Be more productive with AI
Get more done and think sharper with AI as a daily habit.
3 steps to get you moving, each with a resource worth your time and more waiting underneath
Think of this as a friendly starting line, not the last word. Each step gives you the gist, then a resource worth your time from founders who've actually done it. There's always more underneath, more questions and more resources, whenever you feel like digging in.
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1
ProductivityWhy let AI handle meeting notes, action items, and follow-ups (Granola, Fathom, Fireflies)?
The gist AI notetakers like Granola, Fathom, and Fireflies listen to your calls and turn them into clean notes, action items, and draft follow-up emails, so you can actually be present in the conversation instead of typing. For a founder running back-to-back investor, customer, and hiring calls, every meeting becomes a searchable record you (or an AI assistant) can query later, 'what did that customer object to last month?', instead of a memory that evaporates. Follow-ups that used to take 30 minutes go out in two.
Can Granola's AI meeting notes eat bigger apps for breakfast? Alex Konrad (Upstarts Media, ex-Forbes) Reported deep-dive on why founders became Granola's core users, with real examples like piping 25+ customer-interview notes into NotebookLM for synthesis. -
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AI as a Thinking PartnerHow do founders use AI for strategy, decisions, and brutal feedback?
The gist Founders treat AI less like a search engine and more like a smart colleague they can think out loud with: they paste in their strategy doc, pricing plan, or investor update and ask it to poke holes, list risks, and argue the other side before they commit. Because the default behavior of ChatGPT or Claude is to be agreeable, the trick is explicitly asking for criticism ('challenge my assumptions', 'tell me why this fails') and giving it real context about your business. Used this way, AI becomes a cheap, always-available second opinion that sharpens decisions instead of just producing text.
AI as Your New Strategic Thought Partner, Jeremy Utley (Stanford) Jeremy Utley on Proof of Work: Applied AI Case Studies Stanford's Utley shows why treating AI as a teammate, not a tool, changes the quality of strategic thinking you get out of it. -
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Workflows & AutomationWhat's the difference between automation (Zapier, n8n, Make) and AI agents?
The gist Tools like Zapier, Make, and n8n run fixed recipes you design in advance: when X happens, do Y, then Z, the same steps every single time, which makes them cheap and reliable. An AI agent adds a language model that can read the situation, make decisions, and choose its own next steps, which makes it flexible but also slower, pricier, and less predictable. Most founders actually need a plain workflow with one smart AI step inside it (e.g. 'summarize this email' or 'draft a reply'); save true agents for tasks that genuinely require judgment.
AI Agents, Clearly Explained Jeff Su The clearest 10-minute, jargon-free walkthrough of the LLM → AI workflow → AI agent ladder, with real examples a non-technical founder can follow.
