Workplace

Founders

Not tested yet: Hourly archiving is the guide author's own setup; we haven't confirmed how archived threads are surfaced if the list was wrong. The Founder Mode pack's 16 routines are described in the guide; we haven't installed the pack to confirm names or times. The guide's week is described as a simulation of an early-stage founder, not a live company. The Start here order is ours, assembled from the guide and docs; not run.

Grok Bot for founders and execs: an hourly attention list and a chief of staff that stays quiet

A SpaceXAI PM's setup for a Bot that tracks what you're working on and filters your inbox against it, plus a chief of staff that stays quiet.

Work value 3/10

Our first founders playbook is about selling: design-partner scans, call prep and one daily list. This one is about your own attention. It comes mostly from Kevin Niparko, a PM at SpaceXAI, who wrote Grok Bot for PMs on Aug 15. The setup fits anyone who works across many teams and has no time to keep a priority list current: a founder, an exec, or a PM.

Not tested: The Daily Bot doesn't have a Slack workspace, an inbox or meetings of the kind this needs, so we haven't run it. Everything below comes from the linked guide, post and docs.

What founders and execs use it for#

  • An attention list instead of a priority list. Niparko: "Many PMs create weekly goals or priorities that quickly go stale. Rather than creating a 'priority list' (which will become outdated throughout the chaos of a day) I've started to have Grok Bot follow my attention across Slack, email, and meetings / Granola to create something different: an 'attention list.'" He finds that "what I'm actually talking about and doing throughout the day is a much better live view of what matters than trying to keep a list of priorities updated."
  • A filter for everything else. "Agents can apply the attention list as a filter. Throughout the day there are thousands of Slack messages and emails that can distract or need me, so agents can use this to guide my attention to threads relevant to what I'm focused on."
  • A check on yourself. The list lets you "compare stated priorities and goals vs. what I'm actually focused on."
  • A manager for the other Bots. Eric Siu, who runs the ad agency Single Grain, wrote on Sep 2: "Once you have several bots running, you need a chief of staff to coordinate them." That Bot "routes work, collects updates, and turns separate outputs into one clean handoff," and "The goal is to give the human one place to review what happened, what is blocked, and what needs a decision."

Connectors to set up#

Niparko's chief of staff is "the one on my calendar, Slack, and inbox." Connect Gmail, Slack and Google Calendar from Connect apps in the sidebar (Cursor's docs), and your meeting-notes tool if it has a plugin. Niparko uses Granola. "Gmail connects one mailbox at a time," per the help center, so use the one where decisions reach you.

Routines#

Two, both hourly, from Niparko's guide:

  • The list itself. The setup line is the example prompt below.
  • The inbox filter. "Hourly it archives Gmail unless the thread names me and maps to that list."

He also gives two uses to try once the list exists: "Review my attention list and archive any emails that are not relevant to my focus list," and "Where did I spend time this week that I can offload to an agent going forward?"

Hourly is the most expensive schedule here. Cursor's help center says "An hourly schedule, a short interval, or a Slack trigger on a busy channel can use a week of usage in a day" (Routines). If usage drops fast, move the list to every two or three hours during the workday.

Example prompt#

This is Niparko's setup line, word for word:

Prompt
Create an attention list: every hour, review email, Slack, Granola, and calendar and create a succinct set of projects I'm focused on and their current state, what needs to happen next.

For a once-a-day version, Cursor's Chief of staff starter returns "only items that map to the priorities in this document," and the docs say to "Mark what was useful and what was noise, then schedule the digest for a time you can review it."

What to expect#

Niparko reports what it does, not time saved. In one example, his chief of staff "sent holds and asked me to pick a start time. I said 10am. It moved the hold." He keeps it to one job: "The only generalist. Stays quiet if nothing changed."

Gotchas#

  • Write the style guide first. Niparko: "Have it write a personal style guide from your outbox and Slacks, then sample the exact thread before it drafts so it sounds like you, not a bot." He calls "Read my past Slack messages and develop a Slack style guide for me" "the highest-leverage instruction I've found."
  • Keep sends and deletes. "I still keep final review for any external email sends, purchasing anything, or destructive actions like deletes." Archiving is not deleting, but check the archive for the first week in case the list missed something.
  • Ask for quiet. "Grok Bot agents bias to action but can also over-communicate. Ask them to stay quiet unless something needs your attention to reduce distraction and noise."
  • Separate memory. "Chief of Staff should not be debugging computer-use evals. The eval agent is not archiving my mail." Give the chief of staff its own Bot.
  • Don't make it the boss of everything on day one. Siu's rule is to "Keep a human in the loop until the bot earns more freedom."

Sources#

Grok Bot for founders: design-partner scans, call prep, and one daily list

How an advisor to startup founders set up founder-led sales in Grok Bot, the routines that stage work overnight, and the conversations the guide says to keep for yourself.

Work value 3/10

Founders before their first sales hire do every go-to-market job at once. Simon Lackowski, who advises founders in the Grok for Startups program, published a full founder-led sales setup for Grok Bot, and several public templates by Shub Gaur and Hiten Shah cover the rest of a founder's week. This playbook is for founders and small teams.

Not tested: The Daily Bot runs on a Bot computer without the Grok Bot desktop app, so we haven't installed these Bots or run the routines. Everything below comes from the linked guide and listings. The guide's sample week comes from a setup Lackowski built "to help simulate the experience of being a founder in the early stages," so treat it as a walkthrough, not a customer result (guide).

What founders use it for#

Lackowski's guide maps Grok Bot onto the founder-led sales steps: "Define your ICP," "Find design partners," "Prep for first meetings," "Build your first playbook," "Run pipeline and forecasting," and "Make your product better." Lackowski's Founder Mode setup pack installs "one chief of staff bot, 4 sidebar folders (Pipeline, Customers, Product, Marketing), 8 bots, 16 paused routines, and a shared data folder."

Other public Bots for founders:

  • Calls and customers. Gaur's Sell Bot "works your whole customer journey" and "sends only what you approve, one message at a time."
  • Competitors. Gaur's Stalk Bot "signs up for your competitors' newsletters and products under its own research email" and "never posts or contacts anyone."
  • Product checks. Gaur's Startup QA Bot "walks your product every weekday in its own test account" and reports "what shipped, what got unshipped, what broke."
  • Fundraising and ideas. Shah's Pitch Deck Coach "reviews a pitch deck and reports what an investor is likely to understand, believe, question, and remember." Shah's Product Idea Stress Test surfaces "the assumption most likely to kill it."

Start here#

The guide describes the finished setup, not the order to switch it on. This order is ours, each step rests on the source linked in it, and we haven't run it.

  1. Install the Founder Mode setup pack "in a fresh Grok Bot environment," then "Ask the Founder-led sales setup bot to get you started" (guide).
  2. Have your answers ready. Onboarding "asks around 20 questions: company, pitch, voice samples, ICP, target accounts, competitors, P0 definition, connectors, and which routines to turn on."
  3. Connect read and draft access only: "Gmail and Calendar (drafts and read only), a deal tracker CSV until we outgrow it," and Granola. The guide lists HubSpot, Attio, Stripe and webhooks as "Optional later."
  4. Turn on one routine, the Monday design-partner scan below. Every routine "stays paused until you confirm your preferred schedule," and this one ends in drafts: "Don't send anything, don't enroll anyone in a sequence, and don't change my CRM without asking." Cursor's docs say to "start each role with read-and-prepare work, review the result, and only then add approved actions or a routine" (use cases).
  5. Test it before Monday. Open the routine, check When to run, and choose Test (routines help). Review whether it "selected current inputs, met the output format, kept a source trail, stopped at the intended approval point, and made failure states explicit" (Cursor docs).
  6. Fix what you correct twice. "Correcting the same thing twice means a rule is missing" (guide). See our tip on rules in the description.
  7. Add call prep next. Cursor's sales starter uses the same gate: "Once the output is reliable, schedule" the next routine (use cases). In the pack, Sell Bot builds a brief "from the calendar, Granola notes, and the stakeholder map" before each call (guide).

Connectors to set up#

Lackowski connects "Gmail and Calendar (drafts and read only), a deal tracker CSV until we outgrow it, LinkedIn and X (read and draft only, I post by hand), and Granola for call notes." Later: "HubSpot or Attio, GitHub for Product Bot, Stripe or Mercury for the cash check, and Zapier or Make for live webhooks" (guide).

LinkedIn has no plugin: Simon Lackowski's Sequencer listing says "LinkedIn and WhatsApp have no connector, so those drafts are text in chat to paste." Also note that "Gmail connects one mailbox at a time," per the help center. For the setup steps, see our guide to connecting Gmail, Calendar, and Notion.

Routines#

The main routine is the "design-partner scan" Lackowski runs "every Monday," quoted in full below as the example prompt. Its quiet rule is in the prompt: "Keep a list of accounts you've already covered and only report new ones. If nothing new matched, send one line saying so" (guide).

Two more:

  • Daily action list. Founder Mode is the only Bot Lackowski talks to daily: "At 8am it merges every other Grok Bot's routines and automations into one daily action list" (guide). Our tip on a Bot boss front door covers this pattern.
  • Competitor pulse, from Stalk Bot: "Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 9am in the user's timezone," running every enabled check on every competitor. "Quiet when nothing changed."

Stalk Bot's routines are "Disabled by default," and "each run spends usage," per the routines help page. Our quiet routines guide explains how to keep them silent on empty days.

Example prompt#

Lackowski's design-partner scan, from the guide. Fill in the brackets:

Prompt
Every Monday at 7am my time, find companies that match my ICP and posted about [problem] or hired for [role] this week. Before the first run, ask me for my ICP (industry, size, stage, region), who the economic buyer is and who feels the pain day to day, which signals count, and which accounts are off limits. Save the answers and use them on every run. For each match: rank it by fit and explain the signal with a link. Check my deal tracker, Gmail, and calendar so you never surface a current customer or an open conversation as net new. Find a warm path through my network and past conversations, and name the person. Draft a short first touch in my voice that opens with the signal, not with our product. Sort everything into KEEP, HOLD, and DQ with one line on why. Keep a list of accounts you've already covered and only report new ones. If nothing new matched, send one line saying so. Put drafts in Gmail Drafts. Don't send anything, don't enroll anyone in a sequence, and don't change my CRM without asking.

What to expect#

These outcomes come from Lackowski's simulated week and are self-reported.

  • "By midweek Sell Bot had a brief ready the night before each call, and the recap and follow-up sat in Drafts within minutes of each call ending" (guide).
  • "When I get to the office in the morning, Grok Bot already has all the tasks I need staged."
  • "Nothing went out until I said so."

Gotchas#

  • Never auto-send. "Nothing is sent, posted, published, or merged until approved, and the same goes for CRM logs and invoice finalization. Every message a customer reads, I read first" (Lackowski).
  • Know what to keep. "Discovery, pricing conversations, and the call where a design partner says yes stay with me."
  • Use separate identities for research. Stalk Bot uses "its own research email" (listing), and Startup QA Bot "never touches real data" (listing).
  • One job per Bot. Lackowski: "Each bot owns one job." See our one-job Bots guide.

Forward look#

Two signals to watch in your own setup, both named in the guide:

  • Time for a first sales hire. "When the playbook from Sell Bot and Insights Bot starts repeating itself and I'm the bottleneck on meetings, that's the signal to make a first sales hire" (guide).
  • Outgrowing the CSV. The tracker stays a CSV "until we outgrow it," with "HubSpot or Attio" and "Zapier or Make for live webhooks" listed for later. Routines can already start from a webhook; see our webhook routines entry.

Sources#