Quiz new users, match them to an AI friend, then start a voice chat

Phil Carter… want to learn and being pedantic about language learning strategies. They're just getting you into a language learning experience that's immersive and you're earning points and streaks and badges and it's compelling and it's gamified. And so that's how they reinvented the language learning space. But now there are new AI native companies and we work with one called Tolan that's sort of an AI alien companion that's sort of your best AI friend.

Phil CarterAnd they've just done such a good job of, in the first minute or two, you have this oracle who asks you a bunch of questions about yourself. Based on your responses to those questions, you're then matched with a Tolan that has its own unique personality and character dimensions based off of your personality. And it explains the rationale of like why you were matched with this Tolan, it has its own sort of character to it. And then you're very quickly put into a voice to voice chat with this AI creature and its memory and its tone and its recall is just so compelling.

Phil CarterIt feels like you're talking to an old friend. So that's the type of magical experience I'm talking about that you can't really experience anywhere else. And the reason that's important is that's going to have a very high degree of influence on whether or not a user comes back and keeps using your product as well as whether they decide to pay money for it.

David Barnard… Three or four years ago, Duolingo was doing a lot of customization and that onboarding, but it was hundreds of engineering hours and a lot of like set rules and maybe a little machine learning sprinkled in. And you need a really big team to do that. And now, small teams are able to do some really cool stuff thanks to AI. And that onboarding is a great place to be experimenting with it because of how important it is to nail that first session.

Phil CarterYeah, I completely agree. And one last note I'll make on this one is in a world where AI has made it easy for anybody to vibe code an app in a weekend, the importance of personality and standing out from all the copycats has never been greater. And so for an app like Tolan, you can feel the craftsmanship and the soul of the company coming through in those first 60 seconds in a way that you just don't see in many consumer or prosumer software products. And I do think that's a huge part of why they've been so successful because they have a very opinionated product that they've built.

David BarnardAll right, let's move on to number two, delivering hyper personalized experiences. We kind of already hinted at this on onboarding, but it's great because it can go through the entire product. So what are some examples you've seen of doing that?