Confession: I have an unhealthy obsession with 2 things

Today’s breakdown has both. My lucky day.

Enjoy.

— Tom

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The what: A TLDR explanation of the strategy

The most powerful AI applications right now are locked behind a text interface.

Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cursor - type a prompt, get an output.

But text is a low throughput mode of communication.

It’s not how humans actually teach, learn, and connect with other humans online.

We jump on a call, we share our screens, and we use a combination of visual + audio communication.

Quarterzip figured this out, and built their entire product around this insight.

Instead of building another chat wrapper, they built an AI that watches your screen share and guides you visually - like having a colleague sit next to you and point at things. Just like when you share your screen on a call, Quarterzip is a picture-in-picture window, sitting inside your browser, that can see what you see: every tab, every app, every workflow.

No SDK installation. No browser extension. No 3-month enterprise integration cycle.

Picture this:

Now picture that same experience, not just for SaaS onboarding, but guiding you through setting up an MCP connector between Claude Code and Notion, or as an employee joining a new company and getting orientated with their workspaces, policies, and internal tools.

Truly elegant case of ‘interface hacking’.

The best part is the PLG potential: Every time an end-user flows through a Quarterzip-powered journey, they experience the power of the tool first hand, and become aware of it for their own use cases.

They just launched a week ago, and they’re already live with Apollo and Grab, running 100s of AI-powered onboarding sessions a day. Without touching a single line of their customers' code to do it.

While every other AI product fights to get inside enterprise systems, Quarterzip just sits on top of them.

The tool is built on an ‘integration’ that every company already allows by default: screen sharing.

The how: The strategic playbook boiled down to 3x key takeaways

Enterprise integration is where AI products go to die.

SDK installation takes months.

Browser extension IT approval? Often impossible.

API access to sensitive internal systems? Forget it.

Quarterzip sidestepped all of it.

Their core insight: screen sharing is something every company already allows. You do it on Google Meet five times a week - no IT ticket, no security review, no engineering sprint.

They built their entire tool around consuming the screen share as its primary input.

The AI sees everything the user sees - any tool, any tab, any window - without ever touching the underlying systems. It's like having read access to every enterprise app, without asking permission.

The strategic advantage isn't just engineering novelty.

→ It's time-to-value.

While competitors need a 3-month enterprise sales cycle just to install, Quarterzip is live and onboarding users on day one. A link is all it takes.

Every AI tool you've used in the last two years has the same interface: a text box with a blinking cursor.

Fine if you’re happy typing, copy-pasting, and dictating to it all day.

A wall if you despise breaking flow-state.

Quarterzip's reframe: what if you skip the text interface entirely?

Their picture-in-picture window follows you around your screen like a colleague looking over your shoulder.

It sees what you see.

But the real unlock is what PIP enables: cross-product experiences.

Traditional onboarding tools are trapped inside a single app. Tooltips, product tours, guided flows - they all disappear the moment your workflow hops to another tab.

Quarterzip doesn't. The PIP window lives at the browser level, not inside a webapp. It can guide you from Gmail to Notion to Apollo and back again in one continuous experience.

That's the shift from "in-app onboarding" to "workflow onboarding."

Tooltips get dismissed.

Help docs are a context switch.

The PIP window just stays there.

Every SaaS founder dreams about the same thing: your brand gets distributed every time a customer uses your product.

It's the oldest viral loop in tech.

Hotmail put "P.S. I Love You" in every email signature.

Docusign notifies every party to "Review and sign".

Atlassian plugs "Powered by Statuspage" on every uptime dashboard.

Quarterzip has their own version. Something you’ll notice while going through a Quarterzip-powered onboarding experience.

“app.quarterzip.ai” sitting inside the PIP.

(Btw - onboarding to Quarterzip using Quarterzip is a real treat if you collect product ‘aha moments’ too. You should try it.)

Every person who gets onboarded to an app using Quarterzip sees that branding.

Every session is a persistent, ambient advertisement.

And because the PIP window sits on top of the customer's product, it's visible for the entire duration of the experience.

Now lets do some maths.

They land a client like Apollo - a tool used by thousands of tech companies.

Probably onboarding hundreds of new users a day.

Every person who onboards to Apollo sees the Quarterzip brand.

Zero ad spend. Just product usage as distribution.

Pure growth loop.

The where: 3x high-signal resources to learn more

This is worth 5 minutes purely for the meta experience.

Quarterzip onboards you to Quarterzip using Quarterzip.

The ultimate dogfooding. Not just the team using the product - it's the product using the product.

If you collect product 'aha moments' too, this is one for the swipe-file.

I love the ‘mini-tool’ lead magnet playbook:

Quarterzip built an ROI calculator that breaks down your opportunity cost, at-risk ACV, and labour costs to show you exactly how much your onboarding gaps are costing you.

Businesses can plug in their numbers and find out where the money's leaking.

1,900 likes. 2,000+ comments.

Alexander Valente's (🇦🇺) launch post is textbook.

Fast-paced hype real.

AIDA copywriting formula (IYKYK).

Viral “Comment ‘QUARTERZIP’ & we’ll give you early access and extra credits!” distribution loop.

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