I've been giving this a lot of thought. This is my take.<p>First: the audience is NOT software devs. Because as you've surely noticed if you are a software dev, you can do most of the things that OpenClaw can do; if it offers improvements, they seem very marginal. You know, "it makes web apps" I can do that; "it posts to Discord programmatically" I can code that; etc. Maybe an AI code buddy shaves a few minutes off but so what. It's hard to see what the hoopla is about, for a dev.<p>However, if you're a small business owner of some kind, where "small business" is defined by headcount (not valuation - meaning this can include VC's), it really seems like it's been a big unlock.<p>For a person like that, adding a 10k/mo expense is a natural move. And, at that price point, an AI service for 2k/mo is more than competitive: it's a savings.<p>The other part is that I think a lot of people have gotten used to human-in-the-loop workflows, but there's a big step up if you can omit the person.<p>Combining this w/the observation above, there were a lot of small business owners who were probably stymied by this problem: they had a bunch of tasks across departments that were worth like $2k/mo to do but couldn't fill (not enough in salary, couldn't be local). AI fits naturally for that use case. For them, it works.