Article · 15 min read

Ten Principles for Building Strong Vertical AI Businesses

Bessemer Venture Partners Free Advanced

Once you have spotted the opening, this gives you concrete principles for making it defensible, heavy on proprietary data and workflow depth, the exact anchor our short answer recommends. It is a checklist you can hold your idea against. Read it to pressure-test whether your idea survives a platform update.

  • Own proprietary data a competitor cannot scrape or buy
  • Embed in the daily workflow so ripping you out hurts
  • Solve the whole job, not one visible slice of it

The question it answers

  1. How do I spot an idea that AI just made possible that was not viable two years ago?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The definitive essay on where good ideas come from: notice problems you personally have, don't force it. Use it as the lens for... paulgraham.com Essay · ~20 min read How to Get Startup Ideas Paul Graham
  3. 200+ candid conversations with Indian founders and investors on how they actually found their idea, spotted a trend, and... Apple Podcasts Podcast · podcast series (45-90 min episodes) The Neon Show (formerly 100x Entrepreneur) Siddhartha Ahluwalia
  4. YC's partners walk through concrete business models that were not viable before large language models: full-stack law firms,... Y Combinator (Lightcone Podcast) Video · ~45 min Startup Ideas You Can Now Build With AI (Lightcone Podcast) Garry Tan, Harj Taggar, Diana Hu, Jared Friedman
  5. Elad Gil is one of the most trusted operators-turned-investors on this exact question, and this piece cuts through the wrapper... Elad Gil (Elad Blog) Essay · ~12 min read Defensibility & Competition Elad Gil
  6. A living list of problem areas YC actively wants founders to tackle, useful as raw material and as a way to spot where the... Y Combinator Tool · Browse Requests for Startups Y Combinator
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →