Funnels

perhaps funnels are underrated. they're kinda S tier and in ways that aren't always obvious

funnels are this interesting idea that a lot of what we’re trying to achieve is shaped like a kitchen funnel. a couple simple examples are problem awareness funnels in sales. or lead funnels for a marketing project. in short, a customer reaches your site via youtube, then an ad, then your newsletter, then they finally buy when the right offer hits. in that case they were at the newsletter level of your funnel.

i see this at work. we have a user called TOFU. Top of Funnel User. it’s a clever little acronym to describe which kinds of customers were talking about. a power user is meaningfully different than a tofu user. that’s a good and useful shorthand.

i’m into that framing but think it could be a bit more expanded.

aside - one of my fav doodles in AI is this:

Funnel doodle

i like it because it shows how we “should” think about llms, AI and the new way we build products. the first part, the llms bit, is trying to convey that we can throw stupid random stuff at an LLM and it will maybe get you somewhere. by which i mean, it will probably actually get you somewhere. often it might even get you somewhere useful and kinda in a repeatable way. llms are actually pretty good at distilling a weird broad request down to a result. we can use tools and skills and all this other cruft to make them better too. but they’ll still suck.

they’re gonna cost a lot, lie to you about success rates a lot. only sorta satisfy customers. they’re just okay. but this diagram i doodled could be thought of as a funnel. it takes you to the next thing. workflows!!

workflows are the freaking greatest. why? because they limit llms. you can have a workflow that’s a mix between code and llms that jump back and forth and get you to your desired result like 99% of the time. they’re easy to improve, they are easy to think about and maintain. they’re cheap to run too. and they don’t require cutting edge models. you can use stupid idiot models. dumb model cheap, cheap good. i like money.

now if your workflow is really freaking good and gets used all the time, it can maybe just become code. that’s the dream state. code is repeatable and trustworthy. it doesn’t rely on Sama or “i Da Ai doomer” to continue to exist or offer their product the way it’s offered now. code lets you use regular ole ideas that we understand the ins and outs of. nice.

okay back to funnels. well what if we turn this little diagram on it’s head.

end aside - oh snap its a funnel

it does a great job explaining how you might want to work through your NEW FEATURE TM idea that doesn’t have product market fit into a feature that’s a winner. to start, throw llms at it, then if it gets a lil traction, throw some workflow at it. then if it picks up… time to invest in some code baby!

i wrote this on linkedin the other day

ai is gonna take over the world but also nobody has product market fit for ai products

i didn’t go viral for reasons that are beyond me, i’m clearly a genuis. nonetheless, i see this a lot. every freaking app now records my calls. everyone has a shitty fucking assistant that sorta works. customers are annoyed because the assistant mostly sucks but sometimes works and then they come back the next day and do a similar thing and it doesn’t work.

this is where workflows are gonna come in handy.

aside - the death of saas

the death of SaaS is an idea that some people have that they clearly haven’t really thought through. if you think that SaaS is dead that means you think that the people who brought you SaaS (basically databases on a webpage) won’t do a good job putting llms on a web page. if you think that how did you get to this weird corner of the internet where i say shit with confidence i don’t really deserve.

of course SaaS companies are going to bring ai (really just llms) to customers in awesome useful ways. that’s what SaaS is good at. just turn the little diagram on it’s side. it’s a fucking funnel. we are at the top of the funnel. hell sometimes its gonna come all the way back to code. that’s where you want it anyway. lots of code, maybe a sprinkle of llms.

low key there’s gonna be some event based / cron stuff in there too

okay okay so you believe me that funnels are cool and llms are just a funnel for features that are fuzzy and will become workflows, right? so what was that worth a whole post?

end aside - we’re back baby

what if we put more stuff into this llm -> workflow -> code or things are a funnel path in the new post ai world. whatever that is. how would that look?

i have some ideas!

first, what should teams look like. we’ve been doing this stupid lets make teams agile because some dudes got together once and wrote a manifesto. do you have any idea how many manifestos i’ve written. that shits all i think about. but somehow that one manifesto got big and everyone liest and says they’re fucking agile. well that’s just an excuse for going slow and talking too much.

we need a much wider funnel. everywhere i’ve ever worked there’s a lot of smart talented people. they’re shaped in all sorts of different ways. but because we’re tech we think we’re super smart and good ideas can only come if we ship our org chart. could teams have

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