“Can anyone suggest an AI tool for…?” — What 420 founders taught us about how people actually find AI tools

Before we built a search engine, we ran a WhatsApp group. 420+ founders, operators, and working professionals — all asking each other questions every day. And the single most repeated sentence was some version of this:

“Can anyone suggest an AI tool for…?”

Not “what's the best AI tool.” Not “compare X vs Y.” Just: I have a problem, I don't know what to search for, does anyone know something that helps?

That sentence is why Currly exists. After watching that community for months, we learned something most AI tool directories completely miss: people don't think in tool categories. They think in problems.

What the community was actually asking for

What's striking about this list is what's not on it. Nobody asked for “an LLM with a fine-tuning API.” The people asking were working professionals trying to solve specific, immediate, unglamorous problems.

The tool that surprised everyone: Chronicle

Someone posted: “Try using Chronicles for presentation…” Within hours, the thread had responses. The follow-up: “I feel none of the presentation apps right now are out there… but Chronicle is still half decent.”

That nuance — half decent, but the best available — is the kind of honest signal you never get from an affiliate review site. No sponsored ranking would ever say “half decent.” But that's exactly the kind of recommendation that actually helps you decide.

What this means if you're not using AI yet

If you've been waiting to “get into AI” because everything you've read assumes you already know what GPT-4 is — this community data is for you. The most common AI tool searches aren't from engineers. They're from people who need to make a presentation, build a website, or write a resume.