AI Prompt of the Week
Sometimes it takes longer to use GenAI to “save time,” than it would have taken just to do the task manually. That happened today.
We wanted to extract some text from an image, for today’s newsletter. (Image at bottom.)
Started out with this prompt:
PROMPT” “Pls extract the text from this image. it’s in the format “Ch <chapter #>] AI Power User – <discipline> (<author name>) – <publication date>. Give me only the <discipline>s, in a sentence, separated by commas. Output only this.”
No me gusta. So tried to separate them:
PROMPT: “Pls extract the text from this image.:”
The first part worked fine! The second part … didn’t. We played around for a bit (since GenAI had the extracted text already), but finally settled on this quick hack:
PROMPT: only need the text in between “-” and “(“
We should have tried that to begin with (instead of getting all fancy). THAT prompt gave us the following output. “Education, Product Manager, Legal, HR, Recruiting, Marketing, Dev, Leader, Small Biz Owner, Finance.”
Remember, friends: Prompt, Iterate, Validate.
1/27/25
We want to help you become an AI Power Users! During this rodeo, we thought it might be fun to give you examples from several disciplines, on how folks are using AI to superpower their careers.
Last week we covered Education, covering the stories of Americus (a university professor) and Sabrina (a middle school teacher). In upcoming weeks we’re looking at tackling (you guessed it): Legal, HR, Recruiting, Marketing, Dev, Leader, Small Biz Owner, and Finance. Today we’ll tackle Product Management (PM).
Do you have your own preference of what order we should tackle them? Any specific scenarios you want us to cover? Did we forget anything? If you have opinions, pls just respond to this email. Since we want to make this newsletter as valuable as possible to you, we really appreciate any feedback you have! We read it all.
So, both of us occasionally put on our PM hat. For example, Dona just worked with some colleagues at Microsoft to put on a series of “AgentConf” events around the world – the first one went off swimmingly last Monday from Johannesburg, South Africa. Jeremiah has started to work on two new ventures, one an AI-based startup in the edtech space, and the other one an AI-based company focusing on agriculture in Africa & India. We don’t only act as PMs in our day jobs! We often put “product” hats for our side hustles – our dress line, our shirt/hoodie line, potentially a fragrance business, and even 3rd Rodeo AI itself! You can bet we use GenAI to help us out.
We’ve found that many people have to do “product” type things, regardless of their discipline (not just someone w/ a PM title) or industry (not just tech). So let’s run through a few ways that AI can help you out. We’ll use a made up example that’s not far off – helping non-traditional entrepreneurs launch a successful small business. We’ll call it “Boxes & Foxes!”
Since the prompt process can get LONG, we’ll put the prompts we use (and responses we get back) into a webpage so you can follow the full journey if you’re interested.
Here we go!
PROMPT: You’re an expert in starting businesses. I’m a product manager, considering helping non-traditional entrepreneurs launch a successful small business. I’d like to consider the rough framework – (1) does this idea align with my goals?, (2) if so, do I have the skills / assets / resources to make this a good use of time?, (3) if so, what customers might benefit most from this sort of a product [e.g. segment and target one group] ?, (4) what specific problem might this help them solve [e.g. pick one specific problem] ?, and (5) ideate a few potential solutions for this problem – then pick one. For (5), I would prefer an tech-based solution, but am open to other ideas if they’d be a better fit. Once we’ve picked a potential solution to try out, (6) help me think through the MVP we might consider using to test this idea, and (7) help me think through what tasks I need to do first, and what other skills/stakeholders I might need to bring in. Finally, (8) help me think through how I can take this entire process “into the real world,” and do research with actual people to seek to validate this idea. For this entire process, please ask me 1 to 3 questions one by one for each of the parts 1 through 9, and wait for my response before proceeding.
SUMMARY: To help non-traditional entrepreneurs, I decided to focus on rural communities as my target group, aligning with my mission to empower underrepresented individuals to improve their lives and communities through entrepreneurship. Rural communities often face barriers like limited access to high-speed internet, fewer local resources, and difficulty reaching broader markets. I chose to develop Rural Business Launch Kits as my MVP, which include offline-friendly guides, budgeting tools, and marketing strategies tailored to low-connectivity environments and localized business opportunities. These kits will be distributed through a lightweight online portal with offline download options or via partnerships with local organizations. To validate the idea, I will collaborate with rural development agencies, local chambers of commerce, and community networks, conducting surveys and interviews to ensure the kits address real needs. By launching in a small pilot region and iterating based on feedback, I aim to create a scalable solution that helps rural entrepreneurs turn their ideas into sustainable businesses, bridging the resource gap.
Now, if you’ll follow (or wade through) the full interaction, you’ll notice that we obviously rushed this to show you the rough outlines of how you can use this. We didn’t really challenge any of the ChatGPT suggestions, and we had our tool suggest categories, assign scores, and make recommendations. You’re going to want to go much further in your thinking before you use this to launch a meaningful product. But you can move much quicker with AI at your side – and we tried to show you some of the ways to do that, right in the prompts we used.
Once we got through the initial “product sense” part of this work, we’d need to do the thing – which in many cases means bringing along your team for the ride (even if it’s just a team of two, like it often is for us).
GenAI can help you with this work, as well. Here’s a quick example:
PROMPT: Describe the PM tools I’ll need to drive this project forward, including PRDs and a product roadmap, and how I’ll use each of them.
SUMMARY:
- The PRD ensures everyone understands the vision and scope of the project.
- The roadmap provides a clear timeline and goals for each phase.
- Task management tools keep daily operations organized and on track.
- Feedback tools gather actionable insights from rural users, driving iteration.
- Analytics tools measure engagement and success metrics.
- Collaboration tools streamline communication with your team and partners.
Now, it’s pretty easy to see how we could use GenAI to help us iterate on each of these PM tools. Again – very not a replacement for doing the job of a PM (you will have to make some tough decisions, help herd the cats of multiple stakeholders, etc). That said – if you use GenAI as a thought partner, you can run through multiple options MUCH faster and get to a passible first draft in minutes/hours instead of days/weeks.
We hope this was useful! Please let us know if you’d make any suggestions, and we can update this one. And tell us which disciplines you’d like to tackle next!
<3 Dona & Jeremiah
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