Inside the Personal AI Assistant Growing 10% a Day | Instinct Founder
Patrick O'Shaughnessy talks with Noah Shinn, founder of Instinct, a personal AI assistant you text or call, about its 10% daily growth, earning user trust, its ad-free business model and the compute crunch.
The gist
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Shinn says Instinct is just a personal assistant with its own phone, computer and email address, so users text, call or email it with no new app.
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Shinn says 40% of users share a credit card within 3 weeks, and users who share one sensitive item show 80% retention.
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Instinct is free with no ads; Shinn plans a merchant take rate on over $1 billion in yearly transactions, half from travel.
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Using Patrick's Uber Eats example, Shinn argues lower friction raises order volume, and suggests businesses test agent access on 1% of users first.
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Growing about 10% a day through invites, Shinn spends 40% of his time on compute, because it takes months to arrive and misjudging costs 3-4x.
"I use Uber Eats a lot. Like I order from Uber Eats all the time. It's kind of a pain in the ass to click through the thing. I can imagine a lot better experience on a snappy WhatsApp connection with Instinct or something saying, 'Hey, I want my usual from this restaurant.' And..."
▶ Play at 38:30What they recommend · 1 pick
"I use Uber Eats a lot. Like I order from Uber Eats all the time. It's kind of a pain in the ass to click through the thing. I can imagine a lot better experience on a snappy Wha..."
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