The Founder's Playbook for AI and Automation: How to Save Time and Scale Smarter

December 3, 2025

Published in:

Innovation & Technology

Five young founders dressed casually meet for coffee. — Photo by Entrepreneurs' Organization

Founders juggle countless responsibilities, especially in the early stages of a company.

It’s easy to get lost in busy work when your day may include pitching investors, answering customer emails, hiring talent, or writing marketing copy. Before you know it, you spend more time managing the business than growing it.

What if AI scheduled meetings, generated reports, and drafted emails for you? How many hours would you get back?

AI automation tools make it easy to offload repetitive, tedious work—without code, a huge budget, or a team of developers.

In this six-step playbook, I’ll show you exactly how to start and scale AI automation, so you have more time to do the work you actually want to do.

1. Find What Slows You Down First

Instead of trying to automate everything, focus on the routine, time-consuming tasks that AI does best.

Think of it as the 80/20 rule of AI. The goal is to automate at least 20% of tasks that take up 80% of your time. Imagine what you could do with 80% more time.

“Imagine what you could do with 80% more time.”
— Maximilian Fleitmann, EO Berlin

For example, AI can do busy work like:

Draft investor updates with financial, product, and sales data
Summarize meeting notes and list action items
Personalize sales outreach emails for every lead
Update weekly KPI reports in real-time
Schedule meetings and respond to routine emails

The first step is to identify what those tasks are for you—here’s how:

Track your time for one week. Use AI time-tracking apps like Rize or Reclaim to automatically log and categorize activities for you.
Organize tasks by type (marketing, sales, admin, customer support, etc.) This will signal where automation has the biggest impact.
Rank tasks by frequency, time spent, and impact. Prioritize the most tedious, routine items that require little to no human involvement.

2. Fix the Process Before You Automate It

By now, you’ll have a list of automation opportunities, but don’t jump into a tool yet. First, audit your workflows. Why? Because automation won’t fix a broken process.

To start:

Write down your current workflows.
Estimate how long each step takes.
Note the tools you use.
List an owner for each part of the process.

When you document your processes, it’s easier to spot gaps in them. AI can also act as a consultant and suggest improvements.

Drop your workflows along with any standard operating procedures (SOPs) into ChatGPT or another AI tool and use this prompt:

Here’s my current workflow for [describe task or area of your business]. How can I improve it?

Pro tip: Try creating a CustomGPT (for paid users only). With CustomGPTs, you can upload documents like your brand guidelines or customer personas, and get personalized feedback for your business.

3. Win Fast with One-Hour AI Sprints

You don’t have to start automating from scratch. Apps like Make and Zapier have pre-built automation workflows.

“AI isn’t replacing people. It’s amplifying their strengths.”
— Maximilian Fleitmann, EO Berlin

They have useful templates to:

Draft a landing page for ads
Create, schedule, and track social posts
Respond to customer reviews
Build a chatbot for customer FAQs
Track conversions across channels
Update leads and score them in a CRM

The possibilities are endless, which is also why many founders feel overwhelmed when they start automating. To avoid AI overload, do one-hour AI sprints.

Set a one-hour timer and either:

Test a few pre-built AI templates from Zapier or Make.
Choose one workflow to automate and experiment with different tools.

Treat these sprints as quick workouts or experiments. Make note of what worked and what didn’t, and iterate on it. As you do them more often, you’ll get faster and see better results.

4. Use Tools That Work Like You Think

The best AI tools are easy to use. They don’t have steep learning curves or feel like you need to be a developer to set up.

Here are some AI automation tools that have improved my work:

Zapier: Connect almost any tool you use and offload routine tasks like lead scoring or sending emails.
Make: Build automations and visualize workflows easily with its no-code, drag-and-drop builder.
ChatGPT: Use for a range of tasks, including research and content creation. Experiment with AI agents and CustomGPTs to automate specific actions or personalize outputs.

Test a few different tools before committing to them. They should connect to tools you already use and have the capabilities you need for your workflows.

5. Measure What Really Matters

Successful AI automation measures what matters: Achieving your business goals. It delivers meaningful and measurable results like:

Time saved. Compare the time to complete tasks before and after automation.
Costs saved. One way to calculate this is: (Hours saved x estimated hourly cost) - automation costs.
Customer satisfaction. Track response times and review ratings to understand AI’s impact on the customer experience.
Revenue growth. Measure how AI impacts conversion rates, sales, and revenue. For example, did AI-generated ad copy or landing pages perform better than non-AI versions?

Review AI performance monthly. Cut or adjust the AI initiatives that don’t deliver results and double down on the ones that do.

6. Make Automation a Team Habit

To scale AI automation across your company, get everyone involved.

Here are some tips to help your team start using AI and make it a habit.

Overcome hesitation by sharing quick wins. Show your team how you’ve used AI and how it’s impacted your day-to-day.
Encourage collaboration. Create a Slack channel for sharing AI learnings and wins.
Create a shared workspace. Store AI automation templates, prompts, and other resources in Google Drive or Notion. Eventually, it will become a living AI playbook or library your team can access anytime.
Make it easy to learn. Offer your team a budget to take AI courses or a dedicated time each week to work on an AI project.

AI isn’t replacing people. It’s amplifying their strengths.

Founders who use AI effectively make smarter decisions, solve problems creatively, and scale faster with fewer resources.

Start small and focus on quick wins. Automate one task this week. It can be as simple as drafting email replies or scheduling meetings. Once you start, you’ll build momentum and confidence. The goal is for AI to handle the busy work, so you get to do what you do best.

Contributed by Maximilian Fleitmann (EO Berlin), the managing partner of Wizard Ventures and co-founder of bakedwith, a boutique AI and automation consultancy that helps leading companies to grow faster and more efficiently.