Be A More Intelligent Founder [Artificially] - 30 Strategies

According to Google Gemini, as of January 2025, there are 70,000 artificial intelligence companies. In addition, many companies, such as Live Chat, are not AI companies but offer AI chatbot services or options. The result is as a founder or investor; you have 100,000 options on the menu for artificial intelligence applications.

Our team has been focused on testing out a few hundred tools that had some promise of being worthwhile. We start dozens of free and paid trials, pay for the first month or the year for a product, and try many of them on for size. Most are mediocre, very much beta-stage, and a complete waste of time, such as one we tried that claimed to instantly create pitch decks or presentations with a few clicks - horrible. A few - perhaps 2-3% of what we try are great, though, and helpful, and we are building out that list of tools for our own use and for our members.

After 18 years in business, we have a software stack that helps us invest, manage a remote team, conduct due diligence, hire global contractors, and scale our business, but now we are also seeking out the top 10-20 ai tools that are needle-moving, practical and applicable to me as a founder and investor. There is a big push for this right now as many claim AI is changing the world as much as electricity or the internet did, so being in the top 1%, 5% of 10% of adopters will likely pay off in at least maintaining your position in your niche, if not being part of what separates you from the pack or leads to exponential growth.

This is primarily why we are motivated to host our artificial intelligence-focused investor masterminds later this month in Fort Lauderdale (January 28th) and New York City (January 30th). We are not a tech company; I am not a programmer, but I do not want to put off figuring out the lay of the land and learning the fundamentals. At our investor mastermind, we have half a dozen decamillionaires and centimillionaires providing 30 practical case studies on leveraging AI today for founders and investors.

We are doing this to add massive value to our members but selfishly to learn ourselves and force a massive amount of energy to test out hundreds of tools to see what works and what doesn't.

At the investor events hosted later this month, we will openly share software tech stacks, get into small groups to discuss the top 3 tools we are all using, and have each group vote on the top 3 tools from the whole group to share with the entire mastermind group. Throughout the day each participant will complete a worksheet on what to implement next and what would move the needle in their business regarding practical AI applications.

One area we have dove into is creating our own Custom GPTs, artificial intelligence tools that have been very helpful. Think of a Custom GPT like a sandbox of data - you fill it with content/data sources, whitepapers, statistics, checklists, best practices, and transcriptions of workshops or conferences. You can then ask questions about the data, look for trends, identify what is discussed most often, or upload a pitch deck and bounce it against that data set.

We have fully developed 2 tools in such a way, with 1 more to be completed by month end. The first artificial intelligence tool that we don't sell but instead give away to our members is Dewey: Your Due Diligence Advisor.

This GPT, Dewey, largely draws from our full-day due diligence workshop as well as the top 150 whitepapers, checklists, and articles?on investment due diligence that are publicly available in the areas of real estate investment due diligence, private equity due diligence, venture capital diligence, and overall investment/financial due diligence in general.??

This way, if you get sent a pitch deck, a detailed offering document, or another opportunity or group that you need to vet, you can upload it to the GPT and ask it to come up with 10-20 questions to ask, top risks, holes in the presentation. You can start with those to save you time or develop deeper questions to ask as you move along at each stage of due diligence.

Of course, you should still meet in person, conduct formal background checks, use real human attorneys and accountants. Still, many founders and investors need to be more thorough in their due diligence and more thoughtful, and this is like tapping into a 24/7 on-demand due diligence advisor who can instantly reference the 150+ due diligence whitepapers, checklists, and detailed articles we fed into the GPT.

I explain all of this as it is one of practical use case studies of artificial intelligence, whether you are part of the Family Office Club and want to attend one of the two investor masterminds this month or not - I think we all need to adapt to find 5-10 ways we can use AI.

So much of AI news is about what it may do in the future, how it may put some people out of work, how it is going to change the world radically, and how it has spiked the value of some companies such as NVIDIA, how much energy it is consuming, etc. Those are all good things to be aware of, but really, as a founder or investor like me - we have to focus on scaling and protecting our teams, providing for our families, and guarding our time. Identifying what is your bottleneck today (time-investment-wise), what work by your team could be automated or sped up or made more effective with the support of AI, where you could become 2x as productive or impactful, etc. are better uses of your energy than where 99% of AI conversations are focused I am finding.

What AI Tools Do You Use Most? We will announce releasing a few more free AI tools for our charter members and investors in the Family Office Club.

Thank you for following our newsletter and commenting below on this newsletter edition on some of your favorite AI tools, productivity tools, and software stack parts that massively move the needle for your team.

Mastermind Participation: We do not need additional speakers for the AI masterminds at this point, we have many investors & founders speaking already, but if you would like to attend, please text me at (305) 333-1155 regarding membership or see the confirmed speakers, agenda, locations, etc. here: https://familyoffices.com/ai/

From my family to yours, I hope you have a great rest of your week, and I look forward to seeing many of you soon in Fort Lauderdale and New York City.