Ex-Google Guy's Framework for Building a $1M AI GPT Wrapper Startup (Design Sprint)

0:00we've got J Scream the man who needs no introduction funnel master and then we've got Jake naap who originally come from Google created helped create the the design Sprint and I think Jake what I want to get out of this this whole episode is to teach me and by virtue of me everyone how to build a product that has the highest probability of success so that's what I want to do I want I want to build an AI rapper startup but I want to build it with the highest probability success and I want a framework and a process and a methodology to help me get [Music]

0:51there amazing so yeah that sounds like super fun to talk about because that's what I've been obsessed with for a long time is trying to figure out how to get how to get the best out of a a good idea and also even how to evaluate if we've got a set of ideas which one should we pursue first and then how do we tune whichever one seems the most promising into like the best form of it that's going to be different it's going to feel like it's worth people paying attention to and uh and then how to experiment on it once you once you find it so yeah

1:21let's let's do it that'd be wonderful all right I have like an app idea a rapper idea that I'd love to Launch and I was wondering maybe could that be a good thing for Jake to help uh evaluate and help me figure out how to actually make it successful and I actually haven't pitched this to him and I I don't know I'm really curious about what it is I kept it a secret so it's like authentic don't ask a question you know the answer to you fly devil you all right of course let's go all right Jake listen I have this idea for a GTP rapper um GTP GTP

1:59rapper it is all so I I've got this idea I'm just going to like build it uh using all the fancy AI tools that are out there it's called hit. me y okay hit. me it's a way for me and other people like me so like knowledge workers to control their dopamine to get a dopamine hit oh hit me with dopam hit me with dopamine right it's for people who just want to be like I don't want to fall into the Doom scrolling of being on X being on in I just need a dopamine hit I know that's what I need yes I just need a Time

2:35control dopamine hit of like the top things I want to know from my ex account the top things I want to know from whatever and so that I can still get the dopamine hit feel less fomo because I don't want to delete my apps and become like a Zen Monk and uh yeah I I I don't want to Doom scroll but I still want I still want to know what Greg's up to yeah yeah this sounds like actually this is kind of an interesting idea Plus kind like ai ai could it also be crypto it will not yet have a crypto elements not today okay yeah I love it I love it this

3:11is a good idea okay so well maybe it is shall we um should we just jump right into the framework that we use so this is this framework is uh what I use with uh with startups that we invest in character Capital so it's a little tiny VC fund we're investing in uh like preed startups and often they're at this state like they you know smart founder got an idea haven't built anything yet or just starting to toy around with something let's Get Off to the Races so shall I share my screen and we just like that do you want to go into tutorial mode just

3:47like let's that fast or should we talk first what did I talk what did we what did we say about question ask you know the answer to exactly this guy just wants straight into tutorial let's do it can you give me more cable over there so I can kind of squeeze seven more cable or like six more cable I want the sauce I would like show me sauce show me sauce okay okay let's do it let's share screen it's a very sauce based audience Saucy so this is the murro template for the foundation Sprint which is the that's the method so like Greg said I created the design Sprint this is

4:24sort of the prequel to The Design Sprint I mean created it more recently in the last few years but um um it's something you do before a design Sprint so it's perfect for this moment where John's got this idea he's ready to rock and just like a quick overview before we dive in like the the big steps of this would be first we want to get into like the basics just want to identify like crisply what are the what are these key elements of what you're doing then we want to talk about differentiation and then we want to say like okay within that sort of idea that

4:53you have what what are the different forms that it might take and maybe we can do a quick pass on which of those forms would be best um we'll have to go quick if we're gonna you know not take forever doing this but um let's just jump into this like this customer thing so who like who's the customer for this you kind of give me okay a few it doesn't have to be one you can give me like more than one and then we can choose so for me I think it's um initially mainly guys just because I know guys you know yeah you know guys

5:21I'm one of the guys you you define like what do you mean by guys like guys what does guys mean okay are we really going to are we really going to start this question on no like what's the age range what's the age range what's the is there you said knowled so I think it's knowledge workers I think it's like 25 to 35 maybe 25 to 40 um definitely you know working in Tech or product space or or or entrepreneurs actually I think maybe mainly entrepreneurs it's it's people who are like and it doesn't have to just be guys it's just I happen to be a guy and I'm thinking about this at a

5:56very basic level it is sexist very sexist it's a sexist product no but the idea here is that it's guys who are like I really need to keep up with all the things that are going on in the entrepreneurial space I don't want to M miss out on some new tech thing I don't want to miss out on like this deep seek thing that has happened but I also don't just want to read the news I want to be looking at social media and seeing like The Cutting Edge stuff but also what happens is when I go okay wait shut up for a second because that's going to be

6:23the next thing yeah so I just wrote down two based on what you said one is like guys knowledge workers entrepreneurs maybe 25 to yes or we could just say like entrepreneurs like I think entrepreneurs is the for V1 okay let's just call it we'll we'll lock that for a second cool entrepreneurs yeah oh sexy entrepreneurs yeah I will put that in not bolded text oh no looks like it's gonna be in bold okay sexy entrepreneurs quick break in the Pod to tell you a little bit about startup Empire so startup Empire is my private membership where it's a bunch of people like me like you

7:00who want to build out their startup ideas now they're looking for content to help accelerate that they're looking for potential co-founders they're looking for uh tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them how do you do email marketing how do you build an audience how do you go viral on Twitter all these different things that's exactly what startup Empire is and it's for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas or it's for people who have a startup but just they're not seeing the traction uh that they need so you can check out the link to Startup empire.co in the description

7:37okay so then problem okay so because you started talking about the problem to what is the yeah like you hadn't read the book I think digital addictional is one of them and the sense that we're just spending hours on social media even though that's you know what it is consumption versus creation ah okay over consumption instead of actually creating things is the problem and the feeling of dark emptiness that comes with that so of those which which would be like the one like digital addiction spending hours on social media I know they're all like over consumption overc consumption yeah so like in it makes you feel like

8:16you're getting stuff done but actually all you're doing is consuming information okay overc consumption that's the best label for you this this podcast doesn't count as that no no this right this is pure pure meaning yeah there no this is sauce sauce this is pure sauce this is 100% sauce Okay so we've got entrepreneurs yeah and we've got uh overc consumption that's our problem okay so what's a special capability that might give you an edge so that so just to clarify do you mean what gives me personally as the entrepreneur making this product an edge yeah you Jonathan you're building this thing what's like your you know if if

9:04you imagine other team like somebody else somewhere got the same idea right now what sort of special and I'm gonna ask you by the way I'm gonna ask you like what's your capability that might give you an edge what's your Insight that might give you an edge what's your motivation for doing this might give you an edge because any of those by the way I want to interrupt I just want to say one thing the beauty about this whole process because I bet you people are thinking it's not like we're talking about should we use bolt or lovable or yeah you know which tools should we use

9:32this is back to First principles this like a first principles way of figuring out how to build an AI rapper startup idea right absolutely and this is like I guess when startups come to you guys that's where you you don't necessarily care especially with something like this exactly the tools they're going to use it's does this even have space in the market toally totally yeah I mean that's the thing it's like the um know from working with hundreds of startups over the years and seeing everything from like slack and Uber to a lot of companies that just went out of business um which by the way I mean that can

10:10happen even if you're really smart and have a good idea but like the the difference of the core thing that technology ultimately will matter when you're building it but like the core thing is like does it solve a problem or are people excited about the getting the solution to the problem and usually like you just thought of this idea I don't know today or like recently maybe 15 minutes ago 15 minutes ago but like usually working with a startup and they've been doing this thing for like them thinking about it for a while right like maybe weeks months you know maybe maybe even a couple years like oh should

10:40I should I go ahead and do this and even still even if you've been thinking about it for a long time it is rare that people are totally dialed in on the first principles on the basics always helpful to say whoa let's just back off of the Tex stack let's just talk about who's the C customer yeah I think like uh Greg I know you don't talk about this this too much on your podcast but one of your companies runs design Sprints a lot and I'm sure you've experienced a company coming to you guys and being like it's so nice to also just have the time and

11:16space to think about these things like most people just dive right into the business but being able to have someone even right now I'm getting caught up in this and I'm like it's such a pleasure to just be able to have the head space to think about it and it can it's already bringing up new ideas that I wasn't even thinking about in the first place and it's fun to be the outsider here too like I love getting to ask the questions and I'm sure if you're the entrepreneur who has the idea already uh you probably have a friend who would love to ask you the questions and like

11:44you know learn yeah I think I think it's really hard to build when your hands are on fire period like if your hands are on fire and you're just like you see a viral tweet and you're like oh my God I need to go build what this person is saying really quickly um you kind of need to take a step back and be like okay what whoa like what am I doing here why am I doing it for who like what that's why I like this framework so yeah let's let's keep going okay so you asked me what my special capability is or something what was your question yeah

12:17right your capability and like there might be more than one I mean I know you Jonathan you have many capabilities but it's like what's the thing that if you if you imagine the typical person who might compete with you who's also we got their own capabilities what's the thing that really like is a standout thing for you um I think what would be what I would bring to the table would be like packaging up an idea so like positioning and packaging uh probably the the mark direct response marketing angle um it's in in a nutshell probably I would have stronger marketing skills yeah funnel funnel Master yeah the

12:57funnel I think funnel building yeah that kind of stuff it would it would all be around marketing and then one of the advantages would be design because I'm a designer design yeah also uh you know I don't think it comes across in the podcast or even in person but you're funny you have a good sense of humor and it might that might be an advantage so that's even a thing okay yeah what about what about unfunny unfunny also is an advantage like yeah absolutely it's a huge Advantage by the way uh Greg do you want us to zoom in more when on the sections yeah yeah you know what I think the only

13:37way I can do it is to make the window smaller which I will do now oh baby yeah is that better for you yeah yeah and if you don't mind uh because there's audio listeners just like whatever you're seeing yeah right audio sorry audio listener uh that I wasn't doing that all along quick recap quick catch up for audio listeners what we've got foret forget it we're doing sticky notes on a virtual whiteboard so that's that's what you missed okay um so here we got packaging and idea funnel Master positioning design which of these stands out to you as like yeah that's probably the thing or the two things I'd hang my hat on

14:14here okay I think if I was I think what would make me difficult to compete with would be the funnel part yeah funnel Master Fel that guy yeah and I think the design element because a lot of people who build these are developers right and I'm a designer so I would just come at this with a different angle and I'd be able to make a nice interface for it and I think that would be important for this particular challenge love it okay I'm gonna grab those two make them big so we've got this little running tally of quick Decisions by the way if you're doing this on your own or if you have

14:49like a team this will take longer Jonathan's just one person look at the one behind us you did this with the team today I guess we can say they're like pip decks and how long did it take for this oneise for this exercise two hours two hours yeah there's a few little buildup steps before but yeah so it's like this is probably normally going to take we flying through it yeah we're flying okay Insight do you have like a something that you get about this that other people do not get I think that this is one of these things where I actually am going through cycles of

15:18digital addiction and it's it's kind of like a eating my own dog food or something I have this problem I've tried I've spent a lot of money buying products to help solve this problem they haven't solved it um okay but those don't quite reach the level of an Insight what what's an Insight I need to explain well it's like for example uh AI can help with this like a lot of people have taken a crack at doing this but nobody has unlocked the power of like AI plus design equals something really special okay I think that a missing element from all of this in all of the products I've

15:58seen out there that attempt to do something like this is they end up replicating a nonstop scrolling system that can be refreshed my insight here is you have a specific amount of time to use this per day and so once your time is up of like 30 minutes I think time might be an element time capping timea the usage might actually be an element that other products might not be able to combine with the AI and design and ETA yeah okay um tell me Jake tell me if this is a an Insight uh yeah so one of the things I like to do is use Google Trends to figure out if like I

16:40might have an idea that there's something worth building in the space but I like to know the monthly search volume and how it's trended over time um so when I look at for example phone addiction um maybe I can share my so if we look at phone addiction can you see my screen yeah yeah look at that hit me this is like as a startup Builder this is what you want to see literally up and to the right so when you know I use a tool I'm not like involved or sponsored by any sense uh Glimpse it's like uh kind of layers on top of Google Trends um so if you look

17:25at 2008 you're looking at you know 18,000 a month which by the way there's still a huge there's still a market for that but now we're looking at hundreds of thousands or 100 plus thousand searches per month um my guess is it's only going to get bigger too so the Insight here being that and then by the way I also like kind of looking at uh you know what kind of questions people have like how to reduce phone addiction what is this a cool app yeah this is cool how do how does grayscale help phone addiction by the way these questions really help me on being like

17:57oh maybe I should have like a great scale product feature or something this is really cool also great for YouTube video keyword research yes when is the what what's going on in that what years are the dip in like maybe because people didn't care about it it just it's like they were at home right so like the phone addiction was less severe yeah you're not in the toilet like at a restaurant on your phone and being like what am I totally who am I you you can also see you know certain countries um are more addicted to their phone than others which I find really interesting um so like for example like

18:42the Philippines people are really addicted to their phone there apparently Singapore like they're really addicted to their phone so um my question to you Jake and I'll I'll give the Baton to you back to the screen share yeah you know is this an Insight does this consider an in is this considered an Insight in your framework just say no and then stop talking just flat out no damn damn and that's the [Laughter] podcast no I mean I think it is right it's like that's a you know the the downside with that Insight is that you were able to get it from from Google trend friends so presumably anyone could

19:31access it the best insights are ones that for some reason because of your unique sort of situation you have a peak into something that nobody else does and um but you know those aren't necessary for a great product they just often those are like really special it's clear from that chart that like Apple's sort of screen time features and all that stuff it's like it's not making a difference like this is still a problem so um that was always a Band-Aid solution just to make them see seem like they cared yeah yeah but it would definitely push you John to say like okay this is a legit problem I can I can

20:10definitely like sniff test it with Trends but is there something that you think you know about this or or or guess about this that you don't think other people guess I think that um not many people know yet the destructive results of consuming versus creating and I think that it's only starting to like slowly make its way into the Zeitgeist I don't even think the average entrepreneur who spends loads of time even listening to all of this stuff about Co showers and all of this stuff yet knows the destructive power of consuming more than you create um the depression the anxiety all of these things I'm like always studying

20:57things like anxiety try to solve my own life problems and a huge huge amount of information is just starting to come out around consuming versus creating being a cause of a lot of issues and I think yeah not many people have been digging into that insight as much as I have on this topic totally that certainly Miss like I just read a great and it was kind of like a little niche post about how uh having high agency is correlated with just like overall like happy life satisfaction and the author identified consuming versus creating among a long list of things is like that's a a great

21:35way to give yourself like high agency but it's not something that you've heard that was the first time I had heard a glimpse of it and then I was shocked that you were talking about it because I'd never heard it so that's yeah that's a new that's a new thing I've only started talking about it in the last two weeks because I'm like oh my God I I was I was stuck on the consuming is bad because you're getting like lots of bad stuff and you're numbing yourself I didn't think about the fact that consuming is bad because you're not creating and now by the way doing this

22:03uh Foundation Sprint I know I don't know if this ever happens I'm like wait a minute I don't want to make a GTP rapper that's about giving you the information from X and all these places I want to make a GTP rapper that focuses on helping you figure out how to switch consumption into Creation in certain points of your day I don't know if that's part of how this works but I just like that it gave me a random idea that wait a second why would I focus on that thing when this is this Insight is the core of the problem but totally I mean the reason why we're doing the basics

22:41like before we do the approach is for that very reason like we want to make sure that the approach you take is the one that best solves the problem this is you know what this is one of the challenges and I'm Greg you've probably seen this again with LCA sometimes when people are in a design Sprint they're like oh I now want to do something different but in a design Sprint it's hard to get off the train because it's powering forward and like clock's ticking they've already paid for the Sprint as well so you don't want to but like the foundation Sprint what I like about it is that you have I I feel

23:09like the client again I'm thinking about it from an agency perspective the client has the opportunity to just explore a bit right right yeah yeah it's a little bit you you have more freedom you like you have a little bit more slack in this cool maybe let's just keep keep going on by the way I'm not kidding right now I'm like I actually don't want to share this idea because I want to do it so we can delete the podcast let's just delete Greg's probably going to be like it sucked so much anyway he doesn't want to put it we'll see we'll see if this is a

23:36good idea by the end that's right Jake's gonna rate it yeah so motivation like what is of all the things you could do why would you do this you spend time on this this is probably getting a bit too personal but uh I have make it deep yeah I have like generalized anxiety disorder uh which is like a you know everyone has every one says they have anxiety so whatever it's like the one of the things and I've come to a strong realization that it gets much worse when I'm consuming more and more and more and it's much better when I'm in a more creation mode um like sitting on

24:16watching YouTube videos all day even if they're really interesting and about business if I don't pair that with actual action it makes life worse so I have a self motivation to create things that increase my ability to create yeah okay I've written that is that a good motivation or is it too like soft and personal yeah it was really soft and personal and like kind of like sitting here like uh no that's good like that's I think that's what this should be right like the the reason this is split out from the other stuff is sometimes this is what makes the thing great that the the creator of the thing

25:00is like hair on fire about something that other people are not so motivated on Yeah scratch my own itch yeah or or or you know sometimes it's not their own itch it's like no this is this problem I see that I really want to solve or like whatever it might be but that it's special and it really drives you it can inform how you differentiate yeah so it's good to tune into that so I think I think that's a good one I would of these like what do you think of the phrasing want to solve this for oh there's one more thing and actually it might even be

25:31stronger than all of these it's like I think back to my teenage years when I used to make comic books I was in a band and I used to make little video games and all of this stuff and I was really proud of the stuff I got out and I think of the last 10 years I'm like I just spent 80% of my time just consuming social media and didn't create things and I think like uh one big motivation is to not regret not creating things yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Greg's like I need to get these guys off the podcast well what about no I was just thinking like what about

26:07helping people you know this is about so I have to say Jonathan's ass no I want to be really honest if for being here I actually think first at least for this challenge I think first about like what selfishly I'd love to exist for myself and then I'm and and with all the things we end up doing at my company I'm like really pleasantly happy that it also helps other people but I always want to make the thing for myself first or I won't care as much I don't know that's just my own it's cool if it helps other people but I will only really care about

26:44it if I feel like this is something that would have helped me 10 years ago it's like what would have been amazing if it was there 10 years ago for me that's what I want to make I think yeah you go that's a strategy that's certainly a strategy well you're more strategic about these things and so I would never just go I would like call you up and call Jake up and i' be like guys so how do I not just make this a Jonathan product you know well what worries me about a Jonathan product is and I want to put this Rafa our our producer can maybe put this image up

27:23Have You Ever Seen The Simpsons episode where Homer designs his car oh we got to be able to find that but you know okay I I get the general idea that it just becomes so specific to okay bring it off Homer Homer's dream car there it is like that is Jonathan designing his app yes okay so the the issue I have with that with this is that's my app that's what literally has that car right today so the horn at the top I think from what I remember from the 90s plays like lukara when you it's like lukara lukara yeah you know so some sometimes what

28:08sounds great to you isn't what sounds great to others so that's the that's what I'm hoping this process oh yeah actually I guess there will be yeah you're right yeah here's how I think about this uh let's see let me get out of this yeah what would you say to that yeah I I would say that here we start this is is this which one was I editing oh yeah that's a laptop you're using there this is a laptop yeah yeah ah I see right okay yeah no here we go so uh the thing about this is we started off we talked about who's the customer what's the

28:44problem you want to solve for the customer and we talked about right Jonathan's capabilities and insight thing about the motivation is i p just personally like if I'm investing in a company I'm I'm a little nervous if their motivation is just money just because that's like well yeah of course like that should come if you do a good job here but it's a little hard to tap into what's special about that it's hard to like create drive or fire out of that to do something unique and opinionated it's it's actually fine with me if it is sort of selfish I think there is a category where it's like gosh for this

29:19personal reason like I saw my parents struggle with this I saw you know I have friends who struggle with this or I've I work in this you know I work with this group of people whether it's like Jonathan maybe is mentoring entrepreneurs and he sees them struggling and he knows he wants to help people like that if that's sincerely true well then like great like maybe that's it but if the sincere reason is he wants to solve it for himself and we still did also start by saying like yeah but who are the people who will use this and like do we think what problem do we

29:48suspect they have I personally think it's fine for him to be to to be honest and say like yeah but like really my motivation is I want this thing for myself there's great stuff that comes can come from that you know we just it has to be balanced with that other those other elements and ultimately it has to be balanced with experiments are probably design Sprints we're going to prototype the thing put it in front of those customers and see like okay do they also share the problem you have okay do they find that Homer's dream car for you is like just garbage for them or

30:19or are you on to something so anyway I guess I like just sort of labeling it here because it's like we're not going to change Jonathan's mind that that's why he's motivated so like fine like good yeah great I want The Cucaracha what would your horn play my horn would

30:50play you didn't add cut you didn't add human trumpet to the unfair advantages yeah human trumpet no one's ever asked me to human TR I've never gotten the opportunity to human trumpet on this uh podcast but finally I hope that doesn't get cut out so which of these would you choose John um honestly if I'm looking at it I would go for the more positive thing it's I want to create want to create and I I want to replace consumption with creation or like change the pie chart to like 8020 creation consumption okay but Greg's podcast doesn't count and I would listen to that every day on repeat while I'm

31:31cing okay let's move on competitors what how do people try to solve this today what what do they do as a workaround or are there other products that they use so I got a little bit stuck here when I was trying to fill this out I was thinking like like the competition here or at least people would believe the competition would be something like brick you know this thing that blocks your phone uh news feed Eradicator Freedom which you use and talked about before um honestly the grayscale thing in the iPhone and even the iPhones built in stuff like the screen time stuff and another uh comp competitor is like

32:06basically like movements you know like no social media movements and no news movements um like those types of things uh digital detox Retreats and things like that okay cool I see all those as my absolute enemies so which of these enemies is like the 800B gorilla like what's the you know what I think is missing from here is honestly like people just try to White Knuckle it like they try to just self-control yeah selfcontrol yeah try to use selfcontrol and feel bad and honestly pisses me off so much when I talk to people about this topic and they're like uh I'm just gonna like or I have a friend who's like

32:43obviously is as addicted as anyone else and he's like yeah I'm just gonna yeah it's Greg and he's like yeah I'm just gonna like you know man up and like whatever and it's like yeah that doesn't really work like it's too good you know we can stop uh yeah I think probably self-control is the most common thing that people say to me is like the thing they're going to use instead of all these things yeah I don't think people really use these things think about that I think it's like I mean people some people do but like it's almost no one compared to try to use self-control what

33:15would be my opinion I think that's a really I I was genuinely not thinking of that so if we grab this set okay let's just say like all of these are your competitors but like the most important one maybe is self-control and is that accur so when I read the book I wouldn't have thought that you could put something like that in there you don't have to the book's garbage you just need to buy it no I think I mean I don't know like that part I I think we you know we sort of talk about like competitors might be products competitors might be a substitute so substitute of like oh I

33:53use yeah like I'm using this thing to solve that problem I do this thing inste and sometimes the competitor is like there is actually no that solves it which can be mean it's oh it's a great opportunity there's no competitors there but it can also mean like the problem's not that bad people aren't motivated to solve it and the fact that like none of these other like you it would definitely give me pause here that people have tried all these things and none of these is like like exploding because people don't really want maybe they don't really want to solve it I think it's also that we don't understand why we're

34:28addicted to this stuff and we have not created other better substitutes to like why would you not open up this box that does everything for you and hits you with dopamine all day long right and I will also say you can also say to yourself yeah well I don't do this drug and I don't do party I don't party all the time and I don't like you can say I don't do all these things can't say that no I can't say that obviously so you know what I'm talking about but like other clean eating people can say I don't do all this stuff but then you

35:01feel like oh well it's it's innocent I'm just spending 80% of my life scrolling um but I think that there's a strong sense of there's the negativity that comes from that the negative consequences are way more extreme than people believe and again I just want to be clear it doesn't mean I'm saying people shouldn't use these shouldn't consume and shouldn't just chill and shouldn't like switch their brain off sometimes it's the ratio that I'd like to solve with a product all right I'm gonna grab this stuff over and just kind of bring it together so we have one quick quick little little One-Stop shopping to see

35:42all this so the customer entrepreneurs yeah delete the word sexy because it's frankly offensive to very offensive so we're just going to make that entrepreneurs and the problem is this power of consume versus create and the advantage the sexy power of consume the sexy power of consume your advantage is your sexy over consumption over sexy consumption wait how did I get over consumption there oh that's the problem Jake Jake's like what's a laptop a laptop what's a trackpad okay uh problem is people are going to be asking what's this software you're using oh no it's written on the top left a it's a whiteboard thing called Meo it's good if

36:27want to use a whiteboard thing it is actually a good one we do I mean we don't get any there's no affiliate link or something okay okay actually then you disclose that okay I have nothing to do with Meo and I think it's a good one of those whiteboard things and I think there it's also free yeah it's pretty great it's pretty great uh but I am incentivized to say so okay uh so we've got yeah your customer entrepreneurs problem over consumption your capability is design and funnel m your Insight is your power of consume versus create your motivation is wanting to create and then we're going to plunk

37:04in these competitors with selfcontrol I'm going to destroy them the 800 yeah you're gonna rip these guys I'm going seek them so I'm gonna seek them deeply 800 pound gorilla self-control all these other guys over here now this is like look this stuff it's called the basics and like if I don't know for some people they're like see this and at first BL you're like this is kind of stupid like of course I know this stuff why would I need to like fill out a canvas changed I mean all the stuff I wrote is so much like it's it's actually really helpful to see this in a

37:41scannable one pager it's kind of nice it's kind of nice and the key thing too here and you know I don't know like I can't how long have we already gone how many I don't know much time we have left to go but like one of the key things here is you've got all this stuff in the basics and then now it's like okay my brain is totally primed to think about differentiation do I have the opportunity to differentiate from these competitors given my advantage my whatever combination of capability Insight motivation can I realistically make something that's just going to totally destroy those competitors and can I frame the world in a way for these

38:19customers for entrepreneurs in this case that they're going to see that and be like oh my God yeah well I'd never thought about things that way but I want that thing that you know that does it so so um so it's good it's a really good warm-up right even even if you didn't have the magical experience of Jonathan of being like Oh that changed the way I saw things a bit even if it was just laying out what's in your head I feel like this is a very powerful way to Prime yourself to think do I have a market do I have an opportunity here so

38:45now Jake yeah I don't know if you've ever done this but have you ever done something like taking a screenshot of for example the basics going to chat GPT CH or chat at GPT Pro and being like I'm thinking about creating a startup this is the idea what am I missing I don't think that would be a bad idea but I don't do it because my experience with experimenting with it has been that the the way chat GPT looks at the world it just tends to be like kind of the oatmeal version of things and I'm so much more interested in like the opinion like weird versions of

39:28things that people come up with uh I still feel like for weirdness humans have like kind of an advantage at that and and so I I like I like the founders take more than that and that said it's not going to hurt to do that and I should totally be wrong and I'm sure like thousands of people would shout at me like you're wrong like you can totally get that great stuff from it that's just been my experience we had a we had a Founder recently who actually ran an entire Design This is a smart guy like co-founder of uh Google Gemini real smart guy who left found a new a new

40:00startup and he's like you know great we're running this design Sprint together running this Foundation Sprint together great but I want to see what um I'm going to create like some different gbts have them run through as if they were a team right like see what they produce in their own Foundation Sprint and their own design Sprint and you know we looked at it and it was kind of like eh like what you came up with was so much so much spicier as a as a human going through it um but again like your mileage may vary I wouldn't I wouldn't like a a die on a

40:33hill saying that but that's that's my experience so far my take on yeah so my take is I would go through this process you know yourself or with a team humans only just pure completely pure once you're done it then you can do two things one is show this to other people and get feedback yeah and the other thing is show this to Ai and get feedback yeah yeah yeah I mean that that's the thing like if you I feel like if you rely on it to do the thinking for you you will miss you know God honestly even if it does come up with a great

41:14thing not stepping through and processing it yourself I think it's hard to have the motivation to and the conviction to go after the thing it's hard it's hard for it to click right in your brain it's hard for it to what click uh hard for it to what what [Laughter] what got it differentiation should we should we dive in and do this I mean look it's up to Greg yeah is it still Saucy or you know I'm still I'm actually quite excited about I I kind of want to do this now yeah let let's rock okay well so for this this whole part what we're trying to do is create a 2 by two

42:03we're trying to create like business school 101 diagram where you plotting your competitors and you're in the upper right of this 2 by two diagram and they are totally pressed out of that quadrant they're somewhere in the like L shape of other quadrants that I like to think of as loserville you're going to push them down there so like in this diagram we have here here it is zoom in there in this diagram like the target is for like you to be up here and every competitor including the 800 pound gillet to be down there crummy crummy yeah differentiator on one side crummy opposite on the other and uh so that's

42:40what we're going to go for now I feel like a lot of people do think about differentiation but I just don't know how often folks dig really deep into it thinking about differentiation from the customer perspective at the very very Inception of a project and it's a tremendous opportunity if you start there you define this very special way that you're going to frame Your solution against the competition from the beginning and then you prove that with design Sprints and then you build that and execute it then you're not you're not sort of slapping positioning on at the end when you're doing marketing or or sales it's like truly embodied in the

43:19product and it becomes really easy to talk about it's like this actually is what the thing is this is why it's special and then you're also giving your customer a tool to talk to other people about it because that you know it will deliver on the promise so anyway that's differentiation I think a huge deal but I think you have to dig deep to get exactly the right differentiators so that's what this little the step by step we're about to do is is all about that by the way and and what you just said there if you don't have clear differentiation you need to be a god

43:48tier marketer to sell something if you do have clear differentiation it's very easy to market the thing how I know this because I Market other people's stuff a lot and sometimes when it's just a vanilla thing and it's like when I say like oh yeah what's the difference between this and this and they can't explain it I know this is going to be a slog and there's probably not that infrequent for a company who has already built something to not know how to describe it I've certainly lived that building products or to to not be able to say oh it's a little you know it's this is why this is different from the

44:23other things it's even if they can't describe the overall thing I just wanted them to be able to say okay so but how does it compare to your direct competitor why is that different yeah well should we jump do this okay so this first step uh a little I'll give a little verbalization of this for people who aren't on video is is just a series of scales uh from the first one is from slow to fast like you know one through seven slow to fast a line a scale the next one not so smart to Smart hard to use easy to use expensive to free um and

44:59so forth there's a few of these and I call these like the classic differentiators these are things that lots of products have differentiated on in the past they're are things that people sort of readily understand what these are um and they're certainly not the full comprehensive set of things you could differentiate on but it's a great warm-up for thinking about differentiation so Jonathan what I'm going to ask you to do is like bearing in mind what the competitive you know alternatives are today for solving this problem how do you think your product could stack up and maybe you can even like like drive here and just copy that little blue sticky

45:35note and place it on the bar wherever you would say like could you be faster sometimes this won't make sense yeah but it's I think I got a feel for it just by looking at it um I'm just going to do that right now silently yeah and I'll narrate I can narrate what you're doing unless Greg has something you know to say since we're just monolog I have something say once you get to the expensive and free yeah you I think this product speed is like zero of zero importance so I'm just going to like drop it in the middle does matter yeah it doesn't matter um I would say it's

46:08actually also not super smart I would use a relatively it would be a relatively off-the-shelf use of some sort of chat GTP or any I would basically not need a lot of intelligence yeah uh very easy to use very easy to use yeah I would definitely start this all free definitely free okay did you want to interject there Greg I did so one of the things i' I've been noticing in so in software land at least is um there's there's this shift from software as a service to paper use so what I'm thinking is like what's hard for me about this framework is is thinking about okay

46:56it's not as simple as free versus expensive sometimes it's the differenti could be the type of business model how how how should I think about that that's a great question I think that if you are thinking about it so the next step after this is like custom differentiators like what are what are the ones that you think would apply and would be useful for separating from the competition and I think it's possible that the the way people pay for it could make a ton of sense here that could be the thing that makes it stand out it makes you say like God that's much better I'd much rather I'd much rather

47:30pay a subscription for getting my CDs mailed to me than you know rent them one at a time at the video store to use like the Netflix sort of example but um but for now like I think free free is an especially powerful concept and this is not to say it's not better right than than like as a business model it's just that in this world on this first set of activities here where it's like these are things that you can can kind of take to the bank that customers will understand free is instantly understandable and like you know it it it makes a huge difference if you ever

48:05read predictably irrational there's like a lot of studies around how insanely irrational people act when something is free so that's that's my push back here I would also say that a very good argument against this is that sometimes expensive is actually the selling point like the fact that it's the luxury version the expensive version is part of what makes it appealing and that totally can be true it's just that's more likely to be like in our special case that's a custom one over here these are just sort of the dumb set right um I think it's a relatively one-sized fits all does this mean one siiz F fits-all

48:43versus focused what would that mean in this context like with a product that I'm talking about uh yeah like it might be really focused on on the exact thing you think your customers have I mean honestly like screen time and like all of these you know you listed off a bunch of competitors that are sort of general purpose for like I I don't really I'm feeling like I use my phone a bit too much and you're specifically trying to solve the problem of um consumption consumption right these are not these are not like laser focused on consumption so I could imagine that you might say I think I can really

49:25differentiate on being focused for entreprene okay so in that Concept in that context I would say it's focused it is focused okay and then simple complicated simple it's going to be simpler than those other options and then integrated versus siloed I think it's probably quite siloed I think this would be like a St like completely Standalone uh I don't know exactly if it would need to interact too much besides pulling stuff from other places and like this is good that not all of these are like to the right you know this isn't like oh God you got an f and PE no it's like it's good that these things are

49:59spread out like this okay so now we're going to do the same thing only I want you to come up with your own differentiators that you think are espcially special okay I think that one of the big in now that we've gone through this process um most of these products are about um they're about like removing this stuff from your life and replacing it with like nothing right yeah this is like a product that has it replaces the bad stuff it replaces the consumption with creation ideally so I don't know exactly how the product would do this yet but an example of this that I would have would be

50:42you're about you know at 8:00 pm maybe this product saying you're probably about to sit down and watch Netflix how about this instead here's like a suggestion on how you can create versus consume or you maybe type in I'm about to sit down and watch YouTube for 4 hours and it's and it's like hey um if it's Greg's podcast that's fine but anything else maybe you could do a like you know maybe it's like what were you thinking of watching I was thinking of watching loads of business or uh politics well how about this instead something that would maybe scratch the itch but in a more in a less dopamine dumping way yeah

51:22well let's just put like a tiny bow on this little part I wrote while what you saying I wrote like replace distraction to remove distraction so like your competitors are removing distraction yeah exactly they're about removing I'm replacing I also wrote a scale of like creation dopamine as like the good thing like give you dopamine for no dopamine versus no dopamine like remove the dopamine um so that's yeah okay so this is like Anyway let's just like zoom out for a second I'm literally zooming out on the Whiteboard but like zooming out in terms of where we are we started with talking about okay you've you've got

51:54this idea for a GPT rapper and you're trying to figure out what form should it take is there something there this process is a way to just kind of Define well what is it what what are the basics of this thing who's the customer for it what are we trying to solve what can I do that's special here what can my team do that's special here who are the competitors and then starting to think about how can I craft the story around this before that I even know exactly what I'm building what's the story I'm likely to be able to to really win on both win on execution win on telling

52:24that story marketing that story that's what John's trying to do right now he's thinking about like okay I'm not GNA be you know a smarter alternative than the other products it's not going to be faster so be more integrated but maybe some of the things that really matter are this notion of like creating a different kind of dopamine not just saying like it's dopamine or no dopamine but saying no there's a different this is going to offer you something different um and we would continue on with this but in terms of evaluating whether this idea is promising or not you know already even though we're probably about like halfway through this

52:56whole this whole Foundation Sprint method which by the way is all in this book click which John keeps putting his phone on so I can't pick it up easily but uh we're about halfway through there and to me already this is feeling like yeah there's something feels like there's something unique there there's something that's like I was just getting started feeling a b special we're just gonna keep going after Greg hangs up the phone like yeah got yeah so anyway that's the that's that's kind of the the thought process with this framework so far and you just keep going and it kind of bring it keeps like bringing your

53:27vision and strategy into into like Clarity from blurriness to Clarity but but the in a nutshell it's about finding your key it's about finding What Makes You Different and what will help make your product stand out in the market yeah that's right is that in the nutshell is that what you the nutshell it's about you know you have the seed of an idea this is a great very first thing to do yeah can you make it special yeah I think um a lot of people who listen to the show I mean their idea guys and girls right so they have a lot of ideas the thing with ideas is you kind of you

54:02start really with you start in the fog you're in the fog and your goal is to um by the way you're drunk on the fog right like you are so excited about this idea you want to get going and I think it's helpful to just you know John used the word like clear kind of clear it out or clarify it what I like about this method is it forces you to kind of go through um the the fog lifting experience um and then at the end you could be like you know what I don't want to build this Homer car like there's too much competition or I can't

54:40differentiate or I don't have an advantage or you know what I'm actually not that motivated and I encourage people to actually like sleep on this like just you know sleep on this before you invest your time and energy into something and then uh so yeah I appreciate you guys coming on um we'll include a link to the book um actually can I say one thing people should not go and just buy the book because your audience doesn't want to sit down and read they be too lazy they want to get started straight away so if they go to you can decide whether to leave this in

55:17or not if they go to the clickbook decom they can get this template they can get all of that other stuff months before the book comes out and just be totally badass immediately we we'll include that and um I like always I'm always in the comment section so feel free to leave a comment uh for me but also for everyone else um and uh look forward to see what everyone you know builds through this framework and Jake and John thanks Jake and jream actually thanks for I can't believe you called me John well it says Jake and John so I was just looking that's actually you know he calls me jce cream because

56:00my name is Jay ice cream on Twitter on all right a lot of regret from you about that that gamer tag oh great see you next time guys dude you're Legend talk to you later [Music]