Accelerating Venture Building processes with AI: Implications and responsibilities

Introduction

I am sure this is not the first time you are reading the term AI today. Suddenly we are flooded with information about "how to improve X using Artificial Intelligence", to the point of accepting that this will be the new paradigm we will navigate in the near future. It is undeniable that AI has implications that go beyond our current understanding, and humanity must prepare to regulate and digest an unpredictable number of changes. As Yuval Harari mentions in the Lex Friedman podcast, AI is the first tool that empowers itself instead of empowering us. That is why discovering better ways to cooperate is today a research priority across all industries.

Our sector is characterized by managing enormous volumes of data to generate new scalable business concepts. We have built methodologies that allow us to make market, problem, and solution discoveries, in order to find the best way to monetize a defined territory. However, according to the Harvard Gazette (2020), "psychologists say that humans can handle up to four independent variables; when we reach five, we get lost." Our efforts to structure this data have long exceeded our human capacities, and today we finally have the necessary tools to do so. But what can we expect and how should we prepare?

The world will not end tomorrow, and Business Builders still have much to contribute

AI is not going to control our reality, and ChatGPT will not replace you – at least not for now. Recent discoveries about how many things can be done in seconds with a precise prompt have put our industry in an uncomfortable position. Suddenly, our insecurities arise as we see how this "alien" technology gathers information in seconds that would take us days to compile.

Those deliverables we have valued for years now seem to magically arise and are good enough to continue our process. The hours dedicated to these outputs – which we used to estimate our value – seem to lose meaning and leave us amid a generational change, where we must reevaluate how we understand our industry and where the real value we bring lies.

So we can fear it or embrace it, as Board of Innovation mentioned: "AI will not replace innovators, but innovators who use AI will definitely replace those who do not."

We need better humans, not less technology – Garry Kasparov

Understanding where the value of our work lies is key to adapting to this new generational change. After years of deliverables being the center, today the focus returns to the "art" of the process. This human-centered approach is understandable, but we miss valuable cooperation opportunities that AI offers, allowing us to focus more on the human side of the business while delegating the heavier tasks in data and research.

Correctly executing a Problem Discovery – the cornerstone of the venture building process – requires deeply empathizing with users. Many times the true message lies beneath their words, an innate human ability that is currently difficult to teach to machines.

However, we can rely on AI tools to generate artifacts that allow us to formulate the right questions and iterate the results according to our needs. This level of cooperation speeds up processes, and once the desired result is obtained, we can reuse it in AI to generate new deliverables.

Normalizing the relationship with AI and using it as a "junior member" of the team automates tasks that free up mental space for Business Builders: optimizing resources through data analysis, maximizing marketing budgets, identifying operational savings opportunities, or even exploiting vulnerabilities in code (a more unsettling example, but interesting to explore on Google).

What should we understand before fully incorporating AI into our processes?

Garry Kasparov set aside his ego by stating: "Few people in the world know better than I what it means for the work of your life to be threatened by a machine." However, he proposed collaboration instead of competition. Corporate Venture Building is still far from being replaced by AI, as understanding context remains essential. AI algorithms process enormous amounts of data and generate insights based on patterns, but they lack our human ability to perceive context.

For this reason, let us keep a few key ideas clear:

• Value identification: although deliverables can be generated with AI, the true value lies in the human-centered process.

• Human empathy vs. AI data processing: machines analyze data, but they cannot empathize or grasp subtle nuances of human behavior.

• AI is a tool, not a replacement: it should be seen as a complement that enhances human skills, not as an absolute substitute.

• Data quality: the efficiency and accuracy of AI-driven decisions depend directly on the quality of the input data. Biased or inaccurate data generates incorrect results.

• Collaboration over competition: see AI as a collaborative force, which combined with human capabilities, can revolutionize business.

• Ethical and contextual considerations: AI lacks moral judgment and contextual understanding. Purely algorithmic decisions may overlook broader ethical implications.

We are at a transformative crossroads. By combining AI insights with the depth of human experience, we can create profitable businesses deeply connected to human needs. There are many variables to consider: data quality, feedback, prompt generation... Aspects we will gradually improve by integrating these tools into our daily lives.

Ultimately, while we are at a unique moment to accelerate our industry using new tools, the secret ingredient in business remains our ability to read between the lines and deeply understand human needs.

The world is about to change, but we are ready to adapt and discover the next incredible ideas.

Trust the process.