This is the second edition of my newsletter. A lot has happened since the first one, so let’s get to it.

How to start

The usual process for a start-up is to “incubate” first, which includes multiple activities like understanding the market, doing interviews, creating a MVP, etc. Then at some point: launch and cross fingers.

The problem with this approach ? Multiple biases in each and every step of the way, leading to failure. Even if you do everything correctly. Because the market, you know, is always right and may not agree with you.

The “indie hacker” or “solopreneur” approach is to build quicker. But that doesn’t necessarily need immediately. The reason is that the cost to build is typically lower, so the investment in market research needs to be adjusted in proportion of the effort. A rule of thumb is 10%. If it takes 60 days to build, invest no more than 6 days in research. Also, research can tell about the pain points but:

1. The feedback on the solution is limited - people won’t get to use it

2. People tend to overestimate what they’ll buy (you can discount intentions by 70% usually)

3. It can actually be hard to reach your target group without having something meaningful for them

4. You may not even know what your target group will be - you’re just solving a problem you’re having

Some people skip the product research part entirely, but I am not. To be clear: the rate of failure with the “build it first” approach is high too, maybe even higher. But given that the investment is more limited, people still think it’s worth it because in the meantime they learned, grew their followers, etc. So, many “indie hackers” have multiple products live, and even more failures behind them.

I like the idea of putting less affect into a solution/product, and also less investment. It makes the act of entrepreneurship back to basics, or even a bit more childish: do a fun project. But as per my recent exchange on Twitter with @mityasmusin : “Having fun is the main thing. If it feels like games to you, you’ll inevitable win.”

Now, what’s the example at hand? Here we go.

My Idea

I think email is broken. So I am launching an AI-powered email assistant (available as a plugin for Gmail and/or Outlook).

More details (you can skip if not interested/saw on Linkedin)

Email is broken, but here to stay. That's why I am creating the AI-powered email assistant I've always wanted. At least, I can spend less time managing it.

I've had an email for like 30 years. Since the beginning it was misused. People who invented emails thought it would be like post mail but faster, right ? Wrong. They never anticipated the avalanche of emails we are facing.

So today our inboxes are flooded with emails discussions you don't want to read, newsletters you didn't know you subscribed to, sequences from the last service or app you registered to, cold emails in languages you don't understand, and so on. The concept of "unread" doesn't mean anything anymore.

And then... there is this important email that requires a response but gets lost in the clutter. Know the feeling ?

Here is how I think Jalon, my new AI assistant will save my life (and yours maybe) - or at least hours. It will give me a few buckets:
1- Emails that I need to reply first (and prepare a reply based on history and my job description)
2- Emails that I should read in-depth because they seem important (and propose some actions)
3- Emails I should follow up on (and not because I noted "to follow up" before, because... I don't want to do that)
4- Everything else (newsletters, cold emails, sequences, etc).

This is entirely based on psychology: the state of mind of "skimming through" email is very different than the state of mind of actively replying or reading an important email in depth. By grouping by type of action, you will be much more focused & efficient.

And if this is something that resonates with you, I encourage you to join the wait-list on Jalon.AI

The backstory

How did I come up with that ? I focused on a problem I had, and thought that others would certainly have it too. Email is used by everybody and many people feel email fatigue & overload. In addition, AI is making email creation easier, and with cold emails tools, it is getting easier to send cold emails, which are now flooding people’s inbox. So I am fighting back, with a tool that will help filtering the signal from the noise among your hundreds of emails.

Did I consider other ideas ? Oh yeah. But this one kept coming back, which is usually a sign, especially when it’s like “Oh I really would like to have this now because I’m so tired of browsing those emails”.

There are lot of reasons why it’s a great idea:

• Big potential market

• Surfing on a solid trend (AI)

• Solving a real problem

• Fun to do - I am passionate about AI and I see a growth opportunity

Also, here is why it’s a bad idea - it’s very important to do that to limit the ‘entrepreneurial fever’ and wishful thinking that goes with it. Also, it gives points of attention for the future:

• The niche is too broad / not identified yet.

• It may be short lived as both Google & Microsoft are investing a lot in AI, so the features I will be building might become native very soon (or not)

• It’s no that easy to do (ie for a solopreneur, bootstrapped…)

• There is no clear software market (ie I could go after the CRM or survey market with a differentiated solution)

All those points are things I will need to solve, at some points, or they’ll get solved by themselves (ie identifying niches by looking at the profile of the most engaged users).

How I started

As you can see if you subscribe to jalon.ai there are 3 components:

• I designed a few “killer” features on Figma (I had to teach myself Figma, which you can do with this tutorial) . You should also take existing resources from the community of Figma (I took the Gmail design)

• I put that as picture on Canva and added some explainer text (the lines you see on the picture on the home page were drawn by hand on my touch screen… I found that gave some style but feel free to disagree…)

• I created an account on EmailOctopus.com for email collection

• I created a landing page on carrd.co. You can also use squarespace, webflow, or others. I tried with Odoo & convertkit but they were too many limitations.

• I created a survey on tally.so (belgian bootstrapped startup, yeah!)

• I integrated everything

So the flow is:

• See a simple landing page (I wanted something on one screen to avoid people having to scroll, but that’s a choice)

• Subscribe to get notified

• Get redirected to the survey on tally.so 

• As the end of the survey, people who are heavy emails users are invited to book time with me on Calendly. 

So I am combining: lead generation, market research (quantitative & qualitative).

No time/will to register ? Please answer the survey on Tally.so 

Does this work ? Wait till next week’s issue.

All the best!

Alexandre