Culture: Consumer AI Startup

Loneliness affects 1-in-2 Americans and causes profoundly negative health outcomes. To turn the tide, we need technology built to facilitate in-person interactions. We spend less time investing in our relationships, fueling feelings of social isolation that push us back to the quick dopamine hit of digital media. With such effortless entertainment available at all times, the energy required to make plans is higher than ever because of the convenience of alternatives.

Problem


We believed consumers needed a way to lower the friction of social coordination in order to facilitate more in-person interactions. When interviewing our user base, we found that coordinating a time of mutual fit was the largest barrier to in-person interactions. We also found that the current solutions were not tailored to the individual's preferences and were not able to determine the best time to make plans due to a lack of integration with the user's calendar and preferred messaging platforms.

Solution


We built a consumer AI platform that can determine the best time to make plans based on the user's calendars. We also built a recommendation engine that can suggest plans based on the user's preferences and past interactions. Our SMS-based chatbot can facilitate the coordination of plans with the user's friends and family, enabling them to initiate plans with a single text message.

Details

  • Role

    CEO & Founder

  • Industry

    Consumer AI

  • Tools

    React, Next.js, Twilio, Google APIs, Supabase, Figma

  • Skills

    User Research, Product Design, LLM Implementation, Fundraising

  • Actions

    User Research, Roadmapping, Product Strategy, Prototyping, Fundraising

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Result


We scaled the platform to a few thousand users, but found that there were significant technological constraints to making the responses fast, scalable, and cost-effective. Emerging technology makes it more possible to reoptimize for speed and cost, but developing a significant moat is questionable as LLMs and associated chat platforms gain access to core OS (e.g., Apple x OpenAI). We decided to spin the company down in 2024 due to these concerns.