As a startup founder, I'm continually intrigued by the latest entrepreneurial tools hitting the market, particularly those enhanced by AI technology. Recently, I discovered an exciting tool named
After trying out the product, I was struck by its impressive capabilities – tasks that once required weeks of preparation can now be accomplished in mere minutes. This piqued my curiosity, prompting me to reach out to the project's founder for further insights through a series of questions.
We had a highly productive conversation, discussing the product, the general aspects of launching startups in 2024, and the specific challenges of working with the corporate sector. Enjoy!
Could you provide a brief overview of your product?
Well, it started as a simple pitch deck generator, which now operates on Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp, and WeChat. The bot asks the user 40 questions. As you know, the correct question is half the answer. Therefore, we aimed to ask the right questions to initiate an internal reflection in the user, leading them to answers they hadn't reached before this dialogue.
What’s important, the user can choose their preferred language from the get-go, and all subsequent communication will be conducted in that selected language. This greatly enhances the accessibility of our tool for entrepreneurs from various countries, aligning seamlessly with our overarching global strategy.
As you respond to the questions, the bot guides you on how to answer better, reformulates your responses, and educates you in certain areas. There are popular options like 'Help Me To Answer' for users who are unsure how to respond. It assists in crafting an answer. If your response is too short, unclear, or overly lengthy, the bot optimizes, shortens, rephrases, and supplements your answers.
For instance, it offers suggestions if you're unaware of your metrics. If you don't know your competitors, it helps identify and compare their strengths and weaknesses. Essentially, it aids, improves, and optimizes your responses as you interact with it.
It's important to note that this does not overlap or compete with any design tools. It's not a design tool. In the process, we offer a choice of ten design templates, that's all. We believe that 'content is king'. Converting content into images is not always crucial.
Nevertheless, there is a choice of ten designs; you simply select one based on style, and the content automatically fits in. Importantly, if you input a lot of text, it's optimized to fit within the slide without overcrowding.
Then come the magical elements. At the end of the dialogue, we send you documents via email: Pitch deck, sales deck, executive summary, blurb, business plan, elevator pitch - ranging from a half-paragraph text for an elevator pitch to a 20-page business plan (excluding financial models). From one dialogue, multiple documents are generated.
Additionally, we generate proposals for major accelerators. The bot fills out all the application forms for these accelerators, which you can then edit. This saves time spent on filling out repetitive forms.
Please share a bit about your background and how the initial idea for this startup came to you. What personal challenges or pain points did you experience that inspired it?
My background is quite diverse. On one hand, I am an entrepreneur who has been involved in launching technology startups. For instance, in 2017, I sold one of my startups to a leading player in the financial sector. Additionally, I maintain ownership stakes in several other companies. Alongside this, I also serve as an advisor and angel investor. Hence, I have a comprehensive understanding of startup investments.
Additionally, my extensive involvement in corporate governance consulting has been a significant part of my career. This positions me uniquely as an entrepreneur, a consultant in corporate innovation, and an investor, all in one.
In my experience coaching both corporations and startups, I consistently encountered a prevalent challenge: individuals often found it difficult to effectively communicate their roles and the fundamental concepts of their projects. I created a questionnaire to address this, which I would print and distribute at every workshop. Participants would read and fill in the blanks, answering questions like 'My client is...', or 'The problem I solve is...'. This exercise helped them develop a coherent narrative. I've been using this practice for many years.
I had this physical questionnaire that people would hold and complete. It was evident that it worked effectively. However, I always aspired to create something more global, addressing a problem that is not limited to a specific market segment. The audience I knew best was entrepreneurs — being one myself and constantly surrounded by them, they were my primary focus.
I see. So how did you turn this idea into the actual product?
In 2020, when the pandemic started, I decided to experiment. While at home, I thought of creating an international startup just for fun. That led to the inception of this pitch-bot. I took my questionnaire and formatted it into a Typeform. To give you context, advanced bots and AI weren't prevalent in 2020. Surprisingly, it gained traction and eventually appeared in the American organic search results under 'AI pitchdeck generator', especially after the launch of ChatGPT.
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At the beginning of January 2023, we started seeing some tentative sales. I began investigating who was actually buying and where the money was coming from. I discovered that it was PitchBob, and I started to engage with it, actively integrating the ChatGPT API. This strategy proved successful. I've just opened the list of payments, and they're literally from all over the world, everywhere.
What are your goals and aspirations for further development?
I'm more drawn to the enterprise segment and internal entrepreneurs within large companies. This is because they tend to be less competent, and big companies strive to have their internal entrepreneurs come up with excellent ideas, which is quite challenging within the confines of a large corporation.
Another goal of mine was to help wantrepreneurs become entrepreneurs. It always disheartened me to see people who wanted to do something but didn't, often due to a lack of something that could get them started. So, the best advice for beginners is to simply start. Our product is specifically designed for such beginners with an idea. So this is a meaningful social mission.
Our product is built based on partnerships with incubators, accelerators, funds, and venture studios. We operate in two formats. The simplest is Perk Partnerships, where we offer discounts for their startups. We can list who our partners are. The second is that we will actively discuss White Label options with them once the subscription part launches. We'll track, manage, nudge, and provide them with an assistant for their acceleration program. They can get a white label and use our tool in that capacity.
I'm interested in learning about your strategies for attracting corporate clients. It's one thing to sell to budding entrepreneurs who discover your services through organic Google searches, but it's quite another to penetrate the corporate market. How have you structured your approach to engaging and acquiring corporate clients?
Well, my decade-long experience in the corporate sector gives me some confidence in understanding the nuances of large enterprises. We've conducted around a hundred interviews, including with an individual who works as a product manager at Microsoft. These interviews were part of our thorough groundwork. Additionally, I have extensively utilized my outreach connections.
Our business development is built on customer development. We enter enterprises and look for individuals willing to launch pilot projects. In essence, we're not selling anything initially; we discuss their projects. The proposition is like this — if innovation matters to you, if such problems resonate with you, let's talk and initiate a pilot launch.
Soon, our product will integrate with Slack and Teams, which is a crucial step towards entering the enterprise market. These platforms are the internal communication channels of enterprises. Effective communication and distribution channels within large companies are already established through these messengers, and integrating our product into them is essential for gaining access within these corporations.
What are the common challenges faced by these corporate entrepreneurs?
In corporations, there are various layers and functional divisions, each with their distinct goals. They have their own KPIs, reporting structures, and so on, yet these goals are ubiquitous.
Firstly, there's the need to engage employees to prevent turnover, ensuring they stay happy and that their creative energies are realized. After all, tasks can become monotonous and lead to a feeling of underutilization. This is primarily the responsibility of HR or the functional divisions where product managers notice burnout or loss of interest among their teams.
Such individuals need to be given the freedom to work on projects outside their direct responsibilities, like free Fridays or a set number of hours dedicated to any project of their choice. It's about giving them the liberty to utilize their creative resources.
Secondly, large companies understand that many products are created internally, but this requires specific conditions to be fostered. One such condition is supporting these creative individuals. However, there are challenges: identifying and motivating these talents, assembling them into teams, aligning their ideas with company strategy, and creating a safe environment for feedback on viable and non-viable projects. It's about figuring out which direction for idea generation aligns with corporate plans for new products.
Therefore, those responsible for innovative development form our second target segment after those focused on employee happiness. They deal with internal entrepreneurs, startups, and labs. Each company might call them differently, but their aim is to increase conversions at several stages. The first conversion is getting people to participate in internal entrepreneurship programs, followed by converting this participation into tangible outcomes like idea generation.
Thus, our approach and direction in the enterprise space focus on increasing conversion at each stage of the funnel, from engagement to monetization. We call this maximizing a corporation's internal innovative potential.
What do you consider a major obstacle when it comes to generating ideas?
A common yet suboptimal approach in companies is measuring KPIs based on the number of generated ideas. Plenty of Idea Management Platforms are designed solely for idea generation, which, while a significant business segment, often add little value to the company as ideas don't progress beyond conception.
Ultimately, any idea for your company falls into one of two categories. Either it's a cost-optimization tool, which is simpler to conceive and implement and can save money even with relatively straightforward solutions. Or it's about developing new, significant products or even breakthroughs at a technological level.
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These ideas need to evolve into prototypes with allocated resources and assembled teams. But forming teams and matching ideas in a large company with hundreds of thousands of employees is challenging. This is where we aim to intervene — by matching people, sharing ideas, forming teams, and involving them based on competencies. When there are gaps in team competencies, they need to be filled by selecting from within the employee pool.
What are the recent updates to your project, and what are your plans for the near future?
Firstly, our service will soon be ready to assist with startup visa applications, targeting startups rather than individual entrepreneurs.
We're also working on integrating various AI features. All these features are based on the initial dialogue, where the bot asks a series of questions. It's similar to purchasing a premium subscription to ChatGPT, training it with your website and presentations, and then continuing the interaction. However, with our service, this is already set up for you since you've answered all the questions and generated the documents with responses based on this pre-trained dialogue.
One key feature is that it provides feedback on your idea across 11 parameters, offering insights and highlighting focus areas. This allows you to gauge the overall viability of your idea, with parameters focusing on pure investment aspects like market, team, and potential.
Another addition is a couch feature with 340 questions commonly asked by investors at various fundraising stages. You can practice and prepare responses to these questions with the bot, and for each response, it offers improvements tailored to your situation.
The AI offers feedback and serves as a training tool. It writes an article about you, which you can publish on our Launchpad with a backlink to your landing page. This is their first published article for many, providing a reference point. We're also updating our logo generation feature.
Additionally, we have an extensive database of over 100,000 investor contacts. Manually searching and contacting them is challenging. As part of your subscription, we will soon introduce the feature that matches your pitch deck with this database and sends you a monthly list of relevant investors based on geography, stage, type, etc. We will also provide a list of journalists for pitching, helping you understand what to do next with your set of documents.
After the initial dialogue and document generation, and having received feedback and used the training tool, you can access a subscription-based feature we call the 'entrepreneur's copilot'. This includes several functionalities. The basic feature, Ask Me Anything Copilot, allows you to ask any question, with responses based on the pre-trained dialogue. Questions can range from what feature to develop next to how to increase SEO traffic in Australia for your product.
It also functions as a tracker. At the start of each month, it inquires about your plans, broken down into product, sales, marketing, team, and fundraising categories. These are fundamental questions worth considering. You respond by formulating hypotheses for the month ahead. At month's end, it reviews your planned versus actual achievements, provides feedback, and generates a stakeholders' or investors' report on your progress, saving you time.
It subtly guides you throughout the month, starting with initial questions, followed by end-of-month reviews, plan-versus-actual comparisons, and report generation. In between, you can generate additional documents or engage in abstract discussions related to your project, effectively serving as your copilot.
We also plan to launch this in the GPT store. As they will have their store, we'll likely feature there too. Our product currently operates on the OpenAI API. So, when we enter their store, it will work in reverse – we aim to use their channel as a distribution channel.
Also, I’d like to offer a promo-code ZKRDUW for 30% discount for our readers.
Thank you for this conversation, Dima, and good luck with your project!
Thank you!