Starting a business with AI in four hours, with nothing paid for

First 25 minutes of day 1 · context, and how to actually talk to an AI

95 minutes of hands-on work · you leave with a model, an idea, a name, a logo and your keywords

1. 0:25 – 0:45 · Step 1 Pick your business model first
   ToolsGemini

   Everyone jumps straight to "what do I sell". The model decides how hard your life will be, so choose it first.

   Model	To start you need	First euro arrives	The real risk
   Service / freelance	A skill and a page	Days	You're selling hours — it doesn't scale by itself
   Digital product (guide, template, course)	Time to make it once	Weeks	Nobody buys from someone with no audience yet
   Own-product store	Stock, photos, shipping	Weeks	Money tied up in stock before a single sale
   Dropshipping	Almost nothing upfront	Days	Thin margins and you don't control quality or delivery
   Marketplace (Amazon, Etsy, eBay)	A product and an account	Days	Their traffic, their fees, their customer — not yours
   Content + affiliate / ads	Patience	Months	You build the audience first and hope it converts later
   Local service with online booking	A page and a calendar	Days	Limited by geography — but far less competition online
   Subscription / small software	A technical partner (or AI)	Months	Hardest to start, best economics if it works

   In Gemini, pressure-test your choice:

   We are two students in Cyprus with [your skills] and about [€X] to start. We're considering the [model] model. Give me a table with: why it fits us, why it doesn't, what we'd need in week one, and two alternative models that might suit us better.

   → Deliverable: the model you're going with, and why.

2. 0:45 – 1:15 · Step 2 Find the idea — then try to destroy it
   ToolsGeminiClaudeChatGPT

   Generate first:

   Act as a startup advisor. We're two students in Cyprus, our model is [model], our skills are [skills], our budget is [€X]. Give me 10 specific business ideas we could start in the next 3 months. As a table: idea / who pays / what they'd pay / upfront cost / main risk.

   Pick your three favourites. Now attack them — this is the part everyone skips:

   Act as a sceptical investor. Here are our three ideas: [paste]. For each, give the single strongest reason it fails, and what we'd have to prove first to be taken seriously.

   Then get a second opinion somewhere else: paste the survivor into Claude or ChatGPT and ask "What is this idea missing?". Different model, different blind spots. If both flag the same weakness, it's real.

   → Deliverable: your business in one sentence — what it is, who it's for.

3. 1:15 – 1:40 · Step 3 Name it and give it a logo
   ToolsGeminiCanva

   Names first:

   Give me 15 brand names for this business: [your sentence]. Short, easy to say in English and Greek, easy to spell after hearing it once. For each: what it suggests, and whether it clashes with a known brand.

   Before you generate anything, decide which kind of logo you need — this is what people get wrong:

   • Wordmark (the name, styled) — best for services and consultancies. Easiest to keep readable, hardest to make ugly.
   • Icon + name — best for shops and apps, because the icon becomes your social avatar and your browser favicon.
   • Avoid detailed illustrations, gradients and thin lines. They look great at full size and turn to mush at 32 pixels.

   Create a simple, modern [wordmark / icon and name] logo for a brand called [name], which sells [what]. Flat design, two colours maximum, plain background, readable at very small size.

   • Never accept the first one. Ask for "the same but simpler", "the same in a different colour", "without the icon".
   • If the generated logos aren't usable, open Canva, search a logo template and edit it. Often faster and better than fighting an image generator.
   • Save three files: the main logo, a square version for social profiles, and a small square for the favicon.

   → Deliverable: brand name + logo files saved on the computer.

4. 1:40 – 1:55 · Step 4 Find out what people actually search for
   ToolsGoogle TrendsGemini

   An idea nobody searches for is a hobby. Free route, in this order:

   • Google Trends: put two or three ways of describing your product side by side, set the country, and see which words people really use.
   • Type your main term into Google and write down the autocomplete suggestions — those are real searches, in real language.
   • Read the "People also ask" box. Those questions are your homepage FAQ, written for you.

   Then let the AI make sense of it all:

   Here are the search terms and questions I found: [paste]. Which 3 should the homepage of [business] target, and what should the page title and first headline say to match them?

   Instructor demo: the same keywords in a professional tool (SE Ranking), with real volumes and difficulty — so they see the gap between guessing and paying for data, and what an agency actually sells.

   → Deliverable: 3 keywords + the headline the homepage will use.

5. 1:55 – 2:00 Wrap-up

   Each pair says out loud: model, name, one-sentence business, main keyword. Tomorrow it goes live.

120 minutes · you leave with a live website, its social profiles and a way to measure it

1. 0:00 – 0:08 Recap

   Each pair restates model, name, business and keywords, and opens their logo files. Nobody starts building without those.

2. 0:08 – 0:50 · Step 5 Build the website
   ToolsGeminiClaude

   In Gemini. Ask for one single file — that's what makes publishing easy:

   Build a complete one-page website for [name], as a single HTML file with the CSS and JavaScript inside it. Sections: a headline using the words [your keyword], three benefits, an about paragraph, a contact form, and a footer. Use a [colour] palette to match our logo. Make it work on mobile. Give me the full file, ready to save as index.html.

   Now iterate — one change per message, never a fresh prompt:

   • "Make the headline shorter and put the main benefit in it."
   • "Change the colours to something more [premium / energetic / calm]."
   • "Add an FAQ section using these questions: [the ones from People also ask]."

   Save it as index.html and put your logo files in the same folder.

   If you're selling physical products, a one-page site isn't a shop. The honest answer: today you build the landing page, and the store comes after. When it does, use WordPress with WooCommerce — free, and the products, prices and orders belong to you rather than a platform. You can run the whole setup with an AI assistant next to you, telling it what you want and having it walk you through each screen.

   If Gemini's free limit runs out (it resets after a few hours): switch to the other person's Google account, or paste the same prompt into Claude, which writes the page and previews it live as it goes. Keep the file, not the chat.

   → Deliverable: an index.html file that opens in the browser.

3. 0:50 – 1:10 · Step 6 Put it online
   ToolsCloudflare Pages

   Your file works on your computer. Nobody else can see it. This fixes that, free, in under a minute:

   • Create a free Cloudflare account.
   • In the dashboard: Workers & Pages → Create application → Pages → Drag and drop your files.
   • Name the project — this becomes your address.
   • Drag in the folder with index.html and your logo files.
   • Click Deploy site.

   Your site is now live at yourproject.pages.dev, served worldwide. Open it on your phone. Send it to someone.

   Be clear about what you own here. That address is a free subdomain of Cloudflare, not your own domain. It's real hosting and a real URL, but the name belongs to them. Your own domain (yourbusiness.com) costs roughly €10–15 a year — the only thing in this entire workshop that isn't free. When you buy one, you point it at this same project and nothing else changes. That's exactly how our own consultancy site runs: a static site on a CDN, no WordPress, no plugins, nothing to break.

   Changed something? Drag and drop again — it deploys a new version over the old one.

   → Deliverable: a live URL anyone in the world can open.

4. 1:10 – 1:35 · Step 7 Give it a face: profiles, images and one video
   ToolsGeminiCanvaCapCut

   You now have a website nobody has ever seen. A brand that exists only as a URL looks abandoned. In twenty-five minutes you can give it a face — and every asset here is generated, not bought.

   • Claim the handles first. Pick the two networks where your customers actually are and register your name on both before somebody else does. Two is enough. Nobody believes a business that posts on six networks and answers on none.
   • Generate the image set. You need four things: a profile picture, a cover image, and two or three images for your first posts. Same visual language as the logo, or it won't read as one brand.
   • One video, thirty seconds. Not a film. A hook, three lines of text over your images, and a closing frame with your URL. Vertical, because that's where it will be watched.
   • Write the first week. Five posts, drafted now while the idea is fresh, so the account doesn't die on day three.

   Images — ask for the whole set in one go, so the style stays consistent:

   Act as a brand designer. Using the logo and colours we defined, generate a coherent image set for [BRAND]: 1) a square profile picture that still reads at 40 pixels, 2) a wide cover image with no text in the centre, 3) three post images illustrating [what you sell]. Same palette, same lighting, same style across all five. No text inside the images.

   Video — write the script first, then assemble it in Canva or CapCut over the images you just made:

   Write a 30-second vertical video script for [BRAND]. Structure: a hook in the first 3 seconds that names the problem, 3 lines of on-screen text (maximum 8 words each), and a final frame with the web address. Plain spoken language, no marketing adjectives. Tell me which image goes with each line.

   Posts — ask for a week, not a month. A month you will not publish:

   Give me 5 posts for the first week of [BRAND] on [network]: one introducing who we are, one about the problem we solve, one showing the product, one answering the most common objection, and one asking a question. Each with the caption and 3 relevant hashtags. Tone: a person talking, not a brochure.

   Check before you publish. Generated images have tells: hands with too many fingers, text that turns into gibberish, logos that drift between versions. Zoom in. And do not use an AI-generated face and present it as a member of your team — it is the fastest way to lose the trust you have not earned yet.

   Deliverable: two live profiles, five images, one video and a week of posts ready to go.

5. 1:35 – 1:47 · Step 8 Make it measurable, and plan the next 30 days
   ToolsGoogle AnalyticsTrello

   A site you don't measure is a poster in an empty street. Three quick jobs:

   • Analytics. Create a Google Analytics property, copy the tag it gives you, then tell the AI: "Add this Google Analytics tag to my index.html and give me the full file back." Re-deploy to Cloudflare.
   • Email. The contact form collects addresses. That list is worth more than followers, because it's yours and no algorithm sits between you and it.
   • A plan you can see. Ask: "Give me a 30-day launch checklist for [business], one task per day, realistic for two students working part-time." Put it in a free Trello board and actually tick things off.

   → Deliverable: analytics running, handles claimed, a 30-day checklist.

6. 1:47 – 1:57 · Showcase Each pair presents

   Two minutes on screen: open your live site, say what the business is, and tell us one prompt that worked brilliantly and one that gave you rubbish. The failures are the useful part.

7. 1:57 – 2:00 Wrap-up — the honest part

   What you built in four hours would have taken weeks and a real budget a few years ago. But the AI also invented things with total confidence, its SEO advice was generic, and not one customer has confirmed they want this. AI got you to the starting line very fast. It didn't run the business. Check everything it tells you.