Niklas: Hi and you too, welcome to you my lovely listeners. glad you're here. Today you're joining me for a chat with Ahmed and Omer. Ahmed and Omer are building Clara. What is Clara?

ahmet: Yeah, Clara is a basically a digital memory app. We call it like Clara, your digital brain. It captures your digital life and organizes it and gives you back. Like we have used many, many apps and at the end of the day, we don't really remember. how much interaction we get, how much information we get for our digital life. So, Clara basically records, saves and after shows to you at the end of the day. Yes, it's basically...

Niklas: Before we dive into the product. Before we dive into the product

ahmet: No, no, quite.

Niklas: further, I think it's really interesting to learn a little bit more about the two of you and your journey that lead you, led you to building Clara. Maybe you could do a bit of a deep dive on that.

ahmet: Okay, I can start because it actually came to my mind in the first place because I'm an engineer and I've been working at this area since 2018 when I was a student and I worked at different companies and I created different applications. But at the end of the day, I got used to working with the user data and the data mining things. And yeah, in the end, I started to think like, you know, this user's data. is a significant thing and is not... turning back to the users in a proper way, I think. And it's generally used by, you know, big data centers or the other companies. And then this AI thing, with this AI thing, I started to think like, you know, if we can combine these big things, big two concept, we would create something big for the users. And yeah, it came to my mind and I talked with my brother. We were interested in creating a startup. It's a... It's always a thing for us. And then he liked it and he was also, you know, expert of Android side. And we started on Android as I know, an exhibition service. And this exhibition service is something not so visible for the many. people but it actually gives you a huge data a huge information and I think it's not being used yeah in a proper way in a good way so yeah It came to my mind, it's shaped like this. It took us to get there for... It took four years, something like that, to get there. yeah, at the summer of 2025, we released the first version. Yeah, Krara is like our process of thoughts and because I am a dentist actually but for many years like since I was a child I always liked to build things and we talked to build something. After the AI got popular because my brother knows accessible service user data and how companies use that. And after AI, we thought like, why don't we use for the people these two things? Because it always used like for the ads, for the big data, for the collecting data or selling other companies and users benefits the least. And we think like it doesn't be like that. It doesn't have to be like that. yeah, Clara was born after these thoughts and like it's almost one year. after the release of Clara.

Niklas: I think you started building it for Android. Do you also plan to launch it on other platforms or are you currently really focusing on having it there and improving it?

ahmet: Yeah, it's in our plan. But at the moment, we would like to get a point where users are really happy and it's working as product. We would like to make sure that first and then it's definitely we will... go with extension, web application, desktop application, and iOS.

Niklas: like for example, Claude Bientropic or OpenAI's chat GPT, they keep the chats. So there's actually a lot of sensible data. think, I'm not sure if we have more sensitive data like maybe on the hyperscalers, but outside of that probably in no other startup. You're going a very different way. It's privacy first and also with limited data retention. How does it work and why did you build it this way?

ahmet: Yeah, it's, At first, we can do something in a way that users don't want to... But we will always be, we will try to be open in that matters because we can do something is not proper for some users, but they should know that. And also, We create Clara so that if a user would like to leave the application, there will be no assign behind him or her. We are making sure of this. yeah, it's like for now it can be useful for the local only. cases for example if a user don't want to use AI models it's still useful but if they want to use the AI features they will share field data and some of their data but it will be five days only and it will be anonymous and it's every day being and related from the the open AI servers and and yeah we make sure that they are being removed. Yeah we we we always our motto is your data should work for you and must work for you so privacy is a big concern because Clara almost knows everything about you and your apps. So we want to work Clara for everyone. Like if you want to, if you don't want to share any data, you can totally use without data sharing and you can disable in the settings and If you want to use AI features and even if you don't do anything like deleting data or something like that, we still delete it after five days. So we don't keep your data permanently on any server and we send data anonymously because we don't want to relate user to the data. We don't want to do that. But even if you disable the data sharing, our core feature is memory. Actually your memory. Like you can still use memory search and statistics and habits because all of the data is your data and you you can control your data how you like it but privacy is a good thing but I always like it's like a trade like you give something and you take something and If you want to use AI features like AI assistant or we have the cool feature like digest it's It gives you a summary of your day And if you want to use some features like that You can share your data. It's anonymous and it's It will be deleted after five days and you can ask to do assistant like Can you summarize my usage on the Twitter or Chrome or something like that? And it gives you an answer, really personalized like because it's your data and Clara knows you and I think it's a good offer and it's acceptable. I thought it like that, but Privacy is like we always said, you can disable everything, you can delete everything because it's your data.

Niklas: Yeah. And it's anonymous, right? If I understand it. So, and kind of it's stored on the device. It's not stored in your, like your cloud or something like that. It's stored on the device. And if it's sent to like RPN points, it's sent to RPN points with zero data retention policies. they like beyond certain things that these providers might be legally required to do, it's not stored somewhere. think that's, that's kind of different to a lot of other... that we're seeing and it's actually very interesting approach. If we look at memory, I'm really interested in that, how you're doing that. So how can I imagine that I know a bit about these rack systems, for example, and I've learned like memory seems to be a really hard topic. Maybe we can do a bit of a deep dive on this, this is actually organized.

ahmet: Yeah, actually, we have, when we start to work on Clara, we had two main motivations. And the first one is that making, creating a digital brain, which is not a, which is not a, you know, something, something It's not just a word. Our digital, our biological brain is so efficient in the real world. It's working so efficient because as far as I know, at every second we process 20 megabytes of data and it's a visual data. But at the end of the day, It's a huge data, you know, every second and you're awake something like 60 hours. But brain is just processing it and extract the meaningful part of it. You know, extracting the story, the needed story for yourself. And But processing text data is not so easy for the human brain and the digital in the digital existence in the digital world. There are huge of data you encounter every day and and I think it's not manageable. So we are trying to make it extract the meaningful part of it. And accessibility service gives us lots of data, but it's chaos. It's not like, okay, it's the information you need. There are huge of unnecessary information, but we eliminate them. It's, it's, yeah, you need to, you know, deep dive. And yeah, after, after, after working a lot, we create a meaningful database and it just collects everything meaningful in, in every second. in every second of your digital activity and then it stores it and when it times, when it's useful, it's being used for the, for example, digest or maybe something searched or maybe at the end of the day. your habits need to be ready for yourself, et cetera. Yeah, that's how we deal with the user data, real data. It's like top of the iceberg. It's like user seated top of the iceberg and there's really unnecessary information from the accessibility service. And Clara just organizes it and shows users what's really important. Yeah, but it just takes data

Niklas: There seem to be...

ahmet: for now. It just takes data for now. I need to emphasize that. We don't get any sound data or visual data for now.

Niklas: I think that is actually going to be really interesting, like in the next wave of AI devices, because that's kind of what I would expect. Like it's either glasses or something with a camera that kind of sees the environment and will add pictures and videos. I think that that's kind of where it's heading. If you look at use cases, there seem to be some use cases around ADHD, for example, in the reviews. Can you walk through what people

ahmet: Yeah.

Niklas: are actually using this for?

ahmet: Yeah, we are surprised too because we don't really think about HD or anything. But we saw some reviews, comments or feedbacks from our users and it makes to think about how we make Clara useful for HDHD or similar things because I think they like they like what Clara do because it's like they control they can control everything on Clara because it records everything and it's searchable It's meaningful. It's organized and they can really control at the end of today. Like what did I see on which app and what time, which date, something like that. I think Clara really helps them with these features. But yeah, it was not in our core plan, but we like this idea. Don't fall in love with the products, fall in love with the users. Yeah, we have a plan, but... Sometimes users give really meaningful ideas and this one was really interesting and she also, there was a user which claims that she has HDHD and she said for example Can you create export feature? Can you make it, you know, make it to schedule and et cetera. And yeah, we liked it and it also helps for everyone.

Niklas: I think what is also interesting about you is that you're building in public and I think it's easy with a large following. It's not something that you have built. What has your experience been like building this application in public and how has it helped you?

ahmet: Yeah, I want to share as much as on Twitter, but X, it's it's it's weird to say X to the Twitter. Or we have a community on Reddit and beside that, we also have surveys in our app. and we have telegram community and we always yeah we have many channels we have many channels and we always want to give our users or communities to do updates features or they give us they give us feedbacks and we really I can say we are really a user-based products like we always care about what they say, what they think and what they want. Because of that, they can reach us really quick and really easily. And I... I really like to share all of these things in public because it really helps.

Niklas: So I, so I agree. what I, what I honestly think is very few products actually survive like the first contact was like users because users will use it in a certain way. When you start building, you have an idea. it's super important to get this, the things out early to get real feedback, to get real users to, see what they want to do actually. And then maybe also just the product. think that's the reality of, of things and probably. Like you have to listen to them. They're just, I think there's some, business models where it's kind of, you have a lot of churn and that will kill it. For example, I built a tool called Wunderjob a while ago, which is kind of for job seekers and so on. And it's obvious like when people find a job later than they are off. Like, so you kind of have to have a pile of funnel of like new users all the time. So it's, I think it's a horrible business. It's, it's a great, like generally it's very helpful product. If you want, if you make a living of a, out of it, it's terrible. That's what I honestly

ahmet: You

Niklas: think. And I, think these things you have to figure out. Like they're, they're just products that are great businesses that, that get shaped by the users where you have very little churn that people use over time. I could imagine that Clara actually is one. And then there are just these kind of business models where you depend so much on customer acquisition that like lasting growth is actually extremely hard. So I like the approach of building in public and shipping. Maybe for me to understand how many users do you currently have and how are growth numbers on the app?

ahmet: Okay, for now we have 2k monthly active users. But yeah, I think that's the number we follow. And yeah, that's the situation. But it's good to have... The trend is... We don't want to create advertisements before we make sure that it's in a good shape for users to pay something. Yeah, that's the current situation if you add something. Yeah, we... Now we have users like founder users because they are the first users and they really most of them they really like the app and they always gives us a feedback and we are also always say let's build Clara together and Yeah, we have like 2000 monthly active users and if I remember correctly it's month to like 10 % growth rate I think that's number and we try to grow organically because we want to Clara shaped by shaped by our users and after that we want to go all in like ads or something.

Niklas: Yeah, I think, I mean, that's also an interesting discussion to have, right? So if you say, like monetization, I mean, you obviously have the option of showing the user ads or you can charge like a subscription fee. think especially on these privacy sensitive models, I would personally lean towards a subscription because otherwise I kind of pay with my data again. And then the other hand is like for user acquisition, release from what I learned from people is... start don't start with like paid growth like i think it's something if you have like if what you have like the first few users you're way beyond that but the first few users i think it's important to talk to them anyway and to find like the classical channels like x reddit whatever it is to acquire them i think these like especially through advertising doing the growth is something either when you're a venture capital funded company and you want to grow at all costs. Or when you have found a way to make that actually profitable, but then you need to kind of track your numbers. Like what are my customer acquisition costs versus customer lifetime value and do I actually grow profitable on ads? I don't really know any business that started with ads and actually became big that way. And the latest ones that I know of... that Expliciti didn't do that. And there's also famous talk of Sam Altman on it, like chat GPT and these kind of tools, didn't do ads. Google also didn't do ads, like maybe later on in some branding, but not in the beginning, they grew organically. And I think that is actually the better way is try to figure out, I think, what kind of viral loops you can build where people reshare something and use that as a gross. What's your take on that? Or have you tried like just for fun, tried ads a bit and just to see how that works or didn't you try it at all?

ahmet: Yeah, you can... Trying what? Ads.

Niklas: trying to do Google Ads, for example. I know that for some sites that I had, I put just like a very limited ad budget, like 20 euros or something to get some traffic on it and just see if it converts. Have you tried something like that? So non-organic growth?

ahmet: Yeah, we tried and... But it's not something big. In the first place, it's good to exceed the 10k for Google Play. And at that era, we created install advertisements. And then we stopped it and then we still have something but it's very, very... You know, it's not so efficient. It's not something big because, you know, we would like to grow in... in the United States and Great Britain and to make that we also have this trick, these advertisements but the main focus is Reddit. Reddit is working very nice and people just interact and the surveys. Surveys, interestingly, working very good. We had a lot of responses in our surveys and they even shared their email addresses and that's a very good thing. And they share their ideas, the needed features. and the shortcomings, everything. We have good space there and users can communicate with us. And yeah, that's the, yeah, email, Telegram, we have also Telegram group. And if someone sees the Clarification, We would like to, you know, even if they leave the application, we would like to connect with them to, you know, to be able to not not not to not not not not to notify them to let them know about the updates. Yeah, Reddit is actually... really working for us, what's working for us. We still grow our community in Reddit. And before we release Clara, we try to build and get our first users. build community and get our first users on Reddit and it really really worked like like in one month one more than one thousand people more than 1000 people subscribe to our our Google Play listing and it surprised us because we don't really expect a thousand people to look at our application. Maybe 10 or 20 people, but it really surprised us and we released Clara. And on the first day, first week, we have already a thousand downloads. It's like crazy. And after that, we always try to share something on Reddit. Sometimes we not for Clara, we talked about on tech or like philosophy or something. And we try to grow our community on Reddit actually. And it really works for us.

Niklas: Yeah, this is really interesting. And maybe as a final question, like a piece of advice for other, like solo founders, two person teams that are starting out, what should they, what can they learn from your journey already or which mistakes should they avoid?

ahmet: Yeah, it's a good question. think it's not... I don't feel like I'm in a good place to give advice because we are not yet successful startup. We are still in the journey. But I can talk about the difficulties. Yeah, if they... If they... first of all MVP is a good concept and they need to release the application as soon as they can because if you have a viable product you should release it and you should go for the users and these are the important I think that might be useful for the others. Yeah, and I think like maybe after the AI hype there are a lot of AI agents and AI assistants and they are cool but we want to go different because everyone built some AI agent but I think it's not the way because the big companies probably make them too and the memory area is really hard but we want to focus on hard things because It can't be really easily copied by others. And the other thing is, I think they always say product is important, but distribution is more important. And I really think that's true. And if you build something, don't wait to finish the product. Just distribute it. Just tell it to the people even if it's not finished because people should know the product even before it's finished. I think that's important too.

Niklas: These are really nice final words. Thank the two of you so much for being on the podcast and to you my listeners, see you next time.