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Tools don’t solve problems. People do.
Why AI is more like a spade than a magic wand — and how one founder nailed his MVP by knowing where to dig.
Carl Stanton
September 16, 2025
Today we’re talking about how to use AI effectively as part of your team….
But first, a few highlights:
🚀 GC Angels reveals startups joining a £6.5m accelerator programme for diverse Northern founders, aiming to promote under-represented founders.
💿 Leeds digital festival is about to go live on September 22nd - get the full programme here
“Tools don’t solve problems. People do.”
A spade won’t dig a hole by itself. AI is no different.
There’s a temptation to see technology as magic, wave the wand, watch the problems vanish. That’s the same thinking that gave us corporate yearly reviews: rituals that promise progress, but deliver very little unless the humans involved bring clarity, intent, and action.
Startups know better. They live and die by speed and precision, not ceremonies. And this is where AI has the potential to shine, not as a gimmick, but as an accelerator.
The catch? It only works if you know what you’re doing in the first place.
⚒️ Why clarity matters
Vague ideas don’t get good results. If you give a poor brief to an intern, you’ll get a poor output. AI is no different.
“If a human can’t understand your brief, neither will AI.”
When you’ve done the thinking, defined the problem, tested the pain, spoken to real people, AI becomes a teammate. It sharpens, stress-tests, and accelerates. But it can’t do the heavy lifting of clarity for you.
🚀 A founder who got it right
We worked recently with a founder who’d spent years inside the problem he wanted to solve, he knew the pain points first-hand. He’d validated them with others. His idea wasn’t a hunch; it was a well-formed need.
We nudged him towards a few tools, Lovable, Gemini’s vibe-coding features, that sort of thing, and within days he had built a working MVP. Not a toy demo, but a proper product ready for user testing.
“The difference wasn’t the AI platform. It was the clarity he brought.”
📌 Takeaway
🔑 AI is a spade, not a magic wand. It only works if you:
Define the problem with painful clarity
Test it with real people
Pick the right tool for the job
AI won’t solve problems for you. But it will help you solve them faster, sharper, and at a scale you couldn’t reach alone.
👉 That’s the kind of leverage we love at Trove: clarity + the right tools + a founder who knows where they’re digging. If you’re ready to test your idea at speed or know someone how is, book a discover call to find out more.
See you same time next week.
Carl.
