Idea, creating and launching an AI Startup Luna.

The world is swept by a fever called AI. But is it always a successful business? How do you approach the idea of creating a specific product? What do you rely on?

Launching a startup requires dedication, hard work, and a willingness to take risks. Embrace the challenges and uncertainties, stay focused on your vision, and continuously learn and iterate as you move forward.?

To increase your chances of success, there are several key elements to rely on when starting a new venture. That the Founders of Luna will share with you.

To begin with, who are Luna.ai

Creators of Luna Steven Nelemans Robin Salimans Jean-Paul Klerks

A leading lead generation tool trusted by countless Startup SaaS companies in the search for hyper growth. We have revolutionized the lead generation space with our AI-powered platform that offers highly personalized emails to our customer's ideal target groups, sourced from our database of 275 million verified leads. With features in esteemed media outlets such as NPO/Radio1, De Ondernemer, Sprout, and the Lotgenoten podcast, Luna is on a mission to create the world's best (AI) sales rep that anyone can hire.

Steven Nelemans shares the story of Luna's creation and vocation of Luna

Together with my cofounders, we founded a Digital Sales agency a few years ago. With this agency, we helped over 100 startups find product-market fit and set up a scalable growth strategy. During our time at this agency, we tried every SaaS tool in the market, but no tool could really help these startups. We knew that many business owners and salespeople were actively looking for a solution to help them out. They were constantly switching between personalized- and automated outreach. Personalized meaning doing all of your research yourself, spending between 20-30 minutes per outreach, and automated meaning blasting a template message to 1,000 people hoping to get a positive response. It was one or the other for years. Until we discovered the power of Generative AI. This was the moment we knew we no longer needed to compromise, we could create a new platform that was the best of both worlds.?

How was the startup founded and what were the key steps taken to turn the initial idea into a successful business venture in AI sector.

After we decided we were going to work on Luna, we conducted hundreds of user interviews. We needed to know for sure that the problem we saw was as big as we thought it was, and that our solution was truly going to help solve this pain. Next to that, we implemented all kinds of analytics in the platform to validate the usage of our initial MVP. This way, we could measure if the verbal feedback we received matched the actual usage. People can tell you that your solution is brilliant, but if they never use the product, you still have some work to do. Using our customer’s feedback, we kept developing until we found product-market fit and saw our growth rate accelerating.?

Market trust in the Luna product

When we first started Luna, we had to spend a lot of time convincing users that AI was actually good enough to write emails that get replies. This meant we had to give multiple demos and really take a user by the hand when onboarding them into Luna. Interestingly enough, with the launch of ChatGPT, this turned around completely because many people instantly believed that AI could do anything. Now we have to slow people down and have them understand that AI still has its limitations.

The most important step we’ve taken in building the user’s trust is the implementation of our Learnings Model. We don’t just connect to ChatGPT and have AI write a random sales email, which is a one-size-fits-all solution. We build a custom sales AI per user, training it on the data and preferences of our users. Every interaction you have with the platform, every edit you make, or every email you approve/deny, teaches Luna about how you’d like your email to be written. This Learnings Model is a big leap towards our users trusting Luna, and enabled us to launch our biggest update to date: Autonomous Mode. With Autonomous Mode, you’re actually training Luna to start reaching out to people on your behalf. With Autonomous Mode, there is no human interaction needed anymore to nail your outreach targets. You can simply focus on training your AI.?

How to prepare yourself for questions and problems that arise at the beginning of the project launch.

We didn’t have significant problems while creating and launching Luna because everything we’ve done was based on the data we generated and the feedback we received from our users. Some features have proven to be more effective than others, but overall no significant problems.?

What advice can you give to people who want to start their own AI business?

The most important advice I could give at this moment is to not start an AI business for the sake of starting an AI business. I see entrepreneurs around me starting an AI business because of the fear of missing the hype, but honestly speaking, I think it’s easier to build a good business outside of the hype at this moment. We were fortunate to discover OpenAI and LLM technology over a year before the launch of ChatGPT, which allowed us to take the time to build a fundamental business. Nowadays, you see numerous companies rising that are mere front-ends to a closed- source language model like OpenAI or Anthropic.

The thing to understand is that the LLM is a mere basic, it’s a given. Everyone with a credit card has access to this technology, so you need to find an added value on top of that. With the rise of no-code tools and APIs, any company that only extracts value out of an external LLM will be chased by thousands of copy-cats. So if you want to start a business, you still need to start with the basics. Find a potential customer’s pain, preferably one that is not being solved yet, and start building your product to solve this pain. If you can leverage AI to do this better/bigger/faster, good for you. But don’t just start an AI business because it’s cool.?

In conclusion

Artificial Intelligence is not just a buzzword; it is transforming our world in profound ways. The advancements in AI technology are reshaping industries, improving efficiency, and enhancing the quality of our lives. However, as AI continues to evolve, it is crucial to prioritize ethical considerations, ensuring that its deployment aligns with human values and safeguards privacy. With responsible implementation, AI has the potential to unlock unimaginable possibilities, making our world smarter, more connected, and sustainable.

For more information on how Luna can positively impact your business, follow the link https://getluna.dev/

Luna is hiring:

Full Stack Developer (TypeScript) https://luna.homerun.co/full-stack-developer-typescript/en

Back-End Engineer https://luna.homerun.co/back-end-engineer/en

AI Engineer https://luna.homerun.co/ai-engineer/en

Customer Success https://luna.homerun.co/head-of-customer-success/en