Hesitantly launching my AI business
I'm very hesitant, but finally launching DocUp.ai. What should feel like a party, is more like a downer 🙃. Here's my weird journey that led to today (I'll keep it short)👇:
I'm running a semi-successful WordPress business. The toughest bottleneck any WordPress business faces, is delivering support 🧑💻. As your plugin or theme sales grow, so does the demand for support. It's different than with SaaS products, as WordPress support requests are often technical in nature and require a fair bit of knowledge and investigating to reply.
A few months ago, AI was quickly becoming a thing so I wanted to see if it could solve part of my support problem 🤖. I started to build DocUp, a tool that would learn from my site's documentation and would use AI to reply to user's queries using that info. 🥳 I was onto something great!
Since I'm already running the WordPress business, dev didn't go as fast as I had hoped. 🐢 I also (perhaps mistakenly) used the opportunity to learn new stuff (React, in particular), which only slowed me down further. My partner heard me swear more than I did in my lifetime. 😬
So up to that point, it hadn't been a great journey. ⏳On top of that, other tools started popping up and they did the same as what I was building. 👀 I stopped counting after seeing a handful of tools. They're cool, but let's be honest, it's super demotivating to see someone launch before you 🙁.
So I asked myself: do I continue or stop building? 🚧 I was too far in and I wanted to see this new learning curve through, so I decided to continue 🛣️.
I slowly continued building version 1 of the tool. It took a few months and I was insecure about my own abilities at every turn. I was postponing launching by finding small & unimportant stuff to do ✅.
But today, I ran out of to-do's. Version 1 has been ready for a while now, and I decided to 🚀 launch it anyway because - regardless of the stressful journey and not being "new and noteworthy" anymore - I am still quite proud of what I built.
Moreover, it's running successfully on my WordPress plugin business!
I have ideas to build more and differentiate from the competition, but for today, I'll just launch and see where to go from there!
If you also need help in decreasing your support queue, check out DocUp.ai and let me know what you think!
Thanks for making it this far. 🙂
Hey, the site looks great. 3 ideas that you can take or leave.
First, I think you need to really find or define a niche here. Maybe the niche is you... Wordpress product builders. Maybe developers use this in their environment for nonpublic documentation that they have access to. Maybe event planners use this to triple check all their requirements before an event.
The reason is that every tech company's top use case seems to be building a customer service bot. So start thinking now about how to distinguish.
Second, it might be great to start this as a managed service. Connect it up and train a few customers. I could see companies easily paying $10-$20k for implementation of this.
Third, it's weird to me (but everyone does it) that ideas gravitate towards users asking questions and the bot gives an answer. That is not the most valuable use case. It's a cost companies want to reduce, but it's limited.
More interesting is what if the bot is asking the users questions and able to drive towards outcomes. So let's say a visitor fills out a lead form on a website. The bot starts a conversation to find out what the new sales lead is interested in and schedules a call with a rep.
Just some ideas off the top of my head. Let me know if you ever want to discuss any of these.
I don’t think launching something that has competitors is anything to be demotivated by. If you look closely, most people have a competitor that started before them.
Proud of you launching!
Thanks and I believe you're right! :)
Congrats on launching and agree with everyone else, the site looks great. I think what @liarliar said is really important. I would think about the outcomes that will help the buyer and from that the automations that you can build into the product to take it beyond Q&A
Thank you, I agree liarliar had some great things to say 😊
Hey Maarten, congratulations on the launch! I totally understand how it feels when the market seems to move faster than your development pace, but remember, it's not always about being first, it's about being the best fit for your customers.
Here are a couple of thoughts for moving forward:
Leverage your unique position as a WordPress business owner. Your firsthand experience with the pain points of WP support gives you a unique insight into your customer’s needs. Use that to differentiate DocUp.
Emphasize on continuous learning. React, AI, whatever comes next - these skills you’ve picked up aren't just for this project. They're long-term investments in your abilities as an entrepreneur.
Don't fear competition, rather, learn from them. Use competitive analysis to understand how they're positioning, pricing, and marketing their products, then iterate on your own strategy.
Seek feedback actively - from your users, peers, and the community here. It's the best way to improve and innovate.
Congrats again on pushing through the hesitation and launching. Looking forward to seeing how DocUp evolves!
Hey, I appreciate your comment a lot! I agree with all of it :)
I like the idea of this and how you turned an issue into a startup. You shouldn't have any issues about launching it because it cant drag you down only lift you up.
Nice! Your competitor chatprime.co 😃
I'll add you to the every-growing list of competitors 😃. How is CP growing for you?
I think we made mistake by going into AI Chatbots, we'll see after all. There are sooo many chatbots already 😃
Nice! Tried it and its working great!!
Why does every other sentence end in an emoji? Lol
Anyways, “launching” really isn’t that big of a deal. People “launch” before a single line of code is written sometimes.
At some point you just gotta break the seal and do it. Congrats!
I was afraid people wouldn't read if it was just text, so I added emojis in!
You're right though. Launching itself isn't a big deal. It's growing and acquiring the first users that's the real deal.
Hi Maarten, I see you're from/based in Ghent. I'm Belgian too and studied at Ghent university and lived there for a while (moved to Berlin 3y ago). Cool to see there's other Belgians out here launching stuff!
Website and product look very clean, intuitive and easy to use. Congrats on the launch!
One tip from my side: show the free tier as an option on your pricing plans. To me it's quite confusing at the moment and at first glance I thought there were no free plans but only a free trial period.
Good luck! Would be happy to connect with you. 🙏🏼
Hello, fellow Belgian! Always great to hear other Belgians walking the same path (we're just a few, so it seems).
I guess you are right about the free plan! I should change that!
Happy to connect too!
Hi Maarten!
You are definitely right that this sort of use case has been popping up everywhere recently, but you might have some edge over others with your specific domain knowledge of Wordpress. Maybe consider making it as a plugin? Or build Wordpress specific features? I believe focusing on that niche might help you stand out and build a successful product that will be the right fit for some group of people :)
Thanks for your feedback! I think you're right: niching down is a way to go!
Congrats! As another hesitant (hopefully soon-to-be) launcher - excited to see you take that first big step!
Thanks! Let us know what you're (maybe) launching! :)
I like this product Maarten, everything about it feels clean and easy to use. The value propositions are also very obvious, and the integration seems very easy
I rarely come across a product online where i think "these lot get it"; you definitely get it.
Dropped you a follow on twitter, looking forward to when you get around to the ProductHunt launch
All the best, you'll go far with this 💪
Thanks, I appreciate your support a lot! I'll do a PH launch soon but hopefully I get some feedback to implement first.
Try some soft launches. Put your product on AI directories and google PPC ads
FindAITools.co (B2B based, free), Futurepedia.io (general, $200 submission), TheresAnAIForThat.com (SEO, $200)
IH and twitter will take too long to validate
Thanks! I subscribed to TheresanAIForThat but waiting to be listed. I'm curious what traffic that might bring, their numbers look great if we can believe them!
I really this Maarten. I see the demo shows 'learn more' with links. I do not understand AI well enough but could the 'learn more' give relevant links to a page? For example, if I search FREE VERSION it tells me there is one but a link to the signup page at the bottom would be good, or the pricing page.
Thanks for taking the time to test! Yes, the idea is that those links point to the relevant documentation it found. In the case of DocUp, it's just a one-pager landing page so everything is basically the same link :).
Add your ai tool to saasbaba.com
Nice landing page!
Thanks! I thought people would say it looks too much like all other tailwind pages out there, so I'm glad you like it!
Love the site from the idea to the site design, you really did well.
Congratulations on launching
From my point of view, this product will serve B2B more as they mostly have lot of enquiries to response to.
You know agencies like social media management tool , email marketing, hosting, CRM, etc will really find Docup AI very useful.
I think having a "Use Case" section or page to explain how different businesses can use it for support will help convert more users.
And if you need help with writing the use case study or SEO content for your new product or plugin, I'm available, I can help with it.
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Thanks, I love your encouragement! :)