How Steven Talia is using AI to shape a trust-based pros app
Steven Talia is CEO & Co-Founder of MY PRO: TRUSTED PROS®, a networking app designed to help people find professionals through promotions from their own networks rather than listings and reviews. Ahead of its planned November 2026 launch, Talia discusses using AI to shape the app’s interface, keeping brand messaging human-edited, and what the team cannot yet measure about customer discovery.
AI helps the team prototype and refine the app’s interface, while people still edit and finalize its messaging. Because the app has not formally launched, the team does not yet have measured data on how customers find it.
What’s the quick origin story of your business, and what makes what you do genuinely different from the other options your customers are looking at?
We want to provide a platform where trust is already established within a B2B or B2C introduction. That can only be authentically accomplished through a mutual relationship. Five-star reviews (and who has the most of them) has never been a true standard for trust. We provide the trust pathway organically.
Where does most of your new business come from today, and where do you wish it came from?
Our app will be formally launching in November 2026. However, we continue to receive many organic requests to join our platform prior to launch. We foresee the majority of our app users coming organically through pros spanning nearly all industries as well as consumers seeking to discover which pros their network trusts and promotes.
What’s one thing you’ve actually handed over to AI in the last year, and one thing you tried it on and went back to doing the human way?
As non-technical founders, we’ve used AI, mainly Claude and Grok, as a core part of our UI/UX process. We describe a feature, AI generates and renders the screens, and we refine them based on feedback from our testers and our own use. This has let us iterate quickly and noticeably improve how people navigate the app and move through its key features.
Where we still keep it human is our messaging. Over time, our AI tools have come to know MY PRO: TRUSTED PROS® deeply: our mission, our brand voice, our audience, and even the words we never use. That context makes them a strong first-draft partner. But AI can understand our intent without living it, so we always edit and finalize every message ourselves. For a brand built on trust between real people, that human element isn’t optional.
Have you noticed a change in how customers find you or what they already know before they reach out? Is anyone arriving through AI assistants like ChatGPT yet?
Since we have not formally launched, we don’t have measured data on this. However, it is evident that AI assistants understand our objective. We speak with them to ask how one may find a trusted professional. Every single LLM’s first response suggests that you start with your network and see if they have someone they have worked with who they would recommend to you.
Claude: Start with your network ChatGPT: Start with referrals Gemini: Word of Mouth Grok: Seek recommendations from people you already trust
We believe with AI understanding how human nature values trust, we will be able to lead the responses once we have launched and are able to feed the internet with our messaging.
If you were advising someone in your industry on all of this for the next 12 months, what would you tell them to actually do, and what would you tell them to ignore?
We haven’t formally launched, so we don’t have measured data yet. But we’ve tested how AI assistants answer the question ‘How do I find a trusted professional?’, and every one we asked gives the same first answer: start with your network.
Claude: ‘Start with your network’ ChatGPT: ‘Start with referrals’ Gemini: ‘Word of mouth’ Grok: ‘Seek recommendations from people you already trust’
AI already recognizes that people trust the recommendations of people they know. That’s exactly what MY PRO: TRUSTED PROS® is built on. Once we launch and build a real presence through press, content, and user promotions, we expect to be the platform these assistants point to when people ask that question.
Thank you to Steven Talia and the team at MY PRO: TRUSTED PROS® for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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