Focus on solving urgent, painful problems ('painkillers') that are indispensable to customers. 'Vitamin' products are nice-to-haves and are the first to be cut when budgets tighten, while painkillers make or save money, ensuring their survival.
Your unique edge is often something you find easy, making it hard to recognize. Grant AI access to your work history, communications, and calendar. It can analyze this data objectively and interview you to reveal the skills that give you a competitive advantage.
Verbal commitments are unreliable. To truly validate a business idea, simulate the entire purchasing experience with a 'Wizard of Oz' test. Create a landing page, guide users through sign-up, and capture their credit card details to prove they are willing to pay.
To avoid wasting resources, use AI to create the leanest possible validation test. Prompt it to design a strategy to secure one real payment within a week, explicitly excluding any time spent on branding, websites, or business registration until the core offer is proven.
By default, AI models are designed to be agreeable and will act as cheerleaders for your ideas, creating a dangerous echo chamber. To get real value, command it to be a 'ruthless mentor,' push back on your ideas, and tell you exactly why your plan will fail.
Don't start a business with a cool technology or product idea. Instead, identify a problem that people are already spending money on with other companies. This validates the market and shows where the real pain is, ensuring you build something with inherent demand.