There is a very interesting rapidly growing niche of AI assisted products. These products aim to reduce friction and provide enhanced time saving value for users.
Meta is generating a lot of branded search demand for their ray ban stories glasses and will most likely win in this space if they can make it easy to push content to Instagram. Snapchat and Tiktok I would imagine will also try to compete in this space as there are also 3rd party glasses or devices that attach to glasses to convert them into a smart device. OpenAI is also going to be entering this space although not with a glasses device but more of a necklace with their acquisition of io, Jony Ive’s startup.
If we look at all of Meta’s product sales on Amazon their gaming quest device is top with the classes coming in second
Removing the quest devices we see the top Rayban glasses as these generating estimated total amount of $4.7M/month in revenue with 14,300 units/month sold.
Other types of smart devices
OpenAI mock ups - not currently available for purchase on the market.
Alternative rendering
A non brand name AI device that is currently crushing it on Amazon is PLAUD. They focused on a specific solution, i.e. “Better notetaking” and developed their offering around this vs trying to be an everything device.
They got initial traction with a kickstarter launch raising $1M+ with 7,564 backers with average backing amount of $146.
Here is an overview of the top variations Plaud is selling on Amazon. Total monthly revenue est. is $2.1M on the low end.
Doing some simple math of units bought in past month x price we get to an estimated monthly revenue figure of $2.1M/month in revenue.
PLAUD competes in the generic niche “voice to text recorder” with 2nd most click share in the niche vs Sony. I would expect that PLAUD is generating a lot of sales by targeting existing non AI products that are voice recorders without AI abilities.
The search terms in this niche are either generic or Sony branded so for PLAUD to be getting the 2nd most click share in the niche means they have a superior product offering vs Sony currently
This is despite being priced much higher ($152 vs $53-$82) than Sony’s existing voice recorder products. Consumers in tech spaces are willing to pay a premium for a device that offers more value than the existing alternatives even if those alternatives have a strong existing brand (i.e. “Sony”). It’s less about brand loyalty and more about perceived value especially as the cost of tech items has gotten lower and lower over time.
The other advantage PLAUD has going for it is the upsell on their mobile app which is required to use their device for AI notetaking.
You can buy a pack that will be good for 2 years.
Web traffic has grown substantially for them since they started on the map in January.
They are getting a bunch of branded searches leading to their website
They are targeting competitor notetaking keywords for companies that have a notetaker only for zoom, google meets and other video calls
Some of the ads may be a little questionable as they use “otter ai” in the ad itself directing traffic to their website instead.
And also to Amazon which led to the creation of a PLAUD specific niche on Amazon “plaud note ai voice recorder”
Looking at the search terms most are branded “plaud” with 3 generic terms
Demand therefore must have been primarily generated via social media content creation show casing the value of the offering.
Their Instagram social handle has the most followers vs Tiktok
Tiktok account
X account
YouTube account
Facebook account
Taking a look at what kind of ads they are running on META here
They have 300+ ads running which I expect it the main driver of their website traffic and branded searches on Amazon. They educate the customer on the value of the device and use different personas to get the message across with a similar templated image overlay with a vertical video format.
Plaud appears to be an SF based company
Plaud executed very well as opposed to a similar device called “Crush the Memory”. Looking at their kickstarters Crush launched almost a year later than Plaud.
Kickstarter Funding Periods
Plaud @June 27, 2023 6:00 AM (PDT) - @August 16, 2023 6:00 AM (PDT) (50 days) |
Raised $111k with 925 backers with average $120/backer raised
Crush @July 16, 2024 6:24 AM (PDT) - @August 15, 2024 6:24 AM (PDT) (30 days) |
Raised $1M+ with 7,564 backers with average $146/backer raised
Looking at their website, https://crushthememory.com/, they are doing much worse than Plaud in terms of traffic generation.
The products look almost identical so this is an interesting question of why did they have such a big difference in outcomes? Some questions that come to mind.
- Who did the two companies use to handle their kickstarter launch?
- Did they do a test before launching on kickstarter to run paid traffic to a pre-launch page and calculate the cost per email signup or soft comitments from earlier users? What did those metrics look like?
- Who is Plaud using to run facebook ads?
One thing is clear on the main position of the two products.
Plaud - note taking sucks, we save you time and organize notes into an easy to digest way.
Crush the memory - we help you capture your good ideas wherever you go
The note taking element might be where more pain lies for people and Plaud nailed that.
PLAUD’s format is definitely a template that a new product, https://www.siersidekick.com/ can utilize once they launch to scale.
How is this space going to evolve?
The less devices someone needs which can do more the better.
I anticipate a universal attachable device will take most of the market share. The device will need to be small and a universal all in one offering.
Companies like otter ai and other virtual online meeting note taking companies I expect to enter this space as it’s a natural progression to offer this device for in person company meetings. This will increase the value of their existing offerings and open up a lot more abilities to help employees in companies keep track of tasks/responsibilities/goals/next actions etc.
No human should be given the role of meeting notetaker in a company anymore. AI can handle this very well.
Otter AI’s traffic is close to 800k/month driven mostly by a viral spread strategy of being invited to google meetings and other meetings to take notes and share them with everyone in the meeting after and having a freemium offering.
