Automating before understanding is the fatal mistake

Bill Gates said once: "The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency."

However, we see founders and engineers obsessed with creating "pipelines" and "autonomous agents" for processes they haven't manually validated themselves.

The Cycle of Illusion

1. You have a difficult problem to solve (e.g. customer acquisition).
2. Solving it manually is painful and slow.
3. You decide to automate the process with a complex tool.
4. Spend 3 weeks configuring automation.
5. Automation runs and fails 1000 times per hour instead of 1 time per hour.

Automation is a multiplier, not a magic solution. Zero multiplied by a thousand is still zero.

Before writing a line of script, do the dirty work. Reply to emails manually. Write the article yourself. Understand the nuances, exceptions, edge cases. Only when the process is boringly predictable does it deserve to be automated.