Artanis #6: A Step Backward
We're seeking a third co-founder while reflecting on our struggles and strategy shifts at Artanis.
Artanis: helping businesses build AI that actually works
🙋 Ways you can help: potential 3rd co-founders 🙋
We're considering taking a 3rd co-founder to add capacity and fill in some gaps. We're looking for people who:
Actively want to found and know what the role entails e.g. because they've been in an early-stage startup before
Have a strong background in data science and/or early-stage sales
Want to work in-person most of the time
Please get in touch if you know anyone who meets these criteria.
🔬 How to build AI that actually works: new post 🔬
We've written the third post in our playbook for building AI that works reliably. This post covers how to fit models in the real world, where there are added complexities you don't experience during university projects or on Kaggle. In particular, we dive into:
Defining what "good enough" looks like (the market decides)
Using a basic model to check data is correctly labelled (it's often not)
Iterating, in a methodical way, towards good enough (logging your experiments)
📉 Progress in September - first month in the red 📉
Our goal for September was to retain 1 customer for our new SaaS product. Unfortunately, we didn't manage it.
Primary metric: 4 customers (-2 since August)
-> of which SaaS: 0 (-1)
Monthly revenue (secondary): £12k (-£10k, some late invoices)
-> of which SaaS: -£1k (-£2k, includes a £1k refund)
Monthly cost (secondary): 127 hours building AI for clients (-26)
-> this doesn't include time spent on SaaS
We were squeezed for time, given our existing commitments to services customers, and dedicated <25% of our time to the product. We also made no time for sales. Ultimately, we didn't deliver and we refunded our first SaaS customer. We're now thinking carefully about what to do next.
In retrospect, we made a big mistake in our strategy. We thought launching a SaaS product would provide a more scalable growth path. While this is true in the long run, the 0 -> 1 stage felt like launching a second business. In hindsight, it clearly is launching a new business!
🕵️ Challenges - flip-flopping on strategy 🕵️
We're having a bit of an identity crisis between providing services and building a product. We enjoy the services work and it's clearly a viable business. But we also haven't found a clear path to scaling it, which is our ultimate mission. This uncertainty makes it hard to set sensible targets, and has led to mistakes such as:
1) Trying to grow a services business at the rate of a product startup, then...
2) Launching a product while trying to maintain services, as a team of two
Normal for an early-stage startup? Or headless chicken? Perhaps they go together more often than we think...
On the plus side, we started a 6-month incubator with Balderton Capital. It's been nice sharing a space with a bunch of other early-stage AI startups, some of whom may be reading this now!
🎯 Goal for October - retain 3 service customers and reflect 🎯
October's goal: retain 3 service customers
We've decided to deprioritise product work for now. We got our fingers burned recently and want to ensure delivery for current customers, who we're grateful to for deepening ties with us. We've done quite a lot since starting Artanis and the end of October will be our 6-month anniversary, so it feels like a good time to reflect on some themes we've observed and chart a new path forward.
🙏 Shout-outs 🙏
Special thanks to the following for helping out in September.
Ben L - for helping scope an interesting project
Maurice B - for giving our writing a shout-out
Nicky F - for some sage advice on not knowing
Mo N - for the intro to Alex
Aniruddha R - for the fun intro to Arsenal FC!
Ben C - for your patience
Thanks,
Sam & Yousef