How Did She Become A GenAI Product Manager in 90 Days As An Architect

There's a AI unicorn every single week which means any AI company we're in the gold rush of AI era right now and there is AI unicorn every single week getting launched getting published and getting new investment every single week. However, most people didn't know how they're able to quickly bootstrap the AI startup find the product market fit and get investment within a short amount of time. Today we had a pleasure to invite our guest Tina. She's going to share with you her secret, how she's able to bootstrap her AI startup quickly and find prime market fit with a team of 13 engineers. Stay until the end of the video so that you're able to use her AI tool to start home renovation for free. Hi guys, this is Dr. Nancy Lee, a direct product feature in Forbes. I've helped thousands of people land their dream PM job offer in fan companies and unicorn startup and continue to get promoted as a product leader. In this channel, we'll talk about tech trends and free product management training. Like and subscribe to a new video every Tuesday. Hi Tina, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? >> Hi Dr. Nancy, I'm doing great. Thank you for having me here today. very exciting and actually Tina I'm hearing about your story leading a team of 13 engineers and quickly launch your AI startup and bootstrap it and being very like agile and also be smart about spending your money on developing the right product and all of our audience either want to become AI product manager or start own AI startup and I'm so glad happy to share all your secret with us today. >> Uh yeah awesome. Yeah, happy to be here today and share all I learned through the journey. >> Awesome. So, why don't we do this for most of audience who does not know you, does not know your AI company, Homewise, can you do a quick intro about yourself? What's your background and who you are? >> Yeah, obviously. Uh my name is Tina Chen. Uh I just I am a P AI PM. I just wrapped up the PM accelerator AI boot camp where I was the team lead for Homewise, an AI agent that takes a homeowner from a photo of a home problem all the way to a vetted scheduled contractor. Um, so instead of getting like five confusing quotes and hoping for the best for yourself, you just need to say yes. During the process, I lead a team of 13 including PMs, designers, engineers, and data scientists. Um and then we shipped a working demo in 11 weeks. So my background is actually in architecture and construction management. >> Very cool. So Tina, so let let me understand this. Before you start your AI entrepreneurial journey and AI product management journey, I believe you came from an architect background which dramatically different from tech, right? Can you tell us more regarding your journey getting from architect background into AI product management and AI entrepreneurship? >> Yes, I am a licensed architect and also a construction manager. Um, but I think here's something that p people missing about architecture and construction. A building is also a product. It has its users. It has it a requirement, a budget, a deadline and hundreds of tradeoffs between which is which is the ideal and which is shippable. So I feel like I've been doing product management for years even in a totally different industry using different vocabulary. And there is actually one moment I remember vivily uh like why I changed my mind and want to try product management. It was one night uh past midnight. I probably all the architect can relate. You burn the oil and then you were doing something like a parking layout. So I was placing the stalls and was tracking the turning radius and tracking the space against the zoning requirement. And at that moment I just felt like everything I was doing was just following rules and that should be programmable. So at that point I was I was not doing any design but I was being a very expensive and very tired algorithm. >> True. >> And one year after that I watched a startup demo software that shows um some AI tools that can autogenerate a parking layout just from online of uh the site geometry. So it's exactly what I was thinking and at that moment I realized that AI is changing every industry including mine. I either face it or you know I I embrace it. >> Exactly. I love those like personal stories and literally lots of our student inside of AIPM book and felt the same way which I personally like literally happened last night. I start to use the chat GBT work. There's a claw co-work and like two weeks later Chad GB introduced chat GBT work and same cloud co-work. I literally was like holy cow is able to match all my data comparing my email with HubSpot and telling my team what to do and identify all those missing customers information and generate everything for me. And I used to pay people like so much money just to do those labor work. And you're right, it's transforming all industries. And something also resonate with me regarding like how people see their past experience as product management. And literally the data shown 91% of product managers today we all transition from different industries. And people like you, you came from construction industry eventually will become AI product manager maybe solving construction or homeowner related uh problems and your expertise in past industries is very relevant to the future problem you want to solve and then you have been doing product management work for very long time but nobody told you that is product management work in tech and those real realization is happened just in time when the AI era just hit >> right. Yeah. Exactly. >> Cool. Uh let me also ask you this question. So that's where I assume your past architecture, interior design, those kind of construction management experience actually I assume that lead you to create this AI company called Home Wise. Am I right? Is this related and how you started Home Wise uh idea? >> Yes. So it's definitely related. um about Home Wise, we are trying to build a AI agent that can help um the home owners with their most stressful moment. As a new homeowner myself, when I when I see something broke in my house, uh I know it's I know how stressful it could be. I need to find a contractor who is reliable and who can come and fix the problem on time. um even though with some like construction non knowledgement I still feel it's sometimes it's a a burden to reach out to schedule and everything. So I feel that um an AI agent who can help um diagnose the issue of your your your house problem and then provide the scope of a work reach out to a reliable contractors and help you schedule the repair is definitely helpful um for a lot of people that's why um I decided to build home wise. >> I see. So let's understand the further and in my understanding home wise is more like AI for some tech right so finding the contractor doing scheduling having the right people coming at the right time managing the project for you is this is my description correct >> um yes mostly right a little bit um a little bit more than that is also come from my um personal experience so when you see something broken in your house you first you want to know what's what was what's was wrong. Um but a lot of time when you reach out to the contractors you will receive totally different scope. Um for example I interview those users some people they have um like rotting sighting outside their house they get quotes from $250 just want repair one sliding sighting uh to like $7,000 because they told them that oh there are more behind that. You need to replace this. you might need to fix the structure this and that. As an ordinary homeowner, you probably don't have the expertise for that. True. Um but in my work experience like if if you are a budget homeowner uh or like commercial projects my mostly doing you are able to hire we called owners rep who is a professional can help identify the issue um provide a detailed scope reach out to trusted um contractors check their license check their insurance protect the owner's uh interest all the way through the project. But what I feel is that a homeowner facing like a $10,000 repair, they also need this kind of service. But nobody hire an owner's rep for a house repair. Economics just doesn't make sense. >> But with AI, um the home wise, you can have an AI expert on your side and help you to do all those lab work. >> That's beautiful. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So I didn't first of all I didn't even know this owners rep jobs exist. I think probably for those like like billion dollars entrepreneur or whatever like super super ultra rich people first of all I don't know they exist. Number two, you're right. If for a small project then you hire them probably will double the cost anyway. And those you did you hire another labor or human expert to see if if the project is out of scope to understand what's right around what the right thing needs to do for your house. Totally. Yeah. And now now we the common people like us was able to access those kind of owners rep through AI without getting like ripped off. This is >> this is so groundbreaking. >> Yeah. And did go ahead. >> Yeah. I think that's the beauty of AI in general. Like I feel with AI's help a lot of services that used to exist only for people with big budget now um AI kind of levering the uh representative and make it available for majority uh of the common like everyone. >> Yeah. Exactly. And and especially it's crazy. I'm not sure if it's similar to Seattle or San Francisco. At least I live in the east coast in Boston and Miami. Each time those kind of project came around from few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars and I remember when we were just bought our new house is something like sewage was clocked something like that. And then have a guy coming to a house saying that, "Oh, you need to dig the hole, the entire hole of your basement, replace the entire sewage pipe, which is like this this this much long literally redo the entire renovation on my basement because it's a sewage clock." I was like, "Holy cow, that's a really big project. That's $20,000. Cut off everything." And then uh my husband just googling what's going on. And then we found one of the review of the site. And then we we we talking to 10 other different company finally found someone else came in saying that oh you don't need to reuse the entire renovation of entire basement for cloed sewage. We just can go in for $300 take out whatever clocked and then it worked. I was like oh I almost like read it unnecessary home renovation. And then and then to be very frank I felt like yeah we are white collar worker and we don't know all the sewage stuff and those kind of like home renovation project actually very expensive. I think those like very expensive contractors are getting paid the same rate as a white collar worker working for Google M Amazon just like the bill just going through the roof. It's like >> this this is like nuts. I'm glad you guys are creating this a great resources people to leverage. Tina, this is very exciting. Can you give everybody the demo of your AI home owner representative help us to figure out how to do renovation for our home and show us your product? >> Yes. Can you see my screen? >> Yes, I can. >> Okay. So, this is where you're going to see here. Should I write back? Okay. Um, this is what you're going to see here when you open Home Wise. uh after log in you have uh uh you're gonna have a conversation with the AI uh we're gonna ask you some questions and you will have the chance to upload photos which going to capture the problem at your house in this case we are showing a leaking sink and AI going to um diagnose this image and provide you a scope of the work if AI feel that they need some uh additional informations It will share um it will ask follow-up questions. For example, is it the only leak in uh in this picture and uh have you done anything to fix it? And after the AI gather all the information and feel comfortable to give you a detailed scope, AI going to show the option for you. So here is the detail scope. AI going to explain the diagnose in a simple planned English to help to help you understand what's going on, but also going to give you a detailed breakdown of the labor and material you will need. And Hawaii's also going to do the research for you that through the reviews on the internet verified whether they are uh they have licensed they have insurance and whether they pull any permit for the similar project in the past. And if you see all those three contract top three contractors are good for you, you can click to send um the quote the scope of work to all those contractors. And from the contractor side, after the you the homeowner decided, they will receive a text or an email with a magic link. Um this is the page they're going to see. they will be able to see the scope that AI generated uh including all those breakdown numbers uh breakdown items and plug in the price how much they're going to charge for each tasks or u material. They will also being asked to um provide the their availability uh top three slots they can come and fix this problem for you. Oh, nice. >> Yeah. And um whether or not this work will include a warranty from the contractor or if there's any details the contractor wants to uh ask the homeowner, they can also put down some notes and hit hit click uh and the quote going to be sent to the sent to Hawai. And after we received all three of uh all three quotes from the contractors, home wise will do a comparison for you. You're going to check every single items whether the contractor included uh whether they're going to provide a warranty. If something is off, Home Wise will flag that for the homeowner. Uh >> yeah. And also the earliest date the contractor is available. And then you you the home owner can choose their availability and choose which contractor they want to pick. And >> this is exciting. >> Yeah. And then the um they will get the invite a meeting invite dable to their calendar to remind that the project will happen on Sunday. And then after the project is complete, the uh contractor also need to submit some information for the homeowner to approve their work. >> Hi Tina, this sounds very exciting and I I I love that have very comprehensive features uh for both sides to use. Um let me ask you this question. I I I heard you have a team of 13 people and I assume creating such complicated product and actually it's pretty difficult. So can you tell me more regarding the trust and I believe you you earlier mentioned that you have a big team people actually building trust is pretty difficult especially people with very different kind of background. Can you tell us more regarding the how you build trust and the the challenges in trust you mentioned earlier to me? Uh yes. Um as a team lead for this product, uh I feel like I I'm I'm being very honest with myself and the whole team from day one because I'm from a different industry. I probably don't have uh the knowledge of everything I need I know I know about um building a AI product. So I choose to be honest with them and from the day one I've been told I I told the team that it is not my product it's our product and I am fully uh relying on a trust my team members I have a tech PM whose background is from um computer science so he has a lot of experience know how to manage uh developers we also have experienced p.m. uh when whenever I have a bigger question um the schedule control uh strategy moving forward I will consult them. We also um have a very very great mentor for the program. We did our weekly check-in and I can talk to her about everything. Uh even sometimes you know I just need some motivation to keep going. Um also the teammates for example the designer team um they have been doing product design for a while. So whenever I have a I create a plan I will have a uh quick check-in with them also ask everybody to put their input to do the review and put their input um because I trust their expertise um in their domain >> and actually I think those kind of human relationship management is literally the hardest thing in today's AI era because it's the only skills that cannot be replaced by AI. I think eventually AI is able to do everything for us. I think AI may be able to create a podcast and create a AI dark net city. I don't even need to show up anymore. But I think the relationship is hardest. Um which is also why you're you all of us need to focus on practicing and building the trust with your team empower them to implement much faster. Now let me also ask you a question regarding fast right. I know your your team actually developed your AI product within two months. Uh what's the secrets developing such AI product so fast? I know one thing is managing people better. What other secret you have to do it fast? >> Um I think the other thing is um substrum uh shipping fast doesn't means building fast. A lot of time we are facing tradeoffs and we have to cut our scope as as the demo shows. Uh it's it's a AI agent and at the very beginning we want to do way more stuff than I just showed but with >> I think it's still a lot by the way. I think the scope's already pretty big. You want you have original even bigger than this. Holy cow. >> Yeah. So it's just also I I was able to uh apply my experience in construction because in construction we also sometimes we have a hard deadline. We have to have a grand opening in this on this date, right? we have to plan backwards and uh adjust the schedule along the way. So yeah, that's that's we have to do uh we have to do make hard decisions and decide what not to build so we can eventually have something that's shippable. >> This is cool. This is about time management of the project. So now a little about the technical element, right? Um I remember can you tell the story we're going earlier you told me that during the AIPM boot camp you face a big bill of $4,000 about API cost. So how did you deal with those kind of unexpected bill especially when you start your own AI startup? Tell us more on on that story. >> Yes. So um when we start this idea we know we're going to need to rely on a lot of API. on for example the review for the contractor uh whether they are licensed their permit history and one one of the most important one is probably the price and uh I found out a startup which have those data point for all different trades uh the price the the contract they're going to charge for different work um and I reach out to them because I feel like oh we are also startups maybe they will feel um happy to help us um but after um weeks. I received the email from them and they told me that just to sign up for the ser service I have to pay $4,000 and it almost killed our idea. Um but I have to say uh a credit to my data scientist and uh the PM who managed this domain as well. They raised concern early enough during this boot camp. So we got some time to look for um substitutes. Um >> yeah, $4,000 is a lot of money for a starter to get started >> like test out the market. That's a lot of money right away. And even to sign up, not not being like used. You haven't even test out yet. It's like >> access $4,000. Holy cow. >> So, how did you deal with that? This is crazy. >> Yeah. So, um yeah, after that we were doing research online. We tried to find um any any information we could and luckily we found someone who also tried I think also tried to start their own business but he was showing the progress on his personal blog and open the source to um anyone. Obviously the data point is probably the the data set is not as big as the one um that you need to pay but um it worked for our um MVP. >> Wow. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. You found alter attorney sources for free through a blog post. >> Yes. >> And the the blog post reference another site which has free data. >> Uh >> you guys are so resourceful. >> The the a blogger actually create a data by himself and he shared that on his personal blog. >> How to discover those blogger? Do you use AI or you actually literally manually search and like going through many different route to find those free data source? um both I definitely ask AI whether there are some u free data source there and you know AI going to lead you to some website and post and sometimes you your lead from one post to another and you found it >> yeah uh I try to leverage AI for different kind of research as well but what I learned is AI mainly learning based on the bigger sources unless you're bigger blogger right and then they usually leading to bigger blogger but bigger blogger may not have the source you're looking for but at least get you started and one blogger have another and then just different places linking to each other. This is very exciting. This is so cool. But I also want exciting regarding what how AI ranking change. So we have actually uh earlier when we start AIPM boot camp two years ago nobody know about us and then as the reputation going up each brand has a reputation in AI now we have seen students fun our program join our program asking chat GVT oh what is the top AI product management boot camp and GB recommend us so someone's going to come through this so the ranking is very important including authority so which also I think the fraud not which is a flaw in the design of the algorithm. So if you're small, it's higher takes years to rank higher even from AI AI views as well. So I'm glad you guys keep on digging combining like human and plus AI to find your free data source much faster. This is very like entrepreneurial. This is crazy. U so can you also tell me more regarding other challenge you had? I bet this not the first one. You must have done more facing many different challenges technically uh and also business-wise. what are the challenges you had when implementing developing such AI agent product for homeowners? >> Yeah. Uh the other challenge will be um how can we um how can we u judge that whether the AI has hallucination when you know AI tried to generate a scope from just couple images. Um so the test was very important because we want we know the product we need to build on trust. Um so there are a couple things we did. Um my data scientist and the team we test some uh images we find online. We find some broken piping issues and uh test with AI and also at this point I feel like my uh industry experience came in handy. I was able to look at the scope that AI generate uh generated and kind of give u I I can I have a basic idea whether or not AI was making up something. And the other thing I did was looking on some platforms like um forums for example for plumbing issues. There are a bunch of forums people posted your pictures and ask plumbers uh what kind of issue is that? So I was looking for those post look for the picture. I use the picture and feed it to AI and um um check AI's response against the actual plumber response on those forum and >> AI is actually pretty good. >> Oh, nice. Nice. Very cool. I I can't wait to try it. I can't wait. This is this is crazy. Tina, I think one important thing through our conversation so far is very critical which is you actually need to experience this experience developing AI experience seeing AI hallucinate and experience doing those AI model evaluation to see is actually doing the right thing or not which is also key skill set for what AI product manager need to have regardless start your own startup as a founder or you join another company and those kind of seeing how it down is way more important doing a capstone project without the real users and real data train AI. So for all the audience um if you want to also gain more additional hands-on experience I have a free checklist which include the 20 different kind of product ideas you can develop to gain hands-on product management experience. This is the number one skill set you must master to succeed in today's job market. I'm going to link it in the description of those show notes and you can also whoever listen to podcast can also go to pms.io / AI product ideas to download 20 different product ideas for you to gain real AI PM experience. Also going to link in the show not if you want to get the link to it and you can also comment AI in the description of my YouTube channel. We're going to send you a link for you to download as well. Okay, Tina, please bear with me. I'm very nerdy. I like to go technical. Okay. And what AI tools and models have you leveraged to create such AI products? So any technical element you have used for your AI agent? >> Uh the short answer is actually cloud code. U during the yeah dur during the development um almost every every single one of us uh use cloud code. For example, our designer team was able to use cloud code to uh develop the prototype and without going through the Figma handoff to the front-end engineer. And we also I'm pretty sure a lot of um developers right now using different uh AI tools like cloud code or um chat GPT. Our team is the same. The model we were choosing um I think back then the boot camp mentor u gave us a very detailed uh breakdown for each tool. Um and um again I uh trust my tech PM and after reviewing our architect architecture with the mentor we decided to go with uh cloud code. I believe back then it was Sonet 4.6. >> Mhm. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> You use the latest model for your product at the time. And when you do those AI model evaluation what's your criteria? Do you compare price, accuracy or based on use cases? What your criteras were you had at the time? >> Price is definitely a consider uh consideration. Um but uh I think the most important is the hallucination portion. U we want to find the model who has the least her hallucination because when we uh ask AI to um diagnose the picture, we also want AI to give us a confidence score like how much confident they they feel like they can actually generate a detailed scope. If the score uh score is really low in some cases, they either ask follow-up questions or they should be honest enough to tell the um home homeowner that we probably need more help or more information from different perspective. Um and again trust is very important for our pro product. So definitely the least uh hallucination one. >> Yeah. And actually another trick everybody if you use clot and there's a setting you can put in and ask AI to report back to you regarding are they hallucinating or are they using the right resources and you can constrain them and let AI to give you more accurate answer or at least volunteering telling you whenever hallucinate is it start to tell you or whenever using different kind of resources not based on fact and I'm going to make a different YouTube video telling you guys all the tips and tricks regarding how to set up your AI model before you start using it. It's actually going to save you a lots of time. The same setup can be used for CHBT and claw just the system slightly different. So there the navigation is different. Uh so make sure to like, comment, subscribe to this channel so you'll be notified once I post those tips and trick to reduce hallucination by doing different setup for clot and chat GBT. Tina is so exciting. I had to ask you this question. I need you to do me a favor. How can I and many people sign up today and to see how to do house renovation within our budget? How can we sign up? >> Um right now we are open to uh early adopters and uh we are going to select the you know based on the project types um project size. Um so if you are interested uh in joining the weight list and to be the lucky early adopter um please DM me through uh LinkedIn and um yeah we will be in touch. >> Awesome. I'm going to put Tina's LinkedIn in the description of the show not you can just search her name Tina Uchan on LinkedIn and make sure to find the right face to be matched uh and then send her DM and then then tell her about the project you're working on and I send you pictures many of my project do you do you fix toilet >> me personally >> no you're AI oh >> you got to send me a DM let me know later on we we have lots of even think any fake this is so cool need to get it done. Uh so let me also ask you this question today. What advice do you have for AI entrepreneur and AI prime managers today to really jump into this gold rush of AI era? >> I will say um especially for people like me treat your background as your advantage not your baggage. I know a lot of people when they think about pivoting or jumping to a totally different new industry, they feel like they need to start a whole new chapter and forgot forget everything they know before. But I don't think that's the that's the case anymore because everyone has the accessibility to the AI model, right? It really depends on the question you ask and the questions usually come from where you see where you do every day. So definitely treat your um special um industry background as advantage. >> This is beautiful. I think what you summarized is is very correct and in the AI era everybody is relevant and everybody could also be irrelevant depends on if you are able to take advantage of your past experience and really leverage AI. Um because eventually the better the AI model depends on the better the data input and the better the users knows how to use AI create amazing AI product and become the next AI unicorn as well. This is very like very great sage advice hit the nail on the head. Um Tina let me also ask you this question. You know, I'm a big believer of personal growth and growth mindset. E especially after I have the kids, not only I need to grow myself, I also need to instill those kind of growth mindset in my kids as early as possible. So, let me ask you this question. How do you grow yourself professionally and personally? And what resources you recommend for people to grow themselves? >> Um, I don't know. I I feel this answer I don't know if it going to surprise everybody. Um but my suggestion is actually be a human. I feel like uh I know a lot of people um are anxious about whether AI going to replace your job but what I think what AI going to replace is the task. AI will never replace a human. So do the things make you feel more human whether it's you know eat well, sleep well, um go outside, walk your dogs. A lot of my idea come come up when I'm walking my dog outdoor enjoying the sound sunline and I just feel like in order to find what people need in real life you need to have a life for yourself. >> This is beautiful very well said actually I was surprised to hear what you said but it makes so much sense especially nowadays. Actually today I had a realization I have a conversation with my my husband actually three things that cannot be bought by money and cannot be replaced by AI. Number one your house number one is relationship and love with your husband your family number three is love from your kids cannot be bought by money cannot be replaced by AI. >> True. Yes, I do love the we need to embrace a human side of things like how you build trust and leveraging your team and leading a team. These are important skill set humans need to have and make even stronger as well. Cool. All right. So now Tina, let me um ask you this. Where can people follow you and what's the best way for them to find you either for investors or for early adopters or for recruiter who want to recruit you to join the company? Uh where can they find you? Um, please uh find me on LinkedIn. I believe Dr. Nessie just shared my LinkedIn um with the group. Yeah, >> feel free to DM me. >> Beautiful. So, I'm going to uh link in the description of the show note and you guys can also go to LinkedIn by searching Tina's name Tina and it was uh there and make sure to have the uh make sure have an engaged conversation today because you never know you're going to meet your next co-founder or next manager or next employees and all the AI conversation need happen starting from today and for people who are interested in gaining additional hands-on experience you can download those 20 AI project idea to start working on on yourself for people who need additional help through us by join AI product management book where we uh hire a team of software engineers, developer and designer assemble team and plus your AI advisor uh mentors and help you to accelerate your growth into AI product management or AI entrepreneurship. You check out our website and by go to pms.ioipm to learn more about our AIPM boot camp. I'm also going to link it in the description of the show note. Thank you so much for joining us, Tina, and can't wait to see all the future growth of your AI startup. >> Thank you for having me today. Best of luck. >> Dear listeners, if you find today's stories and tips and tricks very inspiring, useful. So, make sure to head to the review session of your favorite podcast apps, Apple podcast and Spotify and Amazon Prime podcast and write us a fivestar review because I read every single review and all your important feedback and uh review is going to track. So, it it going to be the great motivation for us and our team to continue bring great guests and give you great advice as we keep going the AI product management community. You should also follow us to for additional questions and tips and DM us. So all our social channel by searching Dr. Nancy Lee on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, Instagram X and all your favorite social platforms were there by searching Dr. Nancy Lee. So this is Dr. Nancy from PM Accelerator. I'm going to see you in my next video right here.