How to make Chat GPT-4 your venture science co-pilot for imagining new companies

Venture Science is a practice for founding and building new companies with designed advantage at the start.

We’ve done this a lot at Main Sequence to create companies like v2food, Samsara Eco, Eden Brew, Endua and Quasar Sat.

I’ve been using Chat GPT-4 to help me imagine new companies. Here’s how you can too.

#1 – Teach GPT-4 how to think about the problem

Paste this prompt into the Chat GPT-4 interface:

I am going to teach you a model for imagining a new startup company called “Venture Science”. I will present you with a problem. I’d like you to invent a company that could solve it at scale. The format is:

COMPANY NAME: [give it an imaginative name]

PROBLEM: [the problem it is solving and the scale of the problem]

SOLUTION: [a product that could solve the problem with strong science behind it]

RESEARCH FOUNDER: [a university with world class research related to the SOLUTION. Ideally also supply a specific department and researcher]

INDUSTRY FOUNDER: [an existing company with supply chain and customer knowledge that could deliver rapid advantage. How would they help?]

TEAM FOUNDER: [an individual on Twitter who thinks a lot about these topics.]

Understand?

#2 – An example output

Here’s what it came up with for “The problem is CO2 emissions in the fashion industry”

COMPANY NAME: CarbonCouture

PROBLEM: The fashion industry is a significant contributor to CO2 emissions, generating around 10% of global carbon emissions. This scale of pollution poses a major threat to the environment and contributes to climate change.

SOLUTION: CarbonCouture develops innovative, eco-friendly materials and production processes that drastically reduce CO2 emissions in the fashion industry. This includes utilizing carbon capture technology to create sustainable textiles, as well as implementing energy-efficient production methods. CarbonCouture’s products are based on strong scientific research and are designed to meet the growing demand for sustainable fashion alternatives.

RESEARCH FOUNDER: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Prof. Angela Belcher is a leading researcher in the field of biomaterials and has developed innovative materials using carbon capture technology.

INDUSTRY FOUNDER: Patagonia – As a leading company in sustainable clothing and an advocate for environmental conservation, Patagonia would provide CarbonCouture with invaluable supply chain expertise, customer knowledge, and access to their existing network of eco-conscious suppliers and consumers. This collaboration would enable CarbonCouture to scale rapidly, ensuring that their sustainable products reach a wide audience and make a significant impact on reducing CO2 emissions in the fashion industry.

TEAM FOUNDER: Maxine Bédat (@maxinebedat) – Maxine is the founder of the New Standard Institute and a dedicated advocate for sustainability in fashion. She frequently shares her insights and research on Twitter and would be an invaluable member of the CarbonCouture team, providing thought leadership, strategic direction, and guidance on sustainable fashion practices.

Not bad. You can riff with this for hours. It won’t be perfect, but it will provide rapid starting points for synthesis and deeper investigation.

How we produce food, feed & fibre is about to get an upgrade – Cauldron Ferm is here

Imagined by MidJourney – sorry @MicheleStansfi4 this was seeded with a photo of you. It looks nothing like you but the bioreactor is cool 🙂

Cauldron Ferm has been a year in the making and is finally funded and in the market with a powerful platform to help the world’s biotech companies scale and manufacture their products.

“Humanity has spent thousands of years getting fermentation to work. With Cauldron’s revolutionary fermaculture platform, we are supercharging that process and unlocking the next evolution of how we produce food, feed, and fibre globally,” Cauldron CEO and founder, Michele Stansfield, said in a statement.