Invest Like the Best · Sep 28, 2026 · 1h 26m · 70m saved
With Noah Shinn, Founder of Instinct
More than $1B a year in transactions already runs through Instinct, an invite-only AI assistant that Noah Shinn said is growing about 10% a day on a small user base.
Consumer apps usually buy their growth and earn their money from ads. Shinn said Instinct has spent $0 on marketing, grows because users give away a limited number of invites, and plans to take a small cut of the transactions it handles rather than sell advertising.
"I'm not going to spice it up because it's really just a personal assistant."
Noah Shinn, founder of Instinct, on Invest Like the Best, started the company about a year ago. It has no app: users text it, email it or call it, and it uses its own phone and computer to act for them. The episode was released the day Instinct announced a $1B round at a $10B valuation.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 86 minutes of audio, 16 minutes of reading.
Here are the 15 insights that matter.
Key Takeaways
Instinct handles over $1B a year in transactions, half of it travel, while still invite-only
40% of users share a credit card within 3 weeks, and users who share one sensitive item retain at 80%
It earns from a take rate on transactions, not ads, because an agent smarter than its user should not be selling to that user
Shinn set the range from Shopify at about 2–3% to Apple at 30%
Apps that make money from users' attention are most at risk, while those paid for the underlying service may see more volume
Its compute needs are doubling roughly every week, and new capacity takes months to arrive
Shinn said he spends about 40% of his time worrying about it
It matches the quality of a frontier model at a much lower cost by shaping workloads that do not need instant answers
Instinct was built for understandability, not capability
All of software may collapse into one simple interface, with voice doing more of the work
1. Just a Personal Assistant
The host said personal agents look similar to, and possibly bigger than, what happened with AI code generation a year or so earlier, and asked why Shinn chose this area.
A new way to use technology
Shinn said a new way for most people to interact with technology will come out of it. He started Instinct about a year ago.
"And we're building a personal assistant. I'm not going to spice it up because it's really just a personal assistant." — Noah Shinn
He said it has gained traction because it works in the way people have wanted AI to act for them since they first used ChatGPT in 2023.
No app, a phone and a computer
"So when I mean simple interface, what I mean is we actually don't even have an application. Like this is not a new app. This is not a new tool. It's a new experience." — Noah Shinn
Instinct has its own phone and computer. Users can text or call it, and it can call them. The host said it had called him. Shinn said it has called him about three times in several months, only for something pressing, such as a document that had to be signed by 3 p.m. at 2:55.
"You can email it. It has its own email address." — Noah Shinn
He said the simple interface should not be confused with limited ability. Because it has a computer, it can do anything a person does on the internet.
