A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:15:48 · Ali Khokhar, Pablo Srugo
[00:15:48] S0: Exactly. So I'll just tell you the full journey basically. I left and, like, I had this concept of, okay, agents, quote unquote, that are gonna deliver some of service, but like where do we start? Right? Because like again, I come from a background of like uppercase horizontal, what category should I begin? Is it copywriting? Is it is that too late? Is it like Jasper's already done that? What is next on the bulk air? I started by just going to a lot of my smart friends and being like, what are you using ChatSuite for? Very classic. Right? To get a sense of like, what are interesting use cases that are that seem very odd at first. Right? Because I'm like, it's so early on, don't I wanna just want and everyone was like, yeah, copywriting. Copywriting. I'm like, okay, cool. What else? And I had a couple of people tell me that they were using it for coaching. Like, personal coaching, leadership coaching, personal development, health coaching. They were using it for motivation, etcetera, etcetera. I was like, oh, interesting. Weird, but interesting. Okay. Let me pull on that thread a little bit. [00:16:39] S1: That became a huge category, by the way. Interesting.
00:16:39 · Pablo Srugo, Ali Khokhar
[00:16:39] S1: That became a huge category, by the way. Interesting. [00:16:41] S0: And I was like, oh, okay. And so then I was like, so who is delivering that service today? Right? Well, humans are delivering that pain point. Then I started saying, okay. Let me go talk to consultants and coaches generally, like executive coaches, leadership coaches, personal coaches, health coaches, and so on and so forth. So let's go. Now I've figured out, okay. There's this weird use case that people have for ChatGPT. That at the time was, like, very niche. Who are the humans delivering this service today? Let's go talk to them and understand their pain points, and is there something for them to be built? And so then I just started going and cold DM ing coaches on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, at this time, had this thing called services where you can, like, hire people. It's almost like Upwork esque type of thing. I just, filter for executive coach and leadership coach, etcetera, etcetera. I like DM 50 people being like, hey, I'm building this AI thing. You can, like, build an AI coach for yourself, train it, etcetera, etcetera. Nobody replied to me. Okay? Like, one out of 50 replied to me. And then what I did was my next batch of 50, I added a PS. At the end of my end cold note, I would say PS, I am also looking for a coach myself potentially. I'm a new founder. And then the next batch of fifty, thirty replied to me. [00:17:41] S1: Nice. I have you on
00:17:43 · Ali Khokhar
[00:17:43] S0: the call now. And in the call I would just start pitching like, hey, you know I've built this product, it doesn't exist, but I would frame it off, say I've built this thing, it works in this way, is this interesting, does this solve the pain point, yada yada yada. And they're all like, oh yeah this is cool, some of them are like, this is creepy. This will be I really need this AI thing. Like, get it away from me. You know, this is again still early on. And some of them are like, oh my god. Yes. This makes total sense, etcetera, etcetera. They're like, oh, cool. One of those folks from one of those conversations, they're like, well, you're gonna be in Florida in two weeks for the world's annual largest coaching conference. Right? I'm like, yeah. Of course, I'll be there. He's like, oh, great. I'll see you there. I'm like, perfect. What was it called again? And I'm like in a new tab, like, figuring out the name, buying flights, booking hotels. So I'm like, alright. Let's go. So I book a one way I book my flights, buy the ticket, show up at the conference. And at the conference, it's all coaches, and they're all much older than me, and they're all looking at me at every table like, are you like, are you? You're pretty young. Are you even a coach? What are you doing here? And I just started being like, oh, look, you know, I built this company. It's for coaches. It allows you to create like an AI coach of yourself, and you can train it. There's a lot of like control built into it, yada yada yada. And instantly I started seeing eyes light up. I was like, oh, that's interesting. I would want that. I would want that. And like, much is it? And I'm like, I don't know. Like, $100? Like, done. Okay. Easy. Like, oh, sweet. Next conversation, $200. Next conversation, $300, and so on and so forth.
00:18:59 · Pablo Srugo, Ali Khokhar
[00:18:59] S1: And you're closing them on the spot or you're getting like interest from them? [00:19:02] S0: I'm just getting interest. I'm like I'm like, I have a I have a wait list. Sorry. Because like there's nothing built by the way. [00:19:06] S1: Yeah. Exactly. You're not ready. [00:19:08] S0: Nothing exists. And I'm like, oh sorry, I have such a big wait list, like I'll I'll get you on there and I'll onboard you in two months. I had one guy follow me around, every time he would see me for the rest of the two day conference, he'd be like, how about this, pull up your wait list, show it to me, and I want you to see I want you to put my name at the top of that wait list. Like, I'm gonna stand here and show it to me. Was like, alright, fine. So I like went and did it. I had like a fake list, a fake wait list with like 40 people's names on it. And so anyway, conference finishes. And I'm like, okay. But still, I don't feel it yet. I don't feel the validation. I feel the excitement. I don't feel the validation. So I did what everybody does or I think everybody should do. I went, created a Stripe account, and created a one time product on Stripe for $499, one time deposit to build your AI coach on Amigo's platform. And then I sent that out, and three people paid me. So I like, oh, shit. And keep in mind, right, $500 for a solopreneur is a non like, it's not $10, $20. [00:20:00] S1: It's real money.
00:20:00 · Pablo Srugo, Ali Khokhar
[00:20:00] S1: It's real money. [00:20:01] S0: This is for them real money. Right? This is like, they're only gonna think twice before ever putting their credit card in without seeing the product, without seeing a demo, without seeing anything. Just physically me being there and having a quick twenty minute conversation turns into a Stripe link from a stranger in which they put in their credit card and pay me $500. Each of them. That then I felt like, okay I have something here. This is real now. I did the same thing in parallel with the larger enterprise y coaching organization that was like, hey, we wanna like build an AI coach. We don't have the technology, we don't have the engineering infrastructure. I was like, oh, don't worry, you can white label my AI coach. I got you. And then they were like, alright, cool. Can we see a demo? I was like, yes, of course. And then I went and to what degree I wanna say this, don't know, I fully fake it. Okay? Like, went and I had basically somebody, an engineer, go, like, create like a local single system prompt that I send in the single system prompt. I said record your screen and, like, put in these in back and forth coaching conversation about dealing with a conflict with a with a colleague. Then I went to YouTube, grabbed the voice clip of the head coach at this organization, went to 11 Labs, cloned her voice, put in each of the snippets that's from the video screen one by one, went to Sony Vegas Pro, stitched all together, and sent it over as a demo.
00:21:13 · Pablo Srugo, Ali Khokhar
[00:21:13] S1: You can be jaded about it, but the reality is now you can a 100% do it, and by the time these people wanted it, you probably could have done it. Right? So it's like Exactly. How do you just get your way to them seeing what you already [00:21:22] S0: see? Exactly. Right. Now you could do this in literally two minutes, but I was like stitching it together in like six hours with this manual process, send it over to them, then went to their leadership team to present, and be like, hey, here's what we do, here's who we are. And the person whose voice I had cloned was like in love. She was like jaw dropped, she's like this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. When I played the demo and I heard my voice, was like, oh my god. This is the future. I was like, alright, cool. They're cool. We wanna do a pilot with one of these large organizations, like a very large fortune 100 organization. I was like, oh, okay, great, sounds good. And they're like, we'll pay you, you know, a thousand dollars for the pilot, and then we'll do sort of like a rev share model. And I was like, a thousand dollars? No. Like you're a larger organization. How about And I was just like, you pay me $20,000 for a three month pilot. And they're like, 20,000? No. No. No. You're too unproven, yada yada yada, but we'll pay you 10,000. [00:22:08] S1: There you go.