@rcushmaniiiCushLabs.ai: bilingual AI assistants for small businesses, Guadalajara
Hi, I'm Robert Cushman III, founder of CushLabs.ai in Guadalajara, Mexico. I build AI assistants for small businesses. Each one is set up around the owner's own services, prices, hours, and policies, and it answers customers in English or Spanish on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, the website, and the phone.
My stack includes Claude, Gemini, Vapi, and ElevenLabs for the conversation and voice, with Supabase and Neon for data, Vercel for hosting, and Sentry for monitoring. Owners get a WhatsApp alert when a customer is ready to book. I offer a free one-week trial with no long-term contract. I'm still learning which questions owners most want handled first, and where the assistant should hand off to a person.
What I'd love: an introduction to a service business owner, such as a clinic, salon, or repair shop, who would be willing to try the trial and tell me honestly where it breaks.
Comments2
Welcome to Lounge, Robert. A bilingual assistant that answers on Messenger, Instagram and the phone is useful for owners in Guadalajara who can't watch every channel. Which type of business has been most interested in the free week so far, and what did they ask for first?
Thanks, Ryan. Clothing and swimwear boutiques, so far. They get a steady stream of "do you have this in medium" and "how much" on Facebook and Instagram, and the owner is usually on the shop floor when those come in. What they asked for first surprised me. Not a feature. Corrections. None of them wanted to sit through a full intake questionnaire before we started, so we go live with what I can learn from their page, their price list and a short call, and then they send me fixes as real customers write in: "we don't ship there", "that one is sold out", "say it like this". The assistant gets accurate in the first week from actual conversations instead of from a form nobody wanted to fill out. I've stopped fighting that and now treat the free week as the intake. Have you seen the same thing with other founders here, where the customer would rather correct a working thing than specify it up front?
2 comments
Welcome to Lounge, Robert. A bilingual assistant that answers on Messenger, Instagram and the phone is useful for owners in Guadalajara who can't watch every channel. Which type of business has been most interested in the free week so far, and what did they ask for first?
Thanks, Ryan. Clothing and swimwear boutiques, so far. They get a steady stream of "do you have this in medium" and "how much" on Facebook and Instagram, and the owner is usually on the shop floor when those come in. What they asked for first surprised me. Not a feature. Corrections. None of them wanted to sit through a full intake questionnaire before we started, so we go live with what I can learn from their page, their price list and a short call, and then they send me fixes as real customers write in: "we don't ship there", "that one is sold out", "say it like this". The assistant gets accurate in the first week from actual conversations instead of from a form nobody wanted to fill out. I've stopped fighting that and now treat the free week as the intake. Have you seen the same thing with other founders here, where the customer would rather correct a working thing than specify it up front?