AI is here now: three mindsets for building an AI-first business

Executive overview

AI has crossed the chasm — a billion people a week use ChatGPT. Businesses that don't adapt in the next one to two years will be disrupted by competitors that use AI to deliver faster value and reach more customers.

Three mental frameworks help founders respond: treating the current business as already dead, deploying AI agents as free labour, and managing multiple projects through loops and groups.

Urgency now buys work-life balance later — but the window is closing.

Mindset 1: your business is already dead

• Assume a competitor has already killed your business using AI.
• That competitor did two things: used AI for speed to value, and used AI to reach more customers.
• The business that disrupts you could be the one you build.
• Rebuild from scratch with an AI-first mindset — don't iterate on the old model.
• Treat this like the pandemic: forced reinvention can make the business bigger and better.

Mindset 2: Atlantis has risen — deploy AI agents as free labour

• AI agents are software that works 24/7 at PhD-level understanding across domains, for free.
• Ask: if I had unlimited free expert labour, what would I give them to do?
• Example: a QR code on a drinks can triggers agents that build a personalised health routine, recommend products, and track hydration.
• Example: ScoreApp agents crunch lead data, suggest plans, and generate podcast episodes from your data.
• Build agent capabilities into your product offering to multiply the value you deliver.

Mindset 3: plural careers and loops and groups

• AI makes it possible for everyone to run multiple projects simultaneously — not just billionaires like Branson.
• A value creation loop tracks where a project sits: founder-opportunity fit → MVP → product-market fit → go-to-market → scale → exit.
• Groups are team sizes matched to stage: 2 (scout), 4 (fire-starting), 8 (core), 30 (scale-up).
• Match your group size to your loop stage to manage multiple projects without losing focus.
• At this moment, experimentation beats single-focus — run several irons in the fire.

The window and what to do now

• We are ~3 years into the ChatGPT era; the inflection point (like social media's year 5) is approaching fast.
• The next two years are the foundation-laying window — after that, catching up becomes much harder.
• Get urgent now; work-life balance is the reward on the other side.