Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Prince Rumi. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Prince, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?

In the startup world, the dogma is simple: scale fast or get out of the way. Ship, grow, raise, repeat. I disagree. Not because I don’t believe in growth, but because I think most founders and investors are skipping the part where they figure out what they’re actually scaling and why.

Everyone talks GTM. No one talks strategy.

I’ve spent a decade working with brands, from scrappy startups to legacy giants, applying real strategic frameworks to help them answer the hard questions: Who are you, what do you do, and why does it matter? Simply put, what story are we telling? What system are we building? So when I stepped into the founder seat, I didn’t suddenly forget everything I’d practiced. I just noticed most of the room had.

When I launched Madeline & Co., the first AI-native brand development platform, I wasn’t interested in chasing shiny objects. We spent 18 months in stealth, self-funded, heads down. We built an end-to-end brnad development and innovation platform, and Madeline-s1, our own proprietary reasoning AI model, which outperforms state-of-the-art models by over 90% across seven key business, strategy, and design domains. We hosted four all-day brand strategy workshops, 40 investor-founder dinners, and large gatherings across NYC’s most exclusive venues to learn from the patterns others were missing. We launched Excelsior Edge as a community-first event series because we believe a company isn’t just a product, it’s a tribe. Our tribe is now 10K+ strong, and we’ve partnered with several organizations including CIBC Innovation Banking, Alliance Bernstein, Flex, and Offit Kurman, to name a few. We worked hard on the model build and the application layer, but worked harder to build the tribe.

Most founders I meet are focused on top-line traction and product. Most investors chat with ask one question: “What’s your GTM?” as if the answer should be two sentences long and heavy on paid acquisition. Strategy is treated like fluff, or reduced to ICPs and a filled-out business model canvas. Meanwhile, core purpose, customers, positioning, culture, strategic goals, and community are afterthoughts.

That’s why we applied Marty Neumeier’s rhythm, first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap — to the way we build. (Marty’s not just a legend, he’s also been a mentor.) The idea is simple:

Sleep is where you define the purpose, align the team, and make the first integrated strategic choices. You don’t hide. You build your backbone.

Creep is where you test the system: small, intentional experiments that sharpen your edge and expose weak links. That’s where we are now.

Leap comes later, when your foundation is strong enough to scale without shattering.

What most of the startup world calls “strategy” is really sales, advertising, ops, or PR = GTM. What we are building is a system, a brand ecosystem where every stakeholder (founder, customer, investor, team) plays a role, gives and gets value, and contributes to a bigger story. That’s how real brands scale. Not by spamming LinkedIn with product updates, but by building trust, taste, and tribe.

So yes, I believe in growth. I just don’t believe in leaping off a cliff hoping for wings. Sleep first. Creep with intention. Then leap, loud, fast, and on your own terms.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We’re standing at the edge of a massive shift. AI is moving from novelty to necessity. Automation is reshaping not just how we work, but what we value. Strategy, design, storytelling, the disciplines we once called “creative”, are being collapsed into templates, dashboards, and prompts.

The question isn’t whether AI will change the game. It already has. The question is: Who will build the next generation of tools, tribes, and systems that ensure we don’t lose the human thread in the process?

That’s why I do what I do.

I’m Prince Rumi, an artist by origin, strategist by practice, and founder by necessity. I’ve spent the last decade building brands, writing songs, shooting films, designing systems, and connecting people across industries. My obsession has always been the same: how do we bring ideas to life in a way that moves people, not just markets?

I launched Madeline & Co. to answer that question with technology, not to replace creative or strategic work, but to elevate it. We’re building the first AI-native brand development platform, powered by Madeline-s1, our proprietary 32-billion-parameter reasoning model trained in business, design, strategy, systems thinking, film, and storytelling.

We didn’t fine-tune. We built our own.
And it outperforms top commercial models such as OpenAI’s O3, Claude Sonnet 4, and Gemini 2.5 Pro by over 90 percent across seven key domains.

But the real differentiator isn’t just the model, it’s how we apply it.

Madeline & Co. is more than a toolkit. It’s a strategy operating system for the AI era. A place where founders, business owners, and in-house innovation teams can go from insight to execution in hours, not months. A place where the work flows together:

Research

Strategy

Brand

Product

Story

Content

UI

Culture

Daily insights

All built from a single source of truth, grounded in clarity and intention.

We’ve self-funded this entire venture. No shortcuts, no hype cycles. We built in stealth. We hosted 40+ founder-investor events and four all-day brand workshops in NYC. We launched Excelsior Edge as a monthly salon for the people shaping the next wave of AI and culture, not to pitch, but to participate.

What ties it all together is belief.
That strategy is not a deck.
That brand is not a logo.
That startups are not just products, they’re living ecosystems.
And that AI, if used well, can help us build better, faster, and more on purpose.

What we’re building isn’t another “AI tool.” It’s a cultural intervention. A statement. A system. A tribe.
I want innovators to feel like they’ve got a creative director, a strategist, and a product team in their pocket.
I want teams to collaborate like orchestras, not assembly lines.
I want AI to become the amplifier of human taste, not the eraser of it.

What I’m proud of isn’t just what we’ve built so far, it’s that we’re doing it differently. We’re moving with rhythm.
Sleep. Creep. Then leap.
We’re not trying to win the race. We’re designing the track.

So if you’re building something meaningful in this new era, brand, product, story, system, Madeline is here to build it with you.

Excelsior!

Prince Rumi
At the beat of AI, liberty is set free.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

We didn’t raise a dime. No pre-seed. No angel checks. No party rounds.

Everything we built, from our proprietary model to our full-stack brand platform, came from audacity, favors, and pure tenacity.

When I started Madeline & Co., I knew we couldn’t afford to play the traditional startup game, nor wait for checks in the fast moving world of AI. So we played our own. I hired a remote team and self-funded the early design and infrastructure. I cold-emailed half a dozen AI research labs until one responded. That intro led to a model partner who believed in the vision. We secured an AWS grant to build out compute, but the rest? That came from lines of credit, dipping into savings, putting skin in the game, and betting on myself and the team.

I called in relationships I’d built over a decade, venue owners I’d supported in past lives became partners who let me host high-end founder events for fraction of the price. I used tools from companies I’d crowd-invested in to run internal ops. I took no salary, and pushed my team to stretch every dollar. I locked in sponsors, bartered services, and found a way to keep building, even when cash was tight.

There were weeks I wasn’t sure we’d make payroll. Weeks we lived on momentum alone. But what emerged was a platform, a model, and a tribe, built to last and with grit, clarity, and purpose.

We didn’t chase capital. We chased the right conditions for the platform to be born on our terms.

And we’re still here. Stronger for it.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

We didn’t grow through ads, SEO hacks, or cold outreach. We built a tribe.

When I launched Madeline & Co., I knew the usual GTM playbook wouldn’t cut it. We’re not selling skincare or SaaS widgets. We’re building the first AI-native platform for brand strategy, storytelling, and product design, the kind of thing that needs to be experienced to be understood. Some call it explainable AI.

So instead of chasing traction, we curated connection.
We launched Excelsior Edge, a monthly event series that brought together founders, investors, and creatives shaping the next wave of AI. Not pitch nights. Not panels. Real conversations in beautiful spaces, speakeasies, rooftops, lofts, where people could show up as humans first, operators second.

Over the past 20 months, we’ve hosted over 40 founder-investor gatherings and workshops across NYC. That’s where the real growth came from. Founders who attended the dinner became users. Investors became sponsors. Clients referred other clients, not because they saw a LinkedIn ad, but because they felt part of something meaningful.

In a world obsessed with sales funnels and automations, we focused on resonance. That’s been our edge.

When you build with taste, trust, and intention, people remember. They come back. They bring others with them. That’s how we’ve grown. Quietly. Organically. But with real roots.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.madeline.one/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/princerumi/
• Twitter: https://x.com/princeruminyc
• Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/madeline-ai/ https://x.com/madeline_ai

Image Credits
Madeline & Co. All rights reserved.