Consumer AI
Culture: A Consumer AI Startup
Loneliness affects one in two Americans. Culture was my bet that technology could pull people back into the same room — lowering the friction of making plans instead of feeding the next dopamine hit.
Problem
Interviewing our users, we found the biggest barrier to seeing friends wasn't desire — it was coordinating a time that worked. Existing tools ignored personal preferences and never touched the calendar or the messaging apps people actually live in.
Solution
We built a consumer AI platform that reads your calendar to find the right moment, recommends plans from your history and tastes, and coordinates the whole thing over SMS — so a night out starts with a single text.
Details
Result
We scaled to a few thousand users, then hit hard limits on making responses fast, cheap, and defensible. As LLMs fold into the core OS, a durable moat looked questionable, and we wound the company down in 2024. I'd make the same bet again.