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Hi Reader, This month on Automate Yourself, I sat down with Yves Junqueira, a former Google SRE and founder of Pipeboard. We explored how automation is transforming what's possible for solopreneurs and small teams, and Yves shared insights from his journey building AI tools that help businesses do more with less. What we covered: - The automation mindset from Google: How Yves's SRE background shaped his approach to building systems that scale without constant human intervention - Empowering solopreneurs with AI: Why this moment is uniquely powerful for individuals and small teams to compete with larger organizations - Baking best practices into tools: How to build AI solutions that guide users toward good outcomes, not just fast ones Key takeaway: The best automation doesn't just save time. It encodes your best thinking so you don't have to remember it every time. Question to sit with: What's one task you're doing manually that, if automated, would free you to focus on higher-value work?
Connect with Yves: LinkedIn | Pipeboard Let's Chillaborate, Dina Founder, Chill Labs |
Chill Labs is a boutique consultancy helping companies think strategically, solve business problems, and streamline operations utilizing Product Management, Software Engineering principles and AI. Combining a decade of experience running complex, globally distributed software products with expertise in product discovery, user research, and strategy, Chill Labs helps companies build products that users want and do so in a way that supports growth and scale. Dina Levitan, Founder and Principal at Chill Labs, based out of Seattle, WA, brings over 15 years of experience as a product and technical leader ranging from startups to companies like Google.
Hi Reader, This month's idea comes from an Arthur Brooks talk I heard. One line stuck with me: never make the mistake of meeting a complex need with a complicated tool. In AI terms: it's very easy to start using a powerful tool to solve problems that aren't actually tool problems. What I'm Noticing When things feel uncertain (a hard decision, messy collaboration, fear of getting it wrong), we tend to reach for AI the same way people reach for their phone: as a way to calm the discomfort....
Hi Reader, This month marks 4 years since I started Chill Labs and went fractional. What I’m Noticing It wasn’t because I wanted less work. It was because I wanted better, more interesting work. Work with people I choose. Going fractional was my first act of “automating myself” as an entrepreneur. Not with AI, but by redesigning how I work. Now, I use them in tandem: I work with a portfolio of clients, and I automate the parts of work that don’t need me. That’s the Automate Yourself...
Hi Reader, You don’t learn this stuff by reading more. You learn it by doing. And doing it with other people. What I’m Noticing AI is moving fast, and a lot of people are trying to keep up all on their own. Solo learning looks productive. New tools, new prompts, new threads. But it often turns into parallel play: everyone is experimenting separately, and nobody is getting meaningfully better together. I see this in teams all the time. Five people “trying AI”. Each person learning different...