A week in AI is like a year in other industries. I hope these issues become your weekly source of AI information, inspiration, and ideas. If we haven’t met before, I’m Amanda Smith. I write about AI and the fascinating folks who are building in this brave new world.
Good morning. I’ve been chatting to a lot of high-profile people in AI lately, so I wanted to mix it up this week.
This is a special time when solo builders can compete with big tech. I spoke with an AI founder who is bootstrapping a build, after “retiring” at 32. Cool guy.
Here’s how he’s doing it. Let’s dive in.
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This week in AI:
ChatGPT Health is here
OpenAI announced their big move into health.
ChatGPT to launch ads
No surprises here. We all knew it was coming.
Andreessen Horowitz $3 bet on no AI bubble
This is an interesting take.
Company background: Feedback Pulse
Founded: March 2025
Team size: 0 employees
Funding to date: Bootstrapped
ARR: Not disclosed
Naz Avo, Feedback Pulse
Naz Avo retired at 32, after a decade as a software engineer in the start-up world. Time freedom was always his ultimate goal.
His last role was Software Architecture Engineer at Ghost Foundation, an open-source project for publishers and independent journalists. But just because Avo has retired doesn’t mean he’s stopping working.
One of Avo’s friends running a small international accounting firm had a problem: He needed a really simple, easy-to-adopt solution to conduct employee pulse surveys. Most existing tools were enterprise-bloated and enterprise-priced. So, he handed Avo a vibe-coded prototype. It was a great start but riddled with bugs.
One week later, Avo had a solid working version. This is when he realized the gap: A HR platform for employee surveying with AI-assisted reporting.
“Growing medium-sized companies (10-100 employees) lack lightweight employee feedback tooling. They’re often stuck between Google Forms and $20K enterprise contracts,” Avo said.
The go-to-market strategy
Avo is a solo builder and brings in contract help when needed (UI/UX and marketing). “I’m fully bootstrapped – early retirement means infinite runway and no pressure to chase VC growth.”
His go-to-market approach was to focus on LLM-native distribution.
“When HR managers or business owners ask ChatGPT or Claude for employee survey tools, FeedbackPulse appears in recommendations. These users come with much more trust compared to traditional SEO – they convert much better and mention “AI recommended your tool” on demo calls.”
People can try a free trial or book a demo, directly with Avo. The demo-to-customer percentage is around 20%. Most customers just sign up and use the self-serve onboarding flow, Avo explained.
The business model works like this:
Free tier: For teams under 10 people. No credit card required, full feature access for pulse surveys, eNPS, eSAT, 360° reviews, and AI-powered insights. When teams grow past 10, they’re already dependent on the workflow.
Paid tier: Competitive per-seat pricing, usually 50-80% cheaper than the enterprise equivalent. The Pro plan is $4 per employee, per employee.
Customers & competitors
Avo is targeting SMBs with 10-100 employees – they’re often pre-HR or looking to hire their first HR manager. His users are mostly from the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, and Switzerland.
“There was a wave of migration in early 2025 when Workleap introduced a $2,000/year minimum. Smaller teams got priced out overnight. Business owners and small HR teams need specialized employee engagement tools (pulse surveys, 360° feedback, peer reviews) but can’t justify enterprise contracts or the Google Forms mess, where employees don’t trust anonymity.
Feedback Pulse’s competitors include BambooHR, CultureAmp, 15Five, Lattice, and Workday.
Avo’s positioning? “FeedbackPulse is an anti-enterprise HR tool.” Setup in minutes, not weeks. It has trustworthy anonymity for employees, built with modern AI capabilities from the start.
Scaling strategies (as a solo builder)
Avo uses three main acquisition channels:
SEO
LLMs
Paid ads
In terms of user breakdown, they come from 10% SEO, 20% paid ads, and 70% LLMs.
“I don’t have a methodological way to rank in LLMs. I did optimize for SEO early on, especially focused on Bing/MSN users – these search engines are owned by Microsoft. Since OpenAI partners with Microsoft, I think that’s where the LLM got the training dataset from.”
Takeaways
Talk to your paying customers obsessively. Solve their needs, rather than what “feels good” for you.
Focus on distribution. These days, the software itself is not the moat for your product.
Ignore overhyped AI labels. Businesses want solutions and convenience. “10 minutes to launch a team-wide pulse survey” resonates much better than “AI-powered employee engagement.”
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Speak soon,
Amanda
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