Notion featured article - 7/10

📆 Heads up, Toronto

We’re hosting a pitch event in Toronto on Thursday, August 21.

Here’s the thing. As a founder, the fundraising process can be incredibly frustrating. ​​

It takes an amazing amount of effort just to get an investor to talk to you.

​​​​And then sometimes the investor never gets back to you. ​​Or if they do, oftentimes their rejection doesn't explain why they're not interested.

​​​​This makes it hard for the founder to know how to improve. ​​We think this stinks.

​​​​That's why, on August 21, we're hosting a live pitch event for founders.

No charge to attend, just reserve your spot here.

📰 Today's Edition

Running a startup means wearing 20 hats, trying to move at the speed of light, and having basically no budget to hire help.

Sigh. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just clone yourself?

Well, turns out you kind of can. AI can get us pretty darn close.

A couple weeks ago, we sat down with Shir Yahosua, who leads Notion's AI engineering team. And while Notion's customer-facing AI tools are pretty cool, it was Shir's internal use of AI that got us most excited.

She's basically turned her team into productivity superstars using simple (yes, actually simple) AI tricks that any startup can steal.

So… we thought we'd share. Below are 9 tactical ways you can leverage AI to save your team hours of work every week. And here are templates you can copy and paste into your own workflows.

Real quick before we get started: Notion’s Business Plan has a boatload of AI features built in. And they’re offering it for up to 6 months at no charge. You can get it here. 

Ok, on to the article.

1. Turn Your Meetings from Time Sucks into Actual Conversations

Let's be real – meetings are already painful. But cleaning up and sending out notes afterward? That's just cruel.

Shir found a dead-simple fix: Let AI handle the note-taking for every single meeting she has. One-on-ones, candidate interviews, all-hands – everything.

The magic: She can actually engage in conversations instead of scribbling notes. Plus, AI cleans everything up afterward, so it's crystal clear who's doing what and when.

How to steal this:

• Set up AI meeting notes (Notion does this beautifully)

• Use it for every meeting – no exceptions

• Focus on being present instead of being a human stenographer

Real impact: Shir says this is a game-changer during interviews. She picks up on subtle cues and body language instead of stressing about documentation. Then uses those notes to craft thoughtful follow-ups.

2. Turn Status Update Marathons into 10-Minute Decision Sessions

Standups should be quick decision-making sessions, not 30-minute status report snoozefests. But when everyone's juggling ten projects, it's easy to fall into the update marathon trap.

Shir's team uses AI to pre-digest all the status stuff.

How it works:

• Create a dedicated Slack channel for team updates

• Train AI to extract key updates from the channel

• Compile everything into a shared doc

• Everyone reads updates before the meeting

• Use standup time only for decisions that need discussion

Result: 30-minute meetings become 10-minute sessions where only the important stuff gets airtime.

3. Build a "Where the Heck Is Everyone?" Tracker

This might be Shir's favorite simple AI hack: an out-of-office tracker that actually works.

Anyone on her team can type "Hey I'm sick today" into Slack, and boom – the AI bot updates the team calendar automatically.

Why this matters: When you're running lean, knowing exactly who's available without playing detective is huge. No more "Wait, where is Sarah today?" moments.

How to build it:

• Create a bot that monitors your team channels

• Train it to recognize out-of-office phrases

• Have it auto-update a shared calendar

• Never manually track availability again

4. Triage Customer Feedback Like a Pro

When you're small, every piece of customer feedback is gold. 

But sorting through it… that's where founders go to die.

Notion's AI system triages incoming feedback and automatically routes it to the right person, product team, or bug database.

The setup:

• AI categorizes feedback as it comes in

• Auto-routes items to the right team member

• Sets priority levels based on content

Impact: Critical bugs get immediate attention while feature requests get properly logged – all without manual sorting.

5. Stop Playing "Where Did I Put That Thing?"

Finding information across your company's scattered knowledge base is a massive time sink. Notion's AI blocks feature solves this beautifully.

Now their team can ask questions in plain English and get answers from anywhere – Slack, email, docs, wherever the info lives.

How to steal this:

• Connect AI to all your information sources

• Train it to understand relationships between different data

• Create a simple interface for plain-language questions

• Watch your team spend less time searching, more time doing

6. Never Stare at a Blank Page Again

Here's the productivity shift that changed everything for Shir: moving from creator to editor.

Instead of grinding through data to create first drafts, she lets AI do the heavy lifting. Then she swoops in to edit and refine, saving hours every month.

Use AI for first drafts of:

• Documentation

• Email responses

• Marketing copy

• Code scaffolding

• Meeting agendas

• Performance reviews

The mindset shift: Focus human brainpower on refining and improving rather than staring at blank pages. 

This will transform your workday.

7. Make Smarter Feature Decisions (Even When Everything Feels Important)

When your team is small and budget's tight, deciding what to build next can feel impossible. Everything seems critical.

Notion uses AI to analyze their options against consistent criteria (they use usefulness, frequency, and value).

How it works:

• Feed AI your success criteria

• Have it analyze potential features against these standards

• Generate recommendations with supporting data

• Use this as input for human decision-making

This doesn't replace your judgment, but it gives you a consistent framework when you're moving at startup speed.

9. Build a Culture Where Everyone's an AI Detective

Maybe most importantly, Shir created a culture where the whole team constantly experiments with new AI tools. It's not just one person dragging everyone along – it's collective excitement.

The result: Notion's engineering team continuously finds new ways to eliminate grunt work and focus on what matters most.

How to build this culture:

• Allocate time for AI experimentation (even 2 hours a week)

• Share successful workflows with everyone

• Celebrate both wins and interesting failures

• Build a shared library of effective prompts

When everyone's hunting for AI opportunities, you'll discover dozens of small optimizations that add up to massive time savings.

Start Small, Win Big

You don't need a dedicated AI team to implement these ideas. Pick one or two that'll give you back a few hours each week:

• Drowning in meetings? → AI note-taking

• Buried in customer feedback? → AI triaging

• Can't find anything? → AI information retrieval

• Always writing from scratch? → AI first drafts

• Team coordination chaos? → Out-of-office tracker

Here’s the secret sauce: start small and measure the impact. Then gradually expand your AI toolkit.

Because it turns out… the really small implementations often have the most massive impact.

Small but mighty,
Kera from Hustle Fund

PS: By the way, Notion is offering up to 6 months of the Notion Business Plan for exactly zero dollars. If you’re looking to implement some of these AI shortcuts, here is your answer. 

Everything is built-in (and so easy to use). 

PPS: Here are some templates you can use if you want to implement some of this stuff.

🎥 Watch This