For Eliot & Sam · Feb 25 2026

Four ways to build Teach Me.

We agree on the problem. We agree on the mantra. This doc explores four product shapes this could take — what each looks like, what it takes to build, and who it serves. The goal: pick a direction.

The premise we're building on.

AI is moving fast. Any static content we create is outdated within weeks. So we don't create content — we curate, aggregate, and personalize it. The internet is already drowning in AI tutorials, YouTube walkthroughs, tool reviews, and prompt guides. The problem isn't supply. The problem is: none of it is organized around what you actually do for a living.

A real estate agent doesn't care about "prompt engineering." They care about writing listings faster. A CPG brand manager doesn't need "AI fundamentals." They need to know which tools analyze shelf data. The value isn't the information — it's the filter.

Our job is to be that filter. We use AI to watch the entire ecosystem, pull in what's relevant, and serve it to people based on their profession. Humans handle marketing and distribution. AI handles everything else. That's how this scales.

"AI isn't going to replace you. But someone who knows how to use AI is."
Start with a free tool. Build an audience. Then build the product.
Don't launch a platform. Launch the simplest, most immediately useful thing possible: "Tell us what you do. We'll tell you who to follow for AI." Capture the email. Nurture with a newsletter. Build everything else on top of an audience you already own.

Phase 1: The Wedge — "Who to Follow" Tool

teachme.ai
AI isn't going to replace you. But someone who knows how to use AI is.
Who should you follow for AI?
Tell us what you do. We'll curate the people, channels,
and voices that matter for your profession.
e.g. "Real estate agent"
Show me →
Your AI feed for: Real Estate Agent
🎬

@AIforAgents · YouTube

Weekly walkthroughs of AI tools for listing creation, CMA reports, and lead nurturing

💼

Sarah Kim · LinkedIn

Top-producing agent sharing daily AI workflows — listing descriptions, follow-ups, market analysis

🐦

@PropTechAI · Twitter/X

Breaking AI news filtered for real estate — tools, use cases, and industry-specific prompts

📰

The AI Realtor · Newsletter

Bi-weekly email focused on AI for residential real estate professionals

This list updates monthly as new voices emerge.
your@email.com
Get updates

Why this is the right starting point

  • Instant value before we ask for anything — proves we're useful in 30 seconds
  • Zero content creation burden — we curate people, not lessons
  • Natural email capture — "this list updates, want to stay current?" is a high-converting ask
  • The act of entering their profession IS the onboarding — we know who they are before they've even subscribed
  • Inherently shareable — "check out this tool that shows you who to follow for AI in your field" is a LinkedIn post waiting to happen

What it takes to build

  • Landing page with profession input + results
  • Curated creator database — 8-12 voices per profession, across YouTube / LinkedIn / Twitter / newsletters
  • Email capture integrated with newsletter platform (Beehiiv, ConvertKit, etc.)
  • Start with 5-10 professions — content/marketing, CPG, real estate, professional services, ops
  • Timeline: 1 week to launch

The Creator Flywheel — Our Distribution Hack

Here's the unlock that makes this grow fast without paid acquisition. The creators and voices we feature in the tool have every incentive to promote us — because we're sending them followers.

🛠️
We curate creators
Feature them in our tool
📈
They get followers
From our user base
📣
They promote us
To their audience
👥
We get users
Who find more creators

The deal is simple: we trade placement for promotion. "We'll feature you as a top voice for AI in real estate — share it with your audience." Every creator who shares their Teach Me listing is driving their followers to our platform, where those followers enter their own profession and discover more creators, who then share it with their followers.

This is how you grow a user base without a marketing budget. The creators ARE the marketing. And the bigger our user base gets, the more valuable the placement becomes, which means bigger creators want in, which brings more users. It compounds.

The pitch to creators: "Teach Me recommends you to every [profession] who asks who to follow for AI. Last month we sent 2,000 professionals to creators in your space. Want to be on the list? Share your listing and we'll feature you." As the platform grows, this becomes a premium placement opportunity — another revenue stream.

Why creators will say yes

  • Free, targeted followers in their exact niche — not random traffic, the right people
  • Social proof — "Recommended by Teach Me" becomes a badge of credibility
  • Zero effort — they share a link once, we keep driving followers indefinitely
  • They're already creating content — we're just amplifying it to the right audience

How to execute

  • Start by curating 8-12 creators per profession — DM them with the value prop before launch
  • Give each featured creator a unique referral link and a shareable "I'm a Teach Me recommended voice" badge
  • Track which creator referrals drive the most signups — double down on those relationships
  • As volume grows, introduce tiered placements (featured vs. listed) — creators compete for top spots by driving more engagement

Phase 2 → 4: From Tool to Newsletter to Product

Phase 2: The Newsletter (Weeks 2-6). Once the micro-tool is capturing emails (segmented by profession), launch a weekly newsletter. Week one: updated "who to follow" list plus highlights from those creators. Week two: curated content — "the best thing we saw this week for real estate agents using AI." Week three: add a prompt template. Week four: tool recommendation. Each email progressively deepens the value while training people to open. The creator flywheel keeps feeding the top of the funnel while the newsletter builds the relationship.

Phase 3: The Paid Product (Months 3-5). You now have an email list segmented by profession, engagement data on what content resonates, and creator relationships in multiple verticals. Pick whichever path (A, B, C, or D) the data points to and launch it to your warmest users first. The newsletter audience is your built-in beta group — they already trust you, they already gave you their profession, and they've been primed by weeks of free value. "We're launching something new — reply if you want early access" to your most engaged subscribers.

Phase 4: Layer and Expand (Months 6+). Add more paths as the data justifies them. Convert newsletter subscribers to paid. Expand to new professions using the same playbook: curate creators, launch the micro-tool for that vertical, build the newsletter, promote the paid product. Each new profession is a repeat of the same formula, not a reinvention.

Why this sequence wins: You never have to convince a stranger to buy something. By the time you launch a paid product, your audience has already received weeks of free value, they've self-selected by profession, and they've been warmed by creators they trust. The micro-tool → newsletter → paid product pipeline means every dollar of revenue comes from someone who already knows you're useful.

Stickiness plays.
Features and mechanics that increase retention, habit formation, and shareability. Layer these onto whichever path becomes the paid product.

🔥 Daily challenge / Prompt of the Day

One real work scenario for your profession, every day. "You just got a brief for a new product launch. Use AI to generate a competitive landscape in under 10 minutes. Go." Takes 5–10 minutes, builds muscle memory, and creates a Wordle-style shareability loop. Streaks keep people coming back.

📊 AI Score / Proficiency Tracker

A personal "AI Quotient" — a score that quantifies how AI-fluent you are in your profession. Think credit score for AI skills. Vanity metrics drive engagement, and a visible score gives people something to improve — and something to put on LinkedIn.

🏆 Streaks + Leaderboards

Duolingo proved that streaks are one of the most powerful retention mechanics in consumer software. A "days active" streak combined with profession-specific leaderboards ("Top 10% of brand managers this month") creates both internal motivation and social proof.

🔗 Share-to-Unlock

Gate certain premium content behind sharing. "Share your weekly briefing with a colleague to unlock this month's advanced prompt library." Every user becomes a distribution channel — and they look good sharing useful AI insights.

📬 The "Time Saved" Receipt

A weekly summary showing how much time you've saved (or could have saved) by using AI. "This month: 6.5 hours saved across 4 workflows." Quantified ROI is the strongest argument against cancellation — and a concrete number to tell your boss.

👥 Peer Comparisons

Anonymous benchmarks showing how your AI adoption compares to others in your field. "72% of brand managers in your cohort are using AI for competitive analysis — you haven't tried this yet." Social proof meets FOMO.

Questions to discuss.

1. Which 5-10 professions do we curate creators for at launch? Start with content/marketing, CPG, and real estate — what else?

2. How many creators per profession do we need to make the tool feel valuable? 8? 12? 20?

3. Do we DM creators before launch to lock in the flywheel, or curate first and pitch them after we have traffic?

4. Newsletter platform: Beehiiv (built for growth/monetization) vs. ConvertKit (built for creators) vs. something else?

5. At what list size do we launch the paid product? 500 subscribers? 1,000? 5,000?

6. The YouTube wrapper idea — does this become a feature of the newsletter (embedded video highlights) or a standalone section of the tool?

7. Which of the four paths (A-D) does your gut say becomes the paid product?

What exists today — and where the gap is.
The AI upskilling market currently falls into four buckets. None of them do what we're proposing.

1. Generic AI Newsletters

Superhuman AI · The 800-lb gorilla

1M+ subscribers. Free daily email, 3-minute read covering AI news, tools, and tutorials. Founded by Zain Kahn, 1.5M+ social following. Pro tier offers weekly deep-dives.

The problem: Same email for everyone. A real estate agent and a CPG brand manager get identical content. Zero personalization by profession or role. It's a broadcast, not a filter.

The Rundown AI  ·  The Neuron

Other large AI newsletters (600K+ and 500K+ subscribers respectively). Similar model to Superhuman — daily AI news, general audience, no profession-based personalization.

The problem: Same as Superhuman. Great for awareness, useless for "how do I use this in my specific job?"

2. AI Course Platforms

SectionAI · Closest competitor

Structured AI courses (live + on-demand), Slack community, expert instructors from OpenAI/Google/Meta. Consulting services for enterprise.

  • Free tier: 3 lesson videos/mo
  • On Demand: $41/mo (billed annually)
  • Unlimited: $82/mo (billed annually)
  • Teams: $750/seat

The problem: Generic courses ("AI for Writing," "AI Crash Course") — not "AI for your specific role." Content goes stale. On the creation treadmill.

Coursera for Business  ·  Udemy Business

Massive course libraries from universities and industry experts. AI-powered recommendations, skill tracking, analytics dashboards. Enterprise-focused pricing.

The problem: AI is one category among thousands. Not purpose-built for AI upskilling. Courses are static, long-form, and generic. Individual professionals aren't the target buyer.

3. Enterprise Learning Platforms (LXPs)

Degreed

AI-powered skill intelligence platform. Aggregates skills data across HR systems, creates personalized learning paths. ~$10-15/user/mo for enterprise contracts. Implementation costs $2K-$20K.

The problem: Broad skill-development platform, not AI-specific. Sells to HR/L&D, not individuals. Inaccessible to the solo professional or SMB.

Pluralsight  ·  360Learning  ·  Sana

Enterprise LXPs with AI personalization engines, skill assessments, and content libraries. Pluralsight is tech-focused; 360Learning is collaborative; Sana uses generative AI for course creation.

The problem: Six-figure enterprise contracts. Built for L&D departments, not individuals. Broad learning platforms that happen to include some AI content.

4. Tool-Specific Academies

HubSpot Academy  ·  Salesforce Trailhead  ·  Google AI Essentials

Free training tied to learning a specific vendor's product. HubSpot teaches HubSpot AI features. Salesforce teaches Einstein. Google teaches Gemini. Useful but narrow — they're selling you their tool, not teaching you AI.

The problem: Vendor lock-in by design. They teach you their AI, not how AI applies to your work broadly. And they don't care what you do for a living.

The gap Teach Me fills.

Nobody organizes by profession

Every competitor organizes by topic ("prompt engineering") or by tool ("learn ChatGPT"). Nobody organizes by who you are and what you do. That's the whole product.

Nobody curates — they all create

SectionAI, Coursera, Udemy — they're all on the content creation treadmill. Their stuff goes stale. We curate from the entire internet and are always current by default.

The price gap is massive

Free newsletters → $500+/yr courses → six-figure enterprise LXPs. There is nothing in the $10-20/mo range for an individual professional who wants more than a newsletter but won't pay for courses.

In-workflow learning doesn't exist

Path D — contextual AI coaching inside your actual tools — has zero competitors. The closest analogy is GitHub Copilot for developers. Nobody has built this for knowledge workers.

Our edge isn't content. Our edge is distribution + personalization. We're not going to out-teach SectionAI or out-write Superhuman. We're going to out-target them. Same internet, better filter, delivered to the right person at the right time in the right context.

💬

The AI Career Coach

A conversational AI that knows your job and guides your AI journey. Think "career advisor who's obsessed with AI" — you talk to it, it talks back with specific advice, resources, and people to follow. It learns what you do and gets smarter over time.
teachme.ai/coach
Hey Sarah 👋
CPG Brand Manager · Week 3 with Teach Me
Big update this week that's relevant for you. Anthropic released a new feature for analyzing structured data like planograms and shelf photos. Given that you told me competitive shelf analysis takes you ~4 hours per store, this could cut that in half. Want me to walk you through how to set it up?
Yes, and also — is there a good way to use AI for writing my quarterly brand review?
Absolutely. Here's what I'd recommend for your quarterly review:

Watch first → @BrandAI_Mike's walkthrough on using Claude for brand performance narratives (12 min, posted 3 days ago)

Try this prompt → I built one tuned for CPG quarterly reviews — it pulls in your KPIs and writes the narrative structure. Want me to show you?

Follow → Priya Shah (@priya_cpg) just posted a thread on exactly this workflow.
Ask me anything about AI for your role...

✅ Why this works

  • Most natural interface — people know how to chat
  • Deeply personalized from day one
  • Can handle the infinite diversity of roles and questions
  • Low content creation burden — AI assembles responses from curated sources in real-time
  • Feels like magic when it knows your job and serves something relevant

⚠️ The risks

  • Relies on the quality of AI responses — hallucination risk with curated content is real
  • Engagement model is pull-based (user has to come to it and ask) — need strong push notifications / email hooks to bring people back
  • Harder to demonstrate value upfront — "try talking to our chatbot" is a tough sell
  • "Just use ChatGPT" objection — need clear differentiation

🔧 What it takes to build

  • AI chat interface with persistent user profiles (role, industry, skill level, interests)
  • Curated content database — YouTube channels, blogs, tools, people indexed by profession
  • AI agents that continuously scan and ingest new content from these sources
  • Prompt template library organized by profession and use case
  • Push system (email / notifications) to surface proactive insights

📊 Unit economics

  • AI API costs per user: ~$2-5/mo (depending on usage volume)
  • At $15/mo sub, ~$10-13 margin per user
  • Key leverage: content curation and indexing costs are amortized across all users in a profession
  • Risk: power users could drive API costs up; may need usage tiers

Path A in a sentence

A personalized AI advisor that lives in your pocket and knows your job. Maximum personalization, highest technical complexity, strongest retention potential if the AI is good. Weakest at passive engagement — requires the user to actively use it.

📡

The Personalized Feed

"Spotify Discover Weekly" for AI skills. You tell us what you do. Every week, we deliver a curated drop of content, tools, people to follow, and prompts to try — all filtered through your profession. It's not a chatbot. It's a living, breathing briefing that rewrites itself for each reader.
teachme.ai/feed
Your AI Briefing
CPG Brand Manager · Week of Feb 23, 2026 · 6 items curated for you
🔥 This Week's Must-Know

Claude now analyzes shelf photos

Upload a planogram or shelf photo and get competitive analysis in seconds. Here's how this changes your workflow →

🎬 Watch This (4 min)

AI-powered brand review writing

@BrandAI_Mike walks through using AI for quarterly brand narratives — exactly your use case

🛠️ Try This Prompt

Competitive price analysis

"Given this pricing data for [category], identify the three biggest opportunities for..."

👤 Follow This Person

Priya Shah (@priya_cpg)

VP of Brand Strategy at [CPG Co], posts weekly AI workflows for brand managers

⚡ Quick Wins

2 things you can try in 5 minutes

1. Paste your last product brief into Claude and ask for three consumer-facing angles you haven't considered
2. Use Perplexity to pull the latest market share data for your category — it's faster than your current process

✅ Why this works

  • Push-based model — content comes to you, no effort required
  • Feels premium and editorial even though AI assembles it
  • Easy to explain and sell: "a weekly AI briefing, personalized to your job"
  • Natural email/app experience — people already consume content this way
  • Low barrier to value — you get something useful the first week

⚠️ The risks

  • Content fatigue — another thing in the inbox, need to earn attention every week
  • Less interactive / deep than a coach — might feel "surface level"
  • Quality depends heavily on how good the AI curation is — bad recommendations kill trust fast
  • Harder to differentiate from general AI newsletters (need the profession-specific angle to be sharp)

🔧 What it takes to build

  • Content ingestion pipeline — AI agents crawling YouTube, blogs, Twitter, Product Hunt, etc.
  • Profession taxonomy — structured map of roles, industries, and what's relevant to each
  • AI assembly engine — takes raw curated content and compiles personalized briefings
  • Email delivery system + web app for archives and browsing
  • Feedback loops (thumbs up/down on content) to improve personalization

📊 Unit economics

  • AI curation cost per user: ~$0.50-1.50/mo (batch processing, shared across cohorts)
  • At $12/mo sub, ~$10-11 margin per user — very attractive
  • Key leverage: most of the curation work is shared across users in the same profession
  • Lowest per-user cost of the three paths

Path B in a sentence

A personalized weekly briefing that finds what matters for your specific job so you don't have to. Easiest to launch, easiest to explain, best unit economics. Weakest at depth and interactivity — it's consumption, not conversation.

🧠

The Learning OS

Structured learning paths built for your profession plus a living feed that keeps you current. You get a curriculum (so you know what to learn and in what order) and a news layer (so you never fall behind). Think Duolingo meets a personalized AI newsletter.
teachme.ai/learn
Your Learning Path
CPG Brand Manager · AI Proficiency Level 2 of 5
42% through your path · ~6 weeks to Level 3
Module 1: AI Basics for Non-Technical Roles
Module 2: Prompt Engineering for Brand Strategy
Module 3: AI-Powered Competitive Intelligence
Module 4: Building Your AI Content Pipeline
Module 5: Advanced — AI for Demand Forecasting
What's New This Week
🔥 Relevant to Module 3

New tool for shelf photo analysis

Directly applies to what you're learning right now →

🎬 Recommended

AI brand review walkthrough

Preview of Module 4 material — watch this 4 min video

✅ Why this works

  • Solves the "I don't know what I don't know" problem — gives people a clear path
  • Progress tracking creates motivation and habit (Duolingo effect)
  • Modules are built from curated external content — we organize it, not create it
  • The feed layer keeps it evergreen and fresh
  • Strongest argument for ongoing subscription — always a next level to unlock

⚠️ The risks

  • Most complex to build — need both a structured curriculum engine AND a feed system
  • Modules need to stay current, which means AI has to continuously update them (not just the feed)
  • Risk of feeling too "coursework" for busy professionals — needs to feel light, not like homework
  • Requires building profession-specific paths before launch (can't go to market with one path)

🔧 What it takes to build

  • Everything from Path B (content ingestion, profession taxonomy, personalization)
  • Plus: curriculum framework — AI-generated learning paths by profession
  • Module assembly engine — curates and sequences external content into structured lessons
  • Progress tracking and proficiency scoring
  • Continuous module refresh system (AI re-evaluates and updates modules as new content drops)

📊 Unit economics

  • AI curation + module assembly: ~$1.50-3/mo per user
  • At $20/mo sub (premium positioning), ~$17-18 margin per user
  • Can command higher price because of structured learning (perceived as education, not content)
  • Highest development cost upfront; best margin potential at scale

Path C in a sentence

A structured, personalized learning platform that also stays current. Strongest value proposition and highest willingness-to-pay, but most complex to build. The risk is over-engineering before you've validated the market.

👁️

The AI Shadow

Instead of teaching you about AI in a separate product, Teach Me lives inside your actual work. A layer that watches what you're doing — writing a listing, building a deck, pulling a report — and shows you how AI could do it faster, right in that moment. Learning happens in context, not in a classroom.
Google Docs — Q1 Brand Performance Review.docx
You're writing in your normal tools. Teach Me is watching quietly in the background...
Q1 Brand Performance Review
Overall category performance declined 2.3% vs. prior year. Our brand maintained share at 14.2%, outperforming the category by...
[you keep typing your report manually]
Teach Me · Nudge
You're writing a brand review manually. This is one of the highest-leverage places to use AI. Claude can draft this entire narrative from your raw data in ~30 seconds — keeping your voice and format.

Show me how Not now Don't show again
Teach Me · After you click "Show me how"
Here's the exact prompt for your brand review. Paste your raw KPI data and this prompt into Claude:

"You are a CPG brand manager writing a Q1 performance review. Given the following data, write a narrative summary in my company's standard format: executive summary, category context, brand performance, key drivers, and recommended actions. Tone: confident, analytical, concise."
⏱️ Estimated time saved: 45 min → 5 min
Your Shadow Stats This Week

7 nudges delivered

3 acted on · 2 dismissed · 2 snoozed

~3.5 hrs of potential time saved

Based on tasks where AI could have helped

✅ Why this works

  • Learning in context — the nudge arrives at the exact moment it's useful, not hours later in a feed
  • Zero behavior change required — user stays in their tools, Teach Me comes to them
  • Quantifies the gap — "you spent 3 hours this week on tasks AI could do in 20 min" is incredibly motivating
  • Stickiest possible product — embedded in the workflow, users feel the absence immediately if they cancel
  • Generates rich data about what professionals actually do, which feeds every other path

⚠️ The risks

  • Hardest to build — browser extension, context detection, integrations with multiple tools
  • Privacy/trust hurdle: "this thing is watching me work?" needs careful framing
  • Nudge fatigue — interrupting someone's flow is a fine line between helpful and annoying
  • Requires deep profession-specific knowledge to recognize the right moments

🔧 What it takes to build

  • Browser extension with context detection (what tool, what task, what content)
  • Profession-specific "moment library" — catalogued situations where AI creates leverage
  • AI matching engine — maps observed activity to relevant moments and prompts
  • Prompt/tutorial database organized by task type and tool
  • Analytics dashboard showing time-saved potential and engagement

📊 Unit economics

  • AI context analysis cost: ~$3-6/mo per active user
  • At $20/mo sub, ~$14-17 margin per user
  • Highest development cost of all four paths
  • But: lowest churn potential — embedded products have the best retention in SaaS

💡 The MVP shortcut: The Daily Shadow Report

You don't need to build the full extension on day one. Start with something simpler — a "daily shadow report." The user describes what they worked on that day (or connects their calendar), and Teach Me sends a short end-of-day message: "Based on what you did today, here are 3 moments where AI would have saved you time, and exactly how." It's retrospective instead of real-time, but it trains the same muscle — and it's buildable in weeks, not months. The full browser extension becomes the premium upgrade once you've validated the concept.

Path D in a sentence

An AI layer that lives inside your actual work tools and teaches you in the moments that matter. Hardest to build, stickiest to retain. The MVP version (daily shadow report) lets you validate the concept fast before investing in the full extension.

How they compare.
Dimension A · Career Coach B · Personalized Feed C · Learning OS D · AI Shadow
One-liner "An AI advisor that knows your job" "A weekly AI briefing for your profession" "Learn AI for your role, at your pace" "AI coaching inside your actual work"
Core experience Conversation Consumption Progression Context
Engagement model Pull (user initiates) Push (content delivered) Push + pull Ambient (always on)
Personalization
Infinite — any question
Filtered by profession
Adapts path + feed
Knows what you're doing right now
Time to launch 6–10 weeks 3–5 weeks 10–14 weeks 4–6 weeks (MVP)
12+ weeks (full extension)
Content burden Low Lowest Medium Low — moment library, not courses
Price point $15/mo $10–12/mo $18–25/mo $20/mo
Margin per user ~$10-13/mo ~$10-11/mo ~$15-22/mo ~$14-17/mo
Biggest strength Feels like magic Effortless; top-of-funnel Clear ROI; highest WTP Stickiest; lowest churn
Biggest risk "Just use ChatGPT" Content fatigue Over-build before validation Privacy concerns; build complexity
B2B upsell