Unleashing the Power ChatGPT and AI Solutions: Lessons of a Serial Entrepreneur

I’ve been using AI for a good year now and ChatGPT since it was in beta as a Plus subscriber. I’ve been using it and exploring how to use it in my everyday life, my art, my engineering, and for business. I’ve spent hundreds of hours and many sleepless nights prompting it, tweaking my prompts, trying to trick it, and challenging it, pushing it to discover its boundaries and limitations. All while also leveraging it to help me break through barriers to help bring my entrepreneurial ideas to fruition.

I’m a serial entrepreneur, artist and engineer - the trifecta - with an insatiable passion for innovation and creation. Some might call it a curse but I call it a competitive advantage or key differentiator. After using AI and ChatGPT for a while now, I like many others can testify that they are indeed powerful tools. But I also agree they’re not perfect. In fact, when it comes to writing code, not only has it not been perfect, in many cases the code was flat out wrong.

All seasoned engineers know you have to be somewhat of a code-connoisseur. Meaning, there is a lot of code out there that is bad code and you have to know how to identify the good code. When you know this, you can wield it and get the results you’re looking for - that is by prompting ChatGPT how to modify the code. By identifying where syntactically it is wrong and instructing it to consider alternatives you get better results. I haven’t had the opportunity to use GitHub’s Copilot very much but from the little bit I have seen, it looks amazing and I suspect it does a far better job than ChatGPT since it was designed specifically for helping to write code. ChatGPT spits out more boilerplate code and snippets but struggles with architectural constructs and design patterns.

Where it really shined was in generating Node.js for my own cli (command line interface). I used it to create my own cli for generating new Nx Nrwl React mono-repos and to auto-gen components in my own proprietary component library using templates. It created everything from the NPM package to the cli commands for building out an entire app with a service layer and all the components and unit tests, soup to nuts.?

The greatest benefit of these tools though, at least for me, has been realized in business and mathematics for engineering. It’s taking my engineering to another level. Prompt ChatGPT for explanations in layman's terms what is Big-Theta notation and Big-O notation as respects algorithms for improving long running threads.

I even partnered with ChatGPT, but couldn’t necessarily list it as a member when I officially registered Shootnscore.com, a sports cards business and by-product of me learning about these AI solutions. ChatGPT helped me with the market research, the business model, the revenue models, cross-channel marketing, and even the domain name. It even suggested the name, a killer name, and well worth the premium price tag. Thanks ChatGPT. As an engineer, I started down the path of designing and creating the entire site on my own - seemed like the right thing to do. But as a businessman, I convinced my-engineering-self to do what’s right - that is, skip the slow, cumbersome and expensive path of reinventing the wheel and prove as quickly as possible I have a business. Build vs. Buy. I bought the domain, set up a Shopify store, got a theme, customized it, and started loading my product.

For years my passion for Hockey and sports cards was just a hobby I’ve had since I was a kid, but this time it was so much more. It was a goal, a destiny and the solidification, at least to me, that my entrepreneurial ideas aren’t just ideas. They’re real opportunities to grow and to learn. They’re motivations to solve specific problems and meet unmet needs, while sometimes being for nothing, just for the thrill for building something new, and sometimes with some potential for financial rewards. Shootnscore.com has sales throughout the US and Canada. Over just this last weekend, I had my first $1,000 weekend. Not quit-your-job money but a nice little side hustle for just getting started. I did this all in about 4 weeks. How’s that for speed?

Organizations who don’t innovate will stagnate. These AI tools can be game changers. But they’re not game changers out-of-the-box. They’re powerful, yes. But they’re extremely powerful in the hands of people who are game changers themselves and know how to use these tools.

I’m currently working on developing a gamified Sprint board. I believe organizational engineering is broken and has room for improvement. By gamifying engineering and software development, organizations can move to a more meritocratic system where developers are compensated and advance based on their individual abilities, skills and achievements, instead of being compensated even if their work isn’t done. I’ve been in organizations where there were also systemic barriers which limit opportunities for certain groups of people. But in a meritocratic system, talent and hard work are the primary factors in determining compensation and success. It’s thus a win-win, for engineers and organizations. I’m about 1,000 days out from when I first had this idea but I hope ChatGPT can help me build it. Sound crazy to you?

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. Glorify them, vilify them. The only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things..they push the human race forward. And while some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. Be different.” - Steve Jobs

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