We're Invisible 🪞

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This week, we embarked on a reflective journey, peering deep into the mirror of customer feedback. Through candid customer interviews, we unearthed two pivotal insights:

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1. Our Ideal Customer

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We talked to experienced devs and non-technical founders. It became clear our best customers are builders who don’t have the time or technical skills to build and manage their own credit-based payment flow.

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2. Our Job to Be Done

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Our customers need us to make payments easy.

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This includes making it easy to:

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• Add a payment solution
• Manage credits that users purchase and use on the app
• Identify the ideal price for credits
• Find users who may churn or may need to upgrade
• Convert users from free plans to pay-as-you-go plans to monthly or annual subscriptions
• Increase awareness of the app, especially for users already subscribed to other AI apps.

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These two learnings mean we need to “become invisible” as a frictionless, developer-facing solution and add analytics and an ecosystem to Chipp, building what we call the Chipp Triangle of Value.

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Here’s a bit of how we came to these conclusions. 👇

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How We Became Invisible 🌫

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Originally, our vision was grand and ambitious.

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We dreamt of crafting an end-to-end payment solution meticulously built atop the robust foundation of Stripe Connect’s payment processing, with customizations tailored to each unique customer.

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However, a recurring theme emerged as we delved deeper into user interactions, interviewing six potential users and onboarding two beta users. Users wanted a payment process that was easy to navigate and trustworthy. They didn’t care if we built our own payment pages or had fancy customizations. They basically wanted us to be invisible.

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Amidst our brainstorming sessions and design drafts for custom checkout pages, an epiphany struck: we could work smarter.

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Instead of just using Stripe Connect for payment processing, we decided to use it to provide the framework for our checkout pages. Users already trusted Stripe, and by leveraging its platform for payment processing and checkout pages, we could offer a consistent, trustworthy checkout experience. This strategic pivot streamlined our development process, saving us 1-2 months of development time. It also unlocked many coveted features, from international support to enhanced security protocols and diverse payment methods.

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How Our Value Became Visible 🔍

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Our initial foray into customer interviews was a rollercoaster of emotions. Questions from more technical teams like "Couldn't I just build this?" and "Why not just use Stripe?" momentarily had us second-guessing our direction.

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But as subsequent interviews unfolded, a different narrative began to take shape. We realized that our target audience wasn't skilled engineers. It was passionate creators who wanted to save time and get paid. They didn’t want to build their own payment tool - perhaps because they didn’t have time or technical skill. They didn’t want to keep track of the tokens or credits of their users. They just wanted a hassle-free pay-as-you-go payment solution. Even better if that solution could build trust and help them figure out how to best monetize their apps.

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With that in mind, we quietly launched with our first beta users! (insert air horn) 🎉

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Here’s a peek of one of our first integrations with Ark, which builds custom apprenticeships and learning plans with AI. You’ll see how users get a prompt to add tokens when they used up the free tokens they are initially given.

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The Chipp Value Triangle △

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One comment from our interviews stood out: "It's really difficult for us to manage our tokens."

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This feedback brought our key value into focus: easy payments with managed tokens/credit. Further conversations highlighted additional ways we could help builders retain users and increase conversion with analytics and an ecosystem of users. The result: the Chipp Value Triangle.

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The Chipp Value Triangle is the trifecta of value we offer AI Builders: easy payments, insightful analytics, and a nurturing ecosystem designed to empower users at every step of their journey.

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The Value of Building 🏗

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With the successful integration of two live customers, our focus has now pivoted towards enhancing our suite of analytics tools. We're not just content with providing a payment solution; we aim to empower our users with actionable insights, from pricing strategies to identifying key user segments. By identifying key actions within an app and generating insights across our user base, we can help developers increase conversion and better monetize their apps.

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One of Chipp.AI's innate strengths lies in education. We're passionate about nurturing and empowering the next generation of AI builders. By integrating Chipp.AI into their tech arsenal, we envision a democratized AI development landscape where monetization is streamlined and innovation is boundless.

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As we continue to evolve and refine our platform, community engagement remains at the forefront of our endeavors. We're actively exploring avenues to fortify our Value Triangle, emphasizing fostering a vibrant ecosystem for AI builders, where collaboration, education, innovation, and growth are the order of the day. We imagine that Chipp can drive users to our developer partners. By identifying an app that a user likes, we can recommend complementary apps from our developer network.

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Help Build the Builder Economy ⚒

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The past week highlights the transformative power of feedback, adaptability, and relentless innovation. As we chart our path forward, we're actively interviewing potential users to refine our offerings further.

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We'd love to hear from you if you want to join the journey. Reach out to scott@chipp.ai.

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Let's build the builder economy! 🚀🌟