Adoption Pulse Check
An anonymous survey tool sent to a small team that surfaces — without naming names — whether anyone is actually using the AI tools your company rolled out, and what's blocking them.
People-managers and ops leads who suspect their team isn't using the new AI subscription and want evidence before escalating
- Three-question weekly pulse (do you use it, for what, what stops you) routed anonymously to a digest for managers
- Cross-team benchmarks so you can compare adoption to similar companies without exposing identity
- Pre-built intervention playbooks triggered by common complaints (low-quality docs, fear of being watched, slow tools, no clear workflow)
- Optional escalation memo — a one-page summary a manager can hand up the chain: 'here's what we're seeing, here's what would help'
The essay's core observation is that AI projects 'avoid tracking basic metrics' because the metrics would be embarrassing — this tool makes those metrics safe and useful, not threatening.
Multiple surveys confirm 50-59% of employees hide AI use from managers (Cybernews 1,000+ employees; Software AG Oct 2024), validating the core problem.59% of employees hide AI use from their bosses | Cybernews ↗The Shadow AI Surge: Study Finds 50% of Workers Use Unapproved AI Tools ↗
Market is crowded — Decision Lab's 'AI Adoption Score' offers anonymous 3-min surveys + barrier identification (nearly identical product), and Teamazing and Evolv IT both ship free anonymous shadow-AI surveys. Enterprise incumbents Worklytics, Larridin, Microsoft 365 AI Adoption Score, and Insightful also occupy this space.AI Adoption Score — Benchmark Your Company's AI Usage Privately ↗Free Anonymous AI Shadow Survey for Your Team | Evolv IT ↗Track AI Adoption and Usage Across Your Org | Worklytics ↗
Hard to charge — direct free competitors (Teamazing, Evolv IT, Decision Lab's public tool) anchor price at $0; enterprise tools (Larridin, Worklytics) sell six-figure contracts but require sales motion the target user (mid-level manager) can't fund out of pocket.Enterprise AI Usage Data: Complete Guide to Measuring Adoption & ROI | Larridin ↗AI Usage Survey: Uncover Shadow AI in Your Organization | Teamazing ↗
AI subscription proliferation won't stop, but vendors are building native adoption telemetry (Microsoft Copilot Adoption Score, ChatGPT Enterprise admin dashboards), which could commoditize this layer over 2-3 years.AI Adoption Category in Adoption Score - Microsoft 365 admin ↗
Anonymous survey + AI summarization is a standard build — no special data integrations, no novel infra; a focused MVP could ship in weeks with off-the-shelf form/survey backends plus an LLM aggregation layer.