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Superblocks CEO: How to find a unicorn idea by studying AI system prompts | TechCrunch

Jun 07, 2025 - techcrunch.com
Brad Menezes, CEO of Superblocks, highlights the potential of system prompts used by AI startups as a source of billion-dollar ideas. These prompts, which guide foundational AI models, are seen as a master class in prompt engineering. Superblocks recently shared 19 system prompts from popular AI coding products to illustrate their importance. Menezes emphasizes that while the system prompt is crucial, it constitutes only 20% of the solution. The remaining 80% involves "prompt enrichment," which includes the infrastructure built around the AI model, such as user instructions and response accuracy checks.

Menezes identifies three key components of system prompts: role prompting, contextual prompting, and tool use. Role prompting ensures consistency and personality, contextual prompting provides necessary guardrails, and tool use enables advanced tasks beyond text generation. By studying these prompts, Superblocks aims to empower non-programmers to create applications, handling aspects like security and data access. Superblocks has attracted notable clients like Instacart and Paypaya Global, and internally, the company uses its product to build tools instead of purchasing them, allowing business staff to create agents for various tasks.

Key takeaways:

  • Brad Menezes, CEO of Superblocks, believes billion-dollar startup ideas are hidden in the system prompts used by existing AI unicorns.
  • System prompts are lengthy instructions used by AI startups to guide foundational models like those from OpenAI or Anthropic.
  • Menezes emphasizes that only 20% of the "secret sauce" is in the system prompt itself, while 80% is in "prompt enrichment" and infrastructure around the LLM calls.
  • Superblocks has raised $23 million in Series A funding and is using its product internally to allow non-programmers to build applications, landing notable companies like Instacart and Paypaya Global as customers.
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