Joff Redfern (Menlo VC) Discusses AI's Onboarding Conundrum & Adobe's Web-First Photoshop

Unsolicited Feedback

🎙️ In this week's episode of Unsolicited Feedback, Joff Redfern, the former Chief Product Officer at Atlassian and current Venture Partner at Menlo Ventures, joins the podcast. Fareed takes a bye-week, and Brian welcomes back Adam Fishman as his co-host.

This week's discussion includes:

1️⃣ Unlocking the Potential of AI Businesses (Starts at 17:05)

2️⃣ The Release of Adobe's Web-Version of Photoshop (Starts at 1:06:41)

We also kick off the episode with Joff introducing us to the Swiss Cheese Method. Curious? Find out more by watching the episode.

🚀 AI's Onboarding Conundrum 🤖💼

Have you ever felt like an AI's forgotten your conversations? 😕 Joff certainly has. He wants a personal assistant like the Chief of Staff from Veep, who knows him inside out and can anticipate his needs. But instead, he gets generic responses and no personalization. 😒

So, what's the real issue here? Why are AI companies falling short of the Job to be Done here? Our experts feel it might be the onboarding experience.

What makes onboarding critical? 🤔 Onboarding serves two purposes: educating the user about the application's capabilities, and personalizing the application. Unfortunately, AI companies have not cracked the code here. Why?

1️⃣ Eliminating Friction at All Costs: AI companies focus on reducing friction at the expense of personalizing the experience. Good AI performance requires learning about the user, which takes time and effort. A little good friction can go a long way! ⚙️

2️⃣ Desire for the largest possible TAM: Companies aim to solve problems for everyone, but we're all unique. Instead, Brian suggests a solution: Starting more narrowly and taking power users who have customized and figured out how to get their job done, and transforming their knowledge into a context window that becomes a new input.

Joff expands on this idea and proposes unlocking many possibilities with a few key decisions. He suggests using pairwise refinement to indicate your preferences and offers options for different response modes: long or concise, funny or serious. 🌍🤝

3️⃣ Trust creates a Chicken and Egg problem:

Without a detailed onboarding, AI usage is underwhelming. And without trust, users won't share their time and info. It's time for AI companies to reinvent the onboarding process and earn that trust! 🙌

Join the discussion and share your thoughts! How can we make AI onboarding easy but effective? 🌟💬

Adobe’s Web-Version of Photoshop

🎉 Adobe has released a web version of Photoshop, and it offers new collaboration, the ability for non-members to view and comment, and a firefly generative AI model! 🔥🎨

Overall, our cynical experts are pretty complimentary.

1️⃣ The team has brilliantly transformed the desktop version of Photoshop into a user-friendly and streamlined web product. 👏✨

2️⃣ Say goodbye to solo editing! Photoshop is now a multiplayer experience with the exciting addition of collaboration. No Photoshop experience required to comment and view. 🤝🔍

3️⃣ This update expands Photoshop's audience, bringing its power to a broader user base. 🌍💪

However, there are a few areas that still need improvement. Currently, there is limited connective tissue to other Adobe products, and collaboration doesn't feel like a first-class citizen just yet. 🧩🤷‍♂️

Nevertheless, these additions might be a great defense for Adobe. If they can provide enough value to prevent users from switching to platforms like Canva or Figma, then it might just be good enough. 🛡️💼

What are your thoughts on these new features?