The opinions expressed by Entrepreneur members are their own.
Somewhere, a future founder is contemplating an idea that could change the world. Not this year, given the state of the economy and funding, and the turmoil caused by the SVB, but 2024 will be the year that this idea comes to fruition.
What this would-be founder doesn’t yet know is that they will soon be in a race against time and drain their financial reserves. The more time they have before they land a big hit, the more likely they are to fail. The more money they spend without generating enough income, the more likely they are to run out of budget before they raise the money or buy it.
Luckily for this founder, rapid AI innovation could change the dynamics of this race—if the founder approaches AI with the right mindset.
Related: AI can crack the most common passwords in less than a minute – here’s how to set it up secure
How AI will save you time
AI already knows how to save time on versatile business initiatives such as copywriting, social media post scheduling, image creation and editing, and even cash flow forecasting. If you don’t think it’s widely used at the corporate level, consider that three months after ChatGPT’s public release, it has over 1 billion visits.
Creative ideas still need to come from people who are familiar with and invested in the specific benefits of your product or service. However, AI has some powerful creative applications. Once you understand why certain creatives work well, determine what made them work and create edits and iterations to match specific media channels.
Modern tools, especially free ones like ChatGPT, are not perfect; founders will still need resources to quality control each AI output for red flags. But even 60 percent mastery of basic business and marketing tasks can provide significant time savings.
I recently asked ChatGPT to write a presentation schema with some specific details and parameters in mind, and the result was surprisingly accurate. This will save me a lot of time as I don’t have a permanent trading resource; our staff is almost entirely focused on customer service. If you’re not a salesperson, don’t have sales resources, and need a starting point for your presentation, one thoughtful tip can save you hours of time.
Founders rarely hire enough people to immediately fill the required skill sets. But the founders of tomorrow can use AI to gain a baseline of skills and knowledge quickly and efficiently.
Another big use case for AI for founders is to speed up the research process and fill knowledge gaps. Over 40% of startups fail are doing this because they have misinterpreted the market demand and you can use AI to stay away from that particular segment.
How? From the moment a big idea is born, founders can use ChatGPT to “show me the companies behind {the idea}” and refine their clues as needed to identify specific selling points and messages already in the market and where gaps still exist. For example, I used this sequence of prompts:
- Which SaaS companies are good at marketing attribution
- Which SaaS Companies Are Good at Tracking Offline Conversions
- Which SaaS companies are good at OOH digital tracking
By the end of the sequence, my results had moved from corporate brands to smaller brands focused on niche segments, such as tracking the performance of physical advertising on vehicles. Choose your vertical, expand and find an open lane ready for your solution.
Related: 5 ways ChatGPT empowers people with disabilities
How AI will save you money
The largest percentage of a startup’s overheads is usually in salaries. The more you spend on wages without generating much income (typical for a startup), the higher your burn rate, which gives you less room to grow before you start raising funding and makes you much less attractive to investors. (Cash depletion is responsible for 29% startup failure.)
While many wring their hands about how quickly AI will replace humans (which has been a dilemma since at least the Industrial Age), it’s great for founders who need to save money.
(Another caveat: AI No produce better work than people with experience, but it will be a much cheaper and acceptable substitute until the founders get funding. For example, instead of hiring a customer service team to run a hotline, run an AI-enabled chatbot that learns nuances over time, and make sure you have a way to respond to inputs that require human attention.)
Beyond simply saving on human capital, AI can help founders save tons of money by helping them manage the distribution of cash across the business. We are already seeing many companies claim to be using AI to connect data from Google Analytics, Meta, AdWords and more. With the help of third-party tools that will provide a much better picture of ROI and efficient budget allocation.
There is no doubt that by 2024, founders will be able to not only use AI to allocate their marketing budget, but also integrate features such as an Amazon account, 3PL systems, CRM, and manufacturing facilities to make better business decisions, reduce returns, and solve customer churn problems. and prevent excess inventory overhead.
Related: How AI is shaping the cybersecurity landscape – exploring benefits and limitations
How you should approach your first pair of hires with AI in mind
By 2024, you will want to make AI a priority in hiring. Language fluency and the ability to think creatively about ways to use AI will be important. I look at AI today in the same way that companies sought to master Microsoft Office in the 2000s or Google’s suite of products in the 2010s.
If you’re building software or technology, hire engineers who can use AI to create code, which is more of a black and white arena than a creative one. Paying for manual coding will put you at a disadvantage; your engineering team should use AI as an extension of their skills.
Companies will also see the emergence of a Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAIO), who will oversee strategy and implementation of the AI tools and vendor stack. Or, at the very least, the CTO should be as focused on this area as possible so as not to fall prey to the innovator’s dilemma.
Wrap
The only thing AI can’t help you with (yet) is an original big idea that can change the world. But if you’re sprouting something new and exciting and want to succeed, it’s time to get familiar with AI tools that can help you along the way.