📈 How companies & teams are starting to use AI

Hello AInauts,

Welcome to the latest issue of your favorite newsletter!

Today a colorful mix of news, gossip, real strategies for entrepreneurs and teams plus a somewhat nerdy practical use case.

That's what we have with us today:

• 🇪🇺 300+ billion for AI in Europe

• 📈 How companies & teams are starting to use AI

• 🤫 How to analyze thousands of websites automatically

Here we go!

🇪🇺 300+ Billions for AI in Europe

Let's start into the news and gossip part of today's issue.

On Monday and Tuesday, important people from politics, business and science met at the AI Action Summit in Paris - and also made some exciting decisions regarding AI and Europe. The event was hosted by French President Macron.

Here are a few important headlines for a quick overview:

• France is investing 109 billion in AI over the next few years.

• 60 European companies have joined forces in an initiative and want to jointly invest over 150 billion euros in European AI.

• And the EU itself is also planning to invest another 50 billion.

At just under 300 billion, that would already be a decent volume and not that much behind the 500 billion that OpenAI has planned in the US with "Stargate".

All this money is intended to make Europe more competitive and also more independent. So far, we have been leading the way in the area of regulation with the AI Act…

US Vice President J.D. Vance also warned us against too much regulation, after making it very clear that the USA is doing everything it can to maintain its leading position in the field.

Exciting end to the conference:

While China signed the Declaration of Intent for "inclusive and sustainable Artificial Intelligence for people and the planet", the US and UK did not ...

Our take: Let's take a look, then we'll see ...

As always, a lot can always be decided. The question is: will it really be implemented …?

Nevertheless, we think it's good that there is a lot of movement in the European AI landscape and that there are initiatives like the AI Action Summit.

We would have liked to see a little more presence from German politicians. But yes, the timing before the election was perhaps not quite ideal.

A quick bit of gossip on the sidelines of the summit

While Sam Altman from OpenAI sat at the dinner, Elon Musk got involved from afar...

OpenAI is currently trying to evolve from a more non-profit oriented approach to a more for-profit approach. Now, Elon Musk has brought together a group of investors and made an offer for OpenAI. In the amount of USD 97.4 billion.

While many argue that Musk only wants full control and world domination when it comes to AI, we also find the following theory exciting:

• Background: OpenAI is in the process of changing its corporate structure.

• According to the law, the value of the assets must also be defined, etc.

• With his public offer, Musk is setting a high "fair market" value that the board must take into account.

• Although this can be rejected, the valuation logic cannot simply be ignored.

• Musk's maneuver is a legally clever move: OpenAI is being forced to defend its previous valuation against a public 97 billion offer.

• The real battle will now be fought in court and in the court of public opinion - with Musk's offer as a disruptive factor.

It's quite a Harvey Specter move that Elon has delivered here. (If you don't know Harvey from the lawyer series "Suits" - RECOMMENDED! 😉)

As always, Altman reacts with stoic composure and makes a counter-offer:

It remains exciting to see what else will happen in the endless tussle between Musk and Altman. In the meantime, we look forward to the next GPT update!

📈 How companies & teams are starting to use AI

We recently sat down with some entrepreneurs and of course the topic of AI came up at some point.

Everyone agreed that you have to somehow get teams to use AI more. However, there was still an upstream hurdle for some to overcome:

"How do we even find processes and topics where AI can best help us? And how do I get my employees to find these?"

This is a good question, and we have an answer to it, which is why we want to share an approach with you today that we use internally, but have also given to other teams.

Before we start, let's take another look at the goal: Identify processes and activities in the company that can be simplified or completely taken over with the help of AI.

We always like it simple, and use these three strategies to achieve this:

1) The process diary

Ask the team to document their daily work processes over the course of a week - especially the tasks that are often perceived as time-consuming or error-prone.

If your team and company allow it, you can also simply use software such as Rize or RescueTime to do this.

2) Identify topics

Now that the biggest time wasters have been identified, it makes sense to think through all processes again with a few reflective questions and record specific topics and pain points.

Here are a few questions that also focus on the capabilities of current AI technologies:

• Which recurring tasks or processes currently cost the most time?

• Where do errors or delays regularly occur that could be improved?

• Are there any manual tasks that could be simplified by automation?

• Which routine tasks could be improved by automated text generation or analysis?

• How could a tool that summarizes complex information in understandable language make your work process easier?

• Which creative ideas or proposed solutions could be supported by the use of language models?

• In which areas could data-based insights lead to new, innovative approaches?

In some cases, a short brain writing workshop in the team, e.g. with the 6-3-5 method, can also make sense. ChatGPT explains the whole thing here.

3) Topics scoring & prioritization

As a rule, you will find 5-10 topics and processes where AI could help quickly.

In our experience, however, you should focus on just a few or carry out a scoring - especially in terms of effort and costs.

Because of course you can use AI to take over the entire customer service. However, this is usually associated with high costs and effort.

It is therefore often better to start with simpler topics for initial quick wins.

We have a super simple scoring system for this, in which we look at the following points:

• Savings in working time,

• Simplicity of implementation,

• cost expenditure,

• Data protection risk etc.

Here you can find a short sample on Google Sheets to copy.

🚀 Bonus hack: Mastermind with like-minded people

Our hack is simple, but delivered: exchange ideas with other companies and teams! In our experience, this always helps the most.

The idea of an AI mastermind round also came up in the aforementioned round of entrepreneurs. The request went along the following lines: "I have a company and see great potential for the use of AI in our company. I would like to exchange ideas with you and some other AInaut entrepreneurs who are in the same situation. Can we meet once a quarter, get updates from you and share best practices?"

Good idea, right? If you're an entrepreneur, we'll pass the question on to you: Would you be interested in an AI mastermind group with like-minded entrepreneurs?

If so, please just reply to our message!

🤫 How to analyze thousands of websites automatically

Finally, here's another super cool practical hack that we saw from the great Daniel Setzermann.

On the one hand, it's super practical if you want to analyze tons of websites for free. On the other hand, it's also a very cool use case of how you can use AI to do really exciting things - without having to know much.

Specifically, we use the API from SimilarWeb.com (platform for market analysis/research) in a Google Sheet to conveniently access website data such as visits, dwell time, traffic from social or search etc..

Ideal for analyzing competitors!

You simply ask ChatGPT or Claude for a Google Script with which you can tap into the SimilarWeb API.

After a little back and forth, you should get the right result. ChatGPT tells you exactly what to do.

You simply add the script to Extensions - Apps Script:

Here is the Google Sheet to rebuild and try out.

(Copy the Google Sheet to ensure that you have editing rights).

And here is a possible prompt if you want to build it yourself:

Write a Google Apps script for Google Sheets that uses the SimilarWeb API to retrieve website data. The API URL is https://data.similarweb.com/api/v1/data?domain=<domain>.

Requirements:
- The domain entry (e.g. amazon.com, https://www.openai.com) should be automatically cleaned up (www., http://, https:// removed).
- The function should be usable as =GET_SIMILARWEB_DATA(A2) and output the values in a row (column by column), not one below the other.
- The following values should be output (if available, otherwise "N/A"):

Domain
Global Rank (GlobalRank.Rank)
Country Rank (CountryRank.Rank)
Total traffic (Month) (Engagments.Visits)
Pages/visit (Engagments.PagePerVisit)
Ø Visit duration (Engagments.TimeOnSite, convert to minutes & seconds)
Bounce rate (Engagments.BounceRate, output as a percentage value)
- Numbers should be displayed in German format (. → ,).
- If an error occurs or no data is available, "N/A" values should be set for all fields.

We made it! But no need to be sad. The AInauts will be back soon, with new stuff for you.

Reto & Fabian from the AInauts

P.S.: Follow us on social media - that motivates us to keep going 😁!
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