20 AI tools to supercharge your business and productivity
Artificial intelligence can be an entrepreneur’s best friend or worst enemy. Channeled incorrectly, it can bring FOMO, anxiety, and fear of irrelevance. It can make business owners believe they’re not moving fast enough and their team fear they’ll lose their jobs. Used well, however, the benefits are huge. Do more in less time, make more impact with less effort, and make more money with a fraction of the cost.
AI is more than ChatGPT. Much, much more. Tools are popping up all over the place, each promising to transform your life and work.
Rowan Cheung is founder of The Rundown, a fast-growing AI newsletter providing an in-depth look at the latest developments in AI. In less than a year, The Rundown has gained a following of over 325,000 subscribers who rely on its content to stay informed about the latest advancements in artificial intelligence. Cheung is on a mission to inform millions of people about the latest advancements in AI and highlight how technology is transforming the world. His AI database, Supertools, records the best tools mentioned in the newsletter.
I asked Cheung to give his top 20 list of the tools entrepreneurs absolutely have to use.
20 AI tools that entrepreneurs can use every day
ChatGPT
Large language model (LLM) ChatGPT, “remains one of my most useful AI tools for generating content ideas including hooks and titles, analyzing data through Code Interpreter, using various plugins, and proofreading my newsletter,” explained Cheung. And while he doesn’t use ChatGPT (or any AI tool) to write his newsletter, “because there’s a risk of hallucinations and misinformation, AI produces really bulky, unreadable copy, and he just likes the human touch,” it’s great for ideation, proofreading, and instant access to a sounding board or co-editor.
Claude 2
Another LLM, Cheung described Claude as, “a less robotic version of ChatGPT.” Claude has a higher context window (up to 75,000 words), is “more up-to-date, can read multiple files similar to Code Interpreter and is completely free.” Claude’s specialism? “Analyzing extra long articles, or for any sort of copywriting suggestions.” Cheung also believes Claude feels more human and is, therefore, a better chatbot to talk with.
Midjourney
An AI image generator Cheung described as, “the highest quality.” He uses this platform to “generate images and thumbnails for my newsletter.” Accessed using Discord and prompted with words, Midjourney can remove the need for photographers, models and complicated sets. Simply describe the image you’d like to see and watch it appear before your eyes. Re-prompt to edit, and download for publication.
Adobe Photoshop Generative Fill
“I use Photoshop like a madman for my social media content and newsletter content, so this is a game changer,” said Cheung. Adobe’s new feature uses Adobe Firefly image creation model, allowing you to expand any image to whatever you can imagine in a few seconds. While Midjourney creates assets from scratch, Photoshop will do more with what you already have. Make use of Adobe’s automation tools and level up your imagery game.
Automation tools
Automation tools Make, Bardeen and Zapier automate your workflows, and each have different strengths. “The power of these tools is incredible, allowing you to automate basic tasks without lifting a single finger.” Cheung has made multiple automations, but one of note is that, “whenever someone replies to one of my posts on any social media channel, it gets sent to my private Slack channel.” This means he can simply stay logged in to Slack and ignore the others. “From there you can respond individually to the responses you find interesting, or even connect it to ChatGPT to generate a response.” He advised that you don’t get caught up on what to automate, rather, “get started with basic automations and letting the more advanced ones come to you with time.
Notion AI
“Notion is a place where I store all my notes,” said Cheung, who explained, “it’s literally my second brain and without it, my mind would probably explode.” Not only can you use Notion to take notes, but Notion AI will help you ideate and mindmap ideas, and if you add Super, you can create websites straight from these notes, without writing code. Cheung’s website Supertools, an AI tools database, was created from a database on Notion using Super.
Rewind
“This AI tool documents everything I see through my Mac laptop or phone screens, processes it, and then allows me to back-track certain content when needed.” Useful for prolific researchers or people who see a lot of stuff. “I go through multiple pages and apps daily, and it helps me recall exactly what I need when I forget throughout the day.” Use Rewind to group content you have seen by theme, for research, presentations or your own newsletter.
Fireflies AI
“Fireflies is a new tool I’ve been experimenting with to semi-automate my meeting notes,” said Cheung, who meets with AI tool creators that want to be recommended in The Rundown. “It transcribes and analyzes all my meetings into a condensed summary for future reference.” And while you might not need every detail from every meeting, “when I forget a thing or two, it’s nice to have the option to revisit.”
Wondercraft AI
This tool, with tagline “effortless podcast creation, for the AI era,” turns written content into engaging podcast episodes. “I’ve been using the tool to turn my newsletter editions into audio versions,” said Cheung, who describes it as an, “incredible tool for creators who simply don’t have enough time to do everythings at once.”
Vimcal
“This is your calendar app on AI steroids.” Cheung uses Vimcal to schedule his time efficiently, because it organizes his schedule to maximize work periods. Especially for busy entrepreneurs with too many meetings, tasks and an overflowing inbox, Vimcal calls itself the, “world’s fastest calendar” and claims to be the only calendar designed for remote work.
Superhuman
Described on its website as, “AI-powered email built for high-performing teams,” Cheung said Superhuman is “an email assistant that streamlines email productivity.” While not specifically all AI, it has “accelerated my emailing experience with its automated organizing systems.” Its built-in AI features include creating an entire email from a few notes, and matching your tone and voice to a tee. “I get a lot of emails every day,” said Cheung, and Superhuman sifts through to prioritize my responses.” You can also integrate your scheduling systems to avoid double-booking.
Social media schedulers
Taplio and Tweethunter are “LinkedIn and Twitter scheduling apps with AI features,” said Cheung, who uses both of them to schedule some of his content ahead of time. One feature of both is the ability to see when you should post, “which matters for the algorithm,” and both offer AI-generated tweet and post creators where they suggest content based on your brand’s topics.
Grammarly
The classic spell checker tool that now uses AI, Grammarly launched in 2009 but has been building AI tools including paraphrasing and text-generation. “I have Grammarly on 24/7,” said Cheung. “Not only does it help me with small mistakes I make while writing content across my newsletter, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but it helps me find more applicable synonyms in seconds.” Spot errors and mix up your wording with this tool.
Gamma
“Create beautiful, engaging content with none of the formatting and design work,” says the Gamma website. “This tool has been helpful when I need slide deck presentations created quickly,” said Cheung. It’s essentially an automated presentation generator that produces full presentations from a few settings and prompts. It also allows real-time edits. “The output usually requires some small changes, but the majority of the work is completed for you after the first round of prompts.”
Feedly AI
Feedly is a news aggregator app that compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources to customize and share with others. “I use Feedly to simplify and narrow my daily research, which has made my process much more organized,” said Cheung, who uses it to research the latest trends for his newsletter. Forget staying up to date with multiple sites, use AI to deliver everything you need to know to the same place.
Poe.com
Created by the team behind question and answer site Quora, Poe’s goal is to be the universal chatbot. “Poe lets people ask questions, get instant answers, and have back-and-forth conversations with several AI-powered bots,” according to its website. Putting existing chatbots into one platform for users to try for free,via a simple mobile interface, Cheung said, “it’s great to try and test chatbots before buying a subscription.”
Consensus
“ChatGPT currently produces fake citations, and this tool is the solution,” said Cheung. Consensus is a research tool that helps get your answers with credited citations, specifically from research papers. Ask your question, for example, “do people trust AI coaches?” and Consensus finds answers from evidence-based sources, or says there’s not enough evidence around. Anecdotes and hallucinations don’t make an appearance.
Perplexity
Perplexity AI “unlocks the power of knowledge with information discovery and sharing,” according to its website. Cheung describes it as, “another AI-chatbot search engine generated to deliver answers to all your questions,” and said, “Perplexity is a great tool to have on hand when you have quick questions requiring evidence-based responses.” No fluff or waffle, just cold hard facts.
Google Sheets AI
Not to be left behind is Google, which recently “integrated AI features into Google Docs and Drive,” said Cheung. “It’s actually extremely useful, especially creating templates for Google Sheets for data projects I want to start.” You can use a “Help me organize” prompt in Google Sheets to create tables with AI, as well as asking it to draft a trip planner or task tracker.
20 AI tools to help entrepreneurs in their business
If you haven’t yet boarded the AI train, these tools will get you started. Identify your biggest business challenges and see if you can make them disappear. Sign up for a free trial, experiment with a specific task, and assess the time you save or the output quality you improve. Forward-thinking entrepreneurs are finding the tools that will make the difference, and the ones that are right for you could be in this list.