As an entrepreneur or startup founder, you not only need to define your brand and develop internal processes and project workflows, but you also need to produce high-quality content, ideas, and materials. And, oftentimes, you’re faced with building your brand and internal systems with limited resources.
The good news is that generative AI is the perfect solution to augment your efforts. Here are some of the most useful AI tools for entrepreneurs and startups:
1. Looka.com
This is an AI-powered design platform that will truly delight any entrepreneur who is creating their visual brand. Looka isn’t just a logo designer, it’s a full marketing content creator.
Within the platform, the AI will design and deliver you a logo, a sharable brand kit, a website, business cards, a social media kit, complete with social platform covers, posts, profile content and more. Need branded giveaways? Looka will instantly create branded keychains, water bottles, tee-shirts, buttons, you name it. Looka even helps to design branded invoices, proposals, and other business documents. This is your one-stop shop for your visual brand. The platform is very intuitive and easy to use.
2. ClickUp
This is a cloud-based project management tool that helps to streamline task planning, organization, collaboration and communication. ClickUp now includes an AI writing assistant, which is accessible platform-wide. This will help with marketing copy and planning events.
What I love the most about ClickUp is that there are more than one 100 role-based AI tools organized by departments with ready-made prompts to speed up your workflow. I also use ClickUp to quickly summarize long-form content and to restructure and brainstorm ideas with Mind Maps and Whiteboards. There is also a robust project management template library.
3. Wiser
Wiser is an AI-powered B2C pricing platform that captures real-time retail data – online and in-store – to help set pricing strategies. The real-time Brand Intelligence tool also allows retail companies to monitor how your products are presented and priced across marketplaces, whether prices are MAP-compliant, and which products are top-sellers.
With the increasing power of the triopoly of marketplaces, the immediate access to customer insights, the shelf health of your products, customer and shopper insights and real-time pricing models makes it necessary for any B2C brand.
4. PriceFX
PriceFX is an AI-powered cloud-based pricing platform that includes many competitive pricing tools and functionalities. It’s one of the best B2B pricing tools that helps with price management and is a CPQ platform providing transparent and responsive pricing solutions. My favorite feature is the Symson’s Smart Algorithm, which uses AI to transform historical purchase data into pricing insights. The easy-to-use dashboard gives you insight into the profitability of each product or solution and allows you to benchmark against competitor pricing.
Entrepreneurs can leverage its price comparison tools and features to analyze competitor prices and data. This platform is critical for any B2B brand entering a new market.
5. Claude2
Although ChatGPT secured the most buzz when it launched in December last year, it isn’t the only generative AI content creator. In fact, I don’t even think it’s the best one. Anthropic’s Claude 2 is the second generation of this “personal assistant” and can be accessed via API as well as a new public-facing beta website, claude.ai.
Claude is easy to converse with. The tool explains its thinking very well and asks questions about how it can improve the output. Claude also has a longer memory than ChatGPT and has some guardrails in place to ensure it doesn’t present incorrect information. In fact, I think the output from this tool reads more like a human and less robotic than Open AI’s ChatGPT. This tool doesn’t just create written content, you can ask it questions like, “how can I obtain more backlinks to my website” and it will deliver step-by-step instructions.
6. Copy.ai
This AI copywriting tool can generate blog posts, social media captions, and marketing copy tailored to your brand voice. The AI learns from your existing content and feedback to improve over time. It’s my preferred tool to train on various writing styles, which it will then replicate with ease. This tool is essential for startups without dedicated copywriters.
I do want to caution that you still need to proof the copy from any of these tools. Also, remember, you will get out of it what you put into it, so don’t forget to provide instructions around your brand’s perspective, approach, voice and tone. The more of a “creative brief” you can provide any AI-powered content tool, the more unique and on-brand the output will be.
7. DALL-E 2
This tool from Open AI helps you to create unique images and digital art for your brand by simply describing what you want. This is great for social media posts, digital ads, infographics and more.
Not only is using this tool less expensive than hiring designers or assembling a photo shoot, it can generate product images and unique, ownable graphics. Dall-E 2 is also a terrific tool to design infographics.
8. Canva
Although Canva has been around for several years, it remains a favorite of mine. Not only does it offer a plethora of templates for brochures, social media content, infographics, marketing collateral, etc. It is now infused with what they are calling “Magic Design” which can transform simple bullets into beautiful PowerPoint presentations in seconds.
As someone who used to spend days and even weeks formatting decks for RFPs, speeches, sales and client presentations, I can’t emphasize enough the time savings you will find using Canva.
9. Synthesia
I am obsessed with this tool and can’t wait for the next versions. Before I tell you what this AI tool does, allow me to share a scenario with you. As a marketer, I can’t tell you how many times I have worked with a client’s product leader or subject matter expert capturing product demos in video, only to be told that person left the company and must now be wiped from all marketing materials. Synthesia solves this problem by offering virtual spokespeople.
You can choose from a wide range of life-like avatars and script them with branded backgrounds, presentations, videos, etc. The avatar can speak any language and will never say the wrong thing or resign. Videos can be rendered quickly eliminating costly video shoots (and reshoots). These avatars can be used for onboarding, company training, product demos and more.
The part of this tool I like the most isn’t quite ready for prime time as there are some issues with it. But, for those who still want to be the face and voice of their brand, Synthesia will transform you into a life-like avatar. You simply read a script in front of a green screen and you can become an avatar yourself. This makes for easy video creation. The only drawback is that your voice is not your own. It’s still a computer generates voice that doesn’t quite fit. But, I imagine future versions of Synthesia will capture your actual voice, so definitely keep an eye on this one.
With the exponential growth of AI, new generators are launching constantly, and it can be hard to keep up with new tools and technologies. I highly recommend you continue to test and learn and identify the right tools for your specific needs.
In the meantime, these tools are a great starting point for any lean startup looking to leverage generative AI. The time and cost savings will allow you to focus resources on your core business goals, while you let AI do the work for you.
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About The Author:
Jennifer Jones-Mitchell is a global marketer with nearly thirty years of experience working with the world’s top B2C and B2B brands. She has held senior leadership positions within agencies like Ogilvy, Porter Novelli and Publicis and served as the president of The Brandware Group for many years. Today, she is the founder of Human Driven AI, a knowledge hub and consultancy for brands seeking AI Transformation across their marketing, advertising and PR departments. www.HumanDrivenAI.com
