Sunsetting Verbalista and Launching a Growth Marketing "Agent-cy"

May 8, 2024

After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to sunset Verbalista and pivot the company in a new direction. Verbalista was founded on the insight that language is the largest barrier to professional opportunity in the world. In Latin America, for example, only 5% of skilled professionals are bilingual, and they make 50% more income than non-bilingual folks with the same skills.

We set out to build a product that could remove language as a blocker and help skilled professionals have a chance to contribute their skills on the global stage. What if you could just work smoothly with someone who doesn’t speak the same language as you?

Last March, we spun up a prototype that made every application on your computer translatable without having to switch back and forth between translators or ChatGPT. With the prototype in hand, we raised an angel round and had the opportunity to participate in the Desai Accelerator and the Latitud Fellowship. We brought an MVP to over 80 beta testers who gave us a mountain of feedback and we brought the Mac application to production and a Chrome version for Windows users shortly thereafter.

May 8, 2024

TLDR: After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to sunset Verbalista and pivot to AI SEO Agent - an "agent-cy" that automates growth marketing workflows, starting with search.

Verbalista was founded on the insight that language is the largest barrier to professional opportunity in the world. In Latin America, for example, only 5% of skilled professionals are bilingual, and they make 50% more income than non-bilingual folks with the same skills.

We set out to build a product that could remove language as a blocker and help skilled professionals have a chance to contribute their skills on the global stage. What if you could just work smoothly with someone who doesn’t speak the same language as you?

Last March, we spun up a prototype that made every application on your computer translatable without having to switch back and forth between translators or ChatGPT. With the prototype in hand, we raised an angel round and had the opportunity to participate in the Desai Accelerator and the Latitud Fellowship. We brought an MVP to over 80 beta testers who gave us a mountain of feedback and we brought the Mac application to production and a Chrome version for Windows users shortly thereafter.

Verbalista users switched entirely from tools like Grammarly and DeepL in favor of the streamlined Verbalista experience. We saw them using Verbalista every hour of the day to get their job done. Folks were using it to improve their professional communication, to learn English, and one of them even used it to complete a US citizenship application. For businesses, we were personalizing the translation model to align with their business language.

With this validation in hand, we jumped into B2B sales, aiming to capitalize on the macro trend of nearshoring – US companies allocating resources in Latin America due to the skilled talent pool, lower costs, and favorable time zone.

We brought on a few clients, but were not feeling the pull of product-market-fit. Verbalista was a vitamin, not a pain killer. It may drive some efficiencies, but wasn’t business critical.

Verbalista users switched entirely from tools like Grammarly and DeepL in favor of the streamlined Verbalista experience. We saw them using Verbalista every hour of the day to get their job done. Folks were using it to improve their professional communication, to learn English, and one of them even used it to complete a US citizenship application. For businesses, we were personalizing the translation model to align with their business language.

With this validation in hand, we jumped into B2B sales, aiming to capitalize on the macro trend of nearshoring – US companies allocating resources in Latin America due to the skilled talent pool, lower costs, and favorable time zone.

We brought on a few clients, but were not feeling the pull of product-market-fit. Verbalista was a vitamin, not a pain killer. It may drive some efficiencies, but wasn’t business critical.

The growth hack that sparked a new insight

Something needed to change, so we set our eyes on audio – realtime subtitles for any application on any device. We hypothesized this was a more urgent need that could open up new growth channels (live streaming, events, medical consults, broadcast closed captioning, etc.)

To test this hypothesis, we built WhatsApp Translate – a chatbot that translates any audio to any language. Forward an audio note and receive a translated transcript. We hacked our Framer CMS with landing pages based on keywords with high search volume and low competition. We configured a small paid search campaign against these landing pages and suddenly got 10K users in 3 weeks. Our campaign had a $0.15 cost per conversion and a staggering 51% conversion rate.

Something needed to change, so we set our eyes on audio – realtime subtitles for any application on any device. We hypothesized this was a more urgent need that could open up new growth channels (live streaming, events, medical consults, broadcast closed captioning, etc.)

To test this hypothesis, we built WhatsApp Translate – a chatbot that translates any audio to any language. Forward an audio note and receive a translated transcript. We hacked our Framer CMS with landing pages based on keywords with high search volume and low competition. We configured a small paid search campaign against these landing pages and suddenly got 10K users in 3 weeks. Our campaign had a $0.15 cost per conversion and a staggering 51% conversion rate.

After sharing our WhatsApp journey on LinkedIn we started receiving inbound inquiries about how we could grow so many users so fast.

Turns out there is more demand for HOW we automated SEO/SEM than the product itself.

We generated more revenue in a week than Verbalista had made in months.

After sharing our WhatsApp journey on LinkedIn we started receiving inbound inquiries about how we could grow so many users so fast.

Turns out there is more demand for HOW we automated SEO/SEM than the product itself.

We generated more revenue in a week than Verbalista had made in months.

And so, AI SEO Agent was born

It turns out that companies all face the same fundamental challenge when it comes to search marketing: the manual, expertise-heavy nature of SEO/SEM creates a high barrier to entry. Traditional agencies charge 20% fees, in-house teams are expensive to build, and existing tools still require significant human oversight.

We saw an opportunity to automate these workflows entirely. AI SEO Agent eliminates the traditional trade-offs between cost, control, and expertise by providing enterprise-grade search marketing automation at a fraction of the cost.

AI SEO Agent can do the workflows of search marketing better, faster, and more comprehensively than an agency without the overhead. It’s your SEO specialist, SEM specialist, website designer, SEO content copywriter, site optimization engineer, paid media planner, campaign manager, account manager, data scientist, lifecycle marketer, and growth product manager…all in one box.

It’s a totally different problem space (and maybe a more boring problem space) than Verbalista, but its rapidly evolving especially as AI search becomes the new paradigm – AI SEO Agent is helping CMOs stay relevant in both traditional search and generative search channels without the burden of a legacy SEO agency.

In the past week alone:

Our keyword deep research agent helped a client uncover a high-intent customer segment they didn't even know they could reach. These insights informed in-product changes to better serve these needs.
Our copywriter agent built hundreds of bespoke landing pages for an immigration fintech startup, each synchronized to low-competition keywords that reach up to 900K organic searches/month
Our site optimization agent generated comprehensive, keyword-rich LLMs.txt files to help clients get discovered by AI search channels
Our campaign manager agent configured robust Google Ads campaigns designed to help clients not only convert leads efficiently but also provide insights on the user intents driving those conversions.

We’re just getting started, and we’re so excited for the journey ahead.

If you’re interested in a demo of AI SEO Agent, you can reach me at vish@aiseoagent.co or schedule time for a demo on calendly here.

Onwards and upwards!

Vish

It turns out that companies all face the same fundamental challenge when it comes to search marketing: the manual, expertise-heavy nature of SEO/SEM creates a high barrier to entry. Traditional agencies charge 20% fees, in-house teams are expensive to build, and existing tools still require significant human oversight.

We saw an opportunity to automate these workflows entirely. AI SEO Agent eliminates the traditional trade-offs between cost, control, and expertise by providing enterprise-grade search marketing automation at a fraction of the cost.

AI SEO Agent can do the workflows of search marketing better, faster, and more comprehensively than an agency - without the overhead. It’s your SEO specialist, SEM specialist, website designer, SEO content copywriter, site optimization engineer, paid media planner, campaign manager, account manager, data scientist, lifecycle marketer, and growth product manager…all in one box.

It’s a totally different problem space (and maybe a more boring problem space) than Verbalista, but its rapidly evolving especially as AI search becomes the new paradigm – AI SEO Agent is helping CMOs stay relevant in both traditional search and generative search channels without the burden of a legacy SEO agency form factor.

In the past week alone:

Our keyword deep research agent helped a client uncover a high-intent customer segment they didn't even know they could reach. These insights informed in-product changes to better serve these needs.
Our copywriter agent built hundreds of bespoke landing pages for an immigration fintech startup, each synchronized to low-competition keywords that reach up to 900K organic searches/month
Our site optimization agent generated comprehensive, keyword-rich LLMs.txt files to help clients get discovered by AI search channels
Our campaign manager agent configured robust Google Ads campaigns designed to help clients not only convert leads efficiently but also provide insights on the user intents driving those conversions.

We’re just getting started, and we’re so excited for the journey ahead.

If you’re interested in a demo of AI SEO Agent, you can reach me at vish@aiseoagent.co or schedule time for a demo on calendly here.

Onwards and upwards!

Vish

It turns out that companies all face the same fundamental challenge when it comes to search marketing: the manual, expertise-heavy nature of SEO/SEM creates a high barrier to entry. Traditional agencies charge 20% fees, in-house teams are expensive to build, and existing tools still require significant human oversight.

We saw an opportunity to automate these workflows entirely. AI SEO Agent eliminates the traditional trade-offs between cost, control, and expertise by providing enterprise-grade search marketing automation at a fraction of the cost.

AI SEO Agent can do the workflows of search marketing better, faster, and more comprehensively than an agency without the overhead. It’s your SEO specialist, SEM specialist, website designer, SEO content copywriter, site optimization engineer, paid media planner, campaign manager, account manager, data scientist, lifecycle marketer, and growth product manager…all in one box.

It’s a totally different problem space (and maybe a more boring problem space) than Verbalista, but its rapidly evolving especially as AI search becomes the new paradigm – AI SEO Agent is helping CMOs stay relevant in both traditional search and generative search channels without the burden of a legacy SEO agency.

In the past week alone:

Our keyword deep research agent helped a client uncover a high-intent customer segment they didn't even know they could reach. These insights informed in-product changes to better serve these needs.
Our copywriter agent built hundreds of bespoke landing pages for an immigration fintech startup, each synchronized to low-competition keywords that reach up to 900K organic searches/month
Our site optimization agent generated comprehensive, keyword-rich LLMs.txt files to help clients get discovered by AI search channels
Our campaign manager agent configured robust Google Ads campaigns designed to help clients not only convert leads efficiently but also provide insights on the user intents driving those conversions.

We’re just getting started, and we’re so excited for the journey ahead.

If you’re interested in a demo of AI SEO Agent, you can reach me at vish@aiseoagent.co or schedule time for a demo on calendly here.

Onwards and upwards!

Vish