2024 Wrapped: A Year Building AI Startups

Things have been moving at lightning speed both within our startup studio and the AI market itself. Since my last post in August, I haven't been able to find a good time to write about our progress. If you're still here and want more frequent updates, drop me a comment or message. Your feedback keeps this blog alive!

1st year running a startup studio

This year has focused on the "0 to 1" phase. We built 3 products and tested the viability of 3-4 more ideas without developing full products, thanks to effective customer discovery.

As a reminder, we're 3 co-founders who successfully sold our previous company, worked for 2 years at a merged company, and in early 2024, left our stable jobs to bootstrap new AI products. We now run a small startup studio where we validate AI startup ideas and look for a potential product-market fit with perfect timing in the market. We partner up with other tech entrepreneurs and builders too to help them or work on joint ideas.

Finding that breakthrough idea

Finding a breakthrough idea for a startup isn't easy. When we started SearchNode, we focused on one concept without exploring others. Now, we're learning to discover these gems. Our method has improved, inspired by Mike Maples Jr.'s approach.

What makes a great startup idea, according to Maples:

1. Inflections: Consider the external changes that drastically alter the landscape. Like GPS hitting the iPhone 3G, which paved the way for Uber that technologically wasn’t possible before without the ability to locate each other within meters accuracy. Or Covid, which made remote work not just a trend but a new reality, opening up numerous startup opportunities.

2. Unique Insights: Novel perspectives and assumptions to leverage these shifts. Look at Pylon, they're disrupting the B2B support market by enabling support through Slack channels. SaaS companies never liked chaotic customers support in Slack channels while customers just loved it and asked for it. Pylon made that possible.

3. Founder-Future Fit: Alignment between the founders' skills, motivations, and personal network with the future they envision. As founders, do we have an edge against other founders working on the same idea?

4. Movements: Successful founders don't just create products, they start movements that connect early believers to a bigger purpose, tapping into their emotions beyond practical benefits.

Take Airbnb, for example. They didn't just create a platform for short-term rentals but inspired a movement to "travel like a local." This resonated deeply and shifted the entire travel industry's dynamics.

5. Storytelling: Consider your startup's narrative as a hero's journey. But you're not the hero. You're the guide, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, helping customers - the true heroes. Your story should invite them into a world where your vision helps them reach their goals. Authenticity is crucial, this isn't about making false promises but aligning your narrative with the genuine aspirations of customers, employees and investors.

6. Disagreeableness: Founders who change the game often come across as disagreeable, and that's okay. They push boundaries by questioning norms and persuading others to think and act differently.

I really like storytelling, movement and disagreeableness by some new startups like 11x or Wordware. Just read 11x manifesto or watch Wordware launch video.

Our current product lineup

Flowtest.ai: We're having a steady users & revenue growth, yet still lacking a strong product-market fit. This AI agent is among the most advanced with its human-like browsing capabilities. The Quality Assurance market is challenging, with some use cases revealing the limits of current LLMs intelligence.

Stay tuned for our newest feature: agent for website health check & monitoring - an AI alternative for Pingdom, capable of performing sophisticated actions on your website. If you currently use Pingdom or a similar service - I’d love to give you a demo!

LinkedIn Post Generator: We found a strong demand for personal branding and audience building on LinkedIn. With outbound being less effective, SEO swamped by automated content, especially SaaS companies are looking for new ways to generate leads and influencing at LinkedIn is what works if you write unique content.

We've generated some revenue with first customers, but current LLMs aren't yet capable of creating truly exceptional content without a proper human input. Our goal was to build a platform that transforms your unique knowledge and interests into amazing LinkedIn posts that create new inbound opportunities. We thought outperforming tools like Taplio was achievable, but we've paused this project until the language models become more advanced, especially for multi-agentic workflows.

AI Companionship app: Our very first consumer product shows solid promise. We invested over $10k in paid ads and are now experimenting to improve profitability for scaling. Although it's currently more a side business to generate fast cash flow, it's providing us with valuable insights into consumer behavior. While we're rooted in B2B SaaS, this experience is broadening our horizons.

2025 is going to be a game changing year 🤞

Our journey with AI agents has opened the door to numerous opportunities. Recently we've been actively researching the workflow automations market, where we've uncovered reality: organizations waste lots of time of their knowledge workers' time on tasks that require human-level reasoning but follow predictable patterns.

From sales prospecting, to screening candidates resumes, to processing invoices, to doing customer support – current automation tools only scratch the surface because they lack human-like judgment and decision-making abilities.

With recent breakthroughs in LLMs and autonomous agents, we're finally at a point where AI can understand context, follow complex procedures, and make reasonable decisions at scale. We believe that AI in the next 5 years will automate lots of intelligent and repetitive work.

A significant focus for us will be developing a Customer Support AI Agent for sectors like ecommerce, fintech, and digital products.

Although customer support is a competitive field, we believe autonomous AI agents will disrupt it. It’s inevitable, as AI agents have just recently become technologically capable of being reliable and efficient in assisting customers within existing tooling. This will significantly reduce costs for companies as they'll need fewer people and tools while raising quality and responsiveness.

Imagine having an AI agent smarter than human support agent, available 24/7, supporting customers in 100 languages at 50x the efficiency and half the cost compared to humans. A no brainer for any company having intense support loads.

We're currently looking for early adopters who want to be first in using this agent. We'll offer lots of personal attention and customizations based on your company’s needs. There are just 3 spots left for those who want a head start! Drop me a message.

Perfect timing to build new companies

Now is the ideal time to build startups. If you've been dreaming about it, there's no better moment than now. AI has unlocked countless opportunities, especially in vertical SaaS. The talent pool is rich, with many potential co-founders and early team members available as companies slow their hiring. Plus, there's plenty of funding available - angels, VCs, and accelerators are eager to back great founders and ideas. Remember, as founders, we are a rare breed.

I love this meme. I dedicate it to all entrepreneurial souls who need to break free from corporate life and chase the unicorn dream. Drop me a message, maybe our startup studio can help you.