How to stay on top of AI trends without wasting your time on shiny products that don't deliver.

The bold over-promises of AI SaaS companies affect us all, but early stage founders are especially vulnerable as they are time starved and need to innovate to stand out.

Hey Substack, cheers from Barcelona!

I’m here for the week before heading to Amsterdam, where I’ll be based with my partner until August 6th.

Ping me if you’re around and wanna grab coffee in Ams.

Sant Cugat del Vallès is a beautiful small town in the hills just north of BCN.

The market is flooded with AI tools promising massive time and cost savings across sales, marketing, customer success - the list goes on.

Wondering if you can automate something?

There’s probably a 6-month old SaaS told designed to do just that.

Vibe-coding, vibe-marketing, eventually we’ll vibe-anything.

It’s a bit of a catch-22:

You see a tool and crave efficiency, but suspect it’s vaporware. You need to put in the time to receive potential benefits, but you don’t want to waste your time on another founder’s AI hype marketing plan.

You could easily spend half your week booking demos and testing tools that claim to revolutionize your operations.

Most of those hours would likely end up being frustrating wastes of time - just like when non-technical people try to "vibe code" on Lovable/Cursor and then get stuck in loops or build something with massive vulnerability issues.

So, instead of chasing every shiny new tool, this is what’s been saving me a ton of time:

1. I've joined two AI-focused founder communities where founders and builders share real-world testing results and use cases daily.
   

   1. When I see people achieved tangible results automating something, I can decide to start using a tool without the risk that it won’t work.
      

   2. If I get stuck along the way, I can simply ask my peers for help. Simple.
      

   3. Shoutout to Alex Lieberman’s Tenex AI WhatsApp group, ping him to join.
      

2. I'm building my own tools in areas I have strong expertise - solving my own problems while knowing that millions of people have the same problem around the world.
   

   1. This helps me understand where the challenges and opportunities are, plus it feels great to develop your own solutions and see users finding value in them.

This simple approach leverages collective learnings without pushing you to invest your time. When you spot a genuine trend or use case that matters for your workflows, then you can jump in knowing it’ll be worth it.

For my fellow early-stage founders: be skeptical of AI promises and tap into community wisdom.

Focus on what creates value right now, not what might work someday.