Magic

At this point, it seems like everyone has had at least one of the "magic" moments with AI.

I have had a few, but my first one was during our daily standup on the day ChatGPT launched. The talk from the team was "you have to try this," so I did—right in the middle of standup. I asked ChatGPT to write a haiku and, when it did, I just remember saying to the team: "I need to go home."

That was the first of many times my mind has been blown.

It's kind of amazing that such an experience was three years ago now. But it's also kind of amazing how many more moments of magic have happened since then. And how the things that are triggering those moments for us are changing from cool tricks to, like, real commercial capabilities.

We've spent a lot of time in this newsletter talking about how powerful AI can be to DTC and experimentation specifically (and growth more generally), but we haven't talked about how it should feel. I'm increasingly of the belief that all of that power is good, but the thing that's going to matter most is being able to deliver on that feeling of magic.

People on our team are vibe-coding side-hustle apps just for fun. We're launching a game (fully vibe coded). We are about to release an agent that's doing some of the deepest, most thorough CRO audits I've ever seen.

And every time someone on our team builds something like this or I get to see it? It feels magical.

Actually, more specifically, it feels like playing a game. It's fun to build, it's immersive. You get so sucked into what you're doing that it doesn't feel like work. It feels like playing.

When's the last time optimizing your site felt that way?

There is usually one element in a test that feels game-like: the first few hours/days after it launches, where you overzealously check the results (even though you know you probably shouldn't be). Otherwise, a lot of the work that goes into building a roadmap and executing on it feels like … well, work.

I think a major part of our opportunity at Intelligems is the opportunity to change this.

If building a roadmap felt magical and if building a test or personalized experience felt magical, I'd bet all of us would put more energy into those things. We'd get sucked in and create experiences because we got sucked into our own brand world, the same way a good video game can suck you in.

The power to do just about anything you can dream of is here. But the experience of doing it is what we're going to change. We're going to make it magical.