WORLD! Meet LogicGlue …
Launching in April 2025 … LogicGlue brings the power of ChatGPT to your Xero data.
As a founder, I am fascinated by the origin stories of technology product companies.
The journey of product companies are influenced by many quantifiable factors (e.g. available technology, competitors), and many unknown and unquantifiable factors (e.g. team synergy, unpredicted use cases).
This is why product evolution is often non-linear, with surprising twists and turns.
For example:
Slack
Started As: A multiplayer online game called Glitch.
Pivoted To: A workplace communication tool.
Why: The game failed commercially, but the internal messaging tool the team used became the real breakthrough.
Twitter (now X)
Started As: A podcasting platform called Odeo.
Pivoted To: A microblogging social network.
Why: Apple announced iTunes podcasting support, killing Odeo’s future. Jack Dorsey proposed a side project — Twitter.
Shopify
Started As: An online store selling snowboards (Snowdevil).
Pivoted To: An e-commerce platform for other businesses.
Why: The founders were frustrated with existing e-commerce tools, so they built their own — and realized others wanted it too.
Instagram
Started As: A location-based social check-in app called Burbn.
Pivoted To: A simple photo-sharing app.
Why: Burbn was too bloated — the photo-sharing feature stood out, so they focused only on that.
YouTube
Started As: A video dating site (“Tune in, Hook up”).
Pivoted To: A general video-sharing platform.
Why: No one uploaded dating videos, but people started uploading all kinds of other content — and that took off.
Zlinky
Over the last couple of years, our team built out Zlinky (mobile and web), and the companion Zlinky Chrome Extension. Zlinky is a mobile and web app built to help people organise their links, screenshots and images.
Last year, we were evolving the Zlinky Chrome Extension further, into a more general workplace productivity tool, including a super simple screenshot and screenshot organizer tool, with plans to build out screen recording features.
During 2024, OpenAI implemented several changes to its public API product. These changes made the openAI API much more accessible to products like Zlinky.
One of our Senior Engineers, Joe Logan, has extensive experience in AI. Joe integrated a simple version of ChatGPT into the Zlinky browser extension - we named the feature ZlinkyAI. This feature allowed the user to "chat" about the current web page they were on.
ZlinkyAI Feature - Zlinky Chrome Extension
For some time, it has been possible to paste a URL into ChatGPT, and ask ChatGPT about the pasted URL. As you can see in the video above, with ZlinkyAI, the user workflow to ask questions about a web URL is easier than with ChatGPT.
I found myself drawn into ZlinkyAI, playing with it every day since we launched the feature. I remember sitting in my Sydney apartment one night in October 2024, using ZlinkyAI for hours. I kept on thinking, "There is something in this. It is almost useful to get insights about a page. But it almost feels like ZlinkyAI is needing a more challenging use case than only a URL."
I happen to have a lot of friends who work in accounting and finance, or own their own businesses. Around the same time I was playing with ZlinkyAI, many of these friends were all saying something along the lines of, “Imagine how useful AI could be for accounting products? Why isn’t even AI core to the user experience of these products?”
Then the 2 pieces found each other in my head.
My accountant friends. Of course, accounting … especially the popular accounting software Xero.
Imagine, we could offer a ZlinkyAI for Xero!
Nearly every small business in Australia uses Xero. The opportunities to help business owners and finance professionals would be endless by marrying openAI with Xero.
I reached out to Joe.
It was on! We are extremely excited to see where this journey takes us!
