Why am I hearing so much about AI?

To say there’s been a lot of hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI) recently would be an understatement. AI has been around for a long, long time, though it broke through to the mainstream in recent months with tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT offering a free preview of the chatbot to the public. Widespread media coverage followed and has not slowed down. It seems everywhere you look, companies are figuring out ways to incorporate AI into their products.

How can I use AI?

With all the AI hype these days, you might be thinking, “hold up, can I just see what AI looks like in action?” Well, today’s your day. This week we hosted a Speaker Series with Matt Hammel, co-founder of AirOps, and he gave us a demo and access to their tool that uses AI to help operators in tech write flawless SQL queries, and if you are a community member you can view the recording here. To further explore the capabilities of AI, we put together a quick case study below 👇

Breaking down AI generated content

Creating content is one of the most accessible ways to see AI in action. You can sign up for a free account with ChatGPT and begin creating content with it in minutes. For the following test, we used a tool called copy.ai and asked it to write us a blog post. To generate content with copy.ai you input a title, keywords and the desired tone, and the tool does the rest generating an outline, talking points and then full-fledged content. At any point in the process you can tweak what the AI is suggesting and it will adapt to your feedback. We created the following article using these inputs, and some light human editing:

Title: Why everyone should work at a startup at least once in their career

Keywords: startups, tech, career journey, professional development

Tone: Convincing

Editing time: 30 minutes

Below, we break down the raw AI copy and edits we made, plus we’ve shared the original AI version and our fully edited piece. Check it out and let us know what you think! Did AI convince you to dust off the old resume and cold-DM some founders on LinkedIn?

Why everyone should work at a startup at least once in their career

Introduction

I've always been a fan of startups. I've worked in companies of various sizes, from small to massive, but I have found that startups have the best learning experience possibilities and biggest opportunities for advancement. When you work at a startup, you get exposure to every department in the company because there are so few people working there. That means you'll learn about operations (and how they differ from other roles) and finance (and how it differs from other roles). You'll also gain an understanding of marketing strategy and sales tactics by working with these departments directly—which is something that's hard to do when working with larger companies where each group is separated into silos. Another benefit is simply having access to more senior leadership than you would as an individual contributor at a larger company.

➡️ Our Take:

• The AI-generated copy touches on a variety of important topics, but it’s an overwhelming  word vomit - like an eager 6-year old telling their parent everything they did that day (“and then….and then …. and then…!!!!”)
• As an intro, there’s too much information for the reader to easily understand what to expect next. It would be more effective with a little structure! We decided to skinny the intro down (plus, we added a little context so that it tied back to our audience)

Here’s our edited version ⤵️

Introduction

As many in The Commons will attest, working at a startup can be a career-defining experience, regardless of what stage of your career you are in. There is no place like a startup to learn how to work efficiently, gain a cross-functional skill set and see what it takes to run a successful business.

Here’s A Subsequent AI-Generated Paragraph Example:

You'll get cross-functional experience in a short amount of time.

Working at a startup is an excellent way to get cross-functional experience. You'll learn how to work with different departments, teams, and cultures. You'll also get exposed to new technologies, processes and people. This is invaluable if you're interested in moving into another role or company later on in your career; it gives you a better understanding of what it's like working for other types of organizations.

➡️ Our Take:

• This paragraph is much easier to follow than the intro - ideas are concise and flow logically. Plus, since the content is focused solely the sub-heading topic, the ideas are more concentrated
• However, the advice is a little simplistic and could benefit from real-world examples to increase value and differentiate it from the plethora of other content on the internet!

Here’s our edited version ⤵️

You'll get cross-functional experience in a short amount of time.

Working at a startup is an excellent way to gain cross-functional experience. You'll be working on projects that touch many different parts of the organization and will learn how to work with different departments and teams. You'll also get exposed to, and figure out how to navigate, the technologies, processes and people used by those teams, while building your stakeholder management skills. 

An example of this would be as a BizOps team member, you might be tasked with testing a new paid product offering. This would require you to have (or build) cross-functional expertise like:

• Understanding customer personas + buying journeys
• Financial concepts like pricing, ROI and modeling
• Sales and comms strategies
• Go-to-market execution

And would require you to cross-collaborate with teams like:

• Marketing / Sales
• Customer Success
• Product

Learning by doing is an invaluable way to grow a generalist toolkit and build cross-functional collaboration skills, which can be applied to a vast array of future roles in your career.

Here’s our edited copy, followed by the original AI version…

👇

Why everyone should work at a startup at least once in their career

Introduction

As many in The Commons will attest, working at a startup can be a career-defining experience, regardless of what stage of your career you are in. There is no place like a startup to learn how to work efficiently, gain a cross-functional skill set and see what it takes to run a successful business.

It's the best way to learn how startups work.

If you want to learn how startups work, the best way is to work in one. Startups are fast-paced, dynamic and challenging. They're not for everyone but they can be an amazing place to learn how to work in a high-pressure environment while also working with people who are passionate about their work. If you’re interested in starting your own company in the future, working at a startup is the best way to learn valuable lessons ahead of time, such as how to set a vision, execute and grow a team.

You'll get cross-functional experience in a short amount of time.

Working at a startup is an excellent way to get cross-functional experience. You'll be working on projects that touch many different parts of the organization and will learn how to work with different departments and teams. You'll also get exposed to, and figure out how to navigate, the technologies, processes and people used by those teams, while building your stakeholder management skills. An example of this would be as a BizOps team member, you might work on a project to streamline customer onboarding, which will require deep collaboration with the Sales and Customer Success teams. This is invaluable experience as you advance in your career as you learn how to get stuff done, and also gain insight into other functional areas of the business.

You'll learn how to move quickly and accept imperfection.

Working at a startup, you have to move fast. Resources, headcount, and your time are limited which means you need to be as efficient with where you focus your effort as possible. Pretty much everything you work on will be the first time it’s being done at the company, and there won’t be a playbook or guide for your projects. It’s also likely that you won’t have enough data to be 100% confident in your decision (more on this below). That means you just have to put something together and try. The quicker you put out your initial work, the quicker you can validate whether or not it’s worth doubling down on, iterating on, or scrapping altogether so you can spend your valuable time on higher impact projects.

You might fail more often than you succeed, but it's all part of the process of learning what works and what doesn't work for your business model. And when you do succeed, those victories will feel even sweeter because they weren't handed over on a silver platter - you earned them!

You'll learn how to make decisions with limited data and information.

As an early stage startup employee, you are often going to be operating with limited data. If you recently launched your business or a new product, you’re likely going to have to make iterations to your product or service, but won’t have tons of data to fall back on. This teaches you the importance of speaking with customers, understanding their pain points, and looking for patterns that you can come in and solve for. It also forces you to get really good at what we covered in the point above: moving quickly. This means using your instincts and intuition to develop a hypothesis and quickly test that hypothesis to see if it's worth pursuing further.

An example of this is the project covered in the Strategy & Operations Sprint at The Commons. You are introduced as a BizOps employee for a company that has just launched their product in New York City. Armed with five weeks of data, you need to use your intuition to develop a series of hypotheses, use the limited five-week dataset to confirm those hypotheses, and then decide how you’ll double down or pivot the business to succeed in New York City. Before taking the Sprint, you may call this a challenge. When working at a startup, you’ll soon realize that this is simply called Tuesday.

So by working at a startup, you’re going to get really good at operating with little data.

You'll work with people who are just as passionate about their work as you are.

Working at a startup is a great way to work with people who are just as passionate about their work as you are. You'll be surrounded by people who love what they do. Not only that, they are likely an expert in their field and you’ll be able to pick up a ton of new skills by working with them in the tight-knit, collaborative environment that a startup offers.

Working at a startup is like no other way to advance your career or gain new skills!

Working at a startup is like no other way to advance your career and gain new skills!

Startups are an amazing environment for professional development because they're constantly growing, adapting and evolving. As we’ve touched on, this means you’ll get to work cross-functionally and see how other teams in the business operate, but it also means that there will be variety in your role as well as the company grows and the needs of the business change. This could look like the opportunity to do both internal and external facing work, the opportunity to lead a team, or the opportunity to work in a new area of the business such as a new vertical or product line. You’ll also have the ability to make an internal pivot if that’s something that lines up with your career goals, such as making the move from Customer Success to BizOps or BizOps to Product.

Working at a startup will expose you to different aspects of business than working at a more siloed, established corporation would allow - which could help prepare you for future positions within the company or elsewhere.

Conclusion

Working at a startup is a career-defining experience. It's the only way you can get cross-functional experience in such a short amount of time, and it will shape your career for years to come. You'll also learn how important it is to make decisions quickly (even when there isn't enough information available). Working at a startup will give you exposure across all departments, from finance and marketing through operations management - all skills that will help shape who you become as an individual and professional!

—

Why everyone should work at a startup at least once in their career

Introduction

I've always been a fan of startups. I've worked in companies of various sizes, from small to massive, but I have found that startups have the best learning experience possibilities and biggest opportunities for advancement. When you work at a startup, you get exposure to every department in the company because there are so few people working there. That means you'll learn about operations (and how they differ from other roles) and finance (and how it differs from other roles). You'll also gain an understanding of marketing strategy and sales tactics by working with these departments directly—which is something that's hard to do when working with larger companies where each group is separated into silos. Another benefit is simply having access to more senior leadership than you would as an individual contributor at a larger company.

It's the best way to learn how startups work.

If you want to learn how startups work, the best way is to work in one. Startups are fast-paced, dynamic and challenging. They're not for everyone but they can be an amazing place to learn how to work in a high-pressure environment while also working with people who are passionate about their work.

You'll get cross-functional experience in a short amount of time.

Working at a startup is an excellent way to get cross-functional experience. You'll learn how to work with different departments, teams, and cultures. You'll also get exposed to new technologies, processes and people. This is invaluable if you're interested in moving into another role or company later on in your career; it gives you a better understanding of what it's like working for other types of organizations.

Your career will be shaped by your experiences at a startup.

A startup is a unique environment because it's a small team, and you'll have to wear many hats. You might be the face of the company on social media, or you might be in charge of sales. You could even be an engineer who builds out new features for customers. Whatever your role is at a startup, there are bound to be challenges along with rewards.

You will learn how quickly things change in this environment; nothing stays static for long here! The pace of innovation at a start-up means that everyone needs to think on their feet and react quickly if they want everything else around them (i.e., competitors) not only keeping up but also surpassing expectations every day as well--and this can only happen if everyone has clear goals set out from day one."

You'll learn how to fail quickly and then move on.

Everyone should work at a startup at least once in their career. A startup is an environment where failure is not only allowed, but it's encouraged. You'll learn how to fail quickly and then move on.

You will fail more often than you succeed, but it's all part of the process of learning what works and what doesn't work for your business model. And when you do succeed, those victories will feel even sweeter because they weren't handed over on a silver platter--you had to earn them through hard work!

You'll learn how to make decisions with limited data and information.

You'll learn how to make decisions with limited data and information.

As a founder, you're going to have an idea for a product or service that can change the world. But until your startup gets some traction, there won't be much data available on whether people actually want what you're building. You'll have to make decisions based on incomplete information--and trust your instincts enough that they're right. You might also find yourself making big calls quickly: Should we pivot? Should we raise venture funding? How should we structure our company? These are all decisions that will affect the entire company and its future success or failure--and as CEO, it's up to you to make them wisely (or not!).

You'll get exposure to operations, finance, marketing and more.

Working at a startup is not just about the glamour of working on cool technology or being part of an awesome team. You'll also get exposure to operations, finance, marketing and more.

A lot of people think that startups only hire software developers or designers but that's not true at all! Startup companies need people who can wear multiple hats and work across different departments.

You will learn how to work in a fast-paced environment where everyone has something important to do. You will have exposure to different aspects of the business such as accounting, marketing and HR - all crucial elements for any company's success but rarely taught in universities or colleges today (I'll talk about why this happens later).

You'll work with people who are just as passionate about their work as you are.

Working at a startup is a great way to work with people who are just as passionate about their work as you are. You'll be surrounded by people who love what they do on a daily basis and the company they work for.

If you're looking to learn new skills, this is also the perfect place for it! Your co-workers will probably have more experience than you do in some areas, which means they can help mentor/teach/train you on those topics.

Working at a startup is like no other way to advance your career or gain new skills!

Working at a startup is like no other way to advance your career or gain new skills!

Startups are an amazing environment for professional development because they're constantly growing, adapting and evolving. This means that your role might change over time as well. When you start out on the ground floor of a company, it may be more focused on sales than operations; later on in its lifespan though (if it lasts), there might be more opportunities for management roles or even starting up another business under its umbrella!

Working at a startup will expose you to different aspects of business than working at an established corporation would allow - which could help prepare you for future positions within larger organizations where variety is key."

Conclusion

The best way to learn how to work at a startup is by working at one. It's the only way you can get cross-functional experience in such a short amount of time, and it will shape your career for years to come. You'll also learn how important it is to make decisions quickly (even when there isn't enough information available). Working at a startup will give you exposure across all departments, from finance and marketing through operations management - all skills that will help shape who you become as an individual and professional!