Founder prompts
ChatGPT prompts for founders that use your real numbers
Founders get the most from four prompts: the investor update, customer call prep, the job post and the weekly plan, and each one works only when it holds your real numbers and notes. Put the facts in the prompt, ask for a fixed format, and check every number before you send.
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Updated
>_Prompt packs
Why prompt packs let founders down
A pack of prompts gives you a pack of blanks, and the hard part is still yours.
A founder's week is full of context that no tool sees: which customer was promised what, which number moved, who said yes on Friday. Anthropic's guide says Claude is like a brilliant but new hire with no context on your business. A pack of prompts does not hand that employee the facts. You do.
So the useful part of a founder prompt is not the wording of the first line. It is the facts you put under it.
Patterns
Three more prompts to copy
The investor update is the worked example further down. These three cover the other jobs a founder asks AI for, with invented details you can swap out.
Pattern 1: prepare for a customer call. Prompt: Prepare me for a 30-minute call on Thursday with Priscilla Njoroge, operations lead at Yewdale Foods, a customer since March. Goal: leave the call knowing if she will renew in April. Facts: she pays $1,150 a month. She emailed twice last month about slow exports, and ticket 482 is still open. Give me: the account in five lines, three questions to ask, and one thing I should not promise on this call. One page, plain words.
Pattern 2: write a job post. Prompt: Write a job post for our first customer support lead at Zinnia Works, a 10-person company in Utrecht. Pay: €52,000 to €60,000. Start: January. The person answers about 40 tickets a day, owns the help centre and reports to me. Tone: plain and honest. Include what the first 90 days look like. List only these perks: 25 days of leave and a €1,000 learning budget. About 400 words.
Pattern 3: plan the week from the calendar. Prompt: Here is my week. Monday: investor call 10:00 to 10:45, hiring interview 14:00 to 15:00. Tuesday: product review 09:30 to 11:00. Wednesday: customer calls 13:00 to 16:00. Friday: all-hands 16:00 to 17:00. I have about 12 hours free. My three goals: close the Wexford deal, hire the support lead, ship the invoice fix. Suggest where to put the work, in a table by day. Mark any goal that does not fit.
One habit comes from users, not from vendors: when you do not know what you want yet, ask ChatGPT to interview you with questions before it writes. Anthropic does recommend it for Claude Code, but no ChatGPT guide we opened says so.
Gaps
What a generic prompt misses
Founders usually type the task and skip the numbers, the names and the asks.
- Your numbers. Revenue, customers, churn and cash, for the same month as last time.
- Your last version. What you told investors last month, so this one connects to it.
- Your asks. The two or three things you need from the reader.
- The people. Who the customer is, what they paid and what they asked last week.
- The limits. A length, a format and a rule that missing numbers stay marked as missing.
Most of this sits in your metrics sheet, your team chat and your inbox. You can copy it by hand each month, or let Scrubbr read your knowledge base and chats when you say the line.
Review
The review rule: check every number
AI can mix up or drop a number, so every figure gets checked before it leaves your desk.
- Tell the AI to use only the numbers you give it. In a founder prompt, that means "write 'missing' where a number is not given". Anthropic's blog advises letting the model say it is uncertain.
- Trace each figure back to your metrics sheet, and mark any you cannot find there. Microsoft's guide asks you to review and verify what Copilot gives you.
- Ask for a revision when the first draft is off. Microsoft notes that the first result is often not the best one.
- Read the asks last. An update that asks for the wrong thing is worse than a quiet one.
Worked example
From "write the update" to a prompt with your numbers
Sunita Rao runs Ropeway, stock software for florists, and she needs the October investor update.
In ChatGPT
You say
optionwrite the investor update for october, use the numbers and the wins from slack, keep it like last time, and ask for two intros
Scrubbr finds
- Knowledge base · October metrics (demo): MRR, customers, churn, cash
Slack · #wins, October
Gmail · Last investor update, sent 2 October
ChatGPT · Prompt
Goal: Write Ropeway's October investor update for Sunita Rao to send to 14 investors. It should keep them informed and win two introductions.
Facts: Metrics for October: MRR $41,200, up from $36,800 in September (12%). Customers 163, up from 148. Monthly churn 1.9%. Cash $412,000, which is 17 months of runway. Wins from Slack: signed Nettleford Florists, our third chain customer; shipped stock sync on 21 October. Challenge from Slack: exports ran slowly for large florists in week 2, fixed on 21 October. The 2 October update had four sections (Numbers, Wins, Challenges, Asks) and a short, frank tone. Asks: introductions to two flower wholesalers, and a referral for a senior backend engineer.
Steps: 1. Open with one line that sums up the month. 2. List the five numbers, with the change from September where given. 3. List the two wins. 4. Describe the one challenge and the fix. 5. State the two asks.
Limits: Frank and short, as in the 2 October update. Use only the numbers above. Write "missing" in place of any number that is not given. Make no claims beyond these facts.
Format: An email in the same four sections as last time: Numbers, Wins, Challenges, Asks. Plain text. Under 300 words.
A great answer: An investor can read it in two minutes, find every number, and see what Sunita wants from them. Each number matches the metrics sheet.
Demo data. The people, company and numbers are invented.
Questions
Founder prompt questions
What ChatGPT prompts should founders use?
Start with four jobs: the investor update, customer call prep, the job post and the weekly plan. Each needs real facts in the prompt, such as numbers, names and dates. Anthropic's guide describes Claude as a new employee who lacks context, and the same advice suits any AI tool you use for this work.
How do I write a ChatGPT prompt for an investor update?
Give it the month's numbers, the wins, one challenge and your asks. Paste last month's update as a model and ask for the same sections. Anthropic's blog suggests a single example is a good place to start for format.
Can I trust the AI with my numbers?
Trust it only as far as you check it. It can mix up or drop a figure. Tell it to use only the numbers you give and to mark missing ones, then check each against your sheet.
Is there a right length for a founder prompt?
About one screen: the goal, your numbers, what to do in order, the limits, the shape of the answer and what good looks like. The prompting hub explains each part.
Is it official advice to have ChatGPT interview me first?
For ChatGPT, this is community advice. The one official version is for Claude Code, where Anthropic suggests asking Claude to interview you and write the spec to a file.
Sources
Where these facts come from
Scrubbr writes this prompt for you. Hold Option and say one line.
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