AI Fundamentals | Startup Fundamentals

This hands-on, 2-hour workshop is part of Invest Ottawa’s Startup Fundamentals series, designed to help early-stage founders move from idea to evidence.

If you’ve completed Build Your Lean Canvas and Customer Discovery, this session is your next step: learning how to use AI to quickly test your assumptions and bring your idea to life.

Who This Is For

Idea-stage founders (especially first-time or non-technical)

Founders who have completed:

• Build Your Lean Canvas
• Customer Discovery

What You’ll Learn

This session focuses on thinking, not tools. You’ll learn how to use AI as a partner to:

Make Sense of What You’ve Learned Through Customer Discovery

• Synthesize customer interview insights into clear patterns
• Pressure-test your assumptions
• Identify the riskiest thing you still need to prove

Design the Right Experiment

• Define the cheapest, fastest test of your idea
• Explore multiple ways to validate before committing
• Focus on learning — not building a perfect product

Build a Lightweight Prototype with AI

• Turn insights into a simple test (landing page, mockup, flow, or MVP concept)
• Use AI tools to rapidly create and iterate
• Understand what to measure and how to interpret results

Event Details

• Duration: 2 hours
• Format: Interactive, in-person workshop at Bayview Yards, 7 Bayview Station Rd.
• Capacity: Limited to 25 participants