How to build with AI

[My SXSW Preso] Practical lessons from 100+ founders

The last few months I’ve been on an AI roadshow learning from AI founders in Brisbane, Sydney and Newcastle (Melbourne and Perth next - here).

Why?

Because the best people to learn AI from are founders who are using it every day.

AND

🔥 because Startmate loves investing in AI founders » apply to the Accelerator here.

We even launched a specific AI stream in the Accelerator supported by mentors from Google, Microsoft, Canva AI, Leonardo.ai and Build Club - more here.

So what is this?

SXSW then asked me to give an exclusive talk on my interim lessons learned.

Here they are:

FULL SXSW DECK AND LESSONS - HERE

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The deck is great and self-explanatory.

But if you prefer to read this on your phone, rather than a deck, here’s the short version:

1/ Mindset

• Getting Started - Don’t “boil the ocean. Pick one narrow, valuable use case. If AI doesn’t make it easier, change approach.

• Get it Live - What is AI really good at? Speed » so don’t make it perfect, just get it live.

• Make it a Habit - what’s your motion to expertiment every day? ie Tinker Thursdays (afternoon) to play around

• Garbage in, Garbage out

  • try promptcowboy to make lazy prompts epic

  • use context windows to the max

  • voice is great for max context

  • ask AI to design a plan first, edit it, then execute » better results!

2/ Building

• Reset - reset context windows otherwise old context distorts next query

• Save markdown - create checkpoints you can come back to, as AI often runs away with changes you can’t roll back

• Pre-process prompts - (espec the first words) as they often follow a pre-determined pattern (“Can you pls XYZ?) = speed + consistency

• Read the official Anthropic + OpenAI SYNTAX guides - proper formatting = higher weight in model reasoning

• AI is the content, not the product - good products are a great User Experience, that’s your edge.

3/ Tools

• ChatGPT projects and Gemini Gems - the fun use cases in my previous blogpost here

• Notion AI - investor updates, customer communications, connected to emails and Google Drive and you can find documents and extract information automatically

• Google Sheets =AI() formula - try it out, super cool!

• NotebookLLM to convert lessons into podcast-style summaries

• Zapier AI - new AI co-pilot: describe your workflow, AI creates it

• n8n - visual workflow engine, sophisticated branching logic, conditions, triggers, ChatGPT agents can even create it for you, as the learning curve is steeper

• Video generation - create small segments and then combine the videos

• Video Tip - upload a video, let AI describe it to get a prompt, then apply that prompt to creating videos

• Canva AI - lots of epic features, ie drop in the text and it creates the full presentation for you

• Mermaid.js - AI transcribe your workflow and Mermaid visualises the logic flows

• Agents = LLM + tool access + feedback loop - more on my previous blog on how to use it