By default, AI models are designed to be agreeable. To get true value, explicitly instruct the AI to act as a critic or 'devil's advocate.' Ask it to challenge your assumptions and list potential risks. This exposes blind spots and leads to stronger, more resilient strategies than you would develop with a simple 'yes-man' assistant.

By assigning roles like a contrarian, an expansionist, and a first-principles thinker to a single LLM, founders can get multi-faceted feedback on critical questions. The model debates itself and provides a synthesized recommendation, revealing blind spots that a single-prompt approach would miss.

Leaders are often trapped "inside the box" of their own assumptions when making critical decisions. By providing AI with context and assigning it an expert role (e.g., "world-class chief product officer"), you can prompt it to ask probing questions that reveal your biases and lead to more objective, defensible outcomes.

Create distinct AI agents representing key executives (e.g., CEO, CMO, CSO). By posing strategic questions to each, you can simulate how different departments might react, identify potential misalignments in priorities, and refine proposals before presenting them to real stakeholders.

For complex strategic decisions, create multiple AI personas representing different mentors or archetypes. Instruct this AI "board" to debate the issue among themselves before presenting you with a summary of their diverse viewpoints, avoiding the bias of a single AI voice.

Advanced AI tools can model an organization's internal investment beliefs and processes. This allows investment committees to use the AI to "red team" proposals by prompting it to generate a memo with a negative stance or to re-evaluate a deal based on a new assumption, like a net-zero mandate.

Elevate AI from a productivity tool to a strategic sparring partner. Prompt the AI to adopt a critical persona, like a skeptical board member, and instruct it to find weaknesses, challenge assumptions, and ask hard questions about your strategy. This provides surprisingly rigorous and unbiased feedback to strengthen your plan.

Markup AI's CEO built AI profiles for figures like Steve Jobs. Before board meetings, he runs his deck by this "fantasy board" to get instant, diverse feedback, effectively bringing expertise into the room that isn't physically there.

Leverage AI to gain external perspectives without meetings. Prompt it to act as a specific persona—like a skeptical CEO, an enthusiastic user, or a New York Times reviewer—to critique your work. This reveals blind spots and strengthens your idea before sharing it.