More and more startupers are using artificial intelligence tools at each stage of their business creation project. Verdict: it needs fine-tuning, but the essentials are there!
In the wake of ChatGPT , thousands of interactive AIs have taken over the Internet. Nothing is more “easy” now than to ask questions in natural language and get answers. In terms of business creation, these tools now have a role to play: from ideation to the construction of an offer through the creation of a site, artificial intelligence is at your service to refine a project, develop an app, create your first content…
ChatGPT will not give you the “idea of the century”. But he and his peers are there to help you challenge your project, have an initial working basis and refine your concept through a question-and-answer game. Meetings with creators who have learned to make the most of these digital brains.
1. Clarify your ideas
If your initial desire is not very specific, ChatGPT will help you clear the ground. In the request addressed to the chatbot – called the “prompt” – you can for example indicate “I like scientific journalism, South American culture and the world of wine, offer me ideas for a start-up or boutique online in connection with these activities.
Between the “creation of an online sales platform for South American wines”, the launch of a “podcast on South American culture” or a wine tourism agency, you will of course have to sort it out! From request to request, refine your idea until you obtain two or three projects that hold up.
But how do you find out about the commercial potential of a market or an idea? Flint, an AI-based news monitoring tool, sends you a personalized selection of articles on a regular basis.
Co-founded by journalist Benoît Raphaël, expert in media innovation, Flint is free in its basic version. During this research phase, also rely on Perplexity AI, a conversational AI combined with a search engine. Unlike ChatGPT, whose data updating stops at the end of 2021, Perplexity deals with recent current topics by indicating its sources and the links to consult them.
2. Refine your offer
How about meeting your future clients? Jean-Alexandre Baghdiguian, founder in 2022 of Grinta Agency, a site creation agency, spent “three months, eight hours a day” to understand everything that could be gleaned from ChatGPT in terms of business creation .
According to this resourceful entrepreneur, the chatbot is particularly useful for understanding the questions that potential customers ask: “If you are targeting delicatessens, for example, ask ChatGPT to play the role of a delicatessen. Then ask him your questions about his main expectations or concerns,” explains the entrepreneur.
To optimize responses, provide your AI consultant with all the useful information to properly carry out its role: for example, a reference text, a market study or a news article on a particular issue close to the project you are developing.
3. Choose a name and logo
ChatGPT can also help you build your brand identity. “The AI gave us lots of lists of names. My partner and I didn’t choose any of the proposals, but it gave us a basis for reflection.
By eliminating everything we didn’t want, we saved time,” says Laura Bokobza, co-founder of Mangomindd (support for hypergrowth start-ups). The entrepreneur then used another AI, Brandmark.io, to create the logo and graphic charter of her start-up.
The machine’s proposals were, once again, not accepted, but they served as a framework for moving forward. Other logo creation tools are available, such as Looka, which provides results in minutes.
4. Create your first content
Product description, blog article, translation: when it comes to written content, ChatGPT is the gold standard. The bot writes text based on very simple queries, such as “I would like a ten-line, four-point summary of the following text.”
The first try will probably not be good. But by repeating the request several times and adding context elements at each step, we end up obtaining a correct result. Retail site creators looking for content optimized for search engines should try Jasper AI. Feed it articles, reports or keywords, and it instantly produces the content you want in the right format.
5. Add images
Midjourney, BlueWillow, Stable Diffusion, NightCafe, Easy-Peasy.AI, Dall-E: there are many tools that generate images from prompts. Argil.ai stands out by feeding on other images and not written instructions.
To insert product photos in the mood of your choice, you can use Withflair.ai, which has a huge selection of decors. Practical for e-commerce sites! As for animated images, Genmo or Synthesia directly transform text into video.
For Jean-Baptiste Berthoux, engineer and trainer at ChatGPT: “It is possible to quickly create a first version of a home page, with a value proposition, advertising ideas, images and videos. We can therefore test more things and achieve a successful project more quickly.”
The result is astonishing: according to a recent study carried out by the start-up Sortlist among 500 business leaders in Europe, 54.38% are unable to differentiate a site designed by an AI from one created by a human!
6. Find customers
Charles Simonet, student entrepreneur, uses ChatGPT to promote his new social network aimed at manga enthusiasts. “I asked the AI at what times 18-25 year olds connect to Tik Tok the most to improve the effectiveness of my communication,” he explains.
The entrepreneur didn’t stop there. He asked the AI to write its first sales pitch: “Write a pitch for product X that solves a common problem and don’t forget to highlight the company’s values.”
For her part, Laura Bokobza had ChatGPT write LinkedIn posts, asking her to scrupulously follow the techniques of the art of written persuasion. “I then took everything over again, but starting with a structured text saved me precious time,” she assures.
“To generate effective marketing messages,” explains Jean-Baptiste Berthoux, “you have to clearly specify to the machine what its role is, tell it, for example, “act like a prospector,” and give it, like an intern, good examples to follow. With Tugan.ia, there is no need, a priori, to provide so much information: you just need to give it a URL or a descriptive text of a product so that it produces ready-to-use commercial emails. However, check before sending them to prospects!
7. Beware of “Cat-lucinations”
ChatGPT, like other generative AI models, sometimes suffers from “hallucinations.” “These hallucinations,” explains Michael Aim, who relied on AI to develop software for managing and measuring the impact of business transformation (Datamensio), “are sometimes attempts to fill in the gaps and react to trial and error. of the user.”
It is therefore better to master a minimum of your subject before resorting to AI, to be able to spot errors. The use of English is also preferable, to obtain better quality results. “Errors often result from practices that are too superficial,” insists Michael Aim. Avoid purchasing “ready-to-use” prompts on dedicated marketplaces.
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