5 Lessons from an AI Start-Up’s Big Launch 🚀🚀🚀

Insights & Lessons Learned from Ribbon.AI's recent Product Hunt launch

Recently, we sat down with Arsham Ghahramani to discuss Ribbon.AI — a tool for job seekers powered by machine learning. As the company says, it’s an entire career kit that helps you build your resume, find jobs, ace your interview, and even meet mentors. When the company launched on Product Hunt, it ranked #2 for the day, receiving widespread attention for its take on the AI revolution.

Gharhramani emphasizes that his company’s platform isn’t just for job seekers. It’s a career improvement tool that is “helpful for anyone at any point in their career, from student interns to senior executives.”

Below, we’ve shared the big takeaways from our discussion.

Lesson 1: Community First

Ribbon didn’t begin as just another AI start-up. Often, when companies try to launch with an idea alone, they are an unproven quantity trying to convince others to believe in them.

But when you foster community first, you develop a real connection to the exact people who might use your product. By empathizing with their lived experience, you get an in-depth understanding of their needs and how best to serve them.

Gharhramani says, “Ribbon started as a community to recognize professional achievements. We quickly realized that we could help our community more directly. We started by thinking about the ways a career coach can help clients. With this in mind, we set out to build a ‘digital career coach.’ Today, Ribbon is rapidly expanding in features to match and in some places surpass what the best career coaches can do.”

Reflecting on the impact the community had on the company's growth, Gharhramani says, “Looking back, the significance of building a robust community engagement strategy from the outset became evident. Creating a feedback loop with our users early on would have accelerated product improvements and user satisfaction.”

Lesson 2: Social Proof

With a community in place, you can generate social proof for your platform. And that’s precisely what Ribbon.AI did.

They leverage their LinkedIn presence. They “produce various organic content and acquire [their] power users” from the social media giant.

Their most successful campaign to date? All based on social proof.

Called Success Stories, the series, “shared detailed accounts of how Ribbon had impacted users' careers, focusing on tangible outcomes like securing dream jobs or significant salary hikes.”

Lesson 3: Authentic Leadership

Growing a start-up is, to no one’s surprise, immensely challenging. Being in a leadership position can be tough because the profit and major successes are all theoretical.

For that reason, start-up CEOs famously struggle to maintain morale and focus. So, what kept the Ribbon team on track?

Gharhramani says that it wasn’t about projecting confidence or pretending things were going better than they were. Instead, he chose the authentic path. “Staying transparent with the team, celebrating small victories, and constantly revisiting our vision helped motivate everyone. A specific instance where persistence paid off was in perfecting our AI interview coach feature. Despite initial inaccuracies, continuous iterations and leveraging user feedback turned it into one of Ribbon's most acclaimed features.”

Lesson 4: Focus on Fixing Real Problems

Silicon Valley’s tech-first approach has been famously mocked by the formula “we’re the Uber for X.”

While it’s a joke, it also points to a real mindset. Many start-ups have a team that can make a certain kind of tool (like a mobile app), and then they try to apply it to various situations, hoping that they hit gold.

But Ribbon.AI worked the other way around.

“Passion for your solution is important,” Gharhramani says, “but understanding and addressing a genuine need creates value. Don’t underestimate the importance of building a great team and fostering a culture of openness and innovation. And remember, persistence is key; every setback is an opportunity to learn and grow.”

Lesson 5: It’s All About Impact

If you’ve grown a solution out of a community and honed in on a real problem, you’ll find something much more rewarding than big seed capital rounds (although those are very rewarding). You find that your product is making a meaningful difference in people’s lives.

Gharhramani muses, “Witnessing individuals achieve their career goals through Ribbon has been profoundly rewarding. It underscores the potential of AI to not just automate tasks but to empower and elevate human potential. This journey has been a testament to the impact that technology, when aligned with human values and needs, can have on individual lives and society at large.”

Ribbon.AI’s Next Steps

So what do you do when your start-up secures initial funding and finds popularity on launch?

While it’s certainly cause for celebration, the path is far from over. Gharhramani lays out his vision this way, “Our long-term goal is to make Ribbon the go-to platform for career advancement across all stages of professional life. We're exploring partnerships with educational institutions and corporate HR departments to integrate Ribbon into their career development programs. Additionally, we're working on expanding our AI capabilities to offer more personalized career insights and opportunities.”

That’s the hidden takeaway here: follow through.

Ultimately, they weren’t developing the app to get funding. And they weren’t seeking funding for the money to keep developing and growing. Instead, each of these steps was part of a vision. That vision was born out of understanding the issues job seekers face and caring enough to apply technical know-how to address those problems with cutting-edge solutions.

For more information on Ribbon, check out their website.

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