Becoming post-AI

"How do you fire yourself from your pre-AI job?" - the challenge I was given in Jan '25.

45 days after Avnish issued this dictum, we had the full investment team on a Zoom call and did a demo of DeVC’s AI agent. It was (at best) a shitty demo on a shoestring budget — the penny (literally) dropped.

Next week — everyone had signed up to Granola AI. I started to see (the least obvious) team members visiting the Prompt Library document like it was the shrine for knowledge.

I told my colleague Aakash (who was sponsoring the internal effort): “That is 10% of what a human Analyst (most junior staff member at a VC firm) can do, 90% to go…” I’m pleased to share, we’re now at 20% of what the human Analyst can do.

“Being in the top 10% of people who know how to use these tools will absolutely set you apart in the coming months and years.” — CEO of Lovable AI

Everyone will go through their version of the 5 stages of grief with AI — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. There is a 6th — ascendence —

Superagency was Z47’s recommended read for Q4 FY25. Eternal optimist Mr. Hoffman says “What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future?”

If the CEO of a $30bn public company (HubSpot) is using Claude for writing an earnings transcript, you ought to at least be using some GenAI tool for 1st drafts or simple tasks.

After hearing how Yamini, HubSpot’s CEO, uses AI — it ignited a different fire — I thought I could re-build BimaPe in one evening using Bolt (due to their Figma integration) — the result here.

Spoiler alert: I couldn’t but it was still a magical experience to see a web page emerge from Figma frames in 60s or less!

What has changed?

"The entire software world order is going to get rewritten" - CEO of Bolt

Some real examples:

1. “Please share the prompt you used”

   1. Team members are more interested in the process of arriving at the output versus the output per say

2. “What did ChatGPT say about this?”

   1. You can get a pretty decent 1st draft using AI

3. “Please push your Granola notes to Notion”

   1. I no longer need to chase for non-existent meeting notes.

   2. I now chase to get team members to share the notes which Granola AI has taken for them

A previously quiet internal WhatsApp group chat has now become ‘muted’ because of the volume of messages flowing!

What hasn’t changed?

“There will always be a skillset involved in knowing what the agent should actually build.” - CEO of Netlify on the 20VC podcast (link here)

The AI agent will most likely always require a Human Principal to direct it.

The Human Principal (i.e. your human team member) becomes more valuable than even before - she has unlimited (synthetic) intelligence at her disposal to command.

So, what hasn’t changed?

1. Hiring outlier human talent

   1. The characteristic trait of outlier human talent is that they are constantly looking to improve.

   2. Tech leverage makes an outlier — even more of an outlier.

2. Organizing around BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals)

   1. Since the human principal remains relevant due to AI leverage & smaller human teams, the importance of alignment with the human team is critical.

   2. Small (human) misdirection can compound very quickly to wild tangents due to AI’s power

3. Human ingenuity, desi jugaad & orignal storytelling

   1. AI (right now) is at best re-packaging what is known or what has been told — humans are just different. We create.

   2. I’ll share more on desi jugaad when a demo video of DeVC’s AI Agent is out!

The tools I use (including demos)

“A bad workman blames his tools… first we build the tools, then they build us.”

The complete list of tools

1. Knowledge🧠

   1. ChatGPT Pro (₹17,500 p.m.) for QnA **

   2. X Premium+ — Grok (₹3,470 p.m.) for QnA

   3. Notion Pro — Notion AI (₹1,900 p.m.) for knowledge management

   4. Granola AI (₹1,600 p.m.) for advanced meeting notes

2. Building🛠️

   1. Lovable (₹1,900 p.m.) for rapid prototyping

   2. Loom (₹1,600 p.m.) for recording basic videos

   3. Whimsical — Whimsical AI (₹900 p.m.) for flowcharts

The net impact — I’m saving an hour or more per day via “AI augmentation” — expecting this to double by end of the year!

** AI moves so fast - when I first drafted this post (1 week ago), I was using ChatGPT Pro. Now, I’m cancelling that subscription in favor of using Gemini 2.5 — found it superior

My rant on Twitter about how Gemini 2.5 blew my mind away!

Links to demos (points to X)

Note: In the spirit of “Please share the prompt you used” — each of the below demos have the full prompt for you to copy & use.

1. Pre-meeting prep notes created by Grok — 1.5 hrs of research converted into 5 mins of prompting Grok. I share the Grok output with the person before I meet them.

2. Flowchart creation using Whimsical AI — Convert a block of text into a stunning mind map or flowchart using Whimsical AI (free to use!)

3. Personalized newsletter curated by Grok — this is weird ‘Rahul behaviour’

   1. I have a long list of interests & people I follow

   2. This prompt on Grok provides a quick 5 min daily read newsletter

4. Rapid prototyping using Lovable — I built a functional prototype of an LP dashboard for our firm in 25 minutes. Truly a Minimum Lovable Product experience. Once again, free to use!

I have a few more demos recorded - will release them over time

My pre-meeting prep process has totally changed!

I now use Grok / Gemini 2.5 (Pro) while prepping for meetings — provides a lot of the basic info about the other person from social media — often supremely useful as a starting point.

I met 3 ‘smart’ AI thinkers (Aarthi Ramamurthy, Sunit Singh and Paras Chopra) in March 2025 — prepped for each meeting using Grok — images below:

ChatGPT 4o provided a nice collage of the Grok pre-meeting prep screenshots.

Note: Above collage also merged by ChatGPT 4o - great AI use-case!

AI in use by wiser ones

1. “I have a (Claude) project for earning script writing and I've fed it with the last 16 quarters of earning script — when I'm about to write the next one I give it the parameter of the story that I want to say — and ask it to use kind of the approach that I've taken in the past 16 scripts — to help me write and think through it.” — CEO of HubSpot on the 20VC podcast (notes here)

2. “You can use AI to replace a person or take away a task from a person, or you can use AI to augment a person’s intelligence. And we're really big believers in tools that make humans do more, achieve more, think more.” — Co-Founder of Granola AI on the Invest Like Best podcast (link here)

3. “We hire people with raw cognitive capability and startup mindset: people who think like owners and act fast.” — Co-Founder of Lovable AI on Lenny’s Podcast (link here)

What is up next for Q1 FY26?

“When you use ChatGPT, it's like you and the AI are working on separate canvases. That will feel archaic very soon.” — CEO of Granola AI

It is time to bring the prompt output to the user, not force the user to prompt for output.

Q4 FY25 was all about discovering & fine-tuning suitable prompts to use — and enforcing the behavior change from pre-AI to post-AI.

The goal for Q1 FY26 is to now create workflows that automate the functional AI demos which I have been sharing on X for the past few weeks.

I will update you on being post-AI at the end of Q1 FY26.

Discl: Views are my own. Shared for informational purposes only. No material here should be construed as legal, financial or tax advice. It is not directed at any investors or prospective investors in Z47 or DeVC funds.

Until next time! Hopefully, next week!