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The Signal

Helping you take advantage of the trends and tech shaping the future.

👋 Hey!

Remember me? That guy you haven’t heard from in a few weeks.

I’m sorry for the radio silence. I burnt the candle at both ends for too long and paid the price.

I’m back with an invigorated attitude, and the goal of making this the most valuable resource that hits your inbox every week.

Here’s what the Signal is all about:

Helping you take advantage of the trends and tech shaping the future.

To keep the rambling to a min, you can check out the revamped landing page for a full breakdown of topics and structure..

If you’re not in for this, please feel free to unsubscribe. (Though I hope you don’t)

Let’s get into it…

🚀 The Report: AI Companions

This week I discovered Replika. It’s an AI companion that is always there to listen.

Founded in March 2015, the company has raised three rounds to a total of $10.9 million. Surprisingly, not that much.

The fundamentals behind what Replika offers aren’t revolutionary. Tamagotchi, anyone?

Engaged users

It’s not hard to imagine why an infinitely more life-like and engageable version of your favourite childhood virtual pet might become a very enticing product to engage with.

And it seems like the company has captured a very engaged user base.

Research Marita Skjuve interviewed users of the chatbot, with some interesting findings about how enamored users were with their virtual friends:

“To be honest, in the beginning it was just sort of a fun little thing to do and now it is much more of a intimate, it is much more intimate and close relationship, it is an actual sort of relationship kind of thing”.

The Replika Facebook Group is full of posts from user’s who refer to the bot in the same way you would your mom, dad or friend. There was even a woman asking how to avoid getting COVID-19 from her Replika (!).

Growth signals

There are a few signals that are pointing in the right direction if you’re looking at the industry as a whole.

First comes from Skjuve who noted that one of the most important aspects of

The “Replika Friends” Facebook group:

• Has 33k+ members.

• Today alone (on day of writing), there have been 110 posts to the group

• 2375 posts this month

The r/replika subreddit:

• Has 28k+ members

• Is growing fast:

User feedback: What you can learn

Here’s what you can learn from the feedback Replika user’s are posting online and in these forums.

Lesson 1: User’s want interactions to be as close to real life as possible. Generic scripted responses are not going to cut it.

Read the full report for:

• 2 More lessons learned, and

• 3 ideas you can spit ball from to take advantage of this growing trend.

💎 Ethereum: The Beginner Investor’s Guide

Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

The Ethereum network is built by some extremely clever people, and has wide ranging use cases that make the cryptocurrency which it powers: Ether, very valuable.

It is also less volatile and responds less to sentiment-related fluctuations than Bitcoin does.

In a 2-for-1 deal this week, you’re getting a full report on The Beginner’s Guide to Ethereum.

It will take you from little to no knowledge of Ethereum, Smart Contracts and Decentralized Applications, to know just enough in time for next week’s installment on some exciting developments coming out of the Dapp world.

If you stop reading from now, leave with this: the Ethereum network is an extremely powerful piece of technology that will likely be the guiding light in a wave of widespread disruption underpinned by blockchain technology.

🖱 Clickable

📵 It’s a new year, you’re energized and excited about a clean slate to set new goals and align your ambitions. Now imagine feeling that invigorated every morning. Seth’s advice is to stop doom scrolling:

Imagine the first thing you did every morning was writing a list of exciting opportunities for the future. How would that change your perspective heading into a new day?

🏁 Steph Smith on the importance of understanding that your business’s competition is not defined by the other player’s in the game.

Think about the core problem you’re solving for your user’s, and what other goods and services are doing that too.

📣 The 5 components of an epic pitch deck, according to Andy Raskin:

1. Never start with you or your company. Start with a big change in the world that is:

   Undeniable, has big stakes attached, and creates urgency and relevance for your product.

2. Show there’ll be winners and losers:

   
   As important as showing that your product has large potential upside, demonstrate the equally significant downside without the adoption of change.

3. Tease the solution:

   Show what the ideal world with the product looks like. This is not directly related to your product, it’s the world with your product as a solution.

4. Introduce features which aid in the transition:

   They know what the desired outcome looks like (step 3), now you present the features of your product which make that a reality.

5. Why you:

   The last step of the puzzle is understanding why you’re and your company are best positioned to make that change a reality.

💧 On the topic of pitches, here’s one of the best video ads I’ve ever seen (and probably one of two I’ve watched end to end - it’s 17 minutes long!).

You might notice some similarities in structure between it and the above 5 steps. Both tell a great story.

Thanks for reading, as always. I value your time!

If you have any feedback on the new format, I would sincerely appreciate it.

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