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Inside the Pod: From Idea to Startup in Minutes With AI

Meet Audos, the ChatGPT-powered incubator for founders

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Thank you to everyone who is watching or listening to my podcast, AI & I. If you want to see a collection of all of the prompts and responses in one place, Every contributor Rhea Purohit is breaking them down for you to replicate. Let us know what else you’d like to see in these guides. —Dan Shipper

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I took the better part of an hour to write the sentence that you are reading.

I stared at a blinking cursor, drank a cup of coffee, obsessively played the same song on repeat—but the inspiration would not come.

Going from zero to one is hard.

I imagine founders face a similar problem when turning their ideas into businesses.

Nicholas Thorne is building a solution to this problem: Audos, an AI chatbot that can take you from startup idea to pitch deck, functional website, custom GPT, and interviews with users in just a few minutes.

Thorne is a general partner at incubator Prehype, which has launched successful venture-backed startups like Barkbox and Ro Health. At Prehype, Thorne works closely with entrepreneurs who are starting new companies—and now he’s using AI to scale the process.

In this episode of AI & I, Dan Shipper interviewed Thorne about how he built, and now runs, Audos using ChatGPT. Thorne gives an inside look at how Audos uses AI for: 

  • Marketing
  • Product management
  • Sales 
  • Operations 

He also uses ChatGPT to prototype new features for Audos live on the show. 

I think this conversation will be useful for anyone who has ever toyed with the idea of starting a business, and is interested in how to do it with AI. This piece goes into the details of how Thorne used ChatGPT to build and operate Audos, complete with screenshots.

Startups receive 6 months free of Notion Plus with unlimited AI, valued at up to $6,000! Notion is the go-to workspace for thousands of startups worldwide, helping them manage everything from engineering specs to new hire onboarding to fundraising. With Notion Plus, access the limitless power of AI to streamline and scale your operations seamlessly. Simplify your processes and enhance productivity with one powerful tool.

Apply now and select Every in the drop-down partner list, then enter code EveryXNotion.

Thorne believes that it’s important for a founder to deeply imagine the customer they aim to serve. Audos’s chatbot prompts the user to do this by asking them to name their potential customer.

All screenshots courtesy of AI & I.

In the pursuit of finding “founder-customer fit,” the Audos bot directs the user to articulate the problem that the customer is struggling with. It also presents the user with different interpretations of the problem statement with the intent of defining the issue as precisely as possible.

After the user has selected the interpretation that best describes their problem, the Audos bot generates a list of potential solutions. Thorne adds that the solutions are seldom mutually exclusive and simply address the issue across a range of business models.
Once the user indicates the solutions he thinks would best serve the customer, the Audos bot conveys that it will repurpose the information into a pitch deck of sorts for the business. It also informs the customer what the next steps to set up their business will be. Meanwhile, on the backend, different GPTs work together to prepare the presentation.
As we wait for the Audos bot to generate the presentation, let’s recap: Audos reaches a customer through an Instagram advertisement, gets them to answer a few simple questions about their needs—and poof! Just like that, it creates a pitch deck for them.
Thorne gives Dan an inside look at how Audos uses AI to execute the following functions: 


Become a paid subscriber to Every to learn about how Audos:

  • Guides users through defining their potential customer, articulating the problem, and generating solutions
  • Uses different AI models for marketing, product management, sales, and operations
  • Creates branding elements like product name, logo, and marketing positioning tailored to the target audience
  • Anticipates and visualizes customer journeys through the product
  • Researches potential market size and creates a monetization strategy
  • Generates a website, registers a domain, and builds a custom GPT for customer acquisition
  • Synthesizes customer interview data into a product roadmap with key features

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