Top all-time · #14520
Alex Willen
Personal blog · theautomatedoperator.substack.com · on HN as idopmstuffaibusiness
Alex Willen writes The Automated Operator, a personal blog at theautomatedoperator.substack.com about ai and business. Since 2025, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 43 times, most often “Screening Inbound Emails with Gemini Flash”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters link this Substack, where the author documents buying and running Amazon e-commerce brands and handing their operations to AI, including a post on using Gemini to screen acquisition emails.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
In which I document my attempts to use AI to fully replace myself in running my business.
Most-linked posts?
- /4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-11-02
- Screening Inbound Emails with Gemini Flash2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-10-25
- AI Just Took My Product Photographer's Job2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-11-26
- 15 Ways I'm Using AI to Manage My Small Business2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-04-16
- Good Vibes Only: Vibe coding an internal app to manage my business2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-10-16
What Hacker News says?
At this point, I mostly ask Claude to use Claude in Chrome to use ChatGPT to create lifestyle images (because I am cheap and I don't want to pay for API usage when I could get them free) based on whatever product shots I have. Sometimes I give it some more specific direction about what I want, but usually for the first pass I just tell it to make 10 or 20 or whatever and see what it gives me. When it's done, it gene…
Comment linking /p/the-dumbest-way-i-have-used-ai-to
on “Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously”Submitted Contra Citrini as a story · 6 points
HN discussionFrom their blog [1] "I acquire e-commerce brands that sell on Amazon" Honestly it sounds like the OP is part of the machine that makes Amazon such a trashy marketplace these days. [1]: https://theautomatedoperator.substack.com/p/15-ways-im-using...
Comment linking /p/15-ways-im-using-ai-to-manage-my
on “Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously”Submitted AI Just Took My Product Photographer's Job as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHe writes about it on his substack. https://theautomatedoperator.substack.com/
Comment linking /
on “Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously”Submitted Claude and ChatGPT Run My Fantasty Football Team: Draft Edition as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI buy and operate e-commerce brands that sell on Amazon, and I'm working on handing as much of the operation of the business off to AI as possible. Doing this both for actual time savings for myself and also as my big-picture eval of new AI models + products as they come out. I also started a Substack to document it - here's a recent post on using Gemini to screen inbound emails with prospective acquisition targets…
Comment linking /p/screening-inbound-emails-with-gemini
on “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)”Submitted AI Just Took My Product Photographer's Job as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNot as much about the economics of the business as my work on using AI to automate it, but I do have a Substack: https://theautomatedoperator.substack.com/
Comment linking /
on “Pomelli”Submitted Fable, Opus, Claude Code and Claude Web: How to Use Them All for the Best Result as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI left my job as a PM a couple of years ago to start acquiring small e-commerce brands that sell on Amazon. I'm currently running those, and mid-acquisition on one. Because they're relatively low-effort (Amazon is terrible for sellers in many ways but man do they provide an incredible amount of infrastructure), that leaves me plenty of time to play with AI, and it just so happens that the business serves as a giant,…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2026)”Submitted Using My AI Assistant to Automate Amazon Return Reimbursements as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSo many! I manage a fund that buys small e-comm brands, and at this point the whole thing runs on a combination of AI and tools created with AI. My favorite is one that scrapes my Alibaba/WeChat/WhatsApp/email supplier convos daily and uses that to build a dashboard tracking the status of my orders. I write a Substack about the whole thing and have a pretty comprehensive list here: https://theautomatedoperator.subst…
Comment linking /p/15-ways-im-using-ai-to-manage-my
on “Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI”Submitted Four Ways ChatGPT Images 2.0 Can Be Useful for Your Business as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTwo of them: 1. ChatGPT 3.5 wrote me a script to pull some data out of Shopify and write it to a Google Sheet. Nothing remotely impressive by today's standards, but I had just commanded a computer to write code in plain English and it worked! 2. I own a bunch of e-comm brands, and with every new image model I tried to get product photography. Nothing worked until Nano Banana Pro, when suddenly I gave it a crappy iPh…
Comment linking /p/ai-just-took-my-product-photographers
on “What was your "Oh Shit" moment with GenAI?”Submitted 15 Ways I'm Using AI to Manage My Small Business as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThat's the place! The most fun one is this, which creates listing images for my products: https://theautomatedoperator.substack.com/p/opus-45-codes-ge... More recently, I'm using Claude Code to handle my inventory management by having it act as an analyst while coding itself tools to access my Amazon Seller accounts to retrieve the necessary info: https://theautomatedoperator.substack.com/p/trading-my-vibe-...
Comment linking /p/trading-my-vibe-coded-app-for-an
on “Two kinds of AI users are emerging. The gap between them is astonishing”Submitted Amazon Ads with Claude Pt. 1: Claude Is Hubristic, Lazy, and Devoid of Sense as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou're in luck: https://theautomatedoperator.substack.com/
Comment linking /
on “Two kinds of AI users are emerging. The gap between them is astonishing”Submitted Handing My Daily Tasks Off to Claude Code as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Can AI Do My Bookkeeping? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Anthropomorphize Your AI Agent for Fun and Profit as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Claude Builds an Internal Customer Service App as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Automated Websites, Run by Claude as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Claude Does SEO as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Using Cloudflare's Agentic Interface to (Mostly) Seamlessly Launch a Website as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Claude -pocalypse as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building a Cashflow Projection Dashboard as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Mining WhatsApp, WeChat, Alibaba, Gmail to Create a Unified Supplier Dashboard as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Creating a Dashboard with Claude Design as a story · 1 points
HN discussion