How to build an AI startup that converts customers from day one.

As a former VC, about 30-50% of the founders pitching me were selling vaporware dreams that would never see commercial traction.

I'm currently building an AI startup with zero surveys, zero user interviews.

I’m also not asking AI to do our user research for us - big red flag.

Yet I’m 100% sure that my clients need our product.

I see founders building self-serve software falling for this trap every year:

1. They feel pressured to spend their time innovating on a bold vision, instead of giving people what they need.

2. That pressure often leads them to look inside and create something new, instead of first spending MONTHS side by side with their potential users.

3 - This is what I'm doing to avoid this trap:

(Context: We're building an AI content agent and an elite mentoring program for senior leaders looking to attract talent and clients using LinkedIn in 5 minutes per post)

Me and my developers aren’t trying to impress anyone.

I'm doing ALL the mentoring myself, building out our curriculum and setting the product strategy together with my tech team, since they don’t spend time with users.

Every mentoring session (hours and hours every week) teaches me something about our users and their real priorities, not my PERCEIVED priorities.

Each mentoring client becomes a natural Beta user of our content agent.

They know it's early and expect bugs.

They ask "Can the agent also do X?"

We're co-creating it, so I don't have to guess.

I don’t have to try and impress anyone with an amazing shower idea.

In a couple months, our software will address ALL their top concerns because I'll know them all by hand.

If a company tries to grow but Product doesn't talk to users and Sales doesn't use the product...they're gonna have a bad time.