What an AI Kickstarter actually is, and what it is not
By Christa Hill, Tacit Edge
When I tell people I run something called an AI Kickstarter, I get one of three reactions.
The first is: "Oh, like a training session." The second is: "So you demo the tools?" And the third, from the leaders who have already tried a few of those things and watched them land with a thud, is a slightly tired "we have done those before."
I understand all three. There is a lot of noise in this space right now, and most of it looks the same. A facilitator. A slide deck. A list of prompts people will never use again. Everyone is politely present and quietly unchanged by the end.
That is not what I do. So let me be specific.
What it actually is
The AI Kickstarter is a 90 minute session for leadership teams who are already moving on AI but not moving together.
The goal is not to make your team AI experts. The goal is to make your team aligned. Those are different things, and alignment is the one that compounds.
Most teams I work with are not behind. They are fragmented. Different people using different tools. Different confidence levels sitting in the same room. A few quiet power users carrying the rollout. A few quiet skeptics waiting to be heard. And a leader who can see all of it but does not quite have the language to name it yet.
The Kickstarter gives the whole team 90 minutes to get honest about where they actually are, not where they are supposed to be. That single shift, being allowed to tell the truth in a room together, is what makes everything else possible.
What happens in the room
There are five parts, and they build on each other.
We start by resetting the room.Not with a slide deck. With one question: where are you actually at with this? Not the polished version. The real one. The first answer is always cautious. By the fifth, the room has changed. Shoulders drop. A senior person admits they have been faking it. Someone quieter says they love it but felt like they were not allowed to. That honesty is what the rest of the session is built on.
Then we make it real, fast.I do not talk about what AI could theoretically do for your industry. I ask people to bring a real problem from their actual work, something on their list that they wish they never had to do again, and we work on it live. This is the moment people stop being skeptical. Not because I sold them on anything, but because they watched it work on something they actually care about.
Then I show the differences that matter.ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot side by side. Same prompt. Same task. Three different outputs. Most teams have been told to pick one and use it for everything. That is like buying one screwdriver and calling it a toolbox. These models are good at different things. Once your team can see that, they stop asking which one is better and start asking which one is right for this specific job.
Then we reframe AI as a leadership capability.This is the part that lands differently with leaders than with everyone else in the room. AI is not a tool rollout. It is a shift in how decisions get made, how value gets created, and who gets to do what. That makes it a leadership conversation, not an IT one. This section gives leaders the language and the frame to actually own it.
Then we align on what comes next.Not a list of action items that will die in someone's notes app. One next step. Clear owner. Real timeline. The team decides together what success looks like in 30 days, and they walk out with a shared map, not just a shared experience.
What it is not
A tool demo. If you want someone to walk your team through features, there are vendor reps for that and they will do it for free.
A policy session. We do not spend 90 minutes building your AI governance framework. That conversation matters, and I am happy to have it separately. But it is not what the Kickstarter is for.
A training. Nobody is going to leave with a certificate. The point is not to add a skill to a resume. The point is to shift the room.
A presentation. I do not talk at your team for 90 minutes. This is a working session. People bring real problems and leave with real clarity.
A fix for a deeper dysfunction. If your team has serious trust issues or structural problems that predate AI, a 90 minute session is not going to solve that. What it can do is give the room a shared starting line, and sometimes that matters more than people expect.
What you walk out with
A team that is speaking the same language about AI, probably for the first time.
A clear picture of where the fragmentation actually lives, so you know what to address and in what order.
Real hands-on time with the tools your team already has access to, used on problems your team actually has.
One specific, agreed-upon next step that has an owner and a timeline.
And a room that feels different. Lighter. More honest. Less like everyone is performing their relationship with AI and more like people can actually say what is working and what is not.
That last part is harder to put on a deliverables list. It is also, in my experience, the part that does the most work in the weeks after.
The bottom line
The AI Kickstarter exists because AI adoption does not fail because of technology. It fails because teams never get aligned.
Not the training. Not the tools. Not the budget. The alignment.
90 minutes. Your whole team. Investment starts at $3,500. Two slots open in the next six weeks.
If this is the conversation your team has been waiting to have, I would be glad to have a 20 minute consult first to make sure it is the right fit.
Christa Hill is the founder of Tacit Edge Product Leadership. She works with leadership teams navigating AI adoption, product strategy, and organizational change. Her clients include teams at Getty Images, Morgan Stanley, Benevity, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
