Strategy

What Founders Should Ask Before Building AI

AI is easy to announce and hard to operationalize. Before you brief a vendor or spin up a prototype, pressure-test the opportunity with a short set of questions.

Where does judgment already exist?

If your best people cannot explain how they decide today, a model will not invent clarity. Codify the decision first—even imperfectly—then decide where prediction, generation, or classification can help.

What does success look like in ninety days?

Choose a metric tied to money or time: hours saved, conversion lift, ticket deflection, cycle time. If the only KPI is “we used AI,” you are funding a narrative, not a business outcome.

The third question is ownership: who maintains prompts, evaluations, and escalation paths after launch? AI without an owner becomes shelfware with a higher cloud bill.