written by Fabiano
6 min read

How to Build a Team of AI Co-Founders and Reclaim Your Time & Joy

Structure

Quick Intro 

What’s the problem?

As an entrepreneur, do you ever feel like you're the entire marketing, sales, and product department all at once?

When I was working for Google we had access to an internal search tool that made it possible to search for all documents, articles, code snippets or employees within Google. It was basically a Google Search, just for internal information. What I liked the most about the tool was the option to search for a colleague and see the string of people who are above them in the organizational diagram. From direct manager up to CEO. I liked to click through it and look at all the different positions and roles along the way up to the top, to give a few examples: Customer Engineering Manager, Head of Sales Germany, Director of Partner Engineering, Vice President of Marketing, President of Engineering and so on. It was also interesting to see how many departments exist in such a big company. Completely independently working departments that probably didn't even know of each other's existence. 

When growing a startup, on the other hand, you're probably one to five people in the beginning. But still there are ‘departments’ or at least various different types of work you have to get done. You have to perform Marketing, Sales, Product Development, Customer Support and all the other areas a big company like Google has huge departments for. So how to use the scarce time wisely and dedicate enough time for each of these important areas?


Own background

When did I encounter the problem?

Since I’ve been working on the 40 Hour Entrepreneur ecosystem full-time, I have to juggle the different areas within a company. I have to win new founders for our membership club, deliver outstanding value to the existing members, build and think about new innovative ways on how to make an outstanding product experience, market the brand on social media and other platforms and strategize on the next steps towards achieving our mission. It’s a lot of context switching: from writing a newsletter about how to keep the balance as an entrepreneur to coding a pomodoro community timer to sending out personalized cold messages to founders on LinkedIn. It can be a bit of a stretch sometimes. Also, I feel like to get better in each of my ‘departments’ I need more time for execution and reflection than just a squeezed-in hour to get things done quickly. I feel unproductive, less effective and, most importantly, I learn less if I constantly switch between sales, content creation, product development and strategizing. At least that’s not how my brain functions the best. So I experimented a bit during my first months being a full-time entrepreneur. And carved out an approach that works very well for me as it involves deep work, a simple structure, clear results and (the best part) joy.


The Startup Departments Framework

How to build your team of AI Agents and reclaim your time & joy?

What if you can have your dedicated Marketing day? And what if you can use AI as your highly-skilled assistant to have more headspace for deep work on such a day? And what if you take on the mindset of a professional marketer during that day? I thought it’s worth testing this out. So I developed a simple three-pillar system that helps me bring those ideas to life.

Let’s get into the first pillar: having a dedicated day for each ‘department’ of your startup.
If you have a co-founder or small team, you’re most likely already dividing your responsibilities. However, you might still juggle between sales, marketing and content creation, or product development, user testing and exploration of new innovation. So the idea is to come up with a short list of your recurring focus areas (your ‘departments’). For me those are:

  • Strategizing (about the next steps within the 40HE ecosystem)
  • Connecting (and building relationships with entrepreneurs, potential partners and other players)
  • Building (an outstanding product for bootstrapped entrepreneurs)
  • Marketing (the product, vision and values)
  • Winning (new entrepreneurs for our vision) and
  • Delivering (an exceptional product and service to our existing members).

Knowing your focus areas, you can make the bold move of picking a day in the week that you block to fully focus on one of those areas. I’m currently trying to block full or half days for each area to create a focus state that helps me get more things done and stay in the flow within one subject. Of course, things often get busy and urgent, which prevents you from fully sticking to your dedicated focus days. But even if you do some urgent tasks from 9 to 11AM, for example, having the rest of the day to focus fully on one area can be powerful. Same with meetings: it may not work every week, but having in mind that Tuesdays are my Building days, I try to avoid meetings there and schedule them into my Connecting days instead. 

The second pillar is all about building your team of AI co-founders and assistants. ChatGPT and Gemini both offer to define custom agents to which you can assign a specific role, tasks and context to equip them for a focused exchange with you. Let’s say you have a clear content marketing strategy, a brand manifesto and set marketing goals for the next quarter. Feed all the information into your custom Gemini or ChatGPT agent and include a prompt that tells it to behave and support you as it were your Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). (For more information, I will link to the documentation on how to set up agents below.) Whenever you feel alone for an important decision, are searching for new ideas, or just want to get feedback on a specific piece of content, your CMO agent is there to support you equipped with relevant knowledge about your business. I set up an agent for each of my focus areas. Let’s say I have a strategy session each Monday morning or am coding a new community tool on my Building Tuesday. In one open tab in my browser there is always one of the dedicated AI agents ready to provide relevant strategic feedback, code snippets based on my GitHub repository, or other relevant support.  

The last pillar within my system is the factor of joy. You're growing a business you truly care about. And you have the opportunity to spend time working on it. If you're a purpose-driven entrepreneur, this is probably the best situation you can think of. Besides the tough times filled with uncertainty and stress, there have to be the good days. The days in which you feel fulfilled about what you’re working on. The days in which you deeply enjoy the journey. If you don’t have them, what is it all about then? So I try to include joy in my system in the form of working rituals. Let’s assume you have defined Wednesday as your dedicated day for product innovation. The advantage of having such a dedicated day is that you can fully dive into the mindset of being an outstanding innovator. Establish a routine that strengthens this mindset. Might be a certain café you work at on those days that sparks your creative spirit. Or a specific desk setup, coffee variation, dress code, workout break, co-working partner or Spotify playlist. The important thing is that it triggers a sense of joy and excitement about the work you’re going to focus on that day. You’ll notice how it will feel easier to enter a flow state and to awaken your specific working personality for that area, which will then create outstanding work.

Framework to Define Your Startup Departments, AI Agents and Working Rituals
The Startup Departments Framework


Tools I use for the AI Agents

Links and Tipps

Inspiration I used for this article

Books, Podcasts, Articles, Quotes

List of related blog articles from 40 Hour Entrepreneur


Community Space

Your comments, ideas, feedback

  • How did you overcome the initial chaos of juggling multiple roles before creating a more structured week for yourself?
  • What was the first "Aha!" moment you had with a custom AI agent where it genuinely felt like you had a new team member?
  • What are some prompts or custom instructions you've found most helpful in getting your AI Agents to be truly effective? 
  • What's the most effective "working ritual" you've established that helps you enter a state of deep focus and joy?
  • ...

Join the discussion below. Or write me an email to fabiano@40hourentrepreneur.com