Typically when you build technology, you want to tailor it to a very specific sector – find your niche, your ideal customer profile, your product-market fit. It's product 101. But this week something interesting happened, and we may have stumbled into a technology that's completely industry-agnostic. Multiple people asked us (unprompted) to build them personal agents – not for their companies, but for themselves.
We had one client (who we're building something completely separate for) send us an impassioned email saying he needs a personal agent immediately. He's fed up spending hours switching between tabs and emails and just can't do it anymore. Then, Julia met someone watching the Knicks game (LGK) who runs a business in the construction industry, and after talking for a bit and showing him Athena, he proclaimed "that's exactly what I need."
If you are a person with responsibilities, stuff to do, and not enough hours in the day to do it all on your own, there’s an app agent for that.
So this week, instead of talking about work, we're going to share how we use our agents in real life for things that have absolutely nothing to do with work.
Let’s get into it.
Russell: Agents on the Road
I was on the road this week in Pennsylvania installing agents for a few clients and realized I needed a hotel for the night. Normally that means: open Google, search hotels nearby, open six tabs, compare rates, check if I have points somewhere, look at reviews, go back and forth for 20 minutes, and finally book something.
Instead I told Archie: find me a hotel near my location tonight, keep it under $200, and book it. He searched for options, compared rates, found a Marriott with availability, and handled it. By the time I got off my last call, it was done.
Sometimes, the most useful things agents do aren't dramatic. It’s the small stuff that eats your time in 15-minute chunks throughout the day. And those chunks add up to hours you're never getting back.
We heard that last week’s image didn’t load for some people, so we’re including it again here. As it happens, Russell’s suitcase for this week’s trip to Pennsylvania contained pretty much the same contents: padel racquet, Padel Browser gear, and of course the Mac Mini for our agents.
Julia: My Agent is Becoming the Favorite Child
My mom needed me to help her sell some furniture on Facebook Marketplace. She sent me a million screenshots over text: photos of the pieces, measurements scattered across messages, prices she had in mind. I had politely asked her to put it in a spreadsheet. She did not.
Normally this would've been an afternoon project: sort through the photos, research what similar items are going for, write descriptions, format everything for listings. Instead, I thought, this might be a perfect job for my agent Athena. I gave her access to my text messages and said "look at my recent texts from my mom and put this into a Facebook Marketplace formatted spreadsheet." Athena pulled all the images, wrote descriptions, researched competitive pricing for similar items online, looked up the original furniture pieces to reference in the listing copy, and organized the whole thing.
This entire exchange happened while I was on a train.
The train didn’t have WiFi, but Athena always does.
What would've taken me hours took Athena about two minutes. (By the way, if you're in the market for a velvet plush navy ottoman, feel free to reach out…)
Life is hard, find things that make it easier.
Stay curious,
Julia & Russell
