The Brutally Honest Top 10 Priorities for Building Your AI Startup in 2025

By Amy Stettler, Founder, 9dNorth

Building an AI product startup in 2025 isn’t for the faint of heart—or the faint of spreadsheet. AI is moving faster than your pitch deck, but the fundamentals of building a scalable, fundable, and executable business haven’t changed (that much).
Here are the 10 unskippable priorities I learned the hard way from www.theaisagroup.com and 25 years of helping startups separate vaporware from billion-dollar exits:

1. Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Tech.
   AI is the shiny object. Focus your obsession on the ugly, gnarly, expensive business problem you are solving.

2. Define a Micro Niche.
   The fastest path to traction is narrow. Own a sliver of the market before you try to eat the whole cake.

3. Test Assumptions with Humans.
   AI is built on data, but humans write the checks. Get out of the building (or Zoom) and test your assumptions with actual buyers.

4. Prototype to Learn, Not to Launch.
   Your beta is for learning. Not vanity. Strip it down and get feedback fast.

5. Structure for Scale from Day One.
   Get your legal, IP, data governance, and equity ducks in a row early. Skipping this costs 10x later.

6. Validate, Validate, Validate.
   Leads, pilots, letters of intent—stack them before you fundraise. Validation is the new MVP.

7. Design the Data Flywheel.
   Where does your proprietary data advantage come from? No data flywheel, no defensibility.

8. Hire Slow, Fire Fast. Especially Co-Founders.
   Choose wisely. AI startups die from people problems more than tech problems.

9. Start Fundraising Conversations Early.
   You’ll need more money than you think. Build investor relationships before you need them.

10. Play the Long Game on Trust.
    AI is under a global microscope. Your transparency, ethics, and bias mitigation will make or break you.

You might feel like you’re sprinting. But the winners in AI are those who run like it's a marathon, with strategic sprints baked in.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.