I think they're just meant to be friendly. I don't think it's that deep. They're useful and not scary and its marketing is meant to project that image.
You can consider the cute & fuzzy presentation of the new consumer AI agents an admission that the doom and gloom so far has been a marketing mistep. It's good that companies are trying to rectify the image of AI.
I was surprised by how much I liked the Muse avatar and its customization options. It’s very good at coming up with something decent looking based on your prompts, and animating it.
The services without the custom avatar now feel like they’re missing something.
As a kid I used to love the video game “Megaman Battle Network”, which depicts a world where everyone walks around with an PDA device carrying a fully customized AI buddy that navigates the internet for them. It was the first time I felt like we were getting close to that.
But even with the nostalgia, I don’t think I can ever connect up a Meta owned agent service to all of my accounts and information.
I feel like this should be memed as something like the "Jar-Jar Binks Marketing Flop": intentionally design something to be childishly adorable and inoffensive, which ironically makes it loathsome and offensive to adult customers.
I've been working on Zigpoll[0] for ~4 years. AI has changed my trajectory dramatically where it's way more realistic to compete with the big players as a one man show. Trying to close out on 2M ARR this year and then maybe look to sell and ride off into the sunset.
Solo founder (and sole employee) getting to 2M ARR with Zigpoll[0]
AI is making it possible to go after bigger clients so the strategy is to focus on marketing and going upmarket. A lot of new features to add and things to learn as you move up to bigger customers with larger contracts!
Scaling Zigpoll[0] to 2M ARR as a solo founder (currently at 1.5 ARR). Each year you double ARR for a business it comes with a whole new set of challenges which are layered on top of the changes in the tech landscape.
Fortunately I think I've been bailed out by agentic coding the last couple months from a product perspective but I think the major gains so far have been due to marketing and exploring alternative growth channels. Even so, keeping momentum is never a given and requires constant output from all angles! Onward...
Crossed over 100K MRR and I'm shooting for 2M ARR by the end of the year. Growing something in this stage is totally different from making it go from zero to one so it's an interesting learning curve. AI has also changed the calculus as well where it seems less crazy to try and do this sort of thing. Time will tell!
You should almost always stick with an idea for longer than you think. I've had 3 successful projects (one making over 100K MRR[0]) IMO the main differentiator between winning and losing is how fast you are iterating based on customer feedback.
I think about it like throwing a dart at the dartboard. You might hit the bullseye in one shot but usually you'll just hit somewhere random then it's up to you to iterate and find the version of your idea that the market will actually pay for. This is the feedback part of the equation and giving up and throwing random darts may never pay off.
were your projects in spaces you were familiar with? I feel like that makes the dart less random. Also I feel like it's hard to get customers/users on calls
well they were all websites so they had that in common but not much else. I would recommend starting off with an app store of some kind since getting initial customers is a real pain unless you already have some lined up due to past work experience / networking. That said, with enough time and screaming into the void you will get someone to walk through the door. Best to ask them as many questions as you can while they are hanging around!
you can email me if you want: jason[at]zigpoll.com
Ideas came from building something that I wished existed. Honestly I didn't overthink any of them and I'm glad I didn't. If you do too much market research it tends to make your vision seem less exciting IMO.
Either way my whole point is to just iterate on your initial idea for long enough that it goes from being "your fun idea" to "your fun idea that people are willing to pay for". Then just repeat that loop until you retire :)
the requirements for growth keep changing plus all the AI noise means that the playbook changes regularly. staying on top of the state of the market while improving/maintaining the product and understanding our icp + exploring new verticals is a tricky (but fun) task to manage!
Congrats, that's a huge achievement!! Curious where your ARR is approximately right now, and how long it's taken you to get to this point? What's your marketing strategy looked like, and is it just you running things?
