When AI Became My Co-CEO: A Year-Old Tale That Still Feels Like Tomorrow
And now it's even easier to replicate that!
You know those moments when you get an idea that sounds either brilliant or completely crazy? Well, last year, right when ChatGPT 4 was fresh out of the oven, I had one of those moments. :)
Everyone was experimenting with AI, but I wanted to push it further. While others were using ChatGPT as a tool, I wondered: could it run a company? Not just help with tasks, but actually make decisions. (Spoiler alert: It kind of did!)
That's how RemoteRise was born – a company literally created from a prompt, focusing on helping remote workers through practical email courses. Simple idea, right? But the cool stuff was happening behind the scenes.
My first post about AI-driven company was published also here!
The Memory Challenge (and How We Solved It)
Back in early 2023, AI had the memory span of a goldfish. Seriously, trying to maintain context between chats was like trying to explain a movie plot to someone who keeps falling asleep. So I created something I called the Memory Key.
Think of Memory Key as a structured brain dump that could travel between different AI conversations. It was basically a fancy Google Sheet that any AI could read and update(now I would use JSON). This way, whether I was talking to the marketing AI or the product AI, they all stayed on the same page. Pretty neat trick for 2023, if I say so myself!
The Central Command Center
To avoid drowning in Zapier actions (and my wallet crying from automation costs), I did something different – I brought ChatGPT directly into Google Sheets through a script(this is how I started API experiemnts as well). This became our central command center.
Some cells were like triggers – change something, and boom! Zapier would spring into action. Other cells were AI's playground, where it could crunch numbers and make decisions without needing external tools.
The Self-Improving Product (My Favorite Part!)
Here's where things got really interesting. Our email course wasn't just static content – it was constantly evolving based on user feedback. Every email had a feedback link, and here's the workflow:
User sends feedback
First AI evaluates if it's actionable
If yes, product AI reviews and applies changes
I get a notification to update the system
Back then, I couldn't automate that last step, but hey, baby steps, right? :D
Data-Driven Decision Making
You can't make good decisions without good data, so I fed our AI-CEO all sorts of juicy stats:
Sales numbers
Marketing metrics
User engagement data
Feedback patterns
Every morning, like a proper CEO, the AI would review these numbers and plan the day ahead. Some data came in automatically, some I had to input manually (future me would probably figure out how to automate all of it).
Social Media Presence
Remember Buffer? We connected our AI to it, and suddenly we had a social media manager that never slept. It would create posts based on our data, activities, and engagement metrics. Sure, sometimes the posts were a bit... interesting... but they were always on-brand! D:
The Lessons (Because What's an Experiment Without Them?)
AI can handle routine decisions surprisingly well – especially when given clear parameters and good data.
Automation needs human oversight – but way less than you might think.
Structured data is king – the better organized your information, the better AI performs.
User feedback loops are essential – they keep your AI-driven product grounded in reality.
Memory management in AI systems is crucial – and there are creative ways to solve it.
Looking Back (and Forward)
A year later, this experiment feels both outdated and ahead of its time. With current AI capabilities, you could probably automate even more. But the core idea remains valid: AI isn't here to replace humans – it's here to handle the stuff we'd rather not do.
I still believe that future businesses will be human-AI partnerships, where we bring the creativity and strategic thinking, and AI handles the operational heavy lifting. And honestly? That future looks pretty exciting to me.
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