- Prompt Entrepreneur by Kyle Balmer
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- Prompt Playbook: AI Business Ideas PART 1
Prompt Playbook: AI Business Ideas PART 1
Prompt Playbook: AI Business Ideas
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Hey Prompt Entrepreneur,
I've started over 30 businesses.

Most failed. Not because the product was bad. Not because I couldn't build. Not because of competition.
They failed because of one iron rule: No demand.
Simple as that. The market doesn't care about your clever features, your beautiful design, or your revolutionary approach. If people don't want it enough to pay for it, it dies.
Here's the painful part - I spent months building some of these in secret. Perfecting every detail. Thinking I had THE answer. Crafting the ideal solution. Then launched to... absolutely nobody caring.
It took me a LONG time to dump this bad habit. I thought I knew best. And the market kept kicking my arse.
Meanwhile, the ugly MVP I threw together recently in a week and tested immediately? That one made £100,000 in the first month.
The difference? I validated the ugly one before building it properly. I built the pretty ones in secret and hoped for the best.
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Summary
Why businesses die
Why most businesses fail
The validation mindset that changes everything
Build fast, launch faster, iterate based on reality
Your validation options with and without an audience
Speed beats perfection every single time
The Iron Rule of Markets
The market is brutally honest. It doesn't care about your passion, your skills, or how hard you worked. It cares about one thing: does this solve a problem people will pay to fix?
From my 30+ businesses:
The ones I was "passionate" about but nobody wanted? Dead.
The "boring" ones that solved real problems? Profitable.
The "perfect" ones I built in secret? Graveyards.
The "embarrassing" ones I tested early? Still running.
This isn't about being negative. It's about being realistic. The faster you find out if people want your solution, the faster you can build something they'll actually pay for.
The Build-in-Secret Trap
Most people follow this path:
Get brilliant idea in shower
Tell nobody (someone might steal it!)
Build for months in secret
Perfect every feature
Launch to crickets
Blame marketing
I did this maybe 20 times before learning.
I’m…not that bright!
The fear of someone stealing your idea is nothing compared to the reality of building something nobody wants. Ideas are cheap. It’s implementation that matters.
If you currently have a “great idea” for a business guess what. It’s worth sweet FA. Sorry!
Hoarding that unique idea is also what differentiates first time entrepreneurs from those who have a few businesses under their belt. As soon as someone tells me they have an amazing idea but can’t talk about it because it’s so damn good…I stop listening!
The successful path instead:
Get idea (doesn't need to be brilliant)
Test with real people immediately
Build only what they'll pay for
Launch ugly but functional
Improve based on usage
Scale what works
The difference? You're building with the market, not for an imaginary market in your head.
As an example I’ve just launched the 4th cohort for my AI Workshop Kit. As part of this push I’ve re-filmed ALL of the content and refreshed all the material. It now LOOKS great - really professional.
But we banked hundreds of thousands with the product before we polished it! Because once we’d banked this much we know it’s worth the investment making it look great.
The Lean Validation Mindset
There’s a valuable book called The Lean Startup by a guy called Eric Ries.
I’ll save you having to read it because the basic idea is pretty simple. The core principle: Build-Measure-Learn, as fast as possible.
Find that the market doesn’t respond? Cool. Pivot. Change what you’re building. Based on what the market tells them! Not their own opinion!
But here's what most people miss: the "Build" part doesn't mean build your full product. It means build the minimum thing that tests your core assumption. We’ll talk about this more over the week.
How do we actually TEST the market though?
Well…it depends on whether you have an audience or not. Hence my (constant!) focus on getting you to build an audience around what you are building!
If you have an audience (even small):
Post: "Thinking of building X. Would you pay £20/month?"
Run a quick survey about the problem
Create a waitlist with pricing visible
Pre-sell before building
This is why we spent Week 2 building an audience. Even 100 followers gives you validation superpowers.
This is exactly how I launched the AI Workshop Kit by the way - and banked a quarter mil plus. Nothing fancy.
Without an audience (where you probably are, and that’s fine!):
Analyse competitor audiences (we'll do this tomorrow)
Direct outreach to potential users
Post in communities where your users hang
Create simple landing pages to test interest
The method changes. The principle doesn't: validate before building.
It’s just a lot easier, faster and cheaper with your own audience!

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Speed Is Your Superpower
In the startup world, speed beats everything:
Speed beats perfection (perfect products launched late fail)
Speed beats features (one feature used beats ten ignored)
Speed beats competition (first to market shapes the market)
Speed beats fear (moving fast prevents overthinking)
This week, we're going to move FAST. By Friday, you'll have a validated idea and build spec. Not perfect. Not polished. But real.
This week is about finding one problem worth solving:
Today: Understanding validation principles
Tomorrow: Mining competitors for problems
Wednesday: Creating simple MVP concepts
Thursday: Choosing your winner objectively
Friday: Building your specification
No more building in secret. No more hoping the market wants what you're creating.
Build in Public Component
Share your validation commitment:
"Day 11 of AI Summer Camp: Done with building in secret.
My last secret build took [time] and made £0.
This time:
Test idea by [date]
Launch MVP by [date]
Get first customer feedback by [date]
Speed > perfection. Who else is done with stealth mode?"
What's Next?
Tomorrow, we're going straight to the source of problems worth solving: your competitors' audiences. They're already telling everyone what they want. We just need to listen.
Keep Prompting,
Kyle


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