Instinct's playbook: free product, costly compute, VC cash subsidizing agent habit formation, Uber-style
AccBalanced · x · 2026-09-07
hnshah argues Instinct's model is simple: the product is free, compute is expensive, and $3.5M from VCs covers the gap while users get used to handing tasks to an agent — the early Uber playbook of paying for new behavior until it feels normal.
He also points to a hidden data play: every task teaches Instinct what users meant, where the agent got stuck, how users corrected it, and what finally worked — potentially more valuable than the tasks themselves. That's why privacy access matters so much: more access makes it more useful, and each correct task earns it the next one.
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