How to explain what an AI startup does
Explain an AI startup by naming the job and the customer before you name the model. Say what the buyer does today, and what they can do with you. Use words they already use for that work. A stranger should be able to repeat the sentence after one reading of the first screen.
On this page
The frame comes before the model
Buyers place a product when they hear a market they know. April Dunford writes that the market frame sets what they assume about competitors, features, and price. Features and technology, offered before that frame, leave the buyer to guess what you are. "AI" is a technology label. It is a weak opening when the buyer came looking for a job to get done. The pages on positioning for AI startups and how to position an AI product cover the decisions under the sentence. This page covers how to say those decisions out loud.
Use words from a week they already had
Rob Fitzpatrick’s The Mom Test puts the interview rules in one place. Talk about their life. Ask about specifics in the past. Listen more than you talk. The explanation should reuse a phrase they used about last week’s work. A phrase coined in the office still has to be translated. The customer interview page is how you collect those phrases. The technical product page is the same order for any product with a mechanism: job, then outcome, then how it works.
A sentence a stranger can repeat
Write four parts, in this order. The category, in a noun a buyer already uses. The customer, narrow enough that the wrong reader feels it is for someone else. The outcome, as a step they stop doing or a step they can now finish. The mechanism, after those three, for the person who will check you. Put the model, the benchmark, and the architecture in that last part. A one-liner is the short form: the product is the category for the customer. The one-liner page has the shape. The homepage, the first slide, and the first line of a sales email should share it. If those three say different things, you have three explanations.
Where each part goes
| Part | What it answers | A place it fails |
|---|---|---|
| Category | What kind of product this is | A coined name with no familiar noun |
| Customer | Who it is for | "Teams" with no job attached |
| Outcome | What they can now do | "Save time" with no task named |
| Alternative | What they do today | A list of other AI products only |
| Mechanism | Why the outcome is true | The model name in the first five words |
Fictional walkthrough
Fictional. Acme Reply is not a client. It drafts replies for support teams at small software companies. The homepage says "AI for customer conversations." A stranger can read that line and still ask what the product does. The founder pulls notes from four calls. The support lead at each company spends the first hour answering questions that are already in the help center. They search the help center, copy a paragraph, and send the reply. The founder writes the explanation in their words. Category: help-desk software. Customer: support leads at software companies with a small team and a public help center. Alternative: search the help center and type the reply. Outcome: a draft is waiting when the ticket opens, and the lead edits it. Mechanism, one sentence later: the draft is built from that company’s help center, and the lead can see the article it used. An illustrative first line: "Help-desk software for support leads who still type the same answers every morning." An illustrative second line: "The draft uses your help center, and the lead can open the article it came from." The model name stays off the first screen. It can live on a docs page for the person who asks. The founder tests the line on the next five calls, using the method on how to test positioning. It is working when the prospect repeats the job in those words and compares Acme Reply to the help center, which is the alternative the founder named.
Steps
Write what they did last week
One task, in their words, from a real call.
Name the category and the customer
A noun they know, and a person with that task.
Name the alternative
The tool, the person, or the manual step they use today.
Write the outcome in one line
What is true at the end of that task.
Add the mechanism after
For the reader who will check you. After the frame.
Read it to a stranger
They should say the job back. If they say "some kind of AI," rewrite the first line.
FAQs
Should the homepage say AI?
Put it where a buyer is shopping for that label, or where a technical reader needs it. The first line still has to name the job and the customer.
What if we are creating a new kind of product?
You still owe a plain description of the job. Dunford treats a brand-new category as the hardest style of positioning. A familiar frame plus a qualifier is easier for a stranger to repeat.
How is this different from positioning the AI product?
Positioning chooses the alternative, the customer, the value, and the category. The explanation is the short version of those choices, in the buyer’s words, with the model after the frame.
Can one sentence serve the user and the buyer?
Write two lines from the same position. The buyer hears the outcome. The user hears how they would check it. Averaging them into one vague line hides both.
Sources
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