Hello to new subscribers, and thanks to everyone for the kind feedback on issue one. This week has been challenging but developmental, which is exactly what I signed up for!

As a reminder, each week I cover:

🪟Finding a blind spot
Realising Founderval isn't communicating its value clearly enough and what I did about it.

🎙️Airbnb’s founder on AI
Two old ideas I was reminded to apply: doing things that don't scale, and the 11-star experience framework.

🎨Adventures in AI image generation
A full afternoon across five tools, one Etsy shop idea, and a harsh early lesson about what AI image generators can and can't do.

In The Complete Founder, we use the Johari Window as a tool for self-awareness. It's a framework for understanding what you know about yourself versus what others can see about you that you can’t: your blind spots. I spent ten years helping founders identify theirs. Now I have my own to find.

This week I realised that Founderval isn't showing the problem it solves clearly enough. It's not obvious who the platform is for, or why they'd want it. I know these things, but I'm not communicating them.

I also saw a mismatch in how I'd been positioning the content. Fewer people will arrive needing the complete entrepreneurial skillset; most will want to strengthen three or four specific areas. That's exactly why the self-audit tool exists, to help you identify your gaps and focus there. But that pathway wasn't visible on the site.

So I've started unbundling. I’m working on a new homepage that puts the modules — now called 'mini-courses' — front and central. I'm writing detailed pages for each one: who it's for, what you'll learn, which pain points it addresses, and the expected outcomes. The mini-course pages are being rebuilt with a full content breakdown and clearer learner journeys.

I'm looking forward to speaking with people in the space this week, which will no doubt surface more blind spots. I welcome them and I enjoy working iteratively like this.

This week I listened to an interview with Airbnb's Brian Chesky (YouTube | Spotify | Apple). If you don't have time for the full episode, I used NoteGPT to extract the key insights.

Three things chimed with me:

AI as a creative equaliser. Chesky sees AI as a tool that brings creative expression to more people, believing all of us have something to say, but can’t always say it. That is what excites me about the recent technology leap: creative visions can be realised without the barriers of old.

Do things that don't scale. A well-known Paul Graham principle, which Airbnb lived when they went door-to-door photographing host properties in the early days. Hearing it again validated my approach to Founderval's organisational memberships: for first adopters, I'm including an in-person workshop and combined pricing that isn't viable at scale. The logic, in Graham's words: “Take extraordinary measures not just to acquire users, but to make them genuinely happy. Your first users should feel that signing up was one of the best choices they ever made”.

The 11-star framework. Imagine the most extraordinary experience your customer could possibly have. Then ask how close you could feasibly get to delivering it. It's a useful creative exercise, and it pushed me to think beyond the core product going forward: touchpoint emails, navigation improvements, small details that shape how a platform feels to use. If you’re not familiar with the approach, it’s explained here.

Many of the ventures I want to build will need creative assets: product shots, branding, and social content. So this week I set about learning image generation.

I decided to apply it practically from the start, the best way to learn. I planned to set up an Etsy poster shop selling print-on-demand artwork. (Shopify would have been the smarter long-term asset, but I prioritised speed.)

The Etsy poster market is saturated, so I needed to niche down. I landed on vintage British travel posters with a modern twist: easy to target through location-based ads, and there's a noticeable nostalgia trend in the UK. If this were a commercial-first exercise rather than a learning one, I'd have spent time on actual market data rather than instinct (apparently, 62% of buyers choose photography pieces).

My first idea: a line art illustration of Gardner Street in Brighton, based on a style I'd spotted in Midjourney's gallery. I had a reference photo. It seemed simple enough.

It was not simple. I spent an afternoon working through five tools — Midjourney, Gemini, Adobe Firefly, Krea and NightCafe — trying to pin down one precise image. Here's what I learned the hard way:

I also tried a few other ideas — Hokusai's wave breaking over Brighton's Palace Pier (looked tacky), and variations on the iconic 'Skegness is Bracing' poster — before arriving at a conclusion I've already reached once with AI: it works best when combined with close human editing.

Going forward, I'll use image generators to create elements, then assemble the finished piece manually in Canva or Photoshop.

An unproductive afternoon, but an instructive one. That’s part of learning something new!

I’m continuing to learn creative AI tools and will share more progress next week, and hopefully an entrepreneurial output.

I am doing a lot of work on Founderval, with site improvements and feedback calls.

A productivity optimization I intend to return to is ‘Send to Kindle’; I used to use this to send website articles and newsletters to my Kindle for later, rather than get distracted during the day.

Have a good week!

Luke

🎩Hat-Tip One of my favourite resources for keeping track of developments in the world of AI is prolific Brit educator AI With Kyle. He publishes daily, has lots of entry-level free courses, is practical and down-to-earth.

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