We began building our AI product in public as a tool to help people quickly build online stores using AI during June of 2023. It was quite a hot AI time.

The tool was using ChatGPT to create a fully-functinal eCommerce store with a demo products from Amazon.
And we managed to get such impression among people so they started to share it with words: "Look, I made my own store in 20 seconds."
We got about 2,000 users that way, mainly people telling their friends to try it out.

We built a toy

Back in 2023, this idea was exciting.
It was great for getting people to talk about us and for getting random people to check us out.
We burned ~2k$ on various API we used then with an expectations: people will start to pay.
Nobody paid.

It was a train called AI and we all were the passengers, but not all of us were able to understand how to monitize this and in reality most of AI wrappers have the lack of this.

Most of AI wrappers would be eaten by a bigger players, other will be not able to proceed due to fact of investment.

We had a few benefits:

1. We are developers with skills in design and a bit in marketing

2. We spent years in development of eCommerce products
   So to keep things going it was important to focus on:

3. Longer game, there is no quick wins, unfortunatelly or fortunatelly

4. Narrower niche and smaller auditory

5. Patience

6. Building network and product authority

The road to actual product

So to attract real users, we had to start solving a real problem for them, to offer them something valuable. We do this already 5 months since October. We made like 5 pivots...
Today our product proposition
"Marketsy allows busy people to own a business: a simple in management store of digital products as a source of income"

So all AI thing right now is hidden under "busy", AI helps to automate the process, but not the primary thing in the product anymore.

Even eCommerce SaaS market is huge and comeptition is hight.
We are going to test this approach upcoming weeks, we believe it will be a right step.

Anyway we are sure we will find the right proposition and our audience, one way or another.

All the best to other product builders here!