Shortly has been acquired by Conversion.ai

A few years ago I built an app for reading short stories based on how much time you have. It was simple, you select how long you have and then it gave you a story of that length. I created this to teach myself how to code, but as soon as I got it out there people really liked it. It was the #1 ranking app on App Store in the US and UK in its category. More than a million stories were read on the app before I introduced the ability to write. It was still a side project for me at this time but a problem was very apparent: every writer would at some point struggle with writer’s block.

When things changed

In August 2020 I created Shortly, an AI-powered writing tool to help solve this problem. This too started as a side project but it rapidly transitioned into a full-time start up. Shortly started generating real revenue and was growing very quickly, without any marketing. In just over six months we grew to over 3,000 businesses using Shortly. Thousands of people were visiting the site on a daily basis and people were depending on the tool for their everyday writing. I was working on Shortly alone and building it quickly took up most of my time. I was doing everything from customer service, to UI design, to tweaking machine learning parameters. I was doing all of this whilst still being a medical student (at least by name 😅). I’ve learnt so much in this time and I am forever grateful for your contribution in using Shortly, providing me with feedback and helping me build the site to where it is today. I wish I could thank and name every single person who has helped make Shortly the company that it is today. Chad, founder of the AI Content Dojo, was an excellent example of this. His feedback and educational videos were pivotal in the success of Shortly. If you are interested in AI assisted writing, be sure to check out his YouTube channel.

The Future

For the past few months I’ve been speaking to Dave (Founder @ Conversion.ai). We’ve been discussing the future of AI-powered writing. AI writing is the future. We both agree that these AI’s will serve as super useful assistants to help us write faster and better. The team at Conversion.ai are really talented and in our conversations it became clear that we are headed in the same direction. This is why I’ve decided to combine forces with Conversion.ai to become the biggest and best AI writing tool out there.

You might be wondering what this means for current Shortly users. For now, Shortly will remain a standalone product. Existing users will stay at their current price point and everything keeps rolling as normal. For the future, I am excited about the future of AI-writing when you combine the qualities of Shortly and Conversion.ai — I am confident that I am leaving it in good hands. If you are wondering what happens to me, I am not quite sure where my curiosity will take me next. If you are at all interested, be sure to follow me on Twitter :)

Qasim Munye

Founder of Shortly