Website builder Jimdo just posted remarkable numbers. Users of their new AI assistant—called "Companion"—saw 40% more customer inquiries and transactions. Half of their users generated their first sale within 30 days of turning it on. The CEO described this as the largest measured impact on customer outcomes in the company's 18-year history.
What's Companion actually doing? It analyzes performance, benchmarks against similar businesses, and tells owners what to change. It functions as a junior strategist that says "here's what you do this week to make more money." This matters because it represents a fundamental shift from reporting what happened to recommending what to do next.
Understanding this shift reveals the opportunity. Jimdo went horizontal, serving every kind of small business with one generalist brain. Your opportunity is vertical specificity: pick one category, embed yourself so deeply you're practically a co-owner, and become the AI General Manager that industry has never had.
Nail salons represent the ideal wedge market.
Why Nail Salons? The Market Fundamentals
The U.S. nail salon market hit $12.9 billion in 2024, growing at a 9.7% clip over the past five years. The industry comprises roughly 24,700 businesses in America, averaging about $500K in annual revenue per location. The global market is projected to double to $24 billion by 2032.
This market is massive, fragmented, and software-aware. The typical nail salon is run by owner-operators managing 1-5 chair shops—many of them women and immigrants who built businesses from scratch. These are sophisticated business owners who understand their numbers and already use technology to manage bookings and payments.
The infrastructure already exists. Fresha, which just raised $31 million from J.P. Morgan for AI and robotics development, serves over 130,000 salon and spa venues globally. They've processed more than one billion appointments and saw 194% growth in online bookings in a recent 12-month window. GlossGenius, another vertical SaaS platform, hit $100 million in revenue in 2024, up from $35 million in 2022. It's valued at $510 million.
These platforms solve a historical problem: they tell owners what happened. They don't tell owners what to do.
The Pain Is Real and Constant
Spend a day shadowing a nail salon owner and you'll watch her toggle between Instagram DMs, Fresha or Vagaro, a janky spreadsheet for tracking slow-pay clients, and her banking app to see if she can afford to hire help. She's fully booked Saturdays, half-empty Tuesdays, constantly fighting no-shows. She has a folder of "marketing ideas" she never touches because there's no time.
The Professional Beauty Association estimates no-shows can account for as much as 18% of lost income annually for salon owners. Add in late cancellations you can't fill, and the financial impact compounds quickly. Meanwhile, 46-50% of salon bookings happen when the business is closed. After-hours demand is real, but most owners don't have systems that act on it while they're asleep.
What she wants is a general manager—someone who looks at the operational chaos and identifies the three highest-leverage actions for the week, then implements them. That general manager doesn't exist at a price point small businesses can afford. You can build it.
Why Vertical AI Beats Generic Copilots
The venture capital world has been explicit about this for 18 months.
Bessemer Venture Partners' 2025 State of AI report states: "Our conviction in Vertical AI is stronger than ever. Adoption continues to accelerate, particularly for vertical workflows that have long been manual, service-heavy, or seen as resistant to technology."
Andreessen Horowitz argues that AI is powering a third wave of vertical SaaS (cloud + fintech + AI) that could increase revenue per customer by 2-10x by turning labor into software. This isn't about automating clicks—it's about replacing the strategic thinking that previously required a consultant, a growth marketer, or a general manager.
The numbers support the thesis. The vertical AI market exceeded $10 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a 21-24% CAGR through 2034. Vertical SaaS overall is forecast to hit $157 billion by 2025, growing at 23.9% annually.
Consider the moat logic. Horizontal AI tools offer impressive demos but suffer from shallow integrations, weak differentiation, and rapid commoditization. A vertical AI GM, by contrast, benefits from deep integrations, domain-specific language models, measurable ROI tied to core business metrics, and switching costs comparable to replacing a point-of-sale system.
Your positioning isn't "AI for small business." It's "the GM nail salons can finally afford."
The Product: What This Actually Looks Like
Position yourself as a GM subscription, which is fundamentally different from a software product. GMs think in terms of outcomes rather than features.
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