As startups navigate how to operate with shrinking budgets, leveraging AI to streamline operational costs has become the favorite strategy of many founders and CEOs. However, a mistake they often make is confining AI’s role to specific functions like customer service or translations.
The potential of AI is considerably greater, and if harnessed properly, it can lead to the creation of AI-powered business units that are able to deliver projects at faster speeds.
We used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to assemble an AI-driven team and detect whether it would be possible for it to perform functions like testing new products, preparing work plans, and more.
The results obtained were solid, and the evidence was clear.
We saved several weeks and reduced our expenses by over $10,000. The experiment enabled us to come up with five key steps that founders can follow to fully capitalize on the power of AI and to successfully incorporate it as a valuable team member taking into account its capabilities and limitations.
1. Clarity matters: Break down tasks as much as possible to improve accuracy
Before you begin, you need to have a clear vision of how you plan to use AI and what you would like to achieve from it. In our case, we had to identify and break down each task to increase understanding and clarity, and it will be the same case for you.
For example, we utilized AI to test the impact a new product feature would have on the Indian market. We wrote to ChatGPT:
Give me the following:
- 10 companies that are constantly working with Indian designers, and add information about their industry and projects.
- 10 popular hobbies among Indian freelancers in Bangalore.
- 10 of the most significant fears among Indian freelancers in Bangalore.
- 10 of the biggest hopes among Indian freelancers in Bangalore.
The results obtained helped us gain a deeper understanding of our target market and cut the time estimated for research and development by several days. The help of AI with this process was more valuable as we needed answers to the same questions in regards to other Indian cities, like Kerala, which have a very different cultural mindset in comparison to Bangalore.
Businesses that successfully leverage AI as their new team members will need to strike a balance between automation and the human touch.
By being able to leverage this information in our favor, we saved about two weeks of research time, as well as over $2,000 in expenses.
To maximize results, it is important that you ask ChatGPT to become the persona that you need it to be. By doing this, AI will be clearer on how to respond. It is important to note that, if you skip this step, your results might not relate well to what you are looking for.
For example, if we take the aforementioned task — researching the Indian freelancing market — without specifying a role, ChatGPT will not be as efficient. You might still save a few days of research time, but not as much as you would like.
This is because, as we will explain through the article, the key to getting the best out of AI lies in the details and in being as specific as possible.
Without a role, there’s a chance that working with the chat will consume time rather than save it.
Also, remember that AI still struggles to effectively handle abstract tasks, and it is still lacking in logic. Therefore, sometimes you might be required to dig deeper. Here is another prompt we used that allowed us to successfully get around LLM limitations.
- Hello, I want you to act like an AI-powered business assistant who frees up time for in-demand freelancers by taking care of non-core activities. In the following three messages, I will give you all the info about your experience, tone of voice, fears, and motivation. Here is the message. Read it carefully; it is about your tone of voice.
