Value Jam

I was fortunate enough to be a mentor at an event focused helping people find more clarity on the highest value of their business or idea, and improve how they communicate it. These are my notes from my introduction.

Using AI to develop your business idea/plan/product

Uses for Generative AI / LLMs / ChatGPT

  • Q&A - Get answers to questions - simple question and answer "What is the capital of France?". Subject to hallucinations.
  • Writing - Have it write documents for you - Create a business plan for a dog park that serves beer.
  • Research - Have it do web & deep research - How many dog parks are in Asheville, NC.
  • Conversation - Have it ask you questions. Help you explore, examine and expand on ideas.
  • Development - Create prototypes

Conversation: Basic Prompt Formula

This is not the best prompt ever created but rather the bare minimum to help you create a custom prompt for your use case.

You are {{POV you want to talk to}} helping me {{achieve a goal}}.
My idea is: {{my idea}}
Ask me questions, one at a time, to expand and examine the idea including pros, cons, strengths and challenges.
When we are done create a {{document you want to create}}.

Have a conversation

The key is to give it a personae that you want to explore. Do you want it to think like a business consultant? An accountant? A city official? A pet owner?

Have it ask you questions and answer them the best you can to refine your context.

Have it make suggestions, summarize or create a document from your conversation.

Then ask it to improve anything that is not quite right or that can be made better.

If you want to get fancy give it a framework to work with such as:

  • Porter's Five Forces
  • SWOT Analysis
  • PESTEL Analysis
  • 4Cs Analysis
  • Strategic Group Mapping
  • Competitor Profile Matrix (CPM)
  • Value Chain Analysis
  • Blue Ocean Strategy Canvas

... or whatever framework you want to follow.

You'll be amazed that it comes up with.

Popular Tools

There is no 'best' tool. There are many many tools and more are announced each day. They're all good for different use cases and preferences. These are some of the more popular ones.

LLMs

  • ChatGPT - the original
  • Claude - really good at coding and writing
  • Gemini - don't sleep on Gemini, lots of great tools/features

Research

  • Web search - searches the Internet for information to answer your question
  • "Deep Research" - searches a little deeper and does more processing
  • you.com - one of the original research based services
  • Perplexity - another good one

Prototyping

Great for creating prototypes and proof of concepts. There is a lot of hype about using no-code tools for production ready applications. I'm skeptical that is a good idea today.

Development

TL;DL

Have a conversation with the LLMs.

  • Put as much relevant information as possible into your prompt.
  • Have it ask you questions. Refine your interactions. Ask for improvements.
  • Start a new conversation for each new topic.

Prompts to Get You Started

Want to get notified of new articles and insights?