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How @OthersideAI founders @mattshumer_ @MilesFeldstein and @JasonKuperberg amassed a 13k waitlist and $2.6m funding after building a demo in 2 hours.

Their product will change how we communicate. 👇🧵

 2. OthersideAI was launched in the latter half of 2020 by three college-aged founders—Matt Shumer, Miles Feldstein, and Jason Kuperberg.

The company’s origin story is incredible. 🔥
3. The three founders met at @LaunchPadSYR (the Blackstone LaunchPad & Techstars at Syracuse University). 🎓

The idea for OthersideAI came from an experience CEO Matt Shumer had at his previous startup, Visos.
4. Without a network to tap into, Matt Shumer had to cold email practically anyone he wanted to connect with or pitch. 📧

“I eventually came to the conclusion that I spend too much time writing emails and I tried to figure out a way to use [GPT-2] to cut that time down” -MS
5. WTF is GPT-2? 🤔

Open-source artificial intelligence by OpenAI.

Developers wield the AI to perform certain specific tasks.

In this case, composing emails.
6. "So the idea originally was, can we do a better auto correct or something akin to Google’s Smart Compose, where it kind of suggests the next few words.”

We built that, and it actually worked out really, really well.” -MS
7. What came next really ignited OthersideAI. 🔥

Around this time OpenAI announced and released GPT-3, the successor to GPT-2.

It was so more advanced than GPT-2 it may as well have been called GPT-10.
8. What you could do with it was mind-blowing and caused a social media frenzy in technology and venture capital communities. 🤯
9. An enthusiastic fanbase built and showed off GPT-3 demos, many of which became viral sensations for a few weeks in the summer of 2020. ☀️
10. But, not everyone could get their hands on GPT-3.

OpenAI had an approval process and a long waiting list.

Not wanting to waste anytime, the OthersideAI team cold emailed the CTO of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, in an attempt to fast-track the process.

It worked! 💪
11. After that, no time was wasted. ⏰

“The day we got access [to GPT-3] we decided to see what we could do… and within about 2 hours we were able to whip up a demo that was just miles ahead of what we had. We really had something that can truly write emails for you.”—MS
12. Two hours? Wow. 😮

Matt Shumer said they were able to move that fast because of their prior experience experimenting with GPT-2.

Fair enough. But still…
13. Next, they posted their demo on Twitter.

It ‘went viral’ and generated hundreds of thousands of views.

Eventually over 1 million. 📈
14. They got the attention of people like former Shark Tank investor Chris Sacca and the CTO of OpenAI, who retweeted and amplified the demo.

This led to coverage in major publications like the New York Times.
15. And, it was totally deserving.

It looked like you were viewing the future today. 🔮

The product they're building transforms basic text into a well-written email.

Input 👇
16. Output 👇
17. This has the potential to be an incredibly productive tool. So many people spend a big portion of their day writing emails.

Their long term vision is to free up billions of hours of time for working professionals globally.

Game-changing. 👀
18. Building a product with the latest hot technology ‘everyone is talking about’ is a fantastic way to generate organic attention.

When it’s combined with a truly valuable and futuristic proposition like this, twitter can go wild.

And, it did. 💥
19. A month later their waitlist hit 4,000 sign ups.
20. Ever since they’ve continued to share their progress on Twitter, as well as taking interviews on podcasts and things.

At the time of writing their waitlist is around 13,000! 📈

You can add yourself to the list here. 👇

https://t.co/mNLDztADi5
21. This momentum created excellent leverage for closing a seed round of $2.6m.

If you want to hear more on that and grab a breakdown on their launch framework, I wrote it up here👇

https://t.co/KXUkuTkrNN
22. Thanks to Matt Shumer for responding to my emails and @Mat_Sherman for the podcast quotes. 🙏

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