Why we built Wimi: what we've shipped, what we've learned, and what's next
I'm Hassan, co-founder and CEO of Wimi. Nine months ago, Wimi was me replying to one restaurant's reviews by hand. Today it replies to Google reviews for restaurants and local businesses every day, in their own voice, in their guests' own language.
This post is the honest version of the story. Why we built it, what we've shipped, what the reviews have taught us, and what comes next.
Why we built it
We built Wimi because the owners who most deserve to be found are the ones with the least time to make it happen.
Before Wimi, I spent four years at Blink selling software to restaurants across the Middle East and Pakistan. I sat with a lot of owners in that time.
The pattern was always the same. The owner is the host, the chef, and the marketer. They care about their Google profile. They just never get to it. Reviews pile up while service runs, and the Sunday-night review pile never quite gets cleared.
Meanwhile, chains reply to every guest because they have a marketing team. Google and the AI answer engines reward profiles that stay active. So the gap between a great independent and a well-staffed chain grows every week, and it has nothing to do with the food.
Those years also showed me what owners need from software. Most don't have time for onboarding calls, training sessions, or another login to check. I wanted to build something an owner could switch on once and never think about again.
We looked at a few problems first, including finance work like invoice reconciliation. Every restaurant did it differently. Google was the one thing every restaurant shared. So we started there.
In February 2026 I went full time on Wimi. I started by running a real restaurant's Google profile myself and writing 1,000+ review replies by hand. Those replies became the training ground for how Wimi writes. Najam, my co-founder and CTO, joined full time in April. We were classmates in engineering school, and he has spent 15 years building software used by millions of users.
What we've shipped
In nine months Wimi went from one hand-run Google profile to a self-serve agent any local business can switch on for free. Here is the log, newest first.
| When | What shipped | What it means for an owner |
|---|---|---|
| Nov 2026 | Wimi inside your AI assistant (MCP) | Run Wimi from the AI tool you already use, with your own approval flow and posting schedule. |
| Oct 2026 | Smarter Pro replies | Wimi reads the review and any photos, checks your Google profile before naming a dish, hours or price, then checks its own reply. A reply that fails its checks is never posted. |
| Oct 2026 | Flagged, no reply | Abusive, spam or suspicious reviews get set aside with a reason, not a cheerful thank-you. One click tells us if we got it wrong. |
| Oct 2026 | All your locations, free | Connect every location at signup. Each Free location gets its own weekly reply allowance. |
| Oct 2026 | Open to every local business | Salons, gyms, dentists, vets and shops can now use Wimi. Restaurants stay our flagship. |
| Oct 2026 | Replies in the reviewer's language | Wimi can reply in the language the guest wrote in, not to Google's translation of it. Switched on per location on request. |
| Oct 2026 | Partner program | Consultants and tools that look after Google profiles can refer owners and earn a share (partners). |
| Oct 2026 | New getwimi.ai | Search for your business and see what Wimi would reply before you sign up. |
| Sep 2026 | Public launch and Insights | Anyone can sign up. Pro owners get an Insights view of reviews answered and rating over time. |
| Aug 2026 | Self-serve signup | Connect your Google profile yourself. No call, no onboarding. |
| Jul 2026 | Closed beta | First restaurants on autopilot replies, onboarded by hand. |
| Feb 2026 | The hand-written start | 1,000+ replies written by hand for one pilot restaurant. |
The Free plan still does the core job: up to 7 replies a week per location, posted the same day, with basic insights and email support. Pro is $20/month per location, billed monthly, for unlimited replies in your voice, an analytics dashboard, AI Connectors enabled and priority email support. Enterprise offers multi-location, embedded product and human in the loop, with pricing on request.
What the reviews taught us
In our closed beta, restaurants moved from a 4.3 to a 4.4 rating by month 3, saved 15+ hours every month, and answered guests 4x faster. The numbers matter. The lessons behind them matter more.
- Owners don't want another inbox. Every tool that asks an owner to log in and approve a queue becomes one more thing they don't get to. So Wimi posts on autopilot. Approval is there if you want it, never required.
- Specific beats polite. "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience" tells a guest nobody read their review. A reply that names the dish, the server or the birthday they came in for tells them someone did. Future guests read the difference too.
- Short reviews deserve short replies. A five-star rating with no text doesn't need a paragraph back. Matching the length of the review is part of sounding like a person.
- Your guests don't all write in English. Our restaurants were getting reviews in French, Spanish, Arabic, Urdu and Polish. Google's auto-translations often miss the point of a mixed-language review, so we reply to what the guest actually wrote.
- Not every review should get a reply. Some reviews are abusive. Some are spam written to trick automatic reply tools. A friendly thank-you under those does more harm than silence, so Wimi sets them aside and tells you why.
- Drafting a reply is easy now. Doing it every day is the job. Google and general AI assistants can draft a reply for free. The gap was never the writing. It's the daily habit of reading, replying and posting, on a Tuesday lunch rush and a Sunday night alike.
- Discovery finds discovery tools. Our first locations came mostly from founder-led conversations. Now owners also find Wimi through Google search and AI answer engines, the same places their own guests are looking.
What's next
Review replies were the first job. The plan is for Wimi to look after every place a guest checks before they visit.
- Wimi in ChatGPT. A connector that lets you ask about your reviews and profile results from inside ChatGPT. It's submitted and in review now.
- Guidance for every kind of business. Most of Wimi's reply guidance today is for food and drink. We're building the same depth for salons, clinics, gyms and shops.
- More of your Google profile, kept current. Posts, hours and profile details, not only replies, so your listing never reads as closed.
- More places guests look. Instagram and Facebook, delivery apps, and AI answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity. One agent, keeping every public signal about your business active.
- Our own model. Today Wimi tunes leading AI models for the job. Next, we're training a model built to write the way local business owners talk.
The free plan stays. The self-serve promise stays. No demos, no sales calls, no contracts.
Thank you
To the owners who trusted us with their Google profile before there was a screen to log into: you built this with us. Every reply Wimi writes still carries what you taught us.
If you run a restaurant or a local business and your reviews are piling up, see what Wimi would reply to your last one. It's free, and it takes one sign-in with Google.
Hassan Mahmood, co-founder and CEO
Hassan Mahmood, Co-founder and CEO
Hassan Mahmood is the co-founder and CEO of Wimi.
