Funnel Vision Newsletter

funnel vision newsletter

Every 2 weeks, we'll be reviewing a trend in automation, AI and marketing technology. We'll then be sharing the Workflow To Watch - an integration, toolset or workflow that you can implement to improve your business today. Subscribe below.

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Marketing Operations

Making Money Moves

Since I started JSC 3 years ago, one tool has been at the dead center of my stack: Bonsai. Bonsai is an all-in-one business services platform for solopreneurs. It can do it all--invoices, contracts, proposals, task management, tax preparation. They even had a bank account.
I say “had” because as of next week, Bonsai is saying goodbye to their bank account, as it seems they’ve been acquired by Zoom. And it turns out, this acquisition represents a growth sector for fintech that has exploded in just the last year: Solopreneurs. Yes, us small-but-mighty independents have gotten the attention of the big money people. Most of the action is in embedded finance--adding bank accounts and other financial services to existing platforms--and neobanks--technology companies that, through banking partners, provide financial services and digital tech that traditional banks can’t compete with. Together, these tools create exciting efficiencies--if you know how to integrate them.

Today’s workflow deals with formatting. When working with platforms like Square, Relay and embedded financial tools, you can’t control how transactions are labeled, making them hard to incorporate into existing financial reports. Automated formatting to the rescue!

Marketing Operations

Too Many Cooks

Since their merger with Adobe fell through in 2023, Figma has been on a tear. They grew revenue by 48% in 2024 and kept that trend going into 2025. They grew their monthly active users from 4 million to 13 million. And they made strategic acquisitions--as CEO Dylan Field promised. 4 in the last two years. The latest is a video company out of Israel called Weavy--their largest to date. These acquisitions, Figmas developer-heavy user base and its focus on collaboration represent a foundational shift in design. What was once a siloed. mysterious black box that only designers could access has become a group project, with real-time notes, edits and comments. As expected, some designers feel overwhelmed, saying there’s too many cooks in the kitchen. Real-time collaboration has obvious advantages, but when it creates too much noise, designers lose focus. So the question is: how can you create calm from the chaos?

Figma has real-time comment notifications which, if you are working on multiple projects, gets crazy. This workflow provides a cleaner notification structure. Shout out to Xinran Ma, who’s original workflow was the inspiration for this.

Content Strategy

Rock The Upvote

If you’ve followed digital marketing trends for any length of time, you know digital influencers tend to fear change. Algorithm updates, new tools and software shifts will send them into a tailspin.
Eventually, freakouts give way to experimentation. And now, based on millions of AI prompt tests from hundreds of worried marketers, we have a decent idea where AI gets its answers. For ChatGPT, Wikipedia is number 1, but getting your new startup listed there can be a challenge. Number 2 on ChatGPT’s source list: Reddit. Before you roll your eyes, Reddit has A LOT going for it that marketers should be paying attention to. Not only is it the number one source for Google AI Overviews and Perplexity AI, its daily active users have skyrocketed into the hundreds of millions. Google’s latest algorithm update and subsequent data purchase from Reddit indicates it will be a key source for them for the foreseeable future. And best of all, it offers free API access. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to build.

The key to any Reddit strategy is to build organically through meaningful, non-promotional contributions to relevant conversations. The trick is finding the conversations where you can make the most impact. That’s where this workflow comes in.

Content Production

Talking To The Plug

If you run a lot of AI experiments like I do, you may have heard of MCP. Short for Model Context Protocol, MCP is a standardized “language” that lets AI tools talk to any app that supports MCP. Think of it like a USB-C adapter--any device with the right port can connect. But if every app has their own MCP, then every MCP has its own pricing structure, usage limits and more. What we need is “the plug”-- the hub at the center of modern marketing operations. For enterprise, Hubspot and Salesforce have made tremendous strides. For low-code startups and SMBs, Zapier just made their play. On September 18th, they announced that their MCP would be free to all users, allowing businesses of any size to connect over 8000 applications. Once connected, simply tell your AI platform what to do next. In an instant, Zapier became the routing hub that makes it happen.

Since the announcement, Zapier and its devotees have elevated workflows to showcase the MCP. Our favorite reads your content calendar, creates blogs/social posts, and posts everywhere, at your command.

Marketing Operations

Mech Support

In our last newsletter, we told you how IBM had spent the last 8 years creating AskHR--an automated chatbot capable of answering 94% of simple asks. And while IBM’s innovation is sure to create efficiency, it is likely already obsolete. That’s because new generation of AI agents are in an arms race to remake customer support. Today, we explore a workflow from Chatbase: fully bootstrapped, $0 to $6m ARR in 2 years, and they’re now serving 9000+ businesses. Chatbase not only answers queries, it performs actions that don’t need to be discreetly pre-programmed, taking automated support to the next level.

Using the AI agent chatbot from Chatbase, create a closed-loop customer service workflow that is fully automated and get’s smarter with each chat.

Marketing Operations

Right On Schedule

This is the story of a perfectly-timed pivot leading to explosive growth. We’re talking 10,000 new customers and $10m in ARR in just four months! The company is Motion, a personal scheduling app that, in May, debuted a new direction--the “Microsoft Office of AI agents.” With 4 new B2B AI tools--an Executive Assistant, a Sales Rep, a Customer Support rep and a Marketing assistant, Motion recognized a gaping hole for Startups/SMBs in the AI era--a unified platform for managing busywork. They’ve inked a $38 million Series C round for their trouble.

Most AI workflows are designed to reduce grunt work. The difference here is the silo-breaking nature of a unified platform, keeping teams focused on value.

This is the story of a perfectly-timed pivot leading to explosive growth. We’re talking 10,000 new customers and $10m in ARR in just four months! The company is Motion, a personal scheduling app that, in May, debuted a ...

Marketing Operations

Vibe Check

Earlier this week, Hubspot CEO Dharmesh Shah posted a stunning admission to his 1.2 million Linkedin followers. “I’ve switched almost entirely over to agentic coding (what most call "vibe coding").” The billionaire behind the immensely popular sales and marketing tool got his start in backend engineering. So to hear he has been vibe coding his way through a new web app raised a few eyebrows. But the admission may be less surprising than it may seem, given a little context. Let’s dig in.

Hubspot just announced integration with Anthropic's agentic AI Claude. Talk directly to your marketing stack, assign tasks, update objects & more.

Content Strategy

Welcome Our Robot Overlords

For all the hype, you might be surprised to learn that AI’s share of voice in search remains incredibly small--just 5%. But AI’s user growth in just a few months has been staggering. 83% of users who have tried it now say they prefer AI search. 61% of GenZ and 53% of millennials are using AI search instead of traditional engines. Numbers like these have left brand and especially smaller insurgents scrambling to find answers: are we visible? How do we update content? Where do we stand?

Using largely existing tools and keywords, teams can measure brand visibility in LLMs.

Marketing Operations

The Productivity Gospel

While AI and automation tools were initially pitched to us as great ways to create images and content on-demand, workplace productivity apps are now producing some of the most exciting tools, integrations and automations of the AI era. From Microsoft to Salesforce to Slack, massive companies are marshaling tremendous resources to making work easier and more intuitive. Can’t afford the latest tech? Need to build something more custom? We’ve got you covered. Read on...

Teams combine Airtable and Slack to create lightweight approval workflows—no PM or dev required.