I Asked Ai To Build Me A Company. Here’s What Happened

I asked ChatGPT how to build a company generating $100 of revenue a day. Here’s what I learned…

In a famous quote by Zig Ziglar, he claims,

“You don’t build a business, you build people, then people build the business.”

But does this still ring true in the days of Ai? Often times startup founders are strapped for cash and paying entry-level employees is a luxury they cannot afford. For those lucky enough to generate income quickly (or receive funding), there can still be potential issues arising from hiring the wrong people. Companies have imploded from a lack of internal harmony or resentment that can stem from hiring employees who are not fully bought into the vision and direction of your startup. While good leadership can help mitigate these issues, the question remains… is Ai capable of doing a better job for less? I decided to run a little experiment.

I asked ChatGPT to provide me with a detailed plan on how to create a brand from scratch and build it up to generate $100 in daily sales. ChatGPT started by outlining a 15-step process on how to start from square one and grow your business into a successful empire. To give you a quick preview I grabbed the heading of each step to give you a quick preview of the overall process:

Step 1 — Define Your Brand Step 2 —Create a Brand Identity Step 3 — Conduct Market Research Step 4 — Build a Website Step 5 — Develop Your Products Step 6 — Create a Content Strategy Step 7 — Promote Your Brand Step 8 — Measure Your Success Step 9 — Build a Strong Online Presence Step 10 — Optimize Your Website for Conversions Step 11 — Use Social Media to Promote Your Brand and Products Step 12 — Leverage Email Marketing to Build Relationships Step 13 — Offer Promotions and Discounts to Incentivize Purchases Step 14 — Use Paid Advertising to Drive Traffic and Generate Leads Step 15 — Continuously Analyze and Optimize Your Marketing Strategy to Improve Your Sales

For the sake of this experiment, I decided to create a fictitious brand for ionized water. I had never heard of ionized water, but recently a fellow Startup Lab member tried a bottle and was describing his experience to me, so it was still top of mind.

Step 1

Define Your Brand

Before starting any branding activity, it is important to define your brand. You need to define your brand’s core values, target audience, unique selling point, and brand personality. This will help you create a strong brand identity that resonates with your target audience.

I decided to let ChatGPT take some liberties in designing our brand. And by “take some liberties” I mean do all the work 😉. I entered the following prompt, “Provide the following for a cutting-edge ionized water company: core values, target audience, unique selling point, and brand personality”

To be honest, I was blown away with the results. I’ve done this exercise before, both individually and with groups of founders, and the output is very similar to what we created. The only difference is that ChatGPT took 30 seconds to do it.

Step 2

Create a Brand Identity

A brand identity is a combination of visual and verbal elements that represent your brand. It includes your logo, brand colors, typography, and tone of voice. You need to create a consistent and memorable brand identity that aligns with your brand’s core values and appeals to your target audience.

I decided to use Ai to create a new logo for our company. Using Midjourney, I asked Ai to “imagine a logo for a modern water bottle with a beautiful utopia inside”

For those of you unfamiliar with Ai art, check out our introduction to Midjourney in our article, How to Make Ai Art in 5 minutes.

I liked the output, it wasn’t a beautiful utopia inside like I had asked 😒 but it's fine, I’m fine. I was happy that the design looked modern and clean but wasn’t fully happy with the results. I decided to keep experimenting.

Next, I asked it to create an emoji version. This time it created a utopia inside the bottle. However, it seemed too busy for a logo. Since logos are used in various sizes and locations, this seemed too complex, even though I loved the aesthetics and vibe.

So, I tried one more attempt, and as Goldilocks found, the third option was just right. I kept it simple and asked for “a logo for ionized water bottles”

This option conveyed ionization with little circles that could be interpreted as atoms and electrons, as well as a smooth lightning icon of some kind to represent ionized charges. Unlike the other two iterations, this one was clean and would show well as a thumbnail on a website, or blown up for promotional material. For the sake of this experiment, it seemed to hit all the boxes.

Note: If you are interested in refining your Ai art, please check out our article on bringing your Ai Artwork to the next level:

Step 3

Conduct Market Research

The next step is to conduct market research to identify your target audience, competitors, and market trends. This will help you understand your target audience’s needs and preferences and develop products that cater to their needs.

I returned to ChatGPT to dig further into this step. I gave it the prompt, “Conduct Market Research for this company by compiling data on our target audience. What is important to them? What products to they love and why? Who are our competitors? What are the market trends for ionized water? How can we better understand our target audience’s needs and preferences and develop products that cater to their needs.”

Once again, I was not disappointed. Since it was in the same chat, ChatGPT remembered its previous responses so understood the context of what I was looking for. It fully understood our target audience, what is important to them, and how it applies to the products they purchase:

ChatGPT provided a list of competitors. If we wanted to take this a step further, we could prompt ChatGPT again for more info on each of our competitors. It also provided market trends and a few statistics to keep us motivated, after all, we are soon going to be the world’s leading ionized water company right?

I also wanted to know what questions I should be asking and how I could further gather data for our market research. Once again, ChatGPT had some great suggestions. Here is it’s response,

“To better understand our target audience, we can conduct consumer surveys, focus groups, and market research to gather feedback on their preferences, purchasing behaviors, and attitudes towards ionized water products. We can also leverage social media and other digital platforms to engage with our target audience and gather real-time feedback. Based on this information, we can develop new products that cater to their specific needs and preferences, such as different flavors or packaging sizes, and communicate our unique selling points to differentiate ourselves from competitors. Additionally, we can prioritize sustainability in our product development to align with our target audience’s values.”

Perhaps in the future we could ask ChatGPT to create a survey for new customers, ask it to write social media captions while we use other tools to automate social media posts, or even provide support responses to our existing customer base. All in all, ChatGPT had some fantastic suggestions for this step.

Step 4

Build a Website

A website is the cornerstone of your online presence. You need to create a user-friendly and visually appealing website that reflects your brand’s identity and showcases your products. The website should be optimized for search engines and have clear call-to-actions that encourage visitors to make a purchase.

When it comes to building our website I can think of 3 options:

1. Use ChatGPT to write copy, then copy and paste into a Wordpress, Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, etc
2. Use ChatGPT to generate both copy and code
3. Use Ai to automate everything

If you are technically inclined and have coded or used a 3rd party tool to create websites in the past, I would recommend option 1. For me, designing websites is one of the most enjoyable and gratifying steps in this process. However, I would always struggle with what to write. Luckily, with the simple prompt “write the copy for our website homepage” ChatGPT took care of the copy:

If you are a dev, you can take it a step further and use ChatGPT to generate PHP code for your WordPress template, React code, or good ‘ol HTML, CSS, and Javascript. You can even use ChatGPT to troubleshoot existing code that is giving you trouble.

For those who prefer to let Ai do all the work, you can use a tool like Hostinger to generate your entire website. For a complete walkthrough of this process, check out this youtube video, 5 Ways To Use ChatGPT To Build Your Website. Or visit Hostinger’s website for more information.

Step 5

Develop Your Products

Develop products that align with your brand’s core values and cater to your target audience’s needs. Ensure that your products are high quality and provide value to your customers.

You might think, “Okay, but there is no way Ai can build my actual product.” In the case of our ionized water company you might be right… for now 😉

However, there are plenty of digital products that Ai can help you with. For example an iOS or Android App, Notion templates, or even a novel! Did you know you can even ask ChatGPT to write a story using a particular author’s tone?

It’s exciting to see what Ai will be capable of within the next few years (unless they are capable of going Terminator style on humankind… that wouldn’t be exciting).

As we wrap the 5th step I realize this article is quickly becoming longer than I had initially expected. For the sake of all our attention spans, I am going to break this experiment up into 3 articles. If you found this article helpful, I hope you will stay tuned for the next steps in ChatGPT’s business blueprint. To make sure you don’t miss out please consider…

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Have you used Ai to automate some of your startup processes? Let us know in the comments!