👋 Welcome back! Hope the weekend was great!

From my desk: Recruiting season for summer internships is in full effect so I’ve been getting my resume fine-tuned. But, Thanksgiving is right around the corner which means great food with even better people, @myfamily.

---

But, let’s cut to the chase and see what’s on the front burner this week…

This week’s startup streamlines the process of long-term annuity investing to boost your chances for that dream retirement party in the Bahamas. Allow me to present…

“One-stop shop for investments that lets you capture the market upside without the downside” – Annuital

---

🎬 Behind the scenes

• Solo founder, Thomas Carroll, a former JP Morgan private banker takes the lead
• Founded in 2023, the concept was initially explored during his time at grad school
• This platform will streamline the annuity investing process for optimal efficiency
• Targeting a $120 billion U.S. annuity market, this company is seeking funding

---

💵 Annuities 101

You may be wondering ‘What exactly is an annuity?’ Let’s break it down…

An annuity is a contract, usually with an insurance company, where you pay a lump sum of money upfront, and they pay money back to you starting on a specified date for a specified period.

This type of investment is more risk-averse and typically used as a retirement vehicle.

Various combinations are available, each offering distinct features…

1. Immediate: Starts paying out right after the initial investment is made
2. Deferred: Income payments are delayed until a future date
3. Fixed: A fixed interest rate is guaranteed on your investment
4. Variable: Returns can vary depending on the underlying investment performance
5. Indexed: The earnings are tied to a specific market index (S&P, DIJA, etc)

Also, there are different phases of annuity investing…

1. Accumulation: Investing in to increase contract value itself (pre-payout phase)
2. Income: Receiving the guaranteed income post-investment (ideal for retirement)

What is Annuital focusing on?

This start-up is more on the accumulation side of things, looking for anyone who wants to secure a safe long-term investment (typically aged 45-65) and provide them with a place to research these different contracts.

---

❌ Current Issues in the Annuity Market

Other than the complex product design of this type of investment and the extra sign-offs or paperwork that is typically required. There are some other difficulties…

Lack of consistency across carriers

Most insurance companies have their own set of paperwork when it comes to annuity offerings creating friction for people to invest efficiently on their own.

Integration difficulties

Many annuity contracts don’t easily integrate into someone’s existing wealth management service due to the plethora of features these contracts can offer.

Lack of real-time quoting

The only opportunity to receive quotes for annuity contracts is during business hours only, and hours long response times.

Post-Sales tracking difficulties

After entering this type of investment, advisement is highly recommended to ensure someone’s retirement portfolio stays on track to meet their monetary goals.

---

🏪 Annuital’s Solution

Annuital aims to create a platform allowing users the ability to research annuity products, quote different strategies, and fill out the application right on their site.

Other than the annuity marketplace website that’s available 24/7, Thomas also plans to be on the back end of things helping with specialized contract deal flow.

Innovative Product Features

Taking a moment to highlight some of the key features that will help this company differentiate itself in this industry, Annuital offers…

Interactive Quoting

Providing users with real-time graphs visualizing potential returns.

Focused Product Offerings

Improved user experience through personalization based on thematic investment strategies (high growth, low risk, etc).

Reduced Processing Complexity

An 80%+ reduction in processing time through a streamlined application process, partnerships, and D2C sales, and this company’s market aggregating concept.

---

✅ Key Catalysts for Annuital

Now that we know what this platform will do, let’s take a walk through the park of reasons why Annuital will grab some market share and be able to generate revenue.

---

Generational Wealth Transfer = Expanding Potential Clientele

With an aging population in the U.S. evidenced by a rising median age and a projected 22% growth in the 65+ demographic by 2040, Annuital is in a good spot.

Between now and 2045 the U.S. will see a multigenerational wealth transfer totaling $84.4 trillion with 86% of this amount being passed down to heirs.

With more people looking for long-term investing solutions, the market size for this service will only increase in the next 20 years.

Generating Revenue

Most investing strategies revolve around the commission that the agency or broker provides. This is the key for Annuital in generating revenue to create a sustainable service for people.

Charging a modest commission for simplified annuity investing is the strategy here. This approach gets multiplied when the scale of operations expands.

---

🚧 Navigating Potential Hurdles Ahead

Alright, now that the annuities problem and Annuital’s solution have been identified Let’s get into what challenges may arise on this path to success…

Regulatory Hurdles

I said it once and’ll repeat it for the folks in the back: insurance companies and their annuity offerings are complex!

This may mean having to endure certain regulatory policy requirements that are unearthed when investing with annuity contracts.

Market Penetration & Customer Acquisition

Once the service is up and running, ensuring Annuital is preferred over competitors will require some dedicated effort which entails…

1. Strategic Partnerships: Providing accurate and reliable quotes on contracts
2. Effective marketing: Technical SEO leveraging LLMs and social media content
3. Product Innovation: Continually updating and improving the quality of service
4. Quality customer service: Promotions for usage, and annuity educational content

---

With all that being said, Annuital has a good shot at killing it in this industry and I think it’s time for us to step back and let it happen!

---

Thanks for reading

-Owen

Share the Post:

Related Posts

This Headline Grabs Visitors’ Attention

A short description introducing your business and the services to visitors.

Personal. AI

This week’s spotlight shines down on an NYC startup that’s not just helping you remember someone’s birthday, it’s revolutionizing information recall.

Behold, a game-changing startup

“Our ultimate goal is to benefit individual human lives by retaining memories so they can be effortlessly and, more importantly, securely recalled.” – Personal.AI

Behind the scenes

• Launched in 2020 (still private)
• Location: NYC 🏙️
• Legal Name Human AI Labs, Inc
• Founders: Sharon Zhang, Suman Kanuganti, Kristie Kaiser
• Total Visits – 215.3K
• Want more numbers? Check them out here

🎤 Intro

If you haven’t heard of ChatGPT or artificial intelligence, where have you been? There has been a surging growth in the artificial intelligence industry, with many paradigms about what is really possible. Having your own AI personal assistant isn’t too far-fetched anymore.

“…over 77% of companies are either using or exploring the use of AI.” – ExplodingTopics

Having an assistant help you with your day-to-day activities ranging from scheduling meetings to figuring out your weekly grocery list is very attractive to many people. It has surged in popularity according to Google Trends

This adds up, because I mean, who wouldn’t want a personal assistant?

Regardless, this week’s company leans into the AI personal assistance concept, focusing on helping you remember things and time saving with messaging.

📦 Product

“The world deserves a second you.” – Personal.AI

Personal AI offers a service primarily revolving around a virtual assistant that is trainable to someone’s favorite foods, hobbies, dreams, desires, etc.

One of the intriguing features is an autoreply to incoming messages depending on who the person is or what context their message is in. This company created something called a Personal Score which “represents the accuracy and authenticity of a message created by your personal AI based on your available information.”

There are mixed reviews with an overall rating of 4.5/5 stars on Product Hunt.

The company targets everyone, from individuals to businesses. After all, there are two kinds of people: those with personal assistants and those who need them. 😂

💵 Pricing

The paid service starts at $150/year and dabbles into the $400/year all the way up to major brand use starting at $3,500/month. If a company is going to dish out $42,000 a year they better be expecting some attributes to come with it, and they definitely get some which include

• A dedicated server
• API access
• An account manager
• AI training specialist
• Custom feature requests
• Unlimited number of memories and AI personas

Full pricing breakdown

😰 Pain Point

I have been using this product for a few days and utilizing it in my day-to-day life to get a feel of the product, it is a very interesting concept of allowing your brain to work with an AI in remembering information. The issue comes into play when attempting to apply this information. I already use Obsidian which is a very similar product in the sense of remembering things and sharpening mental capabilities. For me, the feature of being able to have personalized AI generate messages isn’t enough to keep me using this product.

Not as big of a time saver as I imagined for message responses

I assumed that this service would allow me to train the model and then continue to go about my day-to-day activities with a personal AI assistant ready to go at all times.

However, using this product presented challenges as it doesn’t integrate with all communication platforms. Instead, Personal.AI is trying to create its own platform that you use and get your contacts to join. This business model makes more sense with an employee target audience where a company purchases the service and everyone working there starts to use it.

Your average Joe trying to save time must copy and paste a message they received into this program, receive a generated response, and then copy and paste the response back to the original sender. This doesn’t save time.

In my opinion, this program is not for an individual trying to save time. Programs like Gmail already have generated responses ready to send in reply to emails. Granted the auto-responses aren’t personalized to you but I don’t think that feature is worth $150/year-granted I am a poor college student.

This product is for businesses attempting to save their employees time and dishing out that much money does come with API access which I would assume allows you to integrate the product into a Gmail, Slack, or iMessage app.

💪🏻 Attributes

• 🧠 Digital long-term memory that is organized and lasts forever.
• 📡 API access with paid version
• ⏳ Possible time saver – depending on the situation
• 📖 Intro course to help ensure efficient product use

Complete Details Here

Nobody has a perfect memory. This product addresses that by allowing users to store key events for long-term recall. No one can disagree that this concept wouldn’t be useful because many people already do this via journaling or reflecting. This would be a stimulant to that and allow you to access these thoughts quicker.

“You can ask what the insightful thoughts are from a conversation, the name of your friend’s spouse you met the week before, or the Berkeley restaurant recommendation you got last month.” – Personal.AI

Web 3.0

This company is also utilizing Web3 capabilities, I feel like every start-up since 2020 involves AI or Web3. These are definitely waves to surf similar to the dot com era, cell phones, and the social media era.

Long story short, Personal.AI is building on Web 3.0 for user sovereignty, enhancing privacy, and offering personal AI for individual data control.

That’s a concern of mine when handling personal information. If I were to put all of my journaling or private info on a program I run the risk of that company getting hacked and all my info leaked. This is unlikely but possible.

👨‍⚖️Final verdict? Love the fact that they are trying to make people’s lives easier by helping them remember the little things and maybe saving some time in the process. I think this company will have success targeting large companies and rolling out accounts for hundreds or thousands of employees.

---

Thanks for reading, stay smooth

Owen Ciha

This week’s startup spotlight beams down on a dynamic company out of Paris. They’re not just making noise; they’re orchestrating symphonies.

Enter one of the luminaries of the AI video editing cosmos. Drum roll, please…

“Effortless Captions with perfect emojis and intelligently highlighted keywords, all generated by AI” – SubmagicAI

Behind the scenes

• Birthed in the Spring of 2023 (still private).
• Under the wing of parent company TURBO STUDIO S.A.S.
• A tight-knit crew of four: 2 brains behind the idea and 2 marketing wizards.
• 640k web visits in the last month
• 90k+ content creators vibing with Submagic
• Want numbers? Dive deeper here

🎤 Intro

In layman’s terms, picture Submagic as the keen listener who, after hearing your video rants, slaps on some snazzy captions – the latest digital trend.

Among the heavy hitters in the AI captioning ring, Submagic secures a runner-up position after Opus (200,000+ users). It’s in a league with opponents such as Type Studio, Vidyo.ai, Zubtitle, and Captions.

Speaking of the AI marketing sphere? It’s swarming with fresh startups and seasoned agencies alike, all surfing similar wares. But here’s the twist: Submagic has its eyes set on one prize — dishing out captions for creators’ visuals and doing it well.

📦 Product

Submagic has 37 five-star reviews coming from Product Hunt and works with, or at least is loved by, 90k content creators.

Some of their proprietary features include…

• Trendy templates
• Emojis and keywords that pop.
• Animations that’d make Pixar nod.
• AI-fueled descriptions & hashtags.
• Handy mobile platform
• 48 available languages

Diving into the world of captioning platforms, Submagic shows itself as a frontrunner when it comes to linguistic diversity and seamless auto-captioning. They even scored some famous creators to use their software such as Alex Hormozi, Gary Vaynerchuk, The Diary of a CEO, and Iman Ghadzi just to name a few.

However, if you’re a font aficionado or crave seamless downloads, it may leave you hanging.

A quick look into their Discord reveals users highlighting some of these problems or absent features. But, the founders are all ears and are actively engaging with their community to smooth out those creases.

Submagic kills it in the caption game; no doubt. But for creators, you still might be searching for those editing tools to fine-tune your videos for that signature fast-paced style. Looking for an all-in-one short-form content maestro? Submagic’s strengths lie purely in AI captioning – just so you know where the magic really is.

💰Million-dollar revenue: Statement or question?

Let’s break this down with some back-of-the-napkin math, shall we? 🧐

Rumor has it, Submagic wooed 90k users in a breezy three months. Now, the lowest ticket to this show? A cool $16/month (with an annual commitment).

If every one of those users dug deep for a month’s subscription, we’re talking a potential revenue pool of $1.44 million. Dreamy? Yes. Realistic? Not so much.

But it’s a start.

Now, let’s peek under the hood at what might be eating into those earnings. Monthly operating costs for this AI aficionado might look like:

• Cloud Service: A humble $100 to a hefty $10k. ☁️
• Deep Learning Program: $5k – $20k. 🧠
• Content Moderation Tools: Between $1k and $10k. 🕵️‍♂️
• Marketing: From a grassroots $1k to a blitzing $10k. 📢
• Data Storage: Anywhere from $1k to $50k. 📦
• GPUs/TPUs: Roll the dice between $11k and $21k. 🎲
• Maintenance: $2k to $10k. Because tech does throw tantrums. 🛠️

The ballpark? We’re looking at monthly costs ranging from ~$20k on the frugal end to ~$130k if they’re feeling lavish. With their claim of working with thousands of creators, I’d bet they’re hovering around $47k/month.

By that logic, they would need a steady tribe of roughly 2,938 users each month – which is only 3% of their lofty 90k claim.

Final verdict? My money is on Submagic not just staying afloat, but cruising. They have staked their territory in a specialized niche and it might not be long before a big player strikes these guys with a deal hard to ignore.

---

Thanks for reading, stay smooth

Owen Ciha