Martin - Goated Guild Business Audit

Introduction

This business audit is conducted by Goated Guild (goatedguild.com), a community of expert product marketers and developers who specialize in providing in-depth business feedback. A Goated Guild business audit offers a comprehensive analysis of your product's market positioning, competitive landscape, product functionality, and strategic growth opportunities. If you're interested in getting a business audit for your company, you can learn more and purchase one here.

Martin (http://trymartin.com), the AI assistant, is already a powerful tool, capable of being the killer app that millions of users depend on for daily counsel. However, the key to unlocking this potential lies not in adding more features but in refining the user experience. This audit will delve into how Martin can be improved to achieve this goal.

Overview

This business audit provides a detailed analysis of the Martin app, an AI-powered personal assistant designed to integrate with various aspects of users' digital lives. The analysis explores its current market position, competitive landscape, product opportunities, and strategic growth avenues. The audit also highlights key areas for UX improvement, onboarding processes, and the necessity of human-centered design to enhance user engagement and satisfaction.

Disclosure: I am a seed investor in Martin. I also told them that if they sell the company for over 100m that they have to buy me a Bentley. And I really want a Bentley. So here we are.

1. App Description

Martin (http://trymartin.com) is an AI-driven personal assistant that simplifies and automates tasks such as scheduling, communication, research, and creativity. The app integrates deeply with your calendar, email, contacts, and more, enabling Martin to assist you proactively throughout your day. Martin can play various roles in your life, including personal assistant, thought partner, scheduler, creative muse, and researcher.

Magic Moment: Using Martin to effortlessly manage your day, from scheduling meetings to brainstorming creative ideas, all with seamless, natural interactions.

2. Market Analysis

Industry Overview:

• Market: The global AI assistant market is projected to grow rapidly, with over 1.8 billion users of voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant as of 2024. This number is expected to grow significantly as AI assistants become more integrated into everyday life.
• Competitor Overview: Major competitors include Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Samsung’s Bixby, and Google Assistant. Despite their widespread use, these assistants often receive criticism for limited functionality and poor user experience. For example, Siri, despite Apple’s partnership with OpenAI, continues to frustrate users with its awkward interface and limited capabilities. Even their own engineers explain why Siri sucks, which likely means they have to start from scratch.
• Opportunities for Martin: As a smaller, more agile company, Martin has the opportunity to capitalize on areas where these tech giants are too big to pivot quickly. By focusing on superior user experience, personalized interactions, and innovative onboarding, Martin can carve out a niche in the AI assistant market.

Target Market:

• Professionals, creatives, and individuals 25-40 who seek to optimize their daily routines through automation and AI.
• Users who are dissatisfied with existing voice assistants and are looking for a more personalized and effective solution.

Questions to Consider:

• What opportunities exist that Apple and other large companies are too big to capitalize on? How can they be leveraged by Martin?

The blueprint for Martin

3. Competitor Analysis

Big Tech Competitors:

• Apple Siri: Although Siri is widely used, it is criticized for limited functionality and an often frustrating user experience. Apple’s partnership with OpenAI has yet to yield significant improvements in Siri’s interface, leaving users yearning for a more intuitive experience.
• Microsoft Cortana: Initially designed as a productivity tool, Cortana has seen a reduction in functionality, with Microsoft shifting its focus away from consumer-facing AI assistants.
• Samsung Bixby: Bixby has struggled to gain traction, especially outside of Samsung devices. Its integration with other platforms is limited, making it less versatile compared to competitors.

Medium and Small Competitors:

• Otter.ai: Specializes in transcription and meeting notes, offering a narrow but effective solution within the productivity space.
• x.ai: Aimed at simplifying scheduling, x.ai automates meeting arrangements but lacks the broader functionalities that Martin offers.

Key Differentiators for Martin:

• Martin’s ability to integrate deeply with users' digital lives and adapt to their personal preferences sets it apart from both big tech competitors and smaller startups. However, to truly differentiate, Martin must focus on refining the user experience rather than adding more features.

4. Product Functionality

What the Product Does:

• Daily Feed: Martin’s home screen shows a feed of tasks, reminders, and meetings for the day.
• Communication Management: Martin handles emails, texts, and calls, even engaging in conversations on your behalf.
• Role-Based Functionality: Martin can serve as a personal assistant, thought partner, scheduler, creative muse, and researcher, depending on the user's needs. In the free form conversations, Martin has the ability to become an expert in almost any field in a more intuitive conversational way. Don’t think of Martin as a set of features: its a set of archetypal experiences.

Challenges in Brand & User Experience:

• The upgrade prompt appears too frequently, disrupting the user experience before users have had a chance to fully explore Martin’s capabilities. This needs to be removed, with users encouraged to upgrade only after they’ve experienced the value of the free version.
• Onboarding Process: Onboarding is crucial. It must be streamlined and designed to help users understand the different “modes” of Martin and how each can be tailored to their preferences. This is one of the rare products that almost everyone on earth should be able to understand when presented correctly. Introduce people to these modes in an interactive way, or show a video that depicts people interacting with Martin in the ways that it does so most effectively.
• Lifestyle UX Video: This is the area to ball out on, do videos like what big companies have done like Humane Pin (just focus on the video, not the product for me thanks ok). Spend $25K-50K to put together professional video that communicates what you do. Hire someone like Dashiel Barber who has done 100s of similar videos.
• Brand Overhaul: There is no consistency for the brand currently. You’re competing against Apple, this has to look the part. Spend $25K-50K at an agency like Scout Lab to get a full brand identity and framework that you can use to level up from looking like a startup to looking like a fully polished app. You’re in the general consumer space, it has to feel legit.
• Conversational Flow: The current interaction model can feel abrupt. It is essential to smooth out the flow of conversations, such as by fading out when users start speaking, rather than abruptly stopping.
• Linguistics and UX: Hiring a linguistics expert and a UX designer is critical to humanizing Martin, improving the naturalness of interactions, and ensuring that users feel engaged rather than frustrated. Check out Carnegie Mellon’s Human Centered AI research and the people in their new initiative in this area.

The MOAT: Integrating New Tools:

• To keep Martin ahead of the curve, it’s crucial to develop a framework for quickly integrating new tools, especially from startups that may not have gained significant traction but offer innovative capabilities that could "wow" users. By focusing on these smaller, agile startups, Martin can provide unique and cutting-edge features that larger competitors might overlook. Apple won’t integrate these startups without a ton of due diligence, leaving them waiting around when you’re actually pushing forth the most innovative integrations.

An example:

• Creatify - AI Viral Videos from prompts
• Suno- Custom Music from prompts
• Distrokid - Publish music to streaming platforms
• Ideogram - Create AI art

With these three for example, Martin could do this:

“Hey Martin, can you create an album with songs about bad roommates. Use the notes that I wrote up last month about lyric ideas as the base and send me a draft. Take the sketch I did and send me some covert art options. After I approve you can push it to all streaming platforms”

5. Product Development

Prioritized List of Product Updates:

Must Ship:

• Enhanced UX Design: Focus on refining the user interface to make it more engaging and less like a settings menu. Martin should feel like a natural part of the user’s digital life, not just another app. Martin is my action button, the goal should be to make that button the Martin button.
• Improve Free Version Experience: Remove the aggressive upgrade prompts and instead allow users to explore Martin’s capabilities fully. Encourage upgrades after users see the tangible benefits.

Medium Priority:

• Security Audits: Regular, external security audits are crucial to ensure the integrity of user data. Achieving SOC2 compliance and communicating this to users is essential for building trust.
• Onboarding Experience: Improve the onboarding flow to guide new users through setting up their most important integrations step by step. Show examples of the various roles Martin can play in their lives.

Low Priority:

• Conversational Flow Improvements: Refine the conversational flow to avoid abrupt stops. A smoother, more natural interaction will help humanize Martin.
• Seamless Integration with More Apps: Continue to expand integrations with tools like Google Docs, Slack, and others, but ensure these integrations are introduced to users gradually, showing the impact of each one.

6. User Experience (UX) & Interface Design

Current UX Review:

• Martin’s interface has recently undergone updates, but it still feels too much like a settings menu. A more intuitive, interactive design is needed to enhance user engagement.
• Screen Sharing: Consider creating screen shares of conversations with Martin that showcase its different modes, such as personal assistant, thought partner, and creative muse.

7. Growth Strategies

Product-Led Growth:

• Shared Personal Assistant Experiences: Explore common use cases where shared experiences might necessitate inviting new users. For example, creating a group chat with a shared note for planning a vacation could naturally lead to inviting others. In these scenarios, it’s important to subtly let new users know that Martin was used to facilitate this process, though care must be taken in cases where the main user might prefer to keep this information private.

Community Growth Tactics:

• Engage With Range Of Users: Its important to showcase the range that Martin has for serving users of all types. Engage a set of creators to create unique use case videos. Seed them with a list of ideas: playing games with your Grandma, creating a bedtime story with your niece, scheduling real estate appointments while in the car for an agent etc.

8. Monetization Strategy

Revenue Opportunities:

• Martin operates on a subscription model, with a focus on offering advanced features to paying users. Utilize Apple’s subscription service for consistency and reliability. Users do not want to have to search to figure out how to cancel their subscription, even if they don’t plan on canceling.

9. Opportunities at Scale

Long-Term Strategies:

• Enterprise Solutions: Position Martin as a tool for teams, offering collaborative features and administrative controls.
• Continual AI Improvement: Leverage user data (with explicit consent) to refine Martin’s capabilities continuously.

Developer Platform Potential:

• A developer platform is essential for Martin’s growth. By enabling third-party developers to create custom integrations, Martin can fulfill the promise of a flexible, powerful AI assistant—a promise that Viv Labs famously introduced but never fully delivered

10. Customer Feedback/Quotes

(Currently compiling full customer quotes, but early feedback shows strong appreciation for Martin's proactive capabilities and ease of use.)

Additional Notes:

• Privacy Concerns: Regular security audits and achieving SOC2 compliance are critical for building user trust. A breach could be catastrophic, so consistent, proactive security measures are essential.
• Advisor Recommendation: Adding Dag Kittlaus, co-founder of Viv Labs, as an advisor could provide valuable insights into building a more human-centered AI assistant and developing a robust developer platform.