Abi R&D: Update
Hey everybody,
I decided this month to give updates via this format because we’ve had some pretty significant progress on our actual “Abi” system. It’s been a really hard road for Bryan and I but we get closer every day. We still have some funding gaps to solve (and we have one dev out on paternity leave) but we somehow keep making progress. Because of those and some engineering challenges, we will be behind on our launch. However, while solving our core engineering challenges with our launch product, we stumbled on an engineering path that might let us launch with a wildly more powerful product.
We finally cracked the (rudamentary) engineering on a scaling self-building and self-improving AI system. We might be able to launch with an actual co-founder/COO. Something we want to launch as “Executive Intelligence”.
With that said, if there is anything we are talking about below that you would like a demo of, let me know!
Breaking through our barriers.
Abi//Found is about 80% done
Abi//Core is about 75% done
The dealflow dashboard is 90% done
Galaxy UI + Causal Intelligence
This galaxy UI is the primary visualization for both the founder and investor.
We decided in the ever increasingly competitive landscape, we needed to launch with a little more product value than just a "startup report". So we decided to finalize the logic/architecture for our launch version of the galaxy dashboard design and it's pretty freaking sweet (we finished the engineering and now we need to dial in some final usability). We've cracked the code to a dashboard UI that grows and changes automatically as the company grows.
It gives you all the data, solutions and agentic capabilities in a seamless interface. We'll provide some screenshots but are willing to demo it if you want. This dashboard scales automatically from startup to enterprise on its own and offers a lot of flexibility for automatically adapting the design for specific use cases.
On top of being a human interface, the visualization itself is a tool to deploy a deep layer of causal intelligence (later after launch). This essentially turns visualization into a deep reasoning and simulation engine. If you are a bit more curious about what that looks like, we wrote a small article explaining it here:
Without going into detail, this will be able to take risk analysis and predictability to wild level of accuracy and usability. Beyond traditional Saas systems.
From a user perspective, we are hoping to launch with some wild value props. You can look at our first pass of value props on this test marketing page.
A picture is worth a thousand words (or lines of code)
Abi just built its own workflows and uses its own UI.
The visual UI of Abi//Core
We just leapfrogged beyond our current use of AI as a data analyst and agent.
We just hit a huge milestone this week with our system being able to create its own data/execution workflows in it’s own system. On the user side, its also able to use it's own UI to help communicate with the user. Solving this engineering barrier will open the door (in the short term) to Abi being able to build a much deeper experience in our UI and actually augments the way we use both AI and software to be more cohesive. In Abi//Core, Abi can process through planning workflows to achieve tasks, builds out those workflows and immediately execute those agentic functions with much higher accuracy than standard LLM's. Long term, this is the core system that will allow Abi to self-improve and adapt it's usability and quality to each individual user/company. Go check out the value’s we are using to build our self-improvement engine.
Current visualization of a market research workflow.
For those of you who are into tech advancements, we are also diving into adjusting Abi for TRM + OCR technologies. We think these are going to become core technologies over the next 5 years and we want to get a jump on implementation.
Abi//Core Dev & Launch
We have been working through building the heart of Abi, albeit, slower than we wanted (mainly because of delayed funding and a subcontractor who went on paternity leave). We have been making great progress with the tools we have but need another human at this point. The recent investment from the Bishops will allow us to contract another dev for a short window. Outside of the problem of our pacing, the actual work that is being done is exciting.
If we can’t get another dev, we think we can still launch, but it will take more time. Our current plan either way is to run live startup data this month. That’s subject to our progress on Abi//Core. Again, if you would like a demo, let me know.
We need more fuel. If you know anyone who might want to invest, here is our deck!
Two new investors
I would like to welcome Ken Goebel to our investment pool. Ken is an awesome guy who comes from M&A Saas and is a leader of organizational change. & value creation at Zendesk. Beyond investing in us and his expertise, we are excited to have Ken's perspective in our team/product.
We would also like to welcome Casey and Amanda Bishop into our round. They own a DtC company and wanted to support the development of Abi.
We've successfully tried to hold a rule of "get investors our team would want to go work for" and Ken/the Bishops embody that value really well. We ARE still looking for cash so if you know of any good options, let us know!
New partnerships
On top of stabilizing our partnership with Portola Valley Partners for bringing in potentially thousands of startups through Abi when we launch, I am also flying to Minneapolis in the beginning of December to finalize a partnership with Tommy Spaulding, one one the top leadership speakers in the corporate circut. We are going to be using Tommy as a test partner for content and training modules available through the system. The other benefit is the potential for Tommy to bring in more funding. We will keep you updated