Background: Instinct is an invite-only AI assistant that launched in August, built by a 23-year-old university dropout who left school to write research papers on AI agents before building the product himself. It quickly became one of Silicon Valley's most talked-about AI tools, with people reportedly scrambling for an invite.

What happened: Instinct is pitching tiself as an AI version of a ridiculously efficient personal assistant. It can book travel, pay bills, and cancel subscriptions, but the interesting part is that it has its own phone number and computer, allowing it to make calls on your behalf. And... there's no app. You basically text it like you'd text a mate.

What else: The bigger story is how quickly investors have piled into it. Just a month ago, Instinct raised capital at a US$2.5 billion valuation. It's now reportedly valued at US10 billion, a fourfold increase in a month. And the company has just 14 employees. That's some serious AI hype.

What's the key learning?

💡 Invite-only means you can't just sign up, someone has to let you in. And it does two very different jobs: first, it slows growth down on purpose so the team can fix bugs and learn what users actually want before millions of people turn up and break everything. Second, it creates artificial scarcity, making people, particularly in Silicon Valley, desperate to get in.  

💡 Artificial scarcity can be a powerful marketing tool, but the hype has an expiry date. Clubhouse was the classic example in 2021, with invites reportedly listed on eBay for hundreds of dollars. But once the app opened its doors to everyone, the buzz fizzled pretty quickly. It went from a peak valuation of about US$4 billion to barely existing today.

💡 For Instinct, the exclusive invite list buys the team time to refine the product while building hype and attracting money before a broader launch. But once there's no queue and anyone can sign up, the question becomes whether people actually stick around.