you either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain.
two months ago, dan told me cluely could pivot because their brand has the moat. what have they done so far? from branding themselves as an invisible ai that helps you cheat to... ai-powered meeting notetaker?
the only thing they have pivoted is their landing page.
roy lee showcased how their mrr increased after the landing page change. by how much? no one knows because he hid the y axis scale and also the actual mrr number.
did they run out of ideas? or was there no idea for their product since the inception of the company? what are their engineers doing everyday?
a company built on the foundation of virality will eventually lose, because product matters. product is what build long-lasting brand loyality.
imagine apple shipped a very shitty macintosh back in 1984... they won't have this big of a loyal audience/fans today. sure they can pivot their business model to become profit-centric and attract investors. but they have the ability to do so simply because their foundation was extremely strong. the foundation was built by establishing their users' immense trust in the brand. because they actually have something to offer. their moat was their meticulous product design.
roy lee is perhaps one of the greatest b2c marketing person ever. but irrelevancy will occur if you don't build something that actually matters. so i guess they have two options:
- they keep making marketing skits. god knows what happens in the long run for conversion rates and customers continue to use their tool instead of notion, otter, or even gemini for ai notetaking for meetings.
- do smth substantial with products. actually tell their engineers to start doing r&d. build something. try something. take a risk.
because right now, they don't need to burn anything to swing big. to swing big in software you just need good ideas and enough money for apis.
but i do gotta say, me talking about them here is still proof that they have not lost relevancy. but my observation about such decline in ppl's attention on this brand prob indicates that if this continues, this might be the last post i will ever write about them.