The Human Advantage: Why Entrepreneurial Skills Are the Key to AI Success

The Misunderstood “AI”

Seeing something like ChatGPT, Grok or Gemini called “Artificial Intelligence” feels a bit strange to me. It’s a big overstatement, like a huge leap of faith for these tools. I always call them just LLMs or AI tools, a matter heavily linked to statistics and probabilities to the same extent as the true AI (as Artificial General Intelligence – AGI) is linked to will, curiosity and motivation. When was the last time LLM asked you something? The same feeling was for me when in 2012 there were a lot of AI vacuums, but it was just an algorithm, not even a neural network inside vacuums.

A true AI would be able to set its own tasks, do them by itself, and find new ways if it runs into problems. LLMs can’t do this, but it’s what big companies like Microsoft and Meta are trying to create. A system that could fix and improve itself would have almost no limits. LLMs as a technology don’t have that basic quality.

This is not just about words. This difference matters a lot when you think about how we use this tech in business to make life better for people. I saw this for myself at Dwelly, a startup I co-founded in London. We use tech to make renting flats easier and more transparent. Our idea was to have humans work with AI-enabled apps (including Speech Processing, Computer Vision and LLMs). We made things better for tenants and landlords. For example, our system can cut the time it takes to fix a maintenance issue by 30%. Yes, an LLM can actually direct a British handyman quite well.

We were intrigued about how our large and diverse team would adapt to this new technology. We were convinced that the younger, tech-savvy folks would perform the best with the shiny new tools. 

And we were wrong. We found no real connection between someone’s age, tech background (obviously, we are not talking about folks with a degree in Computer Science; we are talking about more or less ordinary people), and how well they used the LLMs to achieve better results in their work. This could be a 45-year-old programmer with 20 years of experience, or an 18-year-old university graduate.

Why Entrepreneurial Skills Matter More Than Tech Skills

But this showed us something important: the people using LLMs maximum effectively are not the most technical; they are the most entrepreneurial. 

What we found, though, is that the people who excel with these tools aren’t necessarily the ones with the most technical know-how. Instead, it’s the curious, proactive types who are great at setting goals. 

They spot opportunities everywhere and use LLMs to bring their ideas to life, even if they’re anything but tech experts. The most successful people with LLMs are those who are never happy with what they’ve just done and always want to do better. The main criterion for success is the ability to ask the right questions, get the most complete and accurate answers, and draw meaningful conclusions from the information received.

We saw this difference many times. A very technical person might use an LLM like a fast Google search or a big knowledge base. They might ask it to write code, but that’s it. 

On the contrary, someone with an entrepreneurial mindset but with almost zero tech skills, always use the LLM to speed up or rethink the whole creative process, not just to finish one small task. They can use the same LLM to build a quick prototype of an idea, test a guess, or figure out how to launch a new feature. 

The True Power of the Human-AI Partnership

LLMs are not here to replace humans. They are powerful tools that make human work better. You can think of LLMs as a “man in the middle,” helping tasks and communication between different systems and people. Their real power comes out when they are part of bigger, more complex systems. For example, a business can create a network where one LLM breaks down a big task and gives parts of it to other specialized LLMs. This network can then connect to other business tools, like for data analysis or a call center. The LLM’s job is to manage this system, and the quality of its work directly impacts the final result. But the human is still the one who designs the whole system.

The core skills of an entrepreneur are curiosity and proactivity. Also, they are willing to take smart risks. This all makes people so good with this new tech. An entrepreneurial person is a natural problem-solver. They sees chances and opportunities where others only see problems and hassles. They are okay with things not being perfect. They aim to create and innovate, even if the subject matter is a communication with a British plumber. 

When using LLMs, this means not just using the technology for what it’s clearly for, but always trying new things to find new uses. These are the people who will find the next big business idea or a way to make work better that no one else has thought of.

This leads to a surprising idea: to really do well with LLMs, we have to become better humans. A proactive person working with a powerful LLM is what a sci-fi, human-machine partnership feels like. To succeed now, it is much more important to build your entrepreneurial skills and curiosity than it is to just become more tech-savvy. The more active and goal-oriented a person is, the more they can get from LLM’s abilities.

These skills are not just for people who start companies. Anyone can have them, from a new employee with fresh ideas to a senior manager. What makes them different is how they approach work. They don’t just finish tasks; they think about how to improve things, automate boring work, and use tools like LLMs to create something new and valuable. A person with an entrepreneurial mindset “owns” their work, they don’t just do what they are told.

The Path to Success with LLMs

Becoming more entrepreneurial is a journey. It starts with a change in how you think about work and solving problems. And this is where LLMs can really help:

Be Curious

Don’t just take the problem head on. Ask why you are doing it and what the main goal is. Use LLMs to help you find new tools and technologies that could make your work better. Always try to understand the bigger picture of your job and your company.

Be Proactive

Don’t wait for instructions. Look for problems to solve. Use LLMs to think of many solutions and then choose the best one. A great way to use it is to ask it to find problems with your ideas. A lot of the answers might be bad, but the process of discussing and seeing all the options is very useful. An entrepreneurial person doesn’t see these “bad” answers as a failure; they see them as useful information that tells them what not to do.

Take Smart Risks

Don’t be afraid to try new things. Use LLMs to quickly test your ideas. This lets you learn from your mistakes fast, without big problems.

Set Clear Goals and Take the Next Step

An entrepreneur always focuses on the end goal. Use LLMs to help you break down big goals into smaller, easier steps. You can also use it to find possible problems or difficulties you might face.

Thinking this way makes it clear that, as The Economist has said, the first one-person “unicorn” company will be created not by a fully automatic AI, but by a person using an LLM.

This shows that the future of business is about human ideas and motivation driving technology. The partnership between a human and an LLM will be the real “AI.” 

To get the most out of AI, we first have to be better humans—more active, curious, and focused on our goals. That’s why anyone who wants to succeed with LLMs needs to boost their entrepreneurial skills. The more tech-savvy you are, the more you’ll need these skills to make the tech truly work for you.