From Assumptions to Insights — Instantly
Today’s featured startup uses AI-driven experiments to show what customers really value, helping founders focus on what truly sells
Project Overview
When a company launches a new product, the biggest challenge isn’t building it — it’s figuring out what to emphasize when marketing it. A product can have multiple features, multiple audiences, and multiple ways to pitch the same thing.
Valid helps companies understand what their potential customers truly care about — and which messaging will make their product click.
You upload your product description to the platform, and Valid’s AI automatically creates and runs dozens of ad variations — each with different offers, angles, and target audiences. It then analyzes the click-through data and shows which version performs best. In short: whatever gets the most clicks is what you should promote.
Here’s an example.
For a wellness app offering workouts, mindfulness exercises, stress reduction tips, and healthy recipes, the AI generated 80 ad variations, spent $418 on testing, reached 66,000 impressions, and got 993 clicks.
The best-performing value proposition?
“Reducing illnesses, injuries, and other health issues.”
This message resonated with both men and women, but not with middle-aged users. The most responsive audiences turned out to be young adults (18–24), women over 55, and men over 65.
Now, Valid is rolling out a new beta feature — automated competitor analysis. The AI identifies relevant competitors, analyzes their site traffic, demographics, keywords, and ad performance, and even tracks backlinks.
Think of it as Similarweb, but focused on your direct competitors — and at a fraction of the cost.
Founded in mid-2023, Valid has already attracted its first customers and raised $1.1 million in seed funding.
What’s the Gist?
Some might dismiss Valid as “just another ChatGPT wrapper.” Sure, it likely uses OpenAI or similar tech under the hood — but the real innovation here isn’t in the tech itself.
It’s in how the pieces are assembled.
Great products aren’t about inventing new technology — they’re about combining existing tools in new, valuable ways.
Too often, founders sneer at so-called “GPT wrappers,” as if building on top of existing AI APIs were somehow cheating. But that mindset misses the point. The real skill in startups is not invention — it’s discovering demand and delivering value.
Valid exemplifies that mindset perfectly. It’s a simple, fast, and focused tool built to help founders test what works — and it already delivers clear, actionable insights.
AI-driven product insight is quickly becoming a new category in itself.
Other examples include Outset (a YC startup that automates user interviews and insight extraction, with $4.9M raised) and Knit (a platform that added AI to its user research workflow, now with $5.6M in funding).
Key Takeaways
Stop sneering at “ChatGPT wrappers.” Many iconic products are, at their core, clever recombinations of existing technologies.
Try building your own. A simple AI-powered “wrapper” can be a fast, inexpensive way to test product–market fit.
If you hit a nerve — evolve it into a full-fledged product. Every big company starts as a simple MVP that solves one problem really well.
Platforms like Valid.co show how AI can turn marketing experiments into concrete insights — a space where demand is just starting to explode.
As this segment grows, expect both nimble startups and big players like Zappi (which raised $192.7M) to shape how companies uncover what their customers actually want.
Company Info
Valid
Website: valid.co
Latest Round: $1.1M, 15.01.2024
Total Funding: $1.1M, across 1 round