Starting a business in an AI world. That’s what we’re talking about today on serial entrepreneur secrets revealed. Uh, start, scale, exit, repeat, or I could go, uh, in reverse there, start, scale, exit, repeat, serial entrepreneur secrets revealed, which is also the title of our book that launched on October 3rd, uh, and became number one bestselling in seven categories.

If you haven’t already done so, head over to Amazon. Or audible and check out start, scale, exit, repeat serial entrepreneur secrets revealed. Well, it’s interesting. Uh, this show, uh, is close to our 140th episode. And I was just finishing a podcast over at the Allen, Allen Levan Center. At NSU, and you know, I was being interviewed by John Westveen, and we had interviewed John on this show around the concept and the importance of working inside of an incubator.

We also interviewed Bridget Weston, who is the CEO of SCORE, and they have 10, 000 volunteers, mentors, and they make the claim that you can increase your chances of success. By three times by getting a mentor. That’s not what today’s show is all about. But those are some past episodes that you could check out.

Uh, Michele or Mimi, what were some of the past episodes, your favorite episodes that you, uh, you remember on this, on this show? I always love when Joe Foster comes and joins us, the founder of Reebok. He has such an incredible story and always has so much good. Information and advice to share for building a business, growing a brand, expanding all of that.

Yeah. I mean, there’s so many good ones. It’s, it’s hard to just say one, but one of my all time favorites was Jeffrey Moore from crossing the chasm. Like I I’m a total fan girl of his so geeky. I know. And, um, it was just great to hear him talk about early adopters and adoption curves and even talk about clubhouse and What they’re doing and what they might do to be more successful.

Yeah, and that actually was chapter three in the book, catching the wave, uh, and we learned really the sort of the, the godfather of technology adoption and it’s actually a good pivot towards today’s topic, which is really AI in 2024 and You know how to start a business Using AI to help you get it off the ground.

Uh, it’s actually the title of an article that I’m working on for Forbes right now. Mimi just edited, edited, edited it a couple days ago. Uh, starting a business in an AI world. And it’s going to be published in about 30 days from now. Uh, so I thought that this would be an interesting topic. And if you’re in the audience and you’ve used AI.

To help start your business, please raise your hand and come on stage and and share with us what you did. Uh, or if you have a question of anybody who’s on the stage here as well, we’d be happy to to answer those questions. But we really do want to make this interactive. And if you’re listening to this in podcast.

You may not know this, but this is actually a live show on Clubhouse, on Startup Club, and you can go to Clubhouse, go to Startup Club every Friday 2 o’clock Eastern, and come on stage and share with us your thoughts about starting, scaling, exiting, and repeating over and over again. So we’ll kick it off here, Michele.

I know you brought up this whole idea of Jeffrey Moore and the adoption curve, so I thought I could talk about three concepts in that chapter. Uh, really, how do you succeed in a tornado when you have something like, so big, such as AI, uh, you know, such a technology shift, and by the way, I think it, I think it’s the greatest technology shift in our lifetime.

Uh, I actually believe that there’ll be more millionaires minted from this paradigm shift than any in the history of our, our lifetime. But things are moving at incredibly fast paced, and there were three sort of concepts in that chapter. The first is a laser beam. You need to, you know, Jeffrey Moore, he calls it the bowling pin strategy.

Uh, and really it’s all about focus on a niche and be the best in the world at that niche. We have a company, Michele and I, um, that we invested in, that’s in the incubator here, called Pencila, P E N C I L A, and it’s just about to launch. But when the CEO of that company first launched, he thought he was going to create sort of a Canva 2.

0. And we said, no, don’t do that. You need to focus on a smaller market segment and do a better job than than Canberra or any other companies. And so he, he decided to focus on e commerce companies and he’s built all of the technology and software, uh, using, utilizing AI and language models to, um.

Essentially be your 99 AI marketing staff for an e commerce business. And I believe he’s gonna, gonna do very well with this company because he’s focused, he’s focused on, on, on, on connections and API APIs and doing whatever it takes to make his platform more effective for e commerce companies. He’s not going to help every business, but he is going to focus on that.

And that’s his laser beam. The second is make it easy technology for the most part. You know, unless you’re really an innovator, and we know based on Jeffrey Moore’s technology adoption curve, only a very small percentage of the population, you know, a couple percent are innovators, early adopters. Uh, and, you know, most of those early adopters, innovators, they don’t mind the technology being a little complicated.

But in order to really sell a lot of product, we need to appeal to the early majority, and these are pragmatists. Uh, pragmatists, uh, you know, people who want to use something that makes their life better, not because it’s cool. So you think of the enthusiast, the early adopter, they might want to use it because it’s cool.

And then you think of the, um, the people who, really want it to change or benefit them in life. That’s the early majority and that’s where that tornado effect comes in. So by making your product as easy as possible and as simple as possible for that market segment, not for the innovators, you can, you can, uh, you can actually win in the market or win in that tornado.

I like to use a good example. There was CompuServe in the nineties, which really appealed to a lot of. I’ll say geeks on. I say that in only in a very positive way. I’m not a geek, but I only aspire to be one. Uh, and then a company called A. O. L. Came out, which was, you know, a little bit more fancy and had a little bit more.

Uh, simplicity to it, uh, and, and they really dominated, AOL became the dominant player in that, in that market. Uh, I followed it very closely because we had an ISP up in Canada, which, uh, it, that ISP became the dominant player in the Canadian market, even larger than AOL Canada. Um, so, The third thing that Jeffrey Moore talks about is whoever delivers the fastest in a tornado wins.

Okay, so let’s think about this for a second. Whoever delivers the fastest in a tornado wins. Um, let’s go back to that AOL example. At AOL, in the early 2000s, late 1990s, they were distributing CD ROMs that would enable your computer to connect to the internet. And they sent out these everywhere. Every magazine, even newspapers, I mean, they were so pervasive, and this was a time when they weren’t that cheap to, to, uh, produce, but they wanted massive distribution, and that got them there, and that made them number one, and that trounced CompuServe and put them behind, even though CompuServe was the leader.

So it’s, it’s just an interesting to think about, you don’t have to be the first in our market, but if there’s a tornado, like one with AI, we’re gonna wanna be a laser beam. We’re going to want to, you know, focus, we’re going to want to make it easy and we’re going to want to distribute it faster than anyone else and distribution.

That’s where. That’s where distributors come in. You know, you don’t have to always do direct to your customer. You can find ways to use distributors who already have millions of customers that they can sell your product to as well. And that’s one way to win in a tornado. So any thoughts, Michele, before we, we jump into, you know, the, the, the 10 ideas that we wrote for the article on AI and how it, you know, how it can impact startups in 2024.

Yeah, I mean, It’s just amazing. I was actually listening to CNBC, um, yesterday and they actually had experts talking about. You know, how quickly the whole AI landscape is progressing. And one thing they said that I thought was really cool was they said, you know, people have been focused on AI for productivity, but coming into 2024, you’re really going to see people using it, you know, for startups or existing companies to actually make money.

So whatever your idea is, and I think there’s a lot of. Services to call on is what I’m noticing that support the whole ecosystem. And I think that could be actually maybe an easier, you know, opportunity for a lot of people. I was just looking myself because I continually, you know, we have these conversations and I hear other people say, oh, we’ll just train it on your own data or, oh, you know, just, um, You know, use it on your own content and do a chat bot.

And it sounds very easy, but there’s really not solutions out there that make it super easy. And guess what, Colin, you have to do a lot of training of the model to make it good. You have to do a lot of tagging and thinking about, you know, what is the use cases? What are the people that you’re addressing?

So I think there’s an opportunity. For, um, you know, perhaps a lot of people in this room to help companies and, um, help agencies actually harness AI. So if you could somehow become, quote, a subject matter in AI. At least in the implementation part, I think that’s even an opportunity and a good way to get in and to the landscape and start learning about, you know, other potential opportunities and products.

Absolutely. Yeah. So if you’re in the audience again, if this topic resonates with you, you’ve used AI for it to help your startup. Please come on stage and share that story with us. Uh, the title of the article for Forbes is called starting a business in an A. I. World and actually talk a lot about the very beginning of the article about don’t use a I.

Okay, just take a step back here for a second and rules of business. The rules of startups haven’t changed just because a I has come. What has changed is the way that we can go to market and how we can go to market. But I don’t think we can just go to a chat GPT in Ask it to come up with an idea, uh, come up with a list of customers, build the idea for me, and distribute the idea, sell the company for me, and send me a check, all in one prompt.

I don’t think that’s gonna happen, right? I think you’re gonna, you know, each stage, start, scale, exit, repeat, you’re gonna need to figure out the elements of success, and although ChatGPT can tell us, You can never outsource the entrepreneur, the entrepreneur genius. It’s that it’s your experiences. It’s your real life moments that can inspire you to come up with an idea to solve a problem or, you know, find a, uh, how you can solve a bottleneck in a particular industry.

It is those ideas that you’re going to come up with. And, and. When you do have the idea, you’re going to want to take action on that idea. And you’re going to want to launch the name. You’re going to want to come up with a, a, a, an actual name for it. You’re going to want to purchase the domain name. You’re going to want to check the trademark database.

You might want to design a logo. You might want to seek pure feedback, and I think feedback and vetting your idea is key. But also consider at this point, can we use ChatGPT, or a new one that we’ve been playing with here is pi, pi. ai, a really cool app. Can we use those Language models to help us ideate some of these actions that we need to take in a startup.

For instance, uh, we were running a show here coming in and out calling. Oh, okay. Let me go. Okay. Microphone here. I’m fine. Yep. All right. So we are, um, we ran a show earlier. Go ahead. Yeah, we ran a show earlier and, um, A year ago, and, uh, one of the things we asked is, uh, we had somebody who was marketing executive made, made probably about 150, 000 a year, and we asked her to come up with a motto for startup club.

And she came up with a decent, you know, fairly, you know, the community and coming together and just some pretty good things that she came out with. And then we said, come up with five models for startup club. And one of them was fuel your startup journey. And I thought that was a pretty cool moment that we had this creative ideation.

That we did with the chat GPT and I think delivered in some ways a better result than somebody who, who, who was, uh, marketing, marketing executive, but you can use AI for that. You can use AI to help you pick a domain name. You know, if you have a name or, you know, if you’ve sat, you know, figured out your name, you can actually use it to suggest a domain name for it.

Uh, there are many, many things you can do just in that early checklist by using AI to just take your idea. And just get started, Michele, I’ll let you moderate the show today, because I don’t know if I’m having sound connections or issues or not. Yeah, it was a little off and on, but generally on, but let’s go to our audience, James.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the thinking of using AI for your startup. What are your thoughts, James? Um, I think you guys, uh, can you guys hear me? Yes, sir, we can. Awesome. Um, hey, how’s everybody doing? Uh, for inviting me to the stage. Um, using AI, uh, I guess you could say it is the startup for me in my case, because, you know, I started out saying.

Let me see if I can maybe fine tune a language model for like a very specific downstream application that I felt would be useful and like a legitimate, I guess, advancement or innovation in the space that I’m in. And, uh, I knew that it was gonna involve machine learning and data science, you know, there’s a lot of complexities behind it, but I definitely underestimated to a certain extent.

Uh, just how far this rabbit hole goes, but it’s interesting. I think there’s like a ton of help that AI can bring. I think ultimately it’s going to be something that’s going to be integrated as part of our lives and hopefully we’ll just augment everybody’s like regular lifestyle. I see it as kind of like akin to the internet when that came out.

It’s really useful. That’s for sure. Infinitely useful. Yeah, it’s funny. So when the internet came out, you saw an explosion of opportunity in the marketplace, and I think we’re going to see something that actually, I think it’s going to be bigger than the internet. And, uh, already, we’re seeing a lot of different models and companies and, uh, software platforms being launched around AI.

So we’re at the very beginning. Of something that is going to be absolutely huge. And if you could go back to 19, I’m just curious. Um, if you could go back James to 19, I don’t know if you’re that old as old as me, but to 1993 and start a business. Oh, my gosh. But the knowledge we have now, you know, we, we, we could create so we could have created so many things just Knowing that this is going to happen.

Well, I think it’s almost certainty now that I is going to be transformative in our lives and and having a sense or understanding that this is going to be it. And there is it is a paradigm shift. So how do we capitalize on it? How do we catch that wave? Or how do we with our own business idea? Use a I to accelerate our growth or to get that business started?

Are you asking me? Yeah, sure, sure. What are your thoughts on that? What are your thoughts on that? Before we go to Louis. I think, personally, um, the people who are going to benefit the most from it will be the ones who embrace it the most. And I know that kind of sounds intuitive, but I’m surprised sometimes when I talk to other folks, like I’m 30 years old, so 1993 was the year I was born, but I am surprised sometimes when I talk to like, you know, my friends, my peers, and I say, Do you guys use chat GPT at all?

And they’ll say, Eh, not really. Or they tried it out. And I think honestly, you’re right. We are at the precipice of what could be a new revolution when it comes to AI and justice use in general, because like, from my understanding, I don’t even think people have begun to tap into this really as a resource.

Like I think, I don’t know, unless people really use it and I guess try to stress test it in terms of like what it can handle, the queries that you can give to it, and the responses you get, folks won’t truly understand. How helpful it can be. It seems like there’s still skepticism, which you’re always going to get with new technologies, but when I think when that starts to fade and people see how useful this can really be and folks start to understand it more intuitively is like, okay, I can integrate this this way.

It can help me with this. I could plug this in my workflow that way. Yeah, it’s going to be insane. Like the productivity boosts. I just think in every way, shape and form, whether you’re going to be the movers and shakers in this space or just another person integrating it into your daily work life. Yeah.

Yeah, it’s definitely going to be a huge boost.

All right. Well, we couldn’t agree more. And, um, I do believe you’re right. Most people have not even used it. So, there’s so much out there still to be learned. All right, Louis, welcome back to the show. It’s nice to see you. What are your thoughts on our subject today? Thank you. I appreciate it. I actually have a question for you that might, both you, Colin, and yourself, that might have better data.

I imagine that India and China have such a advantage. Due to the massive scale that can’t be matched by the United States towards them in the amount of iterations that they can attempt in startups. And I’m wondering if there’s been any data where The United States startups see what works in those countries and don’t even have to reinvent the wheel to start making similar startups to what works over there.

Any success stories like that, that you know of? Yeah, I don’t have any, I don’t have any data, you know, coming from Canada though. It’s fascinating you say that because we see so many companies in Canada, copies of companies in the United States. Uh, it takes sometimes takes a long time for, for these companies, uh, companies to get to Canada.

And in that interim period, there’s opportunity for businesses to sort of strike out. And, um, yeah, I, I, I think there’s definitely, it’s, it’s, it’s a very good technique to try to find these innovations globally, then bring them back to your country. I think that’s, um, it’s, that’s one of those techniques.

That if you’re worldly, or at least aware, or you look for these unique ideas, then you can bring them back. I don’t have any data on that, per se, but I just, I think your idea there is a solid one. And if we’re starting to see, you know, these AI being used in a particular country, a particular way, why can’t you maybe, you know, adapt that culturally and bring that to your country?

I don’t know if you have any thoughts on data, Michele. I know you missed data. Well, what struck me about what you said is that you referenced China. And that, that’s a whole thing in itself, right? Because we all know that the Chinese government actually censors things. So, I don’t want to go down a rat hole here, but Wow, that, that just made me think of all these things that could also be done to manipulate, but, um, you know, I, I think most people believe that the West are innovators.

I mean, that’s traditionally how it’s been. It doesn’t mean that that’s the way it’s going to continue to be. Right? I think we here have the freedom to experiment a lot more than a lot of other countries and people probably don’t, but absolutely, I think there, it’s just unlimited potential, so I, we should not be surprised where any innovation is going to come from, and we should all have our ear to the ground.

Only because they, they have the opportunity to think different. Um, I, I may not be a fan of what China’s done, but I respect The success of TikTok and I think China has had the opportunity to dissect what works from startups in the United States and they can repurpose it in their country. Well, I would imagine the value is vice versa for us to see what’s working over there and attempt it here.

Thank you guys. Absolutely. You know, Michele and I have visited China about 13 times. And, in some ways, it’s so much more technologically advanced than the United States. We’re talking trains that go 300 kilometers an hour. We’re talking, uh, vending machines where you put your phone up to it and it’s, and that’s your former currency.

Um, it’s just fascinating to see, in countries like that, how advanced they can be and how behind we can be. And, there are ideas, there are things that we can learn from those countries. You know, I think it’s arrogant to think, you know, We should always invent everything on our own or design it on our own.

I think you bring up a really good point. And, uh, that’s, you know, it’s one of those things in starting a business, you know, even in an AI world is look what’s going on around in around in other countries and see if you can’t bring that home. That’s very cool. All right. And by the way, I’m trying to follow everyone on stage.

This app, unfortunately, has blocked me at 2500. So I’m just going to try to go clear some room out of my. Of my friends list, but I really, really do enjoy. If you come on stage, I really want to follow you and continue to connect and continue to have the conversation. You know, we do this show every Friday, two o’clock Eastern, and it’s syndicated and podcast.

We have almost 140 episodes under the title serial entrepreneur secrets revealed. All right, Michele. All right, Shadow. I think I might have accidentally skipped over you. Let’s go to Shadow. Again, always lovely to see, or I should say hear you, Shadow. Um, what are your insights and your, um, thoughts? What are you seeing as AI evolves with startups?

You didn’t, uh, jump over me, by the way. I came up after Louis. I just did a quick question to, uh, Chachi BT about the, uh, use of AI in businesses. And it’s saying that, uh, 16 percent of the world’s AI companies are based in China, which equates to around 5, 734 businesses that puts them well ahead of the US and Canada.

But there’s no information given for IDEA, so it gives you a little bit of data. I can’t see AI doing anything but growing and expanding. I know my own self, uh, it’s the basis of a, wouldn’t, don’t even know if I’d call it a business model, I’m more of an entrepreneur. Because I’m basing it around my writing work.

It’s a major factor in what I’m doing. In fact, I don’t think I’d be doing it without it.

I know it’s just astounding the implications for content creation. And, um, and I, I don’t think you’re saying this or I’m saying this, but it really just kind of like broadens your mindset and helps you. Get to the content probably that you want a little bit faster, but I want your input because I know you’re doing a tremendous amount of work there.

It not only broadens it, it brings up points that I had never thought of before for me to explore and I’m able to use chat GP to analyze the images I’m doing and draw that into the relevancy of my content as well. So it’s, you know, to me, it’s major. Yeah, go ahead. Have you tried the new pi. ai? I haven’t.

It’s not based on chatGPT. It’s not, it’s not, um, it’s completely different language model and, uh, it’s free doesn’t cost anything. Download it. I love the conversational aspect to it. Uh, and I’ve been playing with that 1 and it’s interesting to sometimes ask chatGPT and then ask pi as well. And sort of sometimes you get a bit of a different perspective.

But that’s what I would definitely download play with and, you know, we’re going to use these models to help us launch our startups as well. And I think that’s a model you should consider playing with. So, the big question, as always, with these guys, is it available in Canada? Uh, I don’t know. I mean, I guess I’ll find out what I try.

I guess you will. Right? I’m Canadian too, but we live in the States now. Exactly. I go up in the summers, but Google and, um. That other one, uh, Claude neither one of them are available to Canadians. Oh, wow. Interesting. I don’t think you’re missing. I tried Claude. I couldn’t have a lot of success with it. Um, and, uh, I don’t know.

I mean, it’s maybe it was the application I was using it on. Uh, I know I’ve also got Elon Musk’s and I wasn’t too impressed. You know, I play with it a few weeks back, even bought the subscription, but I wasn’t too impressed with it so far. So the other, this week I’ve downloaded chat GPT for all, um, which is like a.

Desktop that allows me to have it go and look at my own on data on my system. I use Obsidian heavily for my note taking. And I can have it go in and go through my vault and pull out references and analyze the material that I want. So I was pretty impressed with that. Could I ask you guys a question or get your opinion on something?

Absolutely. Go for it. That’s what we’re here for. Perfect. Um, so when somebody mentioned Claw, that made me think, uh, cause I’ve used the model before too. And one of the things that irritated me was like, I personally feel like it has too many safeguards in place. And that’s one of the things that’s made me curious about these AI models, where I know there’s obviously a concern about not, I guess, imbuing them with certain values or like, you know, moral leanings or whatever it is, but it’s like a lot of questions that come from it, such as like, who really gets to be the arbiter of what’s considered to be appropriate or not?

What are the intentions behind it? And are we missing out maybe on the true potential of these models based on these safeguards that are in place? Because sure, they could be used for like ROM, but there also might be some really interesting applications that we could be getting from it that we wouldn’t otherwise receive because, you know, they’ve been neutered in some way, for lack of a better term.

And, um Another thing that I was wondering about your guys’ opinion on was, um, well, I forgot what it was, so I’ll just leave it at that. Sorry. No, that’s, I think that’s interesting and, and I think this group think, we’ll call it, or these models tend to have a particular bias or combined thoughts, uh, you know, how would the mass population think about this and that, not, that’s not necessarily your friend as an entrepreneur, entrepreneurs often do things and start businesses that are completely.

Different than the conventional wisdom and that’s where I think, you know, again, I come back this article in the book. We talk about, um, writing a business plan. We call it the four sticky note business plan. It’s sticky for good reason, so you can put it up on the wall and it’s post it note so that they’re very simple and whatnot, but coming up with your own business plan without using any a I.

I think is absolutely important because you don’t want that group that you don’t want that bias or or, you know, what, you know, what everybody else is thinking. You want to really try to craft your idea, your business plan on your own at 1st. Now, let me be clear here. We’re talking about your personal launch plan and when it comes to investors.

We’re going to want to take that personal launch plan and we’re going to want to feed it into chat GPT. And we’re going to want chat GPT to help us write a very sophisticated looking investor plan. Yes, we definitely want to do that. But, but your whole point about. That there’s a certain, I don’t know, I don’t know what you call it, groupthink, bias, you know, what, what, what, what do you think, what do you call it?

I guess, uh, more of like a neutering. So here’s my best example is, uh, imagine I’m a, I’m a screenwriter for a Netflix show. The one that’s called You, if you guys are familiar with it, where the protagonist is a guy named, oh, you’ve heard of it? Oh yeah, I love it. Yeah, it’s a great show, but I thought to myself the other day, if I were like a screenwriter and I’m working on that script.

I could never use AI to help me with any part of that because of the theme of the show and I even tried it, you know, just as an experiment and it’ll guide the character towards this sort of like, I don’t know, morally good ending or like, you know, not to blow anything, but something that’s kind of opposite or contrary to the plot line right now and I thought the genius behind the show really is kind of And I guess the, the degeneracy of it really, and I thought that’s crazy, you know, there might be a whole entire untapped audience that this could help, but it isn’t otherwise able to be served because of these safeguards in place.

Absolutely. Well, we do want to move on. I know 99, you’ve been patient. Uh, uh, really, really appreciate that. We’d love to hear from you. No problem. If I could just weigh in, um, Harvard business review did a wonderful article on AI for the real world regarding business, just in general, not so much, you know, startup, but it depicts that AI comes in three types, process, automation, cognitive insight, and cognitive engagement.

So when we move away from just looking at. AI is a technology, but engaging business capabilities like kind of what our conversation is today. For my business, I’m utilizing it as to help me with my lead generation vetting and lead generation management. Um, so we know that any startup Um, the cost of customer acquisition is something it’s a metric.

It’s a it’s a value that you should know. How much does it cost you to acquire a qualified customer client? Right. So I’m seeing with the A. I program that was built, um, The speed of customer acquisition is a lot higher. So then that becomes a volumetric, right? I went from 1000 leads in five minutes. Um, that run through a filter.

I’ll just use a filter. Um, that then spits out. Okay. These are your qualified leads based on the data points and information that you need up front in order to approach or acquire these customers. So I think that. The lead generation obviously comes into, you know, cognitive insight, which is the algos to detect patterns and data, um, in vast volumes of data and interpret their meaning and which is, you know, your machine learning, we used to call it machine language, but it’s machine learning because it becomes an intuitive need that kind of skips over just.

Pure code. My litmus test for AI is when AI can start and, uh, create jokes because the human, um, you know, humor is so, I mean, if, if, if AI gets to the point where they can. Give me a Dave Chappelle joke or, uh, you know, a Kevin Hart joke or anyone, you know, take, take your pick, any comedic, if they, if that type of genius is an AI, that, that’s a litmus test for me, but we know that, um, cognitive projects, you know, like you’ve got your robotics, which we call RPA, which is, uh, robotics project automation, um, Um, Harvard did the study and they did 152 corporate projects.

71 were RPAs and, um, cognitive insight. Um, forced collaboration was one of the outcome. In other words, you don’t have the code, I don’t have the code, but we can collaborate and come up with code together because we have a similar need. Ramping up. through some business process. And then cognitive engagement was the last, the smallest group, which was 24 to 152, because we have to remember what we learned from the two thousands and the nineties.

We had a cutting edge and bleeding edge and corporates went through so much forklift. Um, implementation that it was so costly, but by the time they implemented these changes, we were on to the next thing. So how do you look and see as a startup where your horizon is, where your entry point is for implementation?

Because it doesn’t matter if you can’t implement it and use it and see some value proposition or KPI that’s hit. That will give you a better outcome than what your competition, every businesses have some competition, even if it’s imaginative, you know, you want to be strategic and have that strategic advantage.

So for our business, we are. Utilizing, uh, certain algos to help us with our lead generation, lead vetting, and matching that to our service suites.

I land my plane. Yeah, yeah, no, that, that is a perfect example, in my mind too, of how AI can be used for a startup. Because you just described a real use case. And it’s offering a real solution now that you can tailor, right? And I, and I love that you did it around, um, lead generation and trying to attract new business.

I mean, my gosh, if somebody can crack that code, that’s worth a lot, right? So tell, tell us a little more, uh, but let’s go to the next person. And then I think we should probably go popcorn style and everyone just like weigh in on. Their thoughts on projects they want to work on or that they see that are really useful for startups.

So jigger to guard. Yeah, hello. Yes. You’re up. Uh, thanks for having me here. So the AI that we are using right for our startup as well as for our customers, whatever 99 has mentioned right in terms of. generating the leads, validating them with your ICP, right. Ideal customer profile and optimize that to, you know, better ROI and return and investments and all those things.

Right. So that is so far really help. And it increased revenue by 10 X, right. In terms of focusing on those specific leads, how you can optimize, uh, you know, your end to end sales marketing process, right. Uh, starting from, you know, MQL to SQL to qualified lead. That’s what we have seen the AI application.

Second is with respect to our customer. So there’s one startup that I was working with, uh, the rebound. I rebound. ai. They basically wanted to solve a problem of solo premieres e commerce. So basically it was for Shopify. You might have. about Shopify sidekick announcement, right? So similar to that, we were building for Shopify, but not just Shopify.

It was for, you know, Amazon and other players as well, where the, any entrepreneur or e commerce store owner will able to get. Their answers, right? Their sales performance or beat any data performance, whatever they want to ask the question to that data, they will be able to get the answers by just asking the question, uh, questions, right?

So we call it as a talk to your data. So you can talk to your data. You can. You can ask the questions you do.

Yeah, that sounds like a really cool idea. So you’re saying it’s a voice enabled kind of like data analysis. Is that right? Yeah,

I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. So yeah, just exploring that a little bit. So you’re saying literally where you can take a data set and just talk to the model and get insight and answers. Is that what you’re saying? Yep. Yep. So what we have done is we have created a separate platform where you just need to sign in and, uh, authorize your Shopify store or your Amazon store, right?

Uh, our data ingestion process will. Uh, you know, start getting those data into the, your personalized warehouse and then the chat interface will be available for you to, you know, start interacting with that. We have integrated with Slack as well. So another use case that we did it for university, right? So AI in education, right?

That we have two use cases. Actually, we have, uh, we were working. So, uh, one use case was how you can empower students, right? Enhance their learning, especially in math, right? Because if you have seen this GPT models, they are not performing well in when it comes to mathematics, right? When it comes to algebra kind of mathematics and all those things, right?

So the idea was to. build a hint generation, right? So, for example, in US, uh, the student teacher ratio in some of the schools, right, it’s, it’s, it’s low, right? And students required more help or personalized help in terms of, you know, building this, uh, the knowledge gap, right? Or bridging the knowledge gap and, uh, solving this math problem.

So, the idea was to build a hint generation, uh, personalized hint generation, I would say, because One mathematic equation can be solved, uh, you know, in 10 steps or 6 steps. It depends on, you know, the person A to B, right? So, what we have done is, we have built this hint generation, uh, using LM, right? Where student, once the student enters the, you know, a specific, uh, step, right?

Uh, it will evaluate, and if it is incorrect, then, It will give a hint. It won’t be solving that on behalf of that student, but it will give a hint. And that hint will be personalized based on the learning pace of that student. So that’s the another use case and for same, uh, you know, like, uh, the education domain, uh, when it comes to university, big universities where they have a student ambassadors, they have teachers, there are a lot of data requirements, right?

So the traditional BI, it’s not helping, right? When it comes to these charts and all those things, the business stakeholders want. Be able to, uh, you know, know the, uh, answer, uh, uh, you know, the, the insights directly from the BI, they have to interpret those things. Right. So what we have thought is since business stakeholders are using Slack or very hands on on, you know, voice, uh, sort of, uh, you know, applications.

So what we have done is we have integrated that with Slack and created one more web app. Where they can directly ask the questions related to, Hey, what is. Uh, how’s my, uh, you know, students are performing for this class, right? What are the enhancement required for them, right? So those things we were able to, uh, you know, get in.

So we have delivered that MVP, um, you know, last to last week. And we got a huge response on that. And we have built a feedback, feedback mechanism as well, because we want to close the loop in terms of. Okay, there are, because this hallucination is the huge problem, right? The model hallucinate a lot. So what we have done, we use this OpenAI, Vortex AI, Gemini Pro, the Hugging Face, you name it, right?

We experimented it. Uh, so we have a AI research team, by the way. Uh, they are specifically focused on when it comes to, you know, model performance and all those things. So, uh, what we have observed is there are so many applications and all those things. It just that how you are plugging with your business, right?

And how you are leveraging this AI. It’s, it’s not replacing the business. I think it, it can, you know, extend, uh, your business with more capabilities. That’s what I see.

That’s amazing. And, um, Colin, I, I mean, it’s just amazing in the last few months, how much Sophistication we’re seeing come onto the show. Like, I’m very impressed with the audience. I want to thank everyone for attending and especially those who are coming up to the stage. Let’s get over to Levi. Levi, your thoughts, please.

And I also wonder if Santosh, did we miss you? No, he’s next. I know you’ve been, no, it’s on my screen. He’s that’s okay. Yeah. Very interesting. Levi, Levi, sorry, sorry, sorry. My bad. Um, I didn’t realize I was muted. Hello, what are your thoughts on how AI can help you get your business started? Uh, well, personally for me, I, I mean, I’ve heard a few of the people on the stage here and I think everyone seems to be doing well.

And I’ve spoken very positively about AI and how it has helped them in their businesses. But, uh, from my experience. I believe it’s been now six months just getting to building a business for myself and using AI as a tool to actually build it. I can say I’m very happy and positive with the results that I’m getting.

And I think at the beginning, um, there was this, uh, sort of fear of what exactly AI would do or how exactly, uh, AI would impact if I were to just, you know, put my ideas out there and feel like. I’m just giving this, you know, tool information about something that I want to build and what, if it’s maybe just recollecting my ideas and not really giving me what I want, I came to find out at the end of the day, um, everything that I’ve kind of built at the oldest point has actually been AI just giving me, it’s sort of like you put in your thoughts and it’s just, it allows you to see how your thoughts can be laid out so properly or so well.

In words that you can’t describe to another human being. So that’s basically how I feel, you know, with just AI by itself. And, um, what I’ve noticed is also, um, the positive side of this, um, well, AI itself, especially chat GPT, it has created a lot of, uh, platforms. Oh, let me say, there’s a lot of platforms that has come up.

Since the beginning of chat GPT that I’ve seen, which a lot of people are kind of flooding towards and Everybody seems to have like a positive review and one of them being this platform, which I uh, um, It’s called school. com. So It’s sort of like a startup build community. I still don’t know who the founder is, but as of now I can see even, um, influential youtubers and people who have built businesses on youtube like Alex Mosey, who’s currently just had a partnership with them.

Uh, this is a tool that was built, an idea basically, and I read the background story of the school. com, an idea that came out of just AI itself. So the founders must have just figured out a way to manipulate AI, to come up with this sort of an idea. And create something that will bring like minded people to obviously engage bounce off knowledge from each other, share information and even basically learn.

And for anyone who’s really interested, you guys can go and check it out for yourself. I don’t want to like really spoil it, but. I’ve joined the platform and I came to find out there’s actually a lot of opportunities like if you talk about a landmine or a goldmine where they are like minded people who share ideas or will give you information about something that or some way where you may be stuck.

I think school. com is kind of the future. And even for anyone who needs a bit of clarity on what exactly or how exactly will AI help them build their businesses. I think school. com is one of those platforms, but yeah, that was just a shameless plug. I don’t want to promote that platform. Um, to kind of land my plane, um, at this point I’m working on, I would say four different projects.

I can’t really call them out or say exactly what it is because it’s, it’s still, you know, in the works or in progress, but, uh, by the looks of it, I’m very positive. In terms of what exactly AI has done. And I’m not gonna, I’m not going to be ashamed to say that a lot of the things that I’ve literally created was from using AI alone.

Now, my biggest fear for the future is will it continue to be accessible to everyone, or is it going to turn out, you know, to, to become something that. You will have to now pay for or because I do understand that they are parts of AI. There are still limitations even with like chat GPT. They are still, um, there are still certain premium, um, um, tools that you can’t really use.

You have to pay for it. So for anyone who’s like really just in the beginning, like literally in the beginning of starting up a business. Those tools are not accessible or available to you. But what you have currently, I would say, is more than enough to help you build something that will generate you a good income.

And, um, yeah, so I think I’m going to just land my plane there. But by the way, I didn’t, I didn’t mention I’m actually doing this from I’m from South Africa, Cape Town. So anyone else who is really interested to get into the business or wants to build a startup within AI, I would recommend you guys to actually look at certain countries this side.

I know there are certain biases with how exactly would it be like starting the business or startup in Africa, but I would say there’s a lot of potential this side. And also the fact that a lot of people are not really into technology like that. We are still on the come ups, which means is actually a lot of potential.

You could literally take an idea that’s already developed that’s out of the world in the West and you bring it aside and you figure out how the hell you can make it work here and it will look or sound like it’s a whole new idea and people are going to fall and, and, you know, and, and buy it. So, yeah, um, that’s all I’m going to say, but I’m glad to be here and I’ll continue to listen in.

And thank you for joining. So let’s get to Santosh. Santosh, you’ve been so patiently waiting. We’re anxious to hear what your thoughts are. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Miss Hill, Colin, Mimi, and everybody. Yeah, definitely. I was listening very, very carefully. I’m listening very cautiously that, uh, this room. I really like this.

I started love. I’ve been following for a long time, and I know calling like, uh, his, uh, his status, what he does, and we still and. Um, you know what, like myself, I, I learned computers, um, when there was no mouse. When I start business, there is no social media. So this means, like what I mean to say here is a lot of opportunity at the moment, a lot of opportunity in the marketplace, right?

So I live in Australia for the last 15 years, but, uh, I spent nearly, uh, 96 to 2008. How many years? 12 years. I work in the corporate. sector in Nepal. And definitely as in between India and China, I can talk about India and China, how they moving around. And now I’m here in Australia. I can face, I can encounter with the people every day from different parts of the world.

A lot of Indians come here, a lot of Chinese all from all over the world. Everybody’s here in Sydney at the moment, right? So the thing is, you know, these days, wherever you are, it doesn’t make any sense. Anywhere, any parts of the world, you can do an amazing job because it’s like a global village. Maybe you have heard about Canberra.

It’s Canberra. It started from Australia that, uh, you know, 39 years, what’s the name? Uh, they are bilinear now. They started and, uh, they, we, if we look back there, um, you know, the ancestor of Malaysian mother, Australian father, or vice versa. That is the situation, right? And a lot of people, even the United States, Canada, Australia, they’re from South Asia.

especially India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, maybe some from Nepal, you know. So there is no limitation. There is no boundary about the technology. So we cannot divide on that perspective. That’s my first point. And second point is, uh, we, we have been hearing about, I’m a sociologist as well. And I talk about in a social perspective.

Right. Uh, if we talk about that social perspective, yes, I know that India is doing amazingly well in technology because all the math genius are there and all in all and the China is manufacturing hub like when I was doing my MBA in 99, my teacher. I used to say that China gonna be giant one day in manufacturing world because what happens when you do a little bit, a little bit slowly and steady, you win the race, right?

Same thing during 99 hour, my marketing teacher, when I was taking the class, I never forget that China one day dominate the world in manufacturing, in production. What’s happening now? They did. They made it happen, right? So what happens is when you make a foundation and you insist like, uh, China, maybe the government maybe subsidized their manufacturer to manufacture more and maybe they have a tax, they gave the tax bracket and all these things.

So people motivated and start to manufacture. And the other parts of the world, what they realize, if we can get cheaper product on the same quality from overseas, why we bother to manufacture? Let’s go in other sector. And they went to other sector, right? And same case in India. India is, yes. We heard India is doing amazingly well.

I’m very happy India is doing so well in the world, but we don’t know everything about India, right? You see their massive population. There is a lot of poverty. There is a lot of problem there as well, but we only see the positive side. Like, let’s say we talk about the Nepal. Oh, there is a Mount Everest, Buddha’s birthplace.

But if that’s the case, the beautiful country, why I’m here in Australia. why I left my country and I’m here for the opportunity, right? So the thing is we have to, uh, before we talk, we have to know about the background and a lot of Indians, uh, are, uh, you know, uh, Indians or Bangladeshi or Pakistani or Nepalese, you know, these people, they left their home country and went overseas for the opportunities because the part of the world where we, um, to, we live, I used to live, there is always.

Politics, if you are a leader’s son, that if you are a police officer’s son, or you are, you are very rich, only they calculate that. Recently we had an incident, I want to share very bluntly that recently one incident happened in our home country, Nepal, it’s in between India and China, that one political leader was missed off.

Big messed up on the rape case. He came out easily, but another cricket player, there was a little bit of a different scenario, and he’d been jailed for eight years, right? So the thing is, it’s not only about technological advancement. It’s not only about the startup. It’s about. the lifestyle, how you live there, what is your safety, security, your, um, uh, uh, facilities, all these things.

Let’s say I’m, I’m living in Australia for 15 years. Maybe, maybe, uh, if I go back to my home country, I could make more money. I’ll get more success, succeed because I learned a lot of techniques, but I don’t feel like going there right at the moment. It’s not because I don’t love my country. Of course I love my country.

It’s I born Nepalese and I would be Nepalese when I’m Australian. Right. But the thing is social security, you know, facilities, and your life security. And then after so many other factors, which never motivates you to be permanent right there. So these are the factors we have to consider because you know what, like, um, let’s say, let’s say Australia, we have 25 million population.

Let’s, uh, let’s calculate that way. Uh, India got, uh, 1. 4 billion population. China, similarly, the same way, right? Why a lot of people, they did a lot, why they are not interested to go there? Because it’s not only about the success. It’s only about, not only about the business. People look at the thing in a very holistic way, right?

When you convince yourself that whatever, even it applies in the business, like we talk about the high end dollars, a billion, billion dollars, and, uh, um, the people, some of the people, they have a lot of money, but they are not, they’re not happy with whatever they do, right? Whatever they do, and they feel freedom to leave that.

The job whatever they do and you still want to go somewhere, right? So these are the things that’s why Um for me as an entrepreneur, like I look at the thing in a very holistic way It’s not only about the dollar game. You want to make more money more success? Not like that. No, no, not at all That is not only a good, uh, uh, you know characteristics of the good entrepreneurs, right?

You have to be living in a holistic way. You have to balance every sphere of your life That’s what I would like to share. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for that santosh and uh, If you if you’ve been listening to some podcasts, you must be thinking. Okay, we have people from all over the world Yeah, it’s clubhouse It’s a community.

It’s an international community and what a great talk we had today with everyone Uh, it couldn’t have been A show without you coming on stage and share your thoughts, your ideas and everything about, you know, how to how to start up to use a I or how do you use a I to get your startup going? And if you’ve got that idea, you know, there’s a list.

There is a list in the book of things you can do from ideas to action and chapter two. The book I’m talking about is start scale exit repeat. It was launched October 3rd, uh, became a number one bestseller on Amazon. And has sold thousands and thousands of copies and is now rated. Uh, 4. 8, 4. 8 stars. I just checked that out, Michele, 4.

8 stars on Amazon and 4. 6 on Goodreads. That’s amazing. Yeah. And 4. 6 on Goodreads because Goodreads is actually tougher. They’re like all critics over there. And that actually is considered to be a very high score. Um, in any case, uh, it’s been a great show. Thank you very much. Uh, we will see you again next Friday at two o’clock Eastern.

We’ve got some really powerful speakers coming on this show. You’re not going to know that though, unless you go to startup. club and sign up to our email list, www. startup. club, sign up for that email list. And we send out, I think Mimi, we’re sending out a newsletter. We do a monthly newsletter on all the highlights for startup club.

And then we also do a weekly announcement of the shows and the speakers that are coming on this show. So please, uh, go to that website, sign up to that. And if you get a chance, pick up a copy of Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat. You’ve been listening to that, the show, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed.

Same name as the book. And we shall see you all next week. Thank you very much.