| This seems like it could have enough value to build a customer base around? Or for someone to want to purchase the rights to the tech so they could build around it? Selling such a thing should not be a problem given the right target. Not only has the customer space for technologies like that changed over time, but you are providing a new twist on the solution. > “Stripe/Twilio for NLU”, but recent feedback has been that it’s more a “technology”, and less a “product” That comment doesn't make a ton of sense to me. Are services not valuable? Stripe and Twilio seem like really helpful services and that seems...OK to me? Personally I get excited when I hear about an ease-of-use wrapper around regex. But for a DB, in place of that regular messy query stuff with the prospect of things like multiple LEFT JOINS? That's a big deal. And even if it doesn't tick every box it will probably I'd guess it would have its unique applications for a given set of customers. Like let's say sets of people who would like to prototype to well-enough using their ability to sit around and talk in English all day long, and then hand off to someone else. The average person's energy pool for trying different sentences, even considering some expected failure rate, is so much deeper than the resources available for trying and failing with different SQL statements. This would also apply to those who are not really working with the data to work with it. Let's say they are selling data-viz tools and want a quick way to make prototypes from the potential customer's sample data. There, boom, product example. I guess. It sounds really cool. Good luck, hope it works out for you. |
Services are totally valuable! I think with Stripe and Twilio they both solve a problem a Business/PM/Owner has. The conversations go something like this in my head:
PM: I want to be able to send SMS messages to my customers.
Dev: Uh, I don't know anything about telecom...
Twilio: I do! I'm way cheaper than a dev working this problem. Just use me.
For NLU, I'm not sure I've been able to find PMs that are wanting to "understand the plain english of our users". But I know there is a decent amount of NLP usage. Do PM's just not know that they can ask for these NLP? Or do they just not need it? I'm not sure. I feel a little bit like I'm missing a piece of the puzzle.
> Personally I get excited when I hear about an ease-of-use wrapper around regex. But for a DB, in place of that regular messy query stuff with the prospect of things like multiple LEFT JOINS? That's a big deal.
A regex wrapper is an interesting idea. Maybe I'll try it out. I agree that a text to db wrapper could be a good idea, if it works really well.
> The average person's energy pool for trying different sentences, even considering some expected failure rate, is so much deeper than the resources available for trying and failing with different SQL statements.
Great point!
> It sounds really cool. Good luck, hope it works out for you.
Thank you, me too :)