Make Startups, the entrepreneurial-training non-profit by theClubhou.se, has developed a digital platform to help new business owners start and stay on the right path.
CoFounderOS (the latter half short for “operating system”) is an artificial intelligence-based program, built primarily for startup facilitators and organizations, like theClubhou.se or the Small Business Development Center, to make available to individual founders, that helps burgeoning entrepreneurs develop and refine their business plans.
Using a large language model algorithm, the software allows users to input information about their proposed startup via a dashboard and helps identify problems and work through solutions regarding plans, marketing strategies, expectations, projections and more.
“Once you’ve completed everything, you click a button to generate a business plan, and it automates the creation of your business plan with all the information that it has gathered about you,” explained Eric Parker, co-founder of theClubhou.se and CEO of Make Startups.
Budding business owners can get help identifying target markets, competitors, even receive advice. TheClubhou.se has supported some 500 startups over its 10 years. Using data from all the exchanges with founders — such as business pitches, mentorship and counseling provided to entrepreneurs and stats on how well the businesses fared — programmers were able to build the initial model for the operating system.
The creation of the program traces back to roughly three or four years ago, Parker says, when Make Startups was working with banks from across the country to discern what learning objectives were necessary to measure what an entrepreneur knew, in order to secure funding for a new business.
“It’s really challenging testing whether somebody understands the skill,” Parker said. “Frankly, it’s very boring to give somebody a standardized test on entrepreneurship, when entrepreneurship is such a practical application.”
Make Startups officially launched the platform on Oct. 25. One day prior, Parker unveiled CoFounderOs at the Fall 2023 Startup Champions Network Summit in Phoenix to, he said, a “very enthusiastic” response.
“We have about 20 different support organizations that have signed up since then, and so we’re meeting with each one of those to get them onto the platform,” said Parker. “We’ve had a couple of different states that, from a state economic development perspective, have said they’re interested in providing the software to all the founders in their state and all the entrepreneurs support organizations and their state.”
Even some banks have expressed interest, Parker said, inquiring into how the program can be used to do loan prequalification.
Local enterprises have already taken advantage of the platform, such as Augusta Locally Grown, with whom Make Startups has a partnership. Six farmers, Parker observes, are currently using CoFounderOS, and all of the graduates who featured at the latest Demo Day — the culmination of Make Startups’ small business training program — have been supported by it.
For more information on CoFounderOS, visit Make Startup’s website at www.makestartups.com
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
