← The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
634: (Solo) My Current AI Stack (and How It’s Helping Us Move 10x Faster at Foundr)
00:11:12
Most founders are either ignoring AI or drowning in it. But here's what I've learned after 13 years of building Foundr: AI isn't a shortcut to success — it's a tool. And when used right, it's like upgrading from a horse to a car. You make the same journey, but a lot faster.
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- [00:02]
Nathan Chan
Hey, founder fam.
- [00:03]
Podcast Sponsor or Host
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- [00:49]
Nathan Chan
Hey, founder fam. Nathan here. Welcome back to another solo episode. These are short, bite sized episodes where I share with you everything that I'm learning as I'm building founder. I've been building founder for over 10 years, plus almost 13 years. We're coming up to our 13th birthday and while we've grown, one thing has never really changed is I always try and run things pretty lean as a team. You know, I've made the mistake where the team was so bloated. We had like 80 people at one stage. It was crazy, 90 people. And we just didn't need that many people. And I found that the speed in which we're growing really slowed things down. So, you know, I had to slow down to speed up. We move fast, we collaborate fast. We don't have heavy layers of management. We're entrepreneurs at heart and we build like it. And recently I've found that we've been able to maintain that speed even as we scale through using AI. So this episode is going to be super tactical. I'm going to be talking you through my current AI tool stack the tools I'm using, how I use them and what specific purpose I use them for.
- [02:00]
Podcast Narrator or Intro Voice
Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder podcast with Nathan Chan.
- [02:14]
Nathan Chan
A quick disclaimer from me. AI doesn't replace real thinking, real market research, or real customer connection. It's a shortcut to success. And more than ever in this day and age, I'm focused on building community, building relationships at scale. Because AI is a tool and if it's used right, it's like upgrading from a horse to a car. But you can make the same journey a lot faster. All right, so let's get into it. So my first tool is my new most favorite tool, which is Manus Manus AI. So I used to use Gamma for building decks and structuring long form content out, but Manus has taken it to another, another level. So I'm using Manus to really kind of learn my content or learn any content or research anything and then from that build out presentation, outlines, slides, decks, drafting educational content, writing copy angles, reviewing content, reviewing any kind of data or audio or video. And the reason I love it is it's fast, it's clean and it breaks things down. Like I find with ChatGPT and even Claude. Sometimes it just kind of like loses itself and it starts making mistakes. I've been using it pretty heavily for the past two months. I've only seen it make a few mistakes. Otherwise it's very, very, very on point. And I'm loving using Manus especially for analyzing data. It is one of the best things I've seen. And building decks, writing copy, it is exceptional. As I'm recording this, they literally just released their agents. I'm just in the mix of playing around with claudebot and I maybe might do a separate episode on that, but things are moving so far. So they've, you know, created a competitor basically to claudebot. But I'm getting into the agent stuff. It's pretty cool. That's my first tool. I can't stress this enough. When it comes to creating content, Manus AI is where it's at miles and miles and miles. Way ahead of chat GPT, the thinking, it breaking things down, consuming content and learning. Far better notion. Now I know most people use notion like email. I'm using notion as kind of an AI now integrated as my second brain. It really helps me summarize long term projects that I'm working on. It helps me structure my day. It's somewhat of an assistant and a project manager all in one. It knows a lot about me and it helps keep me on track. And it's been an absolute game changer. And I've been learning from a friend. I make no claim to being a notion expert, but yeah, he's helped me really create an incredible notion dashboard and frameworks for kind of documenting all my personal processes and all sorts of things. So once I start getting more into the agentic stuff, playing around Claude Bot or, or Manus's agentic stuff, that's when I can start to feed it these things that I've already taught it and it can go out and do things for me autonomously. Which I'm really, really excited about. And it's definitely going to be the future. And it's moving really, really, really fast now, of course. ChatGPT, that's. It's interesting. Yeah, I have a bit of a love hate relationship with Chat GPT because there's been times where I've used it and it's really, really let me down because I've just pushed it to its absolute limits and it loses track, it kind of, it just kind of breaks and it starts forgetting things and it goes around in spirals and circles and if you're listening to me, you probably like. I know a lot of people use ChatGPT and I think it's still a great tool. But what I'm finding is the best thing for Chat GPT is for it to understand you and then train it over time on what you're building, how you're going about it. I like for it to kind of. I use ChatGPT if I have any blocks. Like there's something now whenever I need to do something and I'm mentally blocked, I just speak to ChatGPT and it keeps me going, which I find that really, really interesting how it just keeps me going. So if you ever block or stuck on something and because I've been using it for so long, it really knows you and I've trained it over time, it knows me, my style. But wouldn't use it for copy, using Manus or Claude for copy. Wouldn't use it for analyzing large hours and hours of content. Not, not the thing. Gemini. Gemini is the thing that I use for analyzing large, large amounts of content. I think Gemini is a really, really powerful tool. So every single podcast that I have actually done, I put that now into Notebook LM, which is basically Google's version of ChatGPT. And in Notebook LM, it's linked to all the YouTube interviews I've ever done. And then I tell usually Manus. Now it was chatgpt what my, you know, objective is. I want to create, you know, a story based carousel. What is the prompt that I should give Notebook lm. And then from there it'll search through all the stories I've ever told, all the interviews I've ever done, and then pulls out just awesome pieces of gold unique to me. So it's like kind of like a repository of all of my thinking. Not the same as Notion. Notion is more my second brain. It's learning about me, but it's learning about kind of keeping me moving forward, which is kind of cool. That's kind of Notebook LM. I really, really like Notebook LM for research and I use NotebookLM as well for podcast prep. So if you're gonna meet anybody and they've done most, you know, if you're gonna meet somebody that's a thought leader or anyone that kind of goes out there and does any speaking of any sort and they've done podcasts, put like a few of those podcasts into NotebookLM. You can press play and in 15 minutes it'll give you a summary and of two kind of people speaking about this person. It's really, really cool. And that's how I do a lot of prep work. It's really cool. Then we've got Whisper AI. So this one's a little bit under the radar. So the person that introduced it to me was my good friend Nick Shackelford. And what Whisper AI lets you do is think out loud and have things transcribed accurately. So now I'm starting to use it to capture ideas while walking or driving or taking notes and really kind of any thoughts that I have without having to type it across all sorts of applications like Notion, which is where I'm storing everything. And then you've got Gmail, Google Docs, you can use it to reply to emails. It's really, really good. So if someone who likes, if you're someone who likes to talk about things or think on your feet, this is definitely worth trying. All right, now my last one that I want to share with you is Fixer AI. So this is something the team's been experimenting with more and think of it as an AI executive assistant. But I think Claudebot might replace this or Manus's Agentix stuff. So inbox management, admin workflows, you know, these eat up hours. It doesn't replace anyone in our team, you know, answering emails, but from speaking to them directly, it really helps remove a lot of mental clutter, like, you know, an out of control inbox. So when you're building a brand, especially in e Commerce, wearing 15 hats, if you want to scale without burning out or bloating your team, this is leverage because we always run lean. So what's really cool about Fixer is it can scan your inbox and it learns over time responses to your email. So it just keeps things moving. So guys, if you are listening to this and you're feeling overwhelmed by AI and the whole wave of everything that's going on, don't be. You don't need to use everything. Just pick one tool, play with it this week, test it and see if it gets you to the outcome that you're looking for better and faster. But I can't stress enough. My new favorite is Manus, and I have a feeling my next new favorite will be Claudebot. But don't get intimidated. Just take it one step at a time. It is moving at the speed of knots and you're not going to be yet left behind. And we're here to help serve you however we can. If you found this useful, if you found this helpful, I'd love you to share this episode with someone. Building a lean team or side hustle. These are the exact tools I wish I had when I was building, you know, 12, 13, 14 years ago. So thank you for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next episode.