Startup Founders - Stop paying $$$ to professionals and do this instead!
Utilizing three premium AI tools to conduct comprehensive market research in less than 100$
Welcome to TJ’s Innovation Zone 👋
Hi…My name is Tomer I’m passionate about innovation.
During the last 15 years, I’ve helped corporates, startups, and government to foster innovation in traditional industries. As an executive, and as an advisor.
In this newsletter you’ll find useful career insights, innovation strategies, and case studies breakdowns that will help and inspire you, as an innovation leader, to disrupt industries.
If you are a Startup Founder, Entrepreneur, Innovation leader, or a tech enthusiast…
The startup ecosystem faces a unique challenge...
Many founders (AKA business owners 😎) come from technical backgrounds and have zero (or very minimal) understanding about running a business. That is why technical founders frequently find themselves in unfamiliar territory when it comes to market analysis and business strategy.
While these founders might be able to create groundbreaking technology, they sometimes struggle to answer crucial business questions:
Who will buy this product?
How large is the market opportunity?
What do customers truly value?
Who are we really competing against?
In the past, this knowledge gap had a steep price tag: As a founder you could Invest significant portions of your limited startup capital in professional market research firms and consultants, or…. Invest limited resources like manpower and time trying to do it yourself.
But things have change much recently...
Advancements in Gen-AI and the emergence of advanced AI tools are dramatically transforming this landscape, particularly for technical founders.
The guide I created for you below demonstrates how to leverage three premium AI tools (ChatGPT Plus, Perplexity Pro, and NotebookLM Plus) to conduct comprehensive market analysis for under $100 (all you need is just one month subscription for each AI tool).
The method I share below has been tested and proven to generate high quality results, however... As someone who has advised startups for over a decade and witnessed countless founders struggle with market research, I want to be transparent about both the strengths and limitations of this AI-powered approach...
Is this methodology perfect? No.
Can research firms and consultants do a better job? Absolutely yes.
Professional market research can provide deeper insights especially in complex or highly regulated industries…However, by following the outlined process and mastering the AI tools mentioned below, you can nearly comparably results at a fraction of the cost.
I have tested this process multiple times, and the results have consistently improved, which is truly remarkable.
Excited? Ready to dive in?
Let’s go…
This guide demonstrates how to leverage three premium AI tools - ChatGPT Plus, Perplexity Pro, and NotebookLM Plus - to conduct comprehensive market analysis for under $100.
We'll explore a systematic approach that helps technically-minded founders translate their analytical skills into effective market research. My methodology breaks down complex business concepts into logical frameworks that will feel familiar to those with technical backgrounds, while delivering the kind of strategic insights necessary for business success.
To create a robust research framework, this approach combines three powerful premium AI services:
ChatGPT Plus ($20/month)
Perplexity Pro ($20/month)
NotebookLM Plus ($20/month)
💡Important note – You can follow the same process using the free versions of these tools. However following extensive research and comparisons, I find the paid versions to be more accurate in results and superior in reasoning.
Step 1: Before you start…be prepared!
Before engaging with AI research tools, you need to provide clear context about your business and research goals. This preparation phase is crucial as the quality and relevance of AI-generated insights depend heavily on the specificity of your inputs.
Begin by writing a detailed description of your business that includes:
Your value proposition:
The specific problem your product/service solves
How your solution addresses this problem
What makes your approach unique
The key benefits customers receive
Your current stage of development
Competition Analysis:
Name known direct competitors
Describe indirect competitors or alternative solutions
List specific aspects of competitor operations you want to analyse
Identify gaps in your competitor knowledge
Specify which competitor attributes matter most
Your target market definition:
The industry sector you're operating in
Geographic regions you plan to serve
The specific market segment you're targeting
Any unique characteristics of your target customers
Your Research Objectives:
Define the specific market segments you want to analyse
List any geographic or demographic limitations
Identify specific timeframes for market projections
Note any regulatory or compliance factors to consider
Specify economic indicators relevant to your market
Step 2: Set up the AI tools
Ensure optimal setup of your AI tools:
ChatGPT Plus Configuration:
Enable GPT-o1 for better reasoning and analysis capabilities
Make sure you aren’t using GPTs or custom instructions.
Save frequently used prompts as shortcuts
Perplexity Pro Setup:
Configure search preferences for business and industry sources
Set up collections for organizing research topics
Save frequently used prompts as shortcuts
NotebookLM Plus Preparation:
Create dedicated notebook for each specific research
Step 3: Market overview analysis (using ChatGPT)
The purpose of this step is to establish a comprehensive understanding of the market landscape and identify key areas for deeper investigation.
Initial market mapping:
Ask ChatGPT to provide a detailed analysis of the industry/sector/niche that includes major market segments, key players, market size estimates, rising startups and trends.
Use this recommended prompt as is, or as an inspiration to write your own prompt:
Ask ChatGPT to analyse direct and indirect competition, and technology trends:
Iterate the findings to get optimal results.
Document the answers
💡Once you are satisfied with ChatGPT’s results, document each answer in a separate text file which you will use later as a source at NoteBookLM. Alternatively, you can add the text output directly in NotebookLM’s relevant notebook (see more details in step 3).
Step 4: Deep Dive (using Perplexity AI)
The purpose of this step is to use information provided by ChatGPT to extract more information on each specific company, startup, or technology that may have an impact on your startup.
We will use Perplexity AI advanced search features to validate and expand upon initial findings with current, factual data from authoritative sources.
Systematic Research Process:
Research each identified competitor individually
Document funding rounds, key executives, and strategic initiatives
Analyze product offerings and pricing strategies
Track customer feedback and market reception
Use this suggested prompt as is, or as inspiration
Ask follow up questions - One of Perplexities strengths is its follow up questions feature. Use it to extract more info that may be relevant to your market research. Use it.
Document the findings - Document each answer in a separate text file (or add as separate source on NotebookLM). Make sure to also document relevant sources Perplexity used to generate its output. These sources can be added also to NotebookLM as sources (using links or copied text).
Repeat the process - Conduct individual research for each company, startup, or technology mentioned in ChatGPT’s report.
Access this report including all this prompt - https://bit.ly/40bcfho
If you followed all the steps this far, by now you should have multiple text files or multiple sources in your dedicated NotebookLM notebook. These sources will be used to conduct your market research inside Google’s most impressive AI tool of 2024.
Step 5: Data synthesis and analysis (using NotebookLM)
NotebookLM is a powerful yet underused AI-powered research assistant. It offers several key benefits for market research and other applications.
NotebookLM analyse and summarize your sources, generate a study guide, which allow you to dive in with specific questions. This AI tool even generates an interactive audio summary of research findings, which you can interact with to obtain results.
The purpose of the step is to consolidate findings and generate actionable insights through AI-powered analysis.
Here are the steps to follow:
Upload all your text files as source file:
Generate a Study Guide and Briefing Doc Mark all the source files and generate a briefing document and a study guide that will help you navigate your research documents. Optimize the generated output as notes.
Convert all relevant notes to sources
Generate a market research report Mark all the source files and ask for a comprehensive market research report.
Interact with the audio version to get better insights
What’s next?
NotebookLM is the best research tool for startups.
While it's not the strongest at search capabilities (that's why we use Perplexity) or reasoning and chain-of-thought analysis (ChatGPT's strength), it excels at making research efficient through its notebook-style cross-referencing system.
It enables you to enrich context through adding source files and notes, query specific or all source files directly, and even use voice commands to have the audio version search through sources for answers.
Now all that remains is to utilize this exceptional tool to create a professional market research report that will enable your startup to grow strategically and effectively.
