School for Startups Minutes

Artificial intelligence is great at making the now better. It makes processes faster, cheaper, and more efficient, but optimizing is only useful when it already exists, which requires visionary humans to go past incremental thinking and imagine a new and exciting future. Computers still don't do that. Thank goodness.

AI provides data, but humans develop trust based on personality and working with someone and shaking their hand. AI can present findings and give you information, but it doesn't inspire loyalty or share empathy, and you can't shake hands with it. Business depends on relationships that are forged over time, where credibility matters more than raw data. People want to work with leaders they like, no...

AI can brainstorm dozens of ideas in the same amount of time it takes a human to just sketch out one idea. It's a great tool for accelerating the creative process or overcoming the blank page syndrome, but originality comes from lived experience, curiosity, and intuition- things that AI does not have. Most of the disruptive ideas come from breaking the rules, and AI cannot do that.

Artificial intelligence is great at spotting trends or finding patterns in data. It can look through millions of transactions, detect anomalies, and highlight the relationships that no human could find. However, data without context is useless. Humans must step in to interpret the findings, connect them with real-world experience, ethics, and goals. A.I. gives a great "what," but you need a human...

The original Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Terminator is one of my absolute favorites, but with A.I. here now, it makes you think - are we in danger? Will A.I. replace humans this week? We're going to talk about it, and I'll give you five reasons why I don't think that will happen. We are safe, us humans. Artificial intelligence is great at doing repetitive tasks - the grunt work, the processing of...

Across the United States, there are organizations called accelerators or incubators. Their job is to accelerate your business or to incubate a new idea. Those programs have some sort of function at the end—a presentation where each group tells what they have accomplished during the program. In the audience are angels. Talk to those angels. Go to the events. See if you can get in an incubator, and...

If you look around in your city, you will find that there is some sort of entrepreneurial event every week - some competitions, demo days, networking days. There's something going on every week. Go to those religiously, and whenever you meet someone, ask them if they're interested in investing in your new business. Have a pitch deck and a business plan ready to show them, but use the events that h...

Perhaps the best way to find an angel is to tap into your professional network and to ask all of the rich people that you know, or just start talking to people at the bar. I have literally sat down at dinner at P.F. Chang's at the bar and walked out with fifty thousand dollars in my pocket from the guy next to me. At the bar, it sounds crazy, but start a conversation and see what happens.

In addition to the city clubs, there are also national organizations of angels. Go to the websites like AngelList Seed. Invest or Crowdcube are great places to find angels and hopefully angels in your area. Expect to give up 20–30 percent, but at least you can get your business started.

SFS Minutes 769: Local Angel Networks When you start a business, one of the hardest parts is getting the money. I hope, of course, that you bootstrap your business, which means using your own internal funds and spending as little money as possible. However, some businesses do require a lot of money, and the typical way to get that money is to go into what's called the angel network and get money f...

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is waiting until their product is perfect. They think it has to be absolutely flawless before they're willing to share it with others. But if you do that, you miss early feedback you could have gotten, and your competitors may be able to jump ahead. Don't waste months polishing the apple when all you need to do is get a minimally viable product out th...

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is ignoring cash flow. Just because you have revenue doesn't mean you have profit. You need cash to pay your bills, yet many entrepreneurs overspend on nonessential things—like securing office space before they actually need it—or fail to forecast unforeseen expenses. Pay close attention to cash flow.

It's a big mistake to think you can do everything alone. You can't—you'll burn out, risk your relationships, miss out on fun opportunities, and even lose valuable business opportunities. By not having other people to provide insight and guidance for your new business, you delay progress. You simply can't do it all alone.

Forgetting to talk to your customers leads to ignorance—and that's never helpful. It also results in a lack of a clear vision statement or value proposition for your business. What makes you unique? How are you different? How will customers differentiate you from all the competition? You've got to think about that early on.

When you're starting a new business, there are countless things that can go wrong, and many people will try to help you—just like in this segment. However, most entrepreneurs make a number of mistakes, especially in their first year, across every category—HR, marketing, finance, and more. This week, I'm going to walk you through some of the most common mistakes and how to prevent them. One of the...

My final AI tip of the week: ask it what it can do for you. Put your resume in and anything else you have about yourself, and say, What suggestions would you make for me? or How can you help me? or What do you see that I'm missing? It will start asking you questions and digging things out of you. It is amazing.

Two or three years ago, you paid a programmer to build a cool website for your business, but now you need to update it, and you can't get in touch with the guy. You have access to the back end with your password. Put ChatGPT on the case. Tell ChatGPT: "On this page..." Give it the URL: "I need to make the following changes. How do I do it?" It will tell you every single step you need to know, I pr...

I am working on a presentation right now where I'm supposed to analyze a video and talk about it. I asked ChatGPT to watch the entire one-hour video, point out 10 weaknesses, and suggest a funny joke. It did it in under two minutes. It was incredible, this entire day of work replaced in under two minutes. Just remember, your prompts need to be as detailed as possible.

Chat GPT remembers every conversation that you've had. So, after I uploaded my resume, I thought it would be a good idea to upload more information about myself and see if ChatGPT could come up with any suggestions. I uploaded my bank information for the last year and asked ChatGPT to look at it. Unbelievable what it said. It said, "You eat out too much." Oh, it devastated me.

All we hear about is AI and ChatGPT. If you're not using it, people say your business is going to die. I don't know what to do—do you? I keep hearing these scary warnings, but I have no idea how to actually use any of it. So, I signed up for ChatGPT, saw a prompt, and had no clue what to do next. This week, I'm going to share five cool things I figured out how to do—things that are seriously aweso...

When you get a group of employees together to talk about a particular topic with absolutely no restrictions on the conversation and where it goes, it's called brainstorming — and it works. Some of the best ideas come when you gather your team and let them talk.

If you want your staff to contribute more and give their ideas, reward them, pay them, set up a contest, and see who wins with the best idea.

So all of the tools we have mentioned so far involve being out front with who's giving the advice. Maybe sometimes you want to give anonymous advice, so you, as the boss, must have some sort of anonymous advice box, or an email, or some system where your employees are allowed to communicate with you without you knowing who it is.

The change starts with you. Instead of asking questions like "How is it going?" or "What's up?" with your staff, you need to ask, "What do you think?" or "Do you have any ideas on how to improve that?" These kinds of questions let your staff know that you are valuing their opinion, want to know what they are thinking, and are inviting them to talk — and to talk freely. That's what you want.

As a business owner, I want my employees and partners to always feel safe giving me feedback. I want to hear their thoughts on how to improve the business, how I can improve my actions and persona, and anything else they believe could help. This week, we're going to talk about that — how you can encourage your staff to give you the feedback you need. First tip: create a feedback-friendly atmospher...