Picture this: You walk into a restaurant for the first time. There's no menu. No pictures. No prices. You sit down and the waiter approaches with a smile.

"What would you like to eat?"

"Um... what do you make?"

"Anything. We can make you anything."

Your mind starts racing. Ice cream and cake? What about mum's lasagna? Then the questions hit: Do they even know how to make mum's lasagna? What ingredients are they using? How do I know they've got the right recipe? Because there's lasagna, and then there's mum's lasagna.

Can you do that? Will it actually taste right? What's this going to cost me?

That's exactly what using AI feels like for most people right now.

Here's a fun fact that'll make you feel better about your AI struggles: ChatGPT costs roughly half a million dollars a day to run. And what are we using this moonlanding technology for?

Inbox anxiety.

We've built state-of-the-art infrastructure so we can agonise over whether an email sounds too pushy, craft the perfect "thanks for your time" message, and apologise our way through professional communication.

But that’s not all… 50% of people can't even use it effectively enough to solve their email problems properly.

You ask AI to write an email and it comes back sounding like a corporate robot, so you spend 10 minutes trying to make it sound like you actually wrote it.

It gives you three paragraphs when you needed three sentences.

You end up rewriting half of it anyway and wonder if you should have just written the bloody thing yourself.

It uses phrases you'd never say in a million years, like "I hope this email finds you well" or "please don't hesitate to reach out."

You're constantly adding "make it less formal" or "make it shorter" to every prompt, like you're negotiating with a particularly stubborn intern.

Sound familiar?

It's not you. It's the interface.

The problem isn't that you're rubbish at AI. The problem is that we've been handed incredibly powerful technology with absolutely no training wheels.

Every other tool you've learned to use showed you what was possible first. Your phone has icons. Photoshop has menus (overwhelming ones, but still). Even your microwave has buttons that tell you what they do.

But AI? We've thrown you into the deep end with "ask anything" and expected you to figure it out.

Here's what the AI companies are glossing over: if their tool needs a prompt engineering course to work properly, that's their design failure, not a user failure.

The real power isn't in that generic ChatGPT box everyone's been using. It's in teaching these systems to work the way you work. Your voice, your industry, your specific problems.

Because the truth is, AI can do far more than help you stress about email tone. It can help you validate product ideas, analyse customer feedback, create user research scripts, and even help you communicate more effectively with your technical team.

But first, you need to understand how to set it up properly.

Last month, I gave a talk at SwiftConnection in Paris, basically standing in front of a room full of developers and telling them we're getting this — AI — wrong.

The video just went live, and I break down three specific ways we can make AI actually work for us instead of leaving people behind. Because mobile computing gave us incredible freedom and access, and AI shouldn't be reversing that.

Watch the full talk here →

And here's what I really want to know: What's your biggest frustration when you try to use AI tools?

Hit reply and tell me what's driving you mental.

I'm thinking about doing more content around making AI actually useful for non-technical founders, but I want to solve the problems you're actually having, not the ones I think you might have.

Because if there's one thing I've learned from building products for 15+ years, it's this: the best solutions come from understanding the real problem, not the obvious one. 😉

P.S. - If you watched that talk and thought "bloody hell, this is exactly what's wrong with our product's AI feature," you're probably right. And if you want to chat about how to fix it, you know where to find me.

This newsletter goes out to founders who are building products without getting trapped in expensive technical builds. If this resonated, forward it to another founder who's been wrestling with AI.

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🤷‍♀ Did you think it was meh? Hit reply and lay your feedback on me!

🤩 Want more? Check out the video below!

Hiring explained in plain English for founders who need to work with developers

Quick legal note: This newsletter shares my experience and opinions, but it's not official financial, legal, or business advice. Every situation is different. Make your own decisions, do your own research, and consult professionals when you need them. You're the expert on your business.