I have been looking for Virginia for years.
When I was the president of a company, I had an assistant named Virginia, and she was amazing. I am convinced she could read my mind. She arranged my schedule, anticipated what I needed, and made sure the most important work actually got done. When I went out on my own, I started looking for another Virginia. I hired locally. I hired virtually. Everyone was capable, but no one could read my mind. No one could be my second brain.
So I made myself a promise: I would master generative AI and build my own.
The first thing I built was a writer.
My biggest time challenge has always been writing. Responding to emails, writing social posts, drafting proposals, creating articles: it consumed an incredible amount of every day. So the first tool I built for myself was called SamWriter, trained on my own books, keynotes, and writing. Then I added the ability to ask it questions about my own work, because too often I cannot remember what I cannot remember.
I kept improving it and showed it to a few people. They were amazed, and they wanted a version for themselves. Then they started reporting back: it was saving them hours, and it had become their second brain too. That is when I decided to launch it publicly as Write85.
So why "85"?
In my presentations, I talk about what generative AI does brilliantly and what it does not. It writes exceptionally well, but it does not have real-world experience. It does not understand nuance and judgment the way a human does. And sometimes it simply makes things up.
So I never used SamWriter to replace me. I used it to augment me. It gets me 85 percent of the way there, fast. Then I go in and add my style, my personal story, my judgment: the 15 percent that only a human can provide. That last 15 percent is where the value lives, and it is why the product is called Write85.
Why there will never be a "send" button.
This is a promise, not a missing feature. Write85 will never post to your social accounts or send your emails for you, because I believe generative AI should not replace the human in communication. It should speed up the process so you can spend your time on what only you can do: being human, adding the story, applying the judgment, and giving the person on the other end a genuine experience.
Every piece Write85 creates is reviewed and shipped by a person. On purpose. Forever.
And that is what Write85 is.
Your voice, learned from your real writing. Your knowledge, on tap. Your team, writing on-brand automatically. And you, doing the human 15 percent that makes it matter.
Sam Richter
Founder, Write85