We plan to bring eChai across 100 cities in India. It starts with eChai Startup Demo Day on 26 September, all in person. 11 cities confirmed, 117 founders registered. Any city that reaches 20 interested founders is on too. See your city

How Founders Use AI

How founders actually use AI, mapped by what you're trying to do. A real question, a straight answer, and a handful of videos, threads, and guides on it.

25 topics 241 questions 3,992 resources

What are you trying to do?

Pick a goal and follow a playbook: a step-by-step route through how founders use AI for it, with a resource at each stop.

Build your product with AI From a prompt to a shipped product: prototype, build, and wire AI into what you ship. 6 steps to get moving Code and ship with AI Write, ship, and maintain real software as a founder, with AI as your pair. 4 steps to get moving Design and prototype with AI Go from idea to a clickable prototype without a designer. 3 steps to get moving Build AI agents and automations Wire up agents and internal tools that do real work for you. 3 steps to get moving Put AI inside your product Ship AI features users actually feel, not a bolted-on chatbot. 3 steps to get moving Research your market with AI Size the market, study competitors, and read data in hours, not weeks. 3 steps to get moving Market and grow with AI Content, creative, and distribution: fill the top of the funnel without a big team. 5 steps to get moving Create content with AI Write, film, and design a content engine that runs without a team. 3 steps to get moving Get found in AI search Show up when founders and buyers ask AI, not just Google (AEO/GEO). 3 steps to get moving Run ads with AI Brief creatives, read the numbers, and optimize spend with AI. 3 steps to get moving Find and serve customers with AI Research the market, prospect, close, and support, with AI doing the heavy lifting. 4 steps to get moving Sell and prospect with AI Find leads, personalize outreach, and run better sales calls. 3 steps to get moving Support customers with AI Answer faster and deflect tickets without losing the human touch. 3 steps to get moving Run the back office with AI The unglamorous grind: workflows, finance, legal, and hiring, automated where it counts. 5 steps to get moving Automate your workflows Stitch your tools together so the busywork runs itself. 3 steps to get moving Hire and manage your team with AI Source, screen, and onboard faster, and keep the team in sync. 3 steps to get moving Handle legal and finance with AI Draft contracts and stay on top of the numbers without a big spend. 2 steps to get moving Be more productive with AI Get more done and think sharper with AI as a daily habit. 3 steps to get moving Become an AI-native founder The meta-skills: build your stack, prompt well, and use AI to research, think, and decide. 6 steps to get moving Build your AI stack Pick the tools worth paying for and the prompts worth reusing. 3 steps to get moving

Top resources

The resources that show up across the most questions, the ones founders keep pointing to.

  1. 1
    Building Effective AI Agents in 5 answers Its 'start with the simplest thing that works' principle is the best guardrail against over-building your first automations, begin with workflows, add autonomy only when it earns its cost. Anthropic
  2. 2
    How to do AI analysis you can actually trust in 4 answers The prompting techniques that stop AI from hallucinating patterns in your interview data. Lenny's Newsletter
  3. 3
    How I AI (podcast) in 4 answers 30-minute screen-share episodes of operators' real AI workflows, many directly research-flavoured. Claire Vo (Lenny's network)
  4. 4
    We replaced our sales team with 20 AI agents, here's what happened | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) in 4 answers A blunt operator account of which sales and marketing automations actually delivered ROI (and which flopped) when a real company went all-in. Lenny's Podcast (Lenny Rachitsky)
  5. 5
    The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product (Ethan Smith) in 3 answers The single most-shared founder briefing on AI search, anchored by data showing ChatGPT traffic converts 6x better than Google. Lenny's Podcast / Ethan Smith (Graphite)
  6. 6
    ChatGPT for sales prospecting: 10 prompts from research to outreach in 3 answers The research prompts double perfectly as pre-call briefs. HubSpot
  7. 7
    Andrej Karpathy: Software Is Changing (Again) in 3 answers The Software 3.0 keynote: prompting as the new programming, essential framing for this whole question. Andrej Karpathy (YC AI Startup School)
  8. 8
    How AI Creator Varun Mayya Has Automated Video Making Using Digital Avatars in 3 answers The India-side written breakdown of the 1,000-videos-a-month operation. SigmaStory
  9. 9
    How to Use Canva AI: 10 Magic Studio Features in 3 answers Practical tour of Magic Switch and friends for founders producing their own visuals. Shopify
  10. 10
    How to Turn Long-Form Videos into YouTube Shorts at Scale in 3 answers The scale workflow from the tool's own team, including what to fix by hand. OpusClip
  11. 11
    Vertical AI Agents Could Be 10X Bigger Than SaaS in 3 answers YC partners explain why support was the first vertical AI agents cracked and what that signals for founders. Y Combinator (Lightcone Podcast)
  12. 12
    Bret Taylor of Sierra on AI agents, outcome-based pricing, and the OpenAI board in 3 answers Stripe's Collison pushes Taylor on whether outcome pricing is real economics or clever packaging. Cheeky Pint (John Collison)
  13. 13
    How To Build A Company With AI From The Ground Up in 3 answers A YC partner's playbook for making AI the operating system of your company from day one, the clearest definition of 'AI-native' for early-stage founders. Diana Hu, Y Combinator
  14. 14
    Founder Voice in the AI Era: Don't Sound Like AI in 3 answers The voice-extraction framework: profile your contrarian beliefs before you ever prompt. Foundera
  15. 15
    How to Use ChatGPT's Deep Research for Market Research in 3 answers Shows Deep Research mapping a market and its buyers before you commit to a segment. Validate My SaaS
  16. 16
    Introducing deep research in 3 answers The primary source on what the agent actually does, its limits, and its intended use. OpenAI
  17. 17
    Google's Guide to Optimizing for Generative AI Features in 3 answers Confirms RAG pulls from the normal index and no separate AI optimization exists. Google Search Central
  18. 18
    How to Do Competitive Analysis with ChatGPT (And When to Avoid Using It) in 3 answers Concrete examples of stale pricing and invented features, the hallucinations founders hit first. Klue
  19. 19
    n8n Masterclass: Build AI Agents and Automate Workflows in 3 answers 92 minutes from zero to working AI agent, no code. Nate Herk
  20. 20
    This Is How the Top 1% Marketers Are Using AI in 3 answers Concrete separation between AI workflows that compound and AI workflows that read as spam. Marketing Against the Grain
  21. 21
    Zapier Agents: Combine AI agents with automation in 3 answers If your team already lives in Zapier, this shows the lowest-friction way to drop AI steps into workflows you have today, no new tool to learn. Zapier
  22. 22
    The Founder Who Automated Content Creation Using AI, with Varun Mayya in 3 answers India's most aggressive AI content operator walks through his actual pipeline on camera. Bad Decisions Podcast
  23. 23
    OpusClip: AI Video Clipping Tool in 3 answers The default clipping tool: one long video in, 5 to 15 captioned vertical clips out. OpusClip
  24. 24
    The most disruptive AI pricing models so far in 3 answers A rapid-fire comparison of Salesforce, Intercom and Zendesk AI pricing you can screenshot into your budget doc. Kyle Poyar
  25. 25
    Karpathy on Software 3.0: Software in the Age of AI in 3 answers The annotated written companion to the keynote if you prefer reading. Latent Space
  26. 26
    Introducing Perplexity Deep Research in 3 answers Cited multi-step research reports on any topic in minutes. Perplexity
  27. 27
    LangChain's CEO: better models alone won't get your agent to production in 2 answers Counters the "just wait for GPT-next" excuse; the engineering around the model decides success. VentureBeat
  28. 28
    How to prompt v0 in 2 answers Vercel's three-part prompt formula: product surface, context of use, constraints and taste. Vercel
  29. 29
    What Is a SAFE Note? Mechanics, Caps & Dilution Examples in 2 answers Current market medians for caps and discounts by stage, the sanity check for whatever terms AI helps you draft. Waveup
  30. 30
    Harrison Chase on Building the Orchestration Layer for AI Agents in 2 answers The LangChain founder on what separates agent demos from agents in production. Sequoia Capital (Training Data)
  31. 31
    Prompting best practices (Lovable docs) in 2 answers The maintained reference version, updated as the model changes. Lovable
  32. 32
    How to build an Ideal Customer Profile with AI (and AI agents) in 2 answers Goes beyond prompts into agent workflows that keep your ICP updated automatically. Growth Ahoy
  33. 33
    Make product management fun again with AI agents in 2 answers Includes a five-question checklist for spotting low-risk, high-impact agent use cases. Lenny's Podcast
  34. 34
    A customer support AI went rogue, and it's a warning for every company in 2 answers The Cursor incident as a business story: one hallucinated policy, hours of silence, real cancellations. Fortune
  35. 35
    Clay University: Clay 101 (YouTube playlist) in 2 answers The complete video sequence if you want the whole enrichment system, not one trick. Clay
  36. 36
    Claude.ai Artifacts for Live Analytics Dashboards in 2 answers Covers wiring artifacts to refreshed data, the gap most tutorials skip. Coupler.io
  37. 37
    Choosing your AI prototyping stack: Lovable, v0, Bolt, Replit, Cursor, Magic Patterns compared in 2 answers A designer's decision framework rather than a feature checklist. Anna Arteeva
  38. 38
    Email deliverability guide: SPF, DKIM, warmup and everything that gets you to the inbox in 2 answers The technical checklist founders skip and then wonder why replies stopped. Smartlead
  39. 39
    AI-Driven, Founder-Led: The 2025 State of Micro-SaaS in 2 answers Data on how solo and small founders are shipping their own software with AI leverage. Freemius
  40. 40
    Proven Case Studies Showing AI in Advertising Moves the Needle in 2 answers A cross-brand roundup of verified AI ad campaigns with actual outcome numbers. Influencer Marketing Hub
  41. 41
    Vibe Coding Security Risks: Why 53% of AI Code Has Security Holes in 2 answers Quantifies how often generated code ships vulnerable so you never skip review. Autonoma
  42. 42
    Can Granola's AI meeting notes eat bigger apps for breakfast? in 2 answers Reported deep-dive on why founders became Granola's core users, with real examples like piping 25+ customer-interview notes into NotebookLM for synthesis. Alex Konrad (Upstarts Media, ex-Forbes)
  43. 43
    Kling vs Sora vs Veo vs Runway: The AI Video Reality Check in 2 answers A builder in the space compares the big four on real ad tasks, not benchmark prompts. InVideo (Indian AI video startup)
  44. 44
    In Graphic Detail: The state of AI referral traffic in 2025 in 2 answers Industry-wide referral volumes so you know whether your AI traffic share is normal. Digiday
  45. 45
    2026 Growth Memo research summary in 2 answers Treats AI visibility as a research system rather than a rank tracker, the right mental model. Kevin Indig (Growth Memo)
  46. 46
    Is my data used for model training? (Anthropic Privacy Center) in 2 answers Anthropic's equivalent answer, including the commercial-products carve-out. Anthropic
  47. 47
    How AI Agents Are Transforming Customer Support, with Decagon's Jesse Zhang in 2 answers Decagon's CEO explains exactly which tickets AI can genuinely resolve today and where it still breaks. No Priors (Sarah Guo & Elad Gil)
  48. 48
    Competitive Analysis for Startups: AI Tools & Competitor Quadrants in 2 answers Shows how to turn AI research into the 2x2 quadrant investors and teams actually read. YouTube creator (startup strategy)
  49. 49
    Notion's Token Town: 5 Rebuilds, 100+ Tools in 2 answers How Notion iterates AI in production at 100M users, including what they rebuilt and why. Latent Space with Simon Last and Sarah Sachs
  50. 50
    Enterprise privacy at OpenAI in 2 answers The primary source: API data is not used for training by default, with retention controls explained. OpenAI
  51. 51
    Aravind Srinivas: Perplexity CEO on the Future of AI, Search & the Internet in 2 answers Perplexity's India-born founder explains from first principles why answers with citations replace ten blue links. Lex Fridman Podcast / Aravind Srinivas
  52. 52
    Write With AI in 2 answers The leading paid newsletter on turning ChatGPT and Claude into a personal digital writing assistant. Nicolas Cole & Dickie Bush
  53. 53
    AI, Liability, and Hallucinations in a Changing Tech and Law Environment in 2 answers The legal-liability backdrop for everything you feed into a model. Stanford Legal podcast
  54. 54
    Build AI agents with n8n: complete beginner's automation course in 2 answers A free course that gets a non-engineer founder to a working CRM-updating agent. AI Foundations
  55. 55
    Lovable full tutorial for complete beginners in 2 answers The most thorough no-experience-needed Lovable walkthrough on YouTube. YouTube educator
  56. 56
    Why AI evals are the hottest new skill for product builders in 2 answers A full walkthrough of creating an eval, playable inline; the fastest zero-to-competent listen. Lenny's Podcast with Hamel Husain and Shreya Shankar
  57. 57
    The best AI notetakers (Product Hunt category) in 2 answers Live user reviews and rankings for the whole category in one place. Product Hunt
  58. 58
    A quarter of startups in YC's current cohort have codebases that are almost entirely AI-generated in 2 answers The data point that proves prototype-first building is now the norm at the world's top accelerator. TechCrunch
  59. 59
    Claude Code + Streamlit = Insane Data Analyst in 2 answers The step up: a real internal analytics app vibe-coded in an afternoon. Lore So What
  60. 60
    How to Create Personas Using ChatGPT in 2 answers Shows how to build data-grounded personas rather than generic AI stereotypes. Delve AI
  61. 61
    Gamma AI Pitch Deck Generator in 2 answers The category leader: paragraph in, structured investor deck out in about a minute, shared at a live URL. Gamma
  62. 62
    Inference Unit Economics: The True Cost Per Million Tokens in 2 answers Explains why output tokens cost more than input and how billing categories really work. Introl
  63. 63
    vanna-ai/vanna on GitHub in 2 answers The repo plus docs, with RAG-based training on your schema for accurate SQL. Vanna AI
  64. 64
    Arcads: Ad creative testing in 2 answers Documented cases like 8 variants in 3 days finding a 3.86 ROAS winner on $500 spend. Arcads
  65. 65
    How to Grow Your Startup with AI: Greg Isenberg's Playbook in 2 answers Documents Isenberg's content-triplet and n8n workflow, a real founder system you can copy. ContentGrip
  66. 66
    Answer Engine Optimization: Complete AEO Guide in 2 answers Covers structuring content as factual, quotable blocks that models can extract and recombine. Frase
  67. 67
    Can AI Agents Finally Fix Customer Support? in 2 answers A sharp market-level view of why support became the first big AI agent category and what buyers actually get. a16z (Kimberly Tan & Jesse Zhang)
  68. 68
    Legal ChatGPT: Tips, Prompts, and Use Cases in 2 answers The ABA's official prompting guidance: structured, contextual, iterative, with jurisdiction always stated. American Bar Association
  69. 69
    How to Track Brand Mentions in ChatGPT & AI Search in 2 answers The free manual method: a prompt-set spreadsheet workflow any founder can run monthly in an hour. Justin McKelvey
  70. 70
    14 AI Tools for Social Media Content Creation in 2 answers A social-native company's honest shortlist of what each AI tool is actually for. Buffer
  71. 71
    Claude Skill for Customer Feedback Analysis: A Guide in 2 answers Shows the newest pattern: packaging your feedback-analysis playbook as a reusable Claude Skill. Enterpret
  72. 72
    How To Build Interactive Dashboards With Claude Like An AI Product Manager in 2 answers A PM's prompt patterns for dashboards stakeholders actually read. Ian Khor
  73. 73
    Lovable business breakdown and founding story in 2 answers Deep, neutral research on the category leader's strengths and risks. Contrary Research
  74. 74
    How Decagon Built Human-Level AI Support: Ashwin Sreenivas in 2 answers A builder's view of which conversations still genuinely need a person, from someone incentivized to say none do. Startup Project (Ashwin Sreenivas, Decagon co-founder)
  75. 75
    AI note-taking app Granola raises $43M at $250M valuation in 2 answers Context on Granola's momentum and its shift from personal notepad to team workspace. TechCrunch
  76. 76
    Hugging Face AI Agents Course in 2 answers Free and certified when you are ready to go one level deeper than no-code. Hugging Face
  77. 77
    AI Legal Advice: What It Does and Where Liability Sits in 2 answers Where responsibility lands when confidential data leaks through an AI workflow. GC AI
  78. 78
    How to test and validate AI prototypes with users in 2 answers Purpose-built for this exact workflow, including prototypes from Figma Make, Lovable, Bolt, and Replit. Maze
  79. 79
    Otterly.AI: AI Search Monitoring in 2 answers The budget entry point ($29/month) for automated prompt tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. Otterly
  80. 80
    AI Is Driving A Shift Towards Outcome-Based Pricing in 2 answers Explains why support was the first category where pricing moved from seats to resolved outcomes. Andreessen Horowitz
  81. 81
    An AI video ad is making a splash. Is it the future of advertising? in 2 answers The 20M-impression Kalshi case with the skeptics' questions attached. NPR
  82. 82
    Deep Research: Grok vs ChatGPT vs Perplexity vs Gemini in 2 answers Accuracy-focused comparison so you know each research agent's error profile. Gradually AI
  83. 83
    AI company accused of fraud? in 2 answers A CFO's read on the 11x saga and how to spot inflated ARR claims in any AI vendor. OnlyCFO
  84. 84
    Behind the product: Replit (Amjad Masad) in 2 answers Replit's CEO on why full-stack-in-one-place matters for non-technical builders. Lenny's Podcast
  85. 85
    Ultimate ICP Guide: Build Your Ideal Customer Profile in 2 answers Templates and worked examples for B2B ICPs, useful when staring at a blank page. Sybill
  86. 86
    Synthetic Users vs Real User Research: Why AI Falls Short in 2 answers A crisp product-strategy argument for keeping real users in the loop. Radical Product Thinking
  87. 87
    ChatGPT traffic analysis: Insights from 17 months of clickstream data in 2 answers Independent clickstream data to sanity-check your own GA4 numbers against. Semrush
  88. 88
    How to Get Your Brand in ChatGPT's Training Data in 2 answers The long-game fix: shaping what the next model version learns about you. Seer Interactive
  89. 89
    From SEO to Agent-Led Growth: Profound's James Cadwallader in 2 answers The clearest articulation of agent experience (AX) as the successor to web UX. Sequoia Capital / James Cadwallader
  90. 90
    Synthetic speech startup Murf lends a voice to content creators in 2 answers Background on the Bengaluru company whose voices power much Indian localization. TechCrunch
  91. 91
    The 2026 Guide to AI Agents in 2 answers Grounds the agent vs automation distinction in enterprise-grade language for customer conversations. IBM
  92. 92
    The 30-Minute Startup Test: How I Use ChatGPT to Validate (or Kill) Any Business Idea in 2 answers A ruthless kill-criteria prompt sequence you can run before committing your weekend. AshokReddy (AI in Plain English)
  93. 93
    Just 8 months in, India's Emergent claims ARR of over $100M in 2 answers India's fastest-growing vibe-coding platform, priced for Indian small businesses. TechCrunch
  94. 94
    AI Agents, Clearly Explained in 2 answers The clearest 10-minute, jargon-free walkthrough of the LLM โ†’ AI workflow โ†’ AI agent ladder, with real examples a non-technical founder can follow. Jeff Su
  95. 95
    AI Agent Pricing Models Explained in 2 answers A plain-language taxonomy (per-seat, usage, outcome, hybrid) for comparing vendor quotes apples to apples. Pickaxe (Chris Peterson)
  96. 96
    Top ways to ensure your content performs well in Google's AI experiences in 2 answers The official success criteria, from the only party that actually knows the system. Google Search Central
  97. 97
    ChatGPT for lawyers: best use cases for legal teams in 2 answers Includes the confidentiality guardrails legal teams put around chatbot use. Juro
  98. 98
    How Varun Mayya Cloned Himself on Reels and YT Shorts Using AI in 2 answers The most public example of a founder scaling short-form with an AI clone of himself. Varun Mayya (featured)
  99. 99
    V0 vs Bolt vs Replit: AI builders compared in 2 answers Engineer-eye view of what each tool's generated code is like to live with. UI Bakery
  100. 100
    Claude Financial Modeling 101: The Complete Setup Guide in 2 answers Practical setup guide (which plan, settings, Projects, three model-building methods) opening with a real 3-statement model built in 18 minutes vs 9 days manually; the full 60-prompt pack is paid but the free setup section stands alone. Sid Saladi (The Product Channel)
See more resources →

Or explore every topic

Building & Product

Vibe Coding 15 questions
Databases & Internal Tools 11 questions
AI Agents 15 questions
Design & Prototyping 12 questions
AI in Your Product 13 questions

Research & Knowledge

Search & Research 13 questions
Market Research 13 questions
Data Analysis 13 questions

Marketing & Growth

Content Creation 12 questions
Video, Image & Audio 14 questions
Getting Found in AI Search (AEO/GEO) 12 questions
Ads & Performance Marketing 14 questions
Social & Community 12 questions

Sales & Customers

Sales Prospecting 13 questions
Customer Support 6 questions
CRM & Sales Calls 12 questions

Operations & Back-office

Legal & Contracts 13 questions
Finance & Accounting 3 questions
Hiring & HR 3 questions
Productivity 3 questions
Workflows & Automation 3 questions

Strategy & The AI-Native Founder

Fundraising 6 questions
Prompting 3 questions
Building Your AI Stack 3 questions
AI as a Thinking Partner 4 questions
eChai Partner Brands