Episode 289 / Anuj Adhiya / Techstars / Expert-in-Residence, Growth
Harnessing AI Ops to Free Up Time for Creativity
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Anuj Adhiya is an “accidental” growth strategist and consultant who specialises in B2B SaaS growth despite having a background in chemistry and biochemistry. Nevertheless, his work has led him to help all sorts of teams scale effectively and he is now looking at the merits of automating and outsourcing “busy work” to AI to allow founders to spend time on the creative works that sets them apart from their competitors.
According to various studies, founders lose anywhere between 10% and 20% of their time on repetitive tasks. This leads to them having less bandwidth for strategic thinking and can also drive to burnout, long with a slower path to profitability.
However, the best data driven marketers put decision making and hypotheses first, says Anuj. If you focus on the things that matter, you can outsource the “busy work” and “outpace your competitors by building smarter and faster systems.”
In the startup world, growth is all about constantly trying new things, iterating quickly, and refining data as you go. This is where AI and automation can really help, reducing the burden on founders: “If AI can do your operational heavy lifting, what does that now enable you to do in terms of growth?”
Tune in to the podcast to hear how Anuj intends to use this shiny new object and to get his top tips for successful growth in data driven marketing.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Anuj Adhiya 0:00
Let's just take some nice big swings, because that's where the real learning comes from.
Speaker 0:04
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Tom Ollerton 0:43
Hello and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative, the creative effectiveness ad tech platform. And this is a weekly show about the future of data driven marketing. And I'm the lucky guy who gets to interview all of these very senior, very interesting, well practiced, well learned marketers about what's coming next. And this week is absolutely no different. I'm on a call with Anuj Adhiya, who is expert in residence growth at TechStars. So a really unusual job title and character for this podcast, certainly for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do. Can you give us a bit of background?
Anuj Adhiya 1:22
Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me on and I am what most people would call an accidental growth strategist and consultant, because I have degrees in chemistry and biochemistry, and yet I find myself specializing in B to B SaaS for the most part. So I work with startups from ones that I found early product market fit all the way through later stage startups looking to drive sustainable growth. And so just through a lot of practice, I've developed a background in product led strategy, experimentation and data driven decision making, where we've used all of these things to help companies align product marketing and sales for maximum impact. So my work has spanned hands on, consulting, coaching, heads of growth and everything in between to help teams scale effectively. And I've been in the space since 2015 and somehow authored even growth hacking for dummies. And so that's essentially led to a lot of initiatives that blend strategic insight and tactical execution for startups.
Tom Ollerton 2:36
So are you a marketing book reader? And if so, is there a specific book that you could recommend?
Anuj Adhiya 2:43
Yes, I do selectively, but I've also realized that some of the best marketing books are not marketing books. And so my favorite one is an autobiography, and that is by somebody who used to work with the famous Oppenheimer, a guy called Dr Richard Feynman, and he wrote an autobiography called, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman," and the entire model of the story of his life, and it's a fascinating book for anybody interested. I highly recommend you read it. The entire moral of his story was try anything once, what do you have to lose? And that was the philosophy through which he ruled his life. And I was greatly inspired by that to break my own personal biases and maybe trepidations for trying new things out. And as I thought about it, you know, yes, it was a book really about personal growth, but it's as much about growth. I think that applies in a startup context as well, because that's really what all of this fancy growth, growth hacking stuff really is, right? It's just constantly trying new things, and some things work and some things don't work, but now, you know, right, but it does take a level of freeing your mind, and it takes a level of not listening to what is or what has been done, or best practices, and just doing things. And I am a giant fan of that approach, as much in life, as it is with with startups, is, let's just take some nice, big swings, because that's where the real learning comes from. So "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman," that is the book.
Tom Ollerton 4:31
So that's a great book recommendation and some some good advice for personal growth and the growth marketer. But I'm looking for a kind of practical tip, a practical bit of advice for someone to instantly become a better data driven marketer. So you must have teams of people coming to you, going, how do you scale this thing? What do you find yourself sharing most often?
Anuj Adhiya 4:49
So I find myself telling them a few things. One is to focus on decisions, not just data, right? Because too many marketers, they chase vanity metrics or overload themselves with dashboards without a clear sense of what actions to take. The best data driven marketers, I think, start with the right questions, right? What decisions need to be made, right? What actions will move the needle then, then they work backwards to find the most relevant data right? And so I always find myself asking when anybody tells me to do anything, or if people in various companies are saying we should do X, my question back is, what is your hypothesis, right? And I find nine out of 10 times people just walk away because they don't really have one. It was something some influencer said on LinkedIn, and that's why they said they should do it right. So I think if you start with the hypothesis and the questions and the decisions, I think you come away much smarter with what needs to be done than what you learn from it and what goes along with it. And I think what allows for it is that allows you to prioritize speed over perfection. Because, especially in startups, a good enough answer today is more valuable than a perfect answer next month, right? So building lightweight experiments, iterating quickly, refining your data as you go. Huge ability to just ship and learn faster than your competition, which really, I think, is what makes most startups that do succeed succeed is just their Execution Velocity, right? So those two things, and I wrap all of that up, you know, through the lens of, never lose sight of the user, right? Because data is only as valuable as the insights it drives, right? So I think the best marketers combine quantitative analysis with qualitative understanding. You know, talking to customers, digging into friction points, you know, using data to validate or challenge what they hear, right? So those are my core tenets.
Tom Ollerton 7:04
It's interesting. I'm just completing a book about data driven marketing, and combining how you use data and creativity with advertising, and speaking to all of the growth specialists, that is the common theme. It's Yes, you have a qualitative observance of the user, and then you use quant to kind of drill into that and test your hypothesis. So it's great to hear that again. And that sounds like that. Sounds like experience well, in over lots of different projects, but we're going to move on to your shiny new object now, which is one we've never had before, which is AI growth ops. So I know all those things mean individually, but stick them all together. Can you what is that? And why is it your shiny new object?
Anuj Adhiya 7:46
Right, so, you know, I've been digging into some inflection points, and you know, one of the ones that struck me, of course, you know, AI is a thing, right? And it's a it's an actual fundamental shift. But you know, most startups, I believe, see AI as a way to enhance their product, and I think that's fine, but it's not where the real growth opportunity lies. So I think the real power of AI is internal. So AI can automate decision making, it can optimize experimentation, and, most importantly, it can accelerate execution, right? So it's not about impressing users with flashy features. It's about outpacing your competitors by building smarter and faster systems. Because again, I'll go back to the point I was just making speed of execution and learning is all that matters. Because really, startups are nothing but hypothesis testing machines, right? And the faster you learn, the greater your odds of being able to outpace your competition. It's as simple as that, right? So I've been digging more into you know, how do we now start to put those sorts of systems in place that let us accelerate execution and take away all of that mundane stuff or non value added stuff that we do, and just focus more on decisions and execution, versus thinking of AI as this. Oh yeah, it's my product with flashy new X.
Tom Ollerton 9:19
So let me understand this. So in terms of the shiny new object would be, is this like a person or a function or a person under technology? So you so the AI growth ops, is that something that plugs into a stack? Help me understand what specifically that is?
Anuj Adhiya 9:32
Yeah, so, so I do think it's, it's, it's a combination of technology and and then people, right? So, you know, so which so the conclusion I was coming to, right? That especially in 2025, I think manual growth tasks have become sort of a critical vulnerability for startups, right? So because, you know, imagine like a head of growth or a founder spending hours each week compiling lead lists or juggling spreadsheets of AB testers URLs or, you know, updating CRM fields, right? You know, whereas, you know, there could be a competitor there who's just adopted an AI powered internal workflow, right, to launch campaigns faster, to qualify leads automatically or to gain real time insights, right? Right? And that's what's been freeing up, you know, the startup leaders to devote more time to product innovation and vision, right? So I think the difference is sort of automating your own internal growth operations as you scale rapidly without drowning in busy work. If that makes sense.
Tom Ollerton 10:38
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And so you speaking to a founder himself who's responsible for growth to a greater or lesser degree. So you're saying that you're, you're freeing up time of a sales involved founder, right? Or is this going to work for a scale up, or, you know, a blue chip?
Anuj Adhiya 11:30
Yeah, I think it works across the board, right? So let me give you a few examples of some sort of manual growth bottlenecks, you know, I have found through some research, right? That you know clearly there's a time sink problem, right? And I think McKinsey did a study, I think, in 2023 that founders lose up to 10 to 20% of their week on repetitive tasks like data entry and reporting, right? So as a consequence, you have less bandwidth for strategic thinking and product iteration, right? Or there was a study last year by BCG about how manual processes can inflate customer acquisition costs by 15 to 25% right, compared to competitors who use AI products, right? So, of course, the natural consequence of that is you have a higher burn rate and you have a slower path to profitability, right? I mean, similarly, right? I mean, I think startups that rely on manual AB testing as an example, I think they would just naturally be running fewer experiments than ones that have adopted AI based systems, right? So as a consequence, you miss out on really rapid feedback loops and iterative growth, right? And again, these are just a few examples of the kinds of bottlenecks I don't think many startups have yet come to fully appreciate.
Tom Ollerton 12:46
And so what you're talking about here, maybe I'm missing the point. I'm being overly blunt here is that, yeah, so if you've got a founder who's going on to Apollo, pulling up a list of potential leads, and then cutting and pasting those leads into a an automated email outreach system, and then, you know, looking at the report, and then reporting back to investors, or whatever it is. Is that what you mean? Is that, like, surely an AI could lift, you know, whether BCG are right or not. It sounds like a lot, but I certainly don't spend, spend 2% doing manual stuff, but, you know, maybe I'm different. So, yeah, is that what you mean? Or is there, are there other things outside of the, you know, the hardcore outreach sales, function stuff?
Anuj Adhiya 13:21
Yeah. So I think you can apply it to pretty much any operation across the board, right? So I think, I think it's the way I am looking at it is, it's about sort of systemic transformation of your internal workflows, right? And I break that down into sort of three, three pillars for myself. One is just basic automation. Just offload repetitive tasks and whatever that means in your context, right? Whether that's lead scoring, experimental setup, data cleaning whatever that may be, right? Just offload that to AI, right? Which then allows you, I think, to me, the most important thing, which is allows you to really integrate all of these pieces into your business. And what I mean by that, I think it allows you to break down data silos, and, you know, for a startup or a scale up, you know, you can start to build much better unified dashboards, right? So you don't have to keep toggling between different tools, just to get you know this, this kind of the same piece of information looked through a different context, right? But if you do that, that then allows you to start to learn, I think much better, right? Because you can continually refine your resource or allocation using real time data, right? So I'm sort of poking at this through the lens of, if AI can handle your operational heavy lifting, what does that now enable you to do in terms of growth?
Tom Ollerton 14:55
That's interesting. And you talk, it's so seductive. I'm like, Yeah, I need to do that. My brain's like every time on this podcast when I'm only gonna talk to them, like, Oh, I've got to start doing that tomorrow. It's a brilliant so that's inspiring, but I love this theory is that the thing to get drawn towards is automation is to like, outsourcing, right? Like, don't, don't do anything that's repetitive. And you said that frees up time for creative and strategic thought and product development. And, you know, finding blue water instead of reds, as they they say. But how do you see it working when it comes to inspiration, right? Sure, you can operationalize your growth ops, and you can make your subject headers of your email like 5% more efficient, and your landing pages better, and, you know, move your call to action button around, and all the rest of it, very important. Then, not discounting that for a minute, but ultimately, the strategic, tangential imagination that kind of thought is, I think the thing that really creates the business advantage, right, is you have the thought that no one else has had. AI can't do that. How are you seeing the founder who has freed up 20% of her time using that time better with AI?
Anuj Adhiya 16:02
Yeah, so I think I'll maybe come at the answer, maybe slightly differently, is the best founders, yeah, that I've ever met are ones who are just inherently Rule Breakers, right? And are inherently creative thinkers, right? And, you know, these are almost like the best pop culture analogy I can give you for this is, you know, if you've ever seen Top Gun, you know, the character of Maverick is very appropriately named, right? Because that's exactly what all the best startup founders are. They're Mavericks. They they don't subscribe to, you know, any sort of status quo, right, which is why they're doing what they do, right? So they don't really have to force themselves to think very creatively. They can. They just do that. It's it's almost like, when you ask somebody like this, what's the shortest distance between two points, 99% of the world is going to say a straight line, but the great founder is going to say, No, it's a wormhole, right? And so it's not like they can't already do this. It's that they don't have the time to do it right. So it's not a question of forcing it right. It's a question of, you know, can I even create the bandwidth to do what I want to do? But having said that, right? Not clearly, not all founders are like this. And that's not to say that founders that don't naturally think like this cannot be great founders. There are behaviors that can be learned, right? And certainly, you know, I think you can as much use AI tools to be your thought partner, right? With just a little bit of even semi creative prompting to be able to look at a particular context and even ask simple questions, right, like analyze ABC situation for non obvious patterns or insights, or here's what I see when I look at A, B and C, what am I missing? You don't have to get fancy about it right, but just leveraging what is available today technologically, I think, with just the right questions. And really, I do think that this is one of the biggest differentiators between sort of people who get ahead and don't. Are the people who inherently either understand or learn how to ask better questions, right? And I think that, to me, is the easiest path to thinking more creatively. If that's not something you're naturally attuned to.
Tom Ollerton 18:56
It's interesting, isn't it? I heard a view recently that take someone like chatGPT, as powerful a tool as it is, it basically says, Tell me what to do, right? Give me a prompt. Prompt me, what do you want to know? What do you want to do, what you want to help with, right? Which is, it's bit like staring at like the cursor flicking on a blank piece of page, trying to try to write a book or something. And I'm even looking on Zoom, there's this, like AI companion, and it says you can ask it like, what topics have been discussed? Are there any action items? Was my name mentioned? It's all incredibly functional, isn't it? And some of the questions that you asked there, I think, are fascinating. Like, what am I not seeing here? Or, like, in this situation, what is the other direction of travel versus these but there's still as far I'm seeing. Like, isn't the service that can coach that well?
Anuj Adhiya 19:39
I have a slightly cynical viewpoint here, is that I think most people don't even know how to Google after all of these years of that service being available. And if we accept that as true, then there is no way that you can even prompt an AI system. And I honestly believe that this is the reason most people have not found great success with these tools is because they don't know how to ask the right questions. So you know, if you're asking like, can you be taught how to ask better questions? Yes, you can, right? But is there something more formal for that? I don't know, but to me, that is the crux of everything, right? And so I'll maybe go back to, you know, what I started out with, right, in terms of, you know, what makes for a great data driven marketer, right is, again, if you just step back to just that basic right is, what am I really trying to get out of all of this? Right? What is the question? Right? What, what decision do I need to make? Right? I think that, or what even might be my starter hypothesis for this, I think if you just go back to that sort of base level of thinking, I think you can find yourself in a position of being able to ask better questions but most people don't, because I think they're too focused on sort of very surface level outcome that they're thinking of, rather than really the true why behind what they're doing what they want to do.
Tom Ollerton 21:14
Well, unfortunately, Anuj, we are at the end of this podcast, and I've come up with an idea for a new business that I'm going to share with you when we come offline, based on the way you've said, obviously you're going to say, I'm an idiot, but you never know there might be something in it. But look, if anyone wants to get in touch with you, whether it's to get the book or to reach out to you, like, where's the best place to do that and what makes a good message that you will actually reply to?
Anuj Adhiya 21:35
Oh, I would reply to everything. I again, I subscribe, like I said, to the Feynman approach of try anything once. So I pretty much say yes to everybody. I pretty much accept any connection request, because you never know. But LinkedIn is great, and Twitter is great as well, and in both it's just I'm present as my name. So Anuj Adhiya at both places. If there are others, clearly, they're not the better one I am, so you know, but my first name, last name, at on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Tom Ollerton 22:07
Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time.
Anuj Adhiya 22:10
Absolutely, thanks for having me.
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