A year ago, some of our friends, clients and colleagues went to a 2AM rave party at the Pyramids at Giza. The music, the lights, the incredible setting. “Best ever”, was the loud message.
This week were were back in Cairo, but this time the best ever was a series of AI hacks we shared with the founders in the 3-day Scale Up MENA! Masterclass. “This is incredible. best ever”, said one of our participants. I guess history rhymes.
Over the past 3,5 years I have been involved in a number of projects and startups using AI for startups. Some of them works well. Some work really well; but the performance we are starting to see in the latest models this fall, well that’s a whole different level. In our recent Scale Up MENA! Masterclass, in Cairo, hosted by Falak Startups and EBRD we shared our ten ‘best AI prompts’ with the participants, and did a live working sessions with two founders in real-time.
We used Claude, with the latest Opus 4,5 model. Other models are quickly catching up and are likely to be good or maybe even just as good. Personally, having applied these to 100+ startup cases over the last three months, I’m wildly impressed with what Anthropic’ s Claude can do. Regardless of your choice of AI companion, here are the top ten AI prompts we used in Cairo.
LEVEL I
1. Deck evaluation
(Files to upload: Your standard pitch deck)
Imagine you are the world’s #1 startup pitch feedback coach. Review my pitch deck. Give me feedback. Tell me where the deck is strong. Tell me where the deck is still weak. Write your world class suggestions for all the pieces that are missing.
2. Decks x Personas
(Files to upload: Your standard pitch deck)
Read my deck. Develop 5 unique investor profile/Personas (ideal investor personas) Write a unique key message and why each of these should invest. That text goes into a slide called “Why invest” Make this a superbly strong slide!
3. Investment memo
(Files to upload: Your standard pitch deck)
Imagine you are one of the top Venture capital investors in MENA, like 500, BECO capital or MEVP. Write up a detailed, extensive investment memo for how they would view my company and a possible lead investment at my next round. Make sure the memo contains: – Executive summary – outcome analysis – Exit modelling + anything else we can expect. Conclude with a clear invest/no invest decision and also a summary on why. Finish a list of recommendations for “what would need to improve for us to lead an investment”
LEVEL II
4. Market Map of investors
Build me a list of the 100 most active investors across MENA. Identify networks and collaboration, i.e. who likes to invest and co-invest with whom
5. Build my investor list
(Files to upload: Your standard pitch deck)
Build me a list of 1000 early-stage investors across MENA, focus on angel investors, angel networks, strategic advisors, startup accelerators, HNWI, successfully exited founders and anyone else investing in the early stages. Feel free to include family offices, CVCs and VC firms, but only if they have a proven track record of investing into the venture capital/early-stage space. Based on these 1000, analyze and identify the top 100 most relevant for me. Segment these 100 into different investor categories and groups. Develop a clear messaging for each of these unique groups. Focus on 3-5 key points on ‘why they would want to invest’. For the 1.000 list, please identify the right contact person, and contact details for each of them. Write the file in excel format, to allow me to plug it into my investor CRM
6. Investment ready – growth strategy
(Files to upload: Your standard pitch deck + all key metrics. Share as much details as possible here + the Rocketship Canvas in .pdf or image)
Review my pitch deck and KPIs. Evaluate our performance vs. ‘best in class’ venture stage companies. Focus on our KPIs. Answer the following questions: – Today: how are we performing on our key metrics vs. our peers? – Next 6-12 months: Which key targets and metrics do we need to hit to really become exciting to a VC investor?
– Next 6-18 months: Write up an aggressive, ambitious growth strategy, focus the strategy on three stages. Use the Rocketship Canvas to structure your recommendation.
Level III
7. Getting to five competitive term sheets
(Files to upload: Your standard pitch deck + your fundraising process, plan, timeline)
Chris Rangen, the Norwegian guy, talks about ‘the triple Olympic gold medal in entrepreneurship is to get five competing term sheets’. Build me a plan for how we best can get to five competitive VC term sheets – and fast.
8. Strategic analysis
(Files to upload: Your best, extensive, detailed investor deck + the ST Investor readiness deck)
Write a short analysis on (insert your company name here). Then, complete the ten Project Work assignments in the ST Investor Readiness Deck. Keep each Project work section to max 5 pages of text. Use any source. (your company URL here).
(Pssst….. if you want the ST Investor Readiness Deck, you should join our Scale Up! Masterclass series….)
9. Strategic analysis with a focus on GTM
(Files to upload: Your best, extensive, detailed investor deck + your GTM plan + outcome canvas)
Develop a strategic analysis for (Insert your company name here) Make sure to develop: Ideal customer profile, Unique value proposition, beach head market, market expansion roadmap, go-to-market strategy, fundraising, ideal investor profile, write up a list of 1000 most relevant investors and fundraising strategy. Split the investors into different stages. Also develop a outcome canvas for a USD500.000 SEED round, at 5M post (adjust your own numbers). Make sure the investor list is correct and sufficiently detailed.
10. Outcome analysis – to- investor mapping – to- e-mails (Files to upload: Your most extensive pitch deck + outcome canvas in .pdf or image)
Develop a robust Outcome Scenario Memo for this company, use deck + any other sources.
Ok, give me a list of 100 investors that I can bring into this deal over the coming years.
Research each of these investors and write a highly, highly personalized e-mail to get them into the deal. Make sure to reference comparable deals and networks for them. Also write the bump, the follow-up and the nudge e-mails when they don’t respond. Finally, write a great thank you note, with a reminder to lets touch base for the next round.
11. Run my fundraising process for meRun my fundraising process for me
(Files to upload: Your most extensive pitch deck + funding journey)
Study my pitch deck. Study the Funding Journey. Write up a 6-month, detailed workflow and workplan for how we can win the funding journey. My fundraising team is me and my co-founder. We are experts at using AI, so we can automate a lot of stuff here, but of course, we rely on you to guide us as much as possible. Use the max potential in your AI engine, Claude + anything else we need. Use Boardy. Give us a plan, broken down to week-by-week, with clear deliveries to make sure we hit our fundraising targets.
12. The #1 scale up in MENA
(files to upload: everything you got, + your entire data room)
ok, Claude, write me a two-page strategy for how to become the #1 scale up in MENA!. Study our data room and all our materials. Tell us what we need to do to win!
These ten prompts were what we covered in the Scale Up MENA! Masterclass. Feel free to experiment and find your own path. One thing is sure – everyone will soon be using AI tools to scale.
Big shoutout to Rumbi Makanga , Mohammed Al Rasbi & the entire Falak Startups team! Can’t wait go be back again, Cairo.