Part 1 - Big boring problems

Hey Prompt Entrepreneur,

Alright, real talk. The uncomfortable, keeping-you-up-at-3am kind.

Jobs are dying. Like...actually proper dying. Not in some far-off "robots are coming" way. Right now. AI is about to put a hole in the job market bigger than my coffee budget…

Check out this cheerful graph from the International Monetary Fund

Those parabolic curves smashing into the ground? Those are wage levels if/when we get to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).

Now, of course we can go back and forth about if/when AGI will get here. But…if I’m in a job looking at that chart I’m not going to wait for the theoretics to resolve. I need to do something.

"No worries!" you might say, "I'll just become an indie hacker!"

Well...about that. Indie hacking is dead too. Don't believe me? The godfather of indie hacking himself, Pieter Levels, called it:

It's not that indie hacking failed - it's that it succeeded so hard it became the default.

Everyone is now "building in public" and "launching fast". Hell, it’s been what I’ve been doing for the last few years too so I’m in the same boat.

What’s next up then? How to not just survive but thrive moving forward? Literally the $1M question right now.

It’s AI right?

Just build AI tools, right? Kyle is an AI guy and he’ll tell me AI is the answer.

Oh lord no.

Want to see something properly depressing? Go browse any AI directory. It's not just a graveyard - it's a mass grave of abandoned projects. My inbox is flooded with desperate founders begging for marketing help because their "revolutionary AI tool" is drowning in obscurity.

And these aren't bad tools! Some of them are actually brilliant. But the tool quality itself doesn’t matter.

Why? This is why

80% Distribution, 20% product - that is what you need to pay attention to.

Because the market is busy. And about to become busier.

AI is allowing anyone to build…which means more competition, more noise and less chance of you building something that’ll hit.

Well crap. What’s the fix?

Let’s get started

What’s next?

Welcome to the age of AI Entrepreneurship. This is the next big thing.

Nay: the Next Big Thing. Let’s capitalise it - it deserves it.

This isn't just another tech trend or market shift. This is a fundamental change in how businesses will be built and scaled.

What exactly is AI entrepreneurship? It's the sweet spot between two crucial capabilities

1. The ability to build AI-powered solutions (which is getting easier every day)

2. The ability to get those solutions into the hands of people who need them most

And here's why it's happening now: building AI tools is becoming democratised. Those 8-year-olds with Cursor? That's just the beginning. Your nan will be spinning up web apps before she spins up her next batch of scones.

This is where AI entrepreneurship comes in. It's about being able to build AND get your solution in front of the right people.

Where do we start with AI entrepreneurship?? Your industry expertise is the key to both.

AI is overrated

Here's something that might surprise you: I don't actually care how much you know about AI.

Like...at all.

The number of people who've come to me saying "I've done all the AI courses, I know prompt engineering inside out, I've built three different ChatGPT plugins..." - and they're all struggling to make their first dollar.

Meanwhile, take Lucy, a procurement manager, who built a simple AI tool that analyses supplier invoices for her industry. Nothing fancy. She barely knew what ChatGPT was six months ago. Doesn’t matter. She knew her industry's problems like the back of her hand.

She's now charging £500/month per customer.

Why? Because she wasn't trying to "do AI". She was solving a real problem that she'd lived with for years.

This is the fundamental difference between success and failure in this space. Are you chasing AI trends, or are you solving legit problems?

Let me show you what I mean. Here's what most people do

1. Learn about AI capabilities

2. Think "ooh, I could use this for X"

3. Build something cool

4. Desperately try to find people who want it

Silly. That’s the fast lane to the AI graveyard.

Instead we’re going to

1. Look at your industry's problems

2. Find one that's costing people money or time

3. Check if AI could help

4. Build the simplest possible solution

See the difference? One starts with technology, the other starts with problems. One requires you to create demand, the other taps into existing demand.

How do you actually find these problems? Well, first up - start in your current industry! If you’ve been working in manufacturing, procurement, marketing, education or whatever your industry is for years then you are in a far better position to know what the problems are!

Let’s use a prompt to help with the process

You are an expert business analyst focusing on process improvement and automation opportunities. Help me analyse my industry for AI implementation opportunities.

Industry: [Your industry]

Please help me identify:
1. Common time-consuming manual tasks in my industry
2. Processes that often result in errors or delays
3. Areas where data analysis is done manually
4. Tasks that require parsing unstructured information
5. Repetitive decision-making processes

For each identified area, explain:
- Why it's a problem worth solving
- Who specifically feels this pain
- Current ways they try to solve it
- Potential value of solving it (time/money saved)

This prompt is your starting point. Run it. Then run it again with different aspects of your industry. Build a list of problems that make you think "yeah, that's proper painful."

You, as someone in the industry are the ultimate arbiter. Not the AI! We’re using prompt to spark some ideas, that’s all.

But here's the crucial bit: for each problem, ask yourself

• Have I experienced this personally?

• Do I know people who face this problem?

• Can I reach the people who have this problem?

If you can't answer "yes" to at least two of these, move on. We're not here to solve theoretical problems. We're here to solve real problems for real people that you can actually reach.

Next Steps

Over the next four Parts of this Playbook, we're taking our first steps into AI entrepreneurship by finding our unique advantage - the intersection of AI capability and market access through our industry expertise.

Here's where we're headed

Part 2: Going Wide

We're going to generate every possible idea for AI implementation in your industry. No filter, no limitations - just pure possibility. Think of it as your industry knowledge having a wild night out with AI capabilities. We'll use specific prompts to dig out problems you might not even realise are solvable.

Part 3: The Reality Check

Time to get brutal. We'll slash through our ideas, eliminating anything that's got red flags around privacy, GDPR, or technical limitations. Better to kill bad ideas early than waste months building something we can't sell. This is where we separate the possible from the practical.

Part 4: Finding Your MVP

We'll zero in on the smallest, most focused solution we can build that people will actually pay for. Not the "wouldn't it be cool if..." ideas, but the "I'll pay you right now to solve this" opportunities. This is where we apply the "boring but valuable" filter.

Part 5: Your Project Brief

We'll wrap it all up by creating a crystal-clear plan for your first AI tool. You'll walk away with a focused brief that identifies exactly what you're building, who it's for, and most importantly - how you'll get it into their hands.

PS. If you’ve got this far we’re exploring launching a 30 Day AI Entrepreneurship Accelerator where we:

1. Hone a business idea

2. Build a focused AI tool

3. Test and refine the tool

4. Market and launch

Course, community and live sessions.

Waitlist here: https://promptentrepreneur.beehiiv.com/c/waitlist