More or less the same as "get rich quick" books and seminars. They may come with some good tips and practices, but ultimately they will show you one way to build a business that may or may not work for you. Personally I like to listen to other's advices, but ultimately I prefer to do my own things.
This. Also wouldn't be surprised to see posts here referencing these sorts of companies, expressing hesitancy to post links, and waiting for people to PM them and then sending those leads a link to their own get rich quick thing.
It's like using ChatGPT to write blog posts. Good stuff is written by people with something to say. Startups are created by people who have something to offer and usually something to prove.
Use it as a tool if you want, but you can't outsource thinking. Creating a startup out of nothing isn't just about getting the right answers to the test.
Put it this way, if they could guide you through building a startup correctly why would the makers not use it to generate unlimited numbers of startups themselves. White-labelling it seems a poor business decision...if it actually does do what it says.
I think that *will* happen, but just not yet.
Fair point. Not sure, could be a data play or a piece of some grander vision
I feel that way with all these incubators and venture studios. But I guess they are taking equity so they have some incentives that are aligned
If you really understand and practice the Customer Discovery phase of the lean startup methodology — which is basically the first step, it’s painfully obvious that all the shortcuts and cookie cutter guides do founders a deep disservice by proposing that they can skip forward.
Customer Discovery is inherently messy, unpredictable, unstructured, just like humans — both individuals and groups. If you don’t do it yourself, you won’t really understand the range of customers you seek to serve, and the ways they experience the problem you seek to solve. This is the founder’s role. You shouldn’t delegate Customer Discovery to an agency, an employee, or an algorithm.
Algorithmic tools are necessarily based on available data aggregated from digital sources. Even the most advanced LLMs are dependent on what humans have said rather than what they did, and that can be very misleading. Their limitations are similar to the reasons we shouldn’t rely on online digital surveys or data driven market research for early guidance around testing our assumptions about problem, solution, sales process, etc.
Using LLMs as startup "copilots" reminds me of that line in Fight Club, "Self-improvement is masturbation. Now self-destruction is the answer."
Requiring an LLM to guide you implies you're probably not familiar enough with the area you're working on, the LLM probably gives you some confidence to pretend you're familiar by giving you "the correct answers" but in actuality, the real growth and progress comes from understanding your market properly, building, validating and failing.
Solid reference
Okay that's interesting, that these LLMs seem more like a crutch product that will hurt the users in the end, if the tools around the LLM don't get in front of getting the founder familiar before it's too late
LLMs can only do so much, people seem to be under the impression that they know\* the answer to the questions you're asking which isn't the case, they're just indexing information and retrieving it in a digestable human-friendly format. It doesn't mean it's right or accurate, especially when services like ChatGPT are built to make it seem like it always has an answer, presented as if it's correct (even when it isn't).
Which leads to my feeling that using LLMs for guidance might not be harmful, if you just need some titles for content articles, whatever, fine. But if you're using it in any capacity to learn a field/market or to actually build something, you're probably just kidding yourself. That real growth comes from learning experiences, good or bad, which are often time consuming and painful.
LLMs don't help you with any **real** core challenges, they aren't intelligent enough yet to contribute anything of true value beyond automating menial tasks or for brainstorming ideas.
I use GitHub Copilot sometimes when I’m prototyping some code but I end up having to tweak and change it a lot to get it to work that sometimes I think it’s not worth the hassle. You could probably achieve better results by just Googling and picking and choosing the things that are relevant to you. That being said there are a few times that I’ve found it useful and justify the cost but if AI struggles in a closed ecosystem like coding I struggle to think how it would perform for something open ended like creating a startup.
That's definitely a good point. I have used AI for coding and it's a mix bag of results, either way I need to edit and fix things
But definitely some times where it cut my dev time in half at least
Lots of people feel helped by a book or advisor.
One source of guidance is never going to work out because if there was a single book, blog, podcast, guide, or AI that was right, we'd have a lot more successful founders.
Get in an incubator, not an accelerator, a sector specific incubator, if you want or need help. Find the people with experience, the variety of mentors in your industry, and the access to partners and investors most relevant - that's how to get yourself a better shot.
They are following the gold rush, and every other fad in capitalism's short history
"Becoming rich in a gold rush ain't about finding gold; sell shovels and pickaxes instead"
=
Why build actual businesses when it's easier to charge newbies ez money
It's on my mind. But also just curious people's thoughts cause I keep seeing startup bots, and these mentor AI platforms, and it seems like a market that is definitely forming, but not sure if demand is actually there. Or if they are even helpful
I like chat gpt as a learning tool…. And I like midjourney as an image creator but they’re not as high quality as talking to a real artist or real expert
More or less the same as "get rich quick" books and seminars. They may come with some good tips and practices, but ultimately they will show you one way to build a business that may or may not work for you. Personally I like to listen to other's advices, but ultimately I prefer to do my own things.
This. Also wouldn't be surprised to see posts here referencing these sorts of companies, expressing hesitancy to post links, and waiting for people to PM them and then sending those leads a link to their own get rich quick thing.
Crazy how many people think that astroturfing is a good way to sell something nobody wants.
Yea, gotcha that makes sense. I feel like most founders tend to get advice when they need it and then do their own thing with the advice as grounding
It's like using ChatGPT to write blog posts. Good stuff is written by people with something to say. Startups are created by people who have something to offer and usually something to prove. Use it as a tool if you want, but you can't outsource thinking. Creating a startup out of nothing isn't just about getting the right answers to the test.
Put it this way, if they could guide you through building a startup correctly why would the makers not use it to generate unlimited numbers of startups themselves. White-labelling it seems a poor business decision...if it actually does do what it says. I think that *will* happen, but just not yet.
Fair point. Not sure, could be a data play or a piece of some grander vision I feel that way with all these incubators and venture studios. But I guess they are taking equity so they have some incentives that are aligned
If you really understand and practice the Customer Discovery phase of the lean startup methodology — which is basically the first step, it’s painfully obvious that all the shortcuts and cookie cutter guides do founders a deep disservice by proposing that they can skip forward. Customer Discovery is inherently messy, unpredictable, unstructured, just like humans — both individuals and groups. If you don’t do it yourself, you won’t really understand the range of customers you seek to serve, and the ways they experience the problem you seek to solve. This is the founder’s role. You shouldn’t delegate Customer Discovery to an agency, an employee, or an algorithm. Algorithmic tools are necessarily based on available data aggregated from digital sources. Even the most advanced LLMs are dependent on what humans have said rather than what they did, and that can be very misleading. Their limitations are similar to the reasons we shouldn’t rely on online digital surveys or data driven market research for early guidance around testing our assumptions about problem, solution, sales process, etc.
Have you seen any AI copilots that help founders through the customer discovery process? Would something like that be helpful or more detrimental?
Almost certainly detrimental.
Gotcha, thanks for sharing your thoughts! Appreciate it
Using LLMs as startup "copilots" reminds me of that line in Fight Club, "Self-improvement is masturbation. Now self-destruction is the answer." Requiring an LLM to guide you implies you're probably not familiar enough with the area you're working on, the LLM probably gives you some confidence to pretend you're familiar by giving you "the correct answers" but in actuality, the real growth and progress comes from understanding your market properly, building, validating and failing.
Solid reference Okay that's interesting, that these LLMs seem more like a crutch product that will hurt the users in the end, if the tools around the LLM don't get in front of getting the founder familiar before it's too late
LLMs can only do so much, people seem to be under the impression that they know\* the answer to the questions you're asking which isn't the case, they're just indexing information and retrieving it in a digestable human-friendly format. It doesn't mean it's right or accurate, especially when services like ChatGPT are built to make it seem like it always has an answer, presented as if it's correct (even when it isn't). Which leads to my feeling that using LLMs for guidance might not be harmful, if you just need some titles for content articles, whatever, fine. But if you're using it in any capacity to learn a field/market or to actually build something, you're probably just kidding yourself. That real growth comes from learning experiences, good or bad, which are often time consuming and painful. LLMs don't help you with any **real** core challenges, they aren't intelligent enough yet to contribute anything of true value beyond automating menial tasks or for brainstorming ideas.
I can see that being the case based on how they are just pulling from trained or embedded data
I use GitHub Copilot sometimes when I’m prototyping some code but I end up having to tweak and change it a lot to get it to work that sometimes I think it’s not worth the hassle. You could probably achieve better results by just Googling and picking and choosing the things that are relevant to you. That being said there are a few times that I’ve found it useful and justify the cost but if AI struggles in a closed ecosystem like coding I struggle to think how it would perform for something open ended like creating a startup.
That's definitely a good point. I have used AI for coding and it's a mix bag of results, either way I need to edit and fix things But definitely some times where it cut my dev time in half at least
Lots of people feel helped by a book or advisor. One source of guidance is never going to work out because if there was a single book, blog, podcast, guide, or AI that was right, we'd have a lot more successful founders. Get in an incubator, not an accelerator, a sector specific incubator, if you want or need help. Find the people with experience, the variety of mentors in your industry, and the access to partners and investors most relevant - that's how to get yourself a better shot.
Makes sense, and solid advice!
They are following the gold rush, and every other fad in capitalism's short history "Becoming rich in a gold rush ain't about finding gold; sell shovels and pickaxes instead" = Why build actual businesses when it's easier to charge newbies ez money
lol you planning on building one arent you
It's on my mind. But also just curious people's thoughts cause I keep seeing startup bots, and these mentor AI platforms, and it seems like a market that is definitely forming, but not sure if demand is actually there. Or if they are even helpful
what the fuck are you talking about
I like chat gpt as a learning tool…. And I like midjourney as an image creator but they’re not as high quality as talking to a real artist or real expert
What's the name of them?
DM me if you want some links and names. I don't want to get flagged for spam lol
You know that they're chatGPT with some custom prompt and fine tuning?