INTERVIEW

How Alexia Uses AI to Automate Her Tech Company
with Alexia Lorenza Martinel, Co-Founder at CabinetNoir
Meet Alexia

Alexia Lorenza Martinel is the co-founder of CabinetNoir, a software company delivering solutions for traditional industries and Web3 clients, with a strong focus on DeFi.

With more than 10 years in tech, she has seen automation evolve from niche tools to today’s AI-driven systems. In this interview, she shares how she uses AI daily, why prompting is the most underrated skill, and what worries her about the future of AI.

THE INTERVIEW

“I try to automate everything that doesn’t create real value.”

What does your company do?

We deliver software solutions for different types of clients. Traditional industries and Web3 clients as well. We work a lot in DeFi.

To relate that to AI — we use a lot of AI tools to automate our operations. I’ve always been interested in automation. And now with tools like n8n and AI models, it’s much easier to automate repetitive tasks.

I try to automate everything that doesn’t create real value. Operations are time-consuming. If there’s a tool that can do it for you, why not use it?

“I learned AI on my own.”

How did you learn to use AI tools? Courses? YouTube?

I learned mostly by myself. I read documentation. I identify what I don’t understand. Then I try to connect tools together to automate whatever task I’m solving.

That’s how I approach it. Sometimes I’ll copy a piece of documentation into ChatGPT and ask: “Do they mean this by that?” For me, AI is also about confidence and clarification.

"The AI tools she uses every day"

What tools do you use most?

I use n8n almost every day. It’s my automation backbone. I use ChatGPT a lot for research and to structure my thoughts. I also use Grok and Claude, especially for coding.

ChatGPT feels very natural to use. It’s a great general-purpose model. But I always double-check important research, especially if accuracy matters. You still need sources.

“AI is not intelligence. It’s a summarizing tool.”

Do you fully trust AI for research?

No. AI is not intelligence. It’s a summarizing tool. It checks content online and summarizes it. But if 90% of the content online is wrong, the summary will be wrong too.

Sometimes you have to go back to the original source. Otherwise, your information is just plain wrong.

"The most underrated AI skill: prompting"

What skill matters most in AI?

Prompting. 100%. Most people get frustrated because they don’t know how to prompt properly. You have to imagine AI is like a child. If you say, “Color in blue.” Which blue? Cyan? Navy? Light blue?

You have to be extremely specific. If you say, “Build me an app for restaurant booking,” it will give you nonsense. If you describe exactly how it should look, where the buttons go, what happens on click — then it works.

Prompting is a management exercise. It forces you to be clear about the outcome you want.

"Meta-prompting: “I prompt the prompt.”

How do you improve your results?

I meta-prompt. I improve the prompt first. Especially for coding. I’ve seen a big increase in output quality when I refine the prompt before asking for the result. If the result is bad, I don’t get frustrated. I fix the prompt.

Automation vs AI: “People confuse the two.”

A lot of people say, “I want AI everywhere.” And I’m like — no. Sometimes what you need is automation. A proper structure. A workflow. AI can be plugged into that. But AI is not the same thing as automation. Clarifying this is very important.

“The speed of evolution shocked me.”

What surprised you most about AI?

The speed. I remember using earlier models and thinking they were good but not amazing. Now the results are incredible. It can do in minutes what a senior developer might take days to do. The speed of execution is crazy.

"The future of AI: turbulence first"

How do you see the future of AI?

Models will get better. Faster. More powerful. But I think the next 5–10 years will be turbulent. Fake content. Fake videos. Fake information. People won’t be able to tell what’s real.

There will be uncertainty. But eventually society will adapt. AI is not going away. So we need to learn how to use it — not fear it.

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I try to automate everything that doesn’t create real value.”
—Alexia Lorenza Martinel, Co-Founder at cabinetnoir

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