Using an AI co-pilot to kickstart your business with Nicholas Thorne of prehype/Audos

Nicholas Thorne is a partner at prehype, a venture development firm that helps large companies create startups by acting as an incubator.

He's also the founder of Audos, an AI co-pilot designed to assist entrepreneurs in conducting customer interviews, creating slide decks, and potentially investing in their ideas.

According to Nicholas, Audos can even write code and identify freelancers, functioning as a virtual technical product manager. I interviewed him to explore how this co-pilot supports entrepreneurs, particularly those in the “conceptual stage,” to locate — and eventually exploit — what he calls ‘founder-customer fit.’

He outlined the ideal user profiles for Audos, which range from small business owners to corporate innovators and also explained how Audos leverages AI to tackle various tasks for entrepreneurs and discussed the investment opportunities he's pursuing.

Finally, Nicholas shared some of the resources he's using to deepen his understanding of AI.

Runtime: 25:39

Episode breakdown

• (1:31) How Audos works, and who's using it.
• (4:33) "It's just about trying to do the best thing you can to create more information with which you can make progress."
• (9:12) Audos' ideal customer is a "conceptual stage" founder.
• (11:40) Helping entrepreneurs "find and then nurture, and over time, exploit what we call 'founder-customer fit.'"
• (15:36) Using AI to shorten the customer discovery process and speed time to market
• (19:30) "I think you would probably consider it a family or suite of GPTs that are all trained in extremely specific jobs."
• (22:00) What kinds of investment opportunities he’s looking for (and how to reach him)
• (24:12) How Nicholas fills in the gaps in his AI knowledge

Links

• Nicholas Thorne, partner, prehype
  • nicholas@prehype.com
• prehype
• Audos
• Ethan Mollick, Ralph J. Roberts Distinguished Faculty Scholar, Associate Professor of Management, Co-Director, Generative AI Labs at Wharton, Rowan Fellow
  • One Useful Thing (Substack)
  • @emollick
• Dan Shipper, co-founder/CEO, Every
  • @danshipper