Start building AI automation 🤖
Let's get into AI automation step-by-step. Step 1: Simple Zapier automation.
Hello, thank you for reading The Product Courier.
We’re now 2,457 which is 137 more than last month! 🙏🏻
In this 43rd edition, I am excited to share with you:
News: Europe joins the AI race 🤖.
Tutorial: Let’s get into “AI automation” easily 🤓
If you're new here, welcome!
I’m Toni, I help B2B companies build scalable growth engines to generate more revenue.
👉🏻 Let’s connect on Linkedin.
With Lucas, we share actionable tips to help you deliver better work and accelerate your career by leveraging A.I. and other tools.
Happy reading!
News of the week. 📰
AI is here to stay: Europe steps up.
Until now, European companies have been cautious about using Gen AI and LLMs, because of data privacy worries, or the dominance of tech giants from the U.S. and China.
But this week saw two announcements that show Europe is eager to jump into the game:
French President Emmanuel Macron revealed a €109 billion private investment plan to speed up AI development in France.
The European Union announced a €200 billion “InvestAI initiative” to support AI innovation (including $150 billion from private investors + $50 billion from the Union).
These come only a few weeks after the American Stargate program ($500 billion).
Why this matters
These investments aren’t just big numbers.
They are political statements of the importance AI is taking around the world.
And it marks a shift that will change how products are built, managed, and scaled in Europe.
Europe is building its own AI ecosystem, likely suited to comply with European regulations.
Building trust and compliance for AI solutions.
One of the biggest roadblocks for European companies has been data sovereignty.
Companies hesitate to use AI tools managed outside the EU, fearing for their data's safety.
With these new, EU-backed projects, I believe we can expect a boom in local AI solutions designed with GDPR and strict European privacy rules in mind.
This means safer, more reliable AI tools made for European businesses. The infrastructure will be in place.
Which will create many opportunities for solutions to address European businesses’ needs.
What you should do now
In my opinion, the globalization of AI investments is your cue to take action. It is no longer an option:
Get hands-on with AI tools: Start playing around with existing AI solutions.
Follow the money: Keep tabs on where these investments are headed.
There will be a demand for AI-savvy Product/Marketing experts.Make data privacy a priority: When adding AI to your products, treat compliance as a must-have feature, not an afterthought. Customers will expect it.
Upskill your team: AI literacy is the new digital literacy.
Don’t wait for your company to roll out training—start learning now
(therefore, subscribe if you haven’t already).
Europe’s massive investments are proof that the AI future isn’t some futuristic tech trend—it’s already here.
Looking away and pretending it is not relevant is no longer an option.
Time to learn the craft.
What do you think?
You want to train your team in AI, but are not sure of the Return on Investment?
Check out our free AI ROI Calculator:
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Let’s start building AI Automation
There's a lot of automation that can happen that isn't a replacement of humans, but of mind-numbing behavior.
Stewart Butterfield.
✅ AI tools save time, but manual workflow tasks slow you down.
✅ Copy-pasting between apps leads to errors, delays, and missed opportunities.
✅ Use AI-powered automation to connect tools and streamline workflows.
✅ It’s easier than we make it to be. It’s like assembling Lego bricks.
If you read the newsletter, you probably already use tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity for research, Bolt for prototyping, or Fathom for interview summaries.
But if you look closely, these actions are usually part of a larger 'workflow:
1) Go to ChatGPT to run a competitive analysis
2) Then copy/paste the output into a Notion Document
3) Send the insights to the team on Slack
1) Use Fathom to transcribe and summarize an interview
2) Then copy/paste the summary and information of the interview into your CRM
3) Go to ChatGPT, copy/paste Fathom’s output, and ask for specific insights
4) Send an email to the interviewee with a summary and link to the recording.
1) Ask Perplexity to give you information about a lead’s company.
2) Then copy that information into Claude to generate a personalized email
3) Copy/paste the output in an email and manually send an email to the lead.
Sounds familiar? AI tools save us hours, but many repetitive, low-value tasks still take time.
The more manual tasks the flows require, the more it can lead to missed opportunities, mistakes, delays.
And then there was Automation
“Automation” refers to the use of technology to perform tasks automatically without human intervention.
With the development of software A.P.I. (application programming interface- the solution that “translates” the data from one app into another), it has become much simpler to connect apps and build automated workflows.
Tools like Zapier, Make, n8n, let you connect apps like Lego blocks to build a sequence of automated tasks.
AI+ Automation: that’s how you get the real potential of AI by building automated workflows that interact with AI.
And it is the first step into what is called “AI agentic systems” :
AI tools performing tasks autonomously and interact with other applications without human intervention.
Build your first “AI automation”
Sounds geeky and complicated? it’s not. Let’s get into a real example:
You work for a Lead Gen AI tool. You have a new feature coming out soon.
You built a form to invite potential users to join a waitlist.
Problem:
You want to focus on B2B companies and understand their pain points related to lead gen before giving them access to the feature.
But you want to keep a list of B2C companies’ info because there is a secondary use case of the feature for brand recognition you might need to test later.
Manual Solution:
Ask people to specify B2B/B2C in the form, and ask them to list their pain points. But people often make mistakes and it adds to the form.
Or ask for information on the company (like their website URL), then manually go to chatGPT and get information.
And then fill a table with the information.
Repeat for each lead. Time consuming.
Now, imagine:
What if you simply asked the person :
Name/email/company domain and get instantly in a sheet for each signup:
if it’s B2B or B2C
a list of the pain points they have related to lead gen (B2B) and brand recognition(B2C).
Cool, no? It’s possible with AI automation. Let’s build it.
bonus 🎁: We’ll do this without spending a dime.
The end result, fully automated:
Let’s dive into it:
Step 1: Structure the workflow
Don’t make this mistake: jump into the solution and use tools without a clear vision of what you want to do.