The biggest early wins are where speed and repetitive text are the bottleneck: instant lead follow-up and qualification, first-draft customer support replies, meeting notes that auto-update your CRM, and repurposing one piece of content into many. A good first automation is frequent, rule-based, and low-risk if it makes a mistake, and keeps a human approving the output. Measure hours saved and response time, ship one small automation a week, and skip the six-month 'AI transformation' project.
A quick orientation. The real value is below: resources worth your time, from people who've actually done it.
A blunt operator account of which sales and marketing automations actually delivered ROI (and which flopped) when a real company went all-in.
Open lennysnewsletter.com →Survey data from thousands of operators on where AI is actually saving time, evidence for prioritizing your first automations instead of guessing.
Open lennysnewsletter.com →
YC partners on how the best startups sequence AI adoption internally, a strategic frame for deciding what to automate first as you scale.
Watch on YouTube youtube.com →Its 'start with the simplest thing that works' principle is the best guardrail against over-building your first automations, begin with workflows, add autonomy only when it earns its cost.
Open anthropic.com →