Framework
The Three Checkbox Framework
Before building any AI product, three boxes must all be checked: (1) distribution on the cap table — equity to people already inside your target market's networks, (2) defensible IP — proprietary data, SOPs, or formulas that cannot be replicated with another model call, and (3) an industry expert involved. If you cannot check all three, the project does not start. Not pauses — does not start.
How it works
- 1Distribution on the cap table means recruiting co-builders with existing relationships in your target market, not hiring salespeople after the fact.
- 2Defensible IP is the moat that makes your niche product acquisition-resistant — SOPs, chemical formulas, machine configurations, and operational playbooks accumulated over decades.
- 3An industry expert is required because founders should enter new markets as 'stupid people' with no assumptions — the expert provides the domain knowledge you will never have from the outside.
- 4All three checkboxes must be true simultaneously. Two out of three is a company that will stall. One out of three is a product that will fail.
- 5This framework is why Josh Furstoss can launch four companies a year — the checklist prevents him from starting projects that are structurally missing something critical from day one.
Hear it on the podcast
Everyone Is Building AI WrongListen to the episodeMore from this episode
The $83K License PlayBuild one hyper-specific feature — so niche you can describe it in five words or less — and sell one enterprise license at $83,000 per month. That is $1M ARR from what may be four lines of code packaged as an executable. The leverage is not in the complexity of the code. It is in the specificity of the insight, the proprietary data that makes it work, and the distribution that gets you in front of the one buyer who needs it.Zero to One SpecializationIdentify exactly what you are best at in the zero-to-one phase of a company — product, talent, capital, first distribution — and build structures that let you do only that. As each company scales past what you do best, promote yourself upward to a strategic role, hire a CEO, and delegate the execution to people better suited to the next phase. This is how you run multiple companies without burning out.
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