The engine
AI tips for non-technical founders.
How to wield AI like the elite, the privacy moves the incumbents won’t teach you, and a builder showing his work in public.
Every post ships with a free skill — the playbook, made executable for your AI.
The golden setup: get running on AI in an afternoon
The exact tools and the exact workflow a non-technical founder needs to start actually running on AI — VS Code, Claude Code, git, Obsidian. No jargon.
Find your brand’s archetype (and let your AI hold the line)
Most small brands don’t have a weak personality — they have twelve. Pick one, and make it the constraint your AI obeys on every word.
Give your brand a voice your AI can write in
“Friendly and professional” means nothing to a language model. Turn your archetype into a voice concrete enough that your AI sounds like you, not the internet.
Write a mission statement that isn’t fluff
The one-line formula real mission statements follow, why they sell impact not products, and how to use AI to draft a dozen then cut to the one that’s true.
Brief your look before you design it
Colour, type and logo go wrong when founders pick what they like, not what fits. Brief the look with AI so it’s right before a single pixel is drawn.
Find your real customers before you build a thing
List everyone who could care, rank them, find where they actually are, and let AI build the map and the outreach — so you reach the conversation faster.
The Mom Test: validate without lying to yourself
Your mum will say your idea is brilliant. So will strangers, if you ask the wrong way. How to talk to customers so the truth survives — with AI as your coach.
Size your market in an afternoon: TAM, SAM, SOM
Three letters investors expect and most founders fumble. What they mean, how to calculate them honestly, and how to do it with AI before dinner.
Nine ways a business actually makes money
The full menu of revenue models, when each fits, and three questions — answered with an AI sparring partner — that point you to yours.
Routes to market: how you actually reach customers
A route to market is how you reach people and how you scale — pick one that clashes with your revenue model and growth gets slow, expensive, or impossible.
What “traction” actually means
Everyone claims traction; almost no one can say what theirs is. The difference between real proof and a busy-looking number — before and after revenue.
Build a brand ecosystem that funnels to what you own
Owned, social, discovery and communication channels — how they fit, why every platform should point at an asset you own, and how AI runs the whole system.
Get found: SEO and AI-search, without the marketing degree
People can’t buy from a brand they can’t find. How search works, why you write in customer language, and how to rank in Google and in ChatGPT and Claude.
A month of content from one idea
Pillars, the 70-20-10 rule, repurposing one idea everywhere, and HELP · SHOW · PROVE · INVITE — run as a system by your AI instead of by willpower.
Coming next
Ship your first website — and host it free
From a folder on your laptop to a live URL on Vercel, without touching a server.
3D on the web without a 3D team
GLB files, a renderer, and a product page that actually moves.
What founders using AI actually do differently
The operating habits behind 10–100× output — and the ones that just burn tokens.
Make AI work while you walk away
Hotspot, sleep settings, one fat prompt — put the laptop in your bag and let it run.
New posts land here first. Join the curve →