Me, My Customer, and AI - Henrik Werdelin Nicholas

partial excerpts (antilibrary)

Introduction

Have you ever had an idea that kept you up at night? A solution to a problem you’d personally faced that you kept coming back to, thinking, Someone really should fix this!

If so, you’re far from alone. A Harris Poll found that over 60 percent of people have had a business idea and believe they have the skills to pursue it. Historically, however, only 10 percent of them ever take the leap.

That’s millions of potential solutions, untapped and waiting to be implemented

*that’s changing—quickly.

Artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of starting and running a business. Need a logo, marketing copy, or first draft of code? AI can handle it in minutes

But here’s the paradox: While AI makes it easier to launch a new business, it also makes it harder to stand out from all the others

*To succeed today, you need something more than the right tech stack.

That “something more” is you

it’s your unique insights, personal experiences, and ability to connect authentically with customers that will set you apart and make you a successful entrepreneur

ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEFINED

In The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin, the legendary music producer and founder of Def Jam Recordings, calls creativity “a fundamental aspect of being human.” It is, he insists (in something of a gut punch), “not a rare ability. It is not difficult to access. […] It’s our birthright. And it’s for all of us.” Creativity, by his definition, is the impulse “to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before.”

Our definition of entrepreneurship makes one addition

in service of an actual or would-be customer

And we believe the world would be a more durable, fun, and interesting one if a larger percentage of people acted on that impulse

Our aim is to share ideas, frameworks, and exercises you can use to start participating in the brave new AI world of work.

ME, MY CUSTOMER, AND AI

This book is

about understanding a fundamental shift currently underway

the entrepreneurial mindset—the ability to spot opportunities, do more with less, and build meaningful connections—will become more than just an advantage; it will become a necessity.

We needed to establish a shared vocabulary for our school of thought and nail down a way of teaching it first to would-be entrepreneurs and then to an AI

We’ve tested and refined this entrepreneurial pedagogy over the past decade and a half as cofounders of prehype, a venture R&D group that researches methods of entrepreneurship, builds new businesses, and operates a network for founders. It’s helped launch BarkBox, AND.CO (acquired by Fiverr), Ro (Roman), Managed by Q, and others

WHO WE ARE

Henrik is best known for cofounding BARK (BarkBox and BARK Air), for taking it public, and for authoring The Acorn Method, which applies startup lessons to big organizations

Nicholas began his entrepreneurial journey after leaving Goldman Sachs, cofounded ventures at prehype (including early attempts at what would now be considered NFTs), and has since guided countless founders behind the scenes. He’s a cofounder of Audos, an AI copilot for entrepreneurs

BUT FIRST

You’re wondering if this book about AI was written by AI. It wasn’t. But not for lack of trying

*I created a very detailed outline (with ChatGPT, naturally) and built a database. I assigned one paragraph-level subsection of outline per database row, thinking I could then prompt a GPT to go row by row, taking the previous paragraph and the next line item into account, and turn each successive outline element into solid prose.

I thought I could avoid the tyranny of averages by being extremely specific and non-average about each writing task.

I still think it should have worked. It’s the same basic approach we’ve used with AI elsewhere

What wasn’t incoherent was generic. Each sentence worked, but the paragraph didn’t mean anything

Chapter 1: First Among Equals

How the democratization of entrepreneurship makes building and maintaining close customer relationships easier and more important than ever before

Copyright

Copyright © 2025