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What can I type into the first box?
Why it works this way
One box takes a website, a market, a profession, a hunch or an idea, and the product works out whether to show you where to look or go straight to the problems.
People arrive with different things in their heads. Someone with an idea already knows what to study. Someone with a market, a profession or a website still needs to see where to look. A single box takes both.
What we gave up: a separate page for people who are still exploring. They get the same box, with five starter cards to fill it.
What it is
The first box takes almost anything you can say in a sentence: a company's website, a market, a profession, a hunch or an idea. Under the box are five starter cards, each one a way in: Test an idea, Study a rival, Find a niche, Test a hunch and One profession. Press a card and the box fills with a real example you can edit.
How to use it
- Open the start box. On your first visit, press Start your board on the card from Iris, your AI guide; after that, use New board at the top. On a first board, a line under the title says "This is your one free board, so pick something you'd really build."
- Type your own, or press a card and change the example.
- Press the arrow at the end of the box, or press Enter. Shift and Enter together start a new line. The arrow stays grey while the box is empty.
Where you land depends on what you typed:
- A website address. Discover Agents reads the site and shows the spaces the company is exploring, each saying what told us. You take one, and the problems are written for it. If the page cannot be read, you go straight to problems. A specific inner page, such as a pricing page, reads sharper than a homepage.
- An idea or a hunch in a sentence. For example, "an agent that chases late invoices". You go straight to problems.
- A market or a profession. For example, "med spas". You usually see spaces first. For a profession, the spaces vary the job inside that person's week, not the audience.
- A single word or a bare name. There is nothing to read behind it, so you usually see spaces first, where you could build, rather than an invented company.
What it will never do
- Start a run before you press the arrow or Enter.
- Submit while you are still choosing a word on a composing keyboard, such as Japanese, Chinese or Korean.
If something looks off
- The arrow is grey. The box is empty.
- A run is slow. The stages are named, and Cancel stays on screen: it stops the run and returns you to the box.
- A run fails. You see a plain message, usually to try again in a moment. Press the arrow again, and if it keeps failing use the Tell Omer link in the footer. A run that fails before it makes a board does not use up your free board, and a board that already exists stays yours.
- You start a new board with a board open. A pop-up asks "Start this one instead?". The open board goes off screen, saved, and you can open it again from My boards.
- You want to explore something else on the same board. A board holds one starting point. Start a new board; if your free board is in use, the limit screen says what happens next.
- Limits. Your first board is free, with starter credits. Some research steps use a credit. Buying more credits is not open yet.