FREE FOUNDER PLAYBOOK
BUILD AN AI-NATIVE COMPANY FROM ANYWHERE
The Founder AI Playbook
How to validate, build, sell, automate, and scale an AI company outside Silicon Valley, with practical workflows you can use this week.
Free PDF • 28 pages • 10 chapters • 6 automation playbooks
practical chapters
AI operating playbooks
growth stages
ANDREJ GONO PRESENTS
How to Build an AI-Native Company Outside Silicon Valley
“The bottleneck is no longer what you can build. It is what you choose to build.”
ANDREJ GONO
Co-founder & CEO, Citymind
WHO THIS PLAYBOOK IS FOR
Built for founders who want leverage, not hype.
Use it if you are testing an idea, building an MVP, winning your first customers, or creating a company that can work without you doing everything.
Validate before you build
Test the problem, understand the market, and talk to customers. Look for real proof, not just polite feedback.
Build fast without building wrong
Keep the scope clear, document the system, test if it works well, and avoid technical debt as you build faster.
Scale beyond yourself
Turn your sales knowledge and repeat tasks into simple systems that a small AI-native team can run.
THE LEVERAGE SHIFT
The founder’s job has changed.
AI gives a small team the output of a large one, but only when the founder knows what to automate, what to delegate, and what judgment must stay human.
- Use AI as an on-call researcher and devil’s advocate
- Direct agentic coding without letting architecture drift
- Automate CRM hygiene, follow-ups, reports, and meeting prep
- Keep trust, customer judgment, and strategic decisions human
THE FOUR-STAGE JOURNEY
Know the only question that matters at each stage.
The playbook takes you from an idea to a company with clear systems. Each stage has one key goal, so you can move fast without guessing.
IDEA
Is this worth building? Goal: prove that people need it.
MVP
What do we build first? Goal: find product-market fit.
LAUNCH
Can the business grow? Goal: build repeatable growth.
SCALE
Can it run without me? Goal: build a company with clear systems.
THE MOST PRACTICAL CHAPTER
Six AI processes that can run your company.
Define the task, write the prompt once, schedule it, check the result, and improve it. These playbooks turn AI into a system that works in the background.
Monday Market Scan
Never be surprised by your market, competitors, regulation, or customer segment.
Lead Follow-Up Engine
Flag every lead that is going cold and prepare a personal, value-based follow-up.
Content Factory
Turn one founder insight into a week of useful posts without losing your judgment.
Opportunity Radar
Monitor procurement, grants, budgets, leadership changes, and warm market openings.
Meeting Prep Brief
Walk into every important conversation as the best-prepared person in the room.
Friday Mirror
Get a weekly, honest view of deals, priorities, slipped work, and the question you are avoiding.
Meta-rule: AI drafts, researches, monitors, and reminds. You approve, decide, and show up.
WHAT IS INSIDE
A complete founder operating system in 10 chapters.
1. The Founder’s Job Has Changed
From individual contributor to orchestrator.
2. The Opportunity Nobody Sees
Why hard, boring markets create defensible companies.
3. Validate Before You Build
A six-step, adversarial validation workflow.
4. Build Fast Without Building Wrong
Scope, architecture, security, and PMF.
5. Selling AI When Nobody Trusts It
Reduce risk, land pilots, and build references.
6. A Sales Machine That Works Without You
Document intuition and remove the founder bottleneck.
7. Six Automation Playbooks
Recurring AI processes for research, pipeline, and content.
8. From Chatbots to Agents
Why acting inside a domain beats answering about it.
9. The Founder Operating System
Health, learning, focus, and long-term people.
10. Your Moat Is Your Depth
Domain expertise, trust, data loops, and workflow lock-in.
The contrarian insight: Markets that most founders avoid can be the best places to build trust and face less competition.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Built from real experience, not theory.
Andrej Gono is the co-founder and CEO of Citymind. The company helps digitise the public sector with AI. Citymind builds AI chatbots, voicebots, and AI agents for cities, universities, and companies across European markets.
Andrej also leads the My MENDELU mobile app team at Mendel University in Brno and is doing a Ph.D. in AI agents and RAG architecture.
GET THE FREE PLAYBOOK
Build with speed. Decide with judgment.
Enter your details to request The Founder AI Playbook. We will send it to the email address you provide.
- 28 practical pages, written for founders outside major tech hubs
- Concrete prompts, checklists, frameworks, and operating cadences
- No Silicon Valley assumptions and no AI hype
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