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Wabi Conversation Prep: Blas Moros Discussion Brief

Date: November 12, 2025
Purpose: Exploratory conversation about Wabi ecosystem role
Context: Blas joined Wabi ~1 month ago, leading ecosystem development and hiring for that team

Executive Summary​

Wabi is Eugenia Kuyda's (Replika founder) new venture: a social platform for creating mini-apps through text prompts. They just raised $20M pre-seed (one of the largest ever) and are in private beta. Blas is building the ecosystem team and exploring whether you'd be a good fit. This is fundamentally about whether Wabi can create a sustainable market between "full coding" (Cursor) and "no customization" (ChatGPT wrappers).

What Excites Me About Wabi​

1. Underserved Market Opportunity​

The current generative coding landscape leaves a massive gap:

  • Cursor/Lovable: Still requires significant technical knowledge and comfort with code
  • Result: Most non-technical people with app ideas never ship anything

Wabi's positioning: Abstracts away the entire build-and-deploy process, targeting the billions of people who will never use Cursor but have legitimate utility needs.

2. Solving the "Last Mile" Problem​

Even with AI-assisted coding, shipping an actual app requires:

  • Email notification infrastructure
  • Push notification systems
  • Streaks/gamification logic
  • App Store/Play Store submission (weeks of approval hell)
  • API key management for 15+ services
  • User acquisition and distribution

Wabi's promise: Handle all infrastructure and distribution in one integrated platform.

3. Sidestepping App Store Gatekeepers​

The App Store/Play Store duopoly creates massive friction:

  • Week-long approval processes
  • Arbitrary rejections
  • 30% revenue cuts
  • Compliance burden

Strategic opportunity: Wabi could become the distribution platform for the next generation of personal utility software, bypassing mobile app stores entirely.

4. Market Timing Convergence​

Three massive trends intersecting:

  • No-code/low-code adoption (70%+ of new apps by 2025)
  • Consumer AI mainstream adoption
  • Social discovery replacing traditional app stores

5. Proven Founder with Bold Vision​

Eugenia Kuyda built Replika to 35M users pre-LLM era. She has a track record of:

  • Predicting consumer AI adoption before it was obvious
  • Building ad-free, ethics-first products
  • Creating genuine utility for underserved audiences (isolated, lonely, disabled users)
  • Raising $20M pre-seed signals major investor conviction

My Core Concerns & Strategic Questions​

The Fundamental Trade-Off: Abstraction vs. Customization​

Central Question: What level of app sophistication can Wabi actually support before the abstraction breaks down?

Why this matters:

  • If Wabi can only support trivial single-function apps (anime face generators, daily dog pictures), that's a novelty toy, not a billion-dollar platform
  • If users can't get apps to work exactly as imagined, you create a "wasteland of 90%-working apps" that users abandon

Key insight from my experience:

"If your app can be described in one or two sentences, it's probably not that unique or important."

The apps I've seen on Wabi feel like they're "really close, but still somewhere around what I would use in my daily life" rather than genuine utilities I'd return to daily.

Questions for Blas​

About Product Vision & Strategy​

  1. What kinds of apps does Wabi believe it can support long-term?

    • What level of complexity works well vs. breaks the model?
    • What are the natural boundaries of Wabi's abstraction layer?
    • Does the team have a clear thesis on "these 10 app categories are our sweet spot"?

  2. How is Wabi thinking about the PRD problem?

    • Right now, users type 1-2 sentences and get somewhat random results
    • Are you nudging users toward more detailed product specs?
    • What's the vision for the "archetype of the product person" you're creating?
    • Teaching people to write good PRDs vs. instant gratification novelty?

  3. What's the infrastructure roadmap?

    • Email notifications?
    • Push notifications (without overwhelming users subscribed to many apps)?
    • Streaks/leaderboards/gamification?
    • Payment processing?
    • User authentication across apps?
    • Data persistence and databases?

  4. How sophisticated can apps actually get?

    • Can I build a workout tracker with progress graphs and reminder system?
    • Can I build a journaling app with mood analytics and export features?
    • Can I build a budgeting app that connects to my bank?
    • Where's the ceiling before I need to use Cursor instead?

About Business Model & Monetization​

  1. How will Wabi make money?

    • No ads (which I respect), but then what?
    • Subscription model? (To the platform? To individual apps?)
    • Take rate on app monetization?
    • Charging for complexity tiers?
    • Enterprise licensing?

  2. How are you thinking about app monetization?

    • Can creators charge for their apps?
    • Revenue sharing model?
    • How do you incentivize quality creators without ads?

  3. Is bypassing the App Store a deliberate strategy?

    • How much has the team thought about this as an alternative distribution platform?
    • What's the vision for Wabi as "the new app store" vs. "a creation toy"?

About Market & Competition​

  1. What's the competitive moat?

    • Replika founder → Polygraph AI (deepfake detection) just raised funding with similar "accessible AI" positioning
    • ChatGPT's GPT store, Quora's Poe, Replit, Emergent, Bloom all competing
    • What makes Wabi defensible beyond first-mover advantage?

  2. What's the ideal user profile?

    • Who's loving Wabi right now beyond tech-curious early adopters?
    • Are there actual non-technical people creating valuable apps?
    • What's a success story that makes you believe in the vision?

  3. Can you explain Replika to me?

    • I've heard of it but don't deeply understand what made it successful
    • What lessons from Replika apply to Wabi's ecosystem strategy?

About Blas's Decision & Experience​

  1. Why did you choose Wabi?

    • Context: I was helping you think through next steps, you considered Alpha
    • Of all the companies you could have joined, what made Wabi compelling?
    • What excited you most about the opportunity?

  2. What's been your experience so far?

    • You created the Discord—what have been the fruits of that work?
    • What insights have you gained about how people are using it?
    • What apps are surprisingly working well?
    • What's been harder than expected?

  3. What are the big chunks of work on your plate right now?

    • You mentioned hiring for "ecosystem tech roles" and "user education"
    • What does your team roadmap look like?
    • Where do you need the most help?

  4. How are you thinking about ecosystem development differently from traditional community management?

    • Given your Peter Coffman operational training and Latticework community experience
    • What's your strategic approach here?

About Ecosystem Strategy & User Success​

  1. What's the current state of user retention and engagement?

    • Are people creating apps and then abandoning them?
    • What's the typical user journey from creation to sustained use?
    • How many creators are actively maintaining/iterating their apps?

  2. How are you approaching the "wasteland of useless apps" problem?

    • Risk: Novelty-driven creation with no real utility or comeback behavior
    • How do you plan to cultivate quality over quantity?
    • What's the curation strategy?

  3. What does user education look like?

    • Are you teaching people product thinking and spec writing?
    • Hand-holding early users to create case studies?
    • What's the onboarding experience strategy?

  4. Have you considered Hugging Face integration as an ecosystem play?

    • Wabi could become the best distribution platform for niche AI models
    • Example: New anime model drops (like Qwen) → instant Wabi wrapper → viral distribution
    • Wabi abstracts the pain of using Hugging Face directly
    • Creators can rapidly wrap emerging models in 4 minutes
    • Could this become a key ecosystem differentiation?

About Team & Role​

  1. What does success look like for this role in 6-12 months?

    • Specific KPIs? (DAU, creation rate, retention, viral coefficient?)
    • Key milestones?
    • How will you know if the ecosystem strategy is working?

  2. What's the team structure and how does this role fit?

    • Who would I work with most closely?
    • What autonomy would I have to experiment?
    • How does ecosystem connect to product, growth, and engineering?

  3. How is Wabi thinking about the transition from beta to public launch?

    • Timeline?
    • What needs to be true before opening the floodgates?
    • How does my potential role relate to that inflection point?

My Strategic Perspective to Share​

The PRD Problem​

From my experience advising startups and building with Cursor:

"I think what Wabi will need to do is teach people how to write PRDs. Because if you just kind of freeball it and don't know what you want, you don't know what you're going to get. Learning to ask for what you want is such an important skill."

The tension:

  • One-sentence specs = instant gratification but random/useless results
  • Detailed PRD process = less magical but actually creates apps people use

My hypothesis: Wabi needs to become more opinionated about nudging users toward proper product specification, even if it's less immediately delightful.

The Case Study Strategy​

What I'd prioritize if I joined:

"Build really detailed relationships with suspected target users. Get on calls, build CIA files on them, make them feel really supported. The goal: Get to 3-5 apps where the creator can easily say 'I wouldn't have used Replit for this, and I wouldn't have gotten initial users without Wabi.'"

Why this matters:

  • Without clear success stories, you can't identify your actual market
  • Handholding early users teaches you what infrastructure is missing
  • Case studies become powerful talking points for product direction

The Infrastructure Hypothesis​

What I think could make Wabi truly differentiated:

Apps that would benefit from Wabi's integrated infrastructure:

  • Habit trackers with streak notifications
  • Journaling apps with daily email prompts
  • Accountability apps with social features and leaderboards
  • Micro-learning apps with spaced repetition reminders
  • Wellness apps with progress tracking and encouragement systems

All of these are painful to build even with Cursor because of the infrastructure complexity. If Wabi can abstract that away, there's real value.

The Distribution Advantage​

Most valuable insight from my experience:

"For a lot of people, they would be very happy to plug into an app of apps and compete over designing the best wrapper, rather than going through painful App Store approvals."

The big question: Can Wabi get enough users that distribution inside Wabi is more valuable than distribution through app stores?

This requires:

  • Algorithmic feed that actually works
  • Social discovery that creates viral loops
  • Enough MAUs that creators see Wabi as the primary distribution channel

Compensation Thinking​

If the conversation goes well and they ask about compensation:

My anchor: $250K + 1.5% equity vesting over 3 years

Framing:

"I'm open to hearing what feels fair based on how you're compensating the team, but given the ecosystem development role is critical to whether Wabi succeeds and I'm bringing both strategic thinking and hands-on execution, something in the range of $250K plus meaningful equity around 1.5% over three years feels aligned with the value I'd bring."

Context to mention:

  • I've built documentation systems, advised startups on AI strategy, and have deep experience with both technical and non-technical user adoption
  • Ecosystem role is fundamentally about making the right strategic bets early, which will determine Wabi's trajectory
  • I'm not just community management—I'm thinking about product strategy, market positioning, and growth loops

Open Questions I'm Wrestling With​

The Billion Dollar Question​

Is Wabi:

  1. A platform play that becomes the new way people create and discover personal software (billion-dollar outcome)
  2. A novelty tool that's fun to play with but never becomes sticky (modest outcome)
  3. A feature that gets absorbed by Cursor/Replit/ChatGPT (acqui-hire)

What would convince me it's #1:

  • Clear examples of non-technical users creating genuinely useful apps they use daily
  • Strong retention metrics showing people return to their apps
  • Evidence of viral loops through remixing and discovery
  • Roadmap showing infrastructure investments that make complex apps possible
  • Business model that creates sustainable creator economy

What would concern me it's #2 or #3:

  • Only seeing trivial one-function apps in the wild
  • No clear path to monetization beyond subscriptions
  • Generic "we'll figure it out" answers about complexity limits
  • Lack of strong opinions about what Wabi should/shouldn't be good for

The Personal Fit Question​

Is this the right opportunity for me right now?

Reasons I'm excited:

  • Proven founder who predicted consumer AI
  • Massive funding suggests long runway
  • Ecosystem role at this stage could be incredibly impactful
  • Chance to help define what "personal software" means for billions of people
  • Blas is thoughtful and operationally excellent (Peter Coffman trained)

Reasons I'm hesitant:

  • Still very early (might be too early)
  • Fundamental product questions unanswered (abstraction vs. customization)
  • Unclear if non-technical users actually want to create software
  • Could be a novelty that fades when AI coding gets even better
  • I have other opportunities (DeepTrack, Nation of Fire, Anthropic DevRel, etc.)

What I need to learn in this conversation:

  • Does Blas believe deeply in this vision, or is he just trying something?
  • Is there a clear strategic roadmap, or are they still figuring it out?
  • Would I have real autonomy to experiment and shape the ecosystem strategy?
  • Do I get excited talking about this for 45 minutes, or does it feel like a stretch?

Conversation Flow Strategy​

Opening (5 min)​

My approach: Express genuine excitement but intellectual honesty

"Blas, I've been thinking a lot about Wabi since I heard you joined. The core idea makes a lot of sense to me—there's clearly a gap between Cursor and 'no customization' that's underserved. But I have a lot of questions about how sophisticated apps can actually get before the abstraction breaks. I'd love to hear what excited you enough to join and what you're learning so far."

Discovery (25 min)​

Let Blas talk first:

  • Why he chose Wabi
  • What he's learned in his first month
  • What's working vs. what's harder than expected
  • His vision for ecosystem development
  • Where he sees the biggest opportunities

My questions (pick 5-7 based on flow):

  • PRD/spec problem
  • Infrastructure roadmap
  • Monetization model
  • Success stories and user types
  • Hugging Face integration opportunity
  • Competition and moat

Strategic Discussion (10 min)​

Share my perspectives:

  • The case study strategy
  • The distribution advantage thesis
  • The infrastructure hypothesis
  • My experience with technical vs. non-technical users

Wrap (5 min)​

Gauge mutual fit:

  • What does he need most in the next 6 months?
  • What would success look like?
  • What's the timeline for hiring decisions?
  • What are next steps?

Express interest appropriately:

  • If excited: "This is really compelling. I'd love to explore further."
  • If uncertain: "This is interesting, but I want to think more about [specific concern]."
  • If not fit: "I appreciate you sharing this. I'm not sure the timing is right, but let's stay connected."

Post-Conversation Reflection Questions​

After the call, assess:

  1. Did Blas give confident, specific answers about the product vision, or was it vague?
  2. Are there real success stories with non-technical users, or just tech-curious early adopters?
  3. Does the monetization strategy make sense, or is it hand-wavy?
  4. Did I get excited talking about the possibilities, or did it feel forced?
  5. Would this role give me real strategic autonomy, or am I just executing someone else's vision?
  6. Is this the highest-leverage opportunity for my time right now?
  7. Does working with Blas specifically make this more appealing than the opportunity itself?

Bottom Line Going Into This​

My hypothesis: Wabi could be genuinely important if they solve the infrastructure and PRD problems. But it's still early enough that fundamental questions remain unanswered.

My posture: Genuinely curious, intellectually honest, willing to be convinced but not desperate for the opportunity.

My goal: Determine whether this is a "hell yes" or a "not right now."

Decision framework:

  • Hell yes = Clear product vision + strong early traction + meaningful role + Blas is bought in + compensation fair
  • Maybe = Some missing pieces but interesting enough to keep talking
  • No = Fundamental concerns unresolved + better opportunities elsewhere + gut says it's not the right fit

Let's see what Blas has to say.