Fyxer AI

Co-Founder

FYXER People

All the companies from the AI wave of 2016–2017 died. We didn’t.

The timing wasn’t right.

We pivoted to build a human version of the product.

We grew this business to $5M ARR, fully bootstrapped and profitable.

We built various SAAS tools (think Asana etc) that didn't feels like the next generation of products. 

We believed running the human powered version of the product would give us the map to build the best AI version. 

You can’t automate what you don’t deeply understand.

That’s why we’ll win.

Predicting the next email you’ll send.

This year, starting with 4 people, we grew from $1M to $15M ARR.

My role is being the voice of the customer: 

- building the best AI models for predicting the next email you’ll send.
- making sure we make intuitive AI & product decisions.
- making sure we reach the customer who feels email HELL the most.

Archie Hollingsworth

AGI has been a massive distraction for startups. 

For years, the easy bet was that foundation models would keep improving exponentially. 

But it’s now clear that the real differentiators are specialization and context engineering, not raw scale. 

The best AI companies are not getting distracted by AGI, but by mastering how AI is applied.

This is one of the points I shared with Arjun Kharpal (CNBC) at Web Summit, where I joined Ling Ge for a panel on building Europe’s global tech edge.

We believe overhiring kills startups.

In the last 12 months, we’ve grown revenue 30x, even though we started the year with these 3 (and me).

Most fast-growing startups fall into traps: overhiring, losing focus, acting like big companies.

We believe small, exceptional, high-performing teams are the future.

This year, we’ve carefully hired a small team of ambitious, humble and extremely hard-working individuals to help us go faster.

Today, we’re adding $1M ARR per week.

We can go faster though.

We’re carefully hiring 2 world-class engineers to join our team.

DM me if you’re interested.

[Last year’s Christmas party, SF, Dec 24]

People love to hate “996.” 9 a.m is not an early start.

But all that misses the point.

We don’t mandate it; instead, it’s about hiring people who love what they do.

I witnessed it this weekend when an issue occurred at 11 p.m on Friday, and the team has worked tirelessly to resolve it (and still is right now).

That’s the environment we believe in: working alongside people who care as much as you do and challenge you to be better every day.

A small team of exceptional people, working hard on a problem they care about, will always beat a larger, less focused team.

Joshua took the biggest bet of his life last year, joining three founders in a coworking space in Shoreditch. Four months later, he moved to SF to live in a hackahouse and is now leading a team of engineers.

My favourite quote from his talk last night: “We used to have a Slack channel for every time someone visited the website. Now we have a bell for every time we add another $1M ARR.”

You might be asking yourself, have I missed the rocketship moment? How much more upside is there? Are they overhiring or lowering the bar?

There will be a $10B company in our space.

Most fast-growing startups fall into traps, overhiring or acting like big companies.

We believe small, exceptional, high-performing teams are the future.

There is no better offer to a candidate than an extremely ambitious group giving unreasonable effort to the right things.

Surround yourself with insanely ambitious and talented people, and the rest will take care of itself.

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

[Josh last night at a founding eng event]

We are addicted to our phones, from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed.

Managing our inbox has become an entire layer of “fake work,” and a burden we no longer need to carry.

We are excited about a future built on AI-native products, ones that do not measure success by how much time people spend using them, but by how much time they gain back.

This video is from my Web Summit keynote this week.

Today we hosted Adam Pisk, founder of BruntWork, a rocketship that has grown to more than 7000 staff in just five years.

Adam was one of our first five users. He signed up on day one after I posted about Fyxer on LinkedIn, and a few weeks later, his whole team joined. For a moment, we had more Bruntwork users than anyone else. 

In the early days, the product was unreliable and a bit rough around the edges, but he stuck with us, gave honest feedback, and never once took a discount. He always believed our success was tied to his.

He visited our hackahouse in SF last year, and today he stopped by to see us in London. It was great catching up with him with Violaine from CS and Eleonora and Assem from engineering.

To all the Adams out there who are supporting us. Thank you. 

We are working extremely hard to make the product better every day.

You cannot say you're customer-obsessed if you only talk to customers. We did extreme things to study our customers.

Unpicking the gap between what customers say and what they actually do is how we’ve grown 25x in the last 10 months.

I met with 🌎 Jessica M. Mendoza from Forbes at Web Summit before going on stage to share more about the last 10 months. Link to article in comments.

Predicting the next email you will write sounds trivial.

After all, you know your inbox, your pipeline, your priorities. Surely a machine can learn that too, right?

In practice, it is one of the hardest problems in applied AI.

Email composition is not pattern-matching. It is intent-recognition, context-recall, tone-shaping, and business-logic sequencing. It requires an understanding of relationship history, implicit urgency, decision dynamics, and the social nuance embedded in every sentence.

Modern models can draft in seconds. The challenge is deciding which paragraphs matter, to whom, at what moment, and why.

AI that feels “human” in email is not about writing text. It is about understanding purpose.

The companies that solve this will not just automate communication. They will reshape how knowledge workers operate by shifting focus from writing to deciding.

Simple on paper. 

Exceptionally hard in reality.

I recently sat down with 🌎 Jessica from Forbes to discuss the last 10 months.

https://lnkd.in/de8irwv5

Open article: 4 Growth Strategies Behind A 10-Month Jump To $25 Million In Revenue by forbes.com

4 Growth Strategies Behind A 10-Month Jump To $25 Million In Revenue

RocketShip HQ - Mobile User Acquisition Agency

RocketShip HQ partners with fast growing companies to help them grow faster. We offer mobile user acquisition services that help our clients hit their growth & profitability goals in a capital-effective manner.

To explore working with us, please email hi at rocketshiphq.com

Founder & CEO

Various

I advise & partner with companies to set up bespoke growth marketing strategies & kick off execution to help them grow & scale effectively.

Growth Marketing Consultant

The How Things Grow Podcast

Host

FreshPlanet

Driving growth & acquisition activity for hit game SongPop 2.

FreshPlanet was acquired by Gameloft.

VP Growth & User Acquisition

Zynga

Drove launch, go-to-market strategy and subsequent growth of Crosswords With Friends, which hit iTunes rank #10 on iPhone & #1 on iPad soon after launch.

Growth & User Acquisition

PuzzleSocial Inc.

Managed 7 figure monthly budgets and drove 7X DAU growth before PuzzleSocial was acquired by Zynga in July 2016.

Director - Growth & User Acquisition

Bash Gaming

Owned new user growth strategy & execution for hit game Bingo Bash, one of Apple’s top 10 apps for the iPad for 2013 and 2014. Bash Gaming was acquired by GSN Games in March 2014 for $170 million.

Senior Manager - User Acquisition

Mint(formerly partner newspaper of WSJ in India)

Travel Editor

My writing has been published in Narratively, Forbes Life, Mint, Outlook Lounge, Open and India Today Travel Plus. My writings are at http://BywayStar.com

Independent Writer

Advised early stage businesses on customer acquisition and growth.

Growth Consultant

I designed and hosted quizzes for some of the top colleges, universities and corporations in India including:
Indian Institutes of Technology(Bombay, Madras), Indian Institutes of Management (Ahmedabad, Indore, Calcutta, Kozhikode), NIT Surat, College of Engineering(Pune), Pune IT Idol, Capgemini, Rotaract Club Pune, BITS Goa, BITS Pilani.

Freelance Quizmaster

InMobi

Led campaign execution for key brand and performance advertisers. Grew team from 5 members to 20 members across Asia Pacific and China. Provided leadership to team to exceed revenue targets.

Head Of Campaign Management (APAC)

Profitable growth in a post-identifier world | UGC & video ad creative production to drive ROAS & scale

I help mobile app companies–including gaming companies like Applovin, East Side Games, Jam City and Scopely, and apps like Bumble, Lingokids, Mojo and FitMind(among others) –acquire new users and achieve profitable, scalable growth in a Generative-AI world.

Offering both managed user acquisition services and done-for-you creative production for teams running their own ads, our clients have continued to not only grow after Apple’s privacy changes, and many have seen their ROAS improve by an avg. of 20-40%.

The secret to our clients’ success is the combination of our deep expertise from having produced 10k+ ads and managed over $100M in ad spend, and our ability to rapidly produce UGC and video ads at volume that can be used to dial in exactly what works, and discard what does not.

📹 HOW WE DO IT📹 

Leveraging a combination of both human and AI creators, we’re able to rapidly produce UGC & video ads that are based on rock solid strategy and research. By testing 50+ (or more) variants a month even at small budgets with our signature rapid testing and iteration process, we’re able to rapidly isolate key elements of winning UGC. This is essential, with our data showing that the tiniest changes can lead to outsized performance.

💻AI VIDEO YOU ASK?💻

Yes, AI video. Now not just AI video, we use both human and AI creators. With the advent of AI we’ve been able to rapidly scale and test in a way we could not before. While many in the industry worry that AI 
Creative appears robotic and doesn't invoke emotion, we’ve found it depends on the inputs you give and the strategy behind your ads. 

📈 RESULTS CREATED📈 

-70% ROAS uplift and 69% CPI improvement for Adventure Communist, an idle-clicking game.

-Tested 100+ creatives for Games2Win, drove 350K+ installs, and 100% increase in ROAS.

-Unlocked month on month growth for hampr, a hyperlocal laundry app while improving cost per purchaser by 55%.

🏎GET STARTED🏎

Reach out here on LinkedIn to get a free consultation on leverage AI-fueled creative production to supercharge your growth.

Email us at: hi@rocketshiphq.com

Shamanth M. Rao

🧠 This is the breakthrough that made AI headshot generation possible

📍 We often think of AI progress as magic - but it’s really a story of simple extrapolation.

I spoke to Rohan Khadatkar, Head of Marketing at InstaHeadshots, on Intelligent Artifice, about how one key technological leap unlocked the entire category of realistic AI headshots.

Here’s how he explained it 👇

ChatGPT made “text to text” easy to grasp.

You type a prompt (text input) and get an intelligent text output. 💬➡️💬

Now, extend that same logic - 
🖼️ text → image
🎵 text → music
🎙️ text → voice

That’s where the next wave of AI breakthroughs began.

In the text-to-image world, the first big leap came when researchers built models that could take a text description - say “a red apple on a table” - and generate a photo-realistic image that looked like a real apple. 🍎

The next leap - the one that made AI headshot generation possible - was even bigger.

It was the ability to take just 8-10 images of a person and train a model to learn their identity. 🧩

Once that became possible, tools could generate realistic portraits that looked like the same person - across different poses, styles, and lighting.

That was the foundation on which the 2023 headshot generation revolution was built. 🚀

From a few sample photos → to a full digital identity.

A tiny dataset - a massive leap.

🎧 Full conversation with Rohan Khadatkar on Intelligent Artifice:
https://lnkd.in/dKSbwGJG

🚀 20-40% ROAS increase for mobile apps in 60 days | AI-fueled UGC & video ad creative production 📹 | 3x Exits | $100m+ ad spend | Meta, Google, TikTok partner

📬 I analyzed 70 ads for Fyxer AI ($17mm ARR AI app)

52% of their ads focus on this BIG emotional trigger….

Relief from overwhelm:

→ Inbox zero before 9am
→ "Drowning in emails?"
→ How I sleep knowing my emails are drafted and organized.

Which probably means... it's working. 

But there's more going on behind the scenes - so I ran it through my Sherlock Holmes Investigator Agent. 

It analyzed every single frame and conducted semantic analysis across the entire ad library - and then I checked it against what I was seeing manually. 

This is how their ads break down:

📝 𝗡𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗙𝗹𝗼𝘄
↳ Problem → AI solution → transformation
↳ Storytelling showing time saved and productivity gained

💢 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺s
↳ Endless unread emails draining focus
↳ Feeling buried in work emails
↳ Losing hours to inbox triage

⏳ 𝗨𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆
↳ "Experience inbox zero by 9am"
↳ "Start your free trial"
↳ "Overdue replies"

📈 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆
↳ "Start your free trial, no card required"
↳ User testimonials and trust markers

🌸 𝗔𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀
↳ Get to inbox zero by 9am.
↳ Calm mornings and nights.
↳ Get more done without opening another tab

In our full breakdown, I share insights from the ad analysis our system ran, including:

✅ Effortless productivity: "Inbox Zero in minutes, not hours"
✅ Liberation from overload: "Reclaim your time from endless emails"
✅ Smart automation: "Your AI that manages replies while you focus on real work"

Full Notion analysis is here: https://lnkd.in/dsZ7S86c

And if you want me to analyze your competitors ad libraries and see what angles we can find... drop me a DM / email: shamanth@rocketshiphq.com

Happy to run a few for free.

taplio

The Battle

Archie Hollingsworth

Shamanth M. Rao

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreArchie Hollingsworth's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreShamanth M. Rao's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Archie Hollingsworth

Shamanth M. Rao

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Archie Hollingsworth's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreShamanth M. Rao's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreArchie Hollingsworth's LinkedIn Performance