When founders decide to stop being the answer to every question, they usually look at three options: write a wiki, put a general chatbot in front of the team, or use an AI clone of themselves. They sound similar. They behave very differently, and the differences matter most at the moment something goes wrong.
Option 1: a shared wiki or document
- Good at: being exact, being owned by named people, and costing almost nothing to start.
- Weak at: people do not like searching, answers go out of date quietly, and it cannot tell the reader what it does not cover.
- Best for: the ten to twenty answers that never change much, written once with a date.
Option 2: a general-purpose chatbot
- Good at: answering in natural language about almost anything, instantly.
- Weak at: it is built to always give an answer. On your own pricing, promises and plans, it does not know the truth, so it can sound confident and be wrong.
- Best for: general questions that are not about your company's private decisions.
Option 3: an AI clone trained on your approved facts
- Good at: answering in a conversation, in your voice, from facts you have read and approved, and showing where each answer came from.
- Different by design: when it has no approved fact, its correct answer is that it does not know, and the question goes to you.
- Weak at: it needs a few minutes of your time at the start to teach it, and it only knows what you taught it.
- Best for: the knowledge only you hold, which people keep asking for.
The test that decides it
Ask one question: what should happen when the system does not know? A wiki shows nothing. A general chatbot guesses. A clone built on approved facts says it does not know and asks you. If a wrong answer would cost you money or trust, only the third behaviour is acceptable.
You do not have to pick only one
Many founders use all three: a wiki for the stable core, a clone for the daily questions, and a general chatbot for everything that is not about the company. The important part is that the clone answers only from what you approved, so it never fills a gap with a guess.
Try the clone approach
AskMyStartup is an AI clone built on exactly this rule. You teach it by talking, you approve each fact, your team asks it, and it says when it does not know. It is in private beta, and you can join the waitlist with your email.