In the past month, I’ve seen an influx of AI agent software being built to help entrepreneurs. It’s basically a business development assistant, but in the form of a chatbot. Outputs range from simple paragraphs to organized spreadsheets. For me, the most appealing thing is the business models they pump out. You can ask them to give you different business models, which one will most likely succeed, the market size, etc. It’s an amazing place to start, but it’s only going to get you so far.
My take? Not sure if I have one. I’ve played around with a few, but since they’re all in beta testing, I’m not going to make a final assumption yet.
But one thing I do know is that it will never equate to the data we get from real conversations. The most important thing to do when starting a company is to talk to people. Real people. Ask them questions, get their opinion, and see their emotional reactions because online data can’t give you that.
So, if you’re using AI agents to help start your company, great! I think it’s an awesome resource for quick, general information, and maybe testing out some ridiculous business models. But you need to go the extra mile and talk to people.
I remember being an intern and only doing customer discovery for 6 months. My entire job was scheduling interviews with targeted customers, having 15-minute conversations, and analyzing each conversation, trying to prove/disprove our hypotheses. In the moment, it felt tedious, a waste of time, and stagnant; I wasn’t seeing the needle move. But after 100 intentional interviews, we started to see real data. Data based on real problems and real emotions.
Although it felt like a waste of time in the moment, it got us through fundraising and convinced people that there is a real problem. There is a difference between the sentence “based on the national average” to “After we talked with 100 developers, 73 of them said X was the problem.” or “56% of developers in this region said they are actively searching for another option.”
These results are persuasive, heart-tugging, and most importantly, real. So if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or ready to fundraise, take the time to do customer discovery. It is something that AI agents cannot replicate.
Don’t know where to start? Check out our Founder Toolkit, which includes customer discovery templates.
So go the extra mile. We’ll walk (or run) it with you.
-Nicole
