By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
World of SoftwareWorld of SoftwareWorld of Software
  • News
  • Software
  • Mobile
  • Computing
  • Gaming
  • Videos
  • More
    • Gadget
    • Web Stories
    • Trending
    • Press Release
Search
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise
  • Contact
Copyright © All Rights Reserved. World of Software.
Reading: Finding value from AI: These tools boost coding, writing, video editing, researching, travel planning
Share
Sign In
Notification Show More
Font ResizerAa
World of SoftwareWorld of Software
Font ResizerAa
  • Software
  • Mobile
  • Computing
  • Gadget
  • Gaming
  • Videos
Search
  • News
  • Software
  • Mobile
  • Computing
  • Gaming
  • Videos
  • More
    • Gadget
    • Web Stories
    • Trending
    • Press Release
Have an existing account? Sign In
Follow US
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise
  • Contact
Copyright © All Rights Reserved. World of Software.
World of Software > Computing > Finding value from AI: These tools boost coding, writing, video editing, researching, travel planning
Computing

Finding value from AI: These tools boost coding, writing, video editing, researching, travel planning

News Room
Last updated: 2025/08/01 at 12:42 PM
News Room Published 1 August 2025
Share
SHARE
From top left, clockwise: Markiesha Patrice; Joe Heitzeberg; Elizabeth Russo; Darian Parrish and Joe Golden; Robert Mao and Xuchen Yao; Gayathri (G3) Venkataraman and Mamtha Banerjee; Ti Zhao and Beth Kolko; and Gregory Kennedy. (GeekWire Photos / Taylor Soper)

Everybody is talking about AI. But how are people actually using new automation tools, and what value are they getting out of them?

That was our question to attendees at the AI2 Incubator’s annual BBQ party on Thursday, hosted at the AI House at Seattle’s Pier 70 as part of Seattle Tech Week.

Techies shared some of their favorite AI tools and how they’re using them. Read on to learn more. Answers were edited for brevity and clarity.

Joe Heitzeberg, founder of AI Tinkerers

Favorite tools: Granola and Amp

Use case: “Granola just works really well. It automatically joins meetings. I can use it for anything where I want to take notes. It’s unobtrusive. And the other one is Amp. It’s a coding tool I’ve been using for two-and-a-half weeks — objectively, it’s better than Claude Code. It just does a better job of taking my instructions and figuring out how to fulfill my objectives in a way that is compatible with my code base.”

Mamtha Banerjee, left, and Gayathri (G3) Venkataraman.

Mamtha Banerjee, managing director at JPMorgan Chase

Favorite tool: Perplexity Comet

Use case: “It’s not that I’m using it a lot. But it’s very interesting how it changes what you think about a browser — it’s almost like an operating system.”

Gayathri (G3) Venkataraman, CEO at Dodda AI

Favorite tool: Perplexity, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot

Use case: “I use them a lot for pretty much all the tasks I have to do. I come up with plans and ask them to let me know if I’m covering everything or missing anything — I’m using it as a comprehensive completeness tool. I’m also using them for travel planning and for retail and other things I need to buy at home.”

Ti Zhao, left, and Beth Kolko.

Beth Kolko, investment partner at Pioneer Fund

Favorite tool: Claude

Use case: “I just did a bunch of traveling and I used Claude to help me narrow down plans. I asked it to tell me the history of a place and where I should go. Professionally, I use it because I do a lot of writing and speaking for my career. I’ll upload things I’ve already written on different topics and get it to do some synthesis work.”

Ti Zhao, partner at Pack Ventures

Favorite tool: Claude

Use case: “I use it for everything — to plan my workouts, plan my meal plans. It gives me recipe ideas and ideas to throw a dinner party or entertain children. It primarily solves the blank-page problem for me. I don’t trust everything it tells me but it can generate a list of ideas and I can work off of it really easily.”

Joe Golden, left, with Darian Parrish.

Joe Golden, founder and CEO at Paper2Audio

Favorite tool: Google Gemini Flash 2.0; OpenAI o3

Use case: “Our company makes it so you can listen to research papers. We don’t need complex thinking or reasoning, or agentic mode. So Gemini Flash 2.0 is fast and cheap. It can also parse images well enough and cheaply. Another tool I’ve been using is o3. A family member was recently diagnosed with cancer. It’s incredible for medical research. It’s really invaluable for getting into a new field of research.”

Darian Parrish, founder and CEO at PwrOn

Favorite tool: Poe

Use case: “Poe allows you to access all the models. That’s the highest value chatbot. And I use a lot of the coding tools — Windsurf, Lovable, Cursor, Replit. I’ve estimated I’m around 30 times faster at software creation.”

Markiesha Patrice, startup community lead at Nebius

Favorite tool: Descript

Use case: “I do a lot of video content and editing, so Descript makes it very simple for me. It’s saving time and it’s also ease of use. If you’re not someone who is super technical or trained, there is not much extra knowledge that you have to have in order to go into the platform and use it.”

Gregory Kennedy, chief vibe marketer at Vibe Your SaaS

Favorite tool: Claude, Canva

Use case: “As a writing assistant, Claude is probably the best one. It works for me like an intern, where it can get started with an idea. I use it more like a really advanced version of Grammarly. And I think Canva doesn’t get a lot of love, and their AI tools are quite good. I do a lot of visuals and graphics for marketing. The tools are really powerful for moving backgrounds, manipulating things, whatever you need. It’s really fast and easy.”

Elizabeth Russo, CEO at adyn

Favorite tool: Claude

Use case: “Mostly to help as a writing assistant, primarily for emails to potential partners and investors. It can sometimes unlock writer’s block or help me get over procrastination of starting something. Even if it gives me a bad draft, I feel motivated that I can do better and fix it.”

Xuchen Yao, left, and Robert Mao.

Xuchen Yao, co-founder and CEO at Seasalt.ai

Favorite tool: Warp

Use case: “I use it for vibe coding. I just open up a terminal and tell it the instructions. I use it to translate blogs into 20 different languages to make our company more international. I also use it to do code reviews.”

Robert Mao, architect at AIGNE

Favorite tool: AIGNE

Use case: “A lot of people are doing vibe coding, but for me, as a developer, I actually enjoy coding. But I really hate writing design documents and user documents. And so we’re building a vibe document tool for developers. All you do is feed in your design idea draft and the AI turns it into a full document. Or if you already wrote the code, it makes a super cool design document.”

Sign Up For Daily Newsletter

Be keep up! Get the latest breaking news delivered straight to your inbox.
By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.
Share This Article
Facebook Twitter Email Print
Share
What do you think?
Love0
Sad0
Happy0
Sleepy0
Angry0
Dead0
Wink0
Previous Article And Just Like That ends after three seasons as showrunner shares ‘final’ reason
Next Article Reddit pauses its paywall plans
Leave a comment

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Stay Connected

248.1k Like
69.1k Follow
134k Pin
54.3k Follow

Latest News

‘Magic number’ on your thermostat that brings your energy bills down
News
Japanes band Kroi used 40 iPhones to film new music video
News
Today's NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Aug. 2 – CNET
News
Months After Freezing Wireless Rates But Not Fees, Verizon Slips in a Fee Increase
News

You Might also Like

Computing

Steam Survey For July Shows Linux Use Approaching 3%

2 Min Read
Computing

AI Is Learning to Ask ‘Why’ and It Changes Everything | HackerNoon

1 Min Read
Computing

The HackerNoon Newsletter: How I Set Up a Cowrie Honeypot to Capture Real SSH Attacks (8/1/2025) | HackerNoon

2 Min Read
Computing

Meta’s AI Boss Just Called LLMs ‘Simplistic’ — Here’s What He’s Building Instead | HackerNoon

15 Min Read
//

World of Software is your one-stop website for the latest tech news and updates, follow us now to get the news that matters to you.

Quick Link

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Advertise
  • Contact

Topics

  • Computing
  • Software
  • Press Release
  • Trending

Sign Up for Our Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!

World of SoftwareWorld of Software
Follow US
Copyright © All Rights Reserved. World of Software.
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?