Prior to the recent AI wave brought about by the release of ChatGPT, Copianto already existed as an AI-powered SaaS platform for content creation. It was born out of a genuine need and shared pain points that the founders encountered while running their own businesses. Being people who experienced the problem they are solving first-hand made them better understand the issues from the perspective of users and helped them design an effective solution that addresses the identified pain points.
Putting yourself into the shoes of users and empathizing with their problems is a crucial step in understanding pain points and designing effective solutions. It allows you to gain valuable insights into the user’s perspective, needs, and frustrations. Experiencing the problem firsthand takes this understanding to an even deeper level. When you personally encounter a pain point, you have a visceral understanding of the challenges and limitations involved. This firsthand experience brings a level of empathy and authenticity to the problem-solving process. By experiencing the problem yourself, you can truly grasp the nuances, intricacies, and emotional aspects associated with the pain point. This intimate knowledge enables you to develop solutions that are not only technically effective but also genuinely address the core issues users face.
That’s the beginning of Copianto’s journey.
The Birth of Copianto
Founded in 2022 by Timothy Afrane Wuo-Asare, Daniella Darlington, Alex Boateng, and Alfred Sosu, with the goal of providing a convenient and efficient method for generating high-quality content, Copianto is an AI-powered SaaS platform for writing, content creation and enterprise search that uses advanced machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to help entrepreneurs, marketers, and copywriters write and create highly optimized content that drives results, the Founders figured the Content creation can be a challenging and time-consuming task when running a business around the industries of creativity, advertising etc. With a diverse background in law, computer science, computer engineering and health it’s evident that the team has done their best to manoeuvre entrepreneurship coupled with teamwork and it’s amazing!
Speaking with Daniella, the co-founder and COO of Copianto, she shared that:
The idea for Copianto originated from a genuine need and shared pain point that the founders encountered while running their own business, including an advertising and creative agency. Creating content proved to be a challenging and time-consuming task, while the option of outsourcing content creation was not a cost-effective solution.
This inspired the team to come up with a solution that could streamline content creation while being cost-effective. By leveraging advanced AI technology, Copianto aims to simplify the content creation process and empower businesses to overcome the hurdles they face in content generation.” That was how Copianto came about. Leveraging AI, the leading technology in the world right now is just amazing considering the fact that they have done so well in a span of a year.
Beyond the Founders’ Pain Points (Validating the concept)
Although Copianto was a solution to the teams’ personal needs, they knew they had to conduct market research to validate their assumptions about the pain points of small businesses and agencies. Reflecting on how they validated the idea, the team explained:
We interviewed a great deal of people in these industries, including digital advertising and marketing agencies, freelancers, and entrepreneurs. We heard the same stories over and over again: businesses were struggling to create high-quality content, they were spending too much time and money on content marketing, and they weren’t seeing the results they wanted. Some of the specific challenges they mentioned included writer’s block, limited resources, and creativity.
At this time, it was clear what the problem was and that was validation for them to build a solution that addresses the problems that their users faced.
Fun fact: ‘Copianto’ is a local Ghanaian slang term used to describe a student who copies’ others.
Building the MVP
In June 2022, the team launched the first version of the platform — Copianto 1.0, focusing on generating content such as blogs, social media captions, and ad copies.
To ensure that our product met the needs of our target users, we conducted close beta testing with our community of early users comprising; entrepreneurs, marketing and copywriters. Their valuable feedback allowed us to iterate on the product and incorporate enhancements. As a result, we expanded our offering to include over 32 tools specifically designed to aid in writing effective copy like pitch decks, emails, long-form articles and more.” She explained how they came up with the MVP.
Innovation is vital to every product and that is what the team has done so far with building Copianto. First, leveraging AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to meet the needs of customers to make their lives easier, then collaborating closely with these customers to essentially build for them.
Today, Copianto offers you a suite of AI-powered tools and services to enhance content creation efficiency and quality which include:
- Keyword research analysis to quickly identify topics
- An intuitive document editor for seamless content creation and editing
- A built-in plagiarism checker to ensure accuracy and authenticity
- Project management tools to facilitate collaboration among teams during the content creation process.
Just to mention a few.
Taking Copianto to Market
Building a great product is one thing, but taking it to market is another. A great product’s value relies heavily on effective go-to-market strategies, as it’s insufficient to simply build an exceptional product and wait for organic user adoption. Deliberate efforts are necessary to actively connect the product with users. Recognizing this, the Copianto team developed and implemented effective go-to-market strategies to take Copianto to market.
Copainto was launched through a webinar they organized on the topic of AI in content creation. This was a great way to introduce the platform to potential users and also get people excited about the possibilities.
Another means they used was reaching out to marketers, agencies, and individual copywriters.
We knew that these were the people who would be most interested in our platform, so we focused our efforts on reaching them. We did this by attending industry events, cold emailing, and running webinars, she said.
Still, on the strategy of reaching out, they visited university campuses to partner with their marketing departments and student representation bodies, as well as running social media and content marketing campaigns. Currently, they have a referral program and incentives for users who refer others to sign up on the platform.
Reception and Traction
By leveraging AI to simplify users’ pain points and provide such a solution, it is no surprise as to the success they have made so far. So far, they have recorded 100,000+ copies from 5,000 users and organizations since launching. They have also raised a $100K pre-seed from MEST Africa.
She shared:
The reception to Copianto has been great. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback from users. We’ve also seen a lot of traction regarding sign-ups and usage. We’re still in the early stages, but we’re confident that Copianto has the potential to be a major player in the content marketing space.
Feedback from a Copianto user.
The Startup Wahala
Sharing some difficulties they face as an AI-based startup, they mentioned:
One of the most difficult parts about running any startup is the uncertainty. There are so many things that can go wrong, and it’s impossible to predict what the future holds. Commercializing your business with the aim of being profitable can be tricky especially when your target customers do not know about the technology and are skeptical about its capabilities or threats. When we launched Copianto a lot of people did not know what AI was and how an AI tool could help them write content, so we needed to do a lot of education around the subject matter. But recently the trend has changed with more people adopting these emerging technologies.
What we learned from Copianto Story.
Copianto’s story has some lessons for entrepreneurs.
- Validation is Key: It is important to validate a product in order to avoid building the wrong product. Talk to potential users and users after launch, to learn what they really want.
- Innovation and technology are great for the growth of a product. Leverage Emerging Technologies to effectively solve users’ pain points.
These are some lessons we learnt. What did you learn?