Why would anyone pay for my tool when they can use ChatGPT?

You're competing with something AI does natively so well: fixing the grammar, improving text, summarizing. People don't buy tools like this. They use ChatGPT for this purpose.

You're trying to sell to people who use ChatGPT in their workflows daily, for a use case ChatGPT and Claude already do an amazing job at. If I want to summarize something, I'm going to take the text, I'm going to put it in ChatGPT.

So what's your differentiator? If somebody says, hey, I could just use ChatGPT or Claude directly, why should I use you? I'd also be curious what your target users say when you show them the tool.

With AI changing things a lot, my gut feeling is you're probably going to have to expand your product's capabilities a little bit. You'll probably have to build something very specific to a niche of people, really well integrated into what they're doing.

To me, support teams are a tough example. There are so many support-specific tools being built that integrate a lot of stuff. That's going to be tough to compete against.

Are there subcategories, like internal operations or IT teams, that don't have modern tools being built for them? Maybe they're not as sexy a market, not quite as big, and so people haven't focused on them.

A disclaimer: I think we're still in the figuring it all out phase, and I'm not a big expert. A separate solution, especially a conversational one, becomes better than generic models with proprietary data.

You could create a custom GPT with your prompts and project instructions, but it will use ChatGPT's model, which is not bad at all. The difference is not in the model so much, but in the data you're using to train. Anyone, me or my daughter, can create the same app based on ChatGPT.

Think through what your proprietary data is and how it actually manifests. What does it give you that ChatGPT doesn't have?

If you just plug and play something that connects to your office software and answers questions, that might not be as strong a selling point. There are many tools, and even a big software company is already providing those.

Many successful companies in this space are usually another wrapper around OpenAI or Gemini. That's not the value. The value is the knowledge on the specific pain points.

If you think ahead of how AI is going to move, data is usually the constraint, not so much the technology. A value proposition exercise would be really good, because it's thinking about the pain points and what could be differentiators.

This is a crowded market, so find a resonant differentiator. Humans plus AI could be strong.

Lots of AI tools can build an app quickly. Quality and control are more important. Speed can work against you.

For credibility, you can craft interim messaging that describes the infrastructure around the models, so you don't sound like a thin wrapper. If you're doing cold outreach, segment your lists and test different value props: speed, cost, quality.

People are already using ChatGPT. If you haven't built your MVP yet, you could test different positioning angles and see which one resonates most with your target audience.

You need to figure out the angle as to why that's better than ChatGPT, because in theory, ChatGPT does that. I literally made an itinerary with ChatGPT. Then I called like 10 of my friends who've been with kids to double check it. This is just a personal suggestion, but I feel like having that human experience, touch is so important.

I would recommend testing your angles in quick channels, like paid ad channels. Of course this depends on your budget.

In this AI world, you have to change your positioning so it communicates your value well. First, I think it's consistency that you need to position, because it's deterministic.

Second, there are so many tools nowadays. The only tools that stand out are ones you can attach to revenue. For example, through efficiency. In a customer-facing role, you can cut down the response time. The faster your response time, the higher the customer satisfaction and then the revenue.

Changing the positioning won't help much if you're not properly testing it. You need to validate two things: who is your winning audience, and what is your winning messaging and offer.