Over the past few years, I have repeatedly asked myself one simple question:
What if we could translate decades of entrepreneurship research into an AI-supported system that helps founders make better decisions?
This question eventually became the starting point for Smart Compass (smartcompass.app).
My academic work has focused on founder coaching, entrepreneurial competencies, and decision-making under uncertainty. While conducting research and working with founders, I repeatedly observed the same challenge: founders receive valuable support from mentors, coaches, investors, and peers. However, much of this support remains fragmented, highly individualized, and difficult to translate into a structured development process.
Recent advances in generative AI have opened an exciting opportunity.
Rather than replacing mentors or coaches, AI can help organize information, identify development priorities, and support reflection between mentoring sessions.
This idea became the foundation of Smart Compass.
The current prototype combines structured assessments with AI-supported feedback to create individualized development roadmaps for founders. Rather than generating generic recommendations, Smart Compass translates evidence-based entrepreneurship concepts into practical decision support for venture development.
The platform is currently in its final development and testing phase, with the first public beta scheduled for July 2026.
Rather than replacing human coaching, Smart Compass is designed to augment it. The system provides coaches, mentors, and entrepreneurship support organizations with a structured, research-informed understanding of founders' development needs, helping them identify priorities, prepare mentoring sessions, and monitor progress over time. In doing so, it seeks to improve the consistency, transparency, and overall quality of entrepreneurship support while preserving the human relationship at the center of the mentoring process.
Developing Smart Compass has also been a personal learning journey.
Although my background is in entrepreneurship research and innovation management rather than software engineering, recent advances in AI-assisted software development have fundamentally changed what individual researchers and practitioners can build. They enable domain experts to transform research into functioning digital products much faster than was possible only a few years ago.
For me, this raises a broader research question:
- How will AI change entrepreneurship support?
- Will future mentoring become more personalized?
- Can AI help founders identify blind spots earlier?
- How should human mentors and AI systems complement one another rather than compete?
These questions extend far beyond Smart Compass itself. They point toward a broader transformation of entrepreneurship education, founder coaching, and venture development.
I believe we are only beginning to understand how evidence-based AI can transform entrepreneurship support, not by replacing human expertise, but by making it more structured, scalable, and accessible.
If you are working at the intersection of entrepreneurship, innovation management, mentoring, or artificial intelligence, I would be delighted to exchange ideas and learn about your perspectives. I look forward to connecting with researchers, educators, practitioners, and others who are exploring how AI can meaningfully support entrepreneurial development.