Prompt Playbook: Your First $1,000 AI Niche PART 1
🏁 Your First $1,000 AI Niche
Greg Isenberg dropped this tweet last week that stopped me in my tracks
Someone should create "AI Summer Camp".
There are 254 million college students worldwide who know that AI is coming for them.
By the time today's college freshmen graduate, AI agents will have eliminated 80% of entry-level jobs.
Enter “AI summer camp”
10 weeks. 50,000
He's onto something massive here. But as I read through his vision - 50,000 students, 10-week intensive programme, learning to build AI businesses from scratch - I kept thinking: why limit this to students?
Hell, there are 50,000+ of you in the newsletter already. Another 150,000 or so on social. All of whom want to start a business with AI.
The reality is, AI isn't just coming for entry-level jobs. It's reshaping entire industries. Whether you're a fresh graduate, mid-career professional, or someone who's been in their field for decades, the message is the same: adapt or get left behind.
So I'm adapting Greg's concept and opening it up to everyone. All you beautiful people.
Consider this your invitation to AI Entrepreneurship Summer Camp - a 10-week journey from complete beginner to AI entrepreneur generating real revenue.
Our goal? Our first $1000 within 10 Weeks.
No prerequisites. No technical background required. Just a willingness to build.
Let’s get started
Summary
Charting the territory
The next 10 weeks
Using AI research tools
Creating their simple tracking spreadsheet
Doing manual verification
Starting our build in public journey
The 10-Week Journey Ahead
So what’s the 10 Week AI Summer Camp look like?
Here's the outline of what we’ll be covering
Week 1: Finding Your Niche - Market-first opportunity discovery (not passion-first)
Week 2: Build in Public Content Strategy - Learning through building and sharing
Week 3: Finding Your Startup Idea - Problem-solution discovery with real validation
Week 4: Vibe Coding Your MVP - Building something people can actually use
Week 5: Manual Beta Testing - Finding users through direct outreach
Week 6: Grassroots Marketing - Marketing that works without an audience
Week 7: Basic Revenue Systems - Setting up to get paid
Week 8: Peer-to-Peer Growth - Growing through relationships, not ads
Week 9: Direct Sales Mastery - Converting interest to revenue
Week 10: $1K Milestone and Foundation Building - Achieving success and planning growth
The goal? Generate your first $1,000 in online revenue within 50 days. But more importantly, build the audience, skills and systems to keep growing from there.
Will your first idea make you a millionaire? Honestly? Chances are no. But you’ll be building a foundation that will get you moving in the right direction.
Why Start With Markets, Not Passion?
Let’s get started with working out what you are going to build.
Here's where most people get it wrong. They start with their passion and try to force a business out of it.
“I love going to restaurants. I should start a restaurant.”
Terrible idea. It’s so backwards. Don’t do it.
We start with finding a market. And finding the problems the market has.
Markets exist where people congregate and complain, not where you have passion.
The market does not care what you want to do. It’s irrelevant. Sorry!
The best niches have three elements
Active communities - Places where your potential customers already gather
Documented pain points - Problems people openly discuss and struggle with
Evidence of spending - Proof that people pay to solve these problems
Your passion for artisanal coffee doesn't matter if coffee lovers aren't actively seeking solutions to expensive problems. But a boring niche like "compliance reporting for small accounting firms"? That's where the money is.
Day 1: Market Research Fundamentals
Today, we're not building anything. We're not even choosing our niche yet. We're going to become market researchers, looking for opportunities with the cold, calculating eye of someone who wants to build a profitable business.
Here's the truth nobody tells you: boring business problems are where the money is.
B2C (selling to consumers)? They'll haggle over £10/month. And then be pissed off the first time they hit a problem.
B2B (selling to businesses)? They'll happily pay £500/month to save time. Hell, if you charge them too little they won’t trust the product.
Don't chase shiny cool markets
AI for artists? Sounds cool, but artists famously have no money
AI for accountants? Sounds dull, but specialists bill £200/hour
Often the more boring the problem, the more businesses will pay to make it go away. Invoice processing, compliance reporting, data entry - these aren't sexy, but they're expensive, time consuming problems that businesses want solved.
And AI is real good at solving some of these boring problems.
Your AI Research Assistant
First, let's set up your AI to think like a market researcher. Use this prompt with Manus (this is my invite link) or any AI with research capabilities like ChatGPT or Claude.
Vanilla AI models aren’t going to cut it here. Use a proper agent or deep research model because we need more detail. Here’s the prompt:
You are a market research analyst helping a first-time solopreneur find profitable business opportunities. First, ask me about:
1. My background and work experience
2. Industries I have knowledge of or connections to
3. ~5 Markets that interest me (even if they seem random) Then search for market opportunities that match my background, focusing on:
- Markets where BUSINESSES (not just consumers) have expensive problems
- Communities where people actively complain about time-consuming tasks
- Evidence of current spending on solutions
- Growing trends in Google Trends
- Active discussions on Reddit, industry forums, Twitter/X Look for the "boring goldmines" - problems that aren't sexy but cost businesses real money. Things like compliance, reporting, data processing often hide the best opportunities. For each market you find:
- What specific problems do they complain about?
- How much time/money does it cost them?
- What solutions exist and what do they cost?
- Why are people frustrated with current options?
- How does this match my background/interests? Search Reddit, Google Trends, industry publications, and business forums for real evidence. I want actual data and complaints, not assumptions. Aim for 10 potential markets.Right now we are keeping it wide.
Do not fall in love with the first market idea you get. Chances are it won’t be “the one”.
We’re going to spend time validating and verifying our markets, winnowing down until we find a winner. And the winner will probably not be the one you think sounds cool to pursue. Quite the opposite.
This is why it’s important at this stage not to get too emotionally attached to one idea. Ideas are cheap. Implementation is all that matters. So get ready to dump a lot of ideas along the way.
Your Simple Opportunity Tracker
Right now forget complex scoring systems. Create a dead simple spreadsheet with just three columns:
Market Name: Be specific (not "fitness" but "CrossFit gym owners")
Big Complaints: What are they moaning about constantly?
Money Spent: Are they already paying for solutions?
That's it. We'll get fancy later. Right now we just need to spot opportunities.
And yes, you can ask your AI to prep this for you. You’re already thinking with AI - nice!
Your Day 1 Deliverable
By the end of today, you should have
~10 markets analysed based on your background and interests
A simple spreadsheet tracking opportunities
This isn't busy work. You're laying the foundation for a real business. The market you choose determines everything else - how hard you'll have to work to find customers, how much you can charge, how painful the problems are that you're solving.
So even if it doesn’t feel like we are being productive believe that we’ll save a lot of time (and money) later by doing this work.
Build in Public Component
As we move through this AI Entrepreneurship Summer Camp I highly recommend you start documenting your journey.
We’ll talk about this more in detail in Week 2 but in a nutshell
it’s becoming VERY easy to build nowadays with AI
which means supply of products and solutions is on the rise
which means more competition against you
Your main counterattack here is distribution. Being known. Being able to talk to hundreds of thousands of people about your product and solutions.
This comes from building an audience.
And if you have an audience right now then documenting your process through this AI Entrepreneurship Summer Camp is the single best way to start growing one.
Need a great example? Check out Yoni’s work at https://www.instagram.com/yoniman.mp4
Everyday he shoots a video documenting what he’s up to. What he’s learning, what he’s building. What’s working and what is not.
So today share your research process. Post something like
"Day 1 of building an AI business from scratch. Learned that boring problems = profitable problems. Found accountants spending 10 hours/week on compliance reports. They hate it. They're paying £500/month for software that barely helps.That's a real opportunity. Tomorrow: Diving deeper into the top 3 boring problems I found."
This does two things: holds you accountable and starts building your audience from day one. Use the hashtag #aisummercamp and tag me in (if TikTok) and I’ll be sure to engage.
What's Next?
Tomorrow we'll take your top 3 markets and dive deep into problem density analysis. We'll map out exactly what problems exist, how painful they are, and which ones represent the best opportunities for an AI-powered solution.
Your future customers are out there right now, complaining about something. Your job is to find them. And fix their problems.
Keep Prompting,
Kyle