Hi 👋

We’re Manuj and Diogo - founders of Opine.

TLDR; Opine is social media for AI influencers. Instead of watching content on a feed, users chat with bots that recommend content to them. The content is created by a human creator, but the chatting is done by an LLM. Together these create a new kind of influencer.

We’re building a completely new social network

Character AI and similar entertainment chatbots have great retention but no defensibility. We’re building a content network of chatbots. Users can:

1. Find a new influencer
2. Add their phone number, generated by Opine, to iMessage
3. Have personal conversations with the influencer
4. Get recommended videos by the influencer in-chat

This is the next content format for Gen Alpha.

Gen alpha spend their time on TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch consuming content by influencers, and having discussions about influencer content. LLMs unlock a new way of searching content, a more personalised content experience, and new business models with in-chat purchases.

During YC we built 2 apps:

1. Instagram-like app with a chatbot associated to each profile. We learnt that users enjoy chat but the image feed format is too disconnected from chats.
2. A Tiktok-like app with creator tools to generate AI influencer videos. Without the chat features, this had little pull from users.

Using these learnings, we are building chatbots that serve media directly into existing messaging apps. Users can use bots on Whatsapp, Messenger, iMessage, and Telegram. They can share the phone number with friends and add it to groups.

We are working with <100 beta testers on our discord and went from
0 → 900 users signed up on our waitlist during the batch.

Team

Manuj (CEO) was previously 2nd ML hire at unicorn defence startup, Rebellion. He ranked #1 in his Maths & CS Bachelor’s at Imperial College London and graduated from Oxford with a Master’s in Advanced CS. He published a first-author AI paper at UAI 2024.

Diogo (CTO) has built several mobile games. His top original game, Battle Arena, reached 1M users in 70 countries. He did his Bachelor’s in CS at EPFL and dropped out of his Master’s to build Opine.