I spent the past few days using Fable to overhaul my main GMAT teaching product. It dug out plenty of hidden bugs, and the algorithm underneath got better too. It should now be one of the few products that does all of these at once:
- “A realistic GMAT interface”
- “A simulated GMAT adaptive testing algorithm”
- “A huge bank of realistic practice questions”
- “Interactive, conversational question practice”
- “Blind-spot analysis integrated across questions”
- “Similar practice questions recommended from your blind spots”
There are a hundred-odd steady subscribers right now, and the part I value more is that they come from both inside and outside the country.
Here’s what I came away with after building it: you really have to knock around an industry for a very long time before you know what its real pain is. Don’t fantasize that you’ll wake up one morning with a bright idea and scoop up the money. Those chances do exist, but they usually aren’t yours.
Who the benefits get credited to afterward is a separate question, and I wrote about it in “The Benefits of AI Adoption Have Little to Do With AI”; this post is about the part before that, where the pain comes from.
And the other thought: attacking or making digs at people in the same business at every turn won’t make you any better, it just gives passersby something to laugh at. But I can’t control other people’s mouths anyway, so I’ll just get on with my own work.