From 'never in a million years' to AI app ready for launch

Hey Reader,

The barriers to launching your AI idea are real –

The tools are advertised as "plug and play," but they're not 😩
You have a day job that's always pulling you away 🥵
Going too broad opens you up to competition from Big Tech – but it's not always easy to hone your idea down to a perfect niche audience 🎯

Big challenges. Shared by tens of thousands of IWAI readers. And there's a path to conquering all of them.

Meet Dr. Laura Davies, a psychiatrist who just launched her new AI app (more details in a minute) at Tuesday's Demo Day.

Just a few months ago, Laura was blocked by all the barriers I just mentioned. In her own words:

"I actually got an app that worked that never in a million years would have happened had I not done the Incubator."

Watch Laura's 2-minute video about her journey

Laura started off with a big idea – one she'd been kicking around in her head for months – about using AI to help with psychiatric documentation that is required for criminal trials. This was her specific area of subject-matter expertise, but she was struggling to find the ideal Minimum Viable Product:

"I had to hone down my idea. I tried to do it for a long time, just like when I was in school and I had to write a thesis. Working with Rob, just like I did with my mentor, helped me narrow it down to something that actually worked. You can't write a thesis, you can't do an app, that's too broad. It just doesn't work."

The Incubator helped her fine-tune her idea and figure out exactly who her target audience and ideal buyer was. (In fact, our original guess about her target buyer turned out to be wrong – which we found out only after rapid prototyping and doing customer interviews. That meant she could quickly and successfully pivot.)

Now, Laura's app its on its way to being used in real courtroom settings to improve the efficiency of medical document analysis. It not only directly helps judges, clerks, defendants and prosecutors, but it also unclogs our court systems by reducing unnecessary hearings.

And she did it all in less than two months, culminating in her presentation at Demo Day earlier this week. (Watch the full replay, she's the first presenter.)

"This would no question have taken me six months if I didn't have Demo Day. So, both working with Rob and having Demo Day coming up made this happen, and now I have a workable app."

Laura and all our Incubator students broke through their barriers, in part, by investing in themselves – just as they'd done for their formal education earlier in their careers.

"Looking at this as education, it was a no brainer. And what happened is, I got a great education. I have transferable skills. I have learned so much. I now have a community of people. I've met physicians. I've met business people. I've met people with different skills. I've met people with overlap. We're all very engaged in this space. We're interested. We've got resources that we can share."

After you watch Laura's video about her journey and her Demo Day presentation, you can reach out to her to learn more about her new tool, ForenPsych. And I'll keep you updated as we get more and more feedback from her first round of beta testers.

Have a great weekend,

– Rob

PS. Laura joined the Innovating with AI Incubator in January. We're opening up the next cohort later this month. If you'd like to be the first to know when enrollment opens, sign up for text message or WhatsApp alerts about the next Incubator cohort. There's a special bonus for everyone who joins on Opening Day in late April.

PPS. Five more students are presenting at our second Demo Day on Tuesday, April 9. It's live and free. Add to calendar >

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