How to use AI tools to start your business (with examples)

There has never been as many opportunities to get started as an entrepreneur as there are today. The web is full of tools, ressources and other means of assistance to help you get started creating your business from scratch. You’ve maybe heard of the guy who made ChatGPT the CEO of a company and carried out its commands in real life. In this article, we’ll do something vaguely similar: we’ll be looking into the new wave of AI tools that you can use to start a business on your own. Whether you’re well on your way in forming your business or haven’t even gotten the right idea yet, there’s something for you.

The article is quite long, so be sure to skip around as you please!

AI tools featured in the article

Business Idea	ChatGPT-4
Business Name	Namelix
Business Plan & Strategy	IdeaBuddy
Logo & Brand	LogoAI
Website	10Web
Website (Landing pages)	Unbounce
Digital Marketing (Management)	Digitalfirst
Digital Marketing (Execution and creatives)	AdCreative

If you’re still looking for AI tools to start your business, check out the business category in the AI tool directory.

1. Business idea & name

Generate business idea with AI

Every good business starts with an idea. The idea is the foundation on which the early stages of your business will be built. Whether you wanna dropship fidget spinners or challenge the incumbents of the tech industry, you’ll need a somewhat clear vision of what you want to do and how you want to do it. In my honest opinion, there is no better AI tool for generating creative and often valid business ideas like good ol’ ChatGPT-4. 

There are countless ways to prompt ChatGPT for this purpose, but after playing with it for some time, I’ve narrowed it down. The prompt can and should be tweaked if you want to start a business within a specific industry, or if you have a set of skills that you’d like to utilise.

Prompts:

Initial prompt

Act as: Entrepreneur and business advisor. Objective: Come up with 5 business ideas within [Insert industry or expertise]. Give a brief explanation of each idea, what it requires of the founder, and possible challenges. (max 100 words). Determine the level of difficulty for succeeding in each business (1-5). Constraints: Each business idea must be achievable, require fairly little initial capital investment, and must be able to be carried out by just a few people.

Follow up prompt

Expand on [insert the business idea) by creating an initial roadmap of how I’ll get the business started. Provide a brief explanation of each step.

In the example I’ll be using in this article, I inserted “artificial intelligence” into the prompt and fired away. After evaluating the different options it produced, I went with its first suggestion; AI Personalized Learning Platform. This business idea suits my skillset better; AI knowledge and basic programming skills. With a difficulty of 3 out of 5 it should be somewhat doable.

Output after initial prompt:

I used the follow-up prompt to gain some better insights to what this business will require of me and how to get going. What you see below is the first 3 steps of the 10-step roadmap ChatGPT created for us.

AI generated business name

Now let’s give this marvellous enterprise a name! In this endeavour, you could easily go with ChatGPT once again. However, I think that the names it generates often are a tad too tacky. I asked it to name the business that it came up with previously, and the best idea the $80 billion super-AI came up with was Learnique: Your Unique Learning Path. This is not even a joke.

Instead I’d recommend going to Namelix. On Namelix’s platform you give keywords related to your business and the AI will create names for that business. After providing keywords, you can adjust the level of creativity of the generator, and even set a specific style you want.

In our example, I gave Namelix the keywords: AI, artificial intelligence, educate, learn and personalize. The creativity is set to medium with no specific style – I want to choose from a broad palette.

Below are some of the names it came up with. Don’t pay too much attention to the logos, they’re just there to add some spice to your business name. I’ll get to logo creation later.

While I think the logo is hideous, I kinda like the name ‘Tutorio’. 

What is Namelix and how does it work?

Namelix harnesses the power of AI to generate distinctive business names. By inputting a few keywords relevant to your venture, Namelix’s algorithms spring into action, analysing your input and searching through vast datasets to come up with a list of unique name suggestions. The platform employs machine learning to understand naming trends and to craft suggestions that are not only relevant but also catchy and memorable. Its process involves a mix of linguistic analysis and creative generation, ensuring the names produced are fitting for branding purposes. Through a simple interface, Namelix makes the complex process of name generation a breeze, illustrating how AI can simplify creative tasks.

2. Business plan & strategy

So far so good. I have a valid business idea with a cool sounding name, Tutorio. Now, I need a strategy. I’d recommend following the roadmap as laid out by ChatGPT initially. However, when you wanna take it to the next level, IdeaBuddy is an absolutely amazing helper.  IdeaBuddy will not only help you create a go-to-market strategy and business plan, but it will help you understand your business and market at a much deeper level.

As soon as you login into IdeaBuddy, you’re met with some templates based on industry that will help you get started. To develop our AI personalised startup, Tuturio, I of course choose the Tech Startup template. 

When choosing a template and typing in basic information, the resources that IdeaBuddy provides will adjust accordingly. The resources include a Business guide, Idea Score (validator), Financial Plan, Business Plan, and an Idea Plan. Within each field, you’ll find areas that you need to cover when developing your business, but explained, presented and utilised in a very simple way.

Many of IdeaBuddy’s features are based on popular theory, frameworks and models in the field of business and innovation, such as design thinking, SWOT and cash flow analysis just to name a few. Having studied business myself, I can confidently say that IdeaBuddy would’ve been a great hack for my course Business Models and Value Chains.

Features like the Business Plan and Idea Score are only fully accessible in the upgraded version, which is available for just $4 dollars per month. I highly recommend the upgraded subscription, if you are unsure on the financial structure and projections of your business (and how to calculate them). 

Here’s a preview of the different areas included in the Business Plan. Each area contains a variety of subtasks and templates.

What is IdeaBuddy and how does it work?

IdeaBuddy is an innovative, AI-powered tool designed to be your entrepreneurial companion from the spark of an idea to the launch of a business. It works by guiding you through the entire business planning process with an intuitive, step-by-step approach. The AI-powered aspect of IdeaBuddy comes into play primarily in the “Plan Stage” where it utilises data analysis to assist you in crafting a comprehensive business plan. The AI analyses market data, financial inputs, and other relevant information to provide you with realistic financial forecasts and operational strategies. 

3. AI generated logo and brand design

Now that I have a solid and well thought business plan, I need a brand identity. A strong visual brand is a must for almost every business, and luckily there are plenty of AI-powered brand specialists available on the web.

AI Logo Maker: LogoAI

I could’ve gone with the logo created by Namelix, but for my precious Tutorio, I want something special. Instead, I go to LogoAI. As straightforward as it sounds, LogoAI is an AI-powered logo generation service. The process of generating a logo is as easy as it comes; you type in your business name (and slogan if relevant), select a colour palette and logo style of your liking, and voila! You now have hundreds of logos to choose from.

Here are a few I found suitable for my business example.

Where the true value in LogoAI lies, is its customization features. First of all, you can easily redo or explore all the style settings you choose initially. More than that, after having picked a logo that you like, you can change colouring and styling (with the AI doing most of the artistic work of course). Best of all, you get to see it in action immediately! LogoAI will substitute your logo into all kinds of places; clothing, a store front window, on mobile devices, and much more.

Even though it’s pretty irrelevant for the example business, I just wanna give a preview of what it can do.

4. AI generated website 

The website is the cornerstone of many digitally-based businesses, and so of course our example startup will need one as well. For creating a website there are two recommendable AI tools; 10Web and Unbounce. The first is best for creating an entire website, while the latter is specialised in creating converting landing pages.

For complete website: 10Web

10Web is one of those platforms that amazes you, while simultaneously reminding you how you could’ve saved countless hours on web design. It is nothing but marvellous. Even though web design and development have become increasingly easier over time with CMS systems, drag-n-drop theme builders and so forth, an AI generated website takes the throne. 

The website 10Web generated for our example business, Tutorio, was made in about 2 minutes, and that’s including my fat fingers typing in a description and choosing a colour palette. 

After creating an account on 10Web, you have to choose which of their services you want to utilise; website creation, website migration, hosting or optimization.

For this purpose, I choose the option to create a new website with AI. After inserting information very similar to what I did with the previous tools; business name, description, industry etc. 10Web created a functional website in a very, very short period of time.

Below is a preview of the site it created for Tutorio. 

The website have all the basic neccessites I need for Tutorio, a visual landing page with clar CTA’s, a simplistic navigational menu also with a CTA, and each page filled with content. After letting the AI generate the site, you have plenty of options for customization, and will get access to a themebuilder, very similar to Elementor in WordPress. The builder is, however, only available for paying members of 10Web. Luckily, 10Web is only $10/month for the basic platform subscription.

AI landing pages: Unbounce

If you already have a website or webshop set up or if you prefer creating one yourself, there is one AI tool that is still highly recommendable. Unbounce is somewhat similar to 10Web, only specialised to creating landing pages primed for conversion. Let’s say I wanna promote a certain feature or service of Tutorio, perhaps a special deal or event, I can create a landing page for this particular objective in Unbounce. The company boast a 30% increase in conversions with their high-performing landing pages.

Using Unbounce works in similar fashion to some of the other AI tools that we’ve went through: 

1. You give the AI some input related to your business (in this case product or service)
2. Finalise on a design and layout
3. AI does its magic
4. Voila, you’ve now saved countless hours.

If you’re interested in giving Unbounce a spin, check out their guide on how to get started with AI landing pages.

By the way, courtesy of the Unbounce team, we can get you 20% off on your first 3 months of subscription. 

5. Digital Marketing with AI

Now that I have the foundation of my business built, it’s time to market it. 

There are plenty of AI-powered tools and platforms available for all sorts of marketing endeavours. While most of them are super useful, we’ve narrowed it down to a few AI tools specialised in digital marketing & management.

Strategy & management: Digitalfirst

If you’re new to digital marketing, you’ll often find that it is surprisingly difficult to have success at first. Good thing generative AI exists. My first recommendation in this regard is Digitalfirst. This platform is a marketplace of digital marketing strategies and tactics, made by a very strong community and powered by AI. In other words, you can browse digital marketing tactics (of all sorts) published by experienced marketers, and use their generative AI to deploy these tactics. If you don’t know what to look for initially, don’t worry! Digitalfirst will recommend tactics based on your description of your company, your level of expertise, and your needs.

As you can see, there’s a huge variety of different tactics to choose from. To make this a bit easier, you can create funnels in Digitalfirst to help manage your tactics (of course the platform will set up a recommended funnel for beginners). After browsing a bit on the tactic marketplace, I’ve set up the following funnel for Tutorio. 

Each tactic will include multiple activities that you can carry out for the best chances of success. This is where AI comes in handy. To showcase this, I selected the tactic Playful Ways to Boost Social Media Engagement, which is something I believe is paramount for the success of Tutorio. An activity in this tactic is to create engaging Did you know? questions. 

Below is a small preview of how the generative AI works:

Each activity includes a recommended prompt you can feed to the AI. 

Overall, Digitalfirst is the perfect AI tool to manage and create broader strategies in your digital marketing, whether you’re a beginner, intermediate or expert. I’d recommend signing up for a free trial on Digitalfirst, get a feeling for how the platform works, and then decide whether you wanna invest in a paid subscription later.

Execution & creatives: AdCreative

To assist in you in the more creative  (less text-based) part of your digital marketing efforts, I’d like to introduce to you, perhaps the #1 AI tool for digital marketing, AdCreative. You might have noticed the company for their aggressive marketing campaign, claiming that you can create an ad in less than 2 minutes, which to some sounds good to be true. In all honesty, I thought so as well, but when trying out the tool for the first time, I managed to create an ad creative in just about 4 minutes. Here’s how it looks:

Here’s a short summary of the process of creating an ad creative on AdCreative.ai:

1. Decide what kind of ad you want to make (AdCreative will provide plenty of options to choose from)
2. Enter some information about your product or service (name, description)
3. Upload your logo (AdCreative will automatically retrieve and use the colours of your logo!)
4. Choose or upload imagery (AdCreative will give you stock photos to choose from based on the description of your product or service).
5. Type in your headlines and CTA (with the paid subscription, the generative AI can do this for you)
6. Done! The platform will give you tonnes of different generated ads to choose from.

There are lots of good things to say about this AI tool, but the ease-of-use, automatic adaptability, and sheer performance speed is highly commendable. Again, I’d recommend starting with a free trial to test the tool.  

FAQ about AI tools for starting a business