Instinct

Instinct hit a $10B valuation about two months after launch

Instinct, the iMessage-based AI personal assistant, went from a $2.5B round to $5B to $10B within a three-to-four-week span, only a couple of months after launching.

“Yeah, it only launched a couple months ago, like 2 months ago, and it's now valued at $10 billion. So they raised their first— they raised a round at $2.5 billion 3 weeks ago, and then $5 billion and $10 billion, all in like a 3 to 4 week span.”

Sam's AI assistant emailed Asurion execs for days until they called

Fed up with Asurion repeatedly canceling his iPhone repair, Sam told Instinct to find the executive team's emails and keep emailing until someone called him. After 4 to 5 days of persistent emails, the executive line phoned him.

“Today, uh, I have this guy who's supposed to repair my, uh, iPhone through Asurion, you know, like that you like pay $20 a month and they fix an iPhone screen and they keep canceling on me. Like I schedule an appointment and they keep canceling or they don't show up. And I was like, find the executive team's email and email them and don't stop until they call me. And it took about 3 or 4 days. Today I got a phone call.”

Steal thisHand customer-service escalations to an AI agent with a clear stop condition ("don't stop until they call me").

Instinct's founder claims 10% compounding growth per day

Instinct's founder says the app is growing 10% a day, compounding, and Shaan notes it has slowed down under the load. Later in the episode Meta's Muse dismisses the claim, pointing out that 10% daily for a year would be about $1.3 quadrillion, so it only works off a tiny base.

“Instinct pretty quickly took over my GrokBot usage. GrokBot feels slow and heavy compared to this. And not even slow, it's just that it's this whole separate thing to manage, whereas Instinct is literally just like texting somebody. Instinct was great, but Instinct has been getting so popular. The guy, the founder said they're growing 10% compounding daily. Daily.”

AI's underrated edge is EQ: a heart-emoji check-in sold Shaan's wife

Shaan's wife thought Instinct was only useful while it planned their kid's birthday party. Then it texted after the party, "I hope the party went great" with a heart, and she was sold. Shaan argues the soft, supportive side of these assistants matters as much as raw intelligence.

“I was like, from that? And then she's like, yes. And I was like, I don't get it. I would, I would be like, what? This is— who cares? This is weird. And she's like— and I realized that everything she's ever wanted me to do as a supportive boyfriend, fiancé, and husband Instinct just knows how to do out of the box.”

Instinct has passed $1B in transactions while still invite-only

Instinct's founder plans to keep the assistant free and earn a cut of every transaction. Still invite-only, it has already run over $1B in purchases, 40-50% of them travel, which Shaan says is a threat to Booking.com and Expedia.

“So the founder of Instinct said he wants us to be free forever, and he wants to make his money taking a cut on all the transactions. He said that already, while they're in invite only, they've already crossed $1 billion of transactions that like through the platform where people use Instinct to buy something, that 40 or 50% of that was travel. So imagine you're Booking.com or you're Expedia. Sorry boys, game's over.”

40% of Instinct users hand over a credit card within 3 weeks; 80% retain

According to Instinct's founder, 40% of users store a credit card with the agent within three weeks, and about 80% of those stay. Shaan calls both numbers very rare. He argues that an agent making the buying decision could beat Google's ad model, because merchants would have to pay a cut for every customer it sends them.

“But I would say the fact that people are using their agent to buy stuff in such volume where he said, I think, I think he said that 40% of users give Instinct their credit card within the first 3 weeks. And then once they've done that, there's like an 80% retention rate, which is These are numbers that, uh, to the average person is just a number. But if you've been in tech, you understand how rare that is, how rare both of those numbers are”

Call it a 'personal assistant,' not an 'AI agent'

Shaan credits Instinct's founder with avoiding techno-nerd branding: a five-sentence website and the plain label "personal assistant." He says "AI agent" will age the way "information superhighway" and "cyberspace" did for the internet.

“I think this guy's done a good job of building a more like a less techno nerdy product. So for example, just saying it's a personal assistant instead of saying it's an AI agent. That, I mean, AI agent is like back when people used to call the internet the information superhighway. And like that, you know, calling it cyberspace, you know, that's how people used to talk about the internet.”

Steal thisName your product by the job it does for a normal person, not by the technology underneath it.