Why I'm Building Ally
The most meaningful problem and opportunities we can work on today.
Posted by
Brian KitanoIntroduction
I've been working on Ally for the past few months. I've been thinking about it for a while, and I've finally decided to build it.
Motivation is the most important problem today
Motivation is the biggest problem in the world. If people aren't motivated to solve problems, then even AGI can't help. The opposite of motivation is anxiety and helplessness and powerlessness. It's also the feeling of burnout, and the feeling of indirection, which is becoming more and more common. I feel like so many people are not clear on what their mission is. They're not clear on what is it that they want to achieve in the world, and they don't even know where to start answering that question, and they desperately want answers, to live out their true lives. We have to make technology that makes human flourishing, we just do. So it starts by solving the motivation problem.
The motivation market
How do people get motivated? What works and what doesn't? What we know from behavioral psychology is two things: consistent systems and self-belief. Establishing your self-belief is how you build up the motivation to even try, and having a system you use regularly is how you maintain motivation to keep doing your thing.
People seek out motivation with their wallets every day – to address the identity side and to address the system side. The "system" market is everywhere:
| type | system purchases | problems/downsides |
|---|---|---|
| substance | coffee/caffeine | makes you anxious (as much harm as good) |
| substance | anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, ADHD drugs | expensive, high friction, builds dependence, side-effects. |
| behavioral intervention | Gym memberships, sleeping better | requires ability to execute on a system (aka requires self-belief) |
| behavioral intervention | habit-tracking apps like Duolingo, Streaks | |
| behavioral intervention | productivity apps like Motion | |
| behavioral intervention | meditation apps like Headspace | |
| behavioral intervention | new therapy apps like Liven | |
| behavioral intervention | therapy marketplace apps like BetterHelp | same problems as regular therapy, just cheaper (which might be even worse) |
The problem with substances is that they have counterproductive side effects and/or they're challenging to start (emotional/logistical overhead of getting a prescription). The problem with the behavioral interventions is that they all require self-belief to work well - it's a chicken/egg problem. The other core problem with behavioral interventions is that they're deeply impersonal - they don't learn anything about you. They try to enforce a system on you, not try to form a system from learning about you.
On the surface, the "self-belief market" is most addressed by therapy and self-help books. But is actually orders of magnitude larger, because identity formation is embedded into brands, and identity is a powerful form of motivation. People pick Nike running shoes over Adidas, Warby Parker over LensCrafters, Equinox over Planet Fitness. It's probably why you have a Masterclass subscription - you wanted the fantasy of "being someone who learns." It's all aspirational, and that's great, but in a world of conspicuous consumption and hyper-attention, aspirational purchases don't have staying power.
Nike and therapy are the most effective motivation purchases because they're a little bit of both self-belief and system. With Nike, you have to put on your shoes every day – self-belief plus consistent system. With therapy, you go every week and talk about yourself – again, self-belief plus consistent system. And, they both have the same lock-in mechanism to protect the consistency: they're expensive. The identity market is filled with Veblen goods - the more expensive the thing is, the more social status people derive from it (social status being something use to inform their self-belief).
One gaping product I've omitted from the self-belief market is social media. It's anathema to building self-belief - in fact, it's a habit-forming system whose second-order effects degrade self-belief. People are more distracted (from notifications, tiktok, etc), more anxious (from the news, social media), feeling more hopeless/powerless (to AI/automation, the economy). More to the point, social media is designed to get you to engage others, not yourself, and they encourage you to do it in ways that are not the same ways that you need to build self-belief. This then informs how you engage with yourself.
| technology | not technology | |
|---|---|---|
| self-belief | ?? | therapy; brands. |
| system | duolingo, streaks, productivity apps; CBT apps like Liven; meditation apps like Headspace. | coffee, prescriptions; self-help books |
So what we know so far is:
- Motivation = self-belief + consistent system
- The motivation market is big
- There is no technology that is self-belief forming, only systems enforcing.
Technology that builds self-belief
It's obvious we have to build technology that builds self-belief. We haven't been able to do it in the past for a few reasons:
- it requires deeply understanding and communicating with users on their level, how they communicate
- the affordances/media to build it had too much friction for people who already struggle with consistent systems - writing/journaling is slow and self-directed
- not a widely understood problem
But now, it's possible. AI has enabled us to build emotionally rich, interactive experiences that make people feel understood and help clarify their own sense of self. And the culture has changed: today, more people feel comfortable to seek out therapy, big tech has lost its luster as a force for good, and consumers have realized that the current attention environment isn't designed to make them happy or fulfilled. The future is technology that promotes human understanding, and the first place to start is by building technology that helps people understand and believe in themselves.