Why most consumer AI will fail
Most consumer AI products are built like work tools and sold like toys. Neither is what people actually want in their lives.
Thoughts
Long thoughts that needed a few thousand words, and notes that arrived fully formed. Newest first.
2026
We spent over a year getting Muse to something a normal person would actually use. Not an entrepreneur, not someone who lives in their email. A teacher, a plumber, a doctor. Three or four versions to get there, most of it squeezed around Social Cat and Clip, and Oscar arriving in the middle of it. Finding the name took months on its own.
This week Meta shipped an assistant called Muse. Ours is done. Not legally, maybe. Practically: nobody is going to find us standing behind that.
A year of product survives a week like this. A name doesn't.
I increasingly think the best consumer products aren't those that give you more things to do. They're the ones that quietly remove things you used to have to think about.
Meta optimizing for installs isn't finding customers cheaply. It's finding installers cheaply. Those are very different things.