Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Start with a broad tagline, then narrow
Launching broad
Victor launched as the AI employee for everyone on purpose. Agencies, ecommerce brands, and small and medium businesses showed up first. The team kept the evergreen creative running and went through the audiences in order. For agencies, it asked whether they could be acquired, what the funnel looked like, and what creative worked. Once the economics worked and the process repeated, it moved to the next audience.
Audience fatigue
Audience fatigue sets in on whatever is being targeted, so the next audience has to be unlocked. Marketing is now ICP specific, and a prompt can simulate a target person, what they read and how they decide, which produces rich ICP research. The landing page, onboarding, and product experience can be built for that person.
The AI employee name
The broad line leaves people unsure what the product does, since an AI video editor or an AI copywriter is clear and an AI employee raises questions about taxes and creative. It was the only way to frame a product against Claude and ChatGPT around knowledge work. With enough use cases and stories, the framing can flip to a story of hiring Victor and what he did, then to a guy's name, an employee, and an AI tool.
Why do startups pick one beachhead market?
Geoffrey Moore's 1991 book Crossing the Chasm argued that technology companies should win a single niche before expanding. He borrowed the term beachhead from the Normandy landings, where a small foothold made the larger advance possible. Winning one group builds references and word of mouth that carry into neighboring groups. The book still shapes how many startups plan their go-to-market.
Why does software get a human name?
Joseph Weizenbaum built ELIZA at MIT in 1966, a program that echoed users' statements back as questions. He was surprised by how readily people attributed understanding to it, a reaction now called the ELIZA effect. Later assistants such as Siri and Alexa were given names and voices. Weizenbaum wrote about his alarm at the reaction in his 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason.
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