Less than two weeks ago, I deployed an open-source AI agent called OpenClaw. I named it Saul. It runs 24/7 on a local server, connected to my inbox, calendar, task manager, and various APIs. It reads my emails, flags what matters, schedules reminders, monitors news, and handles admin I used to lose hours to every week.
I’m an interim CFO. I work with PE-backed businesses. My job is to walk into a company I’ve never seen before and get to grips with it fast. Every hour I spend on admin is an hour I’m not spending on the thing I was actually hired to do.
So here’s what’s changed:
Email triage is gone. Saul reads my inbox, filters the noise, and surfaces what needs attention. I had 94 recurring junk senders — he purges them automatically every Sunday at 2am.
I never miss a deadline. Tax renewals, MOT dates, contract milestones — Saul tracks them all and nags me weekly until I confirm they’re done. Not a calendar entry I’ll ignore. An actual message on WhatsApp that won’t stop until I act.
Board prep is faster. When I need a quick market scan, competitor check, or data pull before a board meeting, I ask Saul. He searches, summarises, and writes it up. What used to take 90 minutes takes 10.
And the thing nobody talks about: the cognitive load reduction. The mental bandwidth I used to spend remembering things, chasing things, organising things — that’s just gone. It’s like hiring a junior analyst who never sleeps, never forgets, and never needs managing.
This isn’t science fiction. It’s not even expensive. The whole thing runs on about £50/month in API costs.
Here’s what I’d say to other CFOs, particularly those in the PE world where speed matters:
You don’t need to understand how LLMs work. You need to understand what they can do for you. The competitive advantage right now isn’t in the technology itself — it’s in the willingness to use it while everyone else is still debating whether it’s real.
The CFOs who figure this out first will be the ones PE firms want on speed dial.
I wrote a longer piece about the AI agent revolution here. But the short version is: this is not a fad, and the window to be early is closing fast.