Run the back office with AI
The unglamorous grind: workflows, finance, legal, and hiring, automated where it counts.
5 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
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. -
2
Finance & AccountingHow do founders use AI for bookkeeping, invoicing, runway and burn analysis?
The gist Founders now hand AI the boring parts of finance: reading supplier invoices from email, categorizing bank transactions, drafting collection emails for unpaid invoices, and reconciling accounts against QuickBooks, Xero or Zoho Books. They also paste in a bank statement or P&L export and ask the AI plain questions like "what's my monthly burn and how many months of runway do I have if revenue stays flat?" The rule that works: give the AI real source data and a narrow job, then review its output, it's a very fast junior bookkeeper, not a replacement for accurate books or a good accountant.
How to replace your bookkeeper with AI Dan Norris (7-time founder, East Coast Roast) A real founder documents delegating ~80% of his admin, invoice entry, daily bank reconciliation, order invoicing, to Claude, including what broke and what didn't. -
3
Legal & ContractsWhy review contracts with AI before paying a lawyer?
The gist AI reads a 20-page agreement in under a minute and flags auto-renewals, indemnities, and one-sided clauses for pennies, while a lawyer bills hundreds per hour for that same first pass. Running every contract through AI first means you walk into the lawyer conversation already knowing where the risks are, so you pay for judgment instead of reading. The pattern that works: AI-only for routine low-stakes paper, AI-plus-lawyer for anything touching equity, investors, or big money.
Are we going to pretend $750/hour law firms are business as usual in the AI age? Greg Isenberg A real founder drafts a contract with AI in 15 minutes, gets a lawyer's 'looks good', and does the math on $2,000 saved. -
4
Hiring & HRHow do founders use AI to write JDs, screen resumes, and prep interviews?
The gist Founders treat AI like a junior recruiter: they paste in a rough role description and get a clean job description back, ask it to compare a stack of resumes against the must-have skills for the role, and have it draft interview questions and scorecards so every candidate gets judged the same way. The newer trick is agent modes (like ChatGPT Agent) that can actually browse LinkedIn profiles and summarize candidates for you, not just write text. The rule practitioners follow: AI drafts and organizes, but a human makes every yes/no call on a candidate.
ChatGPT agent mode: The "little helper" that transformed recruiting | Michal Peled (HoneyBook) How I AI (Claire Vo, Lenny's network) with Michal Peled A real operator screen-shares exactly how she uses ChatGPT agent mode to source and summarize LinkedIn candidates, practitioner gold, not theory. -
5
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.
