An AI roadmap for a startup should start with a specific business problem, not a technology choice — identify where AI creates real value, assess whether your data can actually support it, prioritize one high-impact use case over a scattered list, and build with a plan to scale before writing production code. AI strategy consulting exists to help founders make these calls with judgment, not hype. Most startup AI roadmaps aren't roadmaps. They're a list of things that sound impressive in a pitch deck — "AI-powered recommendations," "intelligent automation," "predictive insights" — with no clear sequence, no defined success metric, and no honest answer to whether the data needed to support any of it actually exists yet. That's not a strategy. It's a wish list. And for founders trying to build something real with limited runway, the gap between the two is expensive. Why Most Startup AI Roadmaps Fail Before They Start The most common mi...