Mentoring AI Startups

Another early morning 7 AM startup mentoring session today.

It's not only satisfying but it also keeps you grounded on the challenges young startups face, particularly those leveraging AI heavily, but it's also great to understand what is working.

Brief notes below:

- Claude Code with Opus 4.6 is a game changer. particularly in terms of quality. A huge upgrade and is helping deliver software modules and application enhancements quicker, and more efficiently. "Things that would have taken months are taking days"

- Embracing Spec Driven Development with in-built test automation and clear MD guidelines that outline security, architecture standards etc.

- Leveraging AgentOS to eke out improvements in the development workflow.

- OpenClaw can be leveraged to improve GTM follow up. calendar scheduling, chasing prospects.

- GTM is always the challenge ,especially with younger startups, but understanding and tracking pipeline metrics, what works in terms of filling that funnel, and automating as much as possible is key to getting some consistency.

- Scale introduces different challenges and it is best to plan for these sooner rather than later.

- It is also important to keep focused on the Moat that the product has and what the defensible IP is (I've written about this before)

These points no doubt encompass the blueprint for many startups and young business but I find with these mentoring sessions it is very helpful for the founders to have a way to talk things though and bounce ideas around as they don't often have someone they can do this with.