AI can make you rich
I run an AI business that makes 20-25k a month in revenue as a solo developer with two co-founders in marketing and design.
The first time I used ChatGPT was in November 2022. If you brought a caveman to a SpaceX rocket launch, it would evoke a similar feeling in him as it did in me. I would show it to friends who hadn’t discovered it like this: “Write a poem about Zeeshaan and [insert friend’s name]. Make sure it rhymes, and make us look good”. Then I watch as my friend’s jaw hits the pavement.
For some, the initial awe faded into a normalization of what it can do. This, in turn, prompted a focus on minor imperfections and, soon after, underusing or ignoring the tech completely.
People began screaming from the rooftops about how it ‘hallucinates’, rather than all the times it gets it right. Zog, the skeptical caveman, probably said, “This ‘fire’ thing keeps all the dangerous animals out of our caves, but we still get stung by mosquitoes so perhaps its totally useless.” This skepticism has been common throughout history. Here’s a real quote:
"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." - Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the Post Office, in 1878.
Around the same time as my ChatGPT Enlightenment, I saw a video by tech YouTuber MKBHD, who had early access to Dall-E. He entered “An astronaut riding a horse” and behold:
This was another neanderthal-exposed-to-mind-blowing-technology moment for me. We may have become slightly numb to what it can do now, but this demonstration gave me chills. This sort of AI imaging tech has made my business possible out of thin air.
Here are some hard-earned insights.
Do you need millions of $s and a PhD?
I live in Europe, where investors are not falling over themselves to fund every idea that comes to my mind in the shower. This forces me to have a viable business model from the start.
You don’t need to train an AI model from scratch. Build on the shoulders of giants, aka open-source AI models. You can also develop this yourself based on what you’re about to discover.
Many have criticized those who build ‘thin wrappers’ or user interfaces around a pre-existing model with minimal changes. As Zog said, “The wheel is a gimmick, it's just a tree on its side.”
Taking tech that’s not user-friendly and making it so, is non-trivial and creates meaningful value. Consider a service like Typing Mind. It is an unabashedly thin UI wrapper for ChatGPT. According to its founder, Tony Dinh, as of February 2024, it had made $500k in one year.
ChatGPT’s interface is spartan. Typing Mind’s key value proposition is to add simple but essential functionality, like the ability to search through your chats, which doesn’t exist in ChatGPT.
Tons of value can be added with a thoughtful user interface.
“I’m ready to get rich and put a down payment on a Tesla. How do I get started?” - You, the reader, at this point.
Step #1 - Use an open-source AI model.
Get familiar with Replicate. It takes the AI models that needed large teams and millions of dollars to develop and turns them into boxes of play-dough with instructions on the back.
Replicate is the ultimate thin-wrapper-builder-helper.
Step #2 - How do you develop the app without programming experience?
Not only can your service leverage AI by wrapping and selling an AI model—it can also be built using AI. Products like Cursor and v0 help you with coding and user interface design. Have your share of the growing pie and eat it too. A beginner can make an app in record time with these tools and trusty ChatGPT.
That’s the theory. Here’s how I walk my talk:
My service, The Multiverse AI, started as a thin AI wrapper, ate a lot of rich food in a short period of time, and now has curves in all the right places.
Our service takes your sloppy selfies and turns them into professional headshots. It’s another example of AI levelling the playing field - people now have $29 access to studio-quality professional headshots in 2 hours.
Behind the scenes, the service involves 3 basic steps:
Take a publicly available imaging model like Stable Diffusion or Flux on Replicate
Fine-tune it on user’s selfies, getting the model’s parameters just right (these are the curves)
Generate outcomes with pre-defined prompts.
Meet Miles Robson. Rumor has it that his professional headshots opened career doors and brought riches and happiness.
Over time, we’ve added more features, such as allowing users to generate their likeness in any scenario.
“Me as an astronaut riding a horse”:
We’ve augmented our offering with hilariously over-the-top customer service, giving manual edits to individual people on demand. I owe that to our first and only long-term contractor, my sister! Thanks, Sanaya.
This shock value of Xtreme customer service results in a high rate of Being Impressed even when the customer contacts us with a complaint.
Building with AI is no get-rich-quick scheme. Only a get-rich-faster-than-you-could-before scheme. You still need to create an excellent service - but you now have entirely new product realms, and tools to supercharge development.
Step into the doors that AI is opening. Don’t make the same mistake that William Preece did. And don’t be Zog.