Alt Update - 5th June 2023
We are not here to take part, we are here to take over - McGregor.
Hey there,
Welcome to the second update of our ‘building in public‘ series.
I will start this update with something exciting, the alt residency.
We believe there are at least 10 teams building exciting things in Pakistani right now. We will bring them together in a single physical space where we build together for 8 weeks - a more accessible alternative to YC and buildspace for Pakistani builders. Check out the concept deck here.
Back to the updates on our active ventures:
Creato
Find
Sprints
AI Experiments
Creato - Making technology accessible for Pakistani creators
Revenue: Still waiting for the first user to make money.
Pipeline: 10+ still testing and a couple very very close to going live.
Target Persona: People selling crypto and stock courses/communities. We also spoke to our counterpart in India, Qoohoo, who further validated our new approach.
Learning: We’re now showing Figma prototypes of new iterations before building them out. Gives us more speed.
Creato is building in public on Twitter. Follow us here to stay updated.
Find - Find the right people faster with AI-powered matching
Revenue Earned: $250 (same as the last update)
Revenue in Pipeline: ~$1000 (vs $0 from the last update)
Companies: 6 (vs 3 in the last update)
Applications: ~1K+ (vs 250+ in the last update)
Interviews: 25+ (vs 5+ in the last update)
Product Updates:
Improving the experience of the async video interviews.
Single-click applications via the Chrome Extension in Google Developer Review.
AI agents read CVs/LinkedIn profiles and give relevancy scores against job descriptions (internal testing)
Sprints - Digital transformation for enterprises
Revenue (this quarter): $13K
Revenue Locked (Q3 23): ~$39K with 3 companies
Our next milestone is $1 million ARR ($84K MRR).
There is a lot of interest from enterprises to adopt low-code and AI to stay competitive. We believe we’re onto something exciting here.
AI Experiments
Experiment 1 - Tasveer, generate localized AI avatars (closed)
We learned quite a lot about diffusion models and were able to create decent localized AI avatars. Check out some of IK’s avatars here.
We decided to close as the pricing (starting at PKR 1K for a couple of avatars) did not make sense for the mass consumer market in this economy.
Experiment 2 - ChatGPT bot trained on specific company data.
Trained on internal policies of a consulting company. The board loves it, still waiting for company-wide adoption.
Trained on Linear. Ask for updates on project and task progress in a chat interface.
Trained on SQL database (BigQuery). Ask questions like new signups or weekly retention in a chat interface.
Experiment 3 - Tasveer (b2b pivot), Product Photography powered by AI
Interior design brand. Placed decoration pieces in fully furnished houses using AI. Generated PKR 5K in revenue.
Shalwar kameez try-ons. Helping a local fashion brand to get female models to try-on Eastern clothes. Working well for Western clothes, figuring out how to do it for Eastern wear.
Cosmetics brand. Helping a cosmetics brand generate viral product photos with the potential to go viral. Check out early results here.
How can you help?
There is no obligation to help but we will be grateful if you can do one of these things to help us move forward:
Connect us with anyone who will resonate with our vision of building a YC alternative accessible for Pakistani builders (alt residency).
We will appreciate a warm intro with Abbas Yousafzai (Conrad Labs) to discuss alt residency. We have been told he is someone we should meet.
Trikl is now live on Play Store. They are doing sessions with offices and co-working spaces on financial literacy and how to save/invest in Pakistan. Let me know if you’d like to invite them to your space and I will make the intro.
Special thanks to everyone who responded or helped us last time! Your appreciation adds fuel to our fire.
You will hear from me again in a couple of weeks.
Best,
Muhammad.
P.S. If you missed the last update, you can view it here.