Pioneer Sq. Labs has launched greater than 40 tech startups and vetted 500-plus concepts since creating its studio a decade in the past in Seattle.
Now it’s testing whether or not its company-building experience and information on profitable startup formulation may be codified into software program — with assist from the most recent AI fashions.
PSL simply unveiled Lev, a brand new venture that goals to be an “AI co-founder” for early stage entrepreneurs.
Developed inside PSL and now rolling out publicly, Lev can consider concepts, rating their potential, and assist founders develop them into corporations.
Lev grew out of an inner PSL instrument that used PSL’s proprietary rubric to attain startup concepts. The studio determined to show it right into a product after exterior founders who examined early variations needed entry for themselves.
Right here’s the way it works:
- Customers begin by coming into an concept (together with any related info/background) and choosing “enterprise” or “bootstrap.”
- Lev walks founders via milestones from resolution to buyer discovery, go-to-market, and product construct.
- It might probably generate “property” like interview scripts, outreach templates, aggressive maps, pricing fashions, model palettes, buyer personas, touchdown pages, potential leads, and even product specs.
“We’re mapping numerous the PSL course of into it,” mentioned T.A. McCann, managing director at PSL.
Lev’s structured workflow units it other than generic chatbots, mentioned Shilpa Kannan, principal at PSL.
“The sequencing of those parts as you undergo the method is without doubt one of the largest value-adds,” she mentioned.
Lev joins a rising quantity of startups leveraging AI to behave as an concept validation instrument for early-stage founders, although its exact method makes it stand out.
Upcoming options will add team-building and fundraising modules and let customers set off actions — corresponding to sending emails or shopping for domains — straight from throughout the platform.
McCann envisions Lev ultimately connecting to instruments like Notion and HubSpot to function a “command middle” for operating an organization — integrating instruments, drafting investor updates, monitoring opponents, and suggesting priorities. There are a number of opponents on this house providing totally different variations of “AI chief of employees” merchandise.
On a broader stage, Lev raises an existential query for PSL: what occurs when a startup studio teaches an AI to do the issues that make a startup studio useful?
“In some methods, that is ‘Innovators Dilemma,’ and you need to cannibalize your self earlier than another person does it,” McCann mentioned, referencing Clayton Christensen’s idea of expertise disruption.
PSL additionally sees Lev as a possible funnel for entrepreneurs it might work with sooner or later. And it’s a approach to develop the studio’s attain past its concentrate on the Pacific Northwest.
“It’s scaling our information in a means that we wouldn’t have the ability to do in any other case,” McCann mentioned.
Kannan and Kevin Leneway, principal at PSL, wrote a weblog put up describing how PSL designed the spine of Lev and the way the agency used it to generate its personal prime quality startup concepts at greater volumes with decrease value.
“As we see increasingly people turn out to be founders with the help of AI, we’re extremely excited for the potential improve in velocity and profitable outcomes from methodologies like ours that concentrate on upfront ideation and validation,” they wrote.
For now, PSL is focusing on venture-scale founders — folks in tech corporations or accelerators with ambitions to construct fast-growing startups. However McCann believes Lev might ultimately empower solo operators operating a number of micro-businesses.
Lev at present provides its product at no cost for one concept, and fees $20/month for 5 concepts, and $100/month for 10 concepts and extra options. It’s accessible on a waitlist foundation.
Lev additionally provides a pair enjoyable instruments to assist increase its personal advertising and marketing, together with a founder “persona check” and an “concept matcher” that produces startup ideas based mostly in your pursuits and expertise.
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