I mentor startups outside my Meta product job. I tell founders to take 3 steps to sell their AI vision.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mahesh Chayel, a product management lead at Meta. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Since 2018, I have mentored 12 startups, especially those operating in the enterprise and AI spaces. The biggest gap I’ve seen is essentially, why use Generative AI?

I work closely with early-stage founders to shape product strategy, refine their go-to-market approach, and explore how AI can be meaningfully…