Claude for Excel: The AI That Made Me Rethink My First Job

Building an AI Agent for Real Team Work

In this episode of Try AI for Growth, Sara Vicente Barreto shares how she built an AI Grant Scout agent for her charity, Um Pequeno Gesto — a structured workflow designed to identify, assess and prioritise funding opportunities more strategically. A tool with real commercial applications. Rather than treating AI as a chatbot experiment, Sara explores what happens when you build an agent around a real operational workflow: defining rules, creating scoring systems, developing reference documents, and onboarding a team member to use it effectively. Along the way, she reflects honestly on what worked, what still feels frustrating, and why the real value of AI often lies in the thinking and structure behind the build.

What Happens When You Let Claude Loose on Your Pitch Deck

Sara Vicente Barreto set out to fix one cluttered slide. What followed was an accidental full redesign of a charity pitch deck — and a new way of thinking about strategic presentation work. In this episode, Sara shares what happened when she gave Claude for PowerPoint a real brief: a side-by-side comparison, a vague positioning concept, and a five-year-old intro slide that no longer reflected how the organisation thinks. The results were better than expected. The rabbit hole was deeper than planned. She also explores what made this experiment different — working through it live with a colleague, and discovering that the real value wasn't just in the slides Claude produced, but in the strategic conversations it accelerated.

From Blank to App: My First Lovable Experiment

In this episode of Try AI for Growth, Sara Vicente Barreto shares her first experience building apps with Lovable — starting from a moment of complete creative paralysis during a hands-on workshop and ending with multiple working apps built in under ten minutes. What began as an experiment in AI-powered app creation quickly became a broader reflection on workflows, creativity, and how non-coders can now prototype ideas faster than ever before. From redesigning field data collection processes at the charity to building spelling and football apps with her son at the kitchen table, Sara explores how tools like Lovable are changing the relationship between ideas and execution. Along the way, she shares lessons about process redesign, prompting, experimentation, and why simple apps can sometimes create the biggest mindset shifts. Whether you are curious about AI tools, overwhelmed with ideas, or convinced app-building is only for developers, this episode may change how you think about creating with technology.

Claude for Excel: The AI That Made Me Rethink My First Job

n this episode of Try AI for Growth, Sara Vicente Barreto shares how one AI tool—Claude for Excel—made her rethink what her first job would look like today. By bringing AI directly into spreadsheets, Claude doesn't just assist with analysis—it can fix formulas, rebuild models, validate data, and even create full dashboards from scratch. Through real examples, from debugging complex files to building a 2026 reporting dashboard, Sara explores how tasks that once defined entry-level analyst roles can now be done in minutes. But beyond productivity, this raises a bigger question: if AI can do the work that used to teach us how to think, analyse, and problem-solve… how do people develop those skills in the first place? A practical and thought-provoking episode for anyone working with data, managing teams, or thinking about the future of work.

From Overwhelm to Focus: How AI Is Changing the Way We Learn

In this episode of Try AI for Growth, Sara Vicente Barreto explores how a simple shift in using AI transformed a moment of overwhelm into real learning. What started as a frustrating biology revision session became a powerful experiment in focus, using Google Notebook LLM to ground AI in specific materials. The result? Greater clarity, confidence, and a completely different learning experience. This episode unpacks why AI often creates noise instead of value—and how narrowing its scope can turn it into a true learning partner, both at home and in business.