The Future is Now: Setting Up Your Own AI Automation Agency (AAA)

The Essential Steps to Establishing Your own AAA

Setting up an AAA. Imagined using Midjourney.

Hi folks, I nearly didn’t write this post as I’ve been a bit lost and unfocused this week, which is very unusual for me. The reason being is I lost a close family member today. This post is therefore dedicated to Christine, loving mother, grandmother and friend to many, including me, always in our hearts x

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A lot of media discussion has been about how AI is going to destroy jobs, if not the whole of humankind (not that I personally believe in the latter doomsday scenario).

While it's true that AI may eventually render some jobs obsolete in the long run, much like how the internal combustion engine replaced horses and other animals for transportation and heavy lifting, there's a significant opportunity in the interim.

This period presents a golden era for AI entrepreneurs, and it's not just limited to those backed by substantial venture capital. Even those with modest resources can seize this opportunity.

One type of opportunity I’m personally drawn to is the AI Automation Agency, or AAA.

What is an AAA?

Let’s dive and find out.

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Understand, this ain’t my first rodeo

Having earned a computer science degree in the 1990s, I started off my career as a programmer, working my way up the greasy pole of investment banking technology management.

However, since 2005, I’ve been winging my “career”.

I’m not exactly sure why I turned my back on corporate life. Investment banking technology was, and still is an extremely lucrative career.

But part of it was definitely an independent streak in me that meant I was never going to stick around anywhere just for the money. I guess I didn’t want to look back from my deathbed and think, “What if?”.

From my teenage years, having discovered home computers, I always thought I would have my own “computer company” someday, and the clock was ticking.

I ended up accidentally founding a data analytics company, quite a novel concept in the early 2000s, growing it to 80 staff with offices in London and New York and exiting it in 2012 - finally selling it to a French tech company (Keyrus) in 2014.

Since then, I’ve ticked off a number of bucket-list items, from training to be an expedition leader and outdoor survival instructor, travelling around Europe in a motorhome with my family for 12 months, to deeply exploring landscape and astrophotography.

All these outdoorsy adventures I now see as my own way of getting therapy by grounding myself in nature and making up for all the time I was tied to a desk, staring out the window of an office or the commuter train and wishing I was doing something else.

No matter how much I try to move on, though, what I always come back to is technology. I just love it.

I am a fully certified nerd, geek whatever you want to call it.

It totally engrosses me, much to the despair of my wife!

Since selling my data analytics business and getting nature therapy, I’ve set up dozens of online e-commerce stores and websites, trained and practised as a digital marketer, re-learnt my rusty coding skills (hello Javascript/NodeJs and Python), and recently, there’s AI, the ultimate tech.

Mind you.

I have no ambitions to build the next OpenAI Large Language Model - you need a PhD and a brain the size of a small planet to succeed in that domain, neither of which I profess to have.

Source: https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai-london

So why am I giving you a potted history of my career and life, 26 editions into the newsletter?

Well, what I’m really focused on, if you hadn’t already guessed by now, is how to use generative AI to make organisations more productive.

I believe there are exciting possibilities waiting to be discovered by using generative AI, and I want to let you know that my insights come not just from gut feel, but also from experience in the tech startup sector.

While this doesn't guarantee that every observation I make will be spot-on, it does help to ground some of my perspectives.

Now, let’s look at the opportunity.

The “AI Automation Agency” (AAA) opportunity

I’m probably too old and comfortable to be considered a prime candidate for a tech venture capital round now.

But one area where I see a lot of opportunities that can be serviced with relatively little startup capital is in the field of AI automation for SMEs (Small-Medium Enterprises).

If you’re as experienced (old) as me, you’ll remember when websites, then social media, then mobile websites became a thing that, suddenly, every organisation in the world needed. As a result, some of the companies providing website design services became huge.

Well, guess what?

I think the same is happening now with AI automation.

Whether they know it or not, every organisation is soon going to require AI automation implementation - not just to thrive but to survive - and stay competitive.

It’s going to be an AI arms race, and as the old saying goes, those that fail to prepare might as well prepare to fail because their competitors are going to start getting vastly more productive in the next twelve months through the application of AI.

Having said that, there are headwinds against rapid AI adoption.

For one, only the larger, most well-resourced organisations are going to have the capability to implement AI automations in-house, and even then, it will be a struggle for many to find the right skilled resources.

Although we’ve all been wooed by ChatGPT capabilities, the fact is, not every AI use case is out of the box straightforward text generation.

AI can be used in an infinite number of ways in an organisation, but one of the main ways, other than text generation, is via bespoke chatbot solutions.

I covered some exciting no-code chatbot development platforms in last week’s post.

This week, I’m covering the steps to establish an agency that provides AI automation services as follows:

1. Selecting a business domain or niche for your AI Automation Agency

2. Selecting your use cases to implement

3. Building the capability and business structure to deliver AI Automation services