Starting a company isn’t easy—or cheap. When all you’ve got are a dream and a “shoestring” budget, it’s important to save funds wherever you can, all while getting the job done.
Today’s entrepreneurs can take advantage of unique tools that weren’t available to past generations. You can cut expenses by replacing some services with artificial intelligence (AI). Below, we’ll discuss four different platforms you can use at various stages of your startup journey. We’ll also discuss when hiring a consultant might still be a good idea.
Selling Yourself with a Good Resume
Before investors jump on your idea, they’re going to want to see that you have what it takes to run a successful business. Likely, they will ask to see your resume.
You could spend hundreds of dollars hiring a resume professional to write or optimize your resume. Or you could use ResumeGiants’ free resume checker to get personalized feedback that will tailor your resume to your target industry. It will also make suggestions on bullet point effectiveness, clarity, and word choice.
Is ResumeGiants Safe?
That’s a good question, and the answer really extends to all of the AI tools we’ll talk about below. ResumeGiants and other legitimate AI tools are safe to use. They’re not going to steal your startup ideas. Some require a fee to use, but they’re also not going to steal your banking information.
The question of safety really boils down to your responsible use of AI. It’s a powerful tool, but just like physical power tools, it can cause problems when used improperly. For example, when using AI suggestions to write your resume, you could encounter phrases that are not accurate or that don’t reflect your real-world experience. You must always proofread and fact-check AI output, making any necessary edits before using it.
Business Ideation that Doesn’t Break the Bank
In addition to brainstorming sessions and whiteboards, most startups hire consultants or facilitators to guide innovation. If you don’t have that kind of capital, don’t worry. Vizologi’s Infinite IdeAI generator can help you generate potential business ideas based on keywords, current industry data, and proven, successful, real-world business models.
One of the most unique features is the ability to create mashups of existing business models. For example, if you wanted to create something in the sustainable fashion sphere, IdeAI might combine elements from Quince and Patagonia, or even throw in successful moving parts from Airbnb, Coursera, or other companies in unrelated industries. The result is a truly unique business model to move and shake the industry.
IdeAI can also create automated SWOT analyses to help you evaluate your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, or a PEST analysis to identify external macro-environmental factors, including political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal considerations. In this way, AI is not only helping entrepreneurs come up with new ideas, but also to strategically evaluate them.
Pitch Practice, Content Strategy, and Business Model Validation
Not to be overlooked is the AI engine many tools are powered by: ChatGPT. Founders can use Chat in the following ways:
- Business model validation: Prompt Chat to test your value proposition, explore additional monetization strategies, or evaluate your competitors.
- Pitch practice: Get ready to present your ideas to an audience by prompting Chat to generate mock investor questions and evaluate your answers.
- Content strategy: Having an online presence is vital to any successful business. Chat can help you draft and write blog posts, optimize them for search engines (SEO), create social media posts, or come up with an elevator pitch.
- Market research: Research that once took weeks can now be done in minutes. Ask Chat to summarize trends, identify market gaps, and translate complex industry jargon to terms you and your team can understand. Remember, however, to fact-check any output for accuracy.
With the right prompts, ChatGPT can serve as a sounding board, a strategist, a copywriter, and a marketing consultant. The more you use it, the more tailored the advice will be to your business.
Understanding Business Insights in Layman’s Terms
MachEye, recently acquired by Verint Systems, is an augmented analytics platform that turns business intelligence (BI) into actionable insights that anyone can use regardless of technical skill. Its key features include:
- Conversational data access: Natural language processing (NLP) allows you to ask questions in plain English and receive feedback in the form of interactive visual narratives.
- Auto-generated visuals: Instead of the typical dashboards, MachEye delivers audio/visual “stories” that dynamically illustrate insights.
- “Why” analysis: Rather than just listing data, MachEyehelps users understand the underlying causes of business events—trends or anomalies, for example.
The bottom line is that this tool makes critical metrics accessible at speed to all and removes dependency on data analysts or data engineers.
When You Should Still Hire
The AI tools discussed above are powerful, but they aren’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Depending on the needs of your business, hiring a human expert might still be a good call. Consider, for example, hiring a consultant in the following circumstances:
- You need deeply niche regulatory advice.
- Basic financial forecasts aren’t cutting it; you need advanced financial modeling.
- You’re ready to scale rapidly and require a fractional CFO, CTO, or CMO.
For these and other unique circumstances, consultants can unlock doors. For early-stage ideation, positioning, competitive research, and planning, AI tools can get many businesses 80 to 90 percent of the way there.
Key Takeaways
In the early stages of a startup, every decision is magnified, and every dollar matters. Founders are expected to wear multiple hats, such as strategist, market analyst, designer, copywriter, financial planner, and marketing team member. Delegating some of this work to skilled outside consultants can be valuable, but with limited capital, it’s not always possible. Bootstrapped founders can replace or supplement consulting by leveraging smart, strategic AI tools from day one. In this way, you can begin getting your business off the ground even before you’ve landed that first round of seed funding. AI doesn’t take away the need for strategy; it democratizes it, making opportunities more accessible to all.
