How One No-Code AI Tool is Changing the Game for Excel Users

Meet David Bressler, the visionary founder behind Formula Bot, an AI-powered tool that has dramatically simplified the way Excel users manage their data. What began as a straightforward formula generator has evolved into a robust platform for analyzing, visualizing, and enriching data. With over a million users worldwide, David shares the story of his journey, the challenges he faced, and his insights on the future of AI in the realm of spreadsheet management.

Inspiration Behind Formula Bot

SBS – Can you describe the initial motivation and the primary challenges you faced while developing Formula Bot?

David – Initially, the motivation to develop Formula Bot was to help Excel users with their formulas by translating their text into formulas with the help of AI. During its MVP stage, it was a one-trick pony that did just that.

During that time, the main challenge I faced was poor AI accuracy. AI accuracy has improved drastically in the past couple of years, especially for code. Early on, to earn the trust of my users, I was spending my nights going through thousands of Excel formula requests and the formulas being generated, manually fixing them to fine-tune the model to improve its accuracy.

Standing Out Among AI Tools

SBS – How does Formula Bot stand out from other AI tools in the market, like Excelly AI or Botsheets?

David – Formula Bot used to be a simple Excel formula generator like those two tools. Now, it’s a single platform to analyze, visualize, transform, and enrich your data, and so much more — powered by AI. Instead of just providing Excel formulas, you can generate an entire analysis and more in seconds.

Gaining Trust and Users

SBS – What were the key factors that contributed to Formula Bot gaining the trust of over a million users worldwide?

David – The reliability of the results being generated was a key factor in reaching 1M users. Based on survey data, 50% of users heard about Formula Bot from a friend or colleague. People don’t share tools that are unreliable.

When you come across a website that “feels illegal to know,” you want to tell others. As a result, Formula Bot has gone viral many times among top influencers in the productivity space.

Ensuring User Data Privacy

SBS – How does Formula Bot ensure the privacy and security of user data, considering the sensitive nature of spreadsheet information?

David – Formula Bot stores and encrypts all information sent from the user — whether that’s an Excel file or the user’s questions being asked. We only retain data (up to 90 days) to improve the user’s experience, so when they return to the website, they won’t have to constantly re-upload the same file to be analyzed.

Success Story with Formula Bot

SBS – Can you share a success story or a significant impact that Formula Bot has had on a particular business or user?

David – A business owner had an intern manually review every customer feedback weekly to determine if the comment was positive, negative, or neutral. It took the intern several hours per week. With Formula Bot’s enrichments, now it takes two minutes.

Staying Updated with AI Advances

SBS – How do you manage to keep Formula Bot’s AI algorithms up to date with the latest advancements and user needs?

David – We’re constantly testing different AI providers and different models. If there’s a new model available, we’re testing it the next day. Trust and reliability are our most important factors. The models we use are the most accurate, though not the fastest. We’re OK to sacrifice speed as long as we’re providing the best possible results.

Every week, I take several phone calls with my users. Within the app, users can book a phone call with me to talk about feature recommendations, complain about the product, etc.

Common Use Cases

SBS – What are the most common use cases for Formula Bot, and which industries benefit the most from it?

David – Formula Bot has a very diverse mix of users from different regions of the world, different industries, and job titles. The most common job title is analyst — users that are more technical and analytical than most but still use Formula Bot to simply work faster. We also see a lot of small business owners who need to crunch numbers but don’t have a dedicated analyst on staff.

Pricing Models Explained

SBS – Could you explain the different pricing models for Formula Bot and how you decided on them?

David – Formula Bot is still known by many as being that one-trick pony — an Excel formula generator. We provide a $5/month plan that gives users unlimited access to the Excel formula generator. Most of our users are on the unlimited plans, which provides users unlimited access to the Excel formula generator, but also unlimited messages to analyze and visualize your data and a high amount of data enrichments to label their data with AI-generated results. We also offer a friendly free plan, which provides users with a limited amount of usage for every tool.

Catering to All Skill Levels

SBS – How does Formula Bot cater to the needs of both advanced users, like data analysts, and less tech-savvy individuals?

David – Data analysts, the top users, use Formula Bot to simply work faster and smarter. For humans, the faster you work, the more likely you are to make a mistake. AI helps them work faster while reducing their margin of error. Less tech-savvy individuals use Formula Bot to do things they didn’t know how to do, but they know what they want.

User Feedback and Feature Suggestions

SBS – What’s the process for a user to provide feedback or suggest new features for Formula Bot?

David – Users can hop on a call with me at any point by booking time through the app. Additionally, I personally read every email sent.

The Future of AI in Data Analysis

SBS – How do you see the role of AI in spreadsheet management and data analysis evolving in the next few years?

David – We’ll reach a point where users simply input an objective like “Forecast sales for the next six months,” and it will go through the entire data workflow from combining together disparate files, cleaning and organizing the file, then running the appropriate analysis — without additional intervention from the user.

Challenges on the Horizon

SBS – What challenges do you anticipate for Formula Bot as the market and technology continue to evolve?

David – The value that Formula Bot offers becomes native within all martech and analytics tools for free, where the user’s data becomes the price tag.

Advice for Integrating AI Tools

SBS – Finally, what advice would you give to entrepreneurs or small business owners who are considering integrating AI tools like Formula Bot into their workflows?

David – AI can be intimidating and expensive. Formula Bot is user-friendly and cost-effective. Most AI data tools require you to book a call to demo the product. If you can’t test the product for free on your own, it’s going to be an expensive product. Formula Bot offers enterprise-level solutions for free and at a very competitive rate, given I’m bootstrapped and don’t have a lot of mouths to feed — except for my kids and wife!