What if your coworking space came with an AI co-founder

The Dolania Americana mayfly spends more than a year in its nymph form, only to emerge as an adult and live for less than five minutes. Do you know who else often follows the same tragic arc? Startups.

Too many of them end up taking the mayfly’s route, spending years crafting the perfect product in isolation, only to discover at launch that the market never wanted it in the first place. Without validating the idea and testing the market fit early, that long‑awaited debut often turns into a brief, expensive finale.

But knowing you should validate your idea is one thing - doing it well is a whole other beast. Ask most founders, and they will tell you this is one of the trickiest parts of building a startup.

Actually, you know what? Don’t. Our team already did so, and what we found is staggering - over 70% of early‑stage founders admit to struggling with different aspects of the idea validation process - from identifying the right problem to tackle, to pinpointing early adopters and running structured discovery interviews that yield actionable insights.

But this shouldn’t be the case.

If we can give early-stage founders structured tools, strategic validation workflows, and contextual AI guidance, we can reduce the top 3 causes of startup failure by up to 40%.
Vesko Kolev, founder and CEO of Icanpreneur

And so the AI co-founder was born - an intelligent virtual assistant that helps skip the guesswork and follow the real startup path, providing actionable intelligence and battle-tested methodologies for success.

Thanks to our partnership with Campus X, now all new and existing members have preferential access to Icanpreneur’s AI co-founder. Through the initiative, we aim to improve the success rate of Bulgarian startups and help the next generation of builders avoid the most common pitfalls throughout their journey.

Lack of a market fit and poor idea validation among the top reasons why startups fail

A post-mortem study by CB Insights on hundreds of startups found that, in 35% of the cases, the primary reason for failure was tackling problems that were interesting to solve, rather than ones that served a market need. While the researchers note that there is rarely just one reason for a startup going bust, the lack of market fit has been the second most common trigger after running out of cash or failing to raise new capital. In other words, roughly one in three companies thought the market wanted something that it didn’t actually do.

Interestingly, our insights gathered from interviews and partner feedback across 20+ Bulgarian ecosystems reveal that similar dynamics also dominate the domestic startup stage.

“Most founders aren’t failing to build. They’re failing to build the right thing,” notes Kolev. The most common reason: lack of market fit or proper idea validation.

Regardless of how “disruptive” an idea might look on paper, without proper validation, it is highly likely to fail once it hits the market, burning through time, money, and momentum along the way.

History is full of ideas that failed because they lacked validation. The Apple Newton was years ahead of its time as a personal digital assistant. Google Glass was the future of wearables. Juicero was a $400 fix for a problem no one really had. And so the list goes.

All these cases prove that, without early evidence that customers actually want (and will pay for) what you are building, even the potentially most disruptive ideas can go the way of the mayfly - years in development, only to find no demand, no traction, and no runway left upon launch.

However, even founders who try to validate their idea might often fall short - not for lack of effort, but for not fully understanding what proper validation actually looks like. It isn’t about asking a few friends if they “like the idea” or getting nods from peers - it is about following a structured process, talking to the right people, and being willing to adapt based on real insights.

“The majority of first-time founders in Bulgaria build without a structured process, often relying on instinct, peer feedback, or mentor tips,” says Kolev. “Less than 15% conduct more than 10 validation interviews before committing to building.”

The reasons are diverse - a time-consuming process, rushed decisions, cutting corners to save costs, or lack of experience.

However, thanks to the symbiosis of AI technology and Icanpreneur’s know-how, founders can now rely on guided decision-making and validation-first workflows to streamline the entire process and future-proof their startups.

Icanpreneur’s AI co-founder in a nutshell: What it is and how it helps startup founders

The AI co-founder is a context-aware AI assistant, trained on startup best practices and proven strategic frameworks that deliver personalized, adaptive, step-by-step guidance. The co-founder is powered by a custom implementation of advanced deep learning models and our proprietary logic, condensing the knowledge of leading structured playbooks. That way, we support founders throughout the entire process - from raw ideation to market entry.

The AI co-founder isn’t your typical ChatGPT-like tool that answers queries. It is a battle-tested intelligent assistant that will guide you on your journey, including through:

• Idea validation workflows
• Designing a go-to-market strategy
• Defining buyer personas
• Generating interview scripts and running buyer persona interviews
• Crafting a brand positioning strategy
• Assisting with brand assets such as website and pitch decks
• Providing investor readiness insights and know-how from founder conversations
• Access to a guided Lean Canvas builder and insights from structured playbooks and methodologies like Jobs To Be Done, Mom’s test, and more

All of these crucial steps are guided by Icanpreneur’s Virtual Assistant (IVA), a personal AI co-founder that evolves with your journey.

Of course, the AI co-founder isn’t that crystal ball that will protect your business from everything, at all times. As the case of the wedding dress retailer Brideside, which went bust during the COVID pandemic due to two-thirds of the weddings being cancelled, proves, external factors are rarely in our control.

However, validating that there is a real market need for your startup’s products and services and drafting the strategy for how to satisfy it are. And the AI co-founder can be the best ally in ensuring you excel in the areas that are within your control, including identifying genuine demand, uncovering market gaps, and designing data‑driven strategies that increase your odds of building something customers truly want.

The AI co-founder in action: How Equitshare, a Campus X member, found its ideal customer profile

With a deep experience in management consulting, the founding team of the Campus X-based Equitshare had no trouble identifying an existing gap in the way companies addressed workplace equity and employee engagement. The goal then became crystal clear - to create transparent, fair, and easy-to-manage equity compensation plans, aligning employees' success with the long-term growth of their organizations.

However, unlike other founders, they weren’t quick to jump the gun. Instead, they wanted to gain certainty about their early adopters, clarity in their go-to-market strategy, and confidence that their message was landing with the right audience.

"We were top in expertise, but the ideal customer profile was hard to define alone," explains Orlin Dochev, co-founder and co-CEO at Equitshare.

“A platform that makes employee equity transparent and executable for startups” - a one-sentence prompt is all it took to launch a brainstorming session with IVA. The intelligent assistant then became their sounding board, strategist, and research partner, helping refine the idea, map out market opportunities, and shape a launch strategy that could stand up to real‑world challenges.

IVA started by suggesting a number of directions. Eventually, they narrowed it down and structured the concept into a clear business model, identifying the core problems, assumptions, and customer segments.

Next, it was time to address the challenge that brought Equitshare to the AI co-founder in the first place - the customer discovery process. IVA turned 20+ transcripts from interviews with startup founders, business owners, and HR leads into clear and concise actionable intelligence: While the HR leads buy the value, the real decision makers are the business owners or those who prioritize maximizing the ROI in human capital.

And “Voila!” - with just a few clicks, Equitshare nailed down the profile of their real early adopter.

What they did next was to reword their value proposition, update the investor narrative, and redesign their onboarding flow.

But would those work better? IVA was not shy of nudging the Equitshare team to make sure. Over the course of several follow-up iterations, the AI co-founder helped them validate their new messaging with a pilot cohort, track response, and then re-check their Investor Readiness Score.

And so they were ready for an investment round.

“We weren’t building HR tech anymore. We were building the operational layer for employee loyalty boost,” Dochev explains. “We needed a tool to help us describe the pain we wanted to solve and show us who actually felt it. And that’s where Icanpreneur made a big difference.”

Campus X members now with the AI co-founder’s X-Factor in their arsenal

Equipped with our AI co-founder at their fingertips, Campus X members now have a partner that can guide them, so those “lightbulb moments” have a much better shot at becoming thriving companies. As part of the Campus X community, startups like Equitshare can easily tap into the AI co-founder’s capabilities to test and validate their ideas faster, craft smarter go‑to‑market strategies, and get investor-ready from day one.

Importantly, existing and new Campus X members willing to super-charge their startups with the vast capabilities of the AI co-founder can take advantage of a special 30% community discount, dedicated tutorials, and demo support.

This opportunity comes as a natural extension of the Campus X mission of being not just a physical space, but an inspiring ecosystem for founders seeking to bring their ideas to life or elevate their startups to the next level.

The “unfair advantage” that the AI co-founder unlocks is yet another factor in the long list of reasons for startup founders to consider Campus X as the home of their businesses, including also the access to an inspiring community, various value-add services, industry-leading events, and a vast potential for new business opportunities.

As a result, founders can ensure everything needed to set the right structure, at the right time, inside the right ecosystem. And be certain that the market would want what they are building.

So, if you are ready to build smarter and future-proof your idea, get an exclusive access to the AI co-founder and a personalised founder onboarding.

Let’s have fewer mayflies, shall we?