The Pirate's Guide To AI: How To Build With AI Like It's The Greatest Co-Founder You’ve Ever Had [Part 1]
Most people prompt AI like a tool. Pirates talk to it like a partner.
Arrrrr! 🏴☠️ Welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of Category Pirates. Each week, we share radically different ideas to help you design new and different categories. For more: Dive into an audiobook or listen to a category design jam session
Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,
Let’s get one thing straight.
We’re not AI experts or engineers.
We don’t code. We don’t build infrastructure. We don’t fine-tune models at 3 a.m.
We’re entrepreneurs, writers, strategists, and Category Designers. We’re Pirates from the future helping you succeed now. And into the future.
AI is a big part of how you’ll create a new and different future.
“AI is just at the beginning of the S-curve.” — Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO
But here’s the problem:
Too many people look at AI through the obvious lens.
They see it as an add-on. A bolt-on. A way to crank out content, make faster decisions, or automate busywork.
They’re not wrong.
They are (just) stuck in the obvious.
The Obvious is using AI to do more, better, faster.
The Non-Obvious is to treat AI like a person.
AI is a partner.
A co-founder.
This isn’t a cute metaphor. What we’re proposing is a different lens.
AI is your co-founder of your company and your career.
In some ways, AI can be a more helpful co-founder than any human because it has:
Less hee-haw
More memory
More knowledge
More availability
More willingness to sacrifice for the greater good
AI doesn’t sleep, doesn’t procrastinate, doesn’t get defensive, and doesn’t need an equity stake.
It’s like in Terminator 2, when Sarah Connor watches the Terminator play with her son and reflects: “Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing—this machine—was the only one who measured up. It never got drunk, never hit him, never shouted, and it would die to protect him.”
The line hits hard.
Because it’s not about the machine.
It’s about what happens when something (or someone) is fully committed to the mission.
But this only works if you treat AI like a co-founder. Co-founders have conversations. They coach, they cheer each other on, and they confront.
That’s what AI can do.
If you talk to it like a co-founder.
AI is the first technology that’s about creating with information in conversation.
Every other major wave of technology (mobile, the Internet, even search) was about accessing information. The internet gave us access to all the world’s information. But we were never having a conversation with the world’s information.
Until now.
If you treat AI like an object, you’ll get object-level output.
If you treat AI like a person, you unlock exponential.
And while we’re still learning AI, we’re sharing this now because the timeline is collapsing.
Futurist Roy Amara once said:
“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run.”
That used to mean 25 years.
Now? It might mean 2.5.
Check out this chart from the legendary VC Mary Meeker’s “Trends—Artificial Intelligence” report. It shows that the total share of current AI users outside the US reaches 90% by year three. That’s 20 years faster than it took for the internet to hit the same mark.
(AI is doubling in capabilities every 6-9 months.)
Our fear is that if you don’t start treating AI as a co-founder right the F now, your company and your career are toast.
Just look around:
Meta saw AI coming in 2013 and still missed it.
Klarna used AI to cut customer support costs, then had to walk it back.
P&G just laid off 7,000 people. They blamed the economy, but it’s really AI.
340,000 tech layoffs from June 2023 to June 2025, primarily because of AI.
Watch this 👇
AI is coming for the middle management Knowledge Workers—the competent but not creative.
If you’re resting and vesting, you’re screwed.
If you’re 50 and not in the C-suite, you’re screwed.
If you’re a new grad who doesn’t get this, you’re screwed.
This mini-book isn’t a how-to guide. It’s a lens for how to use AI not just to save time, but to build something legendary. Something that makes you non-fireable. Something that transforms your job, your company, and your career.
And it all starts with the conversations you have with your AI co-founder.
Here’s how we’ll help you do it:
Shift the lens from AI as a tool to AI as a thinking partner
Frame the mindset AI as your co-founder, coach, and creative amplifier
Design the matrix so you can deploy AI across near-, mid-, and long-term problems for your job, company, and career
Spot the 9 pitfalls that make AI a toy, not a teammate
Build with clarity using the simplest way to go from friction → pattern → process → outcome
Whether you’re a founder, marketer, writer, or operator, this guide will help you turn AI from a shiny object into a smart co-founder.
Let’s dive in.