Building Smithai: From Google to Marketplace Solutions for SMB Communication in 3-6 Months

As the co-founder and CEO of Smithai, I'm excited to share my journey from building a marketplace for home improvement professionals to creating a platform that helps small and medium-sized businesses handle their inbound and outbound communications.

1. The process of creating a proof of concept prototype for a product shouldn't take longer than 3-6 months.
2. Showing the product to customers early and often is important, even if it's not perfect yet.
3. A willingness of business owners to pay for a product is a strong testimonial for its value.
4. Aaron Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Smithai, a startup that helps small and medium businesses handle their inbound and outbound communications.
5. Smithai handles phone calls, live chat, SMS, and Facebook messengers 24/7.
6. Lee was an early engineer at Google and worked on Google Videos and YouTube's monetization.
7. Google is an engineering-centric company that values exploration and flexibility for its engineers.
8. When building a product, it's important to talk to many customers and continue talking to them after the product or prototype has been built.
9. Users will often have different problems and interests than anticipated, so it's crucial to gather feedback and iterate on the product.
10. Lee left Google in 2008 during the financial crisis to start his first company, Redbeacon, with two other ex-Googlers.
11. Redbeacon was a marketplace that connected homeowners with home improvement professionals and took the top prize at TechCrunch.
12. The most challenging part of building Redbeacon was finding reliable supply (home improvement professionals) to meet demand (homeowners).
13. To source supply, Redbeacon looked for pros with consistent positive feedback on review sites like Yelp and Angie's List and contacted them directly.
14. Having a balanced ratio of jobs sent to providers is important for maintaining engagement and avoiding disappointment on either side.
15. Home Depot acquired Redbeacon, and Lee stayed on as CTO for another three years.
16. The acquisition allowed Redbeacon to leverage Home Depot's brand, trust, and distribution.
17. Smithai is a solution to the problem of small and medium businesses not having the time, team, or IT expertise to handle every call or chat.
18. Smithai uses AI and human agents to ensure calls are answered within a few rings and leads are qualified.
19. Ideal customers for Smithai have high opportunity costs, high lifetime value, and view time as money.
20. Examples of ideal customers include lawyers, home service professionals, real estate agents, general contractors, and interior designers.
21. In the early days of Smithai, the team spent a lot of time talking to customers to understand their pain points and needs.
22. Building a product takes 3-6 months from identifying what to build to launching the first proof of concept prototype.
23. Founders should not be embarrassed to show their products early and gather feedback, as it helps improve the product and avoids building something that doesn't meet market needs.
24. A strong indicator of product-market fit is business owners being willing to pay for the product consistently.

Source: EO via YouTube

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