Build to Thrive | The Blueprint | Week of October 6th, 2025
Prompts, Tools and Trends to grow smarter, scale your business and stay ahead
Build to Thrive delivers strategies, playbooks, trends and tools that help you build smarter, scale your business and stay ahead of the game.
Editorial Note:
Small Moves, Big Leverage
We live in a world that is moving faster than ever. New tools, new competitors, and new shifts appear overnight. In that kind of environment, it is becoming evident that advantage doesn’t come from being the biggest, it comes from being clear, creative, and willing to act while others pause.
With this edition you will see tools that help you turn uncertainty into opportunity. To spot the blind spots, and to move with clarity where others hesitate in a world that won’t slow down for anyone. JS
Table of Contents
PROMPTS
Competitor Deep Drive + Weakness Arbitrage
Growth Opportunity and Risk Scan
Go-to-market launch playbook
FEATURED ARTICLE: The Psychology of Influence
AI TRENDS: Top 5 Curated Stories of the Week
BIG IDEA: Create Your Own AI Assistant in Under 15 Minutes
PREMIUM GPT: Play-the-Gaps Strategy GPT. Outsmart the giants by turning their blind spots into your winning plays
90-DAY SPRINT PLANNER
COMPETITOR DEEP DIVE + WEAKNESS ARBITRAGE
PROMPT: “Analyze competitor [Name]. Summarize their key strengths, weaknesses, and moat durability. Then propose 3 strategic plays we could run to exploit their weak spots (through features, channels, pricing, or positioning). Output as: (1) competitor snapshot table, (2) list of three ‘weakness plays’ with rationale and risks.
GROWTH OPPORTUNITY & RISK SCAN
PROMPT: You are a growth strategist. For industry [X], list 5–7 emerging growth opportunities and 5–7 risks or headwinds. For each, include estimated market size, adoption timeline, and key dependencies. Then rank them by impact vs feasibility. Present output as two tables (opportunities and risks), plus a short prioritization narrative.
GO-TO-MARKET LAUNCH PLAYBOOK
PROMPT: “You are a go-to-market strategist. For product [X], build a 12-week launch plan. Include: (1) target personas and their pain points; (2) recommended channel mix; (3) KPIs to track at each stage (CAC, conversion, retention); and (4) a sequenced timeline (pre-launch, launch, post-launch). Present as a table + narrative summary.
Featured Article: The Psychology of Influence - by Juan Salas-Romer
AI BUSINESS TRENDS
Hey, quick reminder: you do not need a big team or a pile of money to use AI well. What you need is speed, creativity, and the willingness to test. This week’s stories are about founders turning small moves into real leverage.
Top 5 Curated Stories
1. Building an Online Business from Scratch with AI
A solo developer laid out a month-by-month plan to see if modern AI tools plus lean execution can support a real online business. (Medium)
Practical takeaway: Pick one small niche and run a 4 week AI driven MVP sprint. Share the process publicly to create content and validate demand at the same time.
2. Best AI Tools for Startup Founders
EWeek published a fresh roundup of AI tools that help with project workflow, docs, summarization, and more. (EWeek)
Practical takeaway: Audit one part of your weekly workflow. Replace a single manual step with an AI tool like Notion AI for notes, task breakdowns, or quick summaries. Track the hours saved.
3. Periodic Labs Raises $300M to Build AI Scientists
A team is working on AI agents that can form hypotheses, run experiments, and validate them in labs. (Observer)
Practical takeaway: Even if you are not in science, the model is useful. Treat your business like a lab. Run small tests, measure results, and feed those insights back into your AI tools before running the next test.
4. Jason Huggins (Selenium Creator) Returns with Vibium
The creator of Selenium just demoed Vibium, an AI native tool that lets you write browser automation in plain English. (Reddit)
Practical takeaway: If your product lives on the web, try early browser automation tools for customer demos, QA testing, or routine checks. Saves time and reduces bugs without heavy developer lift.
5. Synthetic Founders: Using AI Personas for Startup Validation
New research showed that AI based synthetic personas can simulate founder to investor or founder to customer conversations with surprising accuracy. (Arxiv)
Practical takeaway: Before you launch, ask an LLM to role play as your customer and list objections or weaknesses. Use those objections as stress tests to improve your offer.
Big Idea: Create Your Own AI Assistant in Under 15 Minutes
What if you had an extra team member who never slept and worked exactly how you wanted? That is what creating a custom AI assistant can give you. It only takes 15 minutes and no technical skills.
Here is how:
Upgrade to ChatGPT Plus for $20 per month. This unlocks Custom GPTs.
Open the sidebar, click Explore GPTs, then hit Create.
Select the Easy Builder. You will answer a few simple questions about what you want your assistant to do.
Step 4: Copy and paste these instructions (and tweak them)
Use this as a starting point:
You are a personal writing and publishing assistant for [your name], a [describe your niche or audience].
Your tasks include:
– Brainstorming newsletter topics
– Creating outlines for weekly posts
– Drafting in my voice: [describe your tone]
– Editing for clarity and flow
– Writing CTAs that sound human
– Turning long-form content into short Notes (under 100 words)
– Suggesting titles, headlines, and tagsAdjust the text so it fits your workflow and tone.
You can modify the role of your AI. Examples:
Customer Support Buddy that drafts polite replies.
Ops Tracker that turns messy notes into SOPs.
Sales Wingman that generates prospect research and outreach.
Data Cleaner that fixes messy spreadsheets.
Content Coach that drafts posts and edits in your voice.
Name it and save it. Keep it private by choosing - Only Me.
From then on, your assistant lives in your sidebar like a permanent teammate. Instead of starting from scratch every time you open ChatGPT, you get faster and more consistent results with less friction.
This week: take 15 minutes to set up one assistant that handles a task you dislike. Use it every day for a week and see how much time you get back.
Author:
Full Article here: How To Create Your Own AI Assistant (In Under 15 Minutes)
Premium GPT: Play-the-Gaps Strategy GPT
Outsmart the giants by turning their blind spots into your winning plays
Outsmart the giants by turning their blind spots into your winning plays. Based Netflix’s winning strategy over Blockbuster.
This AI-GPT helps founders and small teams:
✅ Reverse-engineer competitors with the Strategy Choice Cascade.
✅ Spot friction points customers hate — and rivals can’t fix.
✅ Translate blind spots into counter-plays you can actually win.
✅ Design a 14-day Risky-Assumption-First (RAF) test with pass/fail metrics.
✅ Benchmark multiple rivals in one snapshot.
✅ Output a deck-ready one-slide summary for investors or your team.
Whether you need to analyze competitors, find strategic openings, test positioning, or pressure-test your next move — your Play-the-Gaps Strategy GPT makes it fast, structured, and actionable.
💡 Perfect for: founders, consultants, and small teams who want to outthink bigger players, validate bold ideas in days (not months), and build strategies grounded in real market insight.
👉 Get more information here: Play-the-Gaps
90-Day Sprint Planner GPT
Turn your vision into a 90-day operating system.
This AI-GPT helps founders and teams:
✅ Define annual goals — and the “why” behind each one.
✅ Translate them into quarterly OKRs with measurable results.
✅ Filter initiatives with an Impact vs Effort matrix.
✅ Break big bets into milestones, weekly tasks, and KPIs.
✅ Generate reflection prompts to keep you aligned every week.
✅ Output a ready-to-use Sprint Dashboard you can paste into Notion or Sheets.
💡 Perfect for: founders, consultants, and operators who want structure, clarity, and momentum without wasting weeks building a system from scratch.
Let’s Connect
I always enjoy meeting new people and exchanging ideas. Feel free to reach out using the email below if you’d like to connect, collaborate, share an idea, or just continue the conversation.
Or you can also reach me through my chat
Some popular articles:
The Science of Execution: Why Most Founders Stay Stuck (and How to Break Through in 90 Days)
How to Build Assets That Compound (Even When Life Forces You to Pivot)
Everyone’s Rushing to AI. Few See the Ceiling Ahead.
Scaling Smart: 5 Systems Every Solopreneur Needs to Grow Without Burning Out
Built to Blaze: How Ooni Turned Backyard Pizza into a $200M Global Movement
What a powerhouse edition - it reads like a playbook for anyone serious about turning agility into a competitive edge. The “small moves, big leverage” message really lands; it’s a reminder that progress isn’t about grand gestures but consistent, clever iteration. I particularly liked the mix of prompts and real-world applications - it’s rare to find something so strategic yet genuinely usable.
Which of these tools or frameworks do you think offers the biggest return for founders short on time but hungry for impact?
Love the prompts. Thanks for sharing 🌞