How Modern Startups Can Leverage AI for Faster Growth

At startup, every business has to face challenges with its limited resources, small teams, and the need to scale in a competitive market. In this scenario, relying on traditional ways can take a lot of time, effort, and feel costly. On the other side, leveraging AI can change that story.

AI solutions are becoming tremendously popular among business owners. According to research by Deloitte, about 78% of businessmen planned to expand their investment in AI in the future. This is because AI can help to: 

• Increase productivity.
• Speed up different tasks.
• Achieve better growth.
• Reduce overall project costs.

And more…

In this article, we’ll explain some powerful ways through which modern startups can use AI to drive faster growth. Let’s explore each method.

1. Faster Market Research & Consumer Insights

Startups conduct market research and get customer insights to gain a clear picture of their target audience (the people they are going to target). Traditional ways to understand customers include: 

• Interviewing customers manually.
• Visiting the focus groups to analyze.
• Getting help from hiring agencies.

And so on…

Although these methods are helpful, they take weeks and, in some cases, up to even months to complete the process. For the startups, this is slower and a costly process. In this scenario, AI has brought us innovative AI tools that modern startups can leverage to quickly analyze.

• Customer behavior.
• Market trends.
• Competitor activities in real time. 

AI tools will help businesses process vast datasets from social media, reviews, and other online forums and deliver accurate insights about consumers’ behaviors, needs, and preferences.

Recommended AI Tool:

One recommended tool that modern startups can use to track market trends and collect accurate insights is Crunchbase AI Insights. This tool uses AI-powered data to quickly find market opportunities, track competitors, and provide a clear picture of industry trends.

Here’s the Pictorial Demo of the Tool for Better Understanding:

2. Making Accurate Business Data-Driven Growth

Whether it’s a startup or a developed business, everyone has to deal with tons of data that mostly includes customer interactions, sales figures, total production, etc. This data is used to make future growth decisions. 

Traditionally, startups used to rely on gut instinct, basic spreadsheets, and small surveys that involved manual efforts. This was not just a slow process, but also inaccurate and prone to human errors.

Today, with the help of Artificial Intelligence, modern startups can turn these methods into fast and accurate ones. AI has developed several tools for this purpose; one such example is Qlik Sense.

It quickly analyzes the sales performance and customer interactions. After that, it accurately predicts the future trend and uncovers hidden patterns that help modern startups to make smart, informed, and accurate growth decisions.

3. Helps to Automate Repetitive Tasks

Startups often have to operate with a small team, which makes the workflow inefficient and difficult to handle. In this scenario, it becomes a challenge for startups to deal with repetitive tasks like; 

• Managing accounts.
• Sending emails.
• Crafting emails.
• Running marketing campaigns.
• Scheduling meetings.

And so on….

These tasks take a lot of time, require startups to hire more employees, and demand to spend higher costs. Here, modern startups can get help from AI developed solutions to automatically manage their repeating tasks in the minimum time.

For Example;

• To automate meetings, startups can use Calendly
• To automatically manage tasks or projects, use Motion (an AI tool).
• To automate email campaigns, startups can utilize HubSpot with AI.

Here’s the pictorial demo of the Calendly AI tool:

All in all, using AI-developed solutions/tools can help modern startups instantly get their tasks done. Ultimately, they can play a significant role in faster growth.

4. Handle the Queries Asked By the Customer

Answering the queries of customers perfectly is another challenge for startups. In the past, this used to be done by human chat support agents, who took a lot of time to find and write the relevant answer. In the modern era, that practice is not going to work when almost every person is busy and has no time to wait.

Let’s see how modern startups can overcome this with AI. Thankfully! Artificial intelligence has developed AI tools that are capable of instantly generating clear and to-the-point answers to the questions provided. One such tool is the AI Answer Generator. With this, modern startups can generate clear and relevant answers for any query, which can then be used for brainstorming or directly sent to the customers.

For Example;

We generated a concise answer for the question below with the help of the AI answer generator.

Our Question:

“I want to buy your product, but can you provide a demo of how it works before?”

Here’s the answer we got:

“Thank you for your interest in our product! We offer personalized demos to showcase its functionality and benefits. Please visit our website to schedule a convenient time, or let us know your availability, and we’ll be happy to arrange a demonstration. This will help you see how our product can meet your needs effectively.”

Demonstration:

Tool source: https://www.summarizer.org/ai-answer-generator

5. Building the Right Products for Customers

For a startup business, it is very difficult to build the right product at the right time, as it can define success or failure. Traditionally, startups used to rely on their:

• Guesswork.
• Some trial and error approaches.
• Manual ways of deciding the customer's needs.

These methods primarily resulted in the loss of resources, waste of precious time, and delayed product launches. Or, sometimes, result in products that don’t truly meet the requirements of customers.

On the contrary, modern startups can eliminate these challenges and risks with the help of AI. A has completely changed the process by automatically analyzing market trends, customer reviews, social media conversions, and competitors. As a result, AI gives valuable data about what the customers actually need.  Additionally, AI enables modern startups to;

• Test their product virtually before launching it.
• Determine what the most wanted features are in the product.
• Predict how many people will adopt the product.

And so on….

Here are some AI solutions that you can use to streamline product development and launch processes:

• MonkeyLearn: This AI-based tool is useful for modern startups to instantly analyze customer feedback, reviews, surveys, etc., to know product improvement opportunities.
• Datarobot: It is a no-code platform that uses AI technology to assist startups in running predictive modeling, testing product ideas, and providing predictions for the adoption rates.

Similarly, startups can leverage other AI solutions to automate and streamline different tasks that are necessary for product development.

6. Precise Financial Planning & Risk Management

We all know that for startups, every penny or dollar counts due to a limited budget. Before making every growth strategy, startups make financial planning. A small financial mistake, rise of unexpected expenses, or poor budget distribution can negatively affect the entire growth journey.

Startups with traditional financial planning usually depend on;

• spreadsheets,.
• Manual bookkeeping.
• Static forecasts.

Despite this, they also have some direction but fail to capture the inaccuracy, uncertainty, and fast-changing dynamics of startup environments. This is where modern startups can adopt AI to make a major shift. Doing so, they can make data-driven and accurate financial decisions. Today’s AI algorithms are capable of:

• Analyzing the spending patterns.
• Identifying the financial risks that may arise.
• Tracking revenue flows.

This helps founders to allocate their resources/budget wisely, reduce the risks of overspending, and keep their startups financially stable.

One such tool that uses AI to help modern startups do precise financial planning is discussed below.

• Planful: This one is an AI-supported tool that allows founders to do accurate financial planning and forecasting. Plus, it helps to predict the future financial risks, warning startups to get ready before the actual issue comes.

Conclusion

Traditional or old ways are no longer a good option for modern startups. Artificial intelligence-based tools are a necessity for productivity, accuracy, and scaling businesses in the competitive market.

Today, AI has developed a number of tools that are efficient in streamlining different tasks of businesses. By leveraging them, modern startups can manage finances efficiently, improve their customer support, automate repetitive tasks, and identify the needs of customers more precisely.

These capabilities of AI not just save time and effort but also the money of businesses. Additionally, it reduces risks and increases working mechanisms, which ultimately lead to faster business growth. 

FAQs

Is it costly for startups to adopt AI?

No, adopting AI is not necessarily expensive for start-up businesses. Many AI solutions offer free trials or charge less than manual solutions, making them affordable for all small startups.

Can startups use AI to replace their human employees?

Artificial Intelligence can’t replace employees, but supports them to stay more productive by accurately handling various repetitive tasks. And the teams of startups can then better focus on creative and strategic tasks and customer relationships.

How quickly can AI show results for startups?

AI’s results are faster than manual methods and can be shown within weeks.