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AIAUTOMIC / Founder Teardown

Free tool · Fractional CPO

The Founder Teardown

You've got engineers and a working demo. What keeps agentic-AI products from becoming real businesses usually isn't the code — it's eight product decisions. Score yourself honestly. It takes about 20 minutes, and no one else sees your answers.

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01

Problem & fit

Can you name the specific user and the exact job in one sentence without saying "AI" — and does it clear Costly · Frequent · Persistent · Tolerant (can the workflow absorb an occasional wrong answer)? A rule or a form solving it more cheaply is a red.

02

Data reality

Is the data the AI depends on accessible at the point of the workflow, current, owned, and sufficient? MIT found weak data & integration — not model quality — is the top reason pilots fail.

03

Autonomy & trust

Have you set each key action deliberately on the ladder (assists → acts-on-approval → acts-then-notifies → autonomous), with a human in the loop where an action is costly or irreversible, and least-privilege access?

04

Evaluation & quality

Do you have an eval set (real + hard cases with a way to score outputs), guardrails for when it's unsure, and do you re-run evals every time you change the prompt, model, or data? "It looked good in testing" is not a process.

05

Roadmap & focus

Is your roadmap a set of outcomes (not a feature wish-list), can you name the one wedge you're winning first, and what did you say no to this month?

06

Go-to-market

One-sentence positioning (who it's for, what it does, why it's better), your first reference logos or design partners, and pricing tied to value that survives your cost structure?

07

Unit & token economics

Do you know your cost per use at real volume (agents loop and multiply calls), modeled at scale not demo volume (production often lands 5–10× the pilot), with cost-to-serve comfortably below price?

08

Product function & team

Is there one clear owner of the "what and why" (not the loudest voice), a plan and profile for your first full-time PM hire, and product/design/engineering aligned on the goal, not just the tasks?