Partner

Explore resources related to partner to help implement AI solutions for your business.

reddit

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Weekly-Offer-4172•This week

Technical Co-Founder Seeking Commercial/Marketing Partner for Micro SaaS Projects

Hi everyone, I’m looking for a commercial or marketing co-founder to join me in developing some Micro SaaS (MSaaS) apps. Here’s a bit about where I’m coming from and what I’m hoping to find: About Me: I’m a full-stack developer with over 15 years of experience, including some work in AI. I’m currently working part-time, which gives me the time to focus on developing MVPs quickly. I’m passionate about creating SaaS solutions and would love to find someone who can help bring these ideas to life. Based in french alps. What I’m Looking For: Role: Non-Technical Co-Founder (Commercial/Marketing) Location: Remote Equity: 50% co-founder stake What I’m Hoping You’ll Bring: Experience: Background in business development, marketing, or similar fields. Vision: An eye for potential in new SaaS ideas and a drive to help make them successful. Commitment: Enthusiasm for building and growing a business together. What’s In It For You: Revenue Potential: Share in the financial rewards of successful products with a 50% equity stake, giving you a direct share of the profits. Fast ROI: Benefit from rapid MVP development, which allows for quicker validation and faster revenue generation. Dynamic Approach: We move quickly—if an app doesn’t gain traction in a few weeks, we pivot to the next idea, keeping our efforts focused on what works. Financial Growth: As we iterate and scale, there are opportunities for significant financial upside based on the success of our products. Shared Success: Be an integral part of a partnership where both of us share equally in the risks and rewards, creating a strong incentive for mutual success. What’s In It For You: Partnership: Equal share in the business (50/50). Opportunity: Work on interesting MSaaS projects with room for creativity. Flexibility: A remote role that fits around your schedule. If you’re interested or would like to learn more, please reach out. I’d be thrilled to discuss how we might work together. Thank you for considering this!

#reddit#technical#co-founder

reddit

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Altruistic-Flan-8222•This week

Looking for a Marketing Partner for an Innovative AI Mobile App [i will not promote]

Hello everyone! I'm a software engineer and AI developer working on something great in the mobile AI space. If you have been following the trends on TikTok and similar platforms, you have probably noticed the explosion of AI apps (like Rizz AI and similar) that follow the simple "scan → solve" concept. These apps have been massively successful because they solve specific problems with minimal user friction. Here's what makes my project different: I have identified an unique market where there is currently zero competition for this app idea that I'm creating and the potential user base is massive - we are talking about 200M+ potential users in the US alone (60% of the US population could use this app). Even capturing just 0.05% of this market could generate significant revenue, considering similar apps typically charge $4-6 per user. What I'm looking for: A marketing partner (preferably US-based or someone familiar with the US market/audience) who can help grow this app. Initially, it requires about 30–60 minutes per day for content creation and posting. No experience is required. If you don't have marketing experience, don't worry. In today's marketing, passion is often more important than skills (and a bit of luck, haha). What I'm offering: For now, it's a revenue share partnership. I have invested my savings into the development of the app and the necessary equipment and I'm offering a revenue share until we generate enough profit for paid positions. Once we gain traction, the goal is to transition this into a part-time or full-time role. If you have zero creativity skills, I can provide you with my automated content generation tool to assist with marketing. It is basically a script that generates the type of content that gets the most views on other AI apps promoted on social media platforms. This is also a long-term partnership, if we achieve some results but not good enough with one app, we can try a new niche or just continue on this one. About the project: The app is almost complete and will likely launch in mid-February. It is a self-funded venture, meaning all profits will be reinvested into growth, including ads, revenue sharing and potentially useful tools to improve marketing. Also, the app is unique, I made a deep research and there is no similar app in this niche and it is very easy to promote. Overall, it follows a simple and effective business model with a clear monetization strategy. If you're interested in being part of something with genuine growth potential and want to learn more, DM me. We can discuss details on Reddit, Discord, LinkedIn, anything you like. The app launches in mid-February so I'm looking to bring someone on board soon to help out. Note: I will share specific details about the niche and app functionality in private messages to protect the idea before launch.

#reddit#looking#marketing

reddit

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EquivalentDecent5582•This week

Looking for an accountability partner as a solo founder. [I will not promote]

Hello! I am a technical founder focused on using AI solutions to drive automation. Recently had a co-founder split after working together for a couple month. We had a very good traction but I made a decision to leave because I believed we didn't have a solid foundational relationship that can be sustained for a long time. Had more of a co-worker style relationship. Took on the short-term pain to set myself up for a long term success. He was the one leading the sales and relation with the businesses, so we decided he will be leading the company moving forward and we split on very good terms. Back in the gulag now and starting from scratch. Took three days to reset and recover. When I tried to get back at things yesterday, my brain wasn't just having it. My stress activation got so high, i did like 4 wim hof breathing sessions and a 10 mile run to relieve the stress buildup. There is something about uncertainty and working without a lack of clear path that is super hard to process especially when you are solo. Currently I am working through my previous idea backlogs that I have built up and re-starting previous conversations. But my brain isn't giving me the dopamine hit from driving toward action as much as I used to. So any work that i do feels like a slogging through mud. I am looking to experiment with having an accountability partner, to make the initial ramp up easier. Thinking of doing the elon musk style "What have you done this week?" report that we can do to drive accountability and give that extra motivation. If you're navigating similar challenges as a solo founder and believe mutual accountability could accelerate our progress and growth, I'd love to connect. Let's help each other build momentum and stay motivated—drop a comment or DM if interested! I will not promote

#reddit#looking#accountability

reddit

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Business_Boy1•This week

Looking for business partner with technical AI knowledge

Hi all, Posted on here a few times now about my idea (you can read this on my profile). After planning out the details of the process, I can see that it may just be best for me to seek a business partner with has existing AI knowledge. I’m looking for a more technical person who can provide recommendations on AI tools for businesses based on the current processes in order to be more efficient and productive. This is a chance for you to work for yourself and get the money you deserve for your work. No interaction with the client needed and I will do all the sales aspects. Looking for someone UK-based and I am 23 for reference with a consulting and BA background. Please reach out if this interests you :)

#reddit#looking#business

reddit

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jayn35•This week

Partnership revenue share uncertainty as test before any equity discussions, please help, urgent

Hi all, It's brand new relationship to collaborate on work and fast moving situation and i want to be fair and informed about revenue share for this work as startup, new agency, unclear still. Sorry for rushed message, its moving fast. Its starting with revenue share to test and see how things go. I contribute some things as a separate entity/consultant/marketing domain expert who designed some AI products and am able to acquire clients reliably with my marketing skills then they do all development and sales assistance. Details below please can you help with advice on contribution and revenue share thats very fair: The "partnership" non ownership (rev share is best correct?) of delivering custom AI software development solutions to smb b2b clients. As a domain expert i designed a product for myself and then others upsells and want to sell it to other biz, there is interest, its been tested as viable with my outreach which I do and now have 5 clients from last night wanting to meet or receive short video explanations before we meet (its my initial offer, a vid demo). I have designed the product or solution completely and have already developed mvp of the first product that i use myself and is immensely valuable to me. I also acquire all the clients as an client outreach/acquisition expert and perform that entire client acquisition function and marketing up until sales call where they provide assistance/ a joint tech and marketing/product domain specialist (me) sales call, still to be discussed. No dedicated sales function but they have experience. Then I partner with a great desirable professional development agency to deploy the solution and everything that entails hoping for a long-term similar arrangement that mutually beneficial and fair. They also assist with the sales process to close deals, we both contribute on the sales calls but client generation and marketing up to the sales call is my contribution. What would the fair revenue share be in a perfectly fair equal situation and what would it be if I wanted to be generous because i really want to work with them moving forward. Also what would the equity split be if a new entity was formed later to formalize partnership and the contribution remained the same. I dont know much about this or what I should be doing in my situation. As I understand searching revenue share online and a summary from perplexity I perform two of the major functions and they one so something like 30-40 them and the rest me? But if i wanted to be generous and show my appreciation for working with me on this as they are high quality and i foresee more opportunity benefits and capabilities in the future due to their expertise and know they would deliver a superb job, would 50/50 be a fair split? Or am I undervaluing/overvaluing myself,, can you not just offer the logic but advice as well based on the info you have, this is brand new and moving super fast, online info seems clear but i want mine to be super fair even generous for them so they are happy, but also not foolish or irresponsible from my side. Its all new to me. Thank you so much!

#reddit#partnership#revenue

reddit

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torrentialdownpour34•This week

Seeking Feedback on Business Idea: AI-Powered Business Partner Matching Platform

Hey everyone, I've been toying with an idea for a new business venture and I'd love to get some feedback and insights from this community. The Idea: I'm considering building a business platform that utilizes AI to match potential business partners. Whether you're a startup looking for a co-founder, a company seeking strategic partnerships, or an investor searching for promising ventures, this platform would help connect you with compatible partners based on your specific needs, goals, and preferences. How It Works: Users would create detailed profiles outlining their business objectives, industry expertise, skills, and what they're looking for in a partner. The AI algorithm would then analyze this data to identify compatible matches, taking into account factors like complementary skill sets, shared values, and mutual goals. The platform would provide users with a curated list of potential partners, along with insights and recommendations to facilitate meaningful connections. Key Features: Comprehensive Profiles: Users can create detailed profiles highlighting their background, experience, and what they bring to the table. AI Matching Algorithm: The platform's AI algorithm would use advanced data analysis techniques to generate accurate partner recommendations. Communication Tools: Built-in messaging and video conferencing tools would enable seamless communication between potential partners. Feedback and Ratings: Users can leave feedback and ratings for their matches, helping to build trust and credibility within the community. Resource Hub: Access to resources, articles, and guides on partnership development, negotiation strategies, and other relevant topics. Why It's Needed: Finding the right business partner can be a daunting task, often relying on personal networks or serendipitous encounters. By harnessing the power of AI, this platform aims to streamline the partner matching process, saving time and increasing the likelihood of finding compatible collaborators. Looking for Feedback: Before diving headfirst into this venture, I wanted to reach out to this community to gather some feedback: Does this idea resonate with you? Why or why not? Are there any existing platforms or services that offer similar functionalities? What features would be essential for you as a user? Any potential challenges or concerns you foresee with this concept? I'm eager to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Thanks in advance for your input!

#reddit#seeking#feedback

reddit

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Real-Result5238•This week

Seeking marketing/monetization partner for my WhatsApp message generator app

I've built a web app that's showing some promising early traction, and I'm looking for a partner to help take it to the next level. Here's the scoop: What it is: A WhatsApp message generator app Current status: Generating revenue within days of launch My skills: Web development, product design The app helps people generate personalized messages for their partners, solving a real pain point in relationship communication. It's simple, functional, and already making money with zero marketing. What I'm looking for: A partner who's savvy in: Digital marketing (especially for apps) Monetization strategies Scaling user acquisition Ideal partner: Experienced in growing consumer apps Understands social media marketing Has insights on pricing models and user retention Excited about the potential of AI-assisted communication tools What's in it for you: Opportunity for equity in a growing side hustle Chance to shape the marketing and business strategy from early stages If you think you'd be a good fit or know someone who might be interested, let's chat! Drop a comment or DM me. Questions I'm particularly interested in: What's your experience with marketing similar tools? How would you approach monetizing an app like this? Any ideas on how to scale user acquisition quickly? Let's team up and turn this early traction into something bigger!

#reddit#seeking#marketing/monetization

reddit

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yaboykinsavage•This week

Seeking Investors, Partners, and Advice!

I’m currently working through my MBA, learning everything I can about business, finance, and strategy. It has been fueling the entrepreneurial fire I've always had in me. I want to create spaces that bring people together in a natural, effortless way by offering both energy and escape. While I’m based in Canada, I hope these concepts could thrive anywhere. I’ve even used AI to visualize my ideas: Oasis by the Ocean & Console Games Bar. An Oasis by the Ocean Not just a café. A sanctuary. I want to create an accessible and immersive retreat where people can truly unwind, slow down, and connect. A book-filled hideaway with canopies, cozy pods, and ocean waves in the background. Sip coffee, get lost in a novel, or challenge a friend to a board game. At night, it transforms into a social screening lounge. We have sports bars, but where’s the TV streaming bar? Imagine binge-watch nights, reality TV reactions, and cult classic marathons in a space designed for comfort, ambient lighting, and a shared experience over the shows we all love. To support local creatives, I’d host daily events, including: Acoustic music nights & open mics Wine & paint nights Pottery & creative workshops Journaling & poetry gatherings Sunset yoga & breathwork sessions A Console Games Bar My partner is a gamer, and we’ve both noticed that gaming can be quite an isolated experience. Imagine a space with every console game ever—where connection matters as much as gameplay. That’s the vision for a gaming-themed bar—open only at night—that transforms gaming into an immersive, shared experience. The vibe? A refined, welcoming space—part high-end mancave, part modern social club. Not an arcade, but an elevated gaming experience. The Space Classic Zone – N64, Sega Genesis, PlayStation 1 & 2 Retro Arcade – SNES, GameCube, Wii, OG Xbox Modern Lounge – PS5, Xbox Series X, high-end PCs VR Zone – Fully immersive next-gen gaming The Menu Game-themed cocktails – Creeper Cocktails, Rift Herald Rum Runners, Chug Jug Coolers Dishes inspired by franchises – Elden Rings of Onion, Wraith Wraps, Boogie Bomb BBQ Wings Events & Tournaments: Smash Bros. battles, Mario Kart races, etc. Why I’m Posting I know that plenty of people have already executed similar concepts. But I want to bring my own vision to life because these spaces are missing in many communities or are inaccessible in terms of cost and location. Starting something like this takes more than just an idea—it takes planning, funding, and the right people. I’m ready to put together a solid business plan and want to hear from those who have built something from the ground up. Would love to hear your thoughts, advice, or even connect with potential partners!

#reddit#seeking#investors,

reddit

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Sensitive_Yam_4365•This week

Looking to partner with a software developer

I am looking for a 50-50 partnership with a software developer who can create an offline-capable information repository that automatically suggests contract provisions and clauses based on provided information. Core Features • Clause Database: Store clauses and provisions locally • Search & Suggestion Engine: Automatically recommend relevant clauses based on keywords, contract type, or thresholds (e.g., dollar amounts triggering specific provisions). • Offline Access: Fully functional without an internet connection, with periodic updates as needed. Technical Approach • Data Source: Use publicly available resources (e.g., Acquisition.gov) and structure them for local search. • AI or Rule-Based Logic: • Basic: Rule-based tagging (e.g., contracts above $250K require certain clauses). • Advanced: AI-powered NLP (fine-tuned local LLM) to analyze contract details and suggest clauses. Implementation Considerations • Customization: Allow users to modify or add agency-specific clauses What I can offer is direct access to the target customer base for data testing and validation, along with experience navigating the acquisition process to get the product into the right hands and sold.

#reddit#looking#partner

reddit

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DesignedIt•This week

Looking For Tech-Savvy Business Partner

Hi! I'm looking for a business partner to help with one of my product lines or we could create a new product line together. I would like the product to be a digital asset where we can sell it on another website, where the other website brings customers to our product so we don't have to market it at first. Our short-term goal will be to publish a product one month after connecting and then make $1 by the following month. Our 4-month goal will be to generate $2,500 - $7,500 in passive income per year for one product line. I'm not trying to make a lot of money right away, but am looking to setup enough passive income so we can both retire early in a few years. For this year, I wrote down 100's of ideas, tried 30 ideas, have 14 ideas that work, and have only 6 ideas that would be profitable. So I'll bring with me only the best of the best ideas. I'm all about efficiency and doing things in bulk to maximize profit and decrease time spent, using AI to generate text/images/audio but adding on that manual touch to make all digital products high-quality and 5 stars, and using software like Python to automate repetitive processes to create digital products. My main skillset: running a business, project management, creating design and technical documentation, marketing, hiring, budgeting, business analysis, graphic design, software development, app development, web design/development, AI development, databases, data engineering, cloud/Azure, data analysis, and reporting. I know many other skills too and can pick up and learn a new business or technical skill pretty quickly. I also have a friend who's in IT/security/networking/servers if we need to bring him in. A clone of myself would be perfect to connect with, but working with anyone with a different skillset would open up the digital product possibilities. I might put tech-savvy at the top of the list so you could figure out how to create new digital products, while business-savvy might be #2, Other skills might be specific to individual products. If you're interested in working together, then feel free to post below or message me!

#reddit#looking#tech-savvy

reddit

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GrowthGet•This week

WE JUST GOT $2,500 in angel investment for our AI Cold Calling Startup! Hooray! Looking for web dev + digital marketing agencies to partner with.

Hey y'all. The AI cold calling startup I've been working on for 3-4 months now just got a $2,500 angel investment, and we have 2 current customers, a credit card processing broker and a hospital equipment rental company based out of Texas. We have around $1,500 revenue so far, but we're having lots of trouble fulfilling the contracts because our tech just isn't "there" yet. I'm the Chief Tech Officer, and I'm also running some operations. The other main person in this is the CEO who has a strong sales background and came up with the idea. I've been working purely remotely, and it's great having some income because I'm stuck at home because I'm disabled, basically... We're using 11labs, openai, google speech to text, and a sh\*tty online dialer right now to run the first MVP which runs locally on our "botrunners" computers, and we're developing a web app with django python + javascript react. Our plan is, after we get the webapp working better, to hire more botrunners for $3 per hour from countries like Phillipines and India, and we're going to try to track all the actions the botrunners take to be able to train the AI to run it fully automated. The biggest problem we're facing right now with the tech is reducing latency, it started at 27 seconds to get a response and I've been able to get it down to 6 seconds, but people are still hanging up. We're trying several ways to mitigate this, including having pre-rendered speech playing something like "Okay" or "As an artificial representative, I'm still learning to be quicker on the pickup. We appreciate your patience." One of the industries we want to target is international web development and digital marketing companies, and we want to use the bot to cold-call businesses to pitch them our services. The goal is to replace $30 an hour cold-callers from the USA with $3 per hour total-cost automation. Apparently the CEO was given a $5 million valuation from the strength of the MVP from a VC. Our investment so far was at a $300k valuation tho. It's exciting. Trying to get Twilio working to be able to make calls programmatically instead of using our hacky workaround. Let me know if you have any questions, or feedback. Looking for digital marketing and web dev agencies to partner with to test the next stage of our business model. Thanks. I just wanted to share this awesome news!

#reddit#just#$2,500

reddit

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1

DesignedIt•This week

Looking For Tech-Savvy Business Partner

Hi! I'm looking for a business partner to help with one of my product lines or we could create a new product line together. I would like the product to be a digital asset where we can sell it on another website, where the other website brings customers to our product so we don't have to market it at first. Our short-term goal will be to publish a product one month after connecting and then make $1 by the following month. Our 4-month goal will be to generate $2,500 - $7,500 in passive income per year for one product line. I'm not trying to make a lot of money right away, but am looking to setup enough passive income so we can both retire early in a few years. For this year, I wrote down 100's of ideas, tried 30 ideas, have 14 ideas that work, and have only 6 ideas that would be profitable. So I'll bring with me only the best of the best ideas. I'm all about efficiency and doing things in bulk to maximize profit and decrease time spent, using AI to generate text/images/audio but adding on that manual touch to make all digital products high-quality and 5 stars, and using software like Python to automate repetitive processes to create digital products. My main skillset: running a business, project management, creating design and technical documentation, marketing, hiring, budgeting, business analysis, graphic design, software development, app development, web design/development, AI development, databases, data engineering, cloud/Azure, data analysis, and reporting. I know many other skills too and can pick up and learn a new business or technical skill pretty quickly. I also have a friend who's in IT/security/networking/servers if we need to bring him in. A clone of myself would be perfect to connect with, but working with anyone with a different skillset would open up the digital product possibilities. I might put tech-savvy at the top of the list so you could figure out how to create new digital products, while business-savvy might be #2, Other skills might be specific to individual products. If you're interested in working together, then feel free to post below or message me!

#reddit#looking#tech-savvy

reddit

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1

GrowthGet•This week

WE JUST GOT $2,500 in angel investment for our AI Cold Calling Startup! Hooray! Looking for web dev + digital marketing agencies to partner with.

Hey y'all. The AI cold calling startup I've been working on for 3-4 months now just got a $2,500 angel investment, and we have 2 current customers, a credit card processing broker and a hospital equipment rental company based out of Texas. We have around $1,500 revenue so far, but we're having lots of trouble fulfilling the contracts because our tech just isn't "there" yet. I'm the Chief Tech Officer, and I'm also running some operations. The other main person in this is the CEO who has a strong sales background and came up with the idea. I've been working purely remotely, and it's great having some income because I'm stuck at home because I'm disabled, basically... We're using 11labs, openai, google speech to text, and a sh\*tty online dialer right now to run the first MVP which runs locally on our "botrunners" computers, and we're developing a web app with django python + javascript react. Our plan is, after we get the webapp working better, to hire more botrunners for $3 per hour from countries like Phillipines and India, and we're going to try to track all the actions the botrunners take to be able to train the AI to run it fully automated. The biggest problem we're facing right now with the tech is reducing latency, it started at 27 seconds to get a response and I've been able to get it down to 6 seconds, but people are still hanging up. We're trying several ways to mitigate this, including having pre-rendered speech playing something like "Okay" or "As an artificial representative, I'm still learning to be quicker on the pickup. We appreciate your patience." One of the industries we want to target is international web development and digital marketing companies, and we want to use the bot to cold-call businesses to pitch them our services. The goal is to replace $30 an hour cold-callers from the USA with $3 per hour total-cost automation. Apparently the CEO was given a $5 million valuation from the strength of the MVP from a VC. Our investment so far was at a $300k valuation tho. It's exciting. Trying to get Twilio working to be able to make calls programmatically instead of using our hacky workaround. Let me know if you have any questions, or feedback. Looking for digital marketing and web dev agencies to partner with to test the next stage of our business model. Thanks. I just wanted to share this awesome news!

#reddit#just#$2,500

reddit

0

1

Business_Boy1•This week

Looking for business partner with technical AI knowledge

Hi all, Posted on here a few times now about my idea (you can read this on my profile). After planning out the details of the process, I can see that it may just be best for me to seek a business partner with has existing AI knowledge. I’m looking for a more technical person who can provide recommendations on AI tools for businesses based on the current processes in order to be more efficient and productive. Looking for someone UK-based and I am 23 for reference with a consulting and BA background. Please reach out if this interests you :)

#reddit#looking#business

reddit

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armaan-dev•This week

Looking for a Business Partner for an AI Stock recommendation SaaS

Hey everyone, I’m a 15-year-old full-stack developer, currently building StockWise, a startup focused on AI-driven stock market insights and analytics. I can handle all engineering, backend, frontend, and AI-related work—but I need a business partner who can take care of the marketing, sales, and user acquisition side of things. So this SaaS is currently in development. Also this I believe this can be both b2c and b2b. Like for b2c - it's the website included, with the recommendations, for individual users, for b2b - we can provide API's. Here is the classic workflow : \-> You can give your preferences, such as your monthly investment capital, if you're expecting short term or long term, and also if there are any specific areas you are more interested like AI, hydrogen fuel related, ev, compaines. \-> Then with this data, we recommend you stocks to buy, analyzing your preferences, looking at market, researching, looking into company's stock history, background, product \-> You will also have a chatbot like interface you can talk to about anything, and it will be personalized \-> Also you can add your portfolio here, and you can get insights based on the market data \-> Also there can be a weekly newsletter, too, if you subscribe to it. I'm much more of a builder, likes to build stuff, is good at it, but not good at the business side of things, that's why I'm really looking for a business partner. If you’re interested in joining as a co-founder or business partner, drop a comment or DM me!, Thanks a lot, Armaan

#reddit#looking#business

reddit

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Rdqp•This week

Anyone wants to join? Looking for non technical partner

To keep things short, I'm a fullstack dev with 13+ years of exp in few startups (the most successful one is $200m+ valuation). Then launched my own gamedev business which operates well in codev and content production. Now I want to switch back into startups and use 140% of my time and expertise to bring a briliant product live after maybe few pivots. I already have one concept of AI daily newsletter with AI narrator imitating podcasts and/or tv live news but tailored for each user. Sound dumb? - Would love to hear and jump on your ideas baked by usp and market research then. Looking for someone with marketing/UA/fundraising expertise. And remember: It is not success that defines, but dedication.

#reddit#anyone#wants

reddit

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1

nervousslinky•This week

Introducing Vest: Your AI-Powered Due Diligence Partner - Looking for feedback!

TLDR; We are introducing Vest, an AI powered due-diligence and stock recommendation platform. We have bootstrapped ourselves so far and are wanting to get as much feedback from Reddit as we can to see where we can improve, but also what we are doing right. So please have a look around, give us feedback and if you like it, feel free to use it. Hi Reddit, My name is Drian and I'm one of the founders of Vest. We believe we are crafting something special at Vest and we want to get the word out and gather as much feedback as possible! Our major goal at Vest is to help new retail investors make sense of the investment landscape and get AI powered assistance, or even help experienced investors get confirmation of their potential moves. Overall, we want people to start their journey to financial freedom and not be daunted by the complexity of it. So how do we do this? Vest is a user-friendly service that harnesses fundamental metrics, social and news sentiment, and technical analysis, that we feed into some advanced AI models to generate clear buy, sell, or hold signals for US-based (for now!) stocks, offering our users transparent due-diligence for confident investing. The service is currently free with no ads - however, at some point we do plan on adding a paid tier. What's included: ​ Financial Metrics. Our financial metrics take all the potentially complex mathematical equations and present the fundamentals of a company to users in a simple 1 pager, with a score displaying if the metric is positive for a stock. We also provide publicly available analyst ratings from investment banks as well as price targets they have set. News Sentiment. We take publications about a specific stock from new articles, journals and socials and give these all a rating to determine if social sentiment is positive around a stock or not. Each article and its rating is visible to our users through through our dashboard. AI assisted Stock Signals. We have developed an algorithm to take all the metrics, sentiment and technical analysis we collate and analyze this with historic performance data for every stock to attempt to figure out if a stock is undervalued (great time to buy) or overvalued (great time to sell). 155 US stock tickers and counting. We currently have trained our models for around 155 US based stocks on the NASDAQ and NYSE exchanges. As we get more funding/runway we do plan on adding more, with the eventual goal to expand to more exchanges, countries and securities. Knowledge base and community. Our knowledge base & community contains explanations and articles for all metrics and the other good stuff behind Vest. We don’t want to just tell users what to do, but to also assist in their financial education. We hope our knowledge base can also become a thriving community where users can interact with us and each, ask questions around investing and keep gaining knowledge. Is it 100% accurate? Absolutely not. While we do a pretty great job at tracking and surfacing signals, we are not presenting a fool-proof, silver bullet with a guarantee here - rather a starting point for users to make more informed decisions, find potential new investment opportunities and hopefully learn about investing as they do so. We encourage our users to do their own research and due-diligence and not just take our signals as gospel - we know each and every person has a different risk appetite and goals, and we encourage you to use Vest in a way that fits with your own financial goals and risk appetite. We also display our win rates, average returns, and comparisons with buy and hold for each stock - and we are transparent about it when we’ve fallen short. Next steps: ​ Hope over to vestapp.ai and sign-up From the dashboard, play around, inspect our stock information and add some stocks to your watchlist. If you like what you see, and you’ve done your homework - use your favourite brokerage account to make an investment and watch Vest for changes in a stocks signals. If you don’t have one, we have a pop-up when you click buy/sell on any given stock with some non-affiliated brokerage options for the US, Australia and New Zealand - we don’t get a kickback from these brokerages, they are just what we’ve personally been using. FEEDBACK - We’re just getting started and we know the value of a fresh pair of eyes - our current mission is to get as much feedback as possible - anything you think of please send it through here or on the dedicated feedback form on our website in the sidebar on the left. Features we’re working on We're quietly thrilled about the direction Vest is headed, and we want to give you a sneak peek of what's in store for the next couple of quarters. Some of these may roll out as premium features, but we're diligently fine-tuning the details. Here's what you can expect: ​ Insider Trading Insights: Get daily reports on major stock moves by whales and company insiders. Institutional Holders: We're adding daily reports on institutional holders, keeping you informed about their moves. Lobbying Activity: We're actively working on daily updates about lobbying activities, so you can stay informed. Government Contracts Data: We'll provide a quarterly snapshot of government contract values for the companies you're tracking. US Congress Stock Activity: Keep an eye on daily trading actions of House and Senate members. Daily Summaries & Signal Alerts: We're currently hard at work on this feature. Soon, receive daily email summaries covering signals, watchlist updates, and key news. Personalized Risk Management: Tailor signals to match your unique risk management strategy. Your investments, your way. AI Assistant: Our LLM integration is almost ready, allowing you to ask it straightforward questions about particular securities in plain English. It will provide you with real-time context on fundamentals, news, and all the metrics and data points we monitor.

#reddit#introducing#vest:

reddit

0

0

updizizz•This week

Is AI The New Business Partner You’ve Been Waiting For?

READ HERE https://ziiziimarketer.com/2025/01/25/ai/

#reddit#business#partner

reddit

0

1

Altruistic-Flan-8222•This week

Looking for Social Media Marketing Partner(s) for High-Potential AI App Business

Hello everyone! I am Mak, and I'm a software engineer and AI developer with a few years of experience. I'm pretty young like the most of you and have an amazing idea. I'm sure that some of you have heard of Rizz, Plug, Wigman and similar apps. Those are simple AI apps that generate pickup lines for people, and I worked as an AI developer for one of the above. I got this business idea after analyzing more about this industry and realizing that these apps make TONS of money—like the one I worked for, which is making about $50k per WEEK using my AI solutions. That's crazy. The point is that I took a pause from working as a software engineer for clients and researched how to do the same thing. It took me a few months to actually understand everything about this business model, and Rizz apps are just one example of this type of business. There is one 17 yo guy I found who made "Cal AI" I guess, basically a simple AI app that analyzes your meal and provides info like calories, etc. I also created AI solutions for a guy who made an AI app that analyzes your face, provides Sigma analytics, and suggests how to improve your face, etc. So the point is that there are tons of AI app ideas that you can create for this industry. And the important fact is that the AI market is growing. Some important AI analytics say that in 2024, there were 1.5B AI app downloads, and mobile AI app consumer spending was $1.8B. That's huge. So, what am I looking for? I need someone, hopefully from the US, or someone who knows how to post social media content for US users, to help me out with my business idea. I'm self-funded and have already spent a lot on important requirements and equipment, which is why I need someone interested in revenue sharing. We can come up with a deal such as capped/tiered revenue share, profit share, deferred model, etc. We could discuss this privately since everyone has different experience levels and thoughts about this. Also, since I'm talking about experience, you don't need huge experience at all. You can be 16-25 years old just like me and only have marketing skills. However, to make it easier for those who don't have marketing skills, I am planning to create code that will automatically generate content for you, and all you need to do is post the content. But this is only for posting content without creating it and is for interested people from the US since I need US customers. However, if you have marketing skills and an idea for getting organic US views, please let's talk. Short info about my app: It is an AI app like the previous examples, which doesn’t yet exist. There is pretty big potential for app growth (60% of Americans could use this app), and it should be pretty easy to market. Good niche, good idea and overall solid market for this app idea. TL;DR I need someone interested in marketing my AI app in exchange for revenue share. No huge experience is needed. I would prefer someone from the US. If you are interested, feel free to contact me here on Reddit via private messages or below. We can talk here, on Discord, LinkedIn, or anywhere you prefer. Thanks once again!

#reddit#looking#social

reddit

0

1

CRAZYJELLY1•This week

Looking For A Business Partner

Hey everyone, I am looking for a person with adequate skills and experience in automating workflows using AI tools like Zapier, Make and n8n. If AI Automation is something that intrigues you and if you want to start a service based business in this niche, drop me a DM and let's connect! Thanks

#reddit#looking#business

reddit

0

1

CRAZYJELLY1•This week

Looking For A Business Partner

Hey everyone, I am looking for a person with adequate skills and experience in automating workflows using AI tools like Zapier, Make and n8n. If AI Automation is something that intrigues you and if you want to start a service based business in this niche, drop me a DM and let's connect! Thanks

#reddit#looking#business

reddit

0

0

East-Suggestion-8249•This week

I am a software engineer looking for partners to work on any kind of project

I am a software developer, I am sick of working 9 to 5, looking for someone who have a business a startup idea or other developers that plan to make something useful and can benefit from my experience, I can spin up full stack solutions including AI (no frontend) I made so many projects that didn’t make any profits but I think it just needs a group of serious people to start a business.

#reddit#software#engineer

reddit

0

1

CRAZYJELLY1•This week

Looking For A Business Partner

Hey everyone, I am looking for a person with adequate skills and experience in automating workflows using AI tools like Zapier, Make and n8n. If AI Automation is something that intrigues you and if you want to start a service based business in this niche, drop me a DM and let's connect! Thanks

#reddit#looking#business

youtube

0.419

0.77

Charlie Chang•Nov 15, 2023

5 Genius Ways to Make Money From Home (Using AI)

Check out Fundrise to get started with investing in pre-IPO blue-chip companies that are leading the AI industry: http://fundrise.com/charliechang #fundrisetestimonial #fundrisepartner In this video, I'm going to share 5 genius ways to make money online, using AI (that are all proven). I'll also give you a clear outline and show you exactly how to leverage these new AI opportunities to make money online. ► Daily advice and BTS on my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charliechang/ ► Get access to my FREE side hustle courses: https://www.sidehustlemastery.com My favorite business must-haves: 💳 Best business credit cards: https://yourbestcreditcards.com/card-finder/?ccid=2004 🏦 Novo (best business bank): https://startupwise.com/novo 🖥️ Best AI website builder ($3/month using code CHARLIECHANG): https://hostinger.com/charliechang ⚙️ Northwest (best $39 LLC formation service): https://startupwise.com/northwestLLC 🥇 Hire top 1% overseas talent: https://paired.so Whether it's optimizing businesses, doing social media management, or investing in pre-IPO tech companies, there are so many interesting opportunities that are out there for you guys to take advantage of. I highly encourage every aspiring entrepreneur out there to find a way to use AI because this can absolutely change the efficiency and output of your business. If you liked the video, and you want to see more videos on AI and making money, check out my videos: How To Use ChatGPT To Learn ANY Skill Quickly (Tutorial): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYvOTGk7hOA 5 Passive Income Ideas - How I ACTUALLY Make $35K/Week in 2023 https://youtu.be/TVLgIKMOYJ0 I hope you guys found this video helpful, and if you did please share it with a friend or family member who you think could benefit and also LIKE and SUBSCRIBE for more videos like this in the future! Thank you for watching and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day! – Charlie #AI #Money #SideHustle Timeline: 0:00 - Introduction 0:28 - Social Media Management Business 3:11 - AI Optimization Agency 5:41 - Investing in Pre-IPO AI Companies With Fundrise 8:12 - Building an E-commerce Business 10:00 - AI Automated Affiliate Marketing Business 11:12 - Conclusion 11:40 - Outro Disclaimer: Some of the links above may be affiliate links, which means that if you click on them I may receive a small commission. The retailers and financial services companies pay the commission at no cost to you, and this helps to support our channel and keep our videos free. Thank you! In addition, I am not a financial advisor. Charlie Chang does not provide tax, legal or accounting advice. The ideas presented in this video are for entertainment purposes only. Please do your own due diligence before making any financial decisions. ► My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charliechang/

#fundrisetestimonial#fundrisepartner#AI

coursera

0.475

0

Name: Andy Crestodina, Title: Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Orbit Media•This week

The Strategy of Content Marketing

This course is a partnership between the leading content marketing authority, Copyblogger, and UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education. In this course, you will learn the core strategies content marketers use to acquire and retain customers profitably. Specifically, you will learn how to develop, organize and implement a content marketing strategy, analyze and measure the effectiveness of content marketing, write compelling copy, use a strategic framework when writing, and build your professional brand and authority through content marketing. You will also learn how to put the ideas presented to you into action and build your own personal brand through content marketing.

#coursera#strategy#content

reddit

0

1

Democratizingfinance•This week

160 of Y Combinators 229 Startup Cohort are AI Startups with and 75% of the Cohort has 0 revenue

Y Combinator (YC), one of the most prestigious startup accelerators in the world, has just unveiled its latest batch of innovative startups, providing key insights into what the future might hold. Y Combinators Summer 2023 Batch In a recent post by Garry Tan, YC's president, Tan offers a nostalgic look back at his first YC Demo Day in 2008, where he, as a budding entrepreneur, pitched his startup. Now, fifteen years later, he's at the helm, proudly launching the 37th Demo Day, this time for the Summer 2023 batch. Tan proudly declares this batch as one of YC's most impressive yet, emphasizing the deep technical talent of the participants. From a staggering pool of over 24,000 applications, only 229 startups were chosen, making this one of the most competitive batches to date. This batch marks a number of firsts and solidifies several rising trends within the startups landscape. 75% of these companies began their YC journey with zero revenue, and 81% hadn't raised any funding before joining the accelerator. YC's decision to focus on early-stage startups this round signals their commitment to nurturing raw, untapped potential. A Return to Face-to-Face Interaction After three years, YC has brought back the in-person Demo Day format, allowing startups, investors, and mentors to connect directly. While the virtual format has its merits, there's an unmistakable magic in the YC Demo Day room, filled with anticipation, hope, and innovation. AI Takes Center Stage Artificial Intelligence is the standout sector in the Summer 2023 batch. With recent advancements making waves across various industries, there's arguably no better time to launch an AI-focused startup, and no better platform than YC to foster its growth. This signals a clear trend in the startup investing and venture capital space: AI is just getting started. Of the entire Summer 2023 batch, 160 out of the entire 229 Summer 2023 batch that are utilizing or implementing artificial intelligence in some capacity. This means over 2 out of every 3 startups accepted is focused on artificial intelligence in some capacity. Some of the startups include: Quill AI: Automating the job of a financial analyst Fiber AI: Automating prospecting and outbound marketing Reworkd AI: Open Source Zapier of AI Agents Watto AI: AI-powered McKinsey-quality reports in seconds Agentive: AI-powered auditing platform Humanlike: Replace your call center with voice bots that sound human Greenlite: AI compliance team for fintech and banking atla: AI assistants to help in-house lawyers answer legal questions Studdy: An AI Match tutor Glade: League of Legends with AI-generated maps and gameplay and literally over 100 others. As you can see, there's a startup covering nearly every sector of AI in the new batch. YC By The Numbers YC continues to grow as a community. The accelerator now boasts over 10,000 founders spanning more than 4,500 startups. The success stories are impressive: over 350 startups valued at over $150 million and 90 valued at more than $1 billion. The unicorn creation rate of 5% is truly unparalleled in the industry. To cater to the ever-growing community, YC has added more full-time Group Partners than ever. This includes industry veterans such as Tom Blomfield, co-founder of billion-dollar startups GoCardless and Monzo, and YC alumni like Wayne Crosby (Zenter) and Emmett Shear (Twitch). YC Core Values YC's commitment to diversity is evident in the demographics of the S23 batch. They've also spotlighted the industries these startups operate in, with 70% in B2B SaaS/Enterprise, followed by fintech, healthcare, consumer, and proptech/industrials. Garry Tan emphasizes three core tenets for YC investors: to act ethically, to make decisions swiftly, and to commit long-term. He underlines the importance of the YC community, urging investors to provide valuable introductions and guidance to founders. The Road Ahead With YC's track record and the promise shown by the Summer 2023 batch, the future of the startup ecosystem looks promising. As always, YC remains at the forefront, championing innovation and shaping the next generation of global startups. Original Post: https://www.democratizing.finance/post/take-a-peek-into-the-future-with-y-combinators-finalized-summer-2023-batch

#reddit#combinators#startup

reddit

0

1

uwalkirun•This week

Created the Shopify Alternative in a 3rd world country “I will not promote”

Built a Shopify alternative I’ve been a long-time follower of this subreddit and have always valued the insights shared here. Today, I’m reaching out to share our story and seek advice or guidance on potential next steps for our business. Four years ago, we set out to build a local e-commerce platform tailored to the unique challenges of operating in a third-world country where global solutions like Shopify fall short. Shopify, while a fantastic platform, doesn’t provide localized support or integrations here, and the costs of running a Shopify store are prohibitively high due to: The need for multiple apps to replicate basic functionality Expensive international support calls or long chat queues Higher payment gateway fees (no Shopify Pay) USD-only subscription payments, which incur additional bank conversion fees And more We built a solution that addresses these pain points, and today, we’re proud to have over 4,000 merchants on our platform, with 1,600+ paying customers. We’re processing over $1 million per month across 50,000+ orders, which translates to a significant impact in our local economy. As experienced founders, we’ve managed our financials meticulously, allowing us to thrive while many local competitors have shut down. However, scaling in our current economic climate has been challenging, and raising capital has proven to be incredibly tough. We’re exploring strategic options, including potential partnerships, acquisitions, or investments. For example, we believe our platform could be an attractive opportunity for a player like Shopify or another company looking to expand into emerging markets. I’m reaching out to this community to ask: Are there doors we haven’t knocked on? Are there opportunities or strategies we might be overlooking? Any advice, introductions, or insights would be immensely appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I look forward to any feedback or ideas you might have! [post refined by AI]

#reddit#created#shopify

reddit

0

1

adriannelestrange•This week

I studied how 7 Founders found their first 100 customers for their businesses. Summarizing it here!

I am learning marketing, and so I combed through the internet to find specific advice that helped founders reach 100 users and not random Google answers. Here’s what I found: Llama Life by Marie Marie founder of Llama Life, a productivity app ($51.4K+ revenue) got her first 100 users using Snowballing effect. She shared great advice that I want to add here verbatim, “Need to think about what you have that you can leverage based on your current situation. eg..When you have no customers, think about where you can post to get the 1st customer eg Product Hunt. If you do well on PH, say you get #3 product of the day, then you post somewhere else saying ‘I got #3 product of the day’.. to get your next few customers. Maybe that post is on reddit with some learnings that you found. If the reddit post does well, then you might post it on Twitter, saying reddit did well and what learnings you got from that etc. or even if it doesn’t do well you can still post about it.” Another tip she shared is to build related products that get more viral than the product itself. These are small stand-alone sites that would appeal to the same target audience, but by nature, are more shareable. On these sites, you can mention your startup like: ‘brought to you by Llama Life’ and then provide a link to the main website if someone is interested. If one of those gets viral or ranks on Google, you’ll have a passive traffic source. Scraping bee by Pierre Pierre, founder of Scraping Bee, a web scraping tool has now reached $1.5M ARR. Pierre and his cofounder Kevin started with 10 Free Beta Users in 2019, and after 6 months asked them to take a paid subscription if they wanted to continue using the product. That’s how they got their first user within 50 minutes of that email. Then they listed it on dozens of startup directories but their core strategy was writing the best possible content for their target audience — Developers. 3 very successful pieces of content that worked were : A small tutorial on how to scrape single-page application An extensive general guide about web scraping without getting blocked A complete introduction to web scraping with Python They didn’t do content marketing for the sake of content marketing but deep-dived into the value they were providing their customer. One of these got 70K visits, and all this together got them to over 100 users. WePay by Bill Clerico Bill Clerico left his cushy corporate job to build WePay which was then acquired for $400M got his first users by using his app. He got his first users by using his app! The app was for group payments. So he hosted a Poker tournament at his house and collected payments only with his app. Then they hosted a barbecue for fraternity treasurers at San Jose State & helped them do their annual dues collection. Good old word-of-mouth marketing, that however, started with an event where they used what they made! RealWorld by Genevieve Genevieve — Founder and CEO of Realworld stands by the old-school advice of value giving. RealWorld is an app that helps GenZ navigate adulthood. So, before launching their direct-to-consumer platform, they had an educational course that they sold to college career centers and students. They already had a pipeline of adults who turned to Realworld for their adulting challenges. From there, she gained her first 100 followers. Saner dot ai by Austin Austin got 100 users from Reddit for his startup Saner.ai. Reddit hates advertising, and so his tips to market your startup on Reddit is to Write value-driven posts on your niche. Instead of writing posts, find posts where people are looking for solutions DM people facing problems that your SaaS solves. But instead of selling, ask about their problem to see if your product is a good fit Heartfelt posts about why you built it, aren’t gonna cut it To find posts and people, search Reddit with relevant keywords and join all the subreddits A Stock Portfolio Newsletter A financial investor got his first 100 paid newsletter subscribers for his stock portfolio newsletter. His tips : Don’t reinvent the wheel. Work what’s already working. He saw a company making $500M+ from stock picking newsletter, so decided to try that. Find the gaps in “already working” and leverage them. That newsletter did not have portfolios of advisors writing them. That was his USP. He added his own portfolio to his newsletter. Now to 100 users, he partnered with a guy running an investing website and getting good traffic. That guy got a cut of his revenue, in exchange. That one simple step got him to 100 users. Hypefury by Yannick and Samy Yannick and Samy from Hypefury, Twitter and Social Media Automation tool got their first beta testers and users from a paid community. They launched Hypefury there and asked if someone wanted to try it. A couple of people tried it and gave feedback. Samy conducted user interviews and product demos for them, And shared the reviews on Twitter. That alone, along with word-of-mouth marketing on Twitter got them their first 100 users. To conclude: Don’t reinvent the wheel, try what’s working. Find the gaps in what’s working, and leverage that. Instead of thinking about millions of customers, think about the first 10. Then first 100. Leverage what you have. Get the first 10 customers, then talk about this to get the next 100. Use your app. Find ways, events, and opportunities to use your app in front of people. And get them to use it. Write content not only for SEO but also to help people. It won’t work tomorrow, but it will work for years after it picks up. Leverage other sources of traffic by partnering up! Do things that don’t scale. I’m also doing SaaS marketing deep dives over 30 pieces of content. I'm posting here for the first time, so I'm not sure if it will stay or not, sorry if it doesn't. I've helped a SaaS grow from $19K to $100K MRR as a marketer in last 2 years, and now I wanna dive deep. Cheers! (1/30)

#reddit#studied#founders

reddit

0

1

avtges•This week

So, you want to be a CEO?

I used to post here occasionally with business advice. But it turns out most of you in this sub have a dream, but seemingly no execution. You want to be rich sure, but without understanding what it takes to be a founder, run a startup, create a team around an idea and a strategy, and push them to their limits without burning them out, to win in a market that's never heard of you - not to mention the pressures on your personal life. So, I'm going to post a new game called, "So, You Want to Be A CEO?" The game: Each week I will post a reasonably complex challenge that a startup founder has to overcome, between inception of the company until it goes bust or series A. You respond with your best course of action - that is, what would you do in the situation provided? YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THE WORK! The rules: One response per person Your upvotes are your score for the week I will track them in the OP Scores are calculated on the Friday of that week You must answer the prompt completely, if you don't you lose half your points earned that week. ChatGPT is allowed, but it may not provide sufficient advice to win the game Prompt 1: "Boomerang" You are an HR executive turned entrepreneur. You have identified a significant issue: professionals over the age of 55 are struggling to re-enter the workforce and you also believe corporations are missing out on a wealth of institutional knowledge in retirement. You believe you can help solve this problem by creating Boomerang, a platform dedicated to empowering these individuals and corporate partners by connecting them with the best candidates aged 55 and older. Objective: Your goal is to validate your concept, develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and balance your personal responsibilities while laying the foundation for Boomerang’s success. This Week's Key Challenges and Decisions: Market Research Challenge 1: You need to validate the market need for Boomerang. This involves understanding the pain points of older job seekers and potential employers. This will take 4 days (non-sequential) How do you get started? Developing an MVP Challenge 2: With limited resources, you need to create an MVP that effectively demonstrates Boomerang’s value. This will take 2 days. Can be combined with other challenges. How do you get started? Dealing with Personal Health Issues Challenge 3: Your doctor mentioned your bloodwork is irregular, but can't pinpoint the cause. They recommend you see a specialist before Friday. This will take 1 day. Give it a shot! There's no right answer, just answer what your plan to do and try to optimize the use of your time to the best of your ability. EDIT: Scoreboard (I realize now the top post generally gets the most upvotes, so I may change the points system): u/conscious_border3019 - 22 u/inBoulderForSummer - 4 u/that_whey-or-the-lee - 3 u/AgencySaas - 3 u/Gold-Ad-8211 - 2 u/93024662 - 2 u/DeusExBam - 2 u/njm19920 - 2 u/SilentEconomist9265 - 2 u/ai_servant - 2 u/Background-Term2759 - 2 u/Insane_squirrel - 2 u/kiss_thechef - 2 u/codeyman2 - 2 u/Xentoxus - 2 u/LongComplex4395 - 2

#reddit#want#ceo?

reddit

0

1

adriannelestrange•This week

I studied how 7 Founders found their first 100 customers for their businesses. Summarizing it here!

I am learning marketing, and so I combed through the internet to find specific advice that helped founders reach 100 users and not random Google answers. Here’s what I found: Llama Life by Marie Marie founder of Llama Life, a productivity app ($51.4K+ revenue) got her first 100 users using Snowballing effect. She shared great advice that I want to add here verbatim, “Need to think about what you have that you can leverage based on your current situation. eg..When you have no customers, think about where you can post to get the 1st customer eg Product Hunt. If you do well on PH, say you get #3 product of the day, then you post somewhere else saying ‘I got #3 product of the day’.. to get your next few customers. Maybe that post is on reddit with some learnings that you found. If the reddit post does well, then you might post it on Twitter, saying reddit did well and what learnings you got from that etc. or even if it doesn’t do well you can still post about it.” Another tip she shared is to build related products that get more viral than the product itself. These are small stand-alone sites that would appeal to the same target audience, but by nature, are more shareable. On these sites, you can mention your startup like: ‘brought to you by Llama Life’ and then provide a link to the main website if someone is interested. If one of those gets viral or ranks on Google, you’ll have a passive traffic source. Scraping bee by Pierre Pierre, founder of Scraping Bee, a web scraping tool has now reached $1.5M ARR. Pierre and his cofounder Kevin started with 10 Free Beta Users in 2019, and after 6 months asked them to take a paid subscription if they wanted to continue using the product. That’s how they got their first user within 50 minutes of that email. Then they listed it on dozens of startup directories but their core strategy was writing the best possible content for their target audience — Developers. 3 very successful pieces of content that worked were : A small tutorial on how to scrape single-page application An extensive general guide about web scraping without getting blocked A complete introduction to web scraping with Python They didn’t do content marketing for the sake of content marketing but deep-dived into the value they were providing their customer. One of these got 70K visits, and all this together got them to over 100 users. WePay by Bill Clerico Bill Clerico left his cushy corporate job to build WePay which was then acquired for $400M got his first users by using his app. He got his first users by using his app! The app was for group payments. So he hosted a Poker tournament at his house and collected payments only with his app. Then they hosted a barbecue for fraternity treasurers at San Jose State & helped them do their annual dues collection. Good old word-of-mouth marketing, that however, started with an event where they used what they made! RealWorld by Genevieve Genevieve — Founder and CEO of Realworld stands by the old-school advice of value giving. RealWorld is an app that helps GenZ navigate adulthood. So, before launching their direct-to-consumer platform, they had an educational course that they sold to college career centers and students. They already had a pipeline of adults who turned to Realworld for their adulting challenges. From there, she gained her first 100 followers. Saner dot ai by Austin Austin got 100 users from Reddit for his startup Saner.ai. Reddit hates advertising, and so his tips to market your startup on Reddit is to Write value-driven posts on your niche. Instead of writing posts, find posts where people are looking for solutions DM people facing problems that your SaaS solves. But instead of selling, ask about their problem to see if your product is a good fit Heartfelt posts about why you built it, aren’t gonna cut it To find posts and people, search Reddit with relevant keywords and join all the subreddits A Stock Portfolio Newsletter A financial investor got his first 100 paid newsletter subscribers for his stock portfolio newsletter. His tips : Don’t reinvent the wheel. Work what’s already working. He saw a company making $500M+ from stock picking newsletter, so decided to try that. Find the gaps in “already working” and leverage them. That newsletter did not have portfolios of advisors writing them. That was his USP. He added his own portfolio to his newsletter. Now to 100 users, he partnered with a guy running an investing website and getting good traffic. That guy got a cut of his revenue, in exchange. That one simple step got him to 100 users. Hypefury by Yannick and Samy Yannick and Samy from Hypefury, Twitter and Social Media Automation tool got their first beta testers and users from a paid community. They launched Hypefury there and asked if someone wanted to try it. A couple of people tried it and gave feedback. Samy conducted user interviews and product demos for them, And shared the reviews on Twitter. That alone, along with word-of-mouth marketing on Twitter got them their first 100 users. To conclude: Don’t reinvent the wheel, try what’s working. Find the gaps in what’s working, and leverage that. Instead of thinking about millions of customers, think about the first 10. Then first 100. Leverage what you have. Get the first 10 customers, then talk about this to get the next 100. Use your app. Find ways, events, and opportunities to use your app in front of people. And get them to use it. Write content not only for SEO but also to help people. It won’t work tomorrow, but it will work for years after it picks up. Leverage other sources of traffic by partnering up! Do things that don’t scale. I’m also doing SaaS marketing deep dives over 30 pieces of content. I'm posting here for the first time, so I'm not sure if it will stay or not, sorry if it doesn't. I've helped a SaaS grow from $19K to $100K MRR as a marketer in last 2 years, and now I wanna dive deep. Cheers! (1/30)

#reddit#studied#founders

reddit

0

1

Afraid-Astronomer130•This week

Upselling from $8/mo to $2k/mo

I just closed a client for $1947/mo. But 5 months ago he was spending only $8/mo. Most customers have way more purchasing power than you think. Unlock it with the power of stacking. Here's my 3-steps stacking formula: Step 1 - Build trust with a low-ticket product In a world full of scams and deceit, building trust is damn hard. The best way to combat skepticism is through a free or low-ticket product, where you can go above and beyond to demonstrate your credibility. When I first onboarded this client onto my SaaS, an AI to help you with HARO link-building, my product was at a very early stage with many rough edges. He gave me lots of great feedback. I implemented his suggestions the same day and got more feedback from him. After a couple of back-and-forths, I established myself as a trustworthy hustler, instead of just a stranger online. This is easy to do for an agile startup but impossible for big companies, so make good use of opportunities like this to build long-term relationships. Turn your customers into raving fans. Step 2 - Validate a mid-ticket offer Three months into his subscription, he told me he wanted to cancel. When digging into the why, he suggested a performance-based DFY service to remove all the work on his end. Inspired by his suggestion, I took on him and 6 other clients for $237, a one-time package for 1 backlink. It's sold through my newsletter email blast to 300 subscribers, with a total CAC of $0. I wrote about the details of this launch in another long form. At this price range, impulsive purchases can still happen if you have a strong offer and good copywriting. Use this mid-ticket offer to validate your offer and positioning, build out a team, and establish trust. We went beyond the 1 link for almost all our clients, including this one in particular. For $237, we got him on Forbes, HubSpot, 2 DR50+ sites, and a few other smaller media outlets. By doing this, we further built trust into the relationship and established authority in what we do. Step 3 - Create a high-ticket subscription-based offer By now, you'll hopefully have built enough trust to get through the skepticism filter for something high-ticket. Now, it's time to develop an offer that amplifies your previous one. Something that allows you to let your clients achieve their goals to the maximum extent. For me, this is pitching every relevant media query on every platform for this client every day, to leverage HARO link-building to its full extent, all for a fixed price of $1947/mo. This customized offer is based on direct client feedback, isn't publicized on our website, but we're confident it will directly contribute to achieving this client's goal. A subscription-based offer is much superior because it allows you to create a stable source of revenue, especially at the early stage. That's how I created 3 different offers to solve the same problem for one client. By stacking each offer on top of the previous one, I was able to guide clients from one option to the next. This formula isn't some new rocket science I came up with. It's proven over and over again by other agency owners building in public, like Nick from Baked Design who started with a $9 design kit and now sells $9k/mo design subscriptions at $1M ARR. By stacking offers, you position yourself as a committed partner in your client's long-term success. Lastly, I want to address a common objection: "My customers can't afford $2k/month." But consider this: most people are reading your site on their $3000 MacBook or $1000 iPhone. It's not that they lack the funds, it's more likely that your service isn't meeting their expectations. Talk to them to discover the irresistible offer they'll gladly pay for. Update: lots of DM asking about more specifics so I wrote about it here. https://coldstartblueprint.com/p/ai-agent-email-list-building

#reddit#upselling#$8/mo

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SupermarketNew5003•This week

New to Startups; Where do I start?

I have an idea for an specialized AI based software system in a particular market that I think, if done well, could be a very helpful and lucrative software/AI (both for its owners as well as its users). It hasn't been properly implemented into any form that I or my associates have been able to find and I believe that now is the perfect time to start its development. I'm an entrepreneur, have started several successful companies over the years and am well experienced in all things business. But, none of my companies have involved creating a brand new product or would fall into the "Startup" category. It's a whole new world to me. That being said, I'm not sure what the proper steps are to make this idea come to fruition and am hoping for a point in the right direction. How do people usually go from idea to launch? I imagine there are 2 distinct things I need right now, funding for the project and a partner to help create the software. Step 1 would be the partner. For this partner, I'm not sure where to start to find this person. I'd imagine I need someone that's experienced in machine learning, AI engineering, software development, programming, etc. Or a combination of people with those skills. Since none of my companies are startup or tech based, I don't have connections to anyone with those skills. If I go around looking for a partner with those skills, I'll surely need to explain my idea to them and will need to be able to protect my idea before hand. Do I copyright it? Make them sign an NDA? What's common business practice? Where do I go to look for a partner with those skills? For funding, I can fund the initial stages of the project for a handful of months. From there, I'd like to find some kind of investment. But that sounds like a bridge to cross when I get further down that road. Looking forward to starting down this road and hopefully making something that benefits and pushes forward this new world of AI!

#reddit#startups;#start?

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colbyn-wadman•This week

Content aggregation that acts as a middleman for content discovery via third-party marketplace & revenue sharing (i will not promote but I'm looking for fellow researchers)

High level I’m considering a content aggregation business model, but one that acts as an open marketplace where third party devs and where world class data scientists compete to build the best recommenders for different use cases. (E.g. the incentives can be ad revenue sharing or subscription based for niche professional markets.) The idea is to facilitate more bottom up innovation from third party data scientists. The platform itself just acts as the middleman. (Also something that strips out original ads and makes it easy to skip paid sponsorship sections would be great.)  I’ve seen startups building web crawlers and content aggregation systems for other AI startups. My proposal is better in the sense that third party devs are instead responsible for implementing whatever questionable hacks are necessarily to scrape platforms that don’t necessarily want to be scraped.  Personally, I’m more concerned about getting the right information than ever before, to this end I can’t rely on platform specific recommenders. The solution is more bottom up innovation in content promotion. More generally, if you’re also concerned about consuming game changing information that’s too easily missed: we need a platform that incentivizes bottom up innovation of content promotion. What we need is a platform that functions like a marketplace where third party devs and where world class data scientists compete to build the best recommenders for different use cases. Here’s some elevator pitches I’m considering:  Did you know that the magic behind YouTube is its recommendation engine? Now, imagine an open platform where independent engines compete to deliver the most personalized content feed—from news to local events—directly to you. Interested in rethinking how we find content? “In today’s fragmented digital landscape, a single platform no longer holds sway over content discovery. The Network Effect is dead: audiences are more mobile than ever; and big tech killed it. In such a fragmented landscape we’re building a bottom-up, decentralized marketplace for recommendation engines—a solution that taps into diverse revenue streams through subscriptions, ad revenue, and affiliate partnerships. Invest in the future of personalized content aggregation.” “Are you a developer passionate about algorithms and content discovery? Our open marketplace lets you build and monetize your own recommendation engine, competing to deliver the most engaging, personalized feeds. Join a revolution where your innovation can directly shape how the world finds content.” “Are you tired of being told what to watch or read by one mysterious algorithm? Imagine taking control—choosing from a marketplace of smart recommendation engines that curate content just for you. It’s a revolution in content discovery where you hold the power.” (As a Utahn this one is interesting because even mormons are talking about the dangers of “doom scrolling” though it’s seldom discussed in society at large.) As far as simple hooks I’m considering:  One platform to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.  Choose how you discover—content recommenders that work for you.  The area where recommender engines battle to win your feed. Request I would love to start prototyping this idea and see what else I can uncover from such preliminary research. But I want to get a couple other likeminded individuals onboard.  I'm the best when it comes to iOS/macOS development, but there's tons of backend work that needs to be done which I wouldn’t have the time for if i'm focused on the native clients. Who am I 'ideally' looking for?  I’ve heard of weird stats to the effect that if you scale up a population to billions of people, the number of life overlaps starts skyrocketing. Not just physical lookalikes, but people with eerily similar life paths, personalities, habits, and even thoughts — without ever knowing each other. Where are my clones? Such is whom I’m looking for in an ideal world.  Take a hunch  People nowadays have no concept of going out on a limb, taking a ‘hunch’, and backing their instincts. Everything has to be calculated, proven, and guaranteed before they make a move. In contrast consider the success of the Chinese DeepSeek project: According to Asianometry’s YouTube video on DeepSeek, their “memory-saving multi-head latent architecture” (whatever that means, just quoting the name) came about from a researchers ‘hunch’, which the company bet big on and the result was drastically improved performance on low end hardware…  Here in the west the idea of betting on a hunch is inconceivable. We have no balls to chase long term insights. My own instincts when it comes to software is such because I’ve wasted too much of my life on small scale projects. All I’m trying to do is attempt a more scaled up experiment based on some hunches with me and a few other likeminded individuals.  Just as the early oil prospectors didn’t have precise maps—just intuition and test drills. They had to drill, analyze the pressure, and adjust. The best oil fields weren’t found by foresight alone, but by adaptive exploration. The startup space itself is liken to the first prospectors who got the gold nuggets lying in the riverbed. In such an environment moving first has its advantages but nowadays I wish I could have all those shitty ‘engineers’ sent to their maker.  Today the reality is such that you’ve got to dig deep—where vast stores of wealth can be found—or go home, and those who dig into the depths cannot use mere forethought, for what lies beneath cannot be seen by the mind’s eye.  I will not promote but I'm looking for fellow research oriented minds.

#reddit#content#aggregation

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tremendouskitty•This week

Using Claude.. I think I may have built something - suggested next steps, maybe get a dev house to build it? (I will not promote)

So, for context, I am an IT manager (non code) so I can converse all around tech, but I've just never had the nack for coding. My brain doesn't like it. I've been using different AI's for a while for general stuff, but I thought I would give Claude a go to build something that just popped into my head. Took me a while to figure out how to prompt it correctly, but it appears to have built each of the sections of this browser extension tool and even wrote me a business plan on it (which I didn't ask it to do). I had to pay for premium but boy did it just go to work. It has absolutely given me more than any other AI model yet including deepseek, chatgpt (free) and google gemini advanced (pro), I just don't know if it is good. Claude gave me the code as requested for the admin dashboard, backend implementation, browser extension, and security implementation - though I do recognise it probably won't be perfect and there will still be loads to do to get a fully functioning mvp together. So, I have this code... that I don't know how to use :D I'm a business mind that can speak technical, and I am looking to progress this forward. What are your suggestions to get it fully implemented? Find a partner/CTO (up for 50/50 split preferably in the UK), engage a dev shop to build it out, or I've heard places like fiverr are decent? Thoughts?

#reddit#claude..#think

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sweetpea___•This week

Looking for a tech cofounder. Revoltionary (yes really!) gig economy app. I will not promote.

Hey everyone! I’m building a new gig-work app that cuts out the hassles of interviews, applications, and sky-high fees. We’re aiming to make it easy for businesses to hire qualified freelancers for short shifts or one-off tasks—and for freelancers to set their own rates and get paid quickly. Why This App? Time-Saving Model: Instead of posting jobs and conducting multiple interviews, employers can instantly book from a list of KYC-verified freelancers who showcase their skills via 30-second video bios. Cost Leadership: We plan to charge only 5%, far below the 15–50% common in other gig platforms. This keeps more money in the pockets of both freelancers and businesses. Proven Demand: A beta test in 2018 drew nearly 600 active users, validating that there’s appetite for a simpler, fairer way to fill short shifts. About Me 20+ years’ experience in payroll, workforce management, and operations for Fortune 500 companies. Led cross-functional teams, implemented large-scale solutions, and believe in building with a user-first mindset. Offering meaningful equity—I want a true partner, not a hired gun. Who I’m Looking For Full-Stack Developer (comfortable with Node.js, React, Python, or similar and ML/Ai) who can manage everything from front-end to database integration (ideally Postgres/MySQL) and build a same day payments system. Passion for creating solutions that genuinely help gig workers and small businesses. Excitement to collaborate on the product roadmap, from the booking interface to same-day payment features. The Opportunity Major Market: The gig economy is huge and still growing. If we nail speed, cost-effectiveness, and ease of use, we can capture a significant share of it. Remote-Friendly: We can work together from anywhere, though I’m planning to relaunch in London where the initial beta gained momentum. If this sounds like your kind of challenge, drop a comment or DM me. Let’s chat about how we can merge our strengths—my operations background and your technical expertise—to build a platform that truly transforms the gig-work experience. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to creating something impactful together!

#reddit#looking#tech

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Straight_Club_6290•This week

Need advise on equity

Hey all, I am in the late stages of launching an app (Cloud native, API and AI based) with 3rd party data integration. We don’t have any user/revenue at this time but the base platform is almost ready with some user feedback. So far I have been the only one tackling the technical aspects (with some external help) and other non-technical aspects. Now I am teaming up with another partner who is going to be my technical co-founder who ideally will help in taking my platform forward and tweak the product depending on further user feedback. I am wondering what should be the equity offering to the co-founder in this situation considering that the product is in slightly late stage but also considering the skills required for this and also potential pivots we might have to do in future.

#reddit#need#advise

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avtges•This week

So, you want to be a CEO?

I used to post here occasionally with business advice. But it turns out most of you in this sub have a dream, but seemingly no execution. You want to be rich sure, but without understanding what it takes to be a founder, run a startup, create a team around an idea and a strategy, and push them to their limits without burning them out, to win in a market that's never heard of you - not to mention the pressures on your personal life. So, I'm going to post a new game called, "So, You Want to Be A CEO?" The game: Each week I will post a reasonably complex challenge that a startup founder has to overcome, between inception of the company until it goes bust or series A. You respond with your best course of action - that is, what would you do in the situation provided? YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THE WORK! The rules: One response per person Your upvotes are your score for the week I will track them in the OP Scores are calculated on the Friday of that week You must answer the prompt completely, if you don't you lose half your points earned that week. ChatGPT is allowed, but it may not provide sufficient advice to win the game Prompt 1: "Boomerang" You are an HR executive turned entrepreneur. You have identified a significant issue: professionals over the age of 55 are struggling to re-enter the workforce and you also believe corporations are missing out on a wealth of institutional knowledge in retirement. You believe you can help solve this problem by creating Boomerang, a platform dedicated to empowering these individuals and corporate partners by connecting them with the best candidates aged 55 and older. Objective: Your goal is to validate your concept, develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and balance your personal responsibilities while laying the foundation for Boomerang’s success. This Week's Key Challenges and Decisions: Market Research Challenge 1: You need to validate the market need for Boomerang. This involves understanding the pain points of older job seekers and potential employers. This will take 4 days (non-sequential) How do you get started? Developing an MVP Challenge 2: With limited resources, you need to create an MVP that effectively demonstrates Boomerang’s value. This will take 2 days. Can be combined with other challenges. How do you get started? Dealing with Personal Health Issues Challenge 3: Your doctor mentioned your bloodwork is irregular, but can't pinpoint the cause. They recommend you see a specialist before Friday. This will take 1 day. Give it a shot! There's no right answer, just answer what your plan to do and try to optimize the use of your time to the best of your ability. EDIT: Scoreboard (I realize now the top post generally gets the most upvotes, so I may change the points system): u/conscious_border3019 - 22 u/inBoulderForSummer - 4 u/that_whey-or-the-lee - 3 u/AgencySaas - 3 u/Gold-Ad-8211 - 2 u/93024662 - 2 u/DeusExBam - 2 u/njm19920 - 2 u/SilentEconomist9265 - 2 u/ai_servant - 2 u/Background-Term2759 - 2 u/Insane_squirrel - 2 u/kiss_thechef - 2 u/codeyman2 - 2 u/Xentoxus - 2 u/LongComplex4395 - 2

#reddit#want#ceo?

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found_it_online_01•This week

Selling equity - what’s next?

Hey all, Seeking some guidance / advice as I plan my exit from a marketing agency I helped grow to $5M Long story short, I was hired part time to build their digital marketing department that sat at around 40k annual agency revenue. Since then I’ve become a minority equity partner, and at one point the agency was above $5M in gross agency revenue. The digital department that I run had up to 13 FTE employees at one point And digital revenue accounted for 60% of all agency revenue for the last 3-4 years. So, why am I leaving? Things are groovy, right? Well, we have dropped from $5M to now $3M this year and we’ll be lucky to hit that. As a minority equity party it’s been hard to watch leadership continue to disregard our agency as a digital agency. They don’t want to niche down, and they don’t want to identify as a digital agency, but instead by a full service “strategic agency”. Clients have felt our lack of expertise and direction, so they leave for someone who is an expert in xyz platform or industry. I no longer see their vision, and so I’m planning a sale of my equity and looking for new venture opportunities. While I am perfectly capable of running Google ads and Facebook ads campaigns, and as an accomplished SEO I know how to rank sites, and still find it fun. But I’m not interested in the labor arbitrage model of agency work anymore. I’d rather build a portfolio of in-house properties or digital assets where I have more control. Lately my obsession has been using AI and zapier to automate business processes, documentation, project management etc. Agency life has also exposed me to a lot of industries and business models, which I am always fascinated by. Eventually I will launch my own business, but I’m supporting my partner while they finish school. So I’m a single income household.. Therefore a W2 would be ideal but I’m open to contract work. So my question is- what positions or roles would I fill? I’ve done my share of research but this community has always given me new things to consider. Any feedback or questions are welcomed.

#reddit#selling#equity

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joepigeon•This week

36 startup ideas found by analyzing podcasts (problem, solution & source episode)

Hey, I've been a bit of a podcast nerd for a long time. Around a year ago I began experimenting with transcription of podcasts for a SaaS I was running. I realized pretty quickly that there's a lot of knowledge and value in podcast discussions that is for all intents and purposes entirely unsearchable or discoverable to most people. I ended up stopping work on that SaaS product (party for lack of product/market fit, and partly because podcasting was far more interesting), and focusing on the podcast technology full-time instead. I'm a long-time lurker and poster of r/startups and thought this would make for some interesting content and inspiration for folks. Given I'm in this space, have millions of transcripts, and transcribe thousands daily... I've been exploring fun ways to expose some of the interesting knowledge and conversations taking place that utilize our own data/API. I'm a big fan of the usual startup podcasts (My First Million, Greg Isenberg, etc. etc.) and so I built an automation that turns all of the startup ideas discussed into a weekly email digest. I always struggle to listen to as many episodes as I'd actually like to, so I thought I'd summarise the stuff I care about instead (startup opportunities being discussed). I thought it would be interesting to post some of the ideas extracted so far. They range from being completely whacky and blue sky, to pretty boring but realistic. A word of warning before anyone complains – this is a big mixture of tech, ai, non-tech, local services, etc. ideas: Some of the ideas are completely mundane, but realistic (e.g. local window cleaning service) Some of the ideas are completely insane, blue sky, but sound super interesting Here's the latest 36 ideas: |Idea Name|Problem|Solution|Source| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |SalesForce-as-a-Service - White Label Enterprise Sales Teams|White-label enterprise sales teams for B2B SaaS. Companies need sales but can't hire/train. Recruit retail sellers, train for tech, charge 30% of deals closed.|Create a white-label enterprise sales team by recruiting natural salespeople from retail and direct sales backgrounds (e.g. mall kiosks, cutco knives). Train them specifically in B2B SaaS sales techniques and processes. Offer this trained sales force to tech companies on a contract basis.|My First Million - "Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas| |TechButler - Mobile Device Maintenance Service|Mobile tech maintenance service. Clean/optimize devices, improve WiFi, basic support. $100/visit to homes. Target affluent neighborhoods.|Mobile tech support service providing in-home device cleaning, optimization, and setup. Focus on common issues like WiFi improvement, device maintenance, and basic tech support.|My First Million - "Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas| |MemoryBox - At-Home Video Digitization Service|Door-to-door VHS conversion service. Parents have boxes of old tapes. Pick up, digitize, deliver. $30/tape with minimum order. Going extinct.|Door-to-door VHS to digital conversion service that handles everything from pickup to digital delivery. Make it extremely convenient for customers to preserve their memories.|My First Million - "Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas| |Elite Match Ventures - Success-Based Luxury Matchmaking|High-end matchmaking for 50M+ net worth individuals. Only charge $1M+ when they get married. No upfront fees. Extensive vetting process.|Premium matchmaking service exclusively for ultra-high net worth individuals with a pure contingency fee model - only get paid ($1M+) upon successful marriage. Focus on quality over quantity with extensive vetting and personalized matching.|My First Million - "Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas| |LocalHost - Simple Small Business Websites|Simple WordPress sites for local businesses. $50/month includes hosting, updates, security. Target restaurants and shops. Recurring revenue play.|Simplified web hosting and WordPress management service targeting local small businesses. Focus on basic sites with standard templates, ongoing maintenance, and reliable support for a fixed monthly fee.|My First Million - "Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas| |VoiceJournal AI - Voice-First Smart Journaling|Voice-to-text journaling app with AI insights. 8,100 monthly searches. $15/month subscription. Partners with journaling YouTubers.|AI-powered journaling app that combines voice recording, transcription, and intelligent insights. Users can speak their thoughts, which are automatically transcribed and analyzed for patterns, emotions, and actionable insights.|Where It Happens - "7 $1M+ AI startup ideas you can launch tomorrow with $0"| |AIGenAds - AI-Generated UGC Content Platform|AI platform turning product briefs into UGC-style video ads. Brands spending $500/video for human creators. Generate 100 variations for $99/month.|AI platform that generates UGC-style video ads using AI avatars and scripting. System would allow rapid generation of multiple ad variations at a fraction of the cost. Platform would use existing AI avatar technology combined with script generation to create authentic-looking testimonial-style content.|Where It Happens - "7 $1M+ AI startup ideas you can launch tomorrow with $0"| |InfographAI - Automated Infographic Generation Platform|AI turning blog posts into branded infographics. Marketers spending hours on design. $99/month unlimited generation.|AI-powered platform that automatically converts blog posts and articles into visually appealing infographics. System would analyze content, extract key points, and generate professional designs using predefined templates and brand colors.|Where It Happens - "7 $1M+ AI startup ideas you can launch tomorrow with $0"| |KidFinance - Children's Financial Education Entertainment|Children's media franchise teaching financial literacy. Former preschool teacher creating 'Dora for money'. Books, videos, merchandise potential.|Character-driven financial education content for kids, including books, videos, and potentially TV show. Focus on making money concepts fun and memorable.|The Side Hustle Show - "How a Free Challenge Turned Into a $500,000 a Year Business (Greatest Hits)"| |FinanceTasker - Daily Financial Task Challenge|Free 30-day financial challenge with daily action items. People overwhelmed by money management. Makes $500k/year through books, speaking, and premium membership.|A free 30-day financial challenge delivering one simple, actionable task per day via email. Each task includes detailed scripts and instructions. Participants join a Facebook community for support and accountability. The program focuses on quick wins to build momentum. Automated delivery allows scaling.|The Side Hustle Show - "How a Free Challenge Turned Into a $500,000 a Year Business (Greatest Hits)"| |FinanceAcademy - Expert Financial Training Platform|Premium financial education platform. $13/month for expert-led courses and live Q&As. 4000+ members generating $40k+/month.|Premium membership site with expert-led courses, live Q&As, and community support. Focus on specific topics like real estate investing, business creation, and advanced money management.|The Side Hustle Show - "How a Free Challenge Turned Into a $500,000 a Year Business (Greatest Hits)"| |SecurityFirst Compliance - Real Security + Compliance Platform|Security-first compliance platform built by hackers. Companies spending $50k+ on fake security. Making $7M/year showing why current solutions don't work.|A compliance platform built by security experts that combines mandatory compliance requirements with real security measures. The solution includes hands-on security testing, expert guidance, and a focus on actual threat prevention rather than just documentation. It merges traditional compliance workflows with practical security implementations.|In the Pit with Cody Schneider| |LinkedInbound - Automated Professional Visibility Engine|LinkedIn automation for inbound job offers. Professionals spending hours on manual outreach. $99/month per job seeker.|Automated system for creating visibility and generating inbound interest on LinkedIn through coordinated profile viewing and engagement. Uses multiple accounts to create visibility patterns that trigger curiosity and inbound messages.|In the Pit with Cody Schneider| |ConvoTracker - Community Discussion Monitoring Platform|Community discussion monitoring across Reddit, Twitter, HN. Companies missing sales opportunities. $499/month per brand tracked.|Comprehensive monitoring system that tracks competitor mentions and industry discussions across multiple platforms (Reddit, Twitter, Hacker News, etc.) with automated alerts and engagement suggestions.|In the Pit with Cody Schneider| |ContentAds Pro - Smart Display Ad Implementation|Display ad implementation service for content creators. Bloggers losing thousands in ad revenue monthly. Makes $3-5k per site setup plus ongoing optimization fees.|Implementation of professional display advertising through networks like Mediavine that specialize in optimizing ad placement and revenue while maintaining user experience. Include features like turning off ads for email subscribers and careful placement to minimize impact on core metrics.|The Side Hustle Show - "636: Is Business Coaching Worth It? A Look Inside the last 12 months of Side Hustle Nation"| |MoneyAppReviews - Professional Side Hustle App Testing|Professional testing service for money-making apps. People wasting time on low-paying apps. Makes $20k/month from affiliate commissions and ads.|Professional app testing service that systematically reviews money-making apps and creates detailed, honest reviews including actual earnings data, time investment, and practical tips.|The Side Hustle Show - "636: Is Business Coaching Worth It? A Look Inside the last 12 months of Side Hustle Nation"| |LightPro - Holiday Light Installation Service|Professional Christmas light installation service. Homeowners afraid of ladders. $500-2000 per house plus storage.|Professional Christmas light installation service targeting residential and commercial properties. Full-service offering including design, installation, maintenance, removal and storage. Focus on safety and premium aesthetic results.|The Side Hustle Show - "639: 30 Ways to Make Extra Money for the Holidays"| |FocusMatch - Research Participant Marketplace|Marketplace connecting companies to paid research participants. Companies spending weeks finding people. $50-150/hour per study.|Online platform connecting companies directly with paid research participants. Participants create detailed profiles and get matched to relevant studies. Companies get faster access to their target demographic while participants earn money sharing opinions.|The Side Hustle Show - "639: 30 Ways to Make Extra Money for the Holidays"| |SolarShine Pro - Specialized Solar Panel Cleaning Service|Solar panel cleaning service using specialized equipment. Panels lose 50% efficiency when dirty. $650 per job, automated scheduling generates $18k/month from repeat customers.|Professional solar panel cleaning service using specialized deionized water system and European cleaning equipment. Includes automated 6-month scheduling, professional liability coverage, and warranty-safe cleaning processes. Service is bundled with inspection and performance monitoring.|The UpFlip Podcast - "156. $18K/Month with This ONE Service — Niche Business Idea"| |ExteriorCare Complete - One-Stop Exterior Maintenance Service|One-stop exterior home cleaning service (solar, windows, gutters, bird proofing). Automated scheduling. $650 average ticket. 60% repeat customers on 6-month contracts.|All-in-one exterior cleaning service offering comprehensive maintenance packages including solar, windows, gutters, roof cleaning and bird proofing. Single point of contact, consistent quality, and automated scheduling for all services.|The UpFlip Podcast - "156. $18K/Month with This ONE Service — Niche Business Idea"| |ContentMorph - Automated Cross-Platform Content Adaptation|AI platform converting blog posts into platform-optimized social content. Marketing teams spending 5hrs/post on manual adaptation. $199/mo per brand with 50% margins.|An AI-powered platform that automatically transforms long-form content (blog posts, podcasts, videos) into platform-specific formats (Instagram reels, TikToks, tweets). The system would preserve brand voice while optimizing for each platform's unique requirements and best practices.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "Digital Threads: The Entrepreneur Playbook for Digital-First Marketing with Neal Schaffer"| |MarketerMatch - Verified Digital Marketing Talent Marketplace|Marketplace for pre-vetted digital marketing specialists. Entrepreneurs spending 15hrs/week on marketing tasks. Platform takes 15% commission averaging $900/month per active client.|A specialized marketplace exclusively for digital marketing professionals, pre-vetted for specific skills (video editing, social media, SEO, etc.). Platform includes skill verification, portfolio review, and specialization matching.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "Digital Threads: The Entrepreneur Playbook for Digital-First Marketing with Neal Schaffer"| |Tiger Window Cleaning - Premium Local Window Service|Local window cleaning service targeting homeowners. Traditional companies charging 2x market rate. Making $10k/month from $200 initial investment.|Local window cleaning service combining competitive pricing ($5/pane), excellent customer service, and quality guarantees. Uses modern tools like water-fed poles for efficiency. Implements systematic approach to customer communication and follow-up.|The Side Hustle Show - "630: How this College Student’s Side Hustle Brings in $10k a Month"| |RealViz3D - Real Estate Visualization Platform|3D visualization service turning architectural plans into photorealistic renderings for real estate agents. Agents struggling with unbuilt property sales. Making $30-40k/year per operator.|Professional 3D modeling and rendering service that creates photorealistic visualizations of properties before they're built or renovated. The service transforms architectural plans into immersive 3D representations that show lighting, textures, and realistic details. This helps potential buyers fully understand and connect with the space before it physically exists.|Side Hustle School - "#2861 - TBT: An Architect’s Side Hustle in 3D Real Estate Modeling"| |Somewhere - Global Talent Marketplace|Platform connecting US companies with vetted overseas talent. Tech roles costing $150k locally filled for 50% less. Grew from $15M to $52M valuation in 9 months.|Platform connecting US companies with pre-vetted overseas talent at significantly lower rates while maintaining high quality. Handles payments, contracts, and quality assurance to remove friction from global hiring.|My First Million - "I Lost Everything Twice… Then Made $26M In 18 Months| |GymLaunch - Rapid Gym Turnaround Service|Consultants flying to struggling gyms to implement proven member acquisition systems. Gym owners lacking sales expertise. Made $100k in first 21 days.|Expert consultants fly in to implement proven member acquisition systems, train staff, and rapidly fill gyms with new members. The service combines sales training, marketing automation, and proven conversion tactics to transform struggling gyms into profitable businesses within weeks.|My First Million - "I Lost Everything Twice… Then Made $26M In 18 Months| |PublishPlus - Publishing Backend Monetization|Backend monetization system for publishing companies. One-time customers becoming recurring revenue. Grew business from $2M to $110M revenue.|Add complementary backend products and services to increase customer lifetime value. Develop software tools and additional services that natural extend from initial publishing product. Focus on high-margin recurring revenue streams.|My First Million - "I Lost Everything Twice… Then Made $26M In 18 Months| |WelcomeBot - Automated Employee Onboarding Platform|Automated employee welcome platform. HR teams struggling with consistent onboarding. $99/month per 100 employees.|An automated onboarding platform that creates personalized welcome experiences through pre-recorded video messages, scheduled check-ins, and automated swag delivery. The platform would ensure consistent high-quality onboarding regardless of timing or location.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "Free Training on Building Systems and Processes to Scale Your Business with Chris Ronzio: An EOFire Classic from 2021"| |ProcessBrain - Business Knowledge Documentation Platform|SaaS platform turning tribal knowledge into documented processes. Business owners spending hours training new hires. $199/month per company.|A software platform that makes it easy to document and delegate business processes and procedures. The platform would include templates, guided documentation flows, and tools to easily share and update procedures. It would help businesses create a comprehensive playbook of their operations.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "Free Training on Building Systems and Processes to Scale Your Business with Chris Ronzio: An EOFire Classic from 2021"| |TradeMatch - Modern Manufacturing Job Marketplace|Modern job board making manufacturing sexy again. Factory jobs paying $40/hr but can't recruit. $500 per successful referral.|A specialized job marketplace and recruitment platform focused exclusively on modern manufacturing and trade jobs. The platform would combine TikTok-style content marketing, referral programs, and modern UX to make manufacturing jobs appealing to Gen Z and young workers. Would leverage existing $500 referral fees and industry demand.|My First Million - "He Sold His Company For $15M, Then Got A Job At McDonald’s"| |GroundLevel - Executive Immersion Program|Structured program putting CEOs in front-line jobs. Executives disconnected from workers. $25k per placement.|A structured program that places executives and founders in front-line jobs (retail, warehouse, service) for 2-4 weeks with documentation and learning framework. Similar to Scott Heiferman's McDonald's experience but productized.|My First Million - "He Sold His Company For $15M, Then Got A Job At McDonald’s"| |OneStepAhead - Micro-Mentorship Marketplace|Marketplace for 30-min mentorship calls with people one step ahead. Professionals seeking specific guidance. Takes 15% of session fees.|MicroMentor Marketplace - Platform connecting people with mentors who are just one step ahead in their journey for focused, affordable micro-mentorship sessions.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "How to Create an Unbroken Business with Michael Unbroken: An EOFire Classic from 2021"| |VulnerableLeader - Leadership Authenticity Training Platform|Leadership vulnerability training platform. Leaders struggling with authentic communication. $2k/month per company subscription.|Leadership Vulnerability Platform - A digital training platform combining assessment tools, guided exercises, and peer support to help leaders develop authentic communication skills. The platform would include real-world scenarios, video coaching, and measurable metrics for tracking leadership growth through vulnerability.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "How to Create an Unbroken Business with Michael Unbroken: An EOFire Classic from 2021"| |NetworkAI - Smart Network Intelligence Platform|AI analyzing your network to find hidden valuable connections. Professionals missing opportunities in existing contacts. $49/month per user.|AI Network Navigator - Smart tool that analyzes your professional network across platforms, identifies valuable hidden connections, and suggests specific actionable ways to leverage relationships for mutual benefit.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "How to Create an Unbroken Business with Michael Unbroken: An EOFire Classic from 2021"| |Porch Pumpkins - Seasonal Decoration Service|Full-service porch pumpkin decoration. Homeowners spend $300-1350 per season. One operator making $1M in 8 weeks seasonal revenue.|Full-service seasonal porch decoration service focused on autumn/Halloween, including design, installation, maintenance, and removal. Offering premium curated pumpkin arrangements with various package tiers.|My First Million - "The guy who gets paid $80K/yr to do nothing"| |Silent Companion - Professional Presence Service|Professional silent companions for lonely people. Huge problem in Japan/globally. $68/session, $80k/year per companion. Non-sexual, just presence.|A professional companion service where individuals can rent a non-judgmental, quiet presence for various activities. The companion provides silent company without the pressure of conversation or social performance. They accompany clients to events, meals, or just sit quietly together.|My First Million - "The guy who gets paid $80K/yr to do nothing"| Hope this is useful. If anyone would like to ensure I include any particular podcasts or episodes etc. in future posts, very happy to do so. I'll generally send \~5 ideas per week in a short weekly digest format (you can see the format I'd usually use in here: podcastmarketwatch.beehiiv.com). I find it mindblowing that the latest models with large context windows make it even possible to analyze full transcripts at such scale. It's a very exciting time we're living through! Would love some feedback on this stuff, happy to iterate and improve the analysis/ideas... or create a new newsletter on a different topic if anyone would like. Cheers!

#reddit#startup#ideas

reddit

0

1

GummyBear8659•This week

What I Learned from a Failed Startup: Seeking Advice on Engineering, Co-Founder Agreements & Execution (i will not promote)

Hey everyone! Long-time lurker, first-time founder here. I’m reaching out to get feedback on a recent startup experience—what went wrong, what I could have done better, and how I should approach future opportunities. The Background There were three founders in this venture: • Founder A (CEO, 50%) – The product/growth guy who identified the problem space. • Founder B (Me, CTO, 37.5%) – A software engineer with a software dev shop and multiple clients. I wanted to diversify into building my own products but am not inherently a “product person.” • Founder C (COO, 12.5%) – Brought into the mix by Founder A, with the goal of leveraging his network for traction once the product was built. The idea was to create Product X, a solution targeting the SMB space while competitors were moving upmarket. It wasn’t revolutionary—more of a strategic market play. The Initial Plan & My Role • Founder A would define and prioritize product specs, guiding what needed to be built. • I (Founder B) didn’t have time to code myself, so I allocated engineers from my dev shop (which I personally paid for). My stake was adjusted from 32.5% to 37.5% to reflect this contribution. • Founder C was more of an observer early on, planning to help with traction once we had a product ready. We agreed on a 1-year cliff and a 4-year vesting schedule for equity. Where Things Started to Go Wrong • Lack of a Clear Product Roadmap – Founder A was very focused on getting something built fast, but we never signed off on a structured roadmap or milestones. I underestimated the complexity of what was actually needed for customer conversations. • Engineering Expectations vs. Reality – The team (one part-time lead + two full-time juniors from my dev shop) faced early feedback that development was too slow. In response, I ramped up the lead to full-time and added a part-time PM. But Founder A continued pushing for speed, despite real hurdles (OAuth integrations, etc.). • Shifting MVP Goalposts – Midway, Founder A concluded that an MVP wouldn’t cut it—we needed a more complete product to be competitive. This meant more engineering, more delays, and more of my own money spent on development. The Breaking Point Near the 1-year vesting mark, we had an opportunity: a paying client willing to fund an app. I didn’t have devs on the bench, so I asked Founder A to hold off our project briefly while I hired more engineers to avoid stalling either effort. This was the final straw. Founder A (with Founder C somewhat aligned) decided the arrangement wasn’t working—citing past disagreements and the “slowness” issue. The decision was made to end the partnership. Now, Founder A, as majority holder, is requesting a full handover of the code, Founder C is indifferent, and all engineering costs I covered are essentially lost. Key Takeaways (So Far) Crystal-Clear Agreements Upfront – A formalized product roadmap and timeline should’ve been locked in from day one. Business Needs > Engineering Standards – I wanted to build something solid and scalable, but in an early-stage startup, speed to market is king. This was before AI tools became mainstream, so our approach wasn’t as optimized. Don’t Overextend Without Protection – I personally financed all engineering, but without clear safeguards, that investment became a sunk cost. Expenses Must Be Distributed – I was solely covering engineering salaries, which created an imbalance in financial risk. Future partnerships should ensure costs are shared proportionally, rather than one person shouldering the burden. Where I Need Advice Looking back, I want to improve as an engineer, CEO, and co-founder. • What should I have done differently in structuring this partnership? • How do you balance engineering quality with the startup need for speed? • As a dev shop owner, how can I better navigate equity deals where I’m also bringing in engineering resources? I really appreciate everyone who went through this long post and provide any insights from founders, engineers, or anyone who has been in a similar situation. Thanks for reading! ===================================================================== For readers who might be thinking what set this type of expectation? Because I had a dev shop and I thought my co-founders will be understanding of my business circumstance and I was a bit trigger to build a product with a C-exec team, I gave the impression of "unlimited" engineering which I later realized down the line that it was not feasible for me. Something I learned that I have to be more careful with and set expectations accordingly from the very beginning. And from the feedback of the commenters here, I am much more aware what I should offer and how to set expectations, esp. in the early stages of execution. So thank you all! 🙏🏾 EDIT: I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this thread. You not only helped me but future founders who are considering to get into the startup scene!

#reddit#learned#failed

reddit

0

1

sweetpea___•This week

Looking for a tech cofounder. Revoltionary (yes really!) gig economy app. I will not promote.

Hey everyone! I’m building a new gig-work app that cuts out the hassles of interviews, applications, and sky-high fees. We’re aiming to make it easy for businesses to hire qualified freelancers for short shifts or one-off tasks—and for freelancers to set their own rates and get paid quickly. Why This App? Time-Saving Model: Instead of posting jobs and conducting multiple interviews, employers can instantly book from a list of KYC-verified freelancers who showcase their skills via 30-second video bios. Cost Leadership: We plan to charge only 5%, far below the 15–50% common in other gig platforms. This keeps more money in the pockets of both freelancers and businesses. Proven Demand: A beta test in 2018 drew nearly 600 active users, validating that there’s appetite for a simpler, fairer way to fill short shifts. About Me 20+ years’ experience in payroll, workforce management, and operations for Fortune 500 companies. Led cross-functional teams, implemented large-scale solutions, and believe in building with a user-first mindset. Offering meaningful equity—I want a true partner, not a hired gun. Who I’m Looking For Full-Stack Developer (comfortable with Node.js, React, Python, or similar and ML/Ai) who can manage everything from front-end to database integration (ideally Postgres/MySQL) and build a same day payments system. Passion for creating solutions that genuinely help gig workers and small businesses. Excitement to collaborate on the product roadmap, from the booking interface to same-day payment features. The Opportunity Major Market: The gig economy is huge and still growing. If we nail speed, cost-effectiveness, and ease of use, we can capture a significant share of it. Remote-Friendly: We can work together from anywhere, though I’m planning to relaunch in London where the initial beta gained momentum. If this sounds like your kind of challenge, drop a comment or DM me. Let’s chat about how we can merge our strengths—my operations background and your technical expertise—to build a platform that truly transforms the gig-work experience. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to creating something impactful together!

#reddit#looking#tech

reddit

0

1

GummyBear8659•This week

What I Learned from a Failed Startup: Seeking Advice on Engineering, Co-Founder Agreements & Execution (i will not promote)

Hey everyone! Long-time lurker, first-time founder here. I’m reaching out to get feedback on a recent startup experience—what went wrong, what I could have done better, and how I should approach future opportunities. The Background There were three founders in this venture: • Founder A (CEO, 50%) – The product/growth guy who identified the problem space. • Founder B (Me, CTO, 37.5%) – A software engineer with a software dev shop and multiple clients. I wanted to diversify into building my own products but am not inherently a “product person.” • Founder C (COO, 12.5%) – Brought into the mix by Founder A, with the goal of leveraging his network for traction once the product was built. The idea was to create Product X, a solution targeting the SMB space while competitors were moving upmarket. It wasn’t revolutionary—more of a strategic market play. The Initial Plan & My Role • Founder A would define and prioritize product specs, guiding what needed to be built. • I (Founder B) didn’t have time to code myself, so I allocated engineers from my dev shop (which I personally paid for). My stake was adjusted from 32.5% to 37.5% to reflect this contribution. • Founder C was more of an observer early on, planning to help with traction once we had a product ready. We agreed on a 1-year cliff and a 4-year vesting schedule for equity. Where Things Started to Go Wrong • Lack of a Clear Product Roadmap – Founder A was very focused on getting something built fast, but we never signed off on a structured roadmap or milestones. I underestimated the complexity of what was actually needed for customer conversations. • Engineering Expectations vs. Reality – The team (one part-time lead + two full-time juniors from my dev shop) faced early feedback that development was too slow. In response, I ramped up the lead to full-time and added a part-time PM. But Founder A continued pushing for speed, despite real hurdles (OAuth integrations, etc.). • Shifting MVP Goalposts – Midway, Founder A concluded that an MVP wouldn’t cut it—we needed a more complete product to be competitive. This meant more engineering, more delays, and more of my own money spent on development. The Breaking Point Near the 1-year vesting mark, we had an opportunity: a paying client willing to fund an app. I didn’t have devs on the bench, so I asked Founder A to hold off our project briefly while I hired more engineers to avoid stalling either effort. This was the final straw. Founder A (with Founder C somewhat aligned) decided the arrangement wasn’t working—citing past disagreements and the “slowness” issue. The decision was made to end the partnership. Now, Founder A, as majority holder, is requesting a full handover of the code, Founder C is indifferent, and all engineering costs I covered are essentially lost. Key Takeaways (So Far) Crystal-Clear Agreements Upfront – A formalized product roadmap and timeline should’ve been locked in from day one. Business Needs > Engineering Standards – I wanted to build something solid and scalable, but in an early-stage startup, speed to market is king. This was before AI tools became mainstream, so our approach wasn’t as optimized. Don’t Overextend Without Protection – I personally financed all engineering, but without clear safeguards, that investment became a sunk cost. Expenses Must Be Distributed – I was solely covering engineering salaries, which created an imbalance in financial risk. Future partnerships should ensure costs are shared proportionally, rather than one person shouldering the burden. Where I Need Advice Looking back, I want to improve as an engineer, CEO, and co-founder. • What should I have done differently in structuring this partnership? • How do you balance engineering quality with the startup need for speed? • As a dev shop owner, how can I better navigate equity deals where I’m also bringing in engineering resources? I really appreciate everyone who went through this long post and provide any insights from founders, engineers, or anyone who has been in a similar situation. Thanks for reading! ===================================================================== For readers who might be thinking what set this type of expectation? Because I had a dev shop and I thought my co-founders will be understanding of my business circumstance and I was a bit trigger to build a product with a C-exec team, I gave the impression of "unlimited" engineering which I later realized down the line that it was not feasible for me. Something I learned that I have to be more careful with and set expectations accordingly from the very beginning. And from the feedback of the commenters here, I am much more aware what I should offer and how to set expectations, esp. in the early stages of execution. So thank you all! 🙏🏾 EDIT: I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this thread. You not only helped me but future founders who are considering to get into the startup scene!

#reddit#learned#failed

reddit

0

1

adriannelestrange•This week

I studied how 7 Founders found their first 100 customers for their businesses. Summarizing it here!

I am learning marketing, and so I combed through the internet to find specific advice that helped founders reach 100 users and not random Google answers. Here’s what I found: Llama Life by Marie Marie founder of Llama Life, a productivity app ($51.4K+ revenue) got her first 100 users using Snowballing effect. She shared great advice that I want to add here verbatim, “Need to think about what you have that you can leverage based on your current situation. eg..When you have no customers, think about where you can post to get the 1st customer eg Product Hunt. If you do well on PH, say you get #3 product of the day, then you post somewhere else saying ‘I got #3 product of the day’.. to get your next few customers. Maybe that post is on reddit with some learnings that you found. If the reddit post does well, then you might post it on Twitter, saying reddit did well and what learnings you got from that etc. or even if it doesn’t do well you can still post about it.” Another tip she shared is to build related products that get more viral than the product itself. These are small stand-alone sites that would appeal to the same target audience, but by nature, are more shareable. On these sites, you can mention your startup like: ‘brought to you by Llama Life’ and then provide a link to the main website if someone is interested. If one of those gets viral or ranks on Google, you’ll have a passive traffic source. Scraping bee by Pierre Pierre, founder of Scraping Bee, a web scraping tool has now reached $1.5M ARR. Pierre and his cofounder Kevin started with 10 Free Beta Users in 2019, and after 6 months asked them to take a paid subscription if they wanted to continue using the product. That’s how they got their first user within 50 minutes of that email. Then they listed it on dozens of startup directories but their core strategy was writing the best possible content for their target audience — Developers. 3 very successful pieces of content that worked were : A small tutorial on how to scrape single-page application An extensive general guide about web scraping without getting blocked A complete introduction to web scraping with Python They didn’t do content marketing for the sake of content marketing but deep-dived into the value they were providing their customer. One of these got 70K visits, and all this together got them to over 100 users. WePay by Bill Clerico Bill Clerico left his cushy corporate job to build WePay which was then acquired for $400M got his first users by using his app. He got his first users by using his app! The app was for group payments. So he hosted a Poker tournament at his house and collected payments only with his app. Then they hosted a barbecue for fraternity treasurers at San Jose State & helped them do their annual dues collection. Good old word-of-mouth marketing, that however, started with an event where they used what they made! RealWorld by Genevieve Genevieve — Founder and CEO of Realworld stands by the old-school advice of value giving. RealWorld is an app that helps GenZ navigate adulthood. So, before launching their direct-to-consumer platform, they had an educational course that they sold to college career centers and students. They already had a pipeline of adults who turned to Realworld for their adulting challenges. From there, she gained her first 100 followers. Saner dot ai by Austin Austin got 100 users from Reddit for his startup Saner.ai. Reddit hates advertising, and so his tips to market your startup on Reddit is to Write value-driven posts on your niche. Instead of writing posts, find posts where people are looking for solutions DM people facing problems that your SaaS solves. But instead of selling, ask about their problem to see if your product is a good fit Heartfelt posts about why you built it, aren’t gonna cut it To find posts and people, search Reddit with relevant keywords and join all the subreddits A Stock Portfolio Newsletter A financial investor got his first 100 paid newsletter subscribers for his stock portfolio newsletter. His tips : Don’t reinvent the wheel. Work what’s already working. He saw a company making $500M+ from stock picking newsletter, so decided to try that. Find the gaps in “already working” and leverage them. That newsletter did not have portfolios of advisors writing them. That was his USP. He added his own portfolio to his newsletter. Now to 100 users, he partnered with a guy running an investing website and getting good traffic. That guy got a cut of his revenue, in exchange. That one simple step got him to 100 users. Hypefury by Yannick and Samy Yannick and Samy from Hypefury, Twitter and Social Media Automation tool got their first beta testers and users from a paid community. They launched Hypefury there and asked if someone wanted to try it. A couple of people tried it and gave feedback. Samy conducted user interviews and product demos for them, And shared the reviews on Twitter. That alone, along with word-of-mouth marketing on Twitter got them their first 100 users. To conclude: Don’t reinvent the wheel, try what’s working. Find the gaps in what’s working, and leverage that. Instead of thinking about millions of customers, think about the first 10. Then first 100. Leverage what you have. Get the first 10 customers, then talk about this to get the next 100. Use your app. Find ways, events, and opportunities to use your app in front of people. And get them to use it. Write content not only for SEO but also to help people. It won’t work tomorrow, but it will work for years after it picks up. Leverage other sources of traffic by partnering up! Do things that don’t scale. I’m also doing SaaS marketing deep dives over 30 pieces of content. I'm posting here for the first time, so I'm not sure if it will stay or not, sorry if it doesn't. I've helped a SaaS grow from $19K to $100K MRR as a marketer in last 2 years, and now I wanna dive deep. Cheers! (1/30)

#reddit#studied#founders

reddit

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EntryElectronic•This week

Seeking Your Feedback: SeedHustle and Your Small Business Journey✨

Hello, everyone, I'm one of the co-founder of SeedHustle, and I wanted to have an authentic discussion with you about our recent developments. SeedHustle is a project dear to us, with the aim of simplifying the often complex process of connecting startups with venture capitalists. 🌟 Why did we embark on this journey? Well, we've been in your shoes, experiencing the frustration of the never-ending search for the right VC partner and the challenges of establishing meaningful connections. This shared experience led to the creation of (https://seedhustle.ai/ ) . So, what's the deal with SeedHustle? It's our effort to streamline the process of finding the ideal VC match. You provide us with your company details, and our AI system goes to work, suggesting potential VCs and explaining why they might be a good fit based on their past investments and backgrounds. We also provide real-time data on their funds. We're currently in the private beta phase and want to extend an invitation to join our Discord community. It's a space where founders can share their stories and possibly make introductions to VCs. As founders who thrive on AI challenges, we believe this could be a game-changer. 👂 I'm here to have an open dialogue. Is there anything you'd like to discuss? Whether it's SeedHustle, our journey, or your own small business experiences, we're all ears. Here are a few conversation starters: \-Does SeedHustle align with your small business journey? \-Do you have any suggestions for how we can improve our platform? \-Is there anything about what we're doing that's unclear or not quite resonating with you? Your feedback is incredibly valuable to us, so please feel free to reach out. Thank you for being a part of this journey, and we hope to see you in our Discord community for a chat! 😊🚀

#reddit#seeking#your

reddit

0

1

DinoR6•This week

Am I Offering Too Many Services as a New Agency? Need Advice!

Hey everyone, I recently made a big decision to close my marketing agency (which was doing well) and reopen with my partner, who’s a talented graphic designer specializing in logos and branding. We’re excited to start fresh, but I’m worried we might be biting off more than we can chew. Our current plan is to offer a wide range of services, including: Graphic Design (logos, branding, social media graphics) Web Design & Development (landing pages, e-commerce, custom websites) Digital Marketing (SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media management) Copywriting (website copy, blogs, product descriptions) AI Solutions (chatbots, virtual assistants) To make it easier for clients, we’ve grouped these services into 3 main packages: Business Packages (websites, branding, and marketing essentials) Branding Packages (logos, brand identity, and design assets) Social Media Packages (content creation, management, and strategy) I used to focus solely on marketing, but now we’re combining our skills to offer a full-service experience. While this feels like a natural progression, I’m concerned about spreading ourselves too thin, especially as a new agency. Has anyone been in a similar situation? Should we narrow our focus initially and expand later, or is offering a broad range of services (with clear packages) a good strategy to attract more clients? Any advice or experiences would be super helpful! Thanks in advance!

#reddit#offering#many

reddit

0

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yamaggie•This week

Struggling with Cold Start for Our AI PowerPoint Tool - Seeking Platform and Strategy Suggestions!

Hello everyone, I'm one of the co-founders of a new AI-generated PowerPoint company, and I handle the marketing side of things. Our product is currently in the cold start phase, and we’re facing some challenges in gaining traction. We've already tried some influencer marketing, but the results have been underwhelming. We're looking for advice on the best platforms and strategies to effectively launch our product and reach our target audience. Here’s a bit more about our product: AI-Powered: Our tool leverages AI to help users quickly create professional PowerPoint presentations by simply entering their desired topic. User-Friendly: The process is streamlined to save users time and effort, making it ideal for professionals, educators, and students. Given our current situation, we would greatly appreciate any suggestions on: Platforms: Which platforms have you found most effective for cold starts, especially for tech or AI products? Strategies: What marketing strategies or tactics have worked for you in the early stages? Any tips on refining our influencer marketing approach or alternative methods to consider? Partnerships: Are there any specific types of partnerships or collaborations that you’ve found beneficial for similar products? Thank you in advance for your insights and advice. We're eager to learn from this community and hopefully turn things around for our launch. Best, Maggie

#reddit#struggling#cold

reddit

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nomadpaddy•This week

Restarting My Agency / Compared To Full Time Corporate

I’m currently thinking about going back to consulting / agency work compared to my current tech job I have. Over a year ago I signed this tech client and they wanted more and more from me which ended up becoming a full time role. At the time, the challenge excited me as it was working on a very large project on a global scale, competing with some of the biggest brands in the world. I was making good money before working in my agency and consulting with lots of different brands on their paid media, websites and e-commerce. I have a healthy package where I’m at at the moment but want more. Working with different clients always created curiosity, no day was the same and that what I loved about it. So now I’m considering going to back to starting the business and working with clients again. My question is: What do businesses ACTUALLY want? Everyone wants great roas and an amazing site but what are core things people are looking for in a growth partner / agency? I’m thinking of relaunching with three pillars in mind: Digital (Paid Media, Lead Gen, Web Dev) AI implementation as a lot of businesses don’t know how to leverage AI completely for cost saving and efficiencies. Content (Video, SEO, Content Writing) for modern day ranking I’m currently rebuilding my pitch deck and thought I would ask the question here before I go back to my network and start opening up conversations again. Would love to hear people’s thoughts in addition to anyone that’s done the same?

#reddit#restarting#agency

reddit

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Separate-Employer394•This week

Looking for Feedback on this Idea

Hey everyone, I’d love some honest feedback on an idea I’ve been working on (currently just in paper). A little about me: I started in hospitality across South America and Asia, then moved into social entrepreneurship in a rural area, and eventually ecommerce using WordPress. Now, I’m deep into programming here in Europe, which I’ve really come to enjoy. So yes, I understand the perspective of businesses, entrepreneurs and programmers.  Back when I had tons of ideas for businesses and optimizing processes, I always hit the same drama: "You need a developer." But hiring one was too expensive or unreliable or shady business practice, and partnering with a programmer, someone I barely knew often felt too risky (I've learned the hard way that partnerships can feel like marriages). Now, as a programmer, I get a lot of requests from small businesses needing help and sometimes with very simple ideas. And while I can do it, I often don’t have the time, so I have to tell them I can't. And when I do have time, I know the cost can be too much for their budget. This got me thinking: What if I created a course to teach business owners just enough programming to solve their own problems? Not to become full time coders, but to gain enough knowledge to build simple tools or, better yet, understand code enough to ask the right questions whether it's to AI or a future developer. The course would focus on programming but talking business language, starting with building more flexible websites, managing your own content and creating custom tools without the limitations of templates or paid widgets. I’m thinking of creating a supportive community where we learn and grow together (maybe using your business as an example), and I’d be available to help along the way, plus I will be adding tools that you could reuse for your business (mostly because you will be able to read it and understand it → that's the goal). Talking about money, I can only tell you will be way more affordable compared to multiple payments in different places. So, does this resonate with you? I’d really appreciate your honest thoughts. Do you feel you have the time to learn or you still prefer looking for a developer? Feel free to share any frustrations or ideas. And if this sounds interesting, write me a PM, and I’ll keep you updated. Thanks for reading. I'm excited to hear what you think! :)

#reddit#looking#feedback

reddit

0

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lazymentors•This week

80+ Social Media Updates Related to Business Marketing That Occurred in last 5 months

Tiktok expanded its caption limits from 100 to 500 Characters. Reddit Updates Search tools, Now you can search User Comments. “Comment search is here”. Pinterest Announces New Partnership with WooCommerce to Expand Product Listings. Google’s launched ‘multisearch’ feature that lets you search using text and image at the same time. Etsy sellers went on strike after platform increases transaction fees. Reddit launched $1 million fund to support various projects going on platform. Instagram is updating its ranking algorithm to put more focus on Original Content LinkedIn Added New tools In creator mode: improved content analytics and Updates profile video Options. Tiktok launched its own gif library “Effect House”. Instagram Updates Reels editing tools adding reordering clips feature. Google Search got a new label to direct people to original news sources YouTube launches new Profile Rings for Stories and Live. Snapchat launched YouTube Link stickers to make video sharing easier! Messenger adds new shortcuts, including a slack like @everyone feature. Pinterest Expands it’s Creator funds program to help more Underrepresented creators. Reddit brings back r/place after 5 years. Google Adds New Seller Performance Badges, New Pricing Insights for eCommerce Brands. Meta and Google agrees to New Data Transfer agreement to keep Instagram and Facebook running in EU. Twitter tests New Interactive Ad types to boost its promotional Appeal. Instagram removed In-stream Ads from its Advertising Options. Tiktok launched new program “CAP” to help creative agencies reach its audience. Twitch shuts down its desktop app. Meta launched the ability to add “share to Reels” feature to third Party Apps. TikTok Adds New ‘Background Player’ Option for Live-Streams. Twitter rolls out ALT badge and improved image description. Fast, A Checkout Startup with $15 billion valuation shuts down after spending all the funds raised in 2021. Wordpress announced new pricing with more traffic and storage limits after receiving backlash from the community. Sales force upgrades marketing field services and sales tools with AI. Dropbox shop launches in open beta to allow creators to sell digital content. Tiktok is the most downloaded app in Quarter 1 of 2022. WhatsApp announced launch of ‘Communities’ - more structured group chats with admin controls. Tiktok expands testing a private dislike button for comments. Twitter acquired “Openback” A notification app to improve timeline and relevance of push notifications YouTube and Tiktok added New options for Automated Captions, Improving Accessibility. A new social media App “Be Real” is trending across the internet grabbing Gen-Zs attention to try the app. WhatsApp got permission to expand payment services to its Indian user base of 100 Million. YouTube Shorts now allows creators to splice in long-form videos. You can use long form video audios and clips for YT shorts. New Snapchat feature ‘Dynamic Stories’ uses a publisher’s RSS feed to automatically create Stories posts. Zoom launches AI-powered features aimed at sales teams. Tiktok started testing who viewed your profile feature. Ogilvy Announced they will no longer work with who edit their bodies and faces for ads. If you don’t know “Oglivy” is the most successful advertising agency of the decade. YouTube Launches New ‘Search Insights’ for all creators. Snapchat Added 13 million new users in Q1 2022 more than both Twitter and Facebook. Google is Introduced new options to reject tracking cookies in Europe after receiving fines from violating EU data laws. Sony & Microsoft are planning to integrate Ads into their gaming platforms Xbox and PlayStation. YouTube Adds new Shorts Shelf to Trending Tab to show Top Shorts in an alternative section. Instagram started testing a reels template feature which enables creators to copy formats from other reels. Google Tests “What People Are Saying” Search Results. Twitter Launches New Test of Promotions for Third Party Tools Within the App. Instagram is changing how hashtags work by experimenting removing Recents tab from hashtags section. Google Adds New Publisher Verification Badges to Extension Listings in the Google Web Store Amazon AWS launches $30M accelerator program aimed at minority founders. Meta launched more fundraising options for Instagram Reels in 30 countries. Brave Search and DuckDuckGo will no longer support Google AMP due to privacy issues. Instagram is working on a pinned post feature and will officially launch in next few months. Meta: You can now add Music to your Facebook comments Twitter tests new closed caption button to switch on captions in Video Clip Elon Musk Bought Twitter $44 Billion and Company is set to go private. Google now lets you request the removal of personal contact information from search results YouTube reveals that Ads between YT Shorts are being tested with selective brands. LinkedInis rolling out a new website link feature. Google Reduces Visibility Of Business Edits With Color Changes To Profile Updates. Instagram expands testing of 90 second Reels. Microsoft Advertising now offers incentive features like cash-back and adding stock images from your website. Facebook & Pinterest are growing again despite all the hype around slow growth of both platform in last quarter. Google Added 9 new Ad policies to prevent misleading ads taking place. Tiktok Introduces Third-party cookies to its Pixel. (like Facebook Pixel) Twitter reportedly overcounted number of daily active users for last 3 years. Google launched Media CDN to compete on content delivery. YouTube expands Thank You Monetisation tool to all eligible creators. Twitch is looking to expand their cut from streamers earnings from 30 to 50% and also thinks of boosting Ads. Snapchat launches a $230 flying drone camera and new e-commerce integrations in Snap Summit 2022. YouTube Expands its ‘Pre-Publish Checks’ Tool to the Mobile App Google Search Console’s URL parameter tool is officially removed for a time period. Twitter creators can now get paid through Cryptocurrency on Twitter with Stripe. Jellysmack- One of the Influencer marketing agency acquires YouTube analytics tool Google & Microsoft Ads brought more revenue in last quarter- 22% Gains! WhatsApp is working on a paid subscription for multi-phone and tablet chatting. Instagram users now spend 20% of their time in the reels section. Google tests new Color for clicked search results by you. Now Clicked results are in Purple. Twitter: Elon plans to remove employees and focus more on influencers for twitter’s growth + new monetisation ideas were shared. YouTube revenue falls as more users spend time on shorts tab than consuming long form content. Drop 👋 to receive June Updates!

#reddit#social#media

reddit

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CapitalWash5939•This week

Supporting SMBs Through Grants

Hey Reddit! With GetGrant, our aim isn't business promotion - it's genuinely helping SMBs navigate the world of grants using AI. We're prepping for launch and want to offer communities early access and exclusive discounts. If you're part of an SMB or nonprofit community, let's collaborate! We want to make grants truly accessible and beneficial for SMBs. PM if interested in partnering! #GrantsForSMBs #RealHelpRealImpact

#reddit#supporting#smbs

reddit

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campach•This week

Join the AI4Earth challenge with the European Space Agency to highlight our footprint on Earth using Earth Observation data and Machine Learning

​ https://preview.redd.it/ww109cba14f71.png?width=2401&format=png&auto=webp&s=8bd3d43e8b63848af85c73478be61e43d9e10189 The primary goal is to get an insight into the human impact on Earth, to drive and guide conservation efforts of this planet we call home. Our approach will be twofold:  Firstly we will work on AI algorithms that can serve as an early detection system of human impact sites. Secondly we will use these detection systems to find satellite images that show the most impactful human-caused changes, which will be used in the creation of a video to launch an awareness campaign. You will be working with ESA to detect things like: Wildfires and Deforestation Marine Litter and Melting Glaciers Air quality detection & Novel animal migration patterns  and much more!  European Space Agency To reach these goals we’ve partnered up with ESA, who are able to use our algorithms to monitor new satellite data and guide conservation efforts. They will provide us with multi-spectral data of their Sentinel-2 satellite pair and with invaluable knowledge and research on the domain of Earth Observation data in participant only masterclasses.  Format The challenge will run throughout September and October, where you will collaborate with a diverse team of over 30 international data specialists and domain experts in subteams, all tackling this problem from different angles. Subtasks like the detection of deforestation, wildfires, marine litter or any other human caused impact. All contributors in the challenge are expected to spend 12 hours or more per week during the entirity of the two month challenge. To learn more subscribe to the info session on the 3rd of August 19:00 CEST HERE! Some important dates: 3rd of August – Info session 1st of September – Challenge Kick-off 29th of September – Midterm presentations 29th of October – Final presentations PARTNERS SUN - https://spacehubs.network The project is spearheaded by SUN whose goal is to increase the commercialization of space enabled solutions and growth of European start-ups and scale-ups in the space downstream and upstream sectors. ESA - https://esa.int ESA will be the main stakeholder and domain knowledge provider in the challenge. Their efforts to aid human’s space endeavours as well as protect the planet we live on will serve us for many years to come.  MLReef - https://mlreef.com MLReef provides an open source platform for collaborative Machine Learning. They provide the computational infrastructure to support the EO4Earth project as part of their AI4GOOD and Open Science initiatives. Brimatech  As a partner in the SUN project, the innovation management and market research expert Brimatech helps out in the overall organisation of the challenge.  Mothership The ‘Mothership’ is a dedicated open innovation program created by Space4Good and World Startup Factory. The Mothershi is leveraging recent advancements in artificial intelligence and satellite technologies in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Space4Good  Space4Good is a geospatial innovation lab supporting impact makers on the ground with earth observation insights from above. Worldstartup  Worldstartup is a collective of international entrepreneurs, experts, mentors and investors, dedicated to help the best impact-driven startups and scaleups.

#reddit#join#ai4earth

reddit

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axellos•This week

Just recorded a new interview episode where we talk about transitioning from a Fortune 500 to a startup. Let us know what you think!

0:00 Shilpa's Introduction 2:16 A Cosmopolitan Journey 4:46 All Roads Lead to Tech 8:35 From JP Morgan to Intel 12:25 Shilpa's $1 Billion Revenue Pipeline 15:27 Transitioning from IOT to AI 17:42 Flyte Co-Founders (and Marriage Partners!) 22:30 Building an AI Model, for two! 28:04 Flyte's Integration for Workflow Software 30:03 Fundraising Success 31:09 The Bright Flyte Ahead 32:18 Biggest Challenges Building the AI 36:05 Advice to Other AI Founders 38:46 Flyte's Incredible Collaboration Process 44:32 Life Lessons from Shilpa 45:54 Find Flyte! ​ https://preview.redd.it/w4bx22cl10d71.png?width=2042&format=png&auto=webp&s=c14ea0b96a1ffb34165ec84a86ca45b16256c21b Shilpa is a lifelong tech admirer, worldly businesswoman, and now CEO of Flyte -- a Workflow Automation Platform for Complex, Mission-Critical Data and ML Processes at Scale. From her incredible journey from India to her current home in Canada, to the vital role collaboration plays in small teams, Shilpa shares a breadth of knowledge any Entrepreneur would be lucky to hear. Regular link to episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJJgAhwSqqo&t=1s

#reddit#just#recorded

reddit

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Brilliant_Fishing110•This week

Randomly asked ChatGPT and Claude for a 4 year roadmap for an ML Engineer

Title, Is it actually a good plan ?? If no, why not ?? \\🚀 4-Year Roadmap to Becoming a High-Earning ML Engineer & Entrepreneur\\ \\(With Smartwork & Realistic 60-70% Execution Feasibility)\\ \\🟢 Year 1: Strong Foundation & Initial Projects (0-12 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Master Python & ML Fundamentals\\ \\🔹 1-4 Months (Python & Math Strengthening)\\ ✅ Python Mastery \- Daily LeetCode Easy problems (minimum 2) \- Build automation projects \- NumPy & Pandas mastery \- DSA fundamentals ✅ Mathematics Foundation \- Linear Algebra basics \- Statistics fundamentals \- Basic calculus concepts ✅ First Mini-Hackathon Participation \- Join beginner-friendly hackathons \- Focus on Python-based challenges \- Team up with other beginners 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Join Discord/Slack hackathon communities \- Practice collaborative coding \- Build network with fellow participants \\🔹 5-8 Months (ML Foundations)\\ ✅ Machine Learning Basics \- Supervised Learning \- Model evaluation \- Feature engineering \- scikit-learn projects ✅ Participate in 2-3 ML Hackathons \- Kaggle Getting Started competitions \- Local ML hackathons \- University hackathons ✅ Start LinkedIn & GitHub Portfolio 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Document hackathon experiences \- Share learnings on LinkedIn \- Focus on completion over winning \\🔹 9-12 Months (Deep Learning Introduction)\\ ✅ Basic Deep Learning \- Neural network fundamentals \- PyTorch basics \- Computer vision tasks \- Basic NLP ✅ Advanced Hackathon Participation \- AI/ML specific hackathons \- Team lead in 1-2 hackathons \- Start mentoring beginners \\🔵 Year 1 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Strong Python & ML foundations\\ ✔ \\5-6 hackathon participations\\ ✔ \\Active GitHub (100+ commits)\\ ✔ \\Growing LinkedIn (300+ connections)\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹8K-₹20K per month (Projects/Internship)\\ \\🟢 Year 2: Professional Growth & Specialization (12-24 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Build Professional Experience & Recognition\\ \\🔹 1-6 Months (Technical Depth)\\ ✅ Advanced ML Topics \- Deep Learning architectures \- Computer Vision OR NLP \- MLOps basics (Docker, FastAPI) \- Cloud fundamentals (AWS/GCP) ✅ Hackathon Achievements \- Win minor prizes in 2-3 hackathons \- Lead teams in major hackathons \- Network with sponsors ✅ Start Technical Blogging 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Focus on hackathon projects that align with career goals \- Build relationships with companies at hackathons \- Create detailed project documentation \\🔹 7-12 Months (Professional Experience)\\ ✅ Secure ML Role/Internship ✅ Advanced Project Building ✅ Open Source Contributions ✅ Organize Small Hackathons 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Use hackathon network for job referrals \- Convert hackathon projects into full products \- Build mentor reputation \\🔵 Year 2 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Professional ML experience\\ ✔ \\10+ hackathon participations\\ ✔ \\1-2 hackathon wins\\ ✔ \\Strong industry network\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹40K-₹70K per month (Job/Freelancing)\\ \\🟢 Year 3: Scaling & Business Foundation (24-36 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Establish Multiple Income Streams\\ \\🔹 1-4 Months (Expertise Building)\\ ✅ Choose Specialization \- MLOps \- Computer Vision \- NLP/LLMs \- Generative AI ✅ Advanced Competitions \- International hackathons \- High-prize competitions \- Corporate ML challenges ✅ Start Consulting Services 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Use hackathon wins for marketing \- Build service packages around expertise \- Network with corporate sponsors \\🔹 5-8 Months (Business Development)\\ ✅ Scale Services ✅ Build Client Network ✅ Create Training Programs ✅ Hackathon Mentorship Program 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Convert hackathon projects to products \- Use event networks for client acquisition \- Build authority through speaking \\🔹 9-12 Months (Growth & Innovation)\\ ✅ Product Development ✅ Team Building ✅ Innovation Focus ✅ Hackathon Organization \\🔵 Year 3 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Established ML business/career\\ ✔ \\Known in hackathon community\\ ✔ \\Multiple income streams\\ ✔ \\Strong industry presence\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹1L-₹2L per month (Multiple Streams)\\ \\🟢 Year 4: Scale & Leadership (36-48 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Build AI Company & Achieve Financial Freedom\\ \\🔹 1-4 Months (Business Scaling)\\ ✅ Company Formation \- AI consulting firm \- Product development \- Training programs ✅ Hackathon Innovation \- Launch own hackathon series \- Corporate partnerships \- Prize sponsorships ✅ Team Expansion 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Use hackathon network for hiring \- Create unique event formats \- Build corporate relationships \\🔹 5-8 Months (Market Leadership)\\ ✅ Product Launch ✅ Service Expansion ✅ International Presence ✅ Innovation Hub Creation 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Create hackathon-to-hiring pipeline \- Build educational programs \- Establish thought leadership \\🔹 9-12 Months (Empire Building)\\ ✅ Multiple Revenue Streams \- AI products \- Consulting services \- Educational programs \- Event organization \- Investment returns ✅ Industry Leadership \- Conference speaking \- Published content \- Community leadership \\🔵 Year 4 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Established AI company\\ ✔ \\Major hackathon organizer\\ ✔ \\Multiple product lines\\ ✔ \\Industry authority status\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹3L-₹5L+ per month (Business Income)\\ \\📊 FINAL RATING\\ ✅ \\Comprehensive growth plan\\ ✅ \\Strong community focus\\ ✅ \\Multiple income pathways\\ 💡 \\If 100% Execution → 8.5/10 Feasibility\\ 💡 \\If 50% Execution → 6/10 Feasibility\\ 🔥 \\Conclusion: A balanced path to ML mastery and entrepreneurship, built through consistent growth and community engagement!\\ 🚀 \\Key Success Factors:\\ Regular hackathon participation Strong community involvement Consistent skill development Strategic network building Focus on both technical and business growth

#reddit#randomly#asked

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AniketWork•This week

My Building Of Trading Order Management System Using AI Agents

Practical Guide : Automating Business Transactions with AI-Powered Workflows Full Article | Code https://preview.redd.it/hrkeo00yz4ie1.jpg?width=1911&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5bcb6f02c72bbce22fb691e4d8b799c414fed2a7 https://preview.redd.it/1cp0izzxz4ie1.png?width=1899&format=png&auto=webp&s=2598e25e17ab03a95f3009f5333f02b077ce30ca https://preview.redd.it/cjp1640yz4ie1.png?width=1899&format=png&auto=webp&s=13dad0ee8e0b1b22415a60a57b571058f0bdef33 TL;DR A practical implementation of an AI-powered B2B order management system using LangChain and LLM, demonstrating automated order processing, inventory management, and real-time communication between trading partners. https://i.redd.it/kxe4l69105ie1.gif Introduction In today’s fast-paced business environment, efficient order management is crucial for B2B operations. GlobalTrade Nexus AI showcases how artificial intelligence can streamline complex business transactions, reduce errors, and enhance communication between trading partners. What’s This Article About? This article presents a comprehensive B2B trading platform that leverages AI to automate order processing workflows. The system handles everything from order placement to fulfillment, featuring: Real-time inventory verification Automated shipping cost calculations Instant order validation Secure transaction processing Smart order cancellation capabilities State management across the entire order lifecycle The platform demonstrates how modern AI technologies can be integrated into traditional business processes to create a seamless, efficient trading environment. Tech stack Why Read It? As businesses increasingly embrace digital transformation, AI-powered solutions are becoming essential for maintaining competitive advantage. This article provides: A practical example of AI implementation in B2B commerce Insights into modern system architecture for business applications Real-world application of language models in business logic Demonstration of secure and scalable state management Blueprint for building similar AI-enhanced business systems Through our fictional companies’ implementation, readers can understand how AI can transform their business operations and prepare for the future of B2B commerce.

#reddit#building#trading

reddit

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ContributionHour6464•This week

What level of understanding of AI do I need?

Would really appreciate some advice if anyone can help out! So I'm a 20 year old student currently doing regular internships in accounting. I use a lot of my spare time to build small businesses that I find fun to build. I have very little coding experience besides basic courses besides a bit of experience with react when building an app with a more technically competent partner. I've concluded 3 things: 1.I want to add the power of AI to my arsenal, whether in work or in business 2.I don't think I'd have the time or experience to be an absolute expert in AI 3.There's a lot of small tech shy businesses in my area which I think could benefit from AI, particularly in accounting automation. I'd love to introduce it to them through some sort of agency. 4.Ideally I want to be competent enough in AI to be able to start an AI based business (probably in finance) with a more technical developer who I can at least communicate with. ​ So my question is, what level do I need? Should I learn all the complex maths behind it and the first principles, or just learn how to harness the powerful tools already out there? If either, could you point me in the right direction for resources? Thanks!

#reddit#level#understanding

reddit

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AniketWork•This week

My Building Of Trading Order Management System Using AI Agents

Practical Guide : Automating Business Transactions with AI-Powered Workflows Full Article | Code https://preview.redd.it/hrkeo00yz4ie1.jpg?width=1911&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5bcb6f02c72bbce22fb691e4d8b799c414fed2a7 https://preview.redd.it/1cp0izzxz4ie1.png?width=1899&format=png&auto=webp&s=2598e25e17ab03a95f3009f5333f02b077ce30ca https://preview.redd.it/cjp1640yz4ie1.png?width=1899&format=png&auto=webp&s=13dad0ee8e0b1b22415a60a57b571058f0bdef33 TL;DR A practical implementation of an AI-powered B2B order management system using LangChain and LLM, demonstrating automated order processing, inventory management, and real-time communication between trading partners. https://i.redd.it/kxe4l69105ie1.gif Introduction In today’s fast-paced business environment, efficient order management is crucial for B2B operations. GlobalTrade Nexus AI showcases how artificial intelligence can streamline complex business transactions, reduce errors, and enhance communication between trading partners. What’s This Article About? This article presents a comprehensive B2B trading platform that leverages AI to automate order processing workflows. The system handles everything from order placement to fulfillment, featuring: Real-time inventory verification Automated shipping cost calculations Instant order validation Secure transaction processing Smart order cancellation capabilities State management across the entire order lifecycle The platform demonstrates how modern AI technologies can be integrated into traditional business processes to create a seamless, efficient trading environment. Tech stack Why Read It? As businesses increasingly embrace digital transformation, AI-powered solutions are becoming essential for maintaining competitive advantage. This article provides: A practical example of AI implementation in B2B commerce Insights into modern system architecture for business applications Real-world application of language models in business logic Demonstration of secure and scalable state management Blueprint for building similar AI-enhanced business systems Through our fictional companies’ implementation, readers can understand how AI can transform their business operations and prepare for the future of B2B commerce.

#reddit#building#trading

reddit

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Prudent_Ad_3114•This week

I'm Building an "AiExecutiveSuperAgent_Systems_Interface" between humanity and the Ai world, as well as each other... Let's Talk?

Ok... So look... This one is pretty crazy... I'm building an Ai Interface that knows me better than I know myself - Check, lots of people have this, either in reality with employees and family members, or with ai intelligence. But it doesn't just know Me... It knows how to talk with Me. It understands my language, because I've trained it to. I've also trained it to translate that to all my clients and HumanAgents, soon to become RobotAgents... The RESULT: I can literally just spend 1-18 hours talking to it, and things get DONE. Most of that time, I just say EXECUTE, or ENGAGE, or DRAFT, or DISPATCH. I feel like a secret agent communicating in codes with his agency 😂 Not great for the paranoiac in me, but it's easy to get that part under control, ya'll. It's like having a team of 10,000 people, all available 24/7, all perfectly synchronised to each other's communication styles, preferences and ultimately: WHAT DO YOU NEED ME TO DO. At the end of the it all, having run my single COMMAND through a thousand of those people, a Document is prepared that outlines the next 3 stages of the plan, along with instructions to the whole team for how to ENACT it. Sounds rather grand and wonderful... Even when I simply use it to help me come up with a filing system for my creative work... \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Here's my current VISION, why I'm doing this AND why I'm doing it publicly despite it being top secret. VISION To create an army of User-Owned and Operated "AiSuperAgencies" which gather intelligence on the user, securely file and analyse it, and then construct a sub-army of agents and tools that work together to produce the desired output, for any Function in the Personal and Professional Lives of EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, in 3-5 Years. To start, I'm building it for me and the 5-10 cleaners who've made it to Level 1 in my access system. They were sick of toxic employers, tyrannical agencies and greedy customers. They gathered around us (many came in, many went out, few stayed, took about a year for our core team of 3 Level 2 Cleaners. My goal has always been to never employ anyone. Just me, my Partner and the Cleaners. All Shared Owners in the system for delivering the right cleaner to the right house in our town, at the right time and without any dramas or arguments... I have a personal talent for resolving disputes, which has made working for and buying from my business a mostly enjoyable and upbeat experience, with a touch of mystery and a feeling that you're part of something big! It is a business that ran on Me. I put in my time, every day, building automated tool after automated tool. Hiring a contractor to do a job, scratching my head when it didn't add enough value to pay for itself, then just doing it myself again. I wanted to solve that problem. I'm trusting that the few who hear about it who actually see the potential, will just come join us, no dramas, just cool people partnering up! And those that don't, won't. No one could steal it, because it's Mine, and I'll just change the keys anyway loser! Enjoy digging through my past, you lunatic! I'm out here living Now. Anyways... It's lonely around here. I have a cleaning business that I run from my laptop, which means I can live anywhere, but I still had this big problem of time... NOT ENOUGH Oh Wait. It's Here.

#reddit#building#"aiexecutivesuperagent_systems_interface"

reddit

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Brilliant_Fishing110•This week

Randomly asked ChatGPT and Claude for a 4 year roadmap for an ML Engineer

Title, Is it actually a good plan ?? If no, why not ?? \\🚀 4-Year Roadmap to Becoming a High-Earning ML Engineer & Entrepreneur\\ \\(With Smartwork & Realistic 60-70% Execution Feasibility)\\ \\🟢 Year 1: Strong Foundation & Initial Projects (0-12 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Master Python & ML Fundamentals\\ \\🔹 1-4 Months (Python & Math Strengthening)\\ ✅ Python Mastery \- Daily LeetCode Easy problems (minimum 2) \- Build automation projects \- NumPy & Pandas mastery \- DSA fundamentals ✅ Mathematics Foundation \- Linear Algebra basics \- Statistics fundamentals \- Basic calculus concepts ✅ First Mini-Hackathon Participation \- Join beginner-friendly hackathons \- Focus on Python-based challenges \- Team up with other beginners 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Join Discord/Slack hackathon communities \- Practice collaborative coding \- Build network with fellow participants \\🔹 5-8 Months (ML Foundations)\\ ✅ Machine Learning Basics \- Supervised Learning \- Model evaluation \- Feature engineering \- scikit-learn projects ✅ Participate in 2-3 ML Hackathons \- Kaggle Getting Started competitions \- Local ML hackathons \- University hackathons ✅ Start LinkedIn & GitHub Portfolio 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Document hackathon experiences \- Share learnings on LinkedIn \- Focus on completion over winning \\🔹 9-12 Months (Deep Learning Introduction)\\ ✅ Basic Deep Learning \- Neural network fundamentals \- PyTorch basics \- Computer vision tasks \- Basic NLP ✅ Advanced Hackathon Participation \- AI/ML specific hackathons \- Team lead in 1-2 hackathons \- Start mentoring beginners \\🔵 Year 1 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Strong Python & ML foundations\\ ✔ \\5-6 hackathon participations\\ ✔ \\Active GitHub (100+ commits)\\ ✔ \\Growing LinkedIn (300+ connections)\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹8K-₹20K per month (Projects/Internship)\\ \\🟢 Year 2: Professional Growth & Specialization (12-24 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Build Professional Experience & Recognition\\ \\🔹 1-6 Months (Technical Depth)\\ ✅ Advanced ML Topics \- Deep Learning architectures \- Computer Vision OR NLP \- MLOps basics (Docker, FastAPI) \- Cloud fundamentals (AWS/GCP) ✅ Hackathon Achievements \- Win minor prizes in 2-3 hackathons \- Lead teams in major hackathons \- Network with sponsors ✅ Start Technical Blogging 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Focus on hackathon projects that align with career goals \- Build relationships with companies at hackathons \- Create detailed project documentation \\🔹 7-12 Months (Professional Experience)\\ ✅ Secure ML Role/Internship ✅ Advanced Project Building ✅ Open Source Contributions ✅ Organize Small Hackathons 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Use hackathon network for job referrals \- Convert hackathon projects into full products \- Build mentor reputation \\🔵 Year 2 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Professional ML experience\\ ✔ \\10+ hackathon participations\\ ✔ \\1-2 hackathon wins\\ ✔ \\Strong industry network\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹40K-₹70K per month (Job/Freelancing)\\ \\🟢 Year 3: Scaling & Business Foundation (24-36 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Establish Multiple Income Streams\\ \\🔹 1-4 Months (Expertise Building)\\ ✅ Choose Specialization \- MLOps \- Computer Vision \- NLP/LLMs \- Generative AI ✅ Advanced Competitions \- International hackathons \- High-prize competitions \- Corporate ML challenges ✅ Start Consulting Services 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Use hackathon wins for marketing \- Build service packages around expertise \- Network with corporate sponsors \\🔹 5-8 Months (Business Development)\\ ✅ Scale Services ✅ Build Client Network ✅ Create Training Programs ✅ Hackathon Mentorship Program 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Convert hackathon projects to products \- Use event networks for client acquisition \- Build authority through speaking \\🔹 9-12 Months (Growth & Innovation)\\ ✅ Product Development ✅ Team Building ✅ Innovation Focus ✅ Hackathon Organization \\🔵 Year 3 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Established ML business/career\\ ✔ \\Known in hackathon community\\ ✔ \\Multiple income streams\\ ✔ \\Strong industry presence\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹1L-₹2L per month (Multiple Streams)\\ \\🟢 Year 4: Scale & Leadership (36-48 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Build AI Company & Achieve Financial Freedom\\ \\🔹 1-4 Months (Business Scaling)\\ ✅ Company Formation \- AI consulting firm \- Product development \- Training programs ✅ Hackathon Innovation \- Launch own hackathon series \- Corporate partnerships \- Prize sponsorships ✅ Team Expansion 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Use hackathon network for hiring \- Create unique event formats \- Build corporate relationships \\🔹 5-8 Months (Market Leadership)\\ ✅ Product Launch ✅ Service Expansion ✅ International Presence ✅ Innovation Hub Creation 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Create hackathon-to-hiring pipeline \- Build educational programs \- Establish thought leadership \\🔹 9-12 Months (Empire Building)\\ ✅ Multiple Revenue Streams \- AI products \- Consulting services \- Educational programs \- Event organization \- Investment returns ✅ Industry Leadership \- Conference speaking \- Published content \- Community leadership \\🔵 Year 4 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Established AI company\\ ✔ \\Major hackathon organizer\\ ✔ \\Multiple product lines\\ ✔ \\Industry authority status\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹3L-₹5L+ per month (Business Income)\\ \\📊 FINAL RATING\\ ✅ \\Comprehensive growth plan\\ ✅ \\Strong community focus\\ ✅ \\Multiple income pathways\\ 💡 \\If 100% Execution → 8.5/10 Feasibility\\ 💡 \\If 50% Execution → 6/10 Feasibility\\ 🔥 \\Conclusion: A balanced path to ML mastery and entrepreneurship, built through consistent growth and community engagement!\\ 🚀 \\Key Success Factors:\\ Regular hackathon participation Strong community involvement Consistent skill development Strategic network building Focus on both technical and business growth

#reddit#randomly#asked

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Useful-Can-3016•This week

Is fine-tunig dead?

Hello, I am leading a business creation project in AI in France (Europe more broadly). To concretize and structure this project, my partners recommend me to collect feedback from professionals in the sector, and it is in this context that I am asking for your help. Lately, I have learned a lot about data annotation and I have seen a division of thoughts and I admit to being a little lost. Several questions come to mind, in particular is fine-tunig dead? RAG is it really better? Will we see few-shot learning gain momentum or will conventional learning with millions of data continue? And for whom? Too many questions, which I have grouped together in a form, if you would like to help me see more clearly the data needs of the market, I suggest you answer this short form (4 minutes): https://forms.gle/ixyHnwXGyKSJsBof6. This form is more for businesses, but if you have a good vision of the sector, feel free to respond. Your answers will remain confidential and anonymous. No personal or sensitive data is requested. This does not involve a monetary transfer. Thank you for your valuable help. You can also express your thoughts in response to this post. If you have any questions or would like to know more about this initiative, I would be happy to discuss it. Subnotik

#reddit#fine-tunig#dead?

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Prudent_Ad_3114•This week

I'm Building an "AiExecutiveSuperAgent_Systems_Interface" between humanity and the Ai world, as well as each other... Let's Talk?

Ok... So look... This one is pretty crazy... I'm building an Ai Interface that knows me better than I know myself - Check, lots of people have this, either in reality with employees and family members, or with ai intelligence. But it doesn't just know Me... It knows how to talk with Me. It understands my language, because I've trained it to. I've also trained it to translate that to all my clients and HumanAgents, soon to become RobotAgents... The RESULT: I can literally just spend 1-18 hours talking to it, and things get DONE. Most of that time, I just say EXECUTE, or ENGAGE, or DRAFT, or DISPATCH. I feel like a secret agent communicating in codes with his agency 😂 Not great for the paranoiac in me, but it's easy to get that part under control, ya'll. It's like having a team of 10,000 people, all available 24/7, all perfectly synchronised to each other's communication styles, preferences and ultimately: WHAT DO YOU NEED ME TO DO. At the end of the it all, having run my single COMMAND through a thousand of those people, a Document is prepared that outlines the next 3 stages of the plan, along with instructions to the whole team for how to ENACT it. Sounds rather grand and wonderful... Even when I simply use it to help me come up with a filing system for my creative work... \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Here's my current VISION, why I'm doing this AND why I'm doing it publicly despite it being top secret. VISION To create an army of User-Owned and Operated "AiSuperAgencies" which gather intelligence on the user, securely file and analyse it, and then construct a sub-army of agents and tools that work together to produce the desired output, for any Function in the Personal and Professional Lives of EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, in 3-5 Years. To start, I'm building it for me and the 5-10 cleaners who've made it to Level 1 in my access system. They were sick of toxic employers, tyrannical agencies and greedy customers. They gathered around us (many came in, many went out, few stayed, took about a year for our core team of 3 Level 2 Cleaners. My goal has always been to never employ anyone. Just me, my Partner and the Cleaners. All Shared Owners in the system for delivering the right cleaner to the right house in our town, at the right time and without any dramas or arguments... I have a personal talent for resolving disputes, which has made working for and buying from my business a mostly enjoyable and upbeat experience, with a touch of mystery and a feeling that you're part of something big! It is a business that ran on Me. I put in my time, every day, building automated tool after automated tool. Hiring a contractor to do a job, scratching my head when it didn't add enough value to pay for itself, then just doing it myself again. I wanted to solve that problem. I'm trusting that the few who hear about it who actually see the potential, will just come join us, no dramas, just cool people partnering up! And those that don't, won't. No one could steal it, because it's Mine, and I'll just change the keys anyway loser! Enjoy digging through my past, you lunatic! I'm out here living Now. Anyways... It's lonely around here. I have a cleaning business that I run from my laptop, which means I can live anywhere, but I still had this big problem of time... NOT ENOUGH Oh Wait. It's Here.

#reddit#building#"aiexecutivesuperagent_systems_interface"

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inputorigin•This week

I retired at 32 from my side project. Here's the path I took.

EDIT 2: Thanks for the award kind stranger! I've stopped responding to reddit comments for this post. I'm adding an FAQ to the original post based on the most common high quality questions. If you have a question that you're dying to know the answer to and that only I can help you with (vs. Google, ChatGPT, etc.), DM me. EDIT: I love how controversial this post has become (50% upvote rate), and only in this subreddit (vs. other subreddits that I posted the same content in). I trust that the open-minded half of you will find something useful in this post and my other posts and comments. I retired at 32 years old, in large part thanks to a B2C SaaS app that I developed on my own. Now, I don't have to work in order to cover my living expenses, and wouldn't have to work for quite a while. In other words, I can finally sip mai tais at the beach. I've condensed how I got there into this post. First, a super simplified timeline of events, followed by some critical details. Timeline 2013 Graduated college in the US 2013 Started first corporate job 2013 Started side project (B2C app) that would eventually lead to my retirement 2020 Started charging for use of my B2C app (was free, became freemium) 2021 Quit my last corporate job 2022 Retired: time freedom attained Details First, some summary statistics of my path to retirement: 9 years: time between graduating college and my retirement. 8 years: total length of my career where I worked at some corporate day job. 7 years: time it took my B2C app to make its first revenue dollar 2 years: time between my first dollar of SaaS revenue and my retirement. "Something something overnight success a decade in the making". I got extremely lucky on my path to retirement, both in terms of the business environment I was in and who I am as a person. I'd also like to think that some of the conscious decisions I made along the way contributed to my early retirement. Lucky Breaks Was born in the US middle class. Had a natural affinity for computer programming and entrepreneurial mindset (initiative, resourcefulness, pragmatism, courage, growth mindset). Had opportunities to develop these mindsets throughout life. Got into a good college which gave me the credentials to get high paying corporate jobs. Was early to a platform that saw large adoption (see "barnacle on whale" strategy). Business niche is shareworthy: my SaaS received free media. Business niche is relatively stable, and small enough to not be competitive. "Skillful" Decisions I decided to spend the nights and weekends of my early career working on side projects in the hopes that one would hit. I also worked a day job to support myself and build my savings. My launch funnel over roughly 7 years of working on side projects: Countless side projects prototyped. 5 side projects publically launched. 2 side projects made > $0. 1 side project ended up becoming the SaaS that would help me retire. At my corporate day jobs, I optimized for learning and work-life balance. My learning usually stalled after a year or two at one company, so I’d quit and find another job. I invested (and continute to do so) in physical and mental wellbeing via regular workouts, meditation, journaling, traveling, and good food. My fulfilling non-work-life re-energized me for my work-life, and my work-life supported my non-work-life: a virtuous cycle. I automated the most time-consuming aspects of my business (outside of product development). Nowadays, I take long vacations and work at most 20 hours a week / a three-day work week . I decided to keep my business entirely owned and operated by me. It's the best fit for my work-style (high autonomy, deep focus, fast decision-making) and need to have full creative freedom and control. I dated and married a very supportive and inspiring partner. I try not to succumb to outrageous lifestyle creep, which keeps my living expenses low and drastically extends my burn-rate. Prescription To share some aphorisms I’ve leaned with the wantrepreneurs or those who want to follow a similar path: Maximize your at bats, because you only need one hit. Bias towards action. Launch quickly. Get your ideas out into the real world for feedback. Perfect is the enemy of good. If you keep swinging and improving, you'll hit the ball eventually. Keep the big picture in mind. You don't necessarily need a home-run to be happy: a base hit will often do the job. Think about what matters most to you in life: is it a lot of money or status? Or is it something more satisfying, and often just as if not more attainable, like freedom, loving relationships, or fulfillment? Is what you’re doing now a good way to get what you want? Or is there a better way? At more of a micro-level of "keep the big picture in mind", I often see talented wantrepreneurs get stuck in the weeds of lower-level optimizations, usually around technical design choices. They forget (or maybe subconsciously avoid) the higher-level and more important questions of customer development, user experience, and distribution. For example: “Are you solving a real problem?” or “Did you launch an MVP and what did your users think?” Adopt a growth mindset. Believe that you are capable of learning whatever you need to learn in order to do what you want to do. The pain of regret is worse than the pain of failure. I’ve noticed that fear of failure is the greatest thing holding people back from taking action towards their dreams. Unless failure means death in your case, a debilitating fear of failure is a surmountable mental block. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. When all is said and done, we often regret the things we didn't do in life than the things we did. There’s more to life than just work. Blasphemous (at least among my social circle)! But the reality is that many of the dying regret having worked too much in their lives. As Miss Frizzle from The Magic Schoolbus says: "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" Original post

#reddit#retired#side

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BaronofEssex•This week

New Year Resolution: I Will Generate Some Viable SaaS Ideas AND Help You Become a Brand New AI Startup Founder Within 7 Days

Over the Christmas period, I conceived and debuted on some reddit communities, The 7-Day Startup Challenge. The feedback I got from the various communities have been nothing short of fantastic! The 7-Day Startup Challenge simply means leveraging the power of no code platforms like Bubble, Flutterflow, Glide, Thunkable, Softr etc. along with AI APIs to build a functioning MicroSaaS/SaaS within 7 days. I can tailor this around your interests or hobbies so you are more passionate about your new startup. Whether you're a startup novice or a veteran, I am happy to work with you every step of the way. I will work with you from validating and refining your idea(s) to building and publishing your app! I can even work with you on a viable marketing strategy that will help fetch your new startup some revenue within the next 10 to 45 days. Here's what I will provide as part of The 7-Day Startup Challenge A fully validated and refined version of your idea described in technical terms in a shared document A startup name, domain and logo (if you don't have one already) A landing page to capture pre-sign ups, generate some early buzz and index your app on search engines Figma files showing the design of your app(s) Web app (dependent on whether your startup idea requires a web app or a mobile app instead)) iOS app (dependent on whether your startup idea requires a web app or a mobile app instead) Android app (dependent on whether your startup idea requires a web app or a mobile app instead) 1-month of in scope support to fix any bugs and address any issues An outlined marketing strategy you can implement to grow your startup both short and long term. As per tentative timelines, you can expect the following deliverables on schedule Day 1: Secure digital assets such as domain name, hosting, logo etc.; deliver validated and refined version of your startup idea Day 2-3: Landing page & Figma files Day 1-5/6: Build your apps (web app and/or iOS and Android app) Day 6: Evaluations and review if necessary; demo day Day 7: Live launch on web; publish on Android and iOS app stores PS: For more sophisticated ideas (non MicroSaaS), kindly allow approx. 30 days for delivery. I can be as hands on or hands off as you wish. Meaning I can do all the work whilst you sit back and wait for the results OR I can work with you every step of the way to deliver on your demands. For high potential startup ideas, I can partner with you long term to build them out together. I have to be selective because I'm unable to partner together on every single idea out there. Outside of a partnership, all the digital assets (startup name, logo, web app, mobile app etc.) are 100% owned by you. If building an AI SaaS startup via the outlined strategy sounds intriguing enough to you, feel free to send me a DM with any questions you have!

#reddit#year#resolution:

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laike9m•This week

Things I did to promote my product, and how they turned out

(I will share more updates in the future, you can find me on Twitter and/or Mastodon) Ask any ten indie developers about the toughest part of their job, and nine will likely say "marketing." I recently got a taste of this firsthand when I launched Xylect. Here's a rundown of my promotional attempts - hopefully, my experiences can help fellow developers out there. Podcast Community (✅ Success) I kicked things off by promoting Xylect in my podcast listener group. It wasn't a blockbuster, but I managed to sell a few copies and got some invaluable feedback from friends. Shoutout to those early supporters! Reddit r/macapps (✅ Success) Having had some luck promoting open-source projects on Reddit before, I decided to make r/macapps my first stop in the English-speaking world. I made an app to help you automate boring tasks with one click This post turned out to be a hit! I sold about ten copies and got a ton of useful feedback. Users pointed out compatibility issues with PopClip and suggested improvements for the website. One Italian user even requested localization, which I happily added. https://preview.redd.it/y4fuwh6hleqd1.png?width=959&format=png&auto=webp&s=7bb1b68cbf8a4f94998999e0832b9b7bd85bac67 https://preview.redd.it/8uu4cmyhleqd1.png?width=683&format=png&auto=webp&s=8f1744636aee8074b0e7491a334ef06076b143b0 I also got an intriguing email from a French user - more on that later. More Reddit Posts (❌ Failure) Riding high on my r/macapps success, I branched out to r/SideProject, r/Entrepreneur, and r/indiehackers. These subreddits frown upon direct self-promotion, so I took a softer approach with an article: The unexpected emotional cost of being an indiehacker While the article was heartfelt, it fell flat. Across all three posts, I got a grand total of three comments - two of which were complaints about the font size on mobile. Needless to say, I didn't sell a single copy. Hacker News (❌ Failure) As one of the tech world's major forums, I had to give Hacker News a shot. I wasn't too optimistic, given my past experiences there. Posting on HN feels like a mix of luck and dark magic. As expected, my post vanished without a trace - no comments, no sales. I might give it another go someday. If you're curious, you can check out my previous HN submissions. Tools Directory Websites (❌ Failure) These sites have a simple premise: you list your app, they display it. Seemed like an easy way to get some backlinks, right? Well, I learned the hard way that it's not that simple. I stumbled upon a Reddit post where someone claimed to have made a killing with their directory site in just a few days. The catch? Each listing cost $19. The site had a handful of apps listed, so I thought, "Why not? Early bird gets the worm." I paid up and listed Xylect. Spoiler alert: all I got was $19 poorer 🥲 Lesson learned: These directory sites won't magically sell your product. At best, they're just glorified backlinks. There might be some value in paid promotions on these platforms, but I can't speak to that from experience. V2EX (❌ Failure) After striking out in the English-speaking world, I turned my attention to the Chinese market, starting with V2EX (think of it as China's hybrid of HN and Reddit). This turned out to be my most unexpected flop. Here's the post: [\[Launch Discount\] Mac's most powerful AI search (Perplexity + Wikipedia + Google), boost your efficiency tenfold with one click. No API key required, no prompt needed, no token limit 🔥 - V2EX](https://www.v2ex.com/t/1064930?p=1#reply36) I'd seen decent engagement on other promo posts, so I had high hopes. I posted late at night (US time) and went to bed dreaming of waking up to a flood of comments. Reality check: The next morning, I had exactly one reply - from Kilerd, a loyal podcast listener showing some love. I was baffled. After re-reading my post, I realized I'd missed a crucial element: promo codes. A quick scan of popular posts confirmed my suspicion. Nearly every successful promo post was offering codes, and most comments were just base64-encoded email addresses. Talk about a facepalm moment. I scrambled to add a note about an upcoming free trial and invited users to drop their emails. This got the ball rolling with some code requests, but by then, the damage was done. The post fizzled out, and I didn't sell a single copy 🫠 A French Friend's Newsletter (✅ Success) At this point, my promotional efforts were looking pretty grim. My sales chart had a depressing stretch of flatline. But then, a glimmer of hope appeared in my inbox. Remember that French user I mentioned earlier? He ran a newsletter called vvmac and offered to feature Xylect if I added French support and sent him a free license. It was an offer I couldn't refuse. What followed was a crash course in French localization (thank you, Claude!) and the start of an incredible partnership. This guy was the most thorough beta tester I've ever encountered. We exchanged over sixty emails, covering everything from translations to UI tweaks to bug fixes. His response time was lightning-fast - I'd fix a bug, and five minutes later, he'd confirm it was sorted. The result? A much-improved Xylect and a glowing feature in his newsletter. https://preview.redd.it/ylcq2wxoleqd1.png?width=991&format=png&auto=webp&s=ee395110f50417d5c7f61318f27bf3dc30247809 I'm still in awe of his dedication. He single-handedly transformed Xylect from a buggy mess into a polished product. I'll be forever grateful for his help. The newsletter feature led to a few more sales, but honestly, that felt like a bonus at that point. Influencers (❌ Failure) I knew from the start that to really make waves, I'd need influencer backing. So, I added a note offering free licenses to content creators willing to collaborate. https://preview.redd.it/tyb2m1rqleqd1.png?width=799&format=png&auto=webp&s=56eabf126e772515322595613c546e6ba69fb431 I did get one taker: Hey, I'll be honest, I am not a huge content creator but I think I put a lot of effort in evaluating and figuring out which apps work... So I was wondering if I could get a license in case you are willing to share it. Thank you for considering. Have a great weekend. But I knew I needed to aim higher. With the new French localization, I thought I'd try my luck with some French-speaking Mac YouTubers. I crafted emails highlighting how Xylect could help their French audience with English content. https://preview.redd.it/07oqzemrleqd1.png?width=542&format=png&auto=webp&s=3d160c1d149f28e9029816a277c6ab2496fcd57e After days of silence, I got one reply. It was... not what I was hoping for: Hi, Thank you for your proposal. I can help you to promote your service on Tiktok, Instagram et YouTube, with unique short video. Price for this project is 3500€. Unless I've completely lost my marbles, there's no way I'm dropping 3500€ on promotion. Sure, given their follower count (YouTube: 348K, TikTok: 2.7M, Instagram: 400K), it's not an outrageous ask. For some products, it might even be worth it. But for Xylect? No way. I also reached out to a Chinese influencer on Xiaohongshu, but they weren't interested. Back to the drawing board. Conclusion If you've made it this far, you've probably realized this isn't exactly a success story. My search for effective promotional channels came up largely empty-handed. I'd naively thought that my success with open-source projects would translate seamlessly to the indie dev world. Boy, was I wrong. As I mentioned in my previous article, open-source projects create a dynamic where users feel indebted to developers for their free labor. But in the commercial world of indie development, that dynamic completely flips. While this experience was often frustrating, it was also enlightening - which was kind of the point. As my first foray into indie development, my main goal was to learn the ropes and understand the process. Making money would've been nice, sure, but it wasn't my primary focus. Thanks for sticking with me through this post. I will share more updates in the future, you can follow me on  Twitter and/or Mastodon.

#reddit#things#promote

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Odd-Foundation4714•This week

[Self Promo] We made an AI accountability Buddy for ADHD Entrepreneurs

Hi Reddit, My girlfriend and I are both entrepreneurs with ADHD. We were sick of constantly starting projects and not finishing them. We both loved the idea of an accountability partner and wanted to see whether we could use AI as our own personal accountability buddy. So we built Goalhound: https://goalhound-app.vercel.app/ Try it out completely free and let us know your thoughts.

#reddit#[self#promo]

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LieIgnorant6304•This week

How to get your first 10 customers with cold email

Cold email is an insane channel for growth, especially for bootstrapped startups as it's very low cost but completely scalable. Yet there's a huge difference between blind cold emailing and crafting personalized outreach for select individuals. The latter is a legit channel which makes many businesses scale in short amounts of time (i.e. see Alex Hormozi’s ‘$100 Million Dollar Offer’). My goal here is to help other founders do what I did but quicker. So you can learn faster. And then teach me something new too. These are the step-by-step lessons I've learnt as a bootstrapped founder, showing you how to use cold email to get your first customers: Find your leads Write engaging email copy Personalize your outreach Send emails Scale up Find your leads This is a key step. Once you figure out exactly who you want to target and where to find them, you'll be printing money. There's a few different ways to go about finding valuable leads. The secret? Keep testing different approaches until you strike gold. First, dedicate some time every day to find and organise leads. Then, keep an eye on your numbers and bounce rates. If something's not working, switch it up. Stick with what's bringing in results and ditch what's not. It's all about staying flexible and learning as you go. Apollo.io is a great starting point as an effective lead source. Their tool allows you to specify filters including job titles, location, company size, industry, keywords, technologies, and revenue. Get specific with your searches to find your ideal customers. Once you have some results you can save and export them, you'll get a list of contact information including name, email, company, LinkedIn, ready to be verified and used. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is another good source. You can either do manual searches or use a scraper to automate the process. The scrapers I'd recommend checking out are FindyMail and Evaboot. As with Apollo, it's best to get very specific with your targeting so you know the prospect will be interested in your offer. BuiltWith is more expensive but ideal if you're targeting competitors. With BuiltWith you can build lists based on what technologies companies are using. For example if you're selling a Shopify app, you'd want to know websites or stores using Shopify, and reach out to them. The best lead sources will always be those that haven't been contacted a lot in the past. If you are able to find places where your target audience uniquely hangs out, and you can get their company website domains, they have the potential to be scrapped, and you have a way to personalize like "I spotted your comment on XYZ website". Once you've got your leads, keep them organized. Set up folders for different niches, countries, company sizes, so you can review what works and what doesn't. One more thing – before you start firing off emails, make sure those addresses are verified. Always use an email verifier to clean up your list and avoid bounces that may affect your sending reputation, and land you in the spam folder. I use Neverbounce for this but there are other tools available. Write engaging email copy Writing a good copy that gets replies is difficult, it changes depending on your offer/audience and nobody knows what's going to work. The best approach is to keep testing different targeting and messaging until you find what works. However, there are some key rules to stick to that I've outlined. For the subject line, keep it short and personalized. Try to write something that sparks interest, and mention the recipients name: Thought you’d like this {{first name}} {{firstName}} - quick question For the email body it's best to use a framework of personalization, offer, then call to action. Personalization is an entire subject in its own right, which I've covered below. In short, a personalized email opener is the best way to grab their attention, and let them know the email is relevant to them and to keep reading. Take it from Alex Hormozi and his $100M Offers playbook – your offer is very important to get right. Make sure your offer hits the mark for your target audience, and get as specific as possible. For example: I built a SaaS shopify app for small ecommerce businesses selling apparel that doubles your revenue in 60-days or your money back. We developed a cold email personalization tool for lead generation agencies that saves hundreds of hours, and can 3x your reply rate. Lastly, the CTA. The goal here isn't to get sign-ups directly from your first email. It's better to ask a brief question about whether the prospect would be interested in learning more. Something very low friction, that warrants a response. Some examples might include: Would you be interested in learning more about this? Can we connect a bit more on this? Mind if I send over a loom I recorded for you? Never send any links in the first email. You've reached out to this person because you have good reason to believe they'd find real value in your offer, and you want to verify if that's the case. After you get one reply, this is a great positive signal and from there you can send a link, book a call, provide a free resource, whatever makes sense based on their response. Personalize your outreach Personalization is one of the most important parts of the process to get right. Your recipient probably receives a multitude of emails every day, how can you make yours stand out, letting them know you've done your research, and that your email is relevant to them? Personalizing each email ensures you get more positive replies, and avoid spam filters, as your email is unique and hasn't been copied and pasted a million times over. The goal is to spark the recipient's interest, and let them know that you're contacting them for good reason. You might mention a recent achievement, blog post or product release that led you to reach out to the prospect specifically. For example: Your post on "Doing Nothing" gave me a good chuckle. Savvy marketing on Cadbury's part. Saw that you've been at Google for just under a year now as a new VP of sales. Spotted that you've got over 7 years of experience in the digital marketing space. Ideally you'll mention something specifically about the prospect or their company that relates to your offer. The downside to personalization is that it's hard to get right, and very time consuming at scale, but totally worth it. Full disclosure, me and my partner Igor just launched our new startup ColdClicks which uses AI to generate hyper-personalized email openers at scale. We built the tool as we were sending hundreds of emails a day, and personalizing every individual email took hours out of our day. ColdClicks automates this process, saving you time and getting you 2-3x more replies. Send emails At this stage you've decided on who you're targeting, you've mined some leads, and written copy. Now it's time to get sending. You can do this manually by copy and pasting each message, but one of the reasons cold email is so powerful is that it's scalable. When you build a process that gets customers, you'll want to send as many emails as you can to your target market. To get started quickly, you can use a mail-merge gmail tool, the best I've used is Maileteor. With Maileteor you upload your lead data to Google sheets, set-up an email template and Mailmetor will send out emails every day automatically. In your template you can define variables including name, company, and personalization to ensure your email is unique for each recipient. Alternatively, you may opt for a more comprehensive tool such as Instantly. Instantly includes unlimited email sending and accounts. There's more initial setup involved as you'll need to set-up Google workspace, buy sending domains, and warm up your email accounts, but when you become familiar with the process you can build a powerful lead generation / customer acquisition machine. Some key points to note, it's very important to warm up any new email accounts you set up. Warmup is the process of gradually establishing a positive reputation with email service providers like Gmail or Yahoo. Make sure to set up DKIM and DMARC on those new email accounts too, to maximise your chances of landing in the inbox. Scale up Once you've found a process that works, good things happen, and it becomes a numbers game. As you get replies and start to see new users signing up, you'll want to scale the process and send more emails. It's straightforward to add new sending accounts in a sending tool like Instantly, and you'll want to broaden your targeting when mining to test new markets. Unfortunately, sending more emails usually comes with a drop in reply rate as you have less time to personalize your messaging for each recipient. This is where ColdClicks shines. The tool allows you to upload thousands of leads and generate perfectly relevant email personalizations for every lead in your list, then export to your favorite sending tool. The examples I listed above in the personalization section were all generated by ColdClicks. Wrapping it up Cold email is an amazing way to validate your product and get new customers. The channel gets a bad rap, but there's a huge difference between blind cold emailing and crafting personalized outreach for individuals who will find value in your product. It's perfect for bootstrapped founders due to its affordability and scalability, and it's the driver of growth for many SaaS businesses. Time to get your first 10 customers! As you start sending, make it a habit to regularly check for new leads. Always experiment with market/messaging, track every campaign so you can learn what's working and iterate, and when you do get positive responses, reply as soon as you can!

#reddit#your#first

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Low_Philosopher1792•This week

100 agency business ideas that requires zero investment in 2025

Social Media Manager (Search "smma business for sale" and get started with Sitefy or humanpdesign company) Content Writing Service SEO Specialist (Search "outsourced seo business Sitefy" and get started) Instagram Growth Expert LinkedIn Lead Outreach Cold Email Specialist Ghostwriter Services YouTube Channel Assistant X/Twitter Writing Service UGC Creator Network Virtual Assistant Provider Podcast Manager Influencer Outreach Service Brand Strategy Consultant Resume & Profile Optimizer Media Outreach Services Newsletter Creation Team Lead Gen Specialist Personal Branding Partner Online Reputation Consultant Script Writer Team Funnel Strategy Helper Landing Page Writer Blog Strategy Consultant Growth Tactics Consultant SaaS User Onboarding Service App Store Optimization (ASO) Chatbot Automation Setup Customer Support Automator TikTok Strategy Specialist Short Video Editing Team Long Video Editing Team Digital Product Launch Help Webinar Setup Specialist Affiliate Setup Services Online Community Builder Facebook Group Specialist Pinterest Marketing Service (Search "digital marketing business for sale Sitefy" and get started quickly) Email List Builder CRM Setup Helper eBook Writing Partner YouTube Thumbnail Designer Pinterest Content Designer Proposal Writing Team Press Release Writer Influencer Deal Manager SaaS Growth Advisor Direct-To-Consumer Marketing Help App Review Booster Fiverr Profile Consultant Upwork Profile Expert Gig Profile Optimizer AI Tools Setup Help Freelance Talent Finder Local Search Optimizer Google Profile Optimizer Online Course Setup Notion Workflow Setup Airtable Consultant Trello/ClickUp Helper Automation Strategy Planner Sales Funnel Assistant WhatsApp Campaign Setup Telegram Channel Helper Blog Publishing Help Email-Based Content Creator Startup Deck Consultant Business Name & Tagline Creator Domain Research Help Reddit Growth Assistant Niche Community Builder Free Resource Strategy Website Audit Consultant Brand Guide Creator Business System Organizer Productivity Coach Reputation Fix Specialist Digital Product Reviewer Micro SaaS Idea Tester Ad Copywriter Email Strategy Consultant Influencer Research Team Onboarding Docs Creator Automation Setup Specialist Freelance Team Coordinator AI Marketing Planner Feedback Collection Setup Social Proof Strategist Giveaway Organizer Pricing Strategy Helper Contract Template Consultant Startup Growth Guide AI Prompt Writer Press Kit Creator Podcast Booking Assistant Inbox Performance Checker Customer Journey Planner Trend Report Analyst Testimonial Request Specialist Digital Declutter Coach Which one sounds like your vibe?

#reddit#agency#business

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kasperoo•This week

I’ve built a gaming recommendation and exploration platform called Which Game Next

Hello there! Me and a few of my best friends are software engineers, and we’ve been working part-time on developing a side project for the past 12 months. It’s called www.whichgamenext.com, and we’ve recently launched into open beta for everyone to check out. Your feedback would be invaluable to us! Our aim has been to build a gaming recommendation engine, alongside providing market oversight for where you can legally and officially purchase or obtain modern games from multiple stores and/or subscriptions. It’s often difficult to figure out what you have access to if you only have a single specific subscription, like Game Pass PC, or if you’re only interested in games on GOG/Nintendo (what a mix!). We started by identifying the available digital stores and subscriptions and slowly compiling our database using multiple automated services to gather data on these games. Think JustWatch, but for games! One major service we’ve partnered with is IGDB, which has been supplying us with JSON data dumps that served as the initial seed for our game data. A massive thank you to them for their continued support! With the data in place, we’ve been focusing on exploring new features. So far, this has included private and public user-generated lists, personal backlog tracking, and the ability to like or dislike games. We’re now improving our recommendation engine, tackling the complexities that come with it, and having a lot of fun along the way. We’re utilising modern AI strategies and solving fascinating problems related to large-scale data aggregation. We truly can’t wait to share this fantastic work! In addition to this, you can soon expect curated collections, articles about games, and supporting links to help you make informed, unbiased purchasing decisions. Your shared data will drive the recommendations. But it doesn’t stop there—we have plenty of other features on our radar, such as importing games from your favourite stores, syncing your gameplay time, surfacing data like “How Long to Beat,” and creating new and exciting ways to interact with this growing community! This is a passion project created by a group of gamers who want to spend their time and money wisely, without purchasing biases. Since it’s a side project, we mostly work on it at night, but we’re excited to grow the community, share our vision, and, who knows, maybe one day make it our full-time job! Let’s dive into the technical details: • Monorepo architecture: This speeds up development by sharing libraries, living style guides, configs, etc. Nx.js has been brilliant, enabling us to create a dependency graph of changes and only build/deploy what’s modified in a PR. • AWS: We’re using the free tier (with a few exceptions where we pay for smaller services). Achieving self-sufficiency is critical for us. Additionally, we applied to the AWS Startup Foundation programme and received $1,000 in AWS credits, which has been incredibly helpful! • Infrastructure: Fully deployed as code with Terraform. • Backends: Built using Express and Nest.js, split into around 40 projects and counting! Each project plays a unique role in gathering and syncing game data. • Scalability: Designed from the ground up, utilising AWS Lambdas with auto-scaling and load balancing. • Databases: We use Postgres with RDS and DynamoDB for storing various data. • Frontend stack: Built with React, Next.js, Tailwind, Zustand, TanStack Query, Jest, and Storybook. • CI/CD: Managed with GitHub Actions and Amplify hooks for deploying the frontends. • Admin portal: We’ve built a bespoke CMS to control the main website. It synchronises with external services, tracks game data changes, and allows us to selectively apply ‘patches’ from sites like IGDB. The system also includes data override and rollback capabilities, ensuring we maintain control over game data. • Automation: Partially automated, so manual intervention is rarely needed. • Scraping tools: Fully integrated into the admin portal with log trail capabilities. • Cloudflare: Used for on-the-fly image transformations; we’re considering moving to it full-time as our CDN for free WebP conversions. • Authentication: Handled by Cognito, with a custom frontend built from scratch. Key learnings so far: • AWS cold starts: Not ideal! While the platform is still new, we ping endpoints to keep them responsive. This won’t be an issue once traffic increases. • Lambda memory matters: We learned the hard way that low-memory configurations can delay responses by 2-3 seconds. • DynamoDB partition keys: If not designed correctly from the start, you might have to start over (yes, we’ve been there!). • GitHub Actions: Setting up node\_modules cache reuse takes time, but it’s worth it—don’t give up! We don’t know where this project will take us yet, but it’s been a fantastic journey so far. We’ve learned a lot, explored technologies we don’t typically use in our day jobs, and built something we’re genuinely passionate about. Your feedback would mean the world to us. What do you think of what we’ve done so far? What would you like to see added? Is this a service you’d use? Do you see the value in it as we do? Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you in the comments! (or our newly created /r/whichgamenext

#reddit#i’ve#built

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inputorigin•This week

I retired at 32 from my side project. Here's the path I took.

EDIT 2: Thanks for the award kind stranger! I've stopped responding to reddit comments for this post. I'm adding an FAQ to the original post based on the most common high quality questions. If you have a question that you're dying to know the answer to and that only I can help you with (vs. Google, ChatGPT, etc.), DM me. EDIT: I love how controversial this post has become (50% upvote rate), and only in this subreddit (vs. other subreddits that I posted the same content in). I trust that the open-minded half of you will find something useful in this post and my other posts and comments. I retired at 32 years old, in large part thanks to a B2C SaaS app that I developed on my own. Now, I don't have to work in order to cover my living expenses, and wouldn't have to work for quite a while. In other words, I can finally sip mai tais at the beach. I've condensed how I got there into this post. First, a super simplified timeline of events, followed by some critical details. Timeline 2013 Graduated college in the US 2013 Started first corporate job 2013 Started side project (B2C app) that would eventually lead to my retirement 2020 Started charging for use of my B2C app (was free, became freemium) 2021 Quit my last corporate job 2022 Retired: time freedom attained Details First, some summary statistics of my path to retirement: 9 years: time between graduating college and my retirement. 8 years: total length of my career where I worked at some corporate day job. 7 years: time it took my B2C app to make its first revenue dollar 2 years: time between my first dollar of SaaS revenue and my retirement. "Something something overnight success a decade in the making". I got extremely lucky on my path to retirement, both in terms of the business environment I was in and who I am as a person. I'd also like to think that some of the conscious decisions I made along the way contributed to my early retirement. Lucky Breaks Was born in the US middle class. Had a natural affinity for computer programming and entrepreneurial mindset (initiative, resourcefulness, pragmatism, courage, growth mindset). Had opportunities to develop these mindsets throughout life. Got into a good college which gave me the credentials to get high paying corporate jobs. Was early to a platform that saw large adoption (see "barnacle on whale" strategy). Business niche is shareworthy: my SaaS received free media. Business niche is relatively stable, and small enough to not be competitive. "Skillful" Decisions I decided to spend the nights and weekends of my early career working on side projects in the hopes that one would hit. I also worked a day job to support myself and build my savings. My launch funnel over roughly 7 years of working on side projects: Countless side projects prototyped. 5 side projects publically launched. 2 side projects made > $0. 1 side project ended up becoming the SaaS that would help me retire. At my corporate day jobs, I optimized for learning and work-life balance. My learning usually stalled after a year or two at one company, so I’d quit and find another job. I invested (and continute to do so) in physical and mental wellbeing via regular workouts, meditation, journaling, traveling, and good food. My fulfilling non-work-life re-energized me for my work-life, and my work-life supported my non-work-life: a virtuous cycle. I automated the most time-consuming aspects of my business (outside of product development). Nowadays, I take long vacations and work at most 20 hours a week / a three-day work week . I decided to keep my business entirely owned and operated by me. It's the best fit for my work-style (high autonomy, deep focus, fast decision-making) and need to have full creative freedom and control. I dated and married a very supportive and inspiring partner. I try not to succumb to outrageous lifestyle creep, which keeps my living expenses low and drastically extends my burn-rate. Prescription To share some aphorisms I’ve leaned with the wantrepreneurs or those who want to follow a similar path: Maximize your at bats, because you only need one hit. Bias towards action. Launch quickly. Get your ideas out into the real world for feedback. Perfect is the enemy of good. If you keep swinging and improving, you'll hit the ball eventually. Keep the big picture in mind. You don't necessarily need a home-run to be happy: a base hit will often do the job. Think about what matters most to you in life: is it a lot of money or status? Or is it something more satisfying, and often just as if not more attainable, like freedom, loving relationships, or fulfillment? Is what you’re doing now a good way to get what you want? Or is there a better way? At more of a micro-level of "keep the big picture in mind", I often see talented wantrepreneurs get stuck in the weeds of lower-level optimizations, usually around technical design choices. They forget (or maybe subconsciously avoid) the higher-level and more important questions of customer development, user experience, and distribution. For example: “Are you solving a real problem?” or “Did you launch an MVP and what did your users think?” Adopt a growth mindset. Believe that you are capable of learning whatever you need to learn in order to do what you want to do. The pain of regret is worse than the pain of failure. I’ve noticed that fear of failure is the greatest thing holding people back from taking action towards their dreams. Unless failure means death in your case, a debilitating fear of failure is a surmountable mental block. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. When all is said and done, we often regret the things we didn't do in life than the things we did. There’s more to life than just work. Blasphemous (at least among my social circle)! But the reality is that many of the dying regret having worked too much in their lives. As Miss Frizzle from The Magic Schoolbus says: "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" Original post

#reddit#retired#side

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Longjumping-Buddy501•This week

Acquired our first 10 customer for Trustty Reporter - an AI first Business Intelligence Platform.

Hi All, My co founder and I have built Trustty Reporter (www.trusttyreporter.com).  We spent the last couple of months working on launch our AI powered BI platform and gain our first 10 users. We wanted to reach out the community to get your feedback on the platform and how we can take it to the next level. Below is a brief introduction of the platform: Trustty Reporter – your AI-first business intelligence partner that transforms data into actionable insights in minutes! Imagine turning complex data and documents into easy-to-understand reports with clear recommendations, all at the click of a button. No more BI complexities—Trustty Reporter makes business insights accessible to everyone, from business owners to CXOs. Here’s Why You’ll Love Trustty Reporter: Instant Insight Generation – Convert raw data into insights in just 5-15 minutes. No expertise needed! Easy Reporting Access – Persistent reports that let you track, compare, and build strategies over time. Tailored Solutions for Business Problems – Just describe your challenge, and Trustty Reporter delivers custom insights. Interactive Reports – Dive deeper with a chat interface that offers further clarification and recommendations. By now you would have realized that this aces any traditional BI tools. That aside, it’s better than the likes of ChatGPT and Claude since you don’t have to supply multiple prompts to get context specific insights catering to your business! File Requirements: For Excel files with multiple sheets/tabs: Please save each sheet as a separate file Upload them as individual files for processing File Format: The first row must contain your column headers Remove any empty rows above the headers https://preview.redd.it/olmk6lfmwuzd1.png?width=3024&format=png&auto=webp&s=aa2bbc8edb4a299dbeee67b692cd4acf1704c2be

#reddit#acquired#first

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milaworld•This week

[N] How Stability AI’s Founder Tanked His Billion-Dollar Startup

forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2024/03/29/how-stability-ais-founder-tanked-his-billion-dollar-startup/ archive no paywall: https://archive.is/snbeV How Stability AI’s Founder Tanked His Billion-Dollar Startup Mar 29, 2024 Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque took the stage last week at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California to roaring applause and an introduction from an AI-generated Aristotle who announced him as “a modern Prometheus” with “the astuteness of Athena and the vision of Daedalus.” “Under his stewardship, AI becomes the Herculean force poised to vanquish the twin serpents of illness and ailment and extend the olive branch of longevity,” the faux Aristotle proclaimed. “I think that’s the best intro I’ve ever had,” Mostaque said. But behind Mostaque's hagiographic introduction lay a grim and fast metastasizing truth. Stability, once one of AI’s buzziest startups, was floundering. It had been running out of money for months and Mostaque had been unable to secure enough additional funding. It had defaulted on payments to Amazon whose cloud service undergirded Stability’s core offerings. The star research team behind its flagship text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion had tendered their resignations just three days before — as Forbes would first report — and other senior leaders had issued him an ultimatum: resign, or we walk too. Still, onstage before a massive audience of peers and acolytes, Mostaque talked a big game. “AI is jet planes for the mind,” he opined. “AI is our collective intelligence. It's the human Colossus.” He claimed a new, faster version of the Stable Diffusion image generator released earlier this month could generate “200 cats with hats per second.” But later, when he was asked about Stability’s financial model, Mostaque fumbled. “I can’t say that publicly,” he replied. “But it’s going well. We’re ahead of forecast.” Four days later, Mostaque stepped down as CEO of Stability, as Forbes first reported. In a post to X, the service formerly known as Twitter, he claimed he’d voluntarily abdicated his role to decentralize “the concentration of power in AI.” But sources told Forbes that was hardly the case. Behind the scenes, Mostaque had fought to maintain his position and control despite mounting pressure externally and internally to step down. Company documents and interviews with 32 current and former employees, investors, collaborators and industry observers suggest his abrupt exit was the result of poor business judgment and wild overspending that undermined confidence in his vision and leadership, and ultimately kneecapped the company. Mostaque, through his attorneys, declined to comment on record on a detailed list of questions about the reporting in this story. But in an email to Forbes earlier this week he broadly disputed the allegations. “Nobody tells you how hard it is to be a CEO and there are better CEOs than me to scale a business,” he said in a statement. “I am not sure anyone else would have been able to build and grow the research team to build the best and most widely used models out there and I’m very proud of the team there. I look forward to moving onto the next problem to handle and hopefully move the needle.” In an emailed statement, Christian Laforte and Shan Shan Wong, the interim co-CEOs who replaced Mostaque, said, "the company remains focused on commercializing its world leading technology” and providing it “to partners across the creative industries." After starting Stability in 2019, Mostaque built the company into an early AI juggernaut by seizing upon a promising research project that would become Stable Diffusion and funding it into a business reality. The ease with which the software generated detailed images from the simplest text prompts immediately captivated the public: 10 million people used it on any given day, the company told Forbes in early 2023. For some true believers, Mostaque was a crucial advocate for open-source AI development in a space dominated by the closed systems of OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. But his startup’s rise to one of the buzziest in generative AI was in part built on a series of exaggerations and misleading claims, as Forbes first reported last year (Mostaque disputed some points at the time). And they continued after he raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation just days after launching Stable Diffusion in 2022. His failure to deliver on an array of grand promises, like building bespoke AI models for nation states, and his decision to pour tens of millions into research without a sustainable business plan, eroded Stability’s foundations and jeopardized its future. "He was just giving shit away,” one former employee told Forbes. “That man legitimately wanted to transform the world. He actually wanted to train AI models for kids in Malawi. Was it practical? Absolutely not." By October 2023, Stability would have less than $4 million left in the bank, according to an internal memo prepared for a board meeting and reviewed by Forbes. And mounting debt, including months of overdue Amazon Web Services payments, had already left it in the red. To avoid legal penalties for skipping Americans staff’s payroll, the document explained, the London-based startup was considering delaying tax payments to the U.K. government. It was Stability’s armada of GPUs, the wildly powerful and equally expensive chips undergirding AI, that were so taxing the company’s finances. Hosted by AWS, they had long been one of Mostaque’s bragging points; he often touted them as one of the world’s 10 largest supercomputers. They were responsible for helping Stability’s researchers build and maintain one of the top AI image generators, as well as break important new ground on generative audio, video and 3D models. “Undeniably, Stability has continued to ship a lot of models,” said one former employee. “They may not have profited off of it, but the broader ecosystem benefitted in a huge, huge way.” But the costs associated with so much compute were now threatening to sink the company. According to an internal October financial forecast seen by Forbes, Stability was on track to spend $99 million on compute in 2023. It noted as well that Stability was “underpaying AWS bills for July (by $1M)” and “not planning to pay AWS at the end of October for August usage ($7M).” Then there were the September and October bills, plus $1 million owed to Google Cloud and $600,000 to GPU cloud data center CoreWeave. (Amazon, Google and CoreWeave declined to comment.) With an additional $54 million allocated to wages and operating expenses, Stability’s total projected costs for 2023 were $153 million. But according to its October financial report, its projected revenue for the calendar year was just $11 million. Stability was on track to lose more money per month than it made in an entire year. The company’s dire financial position had thoroughly soured Stability’s current investors, including Coatue, which had invested tens of millions in the company during its $101 million funding round in 2022. In the middle of 2023, Mostaque agreed to an independent audit after Coatue raised a series of concerns, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. The outcome of the investigation is unclear. Coatue declined to comment. Within a week of an early October board meeting where Mostaque shared that financial forecast, Lightspeed Venture Partners, another major investor, sent a letter to the board urging them to sell the company. The distressing numbers had “severely undermined” the firm’s confidence in Mostaque’s ability to lead the company. “In particular, we are surprised and deeply concerned by a cash position just now disclosed to us that is inconsistent with prior discussions on this topic,” Lightspeed’s general counsel Brett Nissenberg wrote in the letter, a copy of which was viewed by Forbes. “Lightspeed believes that the company is not likely financeable on terms that would assure the company’s long term sound financial position.” (Lightspeed declined a request for comment.) The calls for a sale led Stability to quietly begin looking for a buyer. Bloomberg reported in November that Stability approached AI startups Cohere and Jasper to gauge their interest. Stability denied this, and Jasper CEO Timothy Young did the same when reached for comment by Forbes. A Cohere representative declined to comment. But one prominent AI company confirmed that Mostaque’s representatives had reached out to them to test the waters. Those talks did not advance because “the numbers didn’t add up,” this person, who declined to be named due to the confidential nature of the talks, told Forbes. Stability also tried to court Samsung as a buyer, going so far as to redecorate its office in advance of a planned meeting with the Korean electronics giant. (Samsung said that it invested in Stability in 2023 and that it does not comment on M&A discussions.) Coatue had been calling for Mostaque’s resignation for months, according to a source with direct knowledge. But it and other investors were unable to oust him because he was the company’s majority shareholder. When they tried a different tact by rallying other investors to offer him a juicy equity package to resign, Mostaque refused, said two sources. By October, Coatue and Lightspeed had had enough. Coatue left the board and Lightspeed resigned its observer seat. “Emad infuriated our initial investors so much it’s just making it impossible for us to raise more money under acceptable terms,” one current Stability executive told Forbes. The early months of 2024 saw Stability’s already precarious position eroding further still. Employees were quietly laid off. Three people in a position to know estimated that at least 10% of staff were cut. And cash reserves continued to dwindle. Mostaque mentioned a lifeline at the October board meeting: $95 million in tentative funding from new investors, pending due diligence. But in the end, only a fraction of it was wired, two sources say, much of it from Intel, which Forbes has learned invested $20 million, a fraction of what was reported. (Intel did not return a request for comment by publication time.) Two hours after Forbes broke the news of Mostaque’s plans to step down as CEO, Stability issued a press release confirming his resignation. Chief operating officer Wong and chief technology officer Laforte have taken over in the interim. Mostaque, who said on X that he still owns a majority of the company, also stepped down from the board, which has now initiated a search for a permanent CEO. There is a lot of work to be done to turn things around, and very little time in which to do it. Said the current Stability executive, “There’s still a possibility of a turnaround story, but the odds drop by the day.” In July of 2023, Mostaque still thought he could pull it off. Halfway through the month, he shared a fundraising plan with his lieutenants. It was wildly optimistic, detailing the raise of $500 million in cash and another $750 million in computing facilities from marquee investors like Nvidia, Google, Intel and the World Bank (Nvidia and Google declined comment. Intel did not respond. The World Bank said it did not invest in Stability). In a Slack message reviewed by Forbes, Mostaque said Google was “willing to move fast” and the round was “likely to be oversubscribed.” It wasn’t. Three people with direct knowledge of these fundraising efforts told Forbes that while there was some interest in Stability, talks often stalled when it came time to disclose financials. Two of them noted that earlier in the year, Mostaque had simply stopped engaging with VCs who asked for numbers. Only one firm invested around that time: actor Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, which invested $35 million in the form of a convertible SAFE note during the second quarter, according to an internal document. (Sound Ventures did not respond to a request for comment.) And though he’d managed to score a meeting with Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang, it ended in disaster, according to two sources. “Under Jensen's microscopic questions, Emad just fell apart,” a source in position to know told Forbes. Huang quickly concluded Stability wasn’t ready for an investment from Nvidia, the sources said. Mostaque told Forbes in an email that he had not met with Huang since 2022, except to say “hello and what’s up a few times after.” His July 2023 message references a plan to raise $150 million from Nvidia. (Nvidia declined to comment.) After a June Forbes investigation citing more than 30 sources revealed Mostaque’s history of misleading claims, Mostaque struggled to raise funding, a Stability investor told Forbes. (Mostaque disputed the story at the time and called it "coordinated lies" in his email this week to Forbes). Increasingly, investors scrutinized his assertions and pressed for data. And Young, now the CEO of Jasper, turned down a verbal offer to be Stability’s president after reading the article, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. The collapse of the talks aggravated the board and other executives, who had hoped Young would compensate for the sales and business management skills that Mostaque lacked, according to four people in a position to know. (Young declined to comment.) When Stability’s senior leadership convened in London for the CogX conference in September, the financing had still not closed. There, a group of executives confronted Mostaque asking questions about the company’s cash position and runway, according to three people with direct knowledge of the incident. They did not get the clarity they’d hoped for. By October, Mostaque had reduced his fundraising target by more than 80%. The months that followed saw a steady drumbeat of departures — general counsel Adam Avrunin, vice presidents Mike Melnicki, Ed Newton-Rex and Joe Penna, chief people officer Ozden Onder — culminating in the demoralizing March exit of Stable Diffusion’s primary developers Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, Patrick Esser and Dominik Lorenz. Rombach, who led the team, had been angling to leave for months, two sources said, first threatening to resign last summer because of the fundraising failures. Others left over concerns about cash flow, as well as liabilities — including what four people described as Mostaque’s lax approach to ensuring that Stability products could not be used to produce child sexual abuse imagery. “Stability AI is committed to preventing the misuse of AI and prohibits the use of our image models and services for unlawful activity, including attempts to edit or create CSAM,” Ella Irwin, senior vice president of integrity, said in a statement. Newton-Rex told Forbes he resigned because he disagreed with Stability’s position that training AI on copyrighted work without consent is fair use. Melnicki and Penna declined to comment. Avrunin and Onder could not be reached for comment. None of the researchers responded to requests for comment. The Stable Diffusion researchers’ departure as a cohort says a lot about the state of Stability AI. The company’s researchers were widely viewed as its crown jewels, their work subsidized with a firehose of pricey compute power that was even extended to people outside the company. Martino Russi, an artificial intelligence researcher, told Forbes that though he was never formally employed by Stability, the company provided him a “staggering” amount of compute between January and April 2023 to play around with developing an AI video generator that Stability might someday use. “It was Candy Land or Coney Island,” said Russi, who estimates that his experiment, which was ultimately shelved, cost the company $2.5 million. Stable Diffusion was simultaneously Stability’s marquee product and its existential cash crisis. One current employee described it to Forbes as “a giant vacuum that absorbed everything: money, compute, people.” While the software was widely used, with Mostaque claiming downloads reaching into the hundreds of millions, Stability struggled to translate that wild success into revenue. Mostaque knew it could be done — peers at Databricks, Elastic and MongoDB had all turned a free product into a lucrative business — he just couldn’t figure out how. His first attempt was Stability’s API, which allowed paying customers to integrate Stable Diffusion into their own products. In early 2023, a handful of small companies, like art generator app NightCafe and presentation software startup Tome, signed on, according to four people with knowledge of the deals. But Stability’s poor account management services soured many, and in a matter of months NightCafe and Tome canceled their contracts, three people said. NightCafe founder Angus Russell told Forbes that his company switched to a competitor which “offered much cheaper inference costs and a broader service.” Tome did not respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, Mostaque’s efforts to court larger companies like Samsung and Snapchat were failing, according to five people familiar with the effort. Canva, which was already one of the heaviest users of open-sourced Stable Diffusion, had multiple discussions with Stability, which was angling for a contract it hoped would generate several millions in annual revenue. But the deal never materialized, four sources said. “These three companies wanted and needed us,” one former employee told Forbes. “They would have been the perfect customers.” (Samsung, Snap and Canva declined to comment.) “It’s not that there was not an appetite to pay Stability — there were tons of companies that would have that wanted to,” the former employee said. “There was a huge opportunity and demand, but just a resistance to execution.” Mostaque’s other big idea was to provide governments with bespoke national AI models that would invigorate their economies and citizenry. “Emad envisions a world where AI through 100 national models serves not as a tool of the few, but as a benefactor to all promising to confront great adversaries, cancer, autism, and the sands of time itself,” the AI avatar of Aristotle said in his intro at the conference. Mostaque told several prospective customers that he could deliver such models within 60 days — an untenable timeline, according to two people in position to know. Stability attempted to develop a model for the Singaporean government over the protestation of employees who questioned its technical feasibility, three sources familiar with the effort told Forbes. But it couldn’t pull it off and Singapore never became a customer. (The government of Singapore confirmed it did not enter into a deal with Stability, but declined to answer additional questions.) As Stability careened from one new business idea to another, resources were abruptly reallocated and researchers reassigned. The whiplash shifts in a largely siloed organization demoralized and infuriated employees. “There were ‘urgent’ things, ‘urgent urgent’ things and ‘most urgent,’” one former employee complained. “None of these things seem important if everything is important.” Another former Stability executive was far more pointed in their assessment. “Emad is the most disorganized leader I have ever worked with in my career,” this person told Forbes. “He has no vision, and changes directions every week, often based on what he sees on Twitter.” In a video interview posted shortly before this story was published, Mostaque explained his leadership style: “I'm particularly great at taking creatives, developers, researchers, others, and achieving their full potential in designing systems. But I should not be dealing with, you know, HR and operations and business development and other elements. There are far better people than me to do that.” By December 2023, Stability had partially abandoned its open-source roots and announced that any commercial use of Stable Diffusion would cost customers at least $20 per month (non-commercial and research use of Stable Diffusion would remain free). But privately, Stability was considering a potentially more lucrative source of revenue: reselling the compute it was leasing from providers like AWS, according to six people familiar with the effort. Though it was essentially GPU arbitrage, Stability framed the strategy to investors as a “managed services” offering. Its damning October financial report projected optimistically that such an offering would bring in $139 million in 2024 — 98% of its revenue. Multiple employees at the time told Forbes they feared reselling compute, even if the company called it “managed services,” would violate the terms of Stability’s contract with AWS. Amazon declined to comment. “The line internally was that we are not reselling compute,” one former employee said. “This was some of the dirtiest feeling stuff.” Stability also discussed reselling a cluster of Nvidia A100 chips, leased via CoreWeave, to the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, three sources said. “It was under the guise of managed services, but there wasn’t any management happening,” one of these people told Forbes. Andreessen Horowitz and CoreWeave declined to comment. Stability did not respond to questions about if it plans to continue this strategy now that Mostaque is out of the picture. Regardless, interim co-CEOs Wong and Laforte are on a tight timeline to clean up his mess. Board chairman Jim O’Shaughnessy said in a statement that he was confident the pair “will adeptly steer the company forward in developing and commercializing industry-leading generative AI products.” But burn continues to far outpace revenue. The Financial Times reported Friday that the company made $5.4 million of revenue in February, against $8 million in costs. Several sources said there are ongoing concerns about making payroll for the roughly 150 remaining employees. Leadership roles have gone vacant for months amid the disarray, leaving the company increasingly directionless. Meanwhile, a potentially catastrophic legal threat looms over the company: A trio of copyright infringement lawsuits brought by Getty Images and a group of artists in the U.S. and U.K., who claim Stability illegally used their art and photography to train the AI models powering Stable Diffusion. A London-based court has already rejected the company’s bid to throw out one of the lawsuits on the basis that none of its researchers were based in the U.K. And Stability’s claim that Getty’s Delaware lawsuit should be blocked because it's a U.K.-based company was rejected. (Stability did not respond to questions about the litigation.) AI-related copyright litigation “could go on for years,” according to Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University. He told Forbes that though plaintiffs suing AI firms face an uphill battle overcoming the existing legal precedent on copyright infringement, the quantity of arguments available to make are virtually inexhaustible. “Like in military theory, if there’s a gap in your lines, that’s where the enemy pours through — if any one of those arguments succeeds, it could completely change the generative AI environment,” he said. “In some sense, generative AI as an industry has to win everything.” Stability, which had more than $100 million in the bank just a year and a half ago, is in a deep hole. Not only does it need more funding, it needs a viable business model — or a buyer with the vision and chops to make it successful in a fast-moving and highly competitive sector. At an all hands meeting this past Monday, Stability’s new leaders detailed a path forward. One point of emphasis: a plan to better manage resources and expenses, according to one person in attendance. It’s a start, but Mostaque’s meddling has left them with little runway to execute. His resignation, though, has given some employees hope. “A few people are 100% going to reconsider leaving after today,” said one current employee. “And the weird gloomy aura of hearing Emad talking nonsense for an hour is gone.” Shortly before Mostaque resigned, one current Stability executive told Forbes that they were optimistic his departure could make Stability appealing enough to receive a small investment or sale to a friendly party. “There are companies that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars that have much less intrinsic value than Stability,” the person said. “A white knight may still appear.”

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[N] How Stability AI’s Founder Tanked His Billion-Dollar Startup

forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2024/03/29/how-stability-ais-founder-tanked-his-billion-dollar-startup/ archive no paywall: https://archive.is/snbeV How Stability AI’s Founder Tanked His Billion-Dollar Startup Mar 29, 2024 Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque took the stage last week at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California to roaring applause and an introduction from an AI-generated Aristotle who announced him as “a modern Prometheus” with “the astuteness of Athena and the vision of Daedalus.” “Under his stewardship, AI becomes the Herculean force poised to vanquish the twin serpents of illness and ailment and extend the olive branch of longevity,” the faux Aristotle proclaimed. “I think that’s the best intro I’ve ever had,” Mostaque said. But behind Mostaque's hagiographic introduction lay a grim and fast metastasizing truth. Stability, once one of AI’s buzziest startups, was floundering. It had been running out of money for months and Mostaque had been unable to secure enough additional funding. It had defaulted on payments to Amazon whose cloud service undergirded Stability’s core offerings. The star research team behind its flagship text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion had tendered their resignations just three days before — as Forbes would first report — and other senior leaders had issued him an ultimatum: resign, or we walk too. Still, onstage before a massive audience of peers and acolytes, Mostaque talked a big game. “AI is jet planes for the mind,” he opined. “AI is our collective intelligence. It's the human Colossus.” He claimed a new, faster version of the Stable Diffusion image generator released earlier this month could generate “200 cats with hats per second.” But later, when he was asked about Stability’s financial model, Mostaque fumbled. “I can’t say that publicly,” he replied. “But it’s going well. We’re ahead of forecast.” Four days later, Mostaque stepped down as CEO of Stability, as Forbes first reported. In a post to X, the service formerly known as Twitter, he claimed he’d voluntarily abdicated his role to decentralize “the concentration of power in AI.” But sources told Forbes that was hardly the case. Behind the scenes, Mostaque had fought to maintain his position and control despite mounting pressure externally and internally to step down. Company documents and interviews with 32 current and former employees, investors, collaborators and industry observers suggest his abrupt exit was the result of poor business judgment and wild overspending that undermined confidence in his vision and leadership, and ultimately kneecapped the company. Mostaque, through his attorneys, declined to comment on record on a detailed list of questions about the reporting in this story. But in an email to Forbes earlier this week he broadly disputed the allegations. “Nobody tells you how hard it is to be a CEO and there are better CEOs than me to scale a business,” he said in a statement. “I am not sure anyone else would have been able to build and grow the research team to build the best and most widely used models out there and I’m very proud of the team there. I look forward to moving onto the next problem to handle and hopefully move the needle.” In an emailed statement, Christian Laforte and Shan Shan Wong, the interim co-CEOs who replaced Mostaque, said, "the company remains focused on commercializing its world leading technology” and providing it “to partners across the creative industries." After starting Stability in 2019, Mostaque built the company into an early AI juggernaut by seizing upon a promising research project that would become Stable Diffusion and funding it into a business reality. The ease with which the software generated detailed images from the simplest text prompts immediately captivated the public: 10 million people used it on any given day, the company told Forbes in early 2023. For some true believers, Mostaque was a crucial advocate for open-source AI development in a space dominated by the closed systems of OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. But his startup’s rise to one of the buzziest in generative AI was in part built on a series of exaggerations and misleading claims, as Forbes first reported last year (Mostaque disputed some points at the time). And they continued after he raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation just days after launching Stable Diffusion in 2022. His failure to deliver on an array of grand promises, like building bespoke AI models for nation states, and his decision to pour tens of millions into research without a sustainable business plan, eroded Stability’s foundations and jeopardized its future. "He was just giving shit away,” one former employee told Forbes. “That man legitimately wanted to transform the world. He actually wanted to train AI models for kids in Malawi. Was it practical? Absolutely not." By October 2023, Stability would have less than $4 million left in the bank, according to an internal memo prepared for a board meeting and reviewed by Forbes. And mounting debt, including months of overdue Amazon Web Services payments, had already left it in the red. To avoid legal penalties for skipping Americans staff’s payroll, the document explained, the London-based startup was considering delaying tax payments to the U.K. government. It was Stability’s armada of GPUs, the wildly powerful and equally expensive chips undergirding AI, that were so taxing the company’s finances. Hosted by AWS, they had long been one of Mostaque’s bragging points; he often touted them as one of the world’s 10 largest supercomputers. They were responsible for helping Stability’s researchers build and maintain one of the top AI image generators, as well as break important new ground on generative audio, video and 3D models. “Undeniably, Stability has continued to ship a lot of models,” said one former employee. “They may not have profited off of it, but the broader ecosystem benefitted in a huge, huge way.” But the costs associated with so much compute were now threatening to sink the company. According to an internal October financial forecast seen by Forbes, Stability was on track to spend $99 million on compute in 2023. It noted as well that Stability was “underpaying AWS bills for July (by $1M)” and “not planning to pay AWS at the end of October for August usage ($7M).” Then there were the September and October bills, plus $1 million owed to Google Cloud and $600,000 to GPU cloud data center CoreWeave. (Amazon, Google and CoreWeave declined to comment.) With an additional $54 million allocated to wages and operating expenses, Stability’s total projected costs for 2023 were $153 million. But according to its October financial report, its projected revenue for the calendar year was just $11 million. Stability was on track to lose more money per month than it made in an entire year. The company’s dire financial position had thoroughly soured Stability’s current investors, including Coatue, which had invested tens of millions in the company during its $101 million funding round in 2022. In the middle of 2023, Mostaque agreed to an independent audit after Coatue raised a series of concerns, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. The outcome of the investigation is unclear. Coatue declined to comment. Within a week of an early October board meeting where Mostaque shared that financial forecast, Lightspeed Venture Partners, another major investor, sent a letter to the board urging them to sell the company. The distressing numbers had “severely undermined” the firm’s confidence in Mostaque’s ability to lead the company. “In particular, we are surprised and deeply concerned by a cash position just now disclosed to us that is inconsistent with prior discussions on this topic,” Lightspeed’s general counsel Brett Nissenberg wrote in the letter, a copy of which was viewed by Forbes. “Lightspeed believes that the company is not likely financeable on terms that would assure the company’s long term sound financial position.” (Lightspeed declined a request for comment.) The calls for a sale led Stability to quietly begin looking for a buyer. Bloomberg reported in November that Stability approached AI startups Cohere and Jasper to gauge their interest. Stability denied this, and Jasper CEO Timothy Young did the same when reached for comment by Forbes. A Cohere representative declined to comment. But one prominent AI company confirmed that Mostaque’s representatives had reached out to them to test the waters. Those talks did not advance because “the numbers didn’t add up,” this person, who declined to be named due to the confidential nature of the talks, told Forbes. Stability also tried to court Samsung as a buyer, going so far as to redecorate its office in advance of a planned meeting with the Korean electronics giant. (Samsung said that it invested in Stability in 2023 and that it does not comment on M&A discussions.) Coatue had been calling for Mostaque’s resignation for months, according to a source with direct knowledge. But it and other investors were unable to oust him because he was the company’s majority shareholder. When they tried a different tact by rallying other investors to offer him a juicy equity package to resign, Mostaque refused, said two sources. By October, Coatue and Lightspeed had had enough. Coatue left the board and Lightspeed resigned its observer seat. “Emad infuriated our initial investors so much it’s just making it impossible for us to raise more money under acceptable terms,” one current Stability executive told Forbes. The early months of 2024 saw Stability’s already precarious position eroding further still. Employees were quietly laid off. Three people in a position to know estimated that at least 10% of staff were cut. And cash reserves continued to dwindle. Mostaque mentioned a lifeline at the October board meeting: $95 million in tentative funding from new investors, pending due diligence. But in the end, only a fraction of it was wired, two sources say, much of it from Intel, which Forbes has learned invested $20 million, a fraction of what was reported. (Intel did not return a request for comment by publication time.) Two hours after Forbes broke the news of Mostaque’s plans to step down as CEO, Stability issued a press release confirming his resignation. Chief operating officer Wong and chief technology officer Laforte have taken over in the interim. Mostaque, who said on X that he still owns a majority of the company, also stepped down from the board, which has now initiated a search for a permanent CEO. There is a lot of work to be done to turn things around, and very little time in which to do it. Said the current Stability executive, “There’s still a possibility of a turnaround story, but the odds drop by the day.” In July of 2023, Mostaque still thought he could pull it off. Halfway through the month, he shared a fundraising plan with his lieutenants. It was wildly optimistic, detailing the raise of $500 million in cash and another $750 million in computing facilities from marquee investors like Nvidia, Google, Intel and the World Bank (Nvidia and Google declined comment. Intel did not respond. The World Bank said it did not invest in Stability). In a Slack message reviewed by Forbes, Mostaque said Google was “willing to move fast” and the round was “likely to be oversubscribed.” It wasn’t. Three people with direct knowledge of these fundraising efforts told Forbes that while there was some interest in Stability, talks often stalled when it came time to disclose financials. Two of them noted that earlier in the year, Mostaque had simply stopped engaging with VCs who asked for numbers. Only one firm invested around that time: actor Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, which invested $35 million in the form of a convertible SAFE note during the second quarter, according to an internal document. (Sound Ventures did not respond to a request for comment.) And though he’d managed to score a meeting with Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang, it ended in disaster, according to two sources. “Under Jensen's microscopic questions, Emad just fell apart,” a source in position to know told Forbes. Huang quickly concluded Stability wasn’t ready for an investment from Nvidia, the sources said. Mostaque told Forbes in an email that he had not met with Huang since 2022, except to say “hello and what’s up a few times after.” His July 2023 message references a plan to raise $150 million from Nvidia. (Nvidia declined to comment.) After a June Forbes investigation citing more than 30 sources revealed Mostaque’s history of misleading claims, Mostaque struggled to raise funding, a Stability investor told Forbes. (Mostaque disputed the story at the time and called it "coordinated lies" in his email this week to Forbes). Increasingly, investors scrutinized his assertions and pressed for data. And Young, now the CEO of Jasper, turned down a verbal offer to be Stability’s president after reading the article, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. The collapse of the talks aggravated the board and other executives, who had hoped Young would compensate for the sales and business management skills that Mostaque lacked, according to four people in a position to know. (Young declined to comment.) When Stability’s senior leadership convened in London for the CogX conference in September, the financing had still not closed. There, a group of executives confronted Mostaque asking questions about the company’s cash position and runway, according to three people with direct knowledge of the incident. They did not get the clarity they’d hoped for. By October, Mostaque had reduced his fundraising target by more than 80%. The months that followed saw a steady drumbeat of departures — general counsel Adam Avrunin, vice presidents Mike Melnicki, Ed Newton-Rex and Joe Penna, chief people officer Ozden Onder — culminating in the demoralizing March exit of Stable Diffusion’s primary developers Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, Patrick Esser and Dominik Lorenz. Rombach, who led the team, had been angling to leave for months, two sources said, first threatening to resign last summer because of the fundraising failures. Others left over concerns about cash flow, as well as liabilities — including what four people described as Mostaque’s lax approach to ensuring that Stability products could not be used to produce child sexual abuse imagery. “Stability AI is committed to preventing the misuse of AI and prohibits the use of our image models and services for unlawful activity, including attempts to edit or create CSAM,” Ella Irwin, senior vice president of integrity, said in a statement. Newton-Rex told Forbes he resigned because he disagreed with Stability’s position that training AI on copyrighted work without consent is fair use. Melnicki and Penna declined to comment. Avrunin and Onder could not be reached for comment. None of the researchers responded to requests for comment. The Stable Diffusion researchers’ departure as a cohort says a lot about the state of Stability AI. The company’s researchers were widely viewed as its crown jewels, their work subsidized with a firehose of pricey compute power that was even extended to people outside the company. Martino Russi, an artificial intelligence researcher, told Forbes that though he was never formally employed by Stability, the company provided him a “staggering” amount of compute between January and April 2023 to play around with developing an AI video generator that Stability might someday use. “It was Candy Land or Coney Island,” said Russi, who estimates that his experiment, which was ultimately shelved, cost the company $2.5 million. Stable Diffusion was simultaneously Stability’s marquee product and its existential cash crisis. One current employee described it to Forbes as “a giant vacuum that absorbed everything: money, compute, people.” While the software was widely used, with Mostaque claiming downloads reaching into the hundreds of millions, Stability struggled to translate that wild success into revenue. Mostaque knew it could be done — peers at Databricks, Elastic and MongoDB had all turned a free product into a lucrative business — he just couldn’t figure out how. His first attempt was Stability’s API, which allowed paying customers to integrate Stable Diffusion into their own products. In early 2023, a handful of small companies, like art generator app NightCafe and presentation software startup Tome, signed on, according to four people with knowledge of the deals. But Stability’s poor account management services soured many, and in a matter of months NightCafe and Tome canceled their contracts, three people said. NightCafe founder Angus Russell told Forbes that his company switched to a competitor which “offered much cheaper inference costs and a broader service.” Tome did not respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, Mostaque’s efforts to court larger companies like Samsung and Snapchat were failing, according to five people familiar with the effort. Canva, which was already one of the heaviest users of open-sourced Stable Diffusion, had multiple discussions with Stability, which was angling for a contract it hoped would generate several millions in annual revenue. But the deal never materialized, four sources said. “These three companies wanted and needed us,” one former employee told Forbes. “They would have been the perfect customers.” (Samsung, Snap and Canva declined to comment.) “It’s not that there was not an appetite to pay Stability — there were tons of companies that would have that wanted to,” the former employee said. “There was a huge opportunity and demand, but just a resistance to execution.” Mostaque’s other big idea was to provide governments with bespoke national AI models that would invigorate their economies and citizenry. “Emad envisions a world where AI through 100 national models serves not as a tool of the few, but as a benefactor to all promising to confront great adversaries, cancer, autism, and the sands of time itself,” the AI avatar of Aristotle said in his intro at the conference. Mostaque told several prospective customers that he could deliver such models within 60 days — an untenable timeline, according to two people in position to know. Stability attempted to develop a model for the Singaporean government over the protestation of employees who questioned its technical feasibility, three sources familiar with the effort told Forbes. But it couldn’t pull it off and Singapore never became a customer. (The government of Singapore confirmed it did not enter into a deal with Stability, but declined to answer additional questions.) As Stability careened from one new business idea to another, resources were abruptly reallocated and researchers reassigned. The whiplash shifts in a largely siloed organization demoralized and infuriated employees. “There were ‘urgent’ things, ‘urgent urgent’ things and ‘most urgent,’” one former employee complained. “None of these things seem important if everything is important.” Another former Stability executive was far more pointed in their assessment. “Emad is the most disorganized leader I have ever worked with in my career,” this person told Forbes. “He has no vision, and changes directions every week, often based on what he sees on Twitter.” In a video interview posted shortly before this story was published, Mostaque explained his leadership style: “I'm particularly great at taking creatives, developers, researchers, others, and achieving their full potential in designing systems. But I should not be dealing with, you know, HR and operations and business development and other elements. There are far better people than me to do that.” By December 2023, Stability had partially abandoned its open-source roots and announced that any commercial use of Stable Diffusion would cost customers at least $20 per month (non-commercial and research use of Stable Diffusion would remain free). But privately, Stability was considering a potentially more lucrative source of revenue: reselling the compute it was leasing from providers like AWS, according to six people familiar with the effort. Though it was essentially GPU arbitrage, Stability framed the strategy to investors as a “managed services” offering. Its damning October financial report projected optimistically that such an offering would bring in $139 million in 2024 — 98% of its revenue. Multiple employees at the time told Forbes they feared reselling compute, even if the company called it “managed services,” would violate the terms of Stability’s contract with AWS. Amazon declined to comment. “The line internally was that we are not reselling compute,” one former employee said. “This was some of the dirtiest feeling stuff.” Stability also discussed reselling a cluster of Nvidia A100 chips, leased via CoreWeave, to the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, three sources said. “It was under the guise of managed services, but there wasn’t any management happening,” one of these people told Forbes. Andreessen Horowitz and CoreWeave declined to comment. Stability did not respond to questions about if it plans to continue this strategy now that Mostaque is out of the picture. Regardless, interim co-CEOs Wong and Laforte are on a tight timeline to clean up his mess. Board chairman Jim O’Shaughnessy said in a statement that he was confident the pair “will adeptly steer the company forward in developing and commercializing industry-leading generative AI products.” But burn continues to far outpace revenue. The Financial Times reported Friday that the company made $5.4 million of revenue in February, against $8 million in costs. Several sources said there are ongoing concerns about making payroll for the roughly 150 remaining employees. Leadership roles have gone vacant for months amid the disarray, leaving the company increasingly directionless. Meanwhile, a potentially catastrophic legal threat looms over the company: A trio of copyright infringement lawsuits brought by Getty Images and a group of artists in the U.S. and U.K., who claim Stability illegally used their art and photography to train the AI models powering Stable Diffusion. A London-based court has already rejected the company’s bid to throw out one of the lawsuits on the basis that none of its researchers were based in the U.K. And Stability’s claim that Getty’s Delaware lawsuit should be blocked because it's a U.K.-based company was rejected. (Stability did not respond to questions about the litigation.) AI-related copyright litigation “could go on for years,” according to Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University. He told Forbes that though plaintiffs suing AI firms face an uphill battle overcoming the existing legal precedent on copyright infringement, the quantity of arguments available to make are virtually inexhaustible. “Like in military theory, if there’s a gap in your lines, that’s where the enemy pours through — if any one of those arguments succeeds, it could completely change the generative AI environment,” he said. “In some sense, generative AI as an industry has to win everything.” Stability, which had more than $100 million in the bank just a year and a half ago, is in a deep hole. Not only does it need more funding, it needs a viable business model — or a buyer with the vision and chops to make it successful in a fast-moving and highly competitive sector. At an all hands meeting this past Monday, Stability’s new leaders detailed a path forward. One point of emphasis: a plan to better manage resources and expenses, according to one person in attendance. It’s a start, but Mostaque’s meddling has left them with little runway to execute. His resignation, though, has given some employees hope. “A few people are 100% going to reconsider leaving after today,” said one current employee. “And the weird gloomy aura of hearing Emad talking nonsense for an hour is gone.” Shortly before Mostaque resigned, one current Stability executive told Forbes that they were optimistic his departure could make Stability appealing enough to receive a small investment or sale to a friendly party. “There are companies that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars that have much less intrinsic value than Stability,” the person said. “A white knight may still appear.”

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[N] How Stability AI’s Founder Tanked His Billion-Dollar Startup

forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2024/03/29/how-stability-ais-founder-tanked-his-billion-dollar-startup/ archive no paywall: https://archive.is/snbeV How Stability AI’s Founder Tanked His Billion-Dollar Startup Mar 29, 2024 Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque took the stage last week at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California to roaring applause and an introduction from an AI-generated Aristotle who announced him as “a modern Prometheus” with “the astuteness of Athena and the vision of Daedalus.” “Under his stewardship, AI becomes the Herculean force poised to vanquish the twin serpents of illness and ailment and extend the olive branch of longevity,” the faux Aristotle proclaimed. “I think that’s the best intro I’ve ever had,” Mostaque said. But behind Mostaque's hagiographic introduction lay a grim and fast metastasizing truth. Stability, once one of AI’s buzziest startups, was floundering. It had been running out of money for months and Mostaque had been unable to secure enough additional funding. It had defaulted on payments to Amazon whose cloud service undergirded Stability’s core offerings. The star research team behind its flagship text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion had tendered their resignations just three days before — as Forbes would first report — and other senior leaders had issued him an ultimatum: resign, or we walk too. Still, onstage before a massive audience of peers and acolytes, Mostaque talked a big game. “AI is jet planes for the mind,” he opined. “AI is our collective intelligence. It's the human Colossus.” He claimed a new, faster version of the Stable Diffusion image generator released earlier this month could generate “200 cats with hats per second.” But later, when he was asked about Stability’s financial model, Mostaque fumbled. “I can’t say that publicly,” he replied. “But it’s going well. We’re ahead of forecast.” Four days later, Mostaque stepped down as CEO of Stability, as Forbes first reported. In a post to X, the service formerly known as Twitter, he claimed he’d voluntarily abdicated his role to decentralize “the concentration of power in AI.” But sources told Forbes that was hardly the case. Behind the scenes, Mostaque had fought to maintain his position and control despite mounting pressure externally and internally to step down. Company documents and interviews with 32 current and former employees, investors, collaborators and industry observers suggest his abrupt exit was the result of poor business judgment and wild overspending that undermined confidence in his vision and leadership, and ultimately kneecapped the company. Mostaque, through his attorneys, declined to comment on record on a detailed list of questions about the reporting in this story. But in an email to Forbes earlier this week he broadly disputed the allegations. “Nobody tells you how hard it is to be a CEO and there are better CEOs than me to scale a business,” he said in a statement. “I am not sure anyone else would have been able to build and grow the research team to build the best and most widely used models out there and I’m very proud of the team there. I look forward to moving onto the next problem to handle and hopefully move the needle.” In an emailed statement, Christian Laforte and Shan Shan Wong, the interim co-CEOs who replaced Mostaque, said, "the company remains focused on commercializing its world leading technology” and providing it “to partners across the creative industries." After starting Stability in 2019, Mostaque built the company into an early AI juggernaut by seizing upon a promising research project that would become Stable Diffusion and funding it into a business reality. The ease with which the software generated detailed images from the simplest text prompts immediately captivated the public: 10 million people used it on any given day, the company told Forbes in early 2023. For some true believers, Mostaque was a crucial advocate for open-source AI development in a space dominated by the closed systems of OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. But his startup’s rise to one of the buzziest in generative AI was in part built on a series of exaggerations and misleading claims, as Forbes first reported last year (Mostaque disputed some points at the time). And they continued after he raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation just days after launching Stable Diffusion in 2022. His failure to deliver on an array of grand promises, like building bespoke AI models for nation states, and his decision to pour tens of millions into research without a sustainable business plan, eroded Stability’s foundations and jeopardized its future. "He was just giving shit away,” one former employee told Forbes. “That man legitimately wanted to transform the world. He actually wanted to train AI models for kids in Malawi. Was it practical? Absolutely not." By October 2023, Stability would have less than $4 million left in the bank, according to an internal memo prepared for a board meeting and reviewed by Forbes. And mounting debt, including months of overdue Amazon Web Services payments, had already left it in the red. To avoid legal penalties for skipping Americans staff’s payroll, the document explained, the London-based startup was considering delaying tax payments to the U.K. government. It was Stability’s armada of GPUs, the wildly powerful and equally expensive chips undergirding AI, that were so taxing the company’s finances. Hosted by AWS, they had long been one of Mostaque’s bragging points; he often touted them as one of the world’s 10 largest supercomputers. They were responsible for helping Stability’s researchers build and maintain one of the top AI image generators, as well as break important new ground on generative audio, video and 3D models. “Undeniably, Stability has continued to ship a lot of models,” said one former employee. “They may not have profited off of it, but the broader ecosystem benefitted in a huge, huge way.” But the costs associated with so much compute were now threatening to sink the company. According to an internal October financial forecast seen by Forbes, Stability was on track to spend $99 million on compute in 2023. It noted as well that Stability was “underpaying AWS bills for July (by $1M)” and “not planning to pay AWS at the end of October for August usage ($7M).” Then there were the September and October bills, plus $1 million owed to Google Cloud and $600,000 to GPU cloud data center CoreWeave. (Amazon, Google and CoreWeave declined to comment.) With an additional $54 million allocated to wages and operating expenses, Stability’s total projected costs for 2023 were $153 million. But according to its October financial report, its projected revenue for the calendar year was just $11 million. Stability was on track to lose more money per month than it made in an entire year. The company’s dire financial position had thoroughly soured Stability’s current investors, including Coatue, which had invested tens of millions in the company during its $101 million funding round in 2022. In the middle of 2023, Mostaque agreed to an independent audit after Coatue raised a series of concerns, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. The outcome of the investigation is unclear. Coatue declined to comment. Within a week of an early October board meeting where Mostaque shared that financial forecast, Lightspeed Venture Partners, another major investor, sent a letter to the board urging them to sell the company. The distressing numbers had “severely undermined” the firm’s confidence in Mostaque’s ability to lead the company. “In particular, we are surprised and deeply concerned by a cash position just now disclosed to us that is inconsistent with prior discussions on this topic,” Lightspeed’s general counsel Brett Nissenberg wrote in the letter, a copy of which was viewed by Forbes. “Lightspeed believes that the company is not likely financeable on terms that would assure the company’s long term sound financial position.” (Lightspeed declined a request for comment.) The calls for a sale led Stability to quietly begin looking for a buyer. Bloomberg reported in November that Stability approached AI startups Cohere and Jasper to gauge their interest. Stability denied this, and Jasper CEO Timothy Young did the same when reached for comment by Forbes. A Cohere representative declined to comment. But one prominent AI company confirmed that Mostaque’s representatives had reached out to them to test the waters. Those talks did not advance because “the numbers didn’t add up,” this person, who declined to be named due to the confidential nature of the talks, told Forbes. Stability also tried to court Samsung as a buyer, going so far as to redecorate its office in advance of a planned meeting with the Korean electronics giant. (Samsung said that it invested in Stability in 2023 and that it does not comment on M&A discussions.) Coatue had been calling for Mostaque’s resignation for months, according to a source with direct knowledge. But it and other investors were unable to oust him because he was the company’s majority shareholder. When they tried a different tact by rallying other investors to offer him a juicy equity package to resign, Mostaque refused, said two sources. By October, Coatue and Lightspeed had had enough. Coatue left the board and Lightspeed resigned its observer seat. “Emad infuriated our initial investors so much it’s just making it impossible for us to raise more money under acceptable terms,” one current Stability executive told Forbes. The early months of 2024 saw Stability’s already precarious position eroding further still. Employees were quietly laid off. Three people in a position to know estimated that at least 10% of staff were cut. And cash reserves continued to dwindle. Mostaque mentioned a lifeline at the October board meeting: $95 million in tentative funding from new investors, pending due diligence. But in the end, only a fraction of it was wired, two sources say, much of it from Intel, which Forbes has learned invested $20 million, a fraction of what was reported. (Intel did not return a request for comment by publication time.) Two hours after Forbes broke the news of Mostaque’s plans to step down as CEO, Stability issued a press release confirming his resignation. Chief operating officer Wong and chief technology officer Laforte have taken over in the interim. Mostaque, who said on X that he still owns a majority of the company, also stepped down from the board, which has now initiated a search for a permanent CEO. There is a lot of work to be done to turn things around, and very little time in which to do it. Said the current Stability executive, “There’s still a possibility of a turnaround story, but the odds drop by the day.” In July of 2023, Mostaque still thought he could pull it off. Halfway through the month, he shared a fundraising plan with his lieutenants. It was wildly optimistic, detailing the raise of $500 million in cash and another $750 million in computing facilities from marquee investors like Nvidia, Google, Intel and the World Bank (Nvidia and Google declined comment. Intel did not respond. The World Bank said it did not invest in Stability). In a Slack message reviewed by Forbes, Mostaque said Google was “willing to move fast” and the round was “likely to be oversubscribed.” It wasn’t. Three people with direct knowledge of these fundraising efforts told Forbes that while there was some interest in Stability, talks often stalled when it came time to disclose financials. Two of them noted that earlier in the year, Mostaque had simply stopped engaging with VCs who asked for numbers. Only one firm invested around that time: actor Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, which invested $35 million in the form of a convertible SAFE note during the second quarter, according to an internal document. (Sound Ventures did not respond to a request for comment.) And though he’d managed to score a meeting with Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang, it ended in disaster, according to two sources. “Under Jensen's microscopic questions, Emad just fell apart,” a source in position to know told Forbes. Huang quickly concluded Stability wasn’t ready for an investment from Nvidia, the sources said. Mostaque told Forbes in an email that he had not met with Huang since 2022, except to say “hello and what’s up a few times after.” His July 2023 message references a plan to raise $150 million from Nvidia. (Nvidia declined to comment.) After a June Forbes investigation citing more than 30 sources revealed Mostaque’s history of misleading claims, Mostaque struggled to raise funding, a Stability investor told Forbes. (Mostaque disputed the story at the time and called it "coordinated lies" in his email this week to Forbes). Increasingly, investors scrutinized his assertions and pressed for data. And Young, now the CEO of Jasper, turned down a verbal offer to be Stability’s president after reading the article, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. The collapse of the talks aggravated the board and other executives, who had hoped Young would compensate for the sales and business management skills that Mostaque lacked, according to four people in a position to know. (Young declined to comment.) When Stability’s senior leadership convened in London for the CogX conference in September, the financing had still not closed. There, a group of executives confronted Mostaque asking questions about the company’s cash position and runway, according to three people with direct knowledge of the incident. They did not get the clarity they’d hoped for. By October, Mostaque had reduced his fundraising target by more than 80%. The months that followed saw a steady drumbeat of departures — general counsel Adam Avrunin, vice presidents Mike Melnicki, Ed Newton-Rex and Joe Penna, chief people officer Ozden Onder — culminating in the demoralizing March exit of Stable Diffusion’s primary developers Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, Patrick Esser and Dominik Lorenz. Rombach, who led the team, had been angling to leave for months, two sources said, first threatening to resign last summer because of the fundraising failures. Others left over concerns about cash flow, as well as liabilities — including what four people described as Mostaque’s lax approach to ensuring that Stability products could not be used to produce child sexual abuse imagery. “Stability AI is committed to preventing the misuse of AI and prohibits the use of our image models and services for unlawful activity, including attempts to edit or create CSAM,” Ella Irwin, senior vice president of integrity, said in a statement. Newton-Rex told Forbes he resigned because he disagreed with Stability’s position that training AI on copyrighted work without consent is fair use. Melnicki and Penna declined to comment. Avrunin and Onder could not be reached for comment. None of the researchers responded to requests for comment. The Stable Diffusion researchers’ departure as a cohort says a lot about the state of Stability AI. The company’s researchers were widely viewed as its crown jewels, their work subsidized with a firehose of pricey compute power that was even extended to people outside the company. Martino Russi, an artificial intelligence researcher, told Forbes that though he was never formally employed by Stability, the company provided him a “staggering” amount of compute between January and April 2023 to play around with developing an AI video generator that Stability might someday use. “It was Candy Land or Coney Island,” said Russi, who estimates that his experiment, which was ultimately shelved, cost the company $2.5 million. Stable Diffusion was simultaneously Stability’s marquee product and its existential cash crisis. One current employee described it to Forbes as “a giant vacuum that absorbed everything: money, compute, people.” While the software was widely used, with Mostaque claiming downloads reaching into the hundreds of millions, Stability struggled to translate that wild success into revenue. Mostaque knew it could be done — peers at Databricks, Elastic and MongoDB had all turned a free product into a lucrative business — he just couldn’t figure out how. His first attempt was Stability’s API, which allowed paying customers to integrate Stable Diffusion into their own products. In early 2023, a handful of small companies, like art generator app NightCafe and presentation software startup Tome, signed on, according to four people with knowledge of the deals. But Stability’s poor account management services soured many, and in a matter of months NightCafe and Tome canceled their contracts, three people said. NightCafe founder Angus Russell told Forbes that his company switched to a competitor which “offered much cheaper inference costs and a broader service.” Tome did not respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, Mostaque’s efforts to court larger companies like Samsung and Snapchat were failing, according to five people familiar with the effort. Canva, which was already one of the heaviest users of open-sourced Stable Diffusion, had multiple discussions with Stability, which was angling for a contract it hoped would generate several millions in annual revenue. But the deal never materialized, four sources said. “These three companies wanted and needed us,” one former employee told Forbes. “They would have been the perfect customers.” (Samsung, Snap and Canva declined to comment.) “It’s not that there was not an appetite to pay Stability — there were tons of companies that would have that wanted to,” the former employee said. “There was a huge opportunity and demand, but just a resistance to execution.” Mostaque’s other big idea was to provide governments with bespoke national AI models that would invigorate their economies and citizenry. “Emad envisions a world where AI through 100 national models serves not as a tool of the few, but as a benefactor to all promising to confront great adversaries, cancer, autism, and the sands of time itself,” the AI avatar of Aristotle said in his intro at the conference. Mostaque told several prospective customers that he could deliver such models within 60 days — an untenable timeline, according to two people in position to know. Stability attempted to develop a model for the Singaporean government over the protestation of employees who questioned its technical feasibility, three sources familiar with the effort told Forbes. But it couldn’t pull it off and Singapore never became a customer. (The government of Singapore confirmed it did not enter into a deal with Stability, but declined to answer additional questions.) As Stability careened from one new business idea to another, resources were abruptly reallocated and researchers reassigned. The whiplash shifts in a largely siloed organization demoralized and infuriated employees. “There were ‘urgent’ things, ‘urgent urgent’ things and ‘most urgent,’” one former employee complained. “None of these things seem important if everything is important.” Another former Stability executive was far more pointed in their assessment. “Emad is the most disorganized leader I have ever worked with in my career,” this person told Forbes. “He has no vision, and changes directions every week, often based on what he sees on Twitter.” In a video interview posted shortly before this story was published, Mostaque explained his leadership style: “I'm particularly great at taking creatives, developers, researchers, others, and achieving their full potential in designing systems. But I should not be dealing with, you know, HR and operations and business development and other elements. There are far better people than me to do that.” By December 2023, Stability had partially abandoned its open-source roots and announced that any commercial use of Stable Diffusion would cost customers at least $20 per month (non-commercial and research use of Stable Diffusion would remain free). But privately, Stability was considering a potentially more lucrative source of revenue: reselling the compute it was leasing from providers like AWS, according to six people familiar with the effort. Though it was essentially GPU arbitrage, Stability framed the strategy to investors as a “managed services” offering. Its damning October financial report projected optimistically that such an offering would bring in $139 million in 2024 — 98% of its revenue. Multiple employees at the time told Forbes they feared reselling compute, even if the company called it “managed services,” would violate the terms of Stability’s contract with AWS. Amazon declined to comment. “The line internally was that we are not reselling compute,” one former employee said. “This was some of the dirtiest feeling stuff.” Stability also discussed reselling a cluster of Nvidia A100 chips, leased via CoreWeave, to the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, three sources said. “It was under the guise of managed services, but there wasn’t any management happening,” one of these people told Forbes. Andreessen Horowitz and CoreWeave declined to comment. Stability did not respond to questions about if it plans to continue this strategy now that Mostaque is out of the picture. Regardless, interim co-CEOs Wong and Laforte are on a tight timeline to clean up his mess. Board chairman Jim O’Shaughnessy said in a statement that he was confident the pair “will adeptly steer the company forward in developing and commercializing industry-leading generative AI products.” But burn continues to far outpace revenue. The Financial Times reported Friday that the company made $5.4 million of revenue in February, against $8 million in costs. Several sources said there are ongoing concerns about making payroll for the roughly 150 remaining employees. Leadership roles have gone vacant for months amid the disarray, leaving the company increasingly directionless. Meanwhile, a potentially catastrophic legal threat looms over the company: A trio of copyright infringement lawsuits brought by Getty Images and a group of artists in the U.S. and U.K., who claim Stability illegally used their art and photography to train the AI models powering Stable Diffusion. A London-based court has already rejected the company’s bid to throw out one of the lawsuits on the basis that none of its researchers were based in the U.K. And Stability’s claim that Getty’s Delaware lawsuit should be blocked because it's a U.K.-based company was rejected. (Stability did not respond to questions about the litigation.) AI-related copyright litigation “could go on for years,” according to Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University. He told Forbes that though plaintiffs suing AI firms face an uphill battle overcoming the existing legal precedent on copyright infringement, the quantity of arguments available to make are virtually inexhaustible. “Like in military theory, if there’s a gap in your lines, that’s where the enemy pours through — if any one of those arguments succeeds, it could completely change the generative AI environment,” he said. “In some sense, generative AI as an industry has to win everything.” Stability, which had more than $100 million in the bank just a year and a half ago, is in a deep hole. Not only does it need more funding, it needs a viable business model — or a buyer with the vision and chops to make it successful in a fast-moving and highly competitive sector. At an all hands meeting this past Monday, Stability’s new leaders detailed a path forward. One point of emphasis: a plan to better manage resources and expenses, according to one person in attendance. It’s a start, but Mostaque’s meddling has left them with little runway to execute. His resignation, though, has given some employees hope. “A few people are 100% going to reconsider leaving after today,” said one current employee. “And the weird gloomy aura of hearing Emad talking nonsense for an hour is gone.” Shortly before Mostaque resigned, one current Stability executive told Forbes that they were optimistic his departure could make Stability appealing enough to receive a small investment or sale to a friendly party. “There are companies that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars that have much less intrinsic value than Stability,” the person said. “A white knight may still appear.”

#reddit#stability#ai’s

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Kseniase•This week

[N] TheSequence Scope: When it comes to machine learning, size matters: Microsoft's DeepSpeed framework, which can train a model with up to a trillion parameters

Hi there! Offering to your attention the latest edition of a weekly ML-newsletter that focusing on three things: impactful ML research papers, cool ML tech solutions, and ML use cases supported by investors. Please, see it below. Reddit is a new thing for me, and I've been struggling a bit with it, so please don't judge me too harsh for this promotion. This weekly digest is free and I hope you'd find the format convenient for you. Your feedback is very appreciated, and please feel free to sign up if you like it. 📝 Editorial  The recent emergence of pre-trained language models and transformer architectures pushed the creation of larger and larger machine learning models. Google’s BERT presented attention mechanism and transformer architecture possibilities as the “next big thing” in ML, and the numbers seem surreal. OpenAI’s GPT-2 set a record by processing 1.5 billion parameters, followed by Microsoft’s Turing-NLG, which processed 17 billion parameters just to see the new GPT-3 processing an astonishing 175 billion parameters. To not feel complacent, just this week Microsoft announced a new release of its DeepSpeed framework (which powers Turing-NLG), which can train a model with up to a trillion parameters. That sounds insane but it really isn’t.   What we are seeing is a consequence of several factors. First, computation power and parallelization techniques have evolved to a point where it is relatively easy to train machine learning models in large clusters of machines. Second and most importantly, in the current state of machine learning, larger models have regularly outperformed smaller and more specialized models. Knowledge reusability methods like transfer learning are still in very nascent stages. As a result, it’s really hard to build small models that can operate in uncertain environments. Furthermore, as models like GPT-3 and Turing-NLG have shown, there is some unexplainable magic that happens after models go past a certain size. Many of the immediate machine learning problems might be solved by scaling the current generation of neural network architectures. Plain and simple, when it comes to machine learning, size matters.   We would love to hear your opinions about the debate between broader-larger vs. smaller and more specialized models.   Leave a comment Now, to the most important developments in the AI industry this week 🔎 ML Research GPT-3 Falls Short in Machine Comprehension Proposed by researchers from a few major American universities, a 57-task test to measure models’ ability to reason poses challenges even for sophisticated models like GPT-3 ->read more in the original paper Better Text Summarization OpenAI published a paper showing a reinforcement learning with human feedback technique that can surpass supervised models ->read more on OpenAI blog Reinforcement Learning with Offline Datasets Researchers from the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab published a paper unveiling a method that uses offline datasets to improve reinforcement learning models->read more on BAIR blog 🤖 Cool AI Tech Releases New Version of DeepSpeed Microsoft open-sourced a new version of DeepSpeed, an open-source library for parallelizable training that can scale up to models with 1 trillion parameters->read more on Microsoft Research blog 💸 Money in AI AI-powered customer experience management platform Sprinklr has raised $200 million (kudos to our subscribers from Sprinklr 👏). Sprinklr's “AI listening processing” solution allows companies to get structured and meaningful sentiments and insights from unstructured customer data that comes from public conversations on different websites and social platforms. Xometry, an on-demand industrial parts marketplace, raises $75 million in Series E funding. The company provides a digital way of creating the right combination of buyers and manufacturers. Another example of AI implementation into matching two sides for a deal. Real estate tech company Orchard raises $69 million in its recent funding round. Orchard aims to digitize the whole real estate market, by developing a solution that combines machine learning and rapid human assistance to smooth the search, match the right deal, and simplify buying and selling relationships. Cybersecurity startup Pcysys raised $25 million in its funding round. Pcysys’ platform, which doesn’t require installation or network reconfiguration, uses algorithms to scan and “ethically” attack enterprise networks. Robotics farming company Iron Ox raised $20 million in a funding round. The system of farming robots is still semi-autonomous, the company’s goal is to become fully autonomous.  Insurtech company Descartes Underwriting raised $18.5 million. The company applies AI and machine learning technologies to climate risk predicting and insurance underwriting. Legaltech startup ThoughtRiver raised $10 million in its Series A round. Its AI solution applied to contract pre-screening aims to boost operational efficiency. Medtech startup Skin Analytics raised $5.1 million in Series A funding. Skin Analytics has developed a clinically validated AI system that can identify not only the important skin cancers but also precancerous lesions that can be treated, as well as a range of lesions that are benign. Amazon, along with several government organizations and three other industry partners, helped fund the National Science Foundation, a high-priority AI research initiative. The amount of funding is not disclosed. The content of TheSequence is written by Jesus Rodriguez, one of the most-read contributors to KDNuggets and TDS. You can check his Medium here.

#reddit#thesequence#scope:

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regalalgorithm•This week

[N] Last Week in AI News Digest 08/15-08/21: detecting hate speech, dogfight simulation, disaster-response, and more!

Hi there, we at Skynet Today produce a weekly newsletter summarizing each week's major AI news, which seems like it'd be of interest to this subreddit. Here's what's in our latest one: Facebook’s AI for detecting hate speech is facing its biggest challenge yet Facebook has made significant progress recently to proactively take down content that violate its community standards. For example, in the second quarter of 2020, Facebook took down 104.6 million pieces of content. While reviews are typically performed by a vast workforce of human moderators, AI-powered tools have enabled Facebook to do this work at a greater scale for textual content. However, there’s a long way to go for these systems to match or exceed the capabilities of human moderators. This is because a large proportion of hate speech and misinformation is in the form of images and memes, and reasoning about the context and language-image interplay is an extremely difficult challenge for AI. Given Facebook’s scale and the speed at which some use it to spread hate, incite violence, and share lies with millions, Facebook will have to keep running to catch up. AI Slays Top F-16 Pilot In DARPA Dogfight Simulation The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) recently hosted a simulated F16 dogfight competition, with different AI bots competing with each other as well as with human pilots. The top AI bot was able to beat a human pilot 5-0 in the simulated contest. DARPA started this program “as a risk-reduction effort \[…\] to flesh out how human and machine pilots share operational control of a fighter jet to maximize its chances of mission success.” Competition runners are broadly optimistic about the demonstration of AI capabilities, even if they are not close to being deployed on a real aircraft. Of concern, the program had little discussion on the ethics of AI military applications, especially with the lethal autonomous weapon systems being considered. News Advances & Business Microsoft, Energy Dept. to Develop Disaster-Response AI Tools \- The U.S. Department of Energy and Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced a partnership to develop artificial-intelligence tools aimed at helping first-responders better react to fast-changing natural events, such as floods and wildfires. Coronavirus: Robot CERi is a bilingual Covid-19 expert \- Ceri is bilingual, clued-up on coronavirus and can tell what mood you are in. Ceri also happens to be a robot. Moscow DOH uses AI platform to detect lung cancer symptoms \- Moscow’s department of health is using an artificial intelligence (AI) platform to detect symptoms of lung cancer in CT scans, as part of a project to implement AI technology for radiology. Scientists develop artificial intelligence system for high precision recognition of hand gestures \- The recognition of human hand gestures by AI systems has been a valuable development over the last decade and has been adopted in high-precision surgical robots, health monitoring equipment and in gaming systems. Forget credit cards - now you can pay with your face. Creepy or cool? \- A new way to pay has arrived in Los Angeles: your face. Concerns & Hype The dystopian tech that companies are selling to help schools reopen sooner \- This fall, AI could be watching students social distance and checking their masks. Thousands of schools nationwide will not be reopening this fall. NYPD Used Facial Recognition Technology In Siege Of Black Lives Matter Activist’s Apartment \- The NYPD deployed facial recognition technology in its hunt for a prominent Black Lives Matter activist, whose home was besieged by dozens of officers and police dogs last week, a spokesperson confirmed to Gothamist. Machines can spot mental health issues - if you hand over your personal data \- Digital diagnosis could transform psychiatry by mining your most intimate data for clues. But is the privacy cost worth it? Supporting Black Artists Who Are Examining AI \- Technology has a complicated relationship with racial justice. Smartphones, internet platforms, and other digital tools can be used to document and expose racism. But digital tools can also fuel racism: smart doorbells surveil Black individuals. A-level and GCSE results in England to be based on teacher assessments in U-turn \- All A-level and GCSE results in England will be based on grades assesed by teachers instead of algorithms. Analysis & Policy GPT-3 and The Question of Automation \- Automation is not an all or nothing proposition. An AI model’s automation capability is highly conjoined with the task and application it is used in. An A.I. Movie Service Could One Day Serve You a New Custom Film Every Time \- How long will it be until an A.I. can make an actual feature film on demand? Fairness, evidence, and predictive equality \- How the causal fairness principle relates to predictive equality How robotics and automation could create new jobs in the new normal \- Depending on who you ask, AI and automation will either destroy jobs or create new ones. In reality, a greater push toward automation will probably both kill and create jobs - human workers will become redundant in certain spheres, sure, but many new roles will likely crop up. Expert Opinions & Discussion within the field Too many AI researchers think real-world problems are not relevant \- The community’s hyperfocus on novel methods ignores what’s really important.

#reddit#last#week

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baylearn•This week

[N] AI Robotics startup Covariant (founded by Peter Chen, Pieter Abbeel, other Berkeley / ex-OpenAI folks) just raised $40M in Series B funding round. “Covariant has recently seen increased usage from clients hoping to avoid supply chain disruption due to the coronavirus pandemic.”

h/t their announcement, VB and WSJ article: Logistics AI Startup Covariant Reaps $40 Million in Funding Round Company plans to explore uses of machine learning for automation beyond warehouse operations Artificial-intelligence robotics startup Covariant raised $40 million to expand its logistics automation technology to new industries and ramp up hiring, the company said Wednesday. The Berkeley, Calif.-based company makes AI software that it says helps warehouse robots pick objects at a faster rate than human workers, with a roughly 95% accuracy rate. Covariant is working with Austrian logistics-automation company Knapp AG and the robotics business of Swiss industrial conglomerate ABB Ltd., which provide hardware such as robot arms or conveyor belts to pair with the startup’s technology platform. “What we’ve built is a universal brain for robotic manipulation tasks,” Covariant co-founder and Chief Executive Peter Chen said in an interview. “We provide the software, they provide the rest of the systems.” Logistics-sector appetite for such technology is growing as distribution and fulfillment operations that have relied on human labor look to speed output and meet rising digital commerce demand. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated that interest as businesses have sought to adjust their operations to volatile swings in consumer demand and to new restrictions, such as spacing workers further apart to guard against contagion. That has provided a bright spot for some technology startups even as many big backers scale back venture-capital spending. Last month logistics delivery platform Bringg said it raised $30 million in a Series D funding round, for example, as demand for home delivery of food, household goods and e-commerce staples soared among homebound consumers. Covariant’s Series B round brings the company’s total funding to $67 million. New investor Index Ventures led the round, with participation from existing investor Amplify Partners and new investors including Radical Ventures. Mr. Chen said the funding will be used to explore the technology’s potential application in other markets such as manufacturing, recycling or agriculture “where there are repetitive manual processes.” Covariant also plans to hire more engineering and other staff, he said. Covariant was founded in 2017 and now has about 50 employees. The company’s technology uses camera systems to capture images of objects, and artificial intelligence to analyze objects and how to pick them up. Machine learning helps Covariant-powered robots learn from experience. The startup’s customers include a German electrical supplies wholesaler that uses the technology to control a mechanical arm that picks out orders of circuit boards, switches and other goods.

#reddit#robotics#startup

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EsotericaCapital•This week

[N] New Trends to Power Faster Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Adoption?

In 2012, Google X lab created a neural network that can identify cats. Since then, technology companies have been increasingly adopting AI/ML on a large scale to build better applications and services for consumers (ToC). On the other hand, AI/ML's adoption on the enterprises' side (ToB) has yet to see the same growth trajectory due to the costs and complexities in both hardware and software. However, Since 2020, we started noticing three emerging tech trends that can help accelerate enterprises' adoption of AI/ML. Breakthrough in semiconductors: In 2020, Nvidia debut the concept of "Data Processing Unit," a new class of programmable processors that combine high-performance CPU with SmartNiC (network interface controller). Data centers can deploy DPUs to optimize computing offload and frees up CPUs to focus on intended tasks, such as machine learning. DPUs help resolve a significant bottleneck for ML training, where models, sometimes with billions of parameters, are way too big for traditional CPUs and GPUs to handle. Other leading semiconductor players, such as Marvell and Xilinx, follow suit with their in-house or partner-designed DPUs. Industry analysts have forecasted that the market size for DPUs in data centers alone could reach $50 billion by 2025. ​ https://preview.redd.it/l436muluhnn61.png?width=1430&format=png&auto=webp&s=ba8d1298056ea31bddd25f1596ff64b7e107580a Breakthrough in software: we also saw significant progress of "Conversational AI," a new form of AI that can understand and speak languages with human-like accuracy, in 2020. Conversational AI allows two-way interactions and provides a much better user experience than traditional AI-powered Chatbot, mostly a one-way response system. The secret of conversational AI is its ability to handle lots of human conversation variance. Developers have designed innovative algorithms such as "Switch transformers" and "Sparse training" to enable models to handle vast amounts of data. The size of conversational AI training models is enormous and keeps expanding. For example, in February 2021, Google Brain announced a model with 1.6 trillion parameters, nine times the size of the famous Open AI GPT-3 (175 billion parameters) unveiled in July 2020. GPT-3 is 100+ times bigger than GPT-2 introduced in 2019. ​ https://preview.redd.it/oajpi2yvhnn61.png?width=1430&format=png&auto=webp&s=1482913a98e17ddc1d62cc79864598d4012ad6f7 Cloud giants are expanding machine-learning platforms for developers. Andy Jassy famously said that "AI is shifting from a niche experiment inside technical departments to becoming more mainstream in business processes." in the 2020 AWS reInvent. During the conference, AWS rolled out many AI products across the technology stack, including AI chips (AWS Trainium), database (Aurora Machine Learning), and vertical solutions (Amazon Healthlake), etc. However, the most significant development is the drastic expansion of "Amazon SageMaker," one of the largest cloud machine-learning platforms. SageMaker has been offering new features to make it easier for developers to automate machine learning workflow. Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are also growing their ML developer platforms. ​ https://preview.redd.it/z9wf2o8xhnn61.png?width=1430&format=png&auto=webp&s=9f607acfe8f0dbf36fb9b472f3cb40b80f13879e Witnessing these breakthroughs in semiconductor and software, coupled with cloud giants' effort to democratize AI, we see a coming inflection point of accelerated AI adoption in both ToC and ToB markets. So how do we benefit from this megatrend? In semiconductors, we like companies with DPUs exposure. In AI development and processing, we favor multi-cloud AI platforms such as Databricks. In enterprise software, we believe there will be a strong wave of new AI-based enterprise applications that can be creative and efficient in solving real-world problems.

#reddit#trends#power

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regalalgorithm•This week

[N] Last Week in AI News Digest 08/15-08/21: detecting hate speech, dogfight simulation, disaster-response, and more!

Hi there, we at Skynet Today produce a weekly newsletter summarizing each week's major AI news, which seems like it'd be of interest to this subreddit. Here's what's in our latest one: Facebook’s AI for detecting hate speech is facing its biggest challenge yet Facebook has made significant progress recently to proactively take down content that violate its community standards. For example, in the second quarter of 2020, Facebook took down 104.6 million pieces of content. While reviews are typically performed by a vast workforce of human moderators, AI-powered tools have enabled Facebook to do this work at a greater scale for textual content. However, there’s a long way to go for these systems to match or exceed the capabilities of human moderators. This is because a large proportion of hate speech and misinformation is in the form of images and memes, and reasoning about the context and language-image interplay is an extremely difficult challenge for AI. Given Facebook’s scale and the speed at which some use it to spread hate, incite violence, and share lies with millions, Facebook will have to keep running to catch up. AI Slays Top F-16 Pilot In DARPA Dogfight Simulation The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) recently hosted a simulated F16 dogfight competition, with different AI bots competing with each other as well as with human pilots. The top AI bot was able to beat a human pilot 5-0 in the simulated contest. DARPA started this program “as a risk-reduction effort \[…\] to flesh out how human and machine pilots share operational control of a fighter jet to maximize its chances of mission success.” Competition runners are broadly optimistic about the demonstration of AI capabilities, even if they are not close to being deployed on a real aircraft. Of concern, the program had little discussion on the ethics of AI military applications, especially with the lethal autonomous weapon systems being considered. News Advances & Business Microsoft, Energy Dept. to Develop Disaster-Response AI Tools \- The U.S. Department of Energy and Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced a partnership to develop artificial-intelligence tools aimed at helping first-responders better react to fast-changing natural events, such as floods and wildfires. Coronavirus: Robot CERi is a bilingual Covid-19 expert \- Ceri is bilingual, clued-up on coronavirus and can tell what mood you are in. Ceri also happens to be a robot. Moscow DOH uses AI platform to detect lung cancer symptoms \- Moscow’s department of health is using an artificial intelligence (AI) platform to detect symptoms of lung cancer in CT scans, as part of a project to implement AI technology for radiology. Scientists develop artificial intelligence system for high precision recognition of hand gestures \- The recognition of human hand gestures by AI systems has been a valuable development over the last decade and has been adopted in high-precision surgical robots, health monitoring equipment and in gaming systems. Forget credit cards - now you can pay with your face. Creepy or cool? \- A new way to pay has arrived in Los Angeles: your face. Concerns & Hype The dystopian tech that companies are selling to help schools reopen sooner \- This fall, AI could be watching students social distance and checking their masks. Thousands of schools nationwide will not be reopening this fall. NYPD Used Facial Recognition Technology In Siege Of Black Lives Matter Activist’s Apartment \- The NYPD deployed facial recognition technology in its hunt for a prominent Black Lives Matter activist, whose home was besieged by dozens of officers and police dogs last week, a spokesperson confirmed to Gothamist. Machines can spot mental health issues - if you hand over your personal data \- Digital diagnosis could transform psychiatry by mining your most intimate data for clues. But is the privacy cost worth it? Supporting Black Artists Who Are Examining AI \- Technology has a complicated relationship with racial justice. Smartphones, internet platforms, and other digital tools can be used to document and expose racism. But digital tools can also fuel racism: smart doorbells surveil Black individuals. A-level and GCSE results in England to be based on teacher assessments in U-turn \- All A-level and GCSE results in England will be based on grades assesed by teachers instead of algorithms. Analysis & Policy GPT-3 and The Question of Automation \- Automation is not an all or nothing proposition. An AI model’s automation capability is highly conjoined with the task and application it is used in. An A.I. Movie Service Could One Day Serve You a New Custom Film Every Time \- How long will it be until an A.I. can make an actual feature film on demand? Fairness, evidence, and predictive equality \- How the causal fairness principle relates to predictive equality How robotics and automation could create new jobs in the new normal \- Depending on who you ask, AI and automation will either destroy jobs or create new ones. In reality, a greater push toward automation will probably both kill and create jobs - human workers will become redundant in certain spheres, sure, but many new roles will likely crop up. Expert Opinions & Discussion within the field Too many AI researchers think real-world problems are not relevant \- The community’s hyperfocus on novel methods ignores what’s really important.

#reddit#last#week

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baylearn•This week

[N] AI Robotics startup Covariant (founded by Peter Chen, Pieter Abbeel, other Berkeley / ex-OpenAI folks) just raised $40M in Series B funding round. “Covariant has recently seen increased usage from clients hoping to avoid supply chain disruption due to the coronavirus pandemic.”

h/t their announcement, VB and WSJ article: Logistics AI Startup Covariant Reaps $40 Million in Funding Round Company plans to explore uses of machine learning for automation beyond warehouse operations Artificial-intelligence robotics startup Covariant raised $40 million to expand its logistics automation technology to new industries and ramp up hiring, the company said Wednesday. The Berkeley, Calif.-based company makes AI software that it says helps warehouse robots pick objects at a faster rate than human workers, with a roughly 95% accuracy rate. Covariant is working with Austrian logistics-automation company Knapp AG and the robotics business of Swiss industrial conglomerate ABB Ltd., which provide hardware such as robot arms or conveyor belts to pair with the startup’s technology platform. “What we’ve built is a universal brain for robotic manipulation tasks,” Covariant co-founder and Chief Executive Peter Chen said in an interview. “We provide the software, they provide the rest of the systems.” Logistics-sector appetite for such technology is growing as distribution and fulfillment operations that have relied on human labor look to speed output and meet rising digital commerce demand. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated that interest as businesses have sought to adjust their operations to volatile swings in consumer demand and to new restrictions, such as spacing workers further apart to guard against contagion. That has provided a bright spot for some technology startups even as many big backers scale back venture-capital spending. Last month logistics delivery platform Bringg said it raised $30 million in a Series D funding round, for example, as demand for home delivery of food, household goods and e-commerce staples soared among homebound consumers. Covariant’s Series B round brings the company’s total funding to $67 million. New investor Index Ventures led the round, with participation from existing investor Amplify Partners and new investors including Radical Ventures. Mr. Chen said the funding will be used to explore the technology’s potential application in other markets such as manufacturing, recycling or agriculture “where there are repetitive manual processes.” Covariant also plans to hire more engineering and other staff, he said. Covariant was founded in 2017 and now has about 50 employees. The company’s technology uses camera systems to capture images of objects, and artificial intelligence to analyze objects and how to pick them up. Machine learning helps Covariant-powered robots learn from experience. The startup’s customers include a German electrical supplies wholesaler that uses the technology to control a mechanical arm that picks out orders of circuit boards, switches and other goods.

#reddit#robotics#startup

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MassivePellfish•This week

[N] Inside DeepMind's secret plot to break away from Google

Article https://www.businessinsider.com/deepmind-secret-plot-break-away-from-google-project-watermelon-mario-2021-9 by Hugh Langley and Martin Coulter For a while, some DeepMind employees referred to it as "Watermelon." Later, executives called it "Mario." Both code names meant the same thing: a secret plan to break away from parent company Google. DeepMind feared Google might one day misuse its technology, and executives worked to distance the artificial-intelligence firm from its owner for years, said nine current and former employees who were directly familiar with the plans. This included plans to pursue an independent legal status that would distance the group's work from Google, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. One core tension at DeepMind was that it sold the business to people it didn't trust, said one former employee. "Everything that happened since that point has been about them questioning that decision," the person added. Efforts to separate DeepMind from Google ended in April without a deal, The Wall Street Journal reported. The yearslong negotiations, along with recent shake-ups within Google's AI division, raise questions over whether the search giant can maintain control over a technology so crucial to its future. "DeepMind's close partnership with Google and Alphabet since the acquisition has been extraordinarily successful — with their support, we've delivered research breakthroughs that transformed the AI field and are now unlocking some of the biggest questions in science," a DeepMind spokesperson said in a statement. "Over the years, of course we've discussed and explored different structures within the Alphabet group to find the optimal way to support our long-term research mission. We could not be prouder to be delivering on this incredible mission, while continuing to have both operational autonomy and Alphabet's full support." When Google acquired DeepMind in 2014, the deal was seen as a win-win. Google got a leading AI research organization, and DeepMind, in London, won financial backing for its quest to build AI that can learn different tasks the way humans do, known as artificial general intelligence. But tensions soon emerged. Some employees described a cultural conflict between researchers who saw themselves firstly as academics and the sometimes bloated bureaucracy of Google's colossal business. Others said staff were immediately apprehensive about putting DeepMind's work under the control of a tech giant. For a while, some employees were encouraged to communicate using encrypted messaging apps over the fear of Google spying on their work. At one point, DeepMind's executives discovered that work published by Google's internal AI research group resembled some of DeepMind's codebase without citation, one person familiar with the situation said. "That pissed off Demis," the person added, referring to Demis Hassabis, DeepMind's CEO. "That was one reason DeepMind started to get more protective of their code." After Google restructured as Alphabet in 2015 to give riskier projects more freedom, DeepMind's leadership started to pursue a new status as a separate division under Alphabet, with its own profit and loss statement, The Information reported. DeepMind already enjoyed a high level of operational independence inside Alphabet, but the group wanted legal autonomy too. And it worried about the misuse of its technology, particularly if DeepMind were to ever achieve AGI. Internally, people started referring to the plan to gain more autonomy as "Watermelon," two former employees said. The project was later formally named "Mario" among DeepMind's leadership, these people said. "Their perspective is that their technology would be too powerful to be held by a private company, so it needs to be housed in some other legal entity detached from shareholder interest," one former employee who was close to the Alphabet negotiations said. "They framed it as 'this is better for society.'" In 2017, at a company retreat at the Macdonald Aviemore Resort in Scotland, DeepMind's leadership disclosed to employees its plan to separate from Google, two people who were present said. At the time, leadership said internally that the company planned to become a "global interest company," three people familiar with the matter said. The title, not an official legal status, was meant to reflect the worldwide ramifications DeepMind believed its technology would have. Later, in negotiations with Google, DeepMind pursued a status as a company limited by guarantee, a corporate structure without shareholders that is sometimes used by nonprofits. The agreement was that Alphabet would continue to bankroll the firm and would get an exclusive license to its technology, two people involved in the discussions said. There was a condition: Alphabet could not cross certain ethical redlines, such as using DeepMind technology for military weapons or surveillance. In 2019, DeepMind registered a new company called DeepMind Labs Limited, as well as a new holding company, filings with the UK's Companies House showed. This was done in anticipation of a separation from Google, two former employees involved in those registrations said. Negotiations with Google went through peaks and valleys over the years but gained new momentum in 2020, one person said. A senior team inside DeepMind started to hold meetings with outside lawyers and Google to hash out details of what this theoretical new formation might mean for the two companies' relationship, including specifics such as whether they would share a codebase, internal performance metrics, and software expenses, two people said. From the start, DeepMind was thinking about potential ethical dilemmas from its deal with Google. Before the 2014 acquisition closed, both companies signed an "Ethics and Safety Review Agreement" that would prevent Google from taking control of DeepMind's technology, The Economist reported in 2019. Part of the agreement included the creation of an ethics board that would supervise the research. Despite years of internal discussions about who should sit on this board, and vague promises to the press, this group "never existed, never convened, and never solved any ethics issues," one former employee close to those discussions said. A DeepMind spokesperson declined to comment. DeepMind did pursue a different idea: an independent review board to convene if it were to separate from Google, three people familiar with the plans said. The board would be made up of Google and DeepMind executives, as well as third parties. Former US president Barack Obama was someone DeepMind wanted to approach for this board, said one person who saw a shortlist of candidates. DeepMind also created an ethical charter that included bans on using its technology for military weapons or surveillance, as well as a rule that its technology should be used for ways that benefit society. In 2017, DeepMind started a unit focused on AI ethics research composed of employees and external research fellows. Its stated goal was to "pave the way for truly beneficial and responsible AI." A few months later, a controversial contract between Google and the Pentagon was disclosed, causing an internal uproar in which employees accused Google of getting into "the business of war." Google's Pentagon contract, known as Project Maven, "set alarm bells ringing" inside DeepMind, a former employee said. Afterward, Google published a set of principles to govern its work in AI, guidelines that were similar to the ethical charter that DeepMind had already set out internally, rankling some of DeepMind's senior leadership, two former employees said. In April, Hassabis told employees in an all-hands meeting that negotiations to separate from Google had ended. DeepMind would maintain its existing status inside Alphabet. DeepMind's future work would be overseen by Google's Advanced Technology Review Council, which includes two DeepMind executives, Google's AI chief Jeff Dean, and the legal SVP Kent Walker. But the group's yearslong battle to achieve more independence raises questions about its future within Google. Google's commitment to AI research has also come under question, after the company forced out two of its most senior AI ethics researchers. That led to an industry backlash and sowed doubt over whether it could allow truly independent research. Ali Alkhatib, a fellow at the Center for Applied Data Ethics, told Insider that more public accountability was "desperately needed" to regulate the pursuit of AI by large tech companies. For Google, its investment in DeepMind may be starting to pay off. Late last year, DeepMind announced a breakthrough to help scientists better understand the behavior of microscopic proteins, which has the potential to revolutionize drug discovery. As for DeepMind, Hassabis is holding on to the belief that AI technology should not be controlled by a single corporation. Speaking at Tortoise's Responsible AI Forum in June, he proposed a "world institute" of AI. Such a body might sit under the jurisdiction of the United Nations, Hassabis theorized, and could be filled with top researchers in the field. "It's much stronger if you lead by example," he told the audience, "and I hope DeepMind can be part of that role-modeling for the industry."

#reddit#inside#deepmind's

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sensetime•This week

[N] Montreal-based Element AI sold for $230-million as founders saw value mostly wiped out

According to Globe and Mail article: Element AI sold for $230-million as founders saw value mostly wiped out, document reveals Montreal startup Element AI Inc. was running out of money and options when it inked a deal last month to sell itself for US$230-milion to Silicon Valley software company ServiceNow Inc., a confidential document obtained by the Globe and Mail reveals. Materials sent to Element AI shareholders Friday reveal that while many of its institutional shareholders will make most if not all of their money back from backing two venture financings, employees will not fare nearly as well. Many have been terminated and had their stock options cancelled. Also losing out are co-founders Jean-François Gagné, the CEO, his wife Anne Martel, the chief administrative officer, chief science officer Nick Chapados and Yoshua Bengio, the University of Montreal professor known as a godfather of “deep learning,” the foundational science behind today’s AI revolution. Between them, they owned 8.8 million common shares, whose value has been wiped out with the takeover, which goes to a shareholder vote Dec 29 with enough investor support already locked up to pass before the takeover goes to a Canadian court to approve a plan of arrangement with ServiceNow. The quartet also owns preferred shares worth less than US$300,000 combined under the terms of the deal. The shareholder document, a management proxy circular, provides a rare look inside efforts by a highly hyped but deeply troubled startup as it struggled to secure financing at the same time as it was failing to live up to its early promises. The circular states the US$230-million purchase price is subject to some adjustments and expenses which could bring the final price down to US$195-million. The sale is a disappointing outcome for a company that burst onto the Canadian tech scene four years ago like few others, promising to deliver AI-powered operational improvements to a range of industries and anchor a thriving domestic AI sector. Element AI became the self-appointed representative of Canada’s AI sector, lobbying politicians and officials and landing numerous photo ops with them, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It also secured $25-million in federal funding – $20-million of which was committed earlier this year and cancelled by the government with the ServiceNow takeover. Element AI invested heavily in hype and and earned international renown, largely due to its association with Dr. Bengio. It raised US$102-million in venture capital in 2017 just nine months after its founding, an unheard of amount for a new Canadian company, from international backers including Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp., Nvidia Corp., Tencent Holdings Ltd., Fidelity Investments, a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund and venture capital firms. Element AI went on a hiring spree to establish what the founders called “supercredibility,” recruiting top AI talent in Canada and abroad. It opened global offices, including a British operation that did pro bono work to deliver “AI for good,” and its ranks swelled to 500 people. But the swift hiring and attention-seeking were at odds with its success in actually building a software business. Element AI took two years to focus on product development after initially pursuing consulting gigs. It came into 2019 with a plan to bring several AI-based products to market, including a cybersecurity offering for financial institutions and a program to help port operators predict waiting times for truck drivers. It was also quietly shopping itself around. In December 2018, the company asked financial adviser Allen & Co LLC to find a potential buyer, in addition to pursuing a private placement, the circular reveals. But Element AI struggled to advance proofs-of-concept work to marketable products. Several client partnerships faltered in 2019 and 2020. Element did manage to reach terms for a US$151.4-million ($200-million) venture financing in September, 2019 led by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and backed by the Quebec government and consulting giant McKinsey and Co. However, the circular reveals the company only received the first tranche of the financing – roughly half of the amount – at the time, and that it had to meet unspecified conditions to get the rest. A fairness opinion by Deloitte commissioned as part of the sale process estimated Element AI’s enterprises value at just US$76-million around the time of the 2019 financing, shrinking to US$45-million this year. “However, the conditions precedent the closing of the second tranche … were not going to be met in a timely manner,” the circular reads. It states “new terms were proposed” for a round of financing that would give incoming investors ranking ahead of others and a cumulative dividend of 12 per cent on invested capital and impose “other operating and governance constraints and limitations on the company.” Management instead decided to pursue a sale, and Allen contacted prospective buyers in June. As talks narrowed this past summer to exclusive negotiations with ServiceNow, “the company’s liquidity was diminishing as sources of capital on acceptable terms were scarce,” the circular reads. By late November, it was generating revenue at an annualized rate of just $10-million to $12-million, Deloitte said. As part of the deal – which will see ServiceNow keep Element AI’s research scientists and patents and effectively abandon its business – the buyer has agreed to pay US$10-million to key employees and consultants including Mr. Gagne and Dr. Bengio as part of a retention plan. The Caisse and Quebec government will get US$35.45-million and US$11.8-million, respectively, roughly the amount they invested in the first tranche of the 2019 financing.

#reddit#montreal-based#element

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milaworld•This week

[N] How Stability AI’s Founder Tanked His Billion-Dollar Startup

forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2024/03/29/how-stability-ais-founder-tanked-his-billion-dollar-startup/ archive no paywall: https://archive.is/snbeV How Stability AI’s Founder Tanked His Billion-Dollar Startup Mar 29, 2024 Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque took the stage last week at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California to roaring applause and an introduction from an AI-generated Aristotle who announced him as “a modern Prometheus” with “the astuteness of Athena and the vision of Daedalus.” “Under his stewardship, AI becomes the Herculean force poised to vanquish the twin serpents of illness and ailment and extend the olive branch of longevity,” the faux Aristotle proclaimed. “I think that’s the best intro I’ve ever had,” Mostaque said. But behind Mostaque's hagiographic introduction lay a grim and fast metastasizing truth. Stability, once one of AI’s buzziest startups, was floundering. It had been running out of money for months and Mostaque had been unable to secure enough additional funding. It had defaulted on payments to Amazon whose cloud service undergirded Stability’s core offerings. The star research team behind its flagship text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion had tendered their resignations just three days before — as Forbes would first report — and other senior leaders had issued him an ultimatum: resign, or we walk too. Still, onstage before a massive audience of peers and acolytes, Mostaque talked a big game. “AI is jet planes for the mind,” he opined. “AI is our collective intelligence. It's the human Colossus.” He claimed a new, faster version of the Stable Diffusion image generator released earlier this month could generate “200 cats with hats per second.” But later, when he was asked about Stability’s financial model, Mostaque fumbled. “I can’t say that publicly,” he replied. “But it’s going well. We’re ahead of forecast.” Four days later, Mostaque stepped down as CEO of Stability, as Forbes first reported. In a post to X, the service formerly known as Twitter, he claimed he’d voluntarily abdicated his role to decentralize “the concentration of power in AI.” But sources told Forbes that was hardly the case. Behind the scenes, Mostaque had fought to maintain his position and control despite mounting pressure externally and internally to step down. Company documents and interviews with 32 current and former employees, investors, collaborators and industry observers suggest his abrupt exit was the result of poor business judgment and wild overspending that undermined confidence in his vision and leadership, and ultimately kneecapped the company. Mostaque, through his attorneys, declined to comment on record on a detailed list of questions about the reporting in this story. But in an email to Forbes earlier this week he broadly disputed the allegations. “Nobody tells you how hard it is to be a CEO and there are better CEOs than me to scale a business,” he said in a statement. “I am not sure anyone else would have been able to build and grow the research team to build the best and most widely used models out there and I’m very proud of the team there. I look forward to moving onto the next problem to handle and hopefully move the needle.” In an emailed statement, Christian Laforte and Shan Shan Wong, the interim co-CEOs who replaced Mostaque, said, "the company remains focused on commercializing its world leading technology” and providing it “to partners across the creative industries." After starting Stability in 2019, Mostaque built the company into an early AI juggernaut by seizing upon a promising research project that would become Stable Diffusion and funding it into a business reality. The ease with which the software generated detailed images from the simplest text prompts immediately captivated the public: 10 million people used it on any given day, the company told Forbes in early 2023. For some true believers, Mostaque was a crucial advocate for open-source AI development in a space dominated by the closed systems of OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. But his startup’s rise to one of the buzziest in generative AI was in part built on a series of exaggerations and misleading claims, as Forbes first reported last year (Mostaque disputed some points at the time). And they continued after he raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation just days after launching Stable Diffusion in 2022. His failure to deliver on an array of grand promises, like building bespoke AI models for nation states, and his decision to pour tens of millions into research without a sustainable business plan, eroded Stability’s foundations and jeopardized its future. "He was just giving shit away,” one former employee told Forbes. “That man legitimately wanted to transform the world. He actually wanted to train AI models for kids in Malawi. Was it practical? Absolutely not." By October 2023, Stability would have less than $4 million left in the bank, according to an internal memo prepared for a board meeting and reviewed by Forbes. And mounting debt, including months of overdue Amazon Web Services payments, had already left it in the red. To avoid legal penalties for skipping Americans staff’s payroll, the document explained, the London-based startup was considering delaying tax payments to the U.K. government. It was Stability’s armada of GPUs, the wildly powerful and equally expensive chips undergirding AI, that were so taxing the company’s finances. Hosted by AWS, they had long been one of Mostaque’s bragging points; he often touted them as one of the world’s 10 largest supercomputers. They were responsible for helping Stability’s researchers build and maintain one of the top AI image generators, as well as break important new ground on generative audio, video and 3D models. “Undeniably, Stability has continued to ship a lot of models,” said one former employee. “They may not have profited off of it, but the broader ecosystem benefitted in a huge, huge way.” But the costs associated with so much compute were now threatening to sink the company. According to an internal October financial forecast seen by Forbes, Stability was on track to spend $99 million on compute in 2023. It noted as well that Stability was “underpaying AWS bills for July (by $1M)” and “not planning to pay AWS at the end of October for August usage ($7M).” Then there were the September and October bills, plus $1 million owed to Google Cloud and $600,000 to GPU cloud data center CoreWeave. (Amazon, Google and CoreWeave declined to comment.) With an additional $54 million allocated to wages and operating expenses, Stability’s total projected costs for 2023 were $153 million. But according to its October financial report, its projected revenue for the calendar year was just $11 million. Stability was on track to lose more money per month than it made in an entire year. The company’s dire financial position had thoroughly soured Stability’s current investors, including Coatue, which had invested tens of millions in the company during its $101 million funding round in 2022. In the middle of 2023, Mostaque agreed to an independent audit after Coatue raised a series of concerns, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. The outcome of the investigation is unclear. Coatue declined to comment. Within a week of an early October board meeting where Mostaque shared that financial forecast, Lightspeed Venture Partners, another major investor, sent a letter to the board urging them to sell the company. The distressing numbers had “severely undermined” the firm’s confidence in Mostaque’s ability to lead the company. “In particular, we are surprised and deeply concerned by a cash position just now disclosed to us that is inconsistent with prior discussions on this topic,” Lightspeed’s general counsel Brett Nissenberg wrote in the letter, a copy of which was viewed by Forbes. “Lightspeed believes that the company is not likely financeable on terms that would assure the company’s long term sound financial position.” (Lightspeed declined a request for comment.) The calls for a sale led Stability to quietly begin looking for a buyer. Bloomberg reported in November that Stability approached AI startups Cohere and Jasper to gauge their interest. Stability denied this, and Jasper CEO Timothy Young did the same when reached for comment by Forbes. A Cohere representative declined to comment. But one prominent AI company confirmed that Mostaque’s representatives had reached out to them to test the waters. Those talks did not advance because “the numbers didn’t add up,” this person, who declined to be named due to the confidential nature of the talks, told Forbes. Stability also tried to court Samsung as a buyer, going so far as to redecorate its office in advance of a planned meeting with the Korean electronics giant. (Samsung said that it invested in Stability in 2023 and that it does not comment on M&A discussions.) Coatue had been calling for Mostaque’s resignation for months, according to a source with direct knowledge. But it and other investors were unable to oust him because he was the company’s majority shareholder. When they tried a different tact by rallying other investors to offer him a juicy equity package to resign, Mostaque refused, said two sources. By October, Coatue and Lightspeed had had enough. Coatue left the board and Lightspeed resigned its observer seat. “Emad infuriated our initial investors so much it’s just making it impossible for us to raise more money under acceptable terms,” one current Stability executive told Forbes. The early months of 2024 saw Stability’s already precarious position eroding further still. Employees were quietly laid off. Three people in a position to know estimated that at least 10% of staff were cut. And cash reserves continued to dwindle. Mostaque mentioned a lifeline at the October board meeting: $95 million in tentative funding from new investors, pending due diligence. But in the end, only a fraction of it was wired, two sources say, much of it from Intel, which Forbes has learned invested $20 million, a fraction of what was reported. (Intel did not return a request for comment by publication time.) Two hours after Forbes broke the news of Mostaque’s plans to step down as CEO, Stability issued a press release confirming his resignation. Chief operating officer Wong and chief technology officer Laforte have taken over in the interim. Mostaque, who said on X that he still owns a majority of the company, also stepped down from the board, which has now initiated a search for a permanent CEO. There is a lot of work to be done to turn things around, and very little time in which to do it. Said the current Stability executive, “There’s still a possibility of a turnaround story, but the odds drop by the day.” In July of 2023, Mostaque still thought he could pull it off. Halfway through the month, he shared a fundraising plan with his lieutenants. It was wildly optimistic, detailing the raise of $500 million in cash and another $750 million in computing facilities from marquee investors like Nvidia, Google, Intel and the World Bank (Nvidia and Google declined comment. Intel did not respond. The World Bank said it did not invest in Stability). In a Slack message reviewed by Forbes, Mostaque said Google was “willing to move fast” and the round was “likely to be oversubscribed.” It wasn’t. Three people with direct knowledge of these fundraising efforts told Forbes that while there was some interest in Stability, talks often stalled when it came time to disclose financials. Two of them noted that earlier in the year, Mostaque had simply stopped engaging with VCs who asked for numbers. Only one firm invested around that time: actor Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, which invested $35 million in the form of a convertible SAFE note during the second quarter, according to an internal document. (Sound Ventures did not respond to a request for comment.) And though he’d managed to score a meeting with Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang, it ended in disaster, according to two sources. “Under Jensen's microscopic questions, Emad just fell apart,” a source in position to know told Forbes. Huang quickly concluded Stability wasn’t ready for an investment from Nvidia, the sources said. Mostaque told Forbes in an email that he had not met with Huang since 2022, except to say “hello and what’s up a few times after.” His July 2023 message references a plan to raise $150 million from Nvidia. (Nvidia declined to comment.) After a June Forbes investigation citing more than 30 sources revealed Mostaque’s history of misleading claims, Mostaque struggled to raise funding, a Stability investor told Forbes. (Mostaque disputed the story at the time and called it "coordinated lies" in his email this week to Forbes). Increasingly, investors scrutinized his assertions and pressed for data. And Young, now the CEO of Jasper, turned down a verbal offer to be Stability’s president after reading the article, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. The collapse of the talks aggravated the board and other executives, who had hoped Young would compensate for the sales and business management skills that Mostaque lacked, according to four people in a position to know. (Young declined to comment.) When Stability’s senior leadership convened in London for the CogX conference in September, the financing had still not closed. There, a group of executives confronted Mostaque asking questions about the company’s cash position and runway, according to three people with direct knowledge of the incident. They did not get the clarity they’d hoped for. By October, Mostaque had reduced his fundraising target by more than 80%. The months that followed saw a steady drumbeat of departures — general counsel Adam Avrunin, vice presidents Mike Melnicki, Ed Newton-Rex and Joe Penna, chief people officer Ozden Onder — culminating in the demoralizing March exit of Stable Diffusion’s primary developers Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, Patrick Esser and Dominik Lorenz. Rombach, who led the team, had been angling to leave for months, two sources said, first threatening to resign last summer because of the fundraising failures. Others left over concerns about cash flow, as well as liabilities — including what four people described as Mostaque’s lax approach to ensuring that Stability products could not be used to produce child sexual abuse imagery. “Stability AI is committed to preventing the misuse of AI and prohibits the use of our image models and services for unlawful activity, including attempts to edit or create CSAM,” Ella Irwin, senior vice president of integrity, said in a statement. Newton-Rex told Forbes he resigned because he disagreed with Stability’s position that training AI on copyrighted work without consent is fair use. Melnicki and Penna declined to comment. Avrunin and Onder could not be reached for comment. None of the researchers responded to requests for comment. The Stable Diffusion researchers’ departure as a cohort says a lot about the state of Stability AI. The company’s researchers were widely viewed as its crown jewels, their work subsidized with a firehose of pricey compute power that was even extended to people outside the company. Martino Russi, an artificial intelligence researcher, told Forbes that though he was never formally employed by Stability, the company provided him a “staggering” amount of compute between January and April 2023 to play around with developing an AI video generator that Stability might someday use. “It was Candy Land or Coney Island,” said Russi, who estimates that his experiment, which was ultimately shelved, cost the company $2.5 million. Stable Diffusion was simultaneously Stability’s marquee product and its existential cash crisis. One current employee described it to Forbes as “a giant vacuum that absorbed everything: money, compute, people.” While the software was widely used, with Mostaque claiming downloads reaching into the hundreds of millions, Stability struggled to translate that wild success into revenue. Mostaque knew it could be done — peers at Databricks, Elastic and MongoDB had all turned a free product into a lucrative business — he just couldn’t figure out how. His first attempt was Stability’s API, which allowed paying customers to integrate Stable Diffusion into their own products. In early 2023, a handful of small companies, like art generator app NightCafe and presentation software startup Tome, signed on, according to four people with knowledge of the deals. But Stability’s poor account management services soured many, and in a matter of months NightCafe and Tome canceled their contracts, three people said. NightCafe founder Angus Russell told Forbes that his company switched to a competitor which “offered much cheaper inference costs and a broader service.” Tome did not respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, Mostaque’s efforts to court larger companies like Samsung and Snapchat were failing, according to five people familiar with the effort. Canva, which was already one of the heaviest users of open-sourced Stable Diffusion, had multiple discussions with Stability, which was angling for a contract it hoped would generate several millions in annual revenue. But the deal never materialized, four sources said. “These three companies wanted and needed us,” one former employee told Forbes. “They would have been the perfect customers.” (Samsung, Snap and Canva declined to comment.) “It’s not that there was not an appetite to pay Stability — there were tons of companies that would have that wanted to,” the former employee said. “There was a huge opportunity and demand, but just a resistance to execution.” Mostaque’s other big idea was to provide governments with bespoke national AI models that would invigorate their economies and citizenry. “Emad envisions a world where AI through 100 national models serves not as a tool of the few, but as a benefactor to all promising to confront great adversaries, cancer, autism, and the sands of time itself,” the AI avatar of Aristotle said in his intro at the conference. Mostaque told several prospective customers that he could deliver such models within 60 days — an untenable timeline, according to two people in position to know. Stability attempted to develop a model for the Singaporean government over the protestation of employees who questioned its technical feasibility, three sources familiar with the effort told Forbes. But it couldn’t pull it off and Singapore never became a customer. (The government of Singapore confirmed it did not enter into a deal with Stability, but declined to answer additional questions.) As Stability careened from one new business idea to another, resources were abruptly reallocated and researchers reassigned. The whiplash shifts in a largely siloed organization demoralized and infuriated employees. “There were ‘urgent’ things, ‘urgent urgent’ things and ‘most urgent,’” one former employee complained. “None of these things seem important if everything is important.” Another former Stability executive was far more pointed in their assessment. “Emad is the most disorganized leader I have ever worked with in my career,” this person told Forbes. “He has no vision, and changes directions every week, often based on what he sees on Twitter.” In a video interview posted shortly before this story was published, Mostaque explained his leadership style: “I'm particularly great at taking creatives, developers, researchers, others, and achieving their full potential in designing systems. But I should not be dealing with, you know, HR and operations and business development and other elements. There are far better people than me to do that.” By December 2023, Stability had partially abandoned its open-source roots and announced that any commercial use of Stable Diffusion would cost customers at least $20 per month (non-commercial and research use of Stable Diffusion would remain free). But privately, Stability was considering a potentially more lucrative source of revenue: reselling the compute it was leasing from providers like AWS, according to six people familiar with the effort. Though it was essentially GPU arbitrage, Stability framed the strategy to investors as a “managed services” offering. Its damning October financial report projected optimistically that such an offering would bring in $139 million in 2024 — 98% of its revenue. Multiple employees at the time told Forbes they feared reselling compute, even if the company called it “managed services,” would violate the terms of Stability’s contract with AWS. Amazon declined to comment. “The line internally was that we are not reselling compute,” one former employee said. “This was some of the dirtiest feeling stuff.” Stability also discussed reselling a cluster of Nvidia A100 chips, leased via CoreWeave, to the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, three sources said. “It was under the guise of managed services, but there wasn’t any management happening,” one of these people told Forbes. Andreessen Horowitz and CoreWeave declined to comment. Stability did not respond to questions about if it plans to continue this strategy now that Mostaque is out of the picture. Regardless, interim co-CEOs Wong and Laforte are on a tight timeline to clean up his mess. Board chairman Jim O’Shaughnessy said in a statement that he was confident the pair “will adeptly steer the company forward in developing and commercializing industry-leading generative AI products.” But burn continues to far outpace revenue. The Financial Times reported Friday that the company made $5.4 million of revenue in February, against $8 million in costs. Several sources said there are ongoing concerns about making payroll for the roughly 150 remaining employees. Leadership roles have gone vacant for months amid the disarray, leaving the company increasingly directionless. Meanwhile, a potentially catastrophic legal threat looms over the company: A trio of copyright infringement lawsuits brought by Getty Images and a group of artists in the U.S. and U.K., who claim Stability illegally used their art and photography to train the AI models powering Stable Diffusion. A London-based court has already rejected the company’s bid to throw out one of the lawsuits on the basis that none of its researchers were based in the U.K. And Stability’s claim that Getty’s Delaware lawsuit should be blocked because it's a U.K.-based company was rejected. (Stability did not respond to questions about the litigation.) AI-related copyright litigation “could go on for years,” according to Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University. He told Forbes that though plaintiffs suing AI firms face an uphill battle overcoming the existing legal precedent on copyright infringement, the quantity of arguments available to make are virtually inexhaustible. “Like in military theory, if there’s a gap in your lines, that’s where the enemy pours through — if any one of those arguments succeeds, it could completely change the generative AI environment,” he said. “In some sense, generative AI as an industry has to win everything.” Stability, which had more than $100 million in the bank just a year and a half ago, is in a deep hole. Not only does it need more funding, it needs a viable business model — or a buyer with the vision and chops to make it successful in a fast-moving and highly competitive sector. At an all hands meeting this past Monday, Stability’s new leaders detailed a path forward. One point of emphasis: a plan to better manage resources and expenses, according to one person in attendance. It’s a start, but Mostaque’s meddling has left them with little runway to execute. His resignation, though, has given some employees hope. “A few people are 100% going to reconsider leaving after today,” said one current employee. “And the weird gloomy aura of hearing Emad talking nonsense for an hour is gone.” Shortly before Mostaque resigned, one current Stability executive told Forbes that they were optimistic his departure could make Stability appealing enough to receive a small investment or sale to a friendly party. “There are companies that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars that have much less intrinsic value than Stability,” the person said. “A white knight may still appear.”

#reddit#stability#ai’s

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Upbeat_Challenge5460•This week

Is being a solopreneur really that fatal?

Okay, so I need to get something off my chest... People love to say that solopreneurship is a death sentence. That if you can’t find a cofounder, you’ll never build a team, never scale, never succeed. But I wonder about the other side of the coin—something that, browsing here and in other subs, doesn’t seem to get nearly as much attention—how fatal cofounder conflicts can be. I’ve personally seen three startups fail before even getting to an MVP because of cofounder issues. One of them was a company I was briefly a cofounder for. The other two are startups coworkers were previous cofounders for that fell apart before they even got to an MVP. In each case, it wasn’t lack of funding or product-market fit that killed them—it was the people. Yet, somehow, the startup world keeps pushing the idea that finding a cofounder is the most important thing you can do. But here’s the thing: if you can’t find a cofounder, that doesn’t mean you can’t build a business. It doesn’t even mean you can’t build a team. With the tools available today (no-code, AI, fractional hiring), a single person can get an MVP off the ground, validate demand, and take those first steps without needing to rush into a partnership with someone they barely know. And also—I wonder how many people actually succeed with a cofounder they met casually at a networking event or online? People talk about the risks of going solo, but not enough about the risks of tying your company’s future to someone you just met. (If you’re going to have a cofounder, IMO it should be someone you trust deeply, someone whose skills and working style you know complement yours—not just someone you brought on because startup X/YouTube told you to.). At the end of the day, I honestly think it’s about the product. If you can build something valuable and find market fit—whether solo or with a team—you’ll have the leverage to hire, partner, and grow. That’s what actually matters. That said—I know how incredibly hard it is to be a solopreneur—and not to have someone along the journey with you who can take half of the emotional and psychological burden, in addition to the actual work... What do you think? Any thoughts here appreciated.

#reddit#being#solopreneur

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Current-Payment-5403•This week

Should I start an AI no-code agency?

This past year I learned no-code to develop a SaaS called AIrMedia. Here's what happened: Developed our platform no-code on Bubble Realised for our exact use-case we needed custom-code Redevelop an hybrid version with custom-code with my partner While doing some marketing to grow our waitlist to 300+ companies, I had to get some cash to be able to sustain both the company and rent. I thought why not selling my no-code skills and I secured 2 clients. For both, the use-case was similar: they have an idea on how to leverage AI to simplify their exact use-case (AI for farmers, AI Marketplace). Finished the first platform in a week and the second in 2 weeks. Now I have a few more projects in the pipeline while I only intended to have 1 client initially. AirMedia comes first with no doubt but I'm wondering if I should start vetting some developers and properly develop this activity while overviewing the projects and reinvest what's left on the main company. It seems like there's strong demand of individuals wanting to get their idea built quickly - could position it to build AI apps in 2 weeks and start marketing the services. What would you do? Also if some talented no-code (preferably Bubble) developers see this - feel free to comment Same for people looking to get their idea built.

#reddit#should#start

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AI_Scout_Official•This week

I run an AI automation agency (AAA). My honest overview and review of this new business model

I started an AI tools directory in February, and then branched off that to start an AI automation agency (AAA) in June. So far I've come across a lot of unsustainable "ideas" to make money with AI, but at the same time a few diamonds in the rough that aren't fully tapped into yet- especially the AAA model. Thought I'd share this post to shine light into this new business model and share some ways you could potentially start your own agency, or at the very least know who you are dealing with and how to pick and choose when you (inevitably) get bombarded with cold emails from them down the line. Foreword Running an AAA does NOT involve using AI tools directly to generate and sell content directly. That ship has sailed, and unless you are happy with $5 from Fiverr every month or so, it is not a real business model. Cry me a river but generating generic art with AI and slapping it onto a T-shirt to sell on Etsy won't make you a dime. At the same time, the AAA model will NOT require you to have a deep theoretical knowledge of AI, or any academic degree, as we are more so dealing with the practical applications of generative AI and how we can implement these into different workflows and tech-stacks, rather than building AI models from the ground up. Regardless of all that, common sense and a willingness to learn will help (a shit ton), as with anything. Keep in mind - this WILL involve work and motivation as well. The mindset that AI somehow means everything can be done for you on autopilot is not the right way to approach things. The common theme of businesses I've seen who have successfully implemented AI into their operations is the willingess to work with AI in a way that augments their existing operations, rather than flat out replace a worker or team. And this is exactly the train of thought you need when working with AI as a business model. However, as the field is relatively unsaturated and hype surrounding AI is still fresh for enterprises, right now is the prime time to start something new if generative AI interests you at all. With that being said, I'll be going over three of the most successful AI-adjacent businesses I've seen over this past year, in addition to some tips and resources to point you in the right direction. so.. WTF is an AI Automation Agency? The AI automation agency (or as some YouTubers have coined it, the AAA model) at its core involves creating custom AI solutions for businesses. I have over 1500 AI tools listed in my directory, however the feedback I've received from some enterprise users is that ready-made SaaS tools are too generic to meet their specific needs. Combine this with the fact virtually no smaller companies have the time or skills required to develop custom solutions right off the bat, and you have yourself real demand. I would say in practice, the AAA model is quite similar to Wordpress and even web dev agencies, with the major difference being all solutions you develop will incorporate key aspects of AI AND automation. Which brings me to my second point- JUST AI IS NOT ENOUGH. Rather than reducing the amount of time required to complete certain tasks, I've seen many AI agencies make the mistake of recommending and (trying to) sell solutions that more likely than not increase the workload of their clients. For example, if you were to make an internal tool that has AI answer questions based on their knowledge base, but this knowledge base has to be updated manually, this is creating unnecessary work. As such I think one of the key components of building successful AI solutions is incorporating the new (Generative AI/LLMs) with the old (programmtic automation- think Zapier, APIs, etc.). Finally, for this business model to be successful, ideally you should target a niche in which you have already worked and understand pain points and needs. Not only does this make it much easier to get calls booked with prospects, the solutions you build will have much greater value to your clients (meaning you get paid more). A mistake I've seen many AAA operators make (and I blame this on the "Get Rich Quick" YouTubers) is focusing too much on a specific productized service, rather than really understanding the needs of businesses. The former is much done via a SaaS model, but when going the agency route the only thing that makes sense is building custom solutions. This is why I always take a consultant-first approach. You can only build once you understand what they actually need and how certain solutions may impact their operations, workflows, and bottom-line. Basics of How to Get Started Pick a niche. As I mentioned previously, preferably one that you've worked in before. Niches I know of that are actively being bombarded with cold emails include real estate, e-commerce, auto-dealerships, lawyers, and medical offices. There is a reason for this, but I will tell you straight up this business model works well if you target any white-collar service business (internal tools approach) or high volume businesses (customer facing tools approach). Setup your toolbox. If you wanted to start a pressure washing business, you would need a pressure-washer. This is no different. For those without programming knowledge, I've seen two common ways AAA get setup to build- one is having a network of on-call web developers, whether its personal contacts or simply going to Upwork or any talent sourcing agency. The second is having an arsenal of no-code tools. I'll get to this more in a second, but this works beecause at its core, when we are dealing with the practical applications of AI, the code is quite simple, simply put. Start cold sales. Unless you have a network already, this is not a step you can skip. You've already picked a niche, so all you have to do is find the right message. Keep cold emails short, sweet, but enticing- and it will help a lot if you did step 1 correctly and intimately understand who your audience is. I'll be touching base later about how you can leverage AI yourself to help you with outreach and closing. The beauty of gen AI and the AAA model You don't need to be a seasoned web developer to make this business model work. The large majority of solutions that SME clients want is best done using an API for an LLM for the actual AI aspect. The value we create with the solutions we build comes with the conceptual framework and design that not only does what they need it to but integrates smoothly with their existing tech-stack and workflow. The actual implementation is quite straightforward once you understand the high level design and know which tools you are going to use. To give you a sense, even if you plan to build out these apps yourself (say in Python) the large majority of the nitty gritty technical work has already been done for you, especially if you leverage Python libraries and packages that offer high level abstraction for LLM-related functions. For instance, calling GPT can be as little as a single line of code. (And there are no-code tools where these functions are simply an icon on a GUI). Aside from understanding the capabilities and limitations of these tools and frameworks, the only thing that matters is being able to put them in a way that makes sense for what you want to build. Which is why outsourcing and no-code tools both work in our case. Okay... but how TF am I suppposed to actually build out these solutions? Now the fun part. I highly recommend getting familiar with Langchain and LlamaIndex. Both are Python libraires that help a lot with the high-level LLM abstraction I mentioned previously. The two most important aspects include being able to integrate internal data sources/knowledge bases with LLMs, and have LLMs perform autonomous actions. The two most common methods respectively are RAG and output parsing. RAG (retrieval augmented Generation) If you've ever seen a tool that seemingly "trains" GPT on your own data, and wonder how it all works- well I have an answer from you. At a high level, the user query is first being fed to what's called a vector database to run vector search. Vector search basically lets you do semantic search where you are searching data based on meaning. The vector databases then retrieves the most relevant sections of text as it relates to the user query, and this text gets APPENDED to your GPT prompt to provide extra context to the AI. Further, with prompt engineering, you can limit GPT to only generate an answer if it can be found within this extra context, greatly limiting the chance of hallucination (this is where AI makes random shit up). Aside from vector databases, we can also implement RAG with other data sources and retrieval methods, for example SQL databses (via parsing the outputs of LLM's- more on this later). Autonomous Agents via Output Parsing A common need of clients has been having AI actually perform tasks, rather than simply spitting out text. For example, with autonomous agents, we can have an e-commerce chatbot do the work of a basic customer service rep (i.e. look into orders, refunds, shipping). At a high level, what's going on is that the response of the LLM is being used programmtically to determine which API to call. Keeping on with the e-commerce example, if I wanted a chatbot to check shipping status, I could have a LLM response within my app (not shown to the user) with a prompt that outputs a random hash or string, and programmatically I can determine which API call to make based on this hash/string. And using the same fundamental concept as with RAG, I can append the the API response to a final prompt that would spit out the answer for the user. How No Code Tools Can Fit In (With some example solutions you can build) With that being said, you don't necessarily need to do all of the above by coding yourself, with Python libraries or otherwise. However, I will say that having that high level overview will help IMMENSELY when it comes to using no-code tools to do the actual work for you. Regardless, here are a few common solutions you might build for clients as well as some no-code tools you can use to build them out. Ex. Solution 1: AI Chatbots for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) This involves creating chatbots that handle user queries, lead gen, and so forth with AI, and will use the principles of RAG at heart. After getting the required data from your client (i.e. product catalogues, previous support tickets, FAQ, internal documentation), you upload this into your knowledge base and write a prompt that makes sense for your use case. One no-code tool that does this well is MyAskAI. The beauty of it especially for building external chatbots is the ability to quickly ingest entire websites into your knowledge base via a sitemap, and bulk uploading files. Essentially, they've covered the entire grunt work required to do this manually. Finally, you can create a inline or chat widget on your client's website with a few lines of HTML, or altneratively integrate it with a Slack/Teams chatbot (if you are going for an internal Q&A chatbot approach). Other tools you could use include Botpress and Voiceflow, however these are less for RAG and more for building out complete chatbot flows that may or may not incorporate LLMs. Both apps are essentially GUIs that eliminate the pain and tears and trying to implement complex flows manually, and both natively incoporate AI intents and a knowledge base feature. Ex. Solution 2: Internal Apps Similar to the first example, except we go beyond making just chatbots but tools such as report generation and really any sort of internal tool or automations that may incorporate LLM's. For instance, you can have a tool that automatically generates replies to inbound emails based on your client's knowledge base. Or an automation that does the same thing but for replies to Instagram comments. Another example could be a tool that generates a description and screeenshot based on a URL (useful for directory sites, made one for my own :P). Getting into more advanced implementations of LLMs, we can have tools that can generate entire drafts of reports (think 80+ pages), based not only on data from a knowledge base but also the writing style, format, and author voice of previous reports. One good tool to create content generation panels for your clients would be MindStudio. You can train LLM's via prompt engineering in a structured way with your own data to essentially fine tune them for whatever text you need it to generate. Furthermore, it has a GUI where you can dictate the entire AI flow. You can also upload data sources via multiple formats, including PDF, CSV, and Docx. For automations that require interactions between multiple apps, I recommend the OG zapier/make.com if you want a no-code solution. For instance, for the automatic email reply generator, I can have a trigger such that when an email is received, a custom AI reply is generated by MyAskAI, and finally a draft is created in my email client. Or, for an automation where I can create a social media posts on multiple platforms based on a RSS feed (news feed), I can implement this directly in Zapier with their native GPT action (see screenshot) As for more complex LLM flows that may require multiple layers of LLMs, data sources, and APIs working together to generate a single response i.e. a long form 100 page report, I would recommend tools such as Stack AI or Flowise (open-source alternative) to build these solutions out. Essentially, you get most of the functions and features of Python packages such as Langchain and LlamaIndex in a GUI. See screenshot for an example of a flow How the hell are you supposed to find clients? With all that being said, none of this matters if you can't find anyone to sell to. You will have to do cold sales, one way or the other, especially if you are brand new to the game. And what better way to sell your AI services than with AI itself? If we want to integrate AI into the cold outreach process, first we must identify what it's good at doing, and that's obviously writing a bunch of text, in a short amount of time. Similar to the solutions that an AAA can build for its clients, we can take advantage of the same principles in our own sales processes. How to do outreach Once you've identified your niche and their pain points/opportunities for automation, you want to craft a compelling message in which you can send via cold email and cold calls to get prospects booked on demos/consultations. I won't get into too much detail in terms of exactly how to write emails or calling scripts, as there are millions of resources to help with this, but I will tell you a few key points you want to keep in mind when doing outreach for your AAA. First, you want to keep in mind that many businesses are still hesitant about AI and may not understand what it really is or how it can benefit their operations. However, we can take advantage of how mass media has been reporting on AI this past year- at the very least people are AWARE that sooner or later they may have to implement AI into their businesses to stay competitive. We want to frame our message in a way that introduces generative AI as a technology that can have a direct, tangible, and positive impact on their business. Although it may be hard to quantify, I like to include estimates of man-hours saved or costs saved at least in my final proposals to prospects. Times are TOUGH right now, and money is expensive, so you need to have a compelling reason for businesses to get on board. Once you've gotten your messaging down, you will want to create a list of prospects to contact. Tools you can use to find prospects include Apollo.io, reply.io, zoominfo (expensive af), and Linkedin Sales Navigator. What specific job titles, etc. to target will depend on your niche but for smaller companies this will tend to be the owner. For white collar niches, i.e. law, the professional that will be directly benefiting from the tool (i.e. partners) may be better to contact. And for larger organizations you may want to target business improvement and digital transformation leads/directors- these are the people directly in charge of projects like what you may be proposing. Okay- so you have your message, and your list, and now all it comes down to is getting the good word out. I won't be going into the details of how to send these out, a quick Google search will give you hundreds of resources for cold outreach methods. However, personalization is key and beyond simple dynamic variables you want to make sure you can either personalize your email campaigns directly with AI (SmartWriter.ai is an example of a tool that can do this), or at the very least have the ability to import email messages programmatically. Alternatively, ask ChatGPT to make you a Python Script that can take in a list of emails, scrape info based on their linkedin URL or website, and all pass this onto a GPT prompt that specifies your messaging to generate an email. From there, send away. How tf do I close? Once you've got some prospects booked in on your meetings, you will need to close deals with them to turn them into clients. Call #1: Consultation Tying back to when I mentioned you want to take a consultant-first appraoch, you will want to listen closely to their goals and needs and understand their pain points. This would be the first call, and typically I would provide a high level overview of different solutions we could build to tacke these. It really helps to have a presentation available, so you can graphically demonstrate key points and key technologies. I like to use Plus AI for this, it's basically a Google Slides add-on that can generate slide decks for you. I copy and paste my default company messaging, add some key points for the presentation, and it comes out with pretty decent slides. Call #2: Demo The second call would involve a demo of one of these solutions, and typically I'll quickly prototype it with boilerplate code I already have, otherwise I'll cook something up in a no-code tool. If you have a niche where one type of solution is commonly demanded, it helps to have a general demo set up to be able to handle a larger volume of calls, so you aren't burning yourself out. I'll also elaborate on how the final product would look like in comparison to the demo. Call #3 and Beyond: Once the initial consultation and demo is complete, you will want to alleviate any remaining concerns from your prospects and work with them to reach a final work proposal. It's crucial you lay out exactly what you will be building (in writing) and ensure the prospect understands this. Furthermore, be clear and transparent with timelines and communication methods for the project. In terms of pricing, you want to take this from a value-based approach. The same solution may be worth a lot more to client A than client B. Furthermore, you can create "add-ons" such as monthly maintenance/upgrade packages, training sessions for employeees, and so forth, separate from the initial setup fee you would charge. How you can incorporate AI into marketing your businesses Beyond cold sales, I highly recommend creating a funnel to capture warm leads. For instance, I do this currently with my AI tools directory, which links directly to my AI agency and has consistent branding throughout. Warm leads are much more likely to close (and honestly, much nicer to deal with). However, even without an AI-related website, at the very least you will want to create a presence on social media and the web in general. As with any agency, you will want basic a professional presence. A professional virtual address helps, in addition to a Google Business Profile (GBP) and TrustPilot. a GBP (especially for local SEO) and Trustpilot page also helps improve the looks of your search results immensely. For GBP, I recommend using ProfilePro, which is a chrome extension you can use to automate SEO work for your GBP. Aside from SEO optimzied business descriptions based on your business, it can handle Q/A answers, responses, updates, and service descriptions based on local keywords. Privacy and Legal Concerns of the AAA Model Aside from typical concerns for agencies relating to service contracts, there are a few issues (especially when using no-code tools) that will need to be addressed to run a successful AAA. Most of these surround privacy concerns when working with proprietary data. In your terms with your client, you will want to clearly define hosting providers and any third party tools you will be using to build their solution, and a DPA with these third parties listed as subprocessors if necessary. In addition, you will want to implement best practices like redacting private information from data being used for building solutions. In terms of addressing concerns directly from clients, it helps if you host your solutions on their own servers (not possible with AI tools), and address the fact only ChatGPT queries in the web app, not OpenAI API calls, will be used to train OpenAI's models (as reported by mainstream media). The key here is to be open and transparent with your clients about ALL the tools you are using, where there data will be going, and make sure to get this all in writing. have fun, and keep an open mind Before I finish this post, I just want to reiterate the fact that this is NOT an easy way to make money. Running an AI agency will require hours and hours of dedication and work, and constantly rearranging your schedule to meet prospect and client needs. However, if you are looking for a new business to run, and have a knack for understanding business operations and are genuinely interested in the pracitcal applications of generative AI, then I say go for it. The time is ticking before AAA becomes the new dropshipping or SMMA, and I've a firm believer that those who set foot first and establish themselves in this field will come out top. And remember, while 100 thousand people may read this post, only 2 may actually take initiative and start.

#reddit#automation#agency

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johnrushx•This week

If only someone told me this before my first startup

If only someone told me this before my first startup: Validate idea first. I wasted a decade building stuff nobody needed. Incubators and VCs served to me as a validation, but I was so wrong. Kill my EGO. It’s not about me, but the user. I must want what the user wants, not what I want. My taste isn't important. The user has expectations, and I must fulfill them. Don’t chaise investors. Chase users, and then investors will be chasing me. I've never had more incoming interest from VC than now when I'm the least interested in them. Never hire managers. Only hire doers until PMF. So many people know how to manage people and so few can actually get sh\*t done barehand. Landing page is the least important thing in a startup. Pick a simple template, edit texts with a no-code website builder in less than an hour and that's it! At the early stage, I win traffic outside of my website, people are already interested, so don't make them search for the signup button among the texts! Focus on conversion optimization only when the traffic is consistent. Keep it to one page. Nobody gonna browse this website. Hire only fullstack devs. There is nothing less productive in this world than a team of developers for an early-stage product. One full stack dev building the whole product. That’s it. Chase global market from day 1. If the product and marketing are good, it will work on the global market too, if it’s bad, it won’t work on the local market too. So better go global from day 1, so that if it works, the upside is 100x bigger. I launched all startups for the Norwegian market, hoping we will scale to international at some point. I wish I launched to international from day 1 as I do now. The size of the market is 10000x bigger. I can validate and grow products in days, not in years as it used to be. Do SEO from day 2. As early as I can. I ignored this for 14 years. It’s my biggest regret. It takes just 5 minutes to get it done on my landing page. I go to Google Keyword Planner, enter a few keywords around my product, sort them by traffic, filter out high competition kws, pick the top 10, and place them natively on my home page and meta tags. Add one blog article every week. Either manually or by paying for an AI blogging tool. Sell features, before building them. Ask existing users if they want this feature. I run DMs with 10-20 users every day, where I chat about all my ideas and features I wanna add. I clearly see what resonates with me most and only go build those. If I don't have followers, try HN, Reddit, or just search on X for posts and ask it in the replies. People are helpful, they will reply if the question is easy to understand. Hire only people I would wanna hug. My cofounder, an old Danish man said this to me in 2015. And it was a big shift. I realized that if I don’t wanna hug the person, it means I dislike them on a chemical/animal level. Even if I can’t say why, but that’s the fact. Sooner or later, we would have a conflict and eventually break up. It takes up to 10 years to build a startup, make sure I do it with people I have this connection with. Invest all money into my startups and friends. Not crypt0, not stockmarket, not properties. I did some math, if I kept investing all my money into all my friends’ startups, that would be about 70 investments. 3 of them turned into unicorns eventually. Even 1 would have made the bank. Since 2022, I have invested all my money into my products, friends, and network. If I don't have friends who do startups, invest it in myself. Post on Twitter daily. I started posting here in March last year. It’s my primary source of new connections and growth. I could have started it earlier, I don't know why I didn't. Don’t work/partner with corporates. Corporations always seem like an amazing opportunity. They’re big and rich, they promise huge stuff, millions of users, etc. But every single time none of this happens. Because I talk to a regular employees there. They waste my time, destroy focus, shift priorities, and eventually bring in no users/money. Don’t get ever distracted by hype e.g. crypt0. I lost 1.5 years of my life this way. I met the worst people along the way. Fricks, scammers, thieves. Some of my close friends turned into thieves along the way, just because it was so common in that space. I wish this didn’t happen to me. I wish I was stronger and stayed on my mission. Don’t build consumer apps. Only b2b. Consumer apps are so hard, like a lottery. It’s just 0.00001% who make it big. The rest don’t. Even if I got many users, then there is a monetization challenge. I’ve spent 4 years in consumer apps and regret it. Don’t hold on bad project for too long, max 1 year. Some projects just don’t work. In most cases, it’s either the idea that’s so wrong that I can’t even pivot it or it’s a team that is good one by one but can’t make it as a team. Don’t drag this out for years. Tech conferences are a waste of time. They cost money, take energy, and time and I never really meet anyone there. Most people there are the “good” employees of corporations who were sent there as a perk for being loyal to the corporation. Very few fellow makers. Scrum is a Scam. For small teams and bootstrapped teams. If I had a team that had to be nagged every morning with questions as if they were children in kindergarten, then things would eventually fail. The only good stuff I managed to do happened with people who were grownups and could manage their stuff on their own. We would just do everything over chat as a sync on goals and plans. Outsource nothing at all until PMF. In a startup, almost everything needs to be done in a slightly different way, more creative, and more integrated into the vision. When outsourcing, the external members get no love and no case for the product. It’s just yet another assignment in their boring job. Instead of coming up with great ideas for my project they will be just focusing on ramping up their skills to get a promotion or a better job offer. Bootstrap. I spent way too much time raising money. I raised more than 10 times, preseed, seeded, and series A. But each time it was a 3-9 month project, meetings every week, and lots of destruction. I could afford to bootstrap, but I still went the VC-funded way, I don’t know why. To be honest, I didn’t know bootstrapping was a thing I could do or anyone does. It may take a decade. When I was 20, I was convinced it takes a few years to build and succeed with a startup. So I kept pushing my plans forward, to do it once I exited. Family, kids. I wish I married earlier. I wish I had kids earlier. No Free Tier. I'd launch a tool with a free tier, and it'd get sign-ups, but very few would convert. I'd treat free sign-ups as KPIs and run on it for years. I'd brag about signups and visitors. I'd even raise VC money with these stats. But eventually, I would fail to reach PMF. Because my main feedback would come from free users and the product turned into a perfect free product. Once I switched to "paid only" until I validated the product, things went really well. Free and paid users often need different products. Don't fall into this trap as I did. Being To Cheap. I always started by checking all competitors and setting the lowest price. I thought this would be one of the key advantages of my product. But no, I was wrong. The audience on $5 and $50 are totally different. $5: pain in the \*ss, never happy, never recommend me to a friend, leave in 4 months. $50: polite, give genuine feedback, happy, share with friends, become my big fan if I solve their request. I will fail. When I started my first startup. I thought if I did everything right, it would work out. But it turned out that almost every startup fails. I wish I knew that and I tried to fail faster, to get to the second iteration, then to the third, and keep going on, until I either find out nothing works or make it work. Use boilerplates. I wasted years of dev time and millions of VC money to pay for basic things. To build yet another sidebar, yet another dashboard, and payment integration... I had too much pride, I couldn't see myself taking someone else code as a basis for my product. I wanted it to be 100% mine, original, from scratch. Because my product seems special to me. Spend more time with Family & Friends. I missed the weddings of all my best friends and family. I was so busy. I thought if I didn't do it on time, the world would end. Looking back today, it was so wrong. I meet my friends and can't share those memories with them, which makes me very sad. I realized now, that spending 10% of my time with family and friends would practically make no negative impact on my startups. Build Products For Audiences I Love. I never thought of this. I'd often build products either for corporates, consumers, or for developers. It turns out I have no love for all 3. But I deeply love indie founders. Because they are risk-takers and partly kids in their hearts. Once I switched the focus to indie makers on my products, my level of joy increased by 100x for me. Ignore Badges and Awards I was chasing those awards just like everyone else. Going to ceremonies, signing up for events and stuff. I've won tons of awards, but none of those were eventually useful to my business. I better focused on my business and users. Write Every Single Day. When I was a kid, I loved writing stories. In school, they would give an assignment, and I'd often write a long story for it, however, the teacher would put an F on it. The reason was simple, I had an issue with the direction of the letters and the sequence of letters in the words. I still have it, it's just the Grammarly app helping me to correct these issues. So the teacher would fail my stories because almost every sentence had a spelling mistake that I couldn't even see. It made me think I'm made at writing. So I stopped, for 15 years. But I kept telling stories all these years. Recently I realized that in any group, the setup ends up turning into me telling stories to everyone. So I tried it all again, here on X 10 months ago. I love it, the process, the feedback from people. I write every day. I wish I had done it all these years. The End. \ this is an updated version of my post on the same topic from 2 months ago. I've edited some of the points and added 9 new ones.* \\ This is not advice, it's my self-reflection that might help you avoid same mistakes if you think those were mistakes

#reddit#only#someone

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matthewbarby•This week

The delicate balance of building an online community business

Hey /r/Entrepreneur 👋 Just under two years ago I launched an online community business called Traffic Think Tank with two other co-founders, Nick Eubanks and Ian Howells. As a Traffic Think Tank customer you (currently) pay $119 a month to get access to our online community, which is run through Slack. The community is focused on helping you learn various aspects of marketing, with a particular focus on search engine optimization (SEO). Alongside access to the Slack community, we publish new educational video content from outside experts every week that all customers have access to. At the time of writing, Traffic Think Tank has around 650 members spanning across 17 of the 24 different global time zones. I was on a business trip over in Sydney recently, and during my time there I met up with some of our Australia-based community members. During dinner I was asked by several of them how the idea for Traffic Think Tank came about and what steps we took to validate that the idea was worth pursuing.  This is what I told them… How it all began It all started with a personal need. Nick, an already successful entrepreneur and owner of a marketing agency, had tested out an early version Traffic Think Tank in early 2017. He offered real-time consulting for around ten customers that he ran from Slack. He would publish some educational videos and offer his advice on projects that the members were running. The initial test went well, but it was tough to maintain on his own and he had to charge a fairly high price to make it worth his time. That’s when he spoke to me and Ian about turning this idea into something much bigger. Both Ian and I offered something slightly different to Nick. We’ve both spent time in senior positions at marketing agencies, but currently hold senior director positions in 2,000+ public employee companies (HubSpot and LendingTree). Alongside this, as a trio we could really ramp up the quality and quantity of content within the community, spread out the administrative workload and just generally have more resources to throw at getting this thing off the ground. Admittedly, Nick was much more optimistic about the potential of Traffic Think Tank – something I’m very thankful for now – whereas Ian and I were in the camp of “you’re out of your mind if you think hundreds of people are going to pay us to be a part of a Slack channel”. To validate the idea at scale, we decided that we’d get an initial MVP of the community up and running with a goal of reaching 100 paying customers in the first six months. If we achieved that, we’d validated that it was a viable business and we would continue to pursue it. If not, we’d kill it. We spent the next month building out the initial tech stack that enabled us to accept payments, do basic user management to the Slack channel, and get a one-page website up and running with information on what Traffic Think Tank was all about.  After this was ready, we doubled down on getting some initial content created for members – I mean, we couldn’t have people just land in an empty Slack channel, could we? We created around ten initial videos, 20 or so articles and then some long threads full of useful information within the Slack channel so that members would have some content to pour into right from the beginning.  Then, it was time to go live. The first 100 customers Fortunately, both Nick and I had built a somewhat substantial following in the SEO space over the previous 5-10 years, so we at least had a large email list to tap into (a total of around 40,000 people). We queued up some launch emails, set an initial price of $99 per month and pressed send. [\[LINK\] The launch email I sent to my subscribers announcing Traffic Think Tank](https://mailchi.mp/matthewbarby/future-of-marketing-1128181) What we didn’t expect was to sell all of the initial 100 membership spots in the first 72 hours. “Shit. What do we do now? Are we ready for this many people? Are we providing them with enough value? What if something breaks in our tech stack? What if they don’t like the content? What if everyone hates Slack?” All of these were thoughts running through my head. This brings me to the first great decision we made: we closed down new membership intake for 3 months so that we could focus completely on adding value to the first cohort of users. The right thing at the right time SEO is somewhat of a dark art to many people that are trying to learn about it for the first time. There’s hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of articles and videos online that talk about how to do SEO.  Some of it’s good advice; a lot of it is very bad advice.  Add to this that the barrier to entry of claiming to be an “expert” in SEO is practically non-existent and you have a recipe for disaster. This is why, for a long time, individuals involved in SEO have flocked in their masses to online communities for information and to bounce ideas off of others in the space. Forums like SEObook, Black Hat World, WickedFire, Inbound.org, /r/BigSEO, and many more have, at one time, been called home by many SEOs.  In recent times, these communities have either been closed down or just simply haven’t adapted to the changing needs of the community – one of those needs being real-time feedback on real-world problems.  The other big need that we all spotted and personally had was the ability to openly share the things that are working – and the things that aren’t – in SEO within a private forum. Not everyone wanted to share their secret sauce with the world. One of the main reasons we chose Slack as the platform to run our community on was the fact that it solved these two core needs. It gave the ability to communicate in real-time across multiple devices, and all of the information shared within it was outside of the public domain. The other problem that plagued a lot of these early communities was spam. Most of them were web-based forums that were free to access. That meant they became a breeding ground for people trying to either sell their services or promote their own content – neither of which is conducive to building a thriving community. This was our main motivation for charging a monthly fee to access Traffic Think Tank. We spent a lot of time thinking through pricing. It needed to be enough money that people would be motivated to really make use of their membership and act in a way that’s beneficial to the community, but not too much money that it became cost prohibitive to the people that would benefit from it the most. Considering that most of our members would typically spend between $200-800 per month on SEO software, $99 initially felt like the perfect balance. Growing pains The first three months of running the community went by without any major hiccups. Members were incredibly patient with us, gave us great feedback and were incredibly helpful and accommodating to other members. Messages were being posted every day, with Nick, Ian and myself seeding most of the engagement at this stage.  With everything going smoothly, we decided that it was time to open the doors to another intake of new members. At this point we’d accumulated a backlog of people on our waiting list, so we knew that simply opening our doors would result in another large intake. Adding more members to a community has a direct impact on the value that each member receives. For Traffic Think Tank in particular, the value for members comes from three areas: The ability to have your questions answered by me, Nick and Ian, as well as other members of the community. The access to a large library of exclusive content. The ability to build connections with the wider community. In the early stages of membership growth, there was a big emphasis on the first of those three points. We didn’t have an enormous content library, nor did we have a particularly large community of members, so a lot of the value came from getting a lot of one-to-one time with the community founders. [\[IMAGE\] Screenshot of engagement within the Traffic Think Tank Slack community](https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/client/qglossy,retimg,w_1322/https://www.matthewbarby.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Community-Engagement-in-Traffic-Think-Tank.png) The good thing about having 100 members was that it was just about feasible to give each and every member some one-to-one time within the month, which really helped us to deliver those moments of delight that the community needed early on. Two-and-a-half months after we launched Traffic Think Tank, we opened the doors to another 250 people, taking our total number of members to 350. This is where we experienced our first growing pains.  Our original members had become used to being able to drop us direct messages and expect an almost instant response, but this wasn’t feasible anymore. There were too many people, and we needed to create a shift in behavior. We needed more value to come from the community engaging with one another or we’d never be able to scale beyond this level. We started to really pay attention to engagement metrics; how many people were logging in every day, and of those, how many were actually posting messages within public channels.  We asked members that were logging in a lot but weren’t posting (the “lurkers”) why that was the case. We also asked the members that engaged in the community the most what motivated them to post regularly. We learned a lot from doing this. We found that the large majority of highly-engaged members had much more experience in SEO, whereas most of the “lurkers” were beginners. This meant that most of the information being shared in the community was very advanced, with a lot of feedback from the beginners in the group being that they “didn’t want to ask a stupid question”.  As managers of the community, we needed to facilitate conversations that catered to all of our members, not just those at a certain level of skill. To tackle this problem, we created a number of new channels that had a much deeper focus on beginner topics so novice members had a safe place to ask questions without judgment.  We also started running live video Q&As each month where we’d answer questions submitted by the community. This gave our members one-on-one time with me, Nick and Ian, but spread the value of these conversations across the whole community rather than them being hidden within private messages. As a result of these changes, we found that the more experienced members in the community were really enjoying sharing their knowledge with those with less experience. The number of replies within each question thread was really starting to increase, and the community started to shift away from just being a bunch of threads created by me, Nick and Ian to a thriving forum of diverse topics compiled by a diverse set of individuals. This is what we’d always wanted. A true community. It was starting to happen. [\[IMAGE\] Chart showing community engagement vs individual member value](https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/client/qglossy,retimg,w_1602/https://www.matthewbarby.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Community-Engagement-Balance-Graph.jpg) At the same time, we started to realize that we’ll eventually reach a tipping point where there’ll be too much content for us to manage and our members to engage with. When we reach this point, the community will be tough to follow and the quality of any given post will go down. Not only that, but the community will become increasingly difficult to moderate. We’re not there yet, but we recognize that this will come, and we’ll have to adjust our model again. Advocating advocacy As we started to feel more comfortable about the value that members were receiving, we made the decision to indefinitely open for new members. At the same time, we increased the price of membership (from $99 a month to $119) in a bid to strike the right balance between profitability as a business and to slow down the rate at which we were reaching the tipping point of community size. We also made the decision to repay all of our early adopters by grandfathering them in to the original pricing – and committing to always do this in the future. Despite the price increase, we saw a continued flow of new members come into the community. The craziest part about this was that we were doing practically no marketing activities to encourage new members– this was all coming from word of mouth. Our members were getting enough value from the community that they were recommending it to their friends, colleagues and business partners.  The scale at which this was happening really took us by surprise and it told us one thing very clearly: delivering more value to members resulted in more value being delivered to the business. This is a wonderful dynamic to have because it perfectly aligns the incentives on both sides. We’d said from the start that we wouldn’t sacrifice value to members for more revenue – this is something that all three of us felt very strongly about. First and foremost, we wanted to create a community that delivered value to its members and was run in a way that aligned with our values as people. If we could find a way to stimulate brand advocacy, while also tightening the bonds between all of our individual community members, we’d be boosting both customer retention and customer acquisition in the same motion. This became our next big focus. [\[TWEET\] Adam, one of our members wore his Traffic Think Tank t-shirt in the Sahara desert](https://twitter.com/AdamGSteele/status/1130892481099382784) We started with some simple things: We shipped out Traffic Think Tank branded T-shirts to all new members. We’d call out each of the individuals that would submit questions to our live Q&A sessions and thank them live on air. We set up a new channel that was dedicated to sharing a quick introduction to who you are, what you do and where you’re based for all new members. We’d created a jobs channel and a marketplace for selling, buying and trading services with other members. Our monthly “blind dates” calls were started where you’d be randomly grouped with 3-4 other community members so that you could hop on a call to get to know each other better. The Traffic Think Tank In Real Life (IRL)* channel was born, which enabled members to facilitate in-person meetups with each other. In particular, we saw that as members started to meet in person or via calls the community itself was feeling more and more like a family. It became much closer knit and some members started to build up a really positive reputation for being particularly helpful to other members, or for having really strong knowledge in a specific area. [\[TWEET\] Dinner with some of the Traffic Think Tank members in Brighton, UK](https://twitter.com/matthewbarby/status/1117175584080134149) Nick, Ian and I would go out of our way to try and meet with members in real life wherever we could. I was taken aback by how appreciative people were for us doing this, and it also served as an invaluable way to gain honest feedback from members. There was another trend that we’d observed that we didn’t really expect to happen. More and more members were doing business with each another. We’ve had people find new jobs through the community, sell businesses to other members, launch joint ventures together and bring members in as consultants to their business. This has probably been the most rewarding thing to watch, and it was clear that the deeper relationships that our members were forming were resulting in an increased level of trust to work with each other. We wanted to harness this and take it to a new level. This brought us to arguably the best decision we’ve made so far running Traffic Think Tank… we were going to run a big live event for our members. I have no idea what I’m doing It’s the first week of January 2019 and we’re less than three weeks away from Traffic Think Tank LIVE, our first ever in-person event hosting 150 people, most of which are Traffic Think Tank members. It's like an ongoing nightmare I can’t wake up from. That was Nick’s response in our private admin channel to myself and Ian when I asked if they were finding the run-up to the event as stressful as I was. I think that all three of us were riding on such a high from how the community was growing that we felt like we could do anything. Running an event? How hard can it be? Well, turns out it’s really hard. We had seven different speakers flying over from around the world to speak at the event, there was a pre- and after event party, and we’d planned a charity dinner where we would take ten attendees (picked at random via a raffle) out for a fancy meal. Oh, and Nick, Ian and I were hosting a live Q&A session on stage. It wasn’t until precisely 48 hours before the event that we’d realized we didn’t have any microphones, nor had a large amount of the swag we’d ordered arrived. Plus, a giant storm had hit Philly causing a TON of flight cancellations. Perfect. Just perfect. This was honestly the tip of the iceberg. We hadn’t thought about who was going to run the registration desk, who would be taking photos during the event and who would actually field questions from the audience while all three of us sat on stage for our live Q&A panel. Turns out that the answer to all of those questions were my wife, Laura, and Nick’s wife, Kelley. Thankfully, they were on hand to save our asses. The weeks running up to the event were honestly some of the most stressful of my life. We sold around 50% of our ticket allocation within the final two weeks before the event. All of the event organizers told us this would happen, but did we believe them? Hell no!  Imagine having two weeks until the big day and as it stood half of the room would be completely empty. I was ready to fly most of my extended family over just to make it look remotely busy. [\[IMAGE\] One of our speakers, Ryan Stewart, presenting at Traffic Think Tank LIVE](https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/client/qglossy,retimg,w_1920/https://www.matthewbarby.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Traffic-Think-Tank-LIVE-Ryan-Presenting.jpg) Thankfully, if all came together. We managed to acquire some microphones, the swag arrived on the morning of the event, all of our speakers were able to make it on time and the weather just about held up so that our entire allocation of ticket holders was able to make it to the event. We pooled together and I’m proud to say that the event was a huge success. While we made a substantial financial loss on the event itself, January saw a huge spike in new members, which more than recouped our losses. Not only that, but we got to hang out with a load of our members all day while they said really nice things about the thing we’d built. It was both exhausting and incredibly rewarding. Bring on Traffic Think Tank LIVE 2020! (This time we’re hiring an event manager...)   The road ahead Fast forward to today (August 2019) and Traffic Think Tank has over 650 members. The biggest challenges that we’re tackling right now include making sure the most interesting conversations and best content surfaces to the top of the community, making Slack more searchable (this is ultimately one of its flaws as a platform) and giving members a quicker way to find the exclusive content that we create. You’ll notice there’s a pretty clear theme here. In the past 30 days, 4,566 messages were posted in public channels inside Traffic Think Tank. If you add on any messages posted inside private direct messages, this number rises to 21,612. That’s a lot of messages. To solve these challenges and enable further scale in the future, we’ve invested a bunch of cash and our time into building out a full learning management system (LMS) that all members will get access to alongside the Slack community. The LMS will be a web-based portal that houses all of the video content we produce. It will also  provide an account admin section where users can update or change their billing information (they have to email us to do this right now, which isn’t ideal), a list of membership perks and discounts with our partners, and a list of links to some of the best threads within Slack – when clicked, these will drop you directly into Slack. [\[IMAGE\] Designs for the new learning management system (LMS)](https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/client/qglossy,retimg,w_2378/https://www.matthewbarby.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Traffic-Think-Tank-LMS.png) It’s not been easy, but we’re 95% of the way through this and I’m certain that it will have a hugely positive impact on the experience for our members. Alongside this we hired a community manager, Liz, who supports with any questions that our members have, coordinates with external experts to arrange webinars for the community, helps with new member onboarding, and has tightened up some of our processes around billing and general accounts admin. This was a great decision. Finally, we’ve started planning next year’s live event, which we plan to more than double in size to 350 attendees, and we decided to pick a slightly warmer location in Miami this time out. Stay tuned for me to have a complete meltdown 3 weeks from the event. Final thoughts When I look back on the journey we’ve had so far building Traffic Think Tank, there’s one very important piece to this puzzle that’s made all of this work that I’ve failed to mention so far: co-founder alignment. Building a community is a balancing act that relies heavily on those in charge being completely aligned. Nick, Ian and I completely trust each other and more importantly, are philosophically aligned on how we want to run and grow the community. If we didn’t have this, the friction between us could tear apart the entire community. Picking the right people to work with is important in any company, but when your business is literally about bringing people together, there’s no margin for error here.  While I’m sure there will be many more challenges ahead, knowing that we all trust each other to make decisions that fall in line with each of our core values makes these challenges dramatically easier to overcome. Finally, I’d like to thank all of our members for making the community what it is today – it’d be nothing without you and I promise that we’ll never take that for granted. ​ I originally posted this on my blog here. Welcoming all of your thoughts, comments, questions and I'll do my best to answer them :)

#reddit#delicate#balance

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Royal_Rest8409•This week

How a Small Startup in Asia Secured a Contract with the US Department of Homeland Security

Uzair Javaid, a Ph.D. with a passion for data privacy, co-founded Betterdata to tackle one of AI's most pressing challenges: protecting privacy while enabling innovation. Recently, Betterdata secured a lucrative contract with the US Department of Homeland Security, 1 of only 4 companies worldwide to do so and the only one in Asia. Here's how he did it: The Story So what's your story? I grew up in Peshawar, Pakistan, excelling in coding despite studying electrical engineering. Inspired by my professors, I set my sights on studying abroad and eventually earned a Ph.D. scholarship at NUS Singapore, specializing in data security and privacy. During my research, I ethically hacked Ethereum and published 15 papers—three times the requirement. While wrapping up my Ph.D., I explored startup ideas and joined Entrepreneur First, where I met Kevin Yee. With his expertise in generative models and mine in privacy, we founded Betterdata. Now, nearly three years in, we’ve secured a major contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—one of only four companies globally and the only one from Asia. The Startup In a nutshell, what does your startup do? Betterdata is a startup that uses AI and synthetic data generation to address two major challenges: data privacy and the scarcity of high-quality data for training AI models. By leveraging generative models and privacy-enhancing technologies, Betterdata enables businesses, such as banks, to use customer data without breaching privacy regulations. The platform trains AI on real data, learns its patterns, and generates synthetic data that mimics the real thing without containing any personal or sensitive information. This allows companies to innovate and develop AI solutions safely and ethically, all while tackling the growing need for diverse, high-quality data in AI development. How did you conduct ideation and validation for your startup? The initial idea for Betterdata came from personal experience. During my Ph.D., I ethically hacked Ethereum’s blockchain, exposing flaws in encryption-based data sharing. This led me to explore AI-driven deep synthesis technology—similar to deepfakes but for structured data privacy. With GDPR impacting 28M+ businesses, I saw a massive opportunity to help enterprises securely share data while staying compliant. To validate the idea, I spoke to 50 potential customers—a number that strikes the right balance. Some say 100, but that’s impractical for early-stage founders. At 50, patterns emerge: if 3 out of 10 mention the same problem, and this repeats across 50, you have 10–15 strong signals, making it a solid foundation for an MVP. Instead of outbound sales, which I dislike, we used three key methods: Account-Based Marketing (ABM)—targeting technically savvy users with solutions for niche problems, like scaling synthetic data for banks. Targeted Content Marketing—regular customer conversations shaped our thought leadership and outreach. Raising Awareness Through Partnerships—collaborating with NUS, Singapore’s PDPC, and Plug and Play to build credibility and educate the market. These strategies attracted serious customers willing to pay, guiding Betterdata’s product development and market fit. How did you approach the initial building and ongoing product development? In the early stages, we built synthetic data generation algorithms and a basic UI for proof-of-concept, using open-source datasets to engage with banks. We quickly learned that banks wouldn't share actual customer data due to privacy concerns, so we had to conduct on-site installations and gather feedback to refine our MVP. Through continuous consultation with customers, we discovered real enterprise data posed challenges, such as missing values, which led us to adapt our prototype accordingly. This iterative approach of listening to customer feedback and observing their usage allowed us to improve our product, enhance UX, and address unmet needs while building trust and loyalty. Working closely with our customers also gives us a data advantage. Our solution’s effectiveness depends on customer data, which we can't fully access, but bridging this knowledge gap gives us a competitive edge. The more customers we test on, the more our algorithms adapt to diverse use cases, making it harder for competitors to replicate our insights. My approach to iteration is simple: focus solely on customer feedback and ignore external noise like trends or advice. The key question for the team is: which customer is asking for this feature or solution? As long as there's a clear answer, we move forward. External influences, such as AI hype, often bring more confusion than clarity. True long-term success comes from solving real customer problems, not chasing trends. Customers may not always know exactly what they want, but they understand their problems. Our job is to identify these problems and solve them in innovative ways. While customers may suggest specific features, we stay focused on solving the core issue rather than just fulfilling their exact requests. The idea aligns with the quote often attributed to Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." The key is understanding their problems, not just taking requests at face value. How do you assess product-market fit? To assess product-market fit, we track two key metrics: Customers' Willingness to Pay: We measure both the quantity and quality of meetings with potential customers. A high number of meetings with key decision-makers signals genuine interest. At Betterdata, we focused on getting meetings with people in banks and large enterprises to gauge our product's resonance with the target market. How Much Customers Are Willing to Pay: We monitor the price customers are willing to pay, especially in the early stages. For us, large enterprises, like banks, were willing to pay a premium for our synthetic data platform due to the growing need for privacy tech. This feedback guided our product refinement and scaling strategy. By focusing on these metrics, we refined our product and positioned it for scaling. What is your business model? We employ a structured, phase-driven approach for out business model, as a B2B startup. I initially struggled with focusing on the core value proposition in sales, often becoming overly educational. Eventually, we developed a product roadmap with models that allowed us to match customer needs to specific offerings and justify our pricing. Our pricing structure includes project-based pilots and annual contracts for successful deployments. At Betterdata, our customer engagement unfolds across three phases: Phase 1: Trial and Benchmarking \- We start with outreach and use open-source datasets to showcase results, offering customers a trial period to evaluate the solution. Phase 2: Pilot or PoC \- After positive trial results, we conduct a PoC or pilot using the customer’s private data, with the understanding that successful pilots lead to an annual contract. Phase 3: Multi-Year Contracts \- Following a successful pilot, we transition to long-term commercial contracts, focusing on multi-year agreements to ensure stability and ongoing partnerships. How do you do marketing for your brand? We take a non-conventional approach to marketing, focusing on answering one key question: Which customers are willing to pay, and how much? This drives our messaging to show how our solution meets their needs. Our strategy centers around two main components: Building a network of lead magnets \- These are influential figures like senior advisors, thought leaders, and strategic partners. Engaging with institutions like IMDA, SUTD, and investors like Plug and Play helps us gain access to the right people and foster warm introductions, which shorten our sales cycle and ensure we’re reaching the right audience. Thought leadership \- We build our brand through customer traction, technology evidence, and regulatory guidelines. This helps us establish credibility in the market and position ourselves as trusted leaders in our field. This holistic approach has enabled us to navigate diverse market conditions in Asia and grow our B2B relationships. By focusing on these areas, we drive business growth and establish strong trust with stakeholders. What's your advice for fundraising? Here are my key takeaways for other founders when it comes to fundraising: Fundraise When You Don’t Need To We closed our seed round in April 2023, a time when we weren't actively raising. Founders should always be in fundraising mode, even when they're not immediately in need of capital. Don’t wait until you have only a few months of runway left. Keep the pipeline open and build relationships. When the timing is right, execution becomes much easier. For us, our investment came through a combination of referrals and inbound interest. Even our lead investor initially rejected us, but after re-engaging, things eventually fell into place. It’s crucial to stay humble, treat everyone with respect, and maintain those relationships for when the time is right. Be Mindful of How You Present Information When fundraising, how you present information matters a lot. We created a comprehensive, easily digestible investment memo, hosted on Notion, which included everything an investor might need—problem, solution, market, team, risks, opportunities, and data. The goal was for investors to be able to get the full picture within 30 minutes without chasing down extra details. We also focused on making our financial model clear and meaningful, even though a 5-year forecast might be overkill at the seed stage. The key was clarity and conciseness, and making it as easy as possible for investors to understand the opportunity. I learned that brevity and simplicity are often the best ways to make a memorable impact. For the pitch itself, keep it simple and focus on 4 things: problem, solution, team, and market. If you can summarize each of these clearly and concisely, you’ll have a compelling pitch. Later on, you can expand into market segments, traction, and other metrics, but for seed-stage, focus on those four areas, and make sure you’re strong in at least three of them. If you do, you'll have a compelling case. How do you run things day-to-day? i.e what's your operational workflow and team structure? Here's an overview of our team structure and process: Internally: Our team is divided into two main areas: backend (internal team) and frontend (market-facing team). There's no formal hierarchy within the backend team. We all operate as equals, defining our goals based on what needs to be developed, assigning tasks, and meeting weekly to share updates and review progress. The focus is on full ownership of tasks and accountability for getting things done. I also contribute to product development, identifying challenges and clearing obstacles to help the team move forward. Backend Team: We approach tasks based on the scope defined by customers, with no blame or hierarchy. It's like a sports team—sometimes someone excels, and other times they struggle, but we support each other and move forward together. Everyone has the creative freedom to work in the way that suits them best, but we establish regular meetings and check-ins to ensure alignment and progress. Frontend Team: For the market-facing side, we implement a hierarchy because the market expects this structure. If I present myself as "CEO," it signals authority and credibility. This distinction affects how we communicate with the market and how we build our brand. The frontend team is split into four main areas: Business Product (Software Engineering) Machine Learning Engineering R&D The C-suite sits at the top, followed by team leads, and then the executors. We distill market expectations into actionable tasks, ensuring that everyone is clear on their role and responsibilities. Process: We start by receiving market expectations and defining tasks based on them. Tasks are assigned to relevant teams, and execution happens with no communication barriers between team members. This ensures seamless collaboration and focused execution. The main goal is always effectiveness—getting things done efficiently while maintaining flexibility in how individuals approach their work. In both teams, there's an emphasis on accountability, collaboration, and clear communication, but the structure varies according to the nature of the work and external expectations.

#reddit#small#startup

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marin_smiljanic•This week

Raised $450k for my startup, here are the lessons I've learned along the way

2021 has been a pretty amazing year for Omnisearch. Having started initial work on Omnisearch at the end of 2020, we entered the new year with a working MVP yet no revenue, no significant partnerships, and no funding. Fast forward to the end of 2021, and we now have fantastic revenue growth, a partnership with a public company, and a far more powerful, complete and polished product. But one milestone really changed Omnisearch’s trajectory: our $450,000 USD pre-seed round by GoAhead Ventures. In this post I want to share the story of how it came about and offer a couple of takeaways to keep in mind when preparing for fundraising. ​ The story Contrary to most advice, my co-founder Matej and I didn’t allocate a specific time to switch to “fundraising mode” but rather talked to investors on an ongoing basis. It was a bit of a distraction from working on the product, but on the positive side we were able to constantly get feedback on the idea, pitch, go-to-market strategy and hiring, as well as hearing investors’ major concerns sooner rather than later. That being said, our six-month long fundraising efforts weren’t yielding results - we talked to about twenty investors, mostly angels or smaller funds, with no success. The feedback was generally of the “too early for us” variety (since we were still pre-revenue), with additional questions about our go-to-market strategy and ideal customer persona. The introduction to our eventual investors, California-based GoAhead Ventures, came through a friend who had pitched them previously. We wrote a simple blurb and sent our pitch deck. We then went through GoAhead’s hyper-efficient screening process, consisting of a 30-minute call, a recorded three-minute pitch, and filling out a simple Google doc. Throughout the whole process, the GoAhead team left an awesome impression thanks to their knowledge of enterprise software and their responsiveness. They ended up investing and the whole deal was closed within two weeks, which is super fast even by Silicon Valley standards. While our fundraising experience is a single data point and your case might be different, here are the key takeaways from our journey. ​ Perseverance wins: Like I said above, we talked to about twenty investors before we closed our round. Getting a series of “no”s sucks, but we took the feedback seriously and tried to prepare better for questions that caught us off guard. But we persevered, keeping in mind that from a bird’s eye perspective it’s an amazing time to be building startups and raising funds. Focus on traction: Sounds pretty obvious, right? The truth is, though, that even a small amount of revenue is infinitely better than none at all. One of the major differences between our eventual successful investor pitch and the earlier ones was that we had actual paying customers, though our MRR was low. This allows you to talk about customers in the present tense, showing there’s actual demand for your product and making the use cases more tangible. And ideally, highlight a couple of customer testimonials to boost your credibility. Have a demo ready: In Omnisearch’s case, the demo was oftentimes the best received part of the pitch or call. We’d show investors the live demo, and for bonus points even asked them to choose a video from YouTube and then try searching through it. This always had a “wow” effect on prospective investors and made the subsequent conversation more exciting and positive. Accelerators: Accelerators like Y Combinator or Techstars can add enormous value to a startup, especially in the early stages. And while it’s a great idea to apply, don’t rely on them too heavily. Applications happen only a few times a year, and you should have a foolproof fundraising plan in case you don’t get in. In our case, we just constantly looked for investors who were interested in our space (defined as enterprise SaaS more broadly), using LinkedIn, AngelList, and intros from our own network. Practice the pitch ad nauseam: Pitching is tough to get right even for seasoned pros, so it pays to practice as often as possible. We took every opportunity to perfect the pitch: attending meetups and giving the thirty-second elevator pitch to other attendees over beer and pizza, participating in startup competitions, going to conferences and exhibiting at our own booth, attending pre-accelerator programs, and pitching to friends who are in the startup world. Show an understanding of the competition: Frankly, this was one of the strongest parts of our pitch and investor conversations. If you’re in a similar space to ours, Gartner Magic Quadrants and Forrester Waves are an awesome resource, as well as sites like AlternativeTo or Capterra and G2. By thoroughly studying these resources we gained a great understanding of the industry landscape and were able to articulate our differentiation more clearly and succinctly. Presenting this visually in a coordinate system or a feature grid is, from our experience, even more effective. Remember it’s just the beginning! Getting your first round of funding is just the beginning of the journey, so it’s important to avoid euphoria and get back to building and selling the product as soon as possible. While securing funding enables you to scale the team, and is a particular relief if the founders had worked without a salary, the end goal is still to build a big, profitable, and overall awesome startup.

#reddit#raised#$450k

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doublescoop24•This week

7 free ways to find customers

You do not need to burn thousands on paid ads to find customers. Most businesses think ads are the only way to get customers. They spend huge amounts on Google and Facebook ads with low conversion rates and end up desperate when the money runs out. Here are some FREE strategies that work way better: Be where your customers already hang out Monitor platforms like Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook groups and other online communities where your target audience discusses their problems. Look for people actively seeking solutions you provide. The conversion rate is much higher because these are people already looking for what you sell. Create content that solves real problems Create blog posts, videos, or social content that addresses specific pain points your audience has. I started writing detailed guides about problems I knew my customers faced and they began finding me organically through search. Strategic partnerships with complementary businesses I connected with businesses that served the same customers but offered different products. We created joint social posts and shared each other's content at zero cost. This opened up their audience to me and vice versa. Get interviewed on podcasts This one surprised me. Many niche industry podcasts need guests constantly. I reached out offering specific topics I could speak on with value for their audience. This positioned me as an expert while reaching new potential customers. Build in public Sharing your journey building your product creates a following of interested people. I posted weekly updates on X about challenges and wins, which created a small but engaged community before we even launched. Leverage personal networks properly Not by spamming friends, but by asking for specific introductions to people who might genuinely benefit from what you offer. One quality introduction beats 100 cold emails. Create free tools or resources This is one of the most effective strategies. You can easily build these free tools using AI now. I built a simple calculator that helped people in my industry solve a common problem. It generated leads because users found it valuable and shared it. The most important thing I learned is that these methods actually produce higher quality customers. They come to you already understanding the value you provide, which means better conversion rates and longer customer relationships. It takes more patience than ads, but the ROI is significantly better in the long run. Plus, these strategies help you understand your customers better, which improves everything else in your business.

#reddit#free#ways

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Momof3rascals•This week

Thoughts on FasterCapital VC?

TLDR: I pitched to FasterCapital and got an "offer". Trying to figure out if this is a legitimate opportunity or a waste of my time. I'm not familiar with VCs and hadn't considered actually getting an investor on board with my plan. I sent my pitch deck to FasterCapital, honestly not expecting a response. It was my first pitch deck and a complete long shot. I ended up getting a response, they asked me for clarification on a few things. Than I get this email about what they are offering here's the main part We specialize in warm introductions to angel investors, VCs, and HNWIs, ensuring you connect with the right investors through personalized recommendations—not ineffective mass email campaigns. Cold outreach, such as LinkedIn messages, rarely succeeds, as investors receive hundreds of such requests and disregard them. To raise money, you need a strong partner like ourselves who has a wide network and direct connection with those angel investors built throughout 10 years. You can see some of the reviews of the startups we have helped attached and reviews on independent sites. Based on our experience and the matching that we have done already on our own AI system and for raising $55M-$65M in 5 years, a suitable package in your case is $50k - $64k and the chances of raising money is %87 - %93, but you were accepted in the exceptional rising star offer, where you pay half of that amount as an advance which is $25k-$32k and the other half ONLY when we raise you the first $1M. Other startups in our standard offers pays double that amount. First, I don't understand all of it, except for the "where you pay half of that amount as an advance which is $25k-$32k" I am no where near being able to come close to that, mostly because if I had that much, I wouldn't apply to a VC. I responded and politely told her that was not something our company could financially do right now. Than this email Thanks for your kind reply. We are flexible on paying this amount into monthly installments. We offer money back guarantee if we didn't raise the capital in 6 months from signing. This is how much we are confident with our approach of warm introductions. Raising the first amount of money and getting the first investor onboard is the most challenging part. You need time to build trust and network of investors. You need to have a good partner to help you. Please note that the down payment is for raising at least $55M over five years as we are interested in long-term partnership to raise multiple rounds because we make money through the commission. Companies take only commission or success fee are doing cold introductions and mass emails and this approach has low chances of success when it comes to raising capital. It is about the chances of success. You can talk to these companies and ask them about their success rate. Mass emails campaign has zero chances of success.  We have helped more than 742 startups raise more than $2.2B. Our network includes 155,000 angel investors and more than 50K funding institutions (VCs, HNI, family offices..etc). We have been in this business for more than 10 years. We have more than 92% success rate in our program so far. So if you are familiar with VC, Is this an actual opportunity. I have a tendency to jump or dive head first into things. As much as I want to get excited because this would be the jumpstart to most of my goals and ambitions. I'm not familiar with VCs. I have bootstrapped all my ventures so far.

#reddit#thoughts#fastercapital

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Millionaire_•This week

In 2018, I started an AI chatbot company...today, we have over 4000 paying customers and ChatGPT is changing EVERYTHING

Intro: 5 years ago, my co-founders and I ventured into the space of AI chatbots and started our first truly successful company. Never in a million years did I see myself in this business and we truly stumbled upon the opportunity by chance. Prior to that, we ran a successful lead generation business and questioned whether a simple ai chat product would increase our online conversions. Of the 3 co-founders, I was skeptical that it would, but the data was clear that we had something that really worked. We built a really simple MVP version of the product and gave it to some of our top lead buyers who saw even better conversion improvements on their own websites. In just a matter of weeks, a new business opportunity was born and a major pivot away from our lead generation business started. Our growth story: Startup growth is really interesting and in most cases, founders aren't really educated on what a typical growth curve looks like. While we hear about "hockey stick" growth curves, it's really atypical to actually see or experience this. From my experience, growth curves take place in a "stair curve". For example, you can scrap your way to a $100k run rate without much process or tracking. You can even get to $1 million ARR being super disorganized. As you start going beyond $1M ARR, things start to break and growth can flatten out while you put new processes and systems in place. Eventually you'll get to $2M or 3M with your new strategy and then things start breaking again. I've seen the process repeat itself and as you increase your ARR, the processes and systems become more difficult to work through...mainly because more people get involved and the product becomes more complex. When you do end up cracking the code in each step, the growth accelerates faster and faster before things start to break down and flatten out again. Without getting too much into the numbers, here were some of our initial levers for growth: Our first "stair" step was to leverage our existing customer base from our prior lead generation business. Having prior business relationships and a proven track record made it really simple to have conversations with people who already trusted us to try something new that we had to offer. Stair #2 was to build out a partner channel. Since our chat product involved a web developer or agency installing the chat on client sites, we partnered with these developers and agencies to leverage their already existing customer bases. We essentially piggy-backed off of their relationships and gave them a cut of the revenue. We built an internal partner tracking portal which took 6+ months, but it was well worth it. Stair #3 was our most expensive step, biggest headache, but added the most revenue. After COVID, we had and SDR/Account Executive sales team of roughly 30 people. It added revenue fast, but the payback periods were 12+ months so we had to cut back on this strategy after exhausting our universe of clients. Stair #4 involves a variety of paid advertisement strategies with product changes and the introduction of new onboarding features. We're in the middle of this stair and hope it's multiple years before things breakdown again. Don't give up I know it sounds really cliché, but the #1 indicator of success is doing the really boring stuff day in and day out and making incremental improvements. As the weeks, months, and years pass by, you will slowly gain domain expertise and start to see the gaps in the market that can set you apart from your competition. It's so hard for founders to stay focused and not get distracted so I would say it's equally as important to have co-founders who hold each other accountable on what your collective goals are. How GPT is changing everything I could write pages and pages about how GPT is going to change how the world operates, but I'll keep it specific to our business and chatbots. In 2021, we built an industry specific AI model that did a great job of classifying intents which allowed us to train future actions during a chat. It was a great advancement in our customer's industry at the time. With GPT integrated into our system, that training process that would take an employee hours to do, can be done in 5 minutes. The model is also cheaper than our own and more accurate. Because of these training improvements, we have been able to conduct research that is allowing us to leverage GPT models like no one else in the industry. This is both in the realm of chat and also training during onboarding. I really want to refrain from sharing our company, but if you are interested in seeing a model trained for your specific company or website, just PM me your link and I'll send you a free testing link with a model fully trained for your site to play around with. Where we are headed and the dangers of AI The level of advancement in AI is not terribly dangerous in its current state. I'm sure you've heard it before, but those who leverage the technology today will be the ones who get ahead. In the coming years, AI will inevitably replace a large percentage of human labor. This will be great for overall value creation and productivity for the world, but the argument that humans have always adapted and new jobs will be created is sadly not going to be as relevant in this case. As the possibility of AGI becomes a reality in the coming years or decades, productivity through AI will be off the charts. There is a major risk that human innovation and creative thinking will be completely stalled...human potential as we know it will be capped off and there will need to be major economic reform for displaced workers. This may not happen in the next 5 or 10 years, but you would be naïve not to believe the world we live in today will not be completely different in 20 to 30 years. Using AI to create deepfakes, fake voice agents, scam the unsuspecting, or exploit technical vulnerabilities are just a few other examples I could write about, but don't want to go into to much detail for obvious reasons. Concluding If you found the post interesting or you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I'll do my best to answer whatever questions come from this! ​ \*EDIT: Wasn't expecting this sort of response. I posted this right before I went to sleep so I'll get to responding soon.

#reddit#2018,#started

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mr_t_forhire•This week

Started a content marketing agency 6 years ago - $0 to $5,974,324 (2023 update)

Hey friends, My name is Tyler and for the past 6 years, I’ve been documenting my experience building a content marketing agency called Optimist. Year 1 - 0 to $500k ARR Year 2 - $500k to $1MM ARR Year 3 - $1MM ARR to $1.5MM(ish) ARR Year 4 - $3,333,686 Revenue Year 5 - $4,539,659 Revenue How Optimist Works First, an overview/recap of the Optimist business model: We operate as a “collective” of full time/professional freelancers Everyone aside from me is a contractor Entirely remote/distributed team Each freelancer earns $65-85/hour Clients pay us a flat monthly fee for full-service content marketing (research, strategy, writing, editing, design/photography, reporting and analytics, targeted linkbuilding, and more) We recently introduced hourly engagements for clients who fit our model but have some existing in-house support Packages range in price from $10-20k/mo We offer profit share to everyone on our core team as a way to give everyone ownership in the company In 2022, we posted $1,434,665 in revenue. It was our highest revenue year to date and brings our lifetime total to $5,974,324. Here’s our monthly revenue from January 2017 to December of 2022. But, like every year, it was a mix of ups and downs. Here’s my dispatch for 2023. — Running a business is like spilling a drink. It starts as a small and simple thing. But, if you don’t clean it up, the spill will spread and grow — taking up more space, seeping into every crack. There’s always something you could be doing. Marketing you could be working on. Pitches you could be making. Networking you could be doing. Client work you could help with. It can be all-consuming. And it will be — if you don’t clean up the spill. I realized this year that I had no containment for the spill that I created. Running an agency was spilling over into nearly every moment of my life. When I wasn’t working, I was thinking about work. When I wasn’t thinking about work, I was dreaming about it. Over the years, I’ve shared about a lot of my personal feelings and experience as an entrepreneur. And I also discussed my reckoning with the limitations of running the business we’ve built. My acceptance that it was an airplane but not a rocket. And my plan to try to compartmentalize the agency to make room in my life for other things — new business ideas, new revenue streams, and maybe some non-income-producing activity. 🤷 What I found in 2022 was that the business wasn’t quite ready for me to make that move. It was still sucking up too much of my time and attention. There were still too many gaps to fill and I was the one who was often filling them. So what do you do? Ultimately you have two choices on the table anytime you run a business and it’s not going the way you want it: Walk away Turn the ship — slowly For a huge number of reasons (personal, professional, financial, etc), walking away from Optimist was not really even an option or the right move for me. But it did feel like things needed to change. I needed to keep turning the ship to get it to the place where it fit into my life — instead of my life fitting around the business. This means 2022 was a year of transition for the agency. (Again?) Refocusing on Profit Some money is better than no money. Right? Oddly, this was one of the questions I found myself asking in 2022. Over the years, we’ve been fortunate to have many clients who have stuck with us a long time. In some cases, we’ve had clients work with us for 2, 3, or even 4 years. (That’s over half of our existence!) But, things have gotten more expensive — we’ve all felt it. We’ve had to increase pay to remain competitive for top talent. Software costs have gone up. It’s eaten into our margin. Because of our increasing costs and evolving scope, many of our best, most loyal clients were our least profitable. In fact, many were barely profitable — if at all. We’ve tried to combat that by increasing rates on new, incoming clients to reflect our new costs and try to make up for shrinking margin on long-term clients. But we didn’t have a good strategy in place for updating pricing for current clients. And it bit us in the ass. Subsidizing lower-profit, long-term clients with new, higher-margin clients ultimately didn’t work out. Our margins continued to dwindle and some months we were barely breaking even while posting six-figures of monthly revenue. 2022 was our highest revenue year but one of our least profitable. It only left one option. We had to raise rates on some of our long-term clients. But, of course, raising rates on a great, long-term client can be delicate. You’ve built a relationship with these people over the years and you’re setting yourself up for an ultimatum — are you more valuable to the client or is the client more valuable to you? Who will blink first? We offered all of these clients the opportunity to move to updated pricing. Unfortunately, some of them weren’t on board. Again, we had 2 options: Keep them at a low/no profit rate Let them churn It seems intuitive that having a low-profit client is better than having no client. But we’ve learned an important lesson many times over the years. Our business doesn’t scale infinitely and we can only handle so many clients at a time. That means that low-profit clients are actually costing us money in some cases. Say our average client generates $2,500 per month in profit — $30,000 per year. If one of our clients is only generating $500/mo in profit, working with them means missing out on bringing on a more profitable client (assuming our team is currently at capacity). Instead of $30,000/year, we’re only making $6,000. Keeping that client costs us $24,000. That’s called opportunity cost. So it’s clear: We had to let these clients churn. We decided to churn about 25% of our existing clients. On paper, the math made sense. And we had a pretty consistent flow of new opportunities coming our way. At the time, it felt like a no-brainer decision. And I felt confident that we could quickly replace these low-profit clients with higher-margin ones. I was wrong. Eating Shit Right after we initiated proactively churning some of our clients, other clients — ones we planned to keep — gave us notice that they were planning to end the engagement. Ouch. Fuck. We went from a 25% planned drop in revenue to a nearly 40% cliff staring us right in the face. Then things got even worse. Around Q3 of this year, talk of recession and layoffs really started to intensify. We work primarily with tech companies and startups. And these were the areas most heavily impacted by the economic news. Venture funding was drying up. Our leads started to slow down. This put us in a tough position. Looking back now, I think it’s clear that I made the wrong decision. We went about this process in the wrong way. The reality sinks in when you consider the imbalance between losing a client and gaining a client. It takes 30 days for someone to fire us. It’s a light switch. But it could take 1-3 months to qualify, close, and onboard a new client. We have lots of upfront work, research, and planning that goes into the process. We have to learn a new brand voice, tone, and style. It’s a marathon. So, for every client we “trade”, there’s a lapse in revenue and work. This means that, in retrospect, I would probably have made this transition using some kind of staggered schedule rather than a cut-and-dry approach. We could have gradually off-boarded clients when we had more definitive work to replace them. I was too confident. But that’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way. Rebuilding & Resetting Most of the voluntary and involuntary churn happened toward the end of 2022. So we’re still dealing with the fall out. Right now, it feels like a period of rebuilding. We didn’t quite lose 50% of our revenue, but we definitely saw a big hit heading into 2023. To be transparent: It sucks. It feels like a gigantic mistake that I made which set us back significantly from our previous high point. I acted rashly and it cost us a lot of money — at least on the surface. But I remind myself of the situation we were in previously. Nearly twice the revenue but struggling to maintain profitability. Would it have been better to try to slowly fix that situation and battle through months of loss or barely-break-even profits? Or was ripping off the bandaid the right move after all? I’m an optimist. (Heh, heh) Plus, I know that spiraling over past decisions won’t change them or help me move forward. So I’m choosing to look at this as an opportunity — to rebuild, reset, and refocus the company. I get to take all of the tough lessons I’ve learned over the last 6 years and apply them to build the company in a way that better aligns with our new and current goals. It’s not quite a fresh, clean start, but by parting ways with some of our oldest clients, we’ve eliminated some of the “debt” that’s accumulated over the years. We get a chance to fully realize the new positioning that we rolled out last year. Many of those long-term clients who churned had a scope of work or engagement structure that didn’t fit with our new positioning and focus. So, by losing them, we’re able to completely close up shop on the SOWs that no longer align with the future version of Optimist. Our smaller roster of clients is a better fit for that future. My job is to protect that positioning by ensuring that while we’re rebuilding our new roster of clients we don’t get desperate. We maintain the qualifications we set out for future clients and only take on work that fits. How’s that for seeing the upside? Some other upside from the situation is that we got an opportunity to ask for candid feedback from clients who were leaving. We asked for insight about their decision, what factors they considered, how they perceived us, and the value of our work. Some of the reasons clients left were obvious and possibly unavoidable. Things like budget cuts, insourcing, and uncertainty about the economy all played at least some part of these decisions. But, reading between the lines, where was one key insight that really struck me. It’s one of those, “oh, yeah — duh — I already knew that,” things that can be difficult to learn and easy to forget…. We’re in the Relationship Business (Plan Accordingly) For all of our focus on things like rankings, keywords, content, conversions, and a buffet of relevant metrics, it can be easy to lose the forest for the trees. Yes, the work itself matters. Yes, the outcomes — the metrics — matter. But sometimes the relationship matters more. When you’re running an agency, you can live or die by someone just liking you. Admittedly, this feels totally unfair. It opens up all kinds of dilemmas, frustration, opportunity for bias and prejudice, and other general messiness. But it’s the real world. If a client doesn’t enjoy working with us — even if for purely personal reasons — they could easily have the power to end of engagement, regardless of how well we did our actual job. We found some evidence of this in the offboarding conversations we had with clients. In some cases, we had clients who we had driven triple- and quadruple-digital growth. Our work was clearly moving the needle and generating positive ROI and we had the data to prove it. But they decided to “take things in another direction” regardless. And when we asked about why they made the decision, it was clear that it was more about the working relationship than anything we could have improved about the service itself. The inverse is also often true. Our best clients have lasting relationships with our team. The work is important — and they want results. But even if things aren’t quite going according to plan, they’re patient and quick to forgive. Those relationships feel solid — unshakeable. Many of these folks move onto new roles or new companies and quickly look for an opportunity to work with us again. On both sides, relationships are often more important than the work itself. We’ve already established that we’re not building a business that will scale in a massive way. Optimist will always be a small, boutique service firm. We don’t need 100 new leads per month We need a small, steady roster of clients who are a great fit for the work we do and the value we create. We want them to stick around. We want to be their long-term partner. I’m not built for churn-and-burn agency life. And neither is the business. When I look at things through this lens, I realize how much I can cut from our overall business strategy. We don’t need an ultra-sophisticated, multi-channel marketing strategy. We just need strong relationships — enough of them to make our business work. There are a few key things we can take away from this as a matter of business strategy: Put most of our effort into building and strengthening relationships with our existing clients Be intentional about establishing a strong relationship with new clients as part of onboarding Focus on relationships as the main driver of future business development Embracing Reality: Theory vs Practice Okay, so with the big learnings out the way, I want to pivot into another key lesson from 2022. It’s the importance of understanding theory vs practice — specifically when it comes to thinking about time, work, and life. It all started when I was considering how to best structure my days and weeks around running Optimist, my other ventures, and my life goals outside of work. Over the years, I’ve dabbled in many different ways to block time and find focus — to compartmentalize all of the things that are spinning and need my attention. As I mapped this out, I realized that I often tried to spread myself too thin throughout the week. Not just that I was trying to do too much but that I was spreading that work into too many small chunks rather than carving out time for focus. In theory, 5 hours is 5 hours. If you have 5 hours of work to get done, you just fit into your schedule whenever you have an open time slot. In reality, a single 5-hour block of work is 10x more productive and satisfying than 10, 30-minute blocks of work spread out across the week. In part, this is because of context switching. Turning your focus from one thing to another thing takes time. Achieving flow and focus takes time. And the more you jump from one project to another, the more time you “lose” to switching. This is insightful for me both in the context of work and planning my day, but also thinking about my life outside of Optimist. One of my personal goals is to put a finite limit on my work time and give myself more freedom. I can structure that in many different ways. Is it better to work 5 days a week but log off 1 hour early each day? Or should I try to fit more hours into each workday so I can take a full day off? Of course, it’s the latter. Both because of the cost of context switching and spreading work into more, smaller chunks — but also because of the remainder that I end up with when I’m done working. A single extra hour in my day probably means nothing. Maybe I can binge-watch one more episode of a new show or do a few extra chores around the house. But it doesn’t significantly improve my life or help me find greater balance. Most things I want to do outside of work can’t fit into a single extra hour. A full day off from work unlocks many more options. I can take the day to go hiking or biking. I can spend the day with my wife, planning or playing a game. Or I can push it up against the weekend and take a 3-day trip. It gives me more of the freedom and balance that I ultimately want. So this has become a guiding principle for how I structure my schedule. I want to: Minimize context switching Maximize focused time for work and for non-work The idea of embracing reality also bleeds into some of the shifts in business strategy that I mentioned above. In theory, any time spent on marketing will have a positive impact on the company. In reality, focusing more on relationships than blasting tweets into the ether is much more likely to drive the kind of growth and stability that we’re seeking. As I think about 2023, I think this is a recurring theme. It manifests in many ways. Companies are making budget cuts and tough decisions about focus and strategy. Most of us are looking for ways to rein in the excess and have greater impact with a bit less time and money. We can’t do everything. We can’t even do most things. So our #1 priority should be to understand the reality of our time and our effort to make the most of every moment (in both work and leisure). That means thinking deeply about our strengths and our limitations. Being practical, even if it feels like sacrifice. Update on Other Businesses Finally, I want to close up by sharing a bit about my ventures outside of Optimist. I shared last year how I planned to shift some of my (finite) time and attention to new ventures and opportunities. And, while I didn’t get to devote as much as I hoped to these new pursuits, they weren’t totally in vain. I made progress across the board on all of the items I laid out in my post. Here’s what happened: Juice: The first Optimist spin-out agency At the end of 2021, we launched our first new service business based on demand from Optimist clients. Focused entirely on building links for SEO, we called the agency Juice. Overall, we made strong progress toward turning this into a legitimate standalone business in 2022. Relying mostly on existing Optimist clients and a few word-of-mouth opportunities (no other marketing), we built a team and set up a decent workflow and operations. There’s still many kinks and challenges that we’re working through on this front. All told, Juice posted almost $100,000 in revenue in our first full year. Monetizing the community I started 2022 with a focus on figuring out how to monetize our free community, Top of the Funnel. Originally, my plan was to sell sponsorships as the main revenue driver. And that option is still on the table. But, this year, I pivoted to selling paid content and subscriptions. We launched a paid tier for content and SEO entrepreneurs where I share more of my lessons, workflows, and ideas for building and running a freelance or agency business. It’s gained some initial traction — we reached \~$1,000 MRR from paid subscriptions. In total, our community revenue for 2022 was about $2,500. In 2023, I’m hoping to turn this into a $30,000 - $50,000 revenue opportunity. Right now, we’re on track for \~$15,000. Agency partnerships and referrals In 2022, we also got more serious about referring leads to other agencies. Any opportunity that was not a fit for Optimist or we didn’t have capacity to take on, we’d try to connect with another partner. Transparently, we struggled to operationalize this as effectively as I would have liked. In part, this was driven by my lack of focus here. With the other challenges throughout the year, I wasn’t able to dedicate as much time as I’d like to setting goals and putting workflows into place. But it wasn’t a total bust. We referred out several dozen potential clients to partner agencies. Of those, a handful ended up converting into sales — and referral commission. In total, we generated about $10,000 in revenue from referrals. I still see this as a huge opportunity for us to unlock in 2023. Affiliate websites Lastly, I mentioned spending some time on my new and existing affiliate sites as another big business opportunity in 2022. This ultimately fell to the bottom of my list and didn’t get nearly the attention I wanted. But I did get a chance to spend a few weeks throughout the year building this income stream. For 2022, I generated just under $2,000 in revenue from affiliate content. My wife has graciously agreed to dedicate some of her time and talent to these projects. So, for 2023, I think this will become a bit of a family venture. I’m hoping to build a solid and consistent workflow, expand the team, and develop a more solid business strategy. Postscript — AI, SEO, OMG As I’m writing this, much of my world is in upheaval. If you’re not in this space (and/or have possibly been living under a rock), the release of ChatGPT in late 2022 has sparked an arms race between Google, Bing, OpenAI, and many other players. The short overview: AI is likely to fundamentally change the way internet search works. This has huge impact on almost all of the work that I do and the businesses that I run. Much of our focus is on SEO and understanding the current Google algorithm, how to generate traffic for clients, and how to drive traffic to our sites and projects. That may all change — very rapidly. This means we’re standing at a very interesting point in time. On the one hand, it’s scary as hell. There’s a non-zero chance that this will fundamentally shift — possibly upturn — our core business model at Optimist. It could dramatically change how we work and/or reduce demand for our core services. No bueno. But it’s also an opportunity (there’s the optimist in me, again). I certainly see a world where we can become leaders in this new frontier. We can pivot, adjust, and capitalize on a now-unknown version of SEO that’s focused on understanding and optimizing for AI-as-search. With that, we may also be able to help others — say, those in our community? — also navigate this tumultuous time. See? It’s an opportunity. I wish I had the answers right now. But, it’s still a time of uncertainty. I just know that there’s a lot of change happening and I want to be in front of it rather than trying to play catch up. Wish me luck. — Alright friends — that's my update for 2023! I’ve always appreciated sharing these updates with the Reddit community, getting feedback, being asked tough questions, and even battling it out with some of my haters (hey!! 👋) As usual, I’m going to pop in throughout the next few days to respond to comments or answer questions. Feel free to share thoughts, ideas, and brutal takedowns in the comments. If you're interested in following the Optimist journey and the other projects I'm working on in 2023, you can follow me on Twitter. Cheers, Tyler P.S. - If you're running or launching a freelance or agency business and looking for help figuring it out, please DM me. Our subscription community, Middle of the Funnel, was created to provide feedback, lessons, and resources for other entrepreneurs in this space.

#reddit#started#content

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mr_t_forhire•This week

Started a content marketing agency 8 years ago - $0 to $7,863,052 (2025 update)

Hey friends, My name is Tyler and for the past 8 years, I’ve been documenting my experience building a content marketing agency called Optimist. Year 1 — 0 to $500k ARR Year 2 — $500k to $1MM ARR Year 3 — $1MM ARR to $1.5MM(ish) ARR Year 4 — $3,333,686 Revenue Year 5 — $4,539,659 Revenue Year 6 — $5,974,324 Revenue Year 7 - $6,815,503 Revenue (Edit: Seems like links are banned now. You can check my post history for all of my previous updates with lessons and learnings.) How Optimist Works First, an overview/recap of the Optimist business model: We operate as a “collective” of full time/professional freelancers Everyone aside from me is a contractor Entirely remote/distributed team We pay freelancers a flat fee for most work, working out to roughly $65-100/hour. Clients pay us a flat monthly fee for full-service content marketing (research, strategy, writing, editing, design/photography, reporting and analytics, targeted linkbuilding, and more)\ Packages range in price from \~$10-20k/mo \This is something we are revisiting now* The Financials In 2024, we posted $1,032,035.34 in revenue. This brings our lifetime revenue to $7,863,052. Here’s our monthly revenue from January 2017 to December of 2024. (Edit: Seems like I'm not allowed to link to the chart.) The good news: Revenue is up 23% YoY. EBITDA in Q4 trending up 1-2 points. We hosted our first retreat in 4 years, going to Ireland with about half the team. The bad news: Our revenue is still historically low. At $1MM for the year, we’re down about 33% from our previous years over $1.5MM. Revenue has been rocky. It doesn’t feel like we’ve really “recovered” from the bumps last year. The trend doesn’t really look great. Even though, anecdotally, it feels like we are moving in a good direction. EBITDA is still hovering at around 7%. Would love to get that closer to 20%. (For those who may ask: I’m calculating EBITDA after paying taxes and W2 portion of my income.) — Almost every year, my update starts the same way: This has been a year of growth and change. Both for my business—and me personally. 2024 was no different. I guess that tells you something about entrepreneurship. It’s a lot more like sailing a ship than driving a car. You’re constantly adapting, tides are shifting, and any blip of calm is usually just a moment before the next storm. As with past years, there’s a lot to unpack from the last 12 months. Here we go again. Everything is Burning In the last 2 years, everything has turned upside down in the world of content and SEO. Back in 2020, we made a big decision to re-position the agency. (See post history) We decided to narrow our focus to our most successful, profitable, and consistent segment of clients and re-work our entire operation to focus on serving them. We defined our ICP as: \~Series A ($10mm+ funding) with 6-12 months runway to scale organic as a channel Product-led company with “simple” sales cycle involving fewer stakeholders Demonstrable opportunity to use SEO to drive business growth Our services: Content focused on growing organic search (SEO) Full-service engagements that included research, planning, writing, design, reporting And our engagement structure: Engaged directly with an executive; ownership over strategy and day-to-day execution 1-2 points of contact or stakeholders Strategic partner that drives business growth (not a service vendor who makes content) Most importantly, we decided that we were no longer going to offer a broader range of content that we used to sell. That included everything from thought leadership content to case studies and ebooks. We doubled-down on “SEO content” for product-led SaaS companies. And this worked phenomenally for us. We started bringing on more clients than ever. We developed a lot of internal system and processes that helped us scale and take on more work than we’ve ever had and drive great outcomes for our ideal clients. But in 2023 and 2024, things started going awry. One big change, of course, was the rise of AI. Many companies and executives (and writers) feel that AI can write content just as well as an agency like ours. That made it a lot harder to sell a $10,000 per month engagement when they feel like the bulk of the work could be “done for free.” (Lots of thoughts on this if you want my opinions.) But it wasn’t just that. Google also started tinkering with their algorithm, introducing new features like AI Overviews, and generally changing the rules of the game. This created 3 big shifts in our world: The perceived value of content (especially “SEO content”) dropped dramatically in many people’s minds because of AI’s writing capabilities SEO became less predictable as a source of traffic and revenue It’s harder than ever for startups and smaller companies to rank for valuable keywords (let alone generate any meaningful traffic or revenue from them) The effect? The middle of the content market has hollowed out. People—like us—providing good, human-crafted content aimed on driving SEO growth saw a dramatic decline in demand. We felt it all year. Fewer and fewer leads. The leads we did see usually scoffed at our prices. They were indexing us against the cost of content mills and mass-produced AI articles. It was a time of soul-searching and looking for a way forward. I spent the first half of the year convinced that the only way to survive was to run toward the fire. We have to build our own AI workflows. We have to cut our rates internally. We have to get faster and cheaper to stay competitive with the agencies offering the same number of deliverables for a fraction of our rates. It’s the only way forward. But then I asked myself a question… Is this the game I actually want to play? As an entrepreneur, do I want to run a business where I’m competing mostly on price and efficiency rather than quality and value? Do I want to hop into a race toward cheaper and cheaper content? Do I want to help people chase a dwindling amount of organic traffic that’s shrinking in value? No. That’s not the game I want to play. That’s not a business I want to run. I don’t want to be in the content mill business. So I decided to turn the wheel—again. Repositioning Part II: Electric Boogaloo What do you do when the whole world shifts around you and the things that used to work aren’t working anymore? You pivot. You re-position the business and move in another direction. So that’s what we decided to do. Again. There was only one problem: I honestly wasn’t sure what opportunities existed in the content marketing industry outside of what we were already doing. We lived in a little echo chamber of startups and SEO. It felt like the whole market was on fire and I had fight through the smoke to find an escape hatch. So I started making calls. Good ol’ fashioned market research. I reached out to a few dozen marketing and content leaders at a bunch of different companies. I got on the phone and just asked lots of questions about their content programs, their goals, and their pain points. I wanted to understand what was happening in the market and how we could be valuable. And, luckily, this process really paid off. I learned a lot about the fragmentation happening across content and how views were shifting. I noticed key trends and how our old target market really wasn’t buying what we were selling. Startups and small companies are no longer willing to invest in an agency like ours. If they were doing content and SEO at all, they were focused entirely on using AI to scale output and minimize costs. VC money is still scarce and venture-backed companies are more focused on profitability than pure growth and raising another round. Larger companies (\~500+ employees) are doing more content than ever and drowning in content production. They want to focus on strategy but can barely tread water keeping up with content requests from sales, demand gen, the CEO, and everyone else. Many of the companies still investing in content are looking at channels and formats outside of SEO. Things like thought leadership, data reports, interview-driven content, and more. They see it as a way to stand out from the crowd of “bland SEO content.” Content needs are constantly in flux. They range from data reports and blog posts to product one-pagers. The idea of a fixed-scope retainer is a total mismatch for the needs of most companies. All of this led to the logical conclusion: We were talking to the wrong people about the wrong things\.\ Many companies came to one of two logical conclusions: SEO is a risky bet, so it’s gotta be a moonshot—super-low cost with a possibility for a big upside (i.e., use AI to crank out lots of content. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, then at least we aren’t out much money.) SEO is a risky bet, so we should diversify into other strategies and channels to drive growth (i.e., shift our budget from SEO and keyword-focused content to video, podcasts, thought leadership, social, etc) Unless we were going to lean into AI and dramatically cut our costs and rates, our old buyers weren’t interested. And the segment of the market that needs our help most are looking primarily for production support across a big range of content types. They’re not looking for a team to run a full-blown program focused entirely on SEO. So we had to go back to the drawing board. I’ve written before about our basic approach to repositioning the business. But, ultimately it comes down to identifying our unique strengths as a team and then connecting them to needs in the market. After reviewing the insights from my discussions and taking another hard look at our business and our strengths, I decided on a new direction: Move upmarket: Serve mid-size to enterprise businesses with \~500-5,000 employees instead of startups Focus on content that supports a broader range of business goals instead of solely on SEO and organic growth (e.g., sales, demand gen, brand, etc) Shift back to our broader playbook of content deliverables, including thought leadership, data studies, and more Focus on content execution and production to support an internally-directed content strategy across multiple functions In a way, it’s sort of a reverse-niche move. Rather than zooming in specifically on driving organic growth for startups, we want to be more of an end-to-end content production partner that solves issues of execution and operations for all kinds of content teams. It’s early days, but the response here has been promising. We’ve seen an uptick in leads through Q4. And more companies in our pipeline fit the new ICP. They’re bigger, often have more budget. (But they move more slowly). We should know by the end of the quarter if this maneuver is truly paying off. Hopefully, this will work out. Hopefully our research and strategy are right and we’ll find a soft landing serving a different type of client. If it doesn’t? Then it will be time to make some harder decisions. As I already mentioned, I’m not interested in the race to the bottom of AI content. And if that’s the only game left in town, then it might be time to think hard about a much bigger change. — To be done: Build new content playbooks for expanded deliverables Build new showcase page for expanded deliverables Retooling the Operation It’s easy to say we’re doing something new. It’s a lot harder to actually do it—and do it well. Beyond just changing our positioning, we have to do open-heart surgery on the entire content operation behind the scenes. We need to create new systems that work for a broader range of content types, formats, and goals. Here’s the first rub: All of our workflows are tooled specifically for SEO-focused content. Every template, worksheet, and process that we’ve built and scaled in the last 5 years assumes that the primary goal of every piece of content is SEO. Even something as simple as requiring a target keyword is a blocker in a world where we’re not entirely focused on SEO. This is relatively easy to fix, but it requires several key changes: Update content calendars to make keywords optional Update workflows to determine whether we need an optimization report for each deliverable Next, we need to break down the deliverables into parts rather than a single line item. In our old system, we would plan content as a single row in a Content Calendar spreadsheet. It was a really wide sheet with lots of fields where we’d define the dimensions of each individual article. This was very efficient and simple to follow. But every article had the same overall scope when it came to the workflow. In Asana (our project management tool), all of the steps in the creation were strung together in a single task. We would create a few basic templates for each client, and then each piece would flow through the same steps: Briefing Writing Editing Design etc. If we had anything that didn’t fit into the “standard” workflow, we’d just tag it in the calendar with an unofficial notation \[USING BRACKETS\]. It worked. But it wasn’t ideal. Now we need the steps to be more modular. Imagine, for example, a client asks us to create a mix of deliverables: 1 article with writing + design 1 content brief 1 long-form ebook with an interview + writing + design Each of these would require its own steps and its own workflow. We need to break down the work to accommodate for a wider variety of workflows and variables. This means we need to update the fields and structure of our calendar to accommodate for the new dimensions—while also keeping the planning process simple and manageable. This leads to the next challenge: The number of “products” that we’re offering could be almost infinite. Just looking at the example scope above, you can mix and match all of these different building blocks to create a huge variety of different types of work, each requiring its own workflow. This is part of the reason we pivoted away from this model to focus on a productized, SEO-focused content service back in 2020. Take something as simple as a case study. On the surface, it seems like one deliverable that can be easily scoped and priced, right? Well, unpack what goes into a case study: Is there already source material from the customer or do we need to conduct an interview? How long is it? Is it a short overview case study or a long-form narrative? Does it need images and graphics? How many? Each of these variables opens up 2-3 possibilities. And when you combine them, we end up with something like 10 possible permutations for this single type of deliverable. It gets a bit messy. But not only do we have to figure out how to scope and price all for all of these variables, we also have to figure out how to account for these variables in the execution. We have to specify—for every deliverable—what type it is, how long, which steps are involved and not involved, the timeline for delivery, and all of the other factors. We’re approaching infinite complexity, here. We have to figure out a system that allows for a high level of flexibility to serve the diverse needs of our clients but is also productized enough that we can build workflows, process, and templates to deliver the work. I’ve spent the last few months designing that system. Failed Attempt #1: Ultra-Productization In my first pass, I tried to make it as straight forward as possible. Just sit down, make a list of all of the possible deliverables we could provide and then assign them specific scopes and services. Want a case study? Okay that’ll include an interview, up to 2,000 words of content, and 5 custom graphics. It costs $X. But this solution quickly fell apart when we started testing it against real-world scenarios. What if the client provided the brief instead of us creating one? What if they didn’t want graphics? What if this particular case study really needs to be 3,000 words but all of the others should be 2,000? In order for this system to work, we’d need to individual scope and price all of these permutations of each productized service. Then we’d need to somehow keep track of all of these and make sure that we accurately scope, price, and deliver them across dozens of clients. It’s sort of like a restaurant handling food allergies by creating separate versions of every single dish to account for every individual type of allergy. Most restaurants have figured out that it makes way more sense to have a “standard” and an “allergy-free” version. Then you only need 2 options to cover 100% of the cases. Onto the next option. Failed Attempt #2: Deliverable-Agnostic Services Next, I sat down with my head of Ops, Katy, to try to map it out. We took a big step back and said: Why does the deliverable itself even matter? At the end of the day, what we’re selling is just a few types of work (research, writing, editing, design, etc) that can be packaged up in an infinite number of ways. Rather than try to define deliverables, shouldn’t we leave it open ended for maximum flexibility? From there, we decided to break down everything into ultra-modular building blocks. We started working on this super complex system of modular deliverables where we would have services like writing, design, editing, etc—plus a sliding scale for different scopes like the length of writing or the number of images. In theory, it would allow us to mix and match any combination of services to create custom deliverables for the client. In fact, we wanted the work to be deliverable-agnostic. That way we could mold it to fit any client’s needs and deliver any type of content, regardless of the format or goal. Want a 5,000-word case study with 15 custom graphics? That’ll be $X. Want a 2,000-word blog post with an interview and no visuals? $Y. Just want us to create 10 briefs, you handle the writing, and we do design? It’s $Z. Again, this feels like a reasonable solution. But it quickly spiraled out of amuck. (That’s an Office reference.) For this to work, we need to have incredibly precise scoping process for every single deliverable. Before we can begin work (or even quote a price), we need to know pretty much the exact word count of the final article, for example. In the real world? This almost never happens. The content is as long as the content needs to be. Clients rarely know if the blog post should be 2,000 words or 3,000 words. They just want good content. We have a general ballpark, but we can rarely dial it in within just 1,000 words until we’ve done enough research to create the brief. Plus, from a packaging and pricing perspective, it introduces all kind of weird scenarios where clients will owe exactly $10,321 for this ultra-specific combination of services. We were building an open system that could accommodate any and all types of potential deliverables. On the face that seems great because it makes us incredibly flexible. In reality, the ambiguity actually works against us. It makes it harder for us to communicate to clients clearly about what they’ll get, how much it will cost, and how long it will take. That, of course, also means that it hurts our client relationships. (This actually kind of goes back to my personal learnings, which I’ll mention in a bit. I tend to be a “let’s leave things vague so we don’t have to limit our options” kind of person. But I’m working on fixing this to be more precise, specific, and clear in everything that we do.) Dialing It In: Building a Closed System We were trying to build an open system. We need to build a closed system. We need to force clarity and get specific about what we do, what we don’t do, and how much it all costs. Then we need a system to expand on that closed system—add new types of deliverables, new content playbooks, and new workflows if and when the need arises. With that in mind, we can start by mapping out the key dimensions of any type of deliverable that we would ever want to deliver. These are the universal dimensions that determine the scope, workflow, and price of any deliverable—regardless of the specific type output. Dimensions are: Brief scope Writing + editing scope Design scope Interview scope Revision (rounds) Scope, essentially, just tells us how many words, graphics, interviews, etc are required for the content we’re creating. In our first crack at the system, we got super granular with these scopes. But to help force a more manageable system, we realized that we didn’t need tiny increments for most of this work. Instead, we just need boundaries—you pay $X for up to Y words. We still need some variability around the scope of these articles. Obviously, most clients won’t be willing to pay the same price for a 1,000-word article as a 10,000-word article. But we can be smarter about the realistic break points. We boiled it down to the most common ranges: (Up to) 250 words 1,000 words 3,000 words 6,000 words 10,000 words This gives us a much more manageable number of variables. But we still haven’t exactly closed the system. We need one final dimension: Deliverable type. This tells us what we’re actually building with these building blocks. This is how we’ll put a cap on the potentially infinite number of combinations we could offer. The deliverable type will define what the final product should look like (e.g., blog post, case study, ebook, etc). And it will also give us a way to put standards and expectations around different types of deliverables that we want to offer. Then we can expand on this list of deliverables to offer new services. In the mean time, only the deliverables that we have already defined are, “on the menu,” so to speak. If a client comes to us and asks for something like a podcast summary article (which we don’t currently offer), we’ll have to either say we can’t provide that work or create a new deliverable type and define the dimensions of that specific piece. But here’s the kicker: No matter the deliverable type, it has to still fit within the scopes we’ve already defined. And the pricing will be the same. This means that if you’re looking for our team to write up to 1,000 words of content, it costs the same amount—whether it’s a blog post, an ebook, a LinkedIn post, or anything else. Rather than trying to retool our entire system to offer this new podcast summary article deliverable, we’ll just create the new deliverable type, add it to the list of options, and it’s ready to sell with the pre-defined dimensions we’ve already identified. To do: Update onboarding workflow Update contracts and scope documents Dial in new briefing process Know Thyself For the last year, I’ve been going through personal therapy. (Huge shout out to my wife, Laura, for her support and encouragement throughout the process.) It’s taught me a lot about myself and my tendencies. It’s helped me find some of my weaknesses and think about how I can improve as a person, as a partner, and as an entrepreneur. And it’s forced me to face a lot of hard truths. For example, consider some of the critical decisions I’ve made for my business: Unconventional freelance “collective” model No formal management structure Open-ended retainers with near-infinite flexibility General contracts without defined scope “Take it or leave it” approach to sales and marketing Over the years, I’ve talked about almost everything on this list as a huge advantage. I saw these things as a reflection of how I wanted to do things differently and better than other companies. But now, I see them more as a reflection of my fears and insecurities. Why did I design my business like this? Why do I want so much “flexibility” and why do I want things left open-ended rather than clearly defined? One reason that could clearly explain it: I’m avoidant. If you’re not steeped in the world of therapy, this basically means that my fight or flight response gets turned all the way to “flight.” If I’m unhappy or uncomfortable, my gut reaction is usually to withdraw from the situation. I see commitment and specificity as a prelude to future conflict. And I avoid conflict whenever possible. So I built my business to minimize it. If I don’t have a specific schedule of work that I’m accountable for delivering, then we can fudge the numbers a bit and hope they even out in the end. If I don’t set a specific standard for the length of an article, then I don’t have to let the client know when their request exceeds that limit. Conflict….avoided? Now, that’s not to say that everything I’ve built was wrong or bad. There is a lot of value in having flexibility in your business. For example, I would say that our flexible retainers are, overall, an advantage. Clients have changing needs. Having flexibility to quickly adapt to those needs can be a huge value add. And not everything can be clearly defined upfront (at least not without a massive amount of time and work just to decide how long to write an article). Overly-rigid structures and processes can be just as problematic as loosey-goosey ones. But, on the whole, I realized that my avoidant tendencies and laissez faire approach to management have left a vacuum in many areas. The places where I avoided specificity were often the places where there was the most confusion, uncertainty, and frustration from the team and from clients. People simply didn’t know what to expect or what was expected of them. Ironically, this often creates the conflict I’m trying to avoid. For example, if I don’t give feedback to people on my team, then they feel uneasy about their work. Or they make assumptions about expectations that don’t match what I’m actually expecting. Then the client might get upset, I might get upset, and our team members may be upset. Conflict definitely not avoided. This happens on the client side, too. If we don’t define a specific timeline when something will be delivered, the client might expect it sooner than we can deliver—creating frustration when we don’t meet their expectation. This conflict actually would have been avoided if we set clearer expectations upfront. But we didn’t do that. I didn’t do that. So it’s time to step up and close the gaps. Stepping Up and Closing the Gaps If I’m going to address these gaps and create more clarity and stability, I have to step up. Both personally and professionally. I have to actually face the fear and uncertainty that drives me to be avoidant. And then apply that to my business in meaningful ways that aren’t cop-out ways of kinda-sorta providing structure without really doing it. I’ve gotta be all in. This means: Fill the gaps where I rely on other people to do things that aren’t really their job but I haven’t put someone in place to do it Set and maintain expectations about our internal work processes, policies, and standards Define clear boundaries on things like roles, timelines, budgets, and scopes Now, this isn’t going to happen overnight. And just because I say that I need to step up to close these gaps doesn’t mean that I need to be the one who’s responsible for them (at least not forever). It just means that, as the business leader, I need to make sure the gaps get filled—by me or by someone else who has been specifically charged with owning that part of the operation. So, this is probably my #1 focus over the coming quarter. And it starts by identifying the gaps that exist. Then, step into those gaps myself, pay someone else to fill that role, or figure out how to eliminate the gap another way. This means going all the way back to the most basic decisions in our business. One of the foundational things about Optimist is being a “different kind” of agency. I always wanted to build something that solved for the bureaucracy, hierarchy, and siloed structure of agencies. If a client has feedback, they should be able to talk directly to the person doing the work rather than going through 3 layers of account management and creative directors. So I tried to be clever. I tried to design all kinds of systems and processes that eliminated these middle rungs. (In retrospect, what I was actually doing was designing a system that played into my avoidant tendencies and made it easy to abdicate responsibility for lots of things.) Since we didn’t want to create hierarchy, we never implemented things like Junior and Senior roles. We never hired someone to manage or direct the individual creatives. We didn’t have Directors or VPs. (Hell, we barely had a project manager for the first several years of existence.) This aversion to hierarchy aligned with our values around elevating ownership and collective contribution. I still believe in the value a flat structure. But a flat structure doesn’t eliminate the complexity of a growing business. No one to review writers and give them 1:1 feedback? I guess I’ll just have to do that….when I have some spare time. No Content Director? Okay, well someone needs to manage our content playbooks and roll out new ones. Just add it to my task list. Our flat structure didn’t eliminate the need for these roles. It just eliminated the people to do them. All of those unfilled roles ultimately fell back on me or our ops person, Katy. Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve recognized this. We’ve known there were growing holes in our business as it’s gotten bigger and more complex. Over the years, we’ve experimented with different ways to solve for it. The Old Solution: Distributed Ops One system we designed was a “distributed ops” framework. Basically, we had one person who was the head of ops (at the time, we considered anything that was non-client-facing to be “ops”). They’d plan and organize all of the various things that needed to happen around Optimist. Then they’d assign out the work to whoever was able to help. We had a whole system for tying this into the our profit share and even gave people “Partner” status based on their contributions to ops. It worked—kinda. One big downfall is that all of the tasks and projects were ad hoc. People would pick up jobs, but they didn’t have much context or expertise to apply. So the output often varied. Since we were trying to maintain a flat structure, there was minimal oversight or management of the work. In other words, we didn’t always get the best results. But, more importantly, we still didn’t close all of the gaps entirely. Because everything was an ad-hoc list of tasks and projects, we never really had the “big picture” view of everything that needed to be done across the business. This also meant we rarely had clarity on what was important, what was trivial, and what was critical. We need a better system. Stop Reinventing the Wheel (And Create a Damn Org Chart) It’s time to get serious about filling the gaps in our business. It can’t be a half-fix or an ad hoc set of projects and tasks. We need clarity on the roles that need to be filled and then fill them. The first step here is to create an org chart. A real one. Map out all of the jobs that need to be done for Optimist to be successful besides just writers and designers. Roles like: Content director Design director SEO manager Reporting Finance Account management Business development Sales Marketing Project management It feels a bit laughable listing all of these roles. Because most are either empty or have my name attached to them. And that’s the problem. I can’t do everything. And all of the empty roles are gaps in our structure—places where people aren’t getting the direction, feedback, or guidance they need to do their best work. Or where things just aren’t being done consistently. Content director, for example, should be responsible for steering the output of our content strategists, writers, and editors. They’re not micromanaging every deliverable. But they give feedback, set overall policy, and help our team identify opportunities to get better. Right now we don’t have anyone in that role. Which means it’s my job—when I have time. Looking at the org chart (a real org chart that I actually built to help with this), it’s plain as day how many roles look like this. Even if we aren’t going to implement a traditional agency structure and a strict hierarchy, we still need to address these gaps. And the only way for that to happen is face the reality and then create a plan to close the gaps. Now that we have a list of theoretical roles, we need to clearly define the responsibilities and boundaries of those roles to make sure they cover everything that actually needs to happen. Then we can begin the process of delegating, assigning, hiring, and otherwise addressing each one. So that’s what I need to do. To be done: Create job descriptions for all of the roles we need to fill Hire Biz Dev role Hire Account Lead role(s) Hire Head of Content Playing Offense As we move into Q1 of 2025 and I reflect on the tumultuous few years we’ve had, one thought keeps running through my head. We need to play offense. Most of the last 1-2 years was reacting to changes that were happening around us. Trying to make sense and chart a new path forward. Reeling. But what I really want—as a person and as an entrepreneur—is to be proactive. I want to think and plan ahead. Figure out where we want to go before we’re forced to change course by something that’s out of our control. So my overarching focus for Q1 is playing offense. Thinking longer term. Getting ahead of the daily deluge and creating space to be more proactive, innovative, and forward thinking. To do: Pilot new content formats Audit and update our own content strategy Improve feedback workflows Build out long-term roadmap for 1-2 years for Optimist Final Note on Follow-Through and Cadence In my reflection this year, one of the things I’ve realized is how helpful these posts are for me. I process by writing. So I actually end up making a lot of decisions and seeing things more clearly each time I sit down to reflect and write my yearly recap. It also gives me a space to hold myself accountable for the things I said I would do. So, I’m doing two things a bit differently from here on out. First: I’m identifying clear action items that I’m holding myself accountable for getting done in the next 3 months (listed in the above sections). In each future update, I’ll do an accounting of what I got done and what wasn’t finished (and why). Second: I’m going to start writing shorter quarterly updates. This will gives me more chances each year to reflect, process, and make decisions. Plus it gives me a shorter feedback loop for the action items that I identified above. (See—playing offense.) — Okay friends, enemies, and frenemies. This is my first update for 2025. Glad to share with y’all. And thanks to everyone who’s read, commented, reached out, and shared their own experiences over the years. We are all the accumulation of our connections and our experiences. As always, I will pop in to respond to comments and answer questions. Feel free to share your thoughts, questions, and general disdain down below. Cheers, Tyler

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AI_Scout_Official•This week

I run an AI automation agency (AAA). My honest overview and review of this new business model

I started an AI tools directory in February, and then branched off that to start an AI automation agency (AAA) in June. So far I've come across a lot of unsustainable "ideas" to make money with AI, but at the same time a few diamonds in the rough that aren't fully tapped into yet- especially the AAA model. Thought I'd share this post to shine light into this new business model and share some ways you could potentially start your own agency, or at the very least know who you are dealing with and how to pick and choose when you (inevitably) get bombarded with cold emails from them down the line. Foreword Running an AAA does NOT involve using AI tools directly to generate and sell content directly. That ship has sailed, and unless you are happy with $5 from Fiverr every month or so, it is not a real business model. Cry me a river but generating generic art with AI and slapping it onto a T-shirt to sell on Etsy won't make you a dime. At the same time, the AAA model will NOT require you to have a deep theoretical knowledge of AI, or any academic degree, as we are more so dealing with the practical applications of generative AI and how we can implement these into different workflows and tech-stacks, rather than building AI models from the ground up. Regardless of all that, common sense and a willingness to learn will help (a shit ton), as with anything. Keep in mind - this WILL involve work and motivation as well. The mindset that AI somehow means everything can be done for you on autopilot is not the right way to approach things. The common theme of businesses I've seen who have successfully implemented AI into their operations is the willingess to work with AI in a way that augments their existing operations, rather than flat out replace a worker or team. And this is exactly the train of thought you need when working with AI as a business model. However, as the field is relatively unsaturated and hype surrounding AI is still fresh for enterprises, right now is the prime time to start something new if generative AI interests you at all. With that being said, I'll be going over three of the most successful AI-adjacent businesses I've seen over this past year, in addition to some tips and resources to point you in the right direction. so.. WTF is an AI Automation Agency? The AI automation agency (or as some YouTubers have coined it, the AAA model) at its core involves creating custom AI solutions for businesses. I have over 1500 AI tools listed in my directory, however the feedback I've received from some enterprise users is that ready-made SaaS tools are too generic to meet their specific needs. Combine this with the fact virtually no smaller companies have the time or skills required to develop custom solutions right off the bat, and you have yourself real demand. I would say in practice, the AAA model is quite similar to Wordpress and even web dev agencies, with the major difference being all solutions you develop will incorporate key aspects of AI AND automation. Which brings me to my second point- JUST AI IS NOT ENOUGH. Rather than reducing the amount of time required to complete certain tasks, I've seen many AI agencies make the mistake of recommending and (trying to) sell solutions that more likely than not increase the workload of their clients. For example, if you were to make an internal tool that has AI answer questions based on their knowledge base, but this knowledge base has to be updated manually, this is creating unnecessary work. As such I think one of the key components of building successful AI solutions is incorporating the new (Generative AI/LLMs) with the old (programmtic automation- think Zapier, APIs, etc.). Finally, for this business model to be successful, ideally you should target a niche in which you have already worked and understand pain points and needs. Not only does this make it much easier to get calls booked with prospects, the solutions you build will have much greater value to your clients (meaning you get paid more). A mistake I've seen many AAA operators make (and I blame this on the "Get Rich Quick" YouTubers) is focusing too much on a specific productized service, rather than really understanding the needs of businesses. The former is much done via a SaaS model, but when going the agency route the only thing that makes sense is building custom solutions. This is why I always take a consultant-first approach. You can only build once you understand what they actually need and how certain solutions may impact their operations, workflows, and bottom-line. Basics of How to Get Started Pick a niche. As I mentioned previously, preferably one that you've worked in before. Niches I know of that are actively being bombarded with cold emails include real estate, e-commerce, auto-dealerships, lawyers, and medical offices. There is a reason for this, but I will tell you straight up this business model works well if you target any white-collar service business (internal tools approach) or high volume businesses (customer facing tools approach). Setup your toolbox. If you wanted to start a pressure washing business, you would need a pressure-washer. This is no different. For those without programming knowledge, I've seen two common ways AAA get setup to build- one is having a network of on-call web developers, whether its personal contacts or simply going to Upwork or any talent sourcing agency. The second is having an arsenal of no-code tools. I'll get to this more in a second, but this works beecause at its core, when we are dealing with the practical applications of AI, the code is quite simple, simply put. Start cold sales. Unless you have a network already, this is not a step you can skip. You've already picked a niche, so all you have to do is find the right message. Keep cold emails short, sweet, but enticing- and it will help a lot if you did step 1 correctly and intimately understand who your audience is. I'll be touching base later about how you can leverage AI yourself to help you with outreach and closing. The beauty of gen AI and the AAA model You don't need to be a seasoned web developer to make this business model work. The large majority of solutions that SME clients want is best done using an API for an LLM for the actual AI aspect. The value we create with the solutions we build comes with the conceptual framework and design that not only does what they need it to but integrates smoothly with their existing tech-stack and workflow. The actual implementation is quite straightforward once you understand the high level design and know which tools you are going to use. To give you a sense, even if you plan to build out these apps yourself (say in Python) the large majority of the nitty gritty technical work has already been done for you, especially if you leverage Python libraries and packages that offer high level abstraction for LLM-related functions. For instance, calling GPT can be as little as a single line of code. (And there are no-code tools where these functions are simply an icon on a GUI). Aside from understanding the capabilities and limitations of these tools and frameworks, the only thing that matters is being able to put them in a way that makes sense for what you want to build. Which is why outsourcing and no-code tools both work in our case. Okay... but how TF am I suppposed to actually build out these solutions? Now the fun part. I highly recommend getting familiar with Langchain and LlamaIndex. Both are Python libraires that help a lot with the high-level LLM abstraction I mentioned previously. The two most important aspects include being able to integrate internal data sources/knowledge bases with LLMs, and have LLMs perform autonomous actions. The two most common methods respectively are RAG and output parsing. RAG (retrieval augmented Generation) If you've ever seen a tool that seemingly "trains" GPT on your own data, and wonder how it all works- well I have an answer from you. At a high level, the user query is first being fed to what's called a vector database to run vector search. Vector search basically lets you do semantic search where you are searching data based on meaning. The vector databases then retrieves the most relevant sections of text as it relates to the user query, and this text gets APPENDED to your GPT prompt to provide extra context to the AI. Further, with prompt engineering, you can limit GPT to only generate an answer if it can be found within this extra context, greatly limiting the chance of hallucination (this is where AI makes random shit up). Aside from vector databases, we can also implement RAG with other data sources and retrieval methods, for example SQL databses (via parsing the outputs of LLM's- more on this later). Autonomous Agents via Output Parsing A common need of clients has been having AI actually perform tasks, rather than simply spitting out text. For example, with autonomous agents, we can have an e-commerce chatbot do the work of a basic customer service rep (i.e. look into orders, refunds, shipping). At a high level, what's going on is that the response of the LLM is being used programmtically to determine which API to call. Keeping on with the e-commerce example, if I wanted a chatbot to check shipping status, I could have a LLM response within my app (not shown to the user) with a prompt that outputs a random hash or string, and programmatically I can determine which API call to make based on this hash/string. And using the same fundamental concept as with RAG, I can append the the API response to a final prompt that would spit out the answer for the user. How No Code Tools Can Fit In (With some example solutions you can build) With that being said, you don't necessarily need to do all of the above by coding yourself, with Python libraries or otherwise. However, I will say that having that high level overview will help IMMENSELY when it comes to using no-code tools to do the actual work for you. Regardless, here are a few common solutions you might build for clients as well as some no-code tools you can use to build them out. Ex. Solution 1: AI Chatbots for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) This involves creating chatbots that handle user queries, lead gen, and so forth with AI, and will use the principles of RAG at heart. After getting the required data from your client (i.e. product catalogues, previous support tickets, FAQ, internal documentation), you upload this into your knowledge base and write a prompt that makes sense for your use case. One no-code tool that does this well is MyAskAI. The beauty of it especially for building external chatbots is the ability to quickly ingest entire websites into your knowledge base via a sitemap, and bulk uploading files. Essentially, they've covered the entire grunt work required to do this manually. Finally, you can create a inline or chat widget on your client's website with a few lines of HTML, or altneratively integrate it with a Slack/Teams chatbot (if you are going for an internal Q&A chatbot approach). Other tools you could use include Botpress and Voiceflow, however these are less for RAG and more for building out complete chatbot flows that may or may not incorporate LLMs. Both apps are essentially GUIs that eliminate the pain and tears and trying to implement complex flows manually, and both natively incoporate AI intents and a knowledge base feature. Ex. Solution 2: Internal Apps Similar to the first example, except we go beyond making just chatbots but tools such as report generation and really any sort of internal tool or automations that may incorporate LLM's. For instance, you can have a tool that automatically generates replies to inbound emails based on your client's knowledge base. Or an automation that does the same thing but for replies to Instagram comments. Another example could be a tool that generates a description and screeenshot based on a URL (useful for directory sites, made one for my own :P). Getting into more advanced implementations of LLMs, we can have tools that can generate entire drafts of reports (think 80+ pages), based not only on data from a knowledge base but also the writing style, format, and author voice of previous reports. One good tool to create content generation panels for your clients would be MindStudio. You can train LLM's via prompt engineering in a structured way with your own data to essentially fine tune them for whatever text you need it to generate. Furthermore, it has a GUI where you can dictate the entire AI flow. You can also upload data sources via multiple formats, including PDF, CSV, and Docx. For automations that require interactions between multiple apps, I recommend the OG zapier/make.com if you want a no-code solution. For instance, for the automatic email reply generator, I can have a trigger such that when an email is received, a custom AI reply is generated by MyAskAI, and finally a draft is created in my email client. Or, for an automation where I can create a social media posts on multiple platforms based on a RSS feed (news feed), I can implement this directly in Zapier with their native GPT action (see screenshot) As for more complex LLM flows that may require multiple layers of LLMs, data sources, and APIs working together to generate a single response i.e. a long form 100 page report, I would recommend tools such as Stack AI or Flowise (open-source alternative) to build these solutions out. Essentially, you get most of the functions and features of Python packages such as Langchain and LlamaIndex in a GUI. See screenshot for an example of a flow How the hell are you supposed to find clients? With all that being said, none of this matters if you can't find anyone to sell to. You will have to do cold sales, one way or the other, especially if you are brand new to the game. And what better way to sell your AI services than with AI itself? If we want to integrate AI into the cold outreach process, first we must identify what it's good at doing, and that's obviously writing a bunch of text, in a short amount of time. Similar to the solutions that an AAA can build for its clients, we can take advantage of the same principles in our own sales processes. How to do outreach Once you've identified your niche and their pain points/opportunities for automation, you want to craft a compelling message in which you can send via cold email and cold calls to get prospects booked on demos/consultations. I won't get into too much detail in terms of exactly how to write emails or calling scripts, as there are millions of resources to help with this, but I will tell you a few key points you want to keep in mind when doing outreach for your AAA. First, you want to keep in mind that many businesses are still hesitant about AI and may not understand what it really is or how it can benefit their operations. However, we can take advantage of how mass media has been reporting on AI this past year- at the very least people are AWARE that sooner or later they may have to implement AI into their businesses to stay competitive. We want to frame our message in a way that introduces generative AI as a technology that can have a direct, tangible, and positive impact on their business. Although it may be hard to quantify, I like to include estimates of man-hours saved or costs saved at least in my final proposals to prospects. Times are TOUGH right now, and money is expensive, so you need to have a compelling reason for businesses to get on board. Once you've gotten your messaging down, you will want to create a list of prospects to contact. Tools you can use to find prospects include Apollo.io, reply.io, zoominfo (expensive af), and Linkedin Sales Navigator. What specific job titles, etc. to target will depend on your niche but for smaller companies this will tend to be the owner. For white collar niches, i.e. law, the professional that will be directly benefiting from the tool (i.e. partners) may be better to contact. And for larger organizations you may want to target business improvement and digital transformation leads/directors- these are the people directly in charge of projects like what you may be proposing. Okay- so you have your message, and your list, and now all it comes down to is getting the good word out. I won't be going into the details of how to send these out, a quick Google search will give you hundreds of resources for cold outreach methods. However, personalization is key and beyond simple dynamic variables you want to make sure you can either personalize your email campaigns directly with AI (SmartWriter.ai is an example of a tool that can do this), or at the very least have the ability to import email messages programmatically. Alternatively, ask ChatGPT to make you a Python Script that can take in a list of emails, scrape info based on their linkedin URL or website, and all pass this onto a GPT prompt that specifies your messaging to generate an email. From there, send away. How tf do I close? Once you've got some prospects booked in on your meetings, you will need to close deals with them to turn them into clients. Call #1: Consultation Tying back to when I mentioned you want to take a consultant-first appraoch, you will want to listen closely to their goals and needs and understand their pain points. This would be the first call, and typically I would provide a high level overview of different solutions we could build to tacke these. It really helps to have a presentation available, so you can graphically demonstrate key points and key technologies. I like to use Plus AI for this, it's basically a Google Slides add-on that can generate slide decks for you. I copy and paste my default company messaging, add some key points for the presentation, and it comes out with pretty decent slides. Call #2: Demo The second call would involve a demo of one of these solutions, and typically I'll quickly prototype it with boilerplate code I already have, otherwise I'll cook something up in a no-code tool. If you have a niche where one type of solution is commonly demanded, it helps to have a general demo set up to be able to handle a larger volume of calls, so you aren't burning yourself out. I'll also elaborate on how the final product would look like in comparison to the demo. Call #3 and Beyond: Once the initial consultation and demo is complete, you will want to alleviate any remaining concerns from your prospects and work with them to reach a final work proposal. It's crucial you lay out exactly what you will be building (in writing) and ensure the prospect understands this. Furthermore, be clear and transparent with timelines and communication methods for the project. In terms of pricing, you want to take this from a value-based approach. The same solution may be worth a lot more to client A than client B. Furthermore, you can create "add-ons" such as monthly maintenance/upgrade packages, training sessions for employeees, and so forth, separate from the initial setup fee you would charge. How you can incorporate AI into marketing your businesses Beyond cold sales, I highly recommend creating a funnel to capture warm leads. For instance, I do this currently with my AI tools directory, which links directly to my AI agency and has consistent branding throughout. Warm leads are much more likely to close (and honestly, much nicer to deal with). However, even without an AI-related website, at the very least you will want to create a presence on social media and the web in general. As with any agency, you will want basic a professional presence. A professional virtual address helps, in addition to a Google Business Profile (GBP) and TrustPilot. a GBP (especially for local SEO) and Trustpilot page also helps improve the looks of your search results immensely. For GBP, I recommend using ProfilePro, which is a chrome extension you can use to automate SEO work for your GBP. Aside from SEO optimzied business descriptions based on your business, it can handle Q/A answers, responses, updates, and service descriptions based on local keywords. Privacy and Legal Concerns of the AAA Model Aside from typical concerns for agencies relating to service contracts, there are a few issues (especially when using no-code tools) that will need to be addressed to run a successful AAA. Most of these surround privacy concerns when working with proprietary data. In your terms with your client, you will want to clearly define hosting providers and any third party tools you will be using to build their solution, and a DPA with these third parties listed as subprocessors if necessary. In addition, you will want to implement best practices like redacting private information from data being used for building solutions. In terms of addressing concerns directly from clients, it helps if you host your solutions on their own servers (not possible with AI tools), and address the fact only ChatGPT queries in the web app, not OpenAI API calls, will be used to train OpenAI's models (as reported by mainstream media). The key here is to be open and transparent with your clients about ALL the tools you are using, where there data will be going, and make sure to get this all in writing. have fun, and keep an open mind Before I finish this post, I just want to reiterate the fact that this is NOT an easy way to make money. Running an AI agency will require hours and hours of dedication and work, and constantly rearranging your schedule to meet prospect and client needs. However, if you are looking for a new business to run, and have a knack for understanding business operations and are genuinely interested in the pracitcal applications of generative AI, then I say go for it. The time is ticking before AAA becomes the new dropshipping or SMMA, and I've a firm believer that those who set foot first and establish themselves in this field will come out top. And remember, while 100 thousand people may read this post, only 2 may actually take initiative and start.

#reddit#automation#agency

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TheValueProvider•This week

10 Side Projects in 10 Years: Lessons from Failures and a $700 Exit

Hey folks, I'm sharing my journey so far in case it can help others. Entrepreneurship can sometimes be demotivating. In my case, I've always been involved in side projects and what I've realized is that every time you crash a project, the next one makes it a bit further. So this is a long-term game and consistency ends up paying off The $1 Android Game (2015, age 18) What Happened: 500 downloads, 1€ in ad revenue Ugly UI, performance issues Key Lessons: Don’t be afraid of launching. Delaying for “perfection” is often a sign that you fear being ignored. I was trying to perfect every aspect of the game. In reality, I was delaying the launch because I feared no one would download the app. Commit to the project or kill it. At some point, this project was no longer fun (it was just about fixing device responsiveness). Most importantly, I wasn't learning anything new so I moved to smth else. The Forex Bot Regret (2016, age 19) What Happened: Lost months identifying inexistent chart patterns Created a Trading bot that was never profitable Key Lessons: Day trading’s real winners are usually brokers. There are plenty of guys selling a bot or systems that are not making money trading, why would they sell a “money-printing machine” otherwise... Develop an unfair advantage. With these projects, I developed a strong coding foundation that gave me an edge when dealing with non-technical business people. Invest countless hours to create a skills gap between you and others, one that becomes increasingly difficult for them to close (coding, public speaking, networking, etc.) The $700 Instagram Exit (2018, age 21) What Happened: Grew a motivational account to 60k followers Sold it for $700 90% of followers were in low-income countries (hard to monetize) Key Lessons: Follower quality > quantity. I focused on growth and ended up with an audience I couldn’t truly define. If brands don’t see value, you won’t generate revenue. Also, if you do not know who you are creating content for, you'll end up demotivated and stop posting. Great 3rd party product + domain authority = Affiliate marketing works. In this case, I could easily promote an IG growing service because my 50k+ followers conveyed trust. Most importantly, the service I was promoting worked amazingly. The Illegal Amazon Review Marketplace (2020, age 23) What Happened: Sellers were reimbursing buyers for positive reviews Built a WordPress marketplace to facilitate “free products for reviews” Realized it violated Amazon’s terms Key Lessons: Check for “red flags” when doing idea assessment. There will always be red and orange flags. It’s about learning to differentiate between them (e.g. illegality, 100% dependence on a platform, etc.) If there’s competition, it’s good, if they are making money it’s even better. I was thrilled when I saw no competition for my “unique idea”. Later, I discovered the obvious reason. Copying a “Proven” Business Model (2020, age 23) What Happened: Tried recreating an Instagram “comment for comment” growth tool Instagram changed the algorithm and killed the growth strategy that the product used. Key Lessons: Do not build a business that depends 100% on another business, it is too risky. Mr. Musk can increase Twitter on API pricing to $42,000 monthly without notice and Tik Tok can be banned in the US. Due to the IG algorithm change, we had built a product that was not useful, and worse, now we had no idea how to grow an IG account. Consider future project synergies before selling. I regret having sold the 60k follower IG account since it could have saved me a lot of time when convincing users to try the service. NFT Marathon Medals (2021, age 24) What Happened: Created NFT race medals Sold 20 for 5€ each, but spent 95% of meetings explaining “what is an NFT?” Key Lessons: Market timing is crucial. As with every new technology, it is only useful as long as society is ready to adopt it. No matter how promising the tech is in the eyes of SV, society will end up dictating its success (blockchain, AI, etc). In this case, the runner community was not ready to adopt blockchain (it is not even prepared today). Race organizers did not know what they were selling, and runners did not know what they were buying. The 30-day rule in Fanatical Prospecting. Do not stop prospecting. I did prospecting and closed deals 3 months after the outbound efforts. Then I was busy executing the projects and had no clients once the projects were finished. AI Portal & Co-Founder Misalignment (2023, age 26) What Happened: Built a portal for SMEs to find AI use cases Co-founders disagreed on vision and execution Platform still gets \~1 new user/day Key Lessons: Define roles and equity clearly. Our biggest strength ended up killing us. Both founders had strong strategic skills and we were constantly arguing about decisions. NextJS + Vercel + Supabase: Great stack to create a SaaS MVP. (but do not use AI with frameworks unless you know how they work conceptually) SEO is king. One of our users creates a use case on “Changing Song Lyrics with AI.” Not being our target use case, it brings 90% of our traffic. Building an AI Tool & Getting Ghosted (2024, age 27) What Happened: SEO agency wanted to automate rewriting product descriptions Built it in 3 weeks, but the client vanished Key Lessons: Validate manually first. Don’t code a full-blown solution for a problem you haven’t tested in real-world workflows. I kept rewriting code only to throw it away. Jumping straight into building a solution ended up costing more time than it saved. Use templates, no-code, and open-source for prototyping. In my case, using a Next.js template saved me about four weeks of development only to hit the same dead end, but much faster. Fall in love with your ICP or walk away. I realized I didn’t enjoy working with SEO agencies. Looking back, I should have been honest with myself and admitted that I wasn’t motivated enough by this type of customer. Ignoring Code Perfection Doubled Traffic (2025, age 28) What Happened: Partnered with an ex-colleague to build an AI agents directory Focused on content & marketing, not endless bug fixes Traffic soared organically Key Lessons: Measure the impact of your actions and double down on what works. We set up an analytics system with PostHog and found wild imbalances (e.g. 1 post about frameworks outperformed 20 promotional posts). You have to start somewhere. For us, the AI agents directory is much more than just a standalone site, it's a strategic project that will allow us to discover new products, gain domain authority, and boost other projects. It builds the path for bigger opportunities. Less coding, more traction. Every day I have to fight against myself not to code “indispensable features”. Surprisingly, the directory keeps gaining consistent traffic despite being far from perfect Quitting My Job & Looking Ahead (2025, age 28) What Happened: Left full-time work to go all-in Plan to build vertical AI agents that handle entire business workflows (support, marketing, sales) Key Lessons: Bet on yourself. The opportunity cost of staying in my full-time job outweighed the benefits. It might be your case too I hope this post helps anyone struggling with their project and inspires those considering quitting their full-time job to take the leap with confidence.

#reddit#side#projects

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Royal_Rest8409•This week

How a Small Startup in Asia Secured a Contract with the US Department of Homeland Security

Uzair Javaid, a Ph.D. with a passion for data privacy, co-founded Betterdata to tackle one of AI's most pressing challenges: protecting privacy while enabling innovation. Recently, Betterdata secured a lucrative contract with the US Department of Homeland Security, 1 of only 4 companies worldwide to do so and the only one in Asia. Here's how he did it: The Story So what's your story? I grew up in Peshawar, Pakistan, excelling in coding despite studying electrical engineering. Inspired by my professors, I set my sights on studying abroad and eventually earned a Ph.D. scholarship at NUS Singapore, specializing in data security and privacy. During my research, I ethically hacked Ethereum and published 15 papers—three times the requirement. While wrapping up my Ph.D., I explored startup ideas and joined Entrepreneur First, where I met Kevin Yee. With his expertise in generative models and mine in privacy, we founded Betterdata. Now, nearly three years in, we’ve secured a major contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—one of only four companies globally and the only one from Asia. The Startup In a nutshell, what does your startup do? Betterdata is a startup that uses AI and synthetic data generation to address two major challenges: data privacy and the scarcity of high-quality data for training AI models. By leveraging generative models and privacy-enhancing technologies, Betterdata enables businesses, such as banks, to use customer data without breaching privacy regulations. The platform trains AI on real data, learns its patterns, and generates synthetic data that mimics the real thing without containing any personal or sensitive information. This allows companies to innovate and develop AI solutions safely and ethically, all while tackling the growing need for diverse, high-quality data in AI development. How did you conduct ideation and validation for your startup? The initial idea for Betterdata came from personal experience. During my Ph.D., I ethically hacked Ethereum’s blockchain, exposing flaws in encryption-based data sharing. This led me to explore AI-driven deep synthesis technology—similar to deepfakes but for structured data privacy. With GDPR impacting 28M+ businesses, I saw a massive opportunity to help enterprises securely share data while staying compliant. To validate the idea, I spoke to 50 potential customers—a number that strikes the right balance. Some say 100, but that’s impractical for early-stage founders. At 50, patterns emerge: if 3 out of 10 mention the same problem, and this repeats across 50, you have 10–15 strong signals, making it a solid foundation for an MVP. Instead of outbound sales, which I dislike, we used three key methods: Account-Based Marketing (ABM)—targeting technically savvy users with solutions for niche problems, like scaling synthetic data for banks. Targeted Content Marketing—regular customer conversations shaped our thought leadership and outreach. Raising Awareness Through Partnerships—collaborating with NUS, Singapore’s PDPC, and Plug and Play to build credibility and educate the market. These strategies attracted serious customers willing to pay, guiding Betterdata’s product development and market fit. How did you approach the initial building and ongoing product development? In the early stages, we built synthetic data generation algorithms and a basic UI for proof-of-concept, using open-source datasets to engage with banks. We quickly learned that banks wouldn't share actual customer data due to privacy concerns, so we had to conduct on-site installations and gather feedback to refine our MVP. Through continuous consultation with customers, we discovered real enterprise data posed challenges, such as missing values, which led us to adapt our prototype accordingly. This iterative approach of listening to customer feedback and observing their usage allowed us to improve our product, enhance UX, and address unmet needs while building trust and loyalty. Working closely with our customers also gives us a data advantage. Our solution’s effectiveness depends on customer data, which we can't fully access, but bridging this knowledge gap gives us a competitive edge. The more customers we test on, the more our algorithms adapt to diverse use cases, making it harder for competitors to replicate our insights. My approach to iteration is simple: focus solely on customer feedback and ignore external noise like trends or advice. The key question for the team is: which customer is asking for this feature or solution? As long as there's a clear answer, we move forward. External influences, such as AI hype, often bring more confusion than clarity. True long-term success comes from solving real customer problems, not chasing trends. Customers may not always know exactly what they want, but they understand their problems. Our job is to identify these problems and solve them in innovative ways. While customers may suggest specific features, we stay focused on solving the core issue rather than just fulfilling their exact requests. The idea aligns with the quote often attributed to Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." The key is understanding their problems, not just taking requests at face value. How do you assess product-market fit? To assess product-market fit, we track two key metrics: Customers' Willingness to Pay: We measure both the quantity and quality of meetings with potential customers. A high number of meetings with key decision-makers signals genuine interest. At Betterdata, we focused on getting meetings with people in banks and large enterprises to gauge our product's resonance with the target market. How Much Customers Are Willing to Pay: We monitor the price customers are willing to pay, especially in the early stages. For us, large enterprises, like banks, were willing to pay a premium for our synthetic data platform due to the growing need for privacy tech. This feedback guided our product refinement and scaling strategy. By focusing on these metrics, we refined our product and positioned it for scaling. What is your business model? We employ a structured, phase-driven approach for out business model, as a B2B startup. I initially struggled with focusing on the core value proposition in sales, often becoming overly educational. Eventually, we developed a product roadmap with models that allowed us to match customer needs to specific offerings and justify our pricing. Our pricing structure includes project-based pilots and annual contracts for successful deployments. At Betterdata, our customer engagement unfolds across three phases: Phase 1: Trial and Benchmarking \- We start with outreach and use open-source datasets to showcase results, offering customers a trial period to evaluate the solution. Phase 2: Pilot or PoC \- After positive trial results, we conduct a PoC or pilot using the customer’s private data, with the understanding that successful pilots lead to an annual contract. Phase 3: Multi-Year Contracts \- Following a successful pilot, we transition to long-term commercial contracts, focusing on multi-year agreements to ensure stability and ongoing partnerships. How do you do marketing for your brand? We take a non-conventional approach to marketing, focusing on answering one key question: Which customers are willing to pay, and how much? This drives our messaging to show how our solution meets their needs. Our strategy centers around two main components: Building a network of lead magnets \- These are influential figures like senior advisors, thought leaders, and strategic partners. Engaging with institutions like IMDA, SUTD, and investors like Plug and Play helps us gain access to the right people and foster warm introductions, which shorten our sales cycle and ensure we’re reaching the right audience. Thought leadership \- We build our brand through customer traction, technology evidence, and regulatory guidelines. This helps us establish credibility in the market and position ourselves as trusted leaders in our field. This holistic approach has enabled us to navigate diverse market conditions in Asia and grow our B2B relationships. By focusing on these areas, we drive business growth and establish strong trust with stakeholders. What's your advice for fundraising? Here are my key takeaways for other founders when it comes to fundraising: Fundraise When You Don’t Need To We closed our seed round in April 2023, a time when we weren't actively raising. Founders should always be in fundraising mode, even when they're not immediately in need of capital. Don’t wait until you have only a few months of runway left. Keep the pipeline open and build relationships. When the timing is right, execution becomes much easier. For us, our investment came through a combination of referrals and inbound interest. Even our lead investor initially rejected us, but after re-engaging, things eventually fell into place. It’s crucial to stay humble, treat everyone with respect, and maintain those relationships for when the time is right. Be Mindful of How You Present Information When fundraising, how you present information matters a lot. We created a comprehensive, easily digestible investment memo, hosted on Notion, which included everything an investor might need—problem, solution, market, team, risks, opportunities, and data. The goal was for investors to be able to get the full picture within 30 minutes without chasing down extra details. We also focused on making our financial model clear and meaningful, even though a 5-year forecast might be overkill at the seed stage. The key was clarity and conciseness, and making it as easy as possible for investors to understand the opportunity. I learned that brevity and simplicity are often the best ways to make a memorable impact. For the pitch itself, keep it simple and focus on 4 things: problem, solution, team, and market. If you can summarize each of these clearly and concisely, you’ll have a compelling pitch. Later on, you can expand into market segments, traction, and other metrics, but for seed-stage, focus on those four areas, and make sure you’re strong in at least three of them. If you do, you'll have a compelling case. How do you run things day-to-day? i.e what's your operational workflow and team structure? Here's an overview of our team structure and process: Internally: Our team is divided into two main areas: backend (internal team) and frontend (market-facing team). There's no formal hierarchy within the backend team. We all operate as equals, defining our goals based on what needs to be developed, assigning tasks, and meeting weekly to share updates and review progress. The focus is on full ownership of tasks and accountability for getting things done. I also contribute to product development, identifying challenges and clearing obstacles to help the team move forward. Backend Team: We approach tasks based on the scope defined by customers, with no blame or hierarchy. It's like a sports team—sometimes someone excels, and other times they struggle, but we support each other and move forward together. Everyone has the creative freedom to work in the way that suits them best, but we establish regular meetings and check-ins to ensure alignment and progress. Frontend Team: For the market-facing side, we implement a hierarchy because the market expects this structure. If I present myself as "CEO," it signals authority and credibility. This distinction affects how we communicate with the market and how we build our brand. The frontend team is split into four main areas: Business Product (Software Engineering) Machine Learning Engineering R&D The C-suite sits at the top, followed by team leads, and then the executors. We distill market expectations into actionable tasks, ensuring that everyone is clear on their role and responsibilities. Process: We start by receiving market expectations and defining tasks based on them. Tasks are assigned to relevant teams, and execution happens with no communication barriers between team members. This ensures seamless collaboration and focused execution. The main goal is always effectiveness—getting things done efficiently while maintaining flexibility in how individuals approach their work. In both teams, there's an emphasis on accountability, collaboration, and clear communication, but the structure varies according to the nature of the work and external expectations.

#reddit#small#startup

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0.429

Personal-Expression3•This week

I Watched My Startup Slowly Dying Over Two Years: Mistakes and Lessons Learned

If you are tired of reading successful stories, you may want to listen to my almost failure story. Last year in April, I went full-time on my startup. Nearly two years later, I’ve seen my product gradually dying. I want to share some of the key mistakes I made and the lessons I’ve taken from them so you don't have to go through them. Some mistakes were very obvious in hindsight; others, I’m still not sure if they were mistakes or just bad luck. I’d love to hear your thoughts and advice as well. Background I built an English-learning app, with both web and mobile versions. The idea came from recognizing how expensive it is to hire an English tutor in most countries, especially for practicing speaking skills. With the rise of AI, I saw an opportunity in the education space. My target market was Japan, though I later added support for multiple languages and picked up some users from Indonesia and some Latin American countries too. Most of my users came from influencer marketing on Twitter. The MVP for the web version launched in Japan and got great feedback. People were reposting it on Twitter, and growth was at its peak in the first few weeks. After verifying the requirement with the MVP, I decided to focus on the mobile app to boost user retention, but for various reasons, the mobile version didn’t launch until December 2023— 8 months after the web version. Most of this year has been spent iterating on the mobile app, but it didn’t make much of an impact in the end. Key Events and Lessons Learned Here are some takeaways: Find co-founders as committed as you are I started with two co-founders—both were tech people and working Part-Time. After the web version launched, one dropped out due to family issues. Unfortunately, we didn’t set clear rules for equity allocation, so even after leaving, they still retained part of the equity. The other co-founder also effectively dropped out this year, contributing only minor fixes here and there. So If you’re starting a company with co-founders, make sure they’re as committed as you are. Otherwise, you might be better off going solo. I ended up teaching myself programming with AI tools, starting with Flutter and eventually handling both front-end and back-end work using Windsurf. With dev tools getting more advanced, being a solo developer is becoming a more viable option. Also, have crystal-clear rules for equity—especially around what happens if someone leaves. Outsourcing Pitfalls Outsourcing development was one of my biggest mistakes. I initially hired a former colleague from India to build the app. He dragged the project on for two months with endless excuses, and the final output was unusable. Then I hired a company, but they didn’t have enough skilled Flutter developers. The company’s owner scrambled to find people, which led to rushed work and poor-quality code which took a lot of time revising myself. Outsourcing is a minefield. If you must do it, break the project into small tasks, set clear milestones, and review progress frequently. Catching issues early can save you time and money. Otherwise, you’re often better off learning the tools yourself—modern dev tools are surprisingly beginner-friendly. Trust, but Verify I have a bad habit of trusting people too easily. I don’t like spending time double-checking things, so I tend to assume people will do what they say they’ll do. This mindset is dangerous in a startup. For example, if I had set up milestones and regularly verified the progress of my first outsourced project, I would’ve realized something was wrong within two weeks instead of two months. That would’ve saved me a lot of time and frustration. Like what I mentioned above, set up systems to verify their work—milestones, deliverables, etc.—to minimize risk. Avoid red ocean if you are small My team was tiny (or non-existent, depending on how you see it), with no technical edge. Yet, I chose to enter Japan’s English-learning market, which is incredibly competitive. It’s a red ocean, dominated by big players who’ve been in the game for years. Initially, my product’s AI-powered speaking practice and automatic grammar correction stood out, but within months, competitors rolled out similar features. Looking back, I should’ve gone all-in on marketing during the initial hype and focused on rapidly launching the mobile app. But hindsight is 20/20. 'Understanding your user' helps but what if it's not what you want? I thought I was pretty good at collecting user feedback. I added feedback buttons everywhere in the app and made changes based on what users said. But most of these changes were incremental improvements—not the kind of big updates that spark excitement. Also, my primary users were from Japan and Indonesia, but I’m neither Japanese nor Indonesian. That made it hard to connect with users on social media in an authentic way. And in my opinion, AI translations can only go so far—they lack the human touch and cultural nuance that builds trust. But honestly I'm not sure if the thought is correct to assume that they will not get touched if they recognize you are a foreigner...... Many of my Japanese users were working professionals preparing for the TOEIC exam. I didn’t design any features specifically for that; instead, I aimed to build a general-purpose English-learning tool since I dream to expand it to other markets someday. While there’s nothing wrong with this idealistic approach, it didn’t give users enough reasons to pay for the app. Should You Go Full-Time? From what I read, a lot of successful indie developers started part-time, building traction before quitting their jobs. But for me, I jumped straight into full-time mode, which worked for my lifestyle but might’ve hurt my productivity. I value work-life balance and refused to sacrifice everything for the startup. The reason I chose to leave the corp is I want to escape the 996 toxic working environment in China's internet companies. So even during my most stressful periods, I made time to watch TV with my partner and take weekends off. Anyways, if you’re also building something or thinking about starting a business, I hope my story helps. If I have other thoughts later, I will add them too. Appreciate any advice.

#reddit#watched#startup

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deepak2431•This week

Made my second f***ing sale of $15k with my agency business

A few months back, I quit my full-time software engineering job, where I was making $5k a month.  I started my business to help founders build their products by partnering with them as a Tech Founder. After two months of getting everything on the road, I closed my first deal of $15k, where I am working with a founder who is building an AI-based A/B testing tool for websites, graphics, and sales copywriting. Today, I am closing my second deal of $15k more, where I will be helping a non-technical founder build Wedding Planner software. I am grateful to have made the decision, as I am on track to make more than my yearly salary within the next three months, as per my plan.  Not a millionaire yet, but I will grow my business to a million dollars in the next year. Back to work; I will keep everyone posted here! Edit: Thanks for all the wishes. This blew up more than I expected, I tried to answer all of the queries. I have received many DMs for sharing the business details. You can find it linked above.

#reddit#made#second

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Motor-Potato3480•This week

Experienced Technology Leader Seeking Visionary Entrepreneur for Collaborative AI Innovation

How do i find the superman? I am seeking a forward-thinking entrepreneurial partner who possesses a transformative vision and the ability to identify untapped market opportunities. The ideal collaborator will bring strong business acumen, capable of defining a compelling business strategy and working alongside me to develop an innovative product. Together, we can create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), secure the necessary funding, and successfully launch a scalable solution with significant market potential. If you have a disruptive idea and the strategic expertise to drive commercial success, I would welcome the opportunity to connect and explore how we can collaborate to bring this vision to life. With Tech background of 17 years i will take responsibility for the product development from inception to completion with my team. #ArtificialIntelligence #TechCollaboration #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #MVPDevelopment #AIServices

#reddit#experienced#technology

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0.778

lazymentors•This week

I spent 18 hours every week tracking marketing trends and latest news. Here are my predictions for 2024

1/ Securing Digital Footprint becomes #1 Priority For Chronically Online Users, Protecting their digital footprint will become one of the main things. We saw influencers getting cancelled over Old Content and Brands used Old Travis Kelce Tweets, we saw what could happen without digital footprint protection. Online Engagement Precautions will be taken again with Twitter & IG showing your usernames above ‘Algorithm Suggested Content’. What you like is more visible to other people in UI Design of these apps, another reason behind why Digital Footprint preservation will matter a lot in 2024. This will impact likes to viewership ratio on your organic and paid content. ​ 2/  TikTok wants Long Videos with Storytelling As I was writing this report, TikTok also released their What’s Next 2024 Report. It focuses heavily on how the audiences on the app demand better storytelling and from the examples in the report, you can judge what TikTok wants. They also rolled out a 30-minute video upload limit. Engaging Content over 1-Minute Mark to keep the audiences longer on the app. I highlighted in the first trend, every social media platform wants the same thing, more time spent. 3/ Use of Shop the Look While Streaming Netflix or Amazon Prime. This year’s one of the most successful TV series, The Bear caused Men to go mad for the T-Shirt worn by Jeremy Allen White in the show. Showing us how TV Shows influence or encourage us to dress in a particular way. It’s nothing new, TV Shows like Friends & Gossip Girl influenced all demographics when they came out. But now, Streamings Services such as Roku & Amazon enable consumers to shop the look while watching the TV Shows. Many Brands will jump on these opportunities in upcoming months. 4/ Brands in Comments & Memes are the new norm By Summer 2024, Most Online Users & Creators will no longer feel too excited or answered when they see your brand in the comments. Why? It’s becoming too common for Brands to show in comments under viral content about them. Or Brands being funny with Internet Culture Trends is known to most users. The Saturation of Every Brand being funny and being present leads to increased competition of levitating the content quality. ​ 5/ Marketers decrease their focus on Traffic & Views With AI recommendations taking over, The Structure of content distributing on social media is changing, the same goes for SEO. Conversational AIs are changing how web traffic is distributed to publishers. An Increased focus on managing the conversion rate and landing page relevancy will be the main focus. 6/ OOH is kind of making a comeback. First, US OOH Ads Industry grew 1.1% in Q3 2023. Second, Outfront Media reported slight revenue increase in Q3 as Billboard Ad Revenue grew in Q3. Many Brands in UK are also aligning more toward traditional media Channels. With Burger King in UK focusing on only OOH for Christmas this year and Fashion Brands like SSENSE launching Billboards as Branding Play. 7/ Rise of Curation Continues This Year, we witnessed success of Pinterest Shuffles App, Gen-Z loved it. Similar Success with formats like IG photo dump & TikTok ‘My Fav Finds’ Carousels being the center of Gen-Z Content. Just look at this recent trend and tell me Curation isn’t personal to Online Teens. Spotify won with their idea of curating Songs with Astrology-type signs. The Fashion Products with Curated Emojis and Stickers on them, that scrappy curated approach is predicted to grow in 2024, data from Pinterest. 8/ Use of AI to Trace Consumers in the wild This year we saw a huge trend of people using Image/ face recognition tools to find or dig dirt about famous people. The biggest example was Dillion Dannis exposing Multiple images of Logan Paul’s girlfriend using AI tools. (Which was Obviously bad) But next year, I believe with better rules, big brands like Adidas or Nike will be able to find worldwide micro-influencers & Online Consumers seen wearing adidas. And partnering with them on a large scale through automated outreach. 9/ More Cartoons than Influencer-Brand Products. All the Cartoon shows are seeing huge rise on IG and TikTok, Shaun the sheep is viral, Snoopy was big this year, Sesame Street’s TikTok is working. Aussie Show Bluey is making a huge spark in the US. More Brand collaborations are on the road. Why? Cartoons have built a very consistent identity and they have social channels. I know many see Cartoons as Kids Content but on social, looking at TikTok Account of Sesame Street & Snoopy. Last month, Powerpuff Girls launched a collaboration with Nike. ​ 10/ The Best Trend to get people off social media ​ Try to get people off the social media apps, build your own loops. You can’t rely on social and you clearly shouldn’t burn out trying to win on social and streaming with Paid Ads or without them. This matters a lot because data shares most of your customers buy from you once or twice a year. And then they interact with your content, how bad will you feel if the only thing they remember as your content is being on TikTok. Nothing about your brand. 11/ The Internet Aesthetic will Die for Cafes & Restaurants When I wrote my post about Instagram Marketing, I mentioned this issue of Every Account looking the same. In reality, It isn’t limited to IG Feeds, This Creator points out the same Problem, mentioning the aesthetic Standards from Internet are changing how new businesses approach their whole business. More Content from Cafes & Restaurants need to be around their people and neighbourhood. 12/ Echo Chambers & Sonic Influence All Podcasts are Echo Chambers because if people wanted a new perspective in form of value. We would have chosen debates, but we chose Podcasts to find new value while being in comfort. People are now looking for more value in comfort than ever, Podcasts will continue to rise. 13/ Clever AI Integration to Better Customer Journeys in B2B & B2C Marketing Agencies can provide clever solutions to B2B Companies, and help them overcome the tag of Boring Ads only. How? Ogilvy India created an AI Ad Campaign for Cadbury, allowing SMBs to have the Bollywood Actor endorse them. They used the AI voice generation allowing businesses to alter the voice and have Shah Rukh Khan endorse their shop. A similar approach was taken by IPG India, An AI Ad with Shah Rukh Khan allowing everyone to add their face in the Branded Content. ​ If I sounded like an Old head in this report or I missed on some elements like Programmatic Advertising and PPC. I will try to include better analysis and new content about future trends. You can find the post shared with examples & research, linked here.

#reddit#spent#hours

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1

AI_Scout_Official•This week

I run an AI automation agency (AAA). My honest overview and review of this new business model

I started an AI tools directory in February, and then branched off that to start an AI automation agency (AAA) in June. So far I've come across a lot of unsustainable "ideas" to make money with AI, but at the same time a few diamonds in the rough that aren't fully tapped into yet- especially the AAA model. Thought I'd share this post to shine light into this new business model and share some ways you could potentially start your own agency, or at the very least know who you are dealing with and how to pick and choose when you (inevitably) get bombarded with cold emails from them down the line. Foreword Running an AAA does NOT involve using AI tools directly to generate and sell content directly. That ship has sailed, and unless you are happy with $5 from Fiverr every month or so, it is not a real business model. Cry me a river but generating generic art with AI and slapping it onto a T-shirt to sell on Etsy won't make you a dime. At the same time, the AAA model will NOT require you to have a deep theoretical knowledge of AI, or any academic degree, as we are more so dealing with the practical applications of generative AI and how we can implement these into different workflows and tech-stacks, rather than building AI models from the ground up. Regardless of all that, common sense and a willingness to learn will help (a shit ton), as with anything. Keep in mind - this WILL involve work and motivation as well. The mindset that AI somehow means everything can be done for you on autopilot is not the right way to approach things. The common theme of businesses I've seen who have successfully implemented AI into their operations is the willingess to work with AI in a way that augments their existing operations, rather than flat out replace a worker or team. And this is exactly the train of thought you need when working with AI as a business model. However, as the field is relatively unsaturated and hype surrounding AI is still fresh for enterprises, right now is the prime time to start something new if generative AI interests you at all. With that being said, I'll be going over three of the most successful AI-adjacent businesses I've seen over this past year, in addition to some tips and resources to point you in the right direction. so.. WTF is an AI Automation Agency? The AI automation agency (or as some YouTubers have coined it, the AAA model) at its core involves creating custom AI solutions for businesses. I have over 1500 AI tools listed in my directory, however the feedback I've received from some enterprise users is that ready-made SaaS tools are too generic to meet their specific needs. Combine this with the fact virtually no smaller companies have the time or skills required to develop custom solutions right off the bat, and you have yourself real demand. I would say in practice, the AAA model is quite similar to Wordpress and even web dev agencies, with the major difference being all solutions you develop will incorporate key aspects of AI AND automation. Which brings me to my second point- JUST AI IS NOT ENOUGH. Rather than reducing the amount of time required to complete certain tasks, I've seen many AI agencies make the mistake of recommending and (trying to) sell solutions that more likely than not increase the workload of their clients. For example, if you were to make an internal tool that has AI answer questions based on their knowledge base, but this knowledge base has to be updated manually, this is creating unnecessary work. As such I think one of the key components of building successful AI solutions is incorporating the new (Generative AI/LLMs) with the old (programmtic automation- think Zapier, APIs, etc.). Finally, for this business model to be successful, ideally you should target a niche in which you have already worked and understand pain points and needs. Not only does this make it much easier to get calls booked with prospects, the solutions you build will have much greater value to your clients (meaning you get paid more). A mistake I've seen many AAA operators make (and I blame this on the "Get Rich Quick" YouTubers) is focusing too much on a specific productized service, rather than really understanding the needs of businesses. The former is much done via a SaaS model, but when going the agency route the only thing that makes sense is building custom solutions. This is why I always take a consultant-first approach. You can only build once you understand what they actually need and how certain solutions may impact their operations, workflows, and bottom-line. Basics of How to Get Started Pick a niche. As I mentioned previously, preferably one that you've worked in before. Niches I know of that are actively being bombarded with cold emails include real estate, e-commerce, auto-dealerships, lawyers, and medical offices. There is a reason for this, but I will tell you straight up this business model works well if you target any white-collar service business (internal tools approach) or high volume businesses (customer facing tools approach). Setup your toolbox. If you wanted to start a pressure washing business, you would need a pressure-washer. This is no different. For those without programming knowledge, I've seen two common ways AAA get setup to build- one is having a network of on-call web developers, whether its personal contacts or simply going to Upwork or any talent sourcing agency. The second is having an arsenal of no-code tools. I'll get to this more in a second, but this works beecause at its core, when we are dealing with the practical applications of AI, the code is quite simple, simply put. Start cold sales. Unless you have a network already, this is not a step you can skip. You've already picked a niche, so all you have to do is find the right message. Keep cold emails short, sweet, but enticing- and it will help a lot if you did step 1 correctly and intimately understand who your audience is. I'll be touching base later about how you can leverage AI yourself to help you with outreach and closing. The beauty of gen AI and the AAA model You don't need to be a seasoned web developer to make this business model work. The large majority of solutions that SME clients want is best done using an API for an LLM for the actual AI aspect. The value we create with the solutions we build comes with the conceptual framework and design that not only does what they need it to but integrates smoothly with their existing tech-stack and workflow. The actual implementation is quite straightforward once you understand the high level design and know which tools you are going to use. To give you a sense, even if you plan to build out these apps yourself (say in Python) the large majority of the nitty gritty technical work has already been done for you, especially if you leverage Python libraries and packages that offer high level abstraction for LLM-related functions. For instance, calling GPT can be as little as a single line of code. (And there are no-code tools where these functions are simply an icon on a GUI). Aside from understanding the capabilities and limitations of these tools and frameworks, the only thing that matters is being able to put them in a way that makes sense for what you want to build. Which is why outsourcing and no-code tools both work in our case. Okay... but how TF am I suppposed to actually build out these solutions? Now the fun part. I highly recommend getting familiar with Langchain and LlamaIndex. Both are Python libraires that help a lot with the high-level LLM abstraction I mentioned previously. The two most important aspects include being able to integrate internal data sources/knowledge bases with LLMs, and have LLMs perform autonomous actions. The two most common methods respectively are RAG and output parsing. RAG (retrieval augmented Generation) If you've ever seen a tool that seemingly "trains" GPT on your own data, and wonder how it all works- well I have an answer from you. At a high level, the user query is first being fed to what's called a vector database to run vector search. Vector search basically lets you do semantic search where you are searching data based on meaning. The vector databases then retrieves the most relevant sections of text as it relates to the user query, and this text gets APPENDED to your GPT prompt to provide extra context to the AI. Further, with prompt engineering, you can limit GPT to only generate an answer if it can be found within this extra context, greatly limiting the chance of hallucination (this is where AI makes random shit up). Aside from vector databases, we can also implement RAG with other data sources and retrieval methods, for example SQL databses (via parsing the outputs of LLM's- more on this later). Autonomous Agents via Output Parsing A common need of clients has been having AI actually perform tasks, rather than simply spitting out text. For example, with autonomous agents, we can have an e-commerce chatbot do the work of a basic customer service rep (i.e. look into orders, refunds, shipping). At a high level, what's going on is that the response of the LLM is being used programmtically to determine which API to call. Keeping on with the e-commerce example, if I wanted a chatbot to check shipping status, I could have a LLM response within my app (not shown to the user) with a prompt that outputs a random hash or string, and programmatically I can determine which API call to make based on this hash/string. And using the same fundamental concept as with RAG, I can append the the API response to a final prompt that would spit out the answer for the user. How No Code Tools Can Fit In (With some example solutions you can build) With that being said, you don't necessarily need to do all of the above by coding yourself, with Python libraries or otherwise. However, I will say that having that high level overview will help IMMENSELY when it comes to using no-code tools to do the actual work for you. Regardless, here are a few common solutions you might build for clients as well as some no-code tools you can use to build them out. Ex. Solution 1: AI Chatbots for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) This involves creating chatbots that handle user queries, lead gen, and so forth with AI, and will use the principles of RAG at heart. After getting the required data from your client (i.e. product catalogues, previous support tickets, FAQ, internal documentation), you upload this into your knowledge base and write a prompt that makes sense for your use case. One no-code tool that does this well is MyAskAI. The beauty of it especially for building external chatbots is the ability to quickly ingest entire websites into your knowledge base via a sitemap, and bulk uploading files. Essentially, they've covered the entire grunt work required to do this manually. Finally, you can create a inline or chat widget on your client's website with a few lines of HTML, or altneratively integrate it with a Slack/Teams chatbot (if you are going for an internal Q&A chatbot approach). Other tools you could use include Botpress and Voiceflow, however these are less for RAG and more for building out complete chatbot flows that may or may not incorporate LLMs. Both apps are essentially GUIs that eliminate the pain and tears and trying to implement complex flows manually, and both natively incoporate AI intents and a knowledge base feature. Ex. Solution 2: Internal Apps Similar to the first example, except we go beyond making just chatbots but tools such as report generation and really any sort of internal tool or automations that may incorporate LLM's. For instance, you can have a tool that automatically generates replies to inbound emails based on your client's knowledge base. Or an automation that does the same thing but for replies to Instagram comments. Another example could be a tool that generates a description and screeenshot based on a URL (useful for directory sites, made one for my own :P). Getting into more advanced implementations of LLMs, we can have tools that can generate entire drafts of reports (think 80+ pages), based not only on data from a knowledge base but also the writing style, format, and author voice of previous reports. One good tool to create content generation panels for your clients would be MindStudio. You can train LLM's via prompt engineering in a structured way with your own data to essentially fine tune them for whatever text you need it to generate. Furthermore, it has a GUI where you can dictate the entire AI flow. You can also upload data sources via multiple formats, including PDF, CSV, and Docx. For automations that require interactions between multiple apps, I recommend the OG zapier/make.com if you want a no-code solution. For instance, for the automatic email reply generator, I can have a trigger such that when an email is received, a custom AI reply is generated by MyAskAI, and finally a draft is created in my email client. Or, for an automation where I can create a social media posts on multiple platforms based on a RSS feed (news feed), I can implement this directly in Zapier with their native GPT action (see screenshot) As for more complex LLM flows that may require multiple layers of LLMs, data sources, and APIs working together to generate a single response i.e. a long form 100 page report, I would recommend tools such as Stack AI or Flowise (open-source alternative) to build these solutions out. Essentially, you get most of the functions and features of Python packages such as Langchain and LlamaIndex in a GUI. See screenshot for an example of a flow How the hell are you supposed to find clients? With all that being said, none of this matters if you can't find anyone to sell to. You will have to do cold sales, one way or the other, especially if you are brand new to the game. And what better way to sell your AI services than with AI itself? If we want to integrate AI into the cold outreach process, first we must identify what it's good at doing, and that's obviously writing a bunch of text, in a short amount of time. Similar to the solutions that an AAA can build for its clients, we can take advantage of the same principles in our own sales processes. How to do outreach Once you've identified your niche and their pain points/opportunities for automation, you want to craft a compelling message in which you can send via cold email and cold calls to get prospects booked on demos/consultations. I won't get into too much detail in terms of exactly how to write emails or calling scripts, as there are millions of resources to help with this, but I will tell you a few key points you want to keep in mind when doing outreach for your AAA. First, you want to keep in mind that many businesses are still hesitant about AI and may not understand what it really is or how it can benefit their operations. However, we can take advantage of how mass media has been reporting on AI this past year- at the very least people are AWARE that sooner or later they may have to implement AI into their businesses to stay competitive. We want to frame our message in a way that introduces generative AI as a technology that can have a direct, tangible, and positive impact on their business. Although it may be hard to quantify, I like to include estimates of man-hours saved or costs saved at least in my final proposals to prospects. Times are TOUGH right now, and money is expensive, so you need to have a compelling reason for businesses to get on board. Once you've gotten your messaging down, you will want to create a list of prospects to contact. Tools you can use to find prospects include Apollo.io, reply.io, zoominfo (expensive af), and Linkedin Sales Navigator. What specific job titles, etc. to target will depend on your niche but for smaller companies this will tend to be the owner. For white collar niches, i.e. law, the professional that will be directly benefiting from the tool (i.e. partners) may be better to contact. And for larger organizations you may want to target business improvement and digital transformation leads/directors- these are the people directly in charge of projects like what you may be proposing. Okay- so you have your message, and your list, and now all it comes down to is getting the good word out. I won't be going into the details of how to send these out, a quick Google search will give you hundreds of resources for cold outreach methods. However, personalization is key and beyond simple dynamic variables you want to make sure you can either personalize your email campaigns directly with AI (SmartWriter.ai is an example of a tool that can do this), or at the very least have the ability to import email messages programmatically. Alternatively, ask ChatGPT to make you a Python Script that can take in a list of emails, scrape info based on their linkedin URL or website, and all pass this onto a GPT prompt that specifies your messaging to generate an email. From there, send away. How tf do I close? Once you've got some prospects booked in on your meetings, you will need to close deals with them to turn them into clients. Call #1: Consultation Tying back to when I mentioned you want to take a consultant-first appraoch, you will want to listen closely to their goals and needs and understand their pain points. This would be the first call, and typically I would provide a high level overview of different solutions we could build to tacke these. It really helps to have a presentation available, so you can graphically demonstrate key points and key technologies. I like to use Plus AI for this, it's basically a Google Slides add-on that can generate slide decks for you. I copy and paste my default company messaging, add some key points for the presentation, and it comes out with pretty decent slides. Call #2: Demo The second call would involve a demo of one of these solutions, and typically I'll quickly prototype it with boilerplate code I already have, otherwise I'll cook something up in a no-code tool. If you have a niche where one type of solution is commonly demanded, it helps to have a general demo set up to be able to handle a larger volume of calls, so you aren't burning yourself out. I'll also elaborate on how the final product would look like in comparison to the demo. Call #3 and Beyond: Once the initial consultation and demo is complete, you will want to alleviate any remaining concerns from your prospects and work with them to reach a final work proposal. It's crucial you lay out exactly what you will be building (in writing) and ensure the prospect understands this. Furthermore, be clear and transparent with timelines and communication methods for the project. In terms of pricing, you want to take this from a value-based approach. The same solution may be worth a lot more to client A than client B. Furthermore, you can create "add-ons" such as monthly maintenance/upgrade packages, training sessions for employeees, and so forth, separate from the initial setup fee you would charge. How you can incorporate AI into marketing your businesses Beyond cold sales, I highly recommend creating a funnel to capture warm leads. For instance, I do this currently with my AI tools directory, which links directly to my AI agency and has consistent branding throughout. Warm leads are much more likely to close (and honestly, much nicer to deal with). However, even without an AI-related website, at the very least you will want to create a presence on social media and the web in general. As with any agency, you will want basic a professional presence. A professional virtual address helps, in addition to a Google Business Profile (GBP) and TrustPilot. a GBP (especially for local SEO) and Trustpilot page also helps improve the looks of your search results immensely. For GBP, I recommend using ProfilePro, which is a chrome extension you can use to automate SEO work for your GBP. Aside from SEO optimzied business descriptions based on your business, it can handle Q/A answers, responses, updates, and service descriptions based on local keywords. Privacy and Legal Concerns of the AAA Model Aside from typical concerns for agencies relating to service contracts, there are a few issues (especially when using no-code tools) that will need to be addressed to run a successful AAA. Most of these surround privacy concerns when working with proprietary data. In your terms with your client, you will want to clearly define hosting providers and any third party tools you will be using to build their solution, and a DPA with these third parties listed as subprocessors if necessary. In addition, you will want to implement best practices like redacting private information from data being used for building solutions. In terms of addressing concerns directly from clients, it helps if you host your solutions on their own servers (not possible with AI tools), and address the fact only ChatGPT queries in the web app, not OpenAI API calls, will be used to train OpenAI's models (as reported by mainstream media). The key here is to be open and transparent with your clients about ALL the tools you are using, where there data will be going, and make sure to get this all in writing. have fun, and keep an open mind Before I finish this post, I just want to reiterate the fact that this is NOT an easy way to make money. Running an AI agency will require hours and hours of dedication and work, and constantly rearranging your schedule to meet prospect and client needs. However, if you are looking for a new business to run, and have a knack for understanding business operations and are genuinely interested in the pracitcal applications of generative AI, then I say go for it. The time is ticking before AAA becomes the new dropshipping or SMMA, and I've a firm believer that those who set foot first and establish themselves in this field will come out top. And remember, while 100 thousand people may read this post, only 2 may actually take initiative and start.

#reddit#automation#agency

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MatthiasMayer•This week

Looking for an AI-driven solution to automate invoice management—any recommendations?

Hey everyone, I’m looking for a tool or service to simplify my invoice management process. Here’s the situation: I deal with a lot of invoices—mostly physical ones (petrol, business dinners, etc.) that I currently photograph and manually input into Excel. I include details like the execution date, invoice date, partner name, currency, and more. For digital invoices (e.g., software and tools we pay for), I often receive them via email or have to download them from a dashboard (we use Revolut Business, SEPA, and an ordinary Visa card for payments). To get everything in one place, I have to sync multiple sheets from different sources—quite the hassle. Currently, this process requires one person full-time, but I believe there should be a better way. Ideally, I’m looking for a solution where: Physical invoices can be photographed and automatically processed (data extracted and stored). Digital invoices can be imported directly from email or dashboards. All invoices (physical and digital) are saved to Google Drive (as proof), with relevant data exported to a Google Sheet. Does anyone know of a service/tool that can handle this in an efficient way, leveraging AI or automation? Any help is greatly appreciated! 😊

#reddit#looking#ai-driven

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pknerd•This week

What kind of online "Boring" businesses that could generate minimum $1k/month

So there is a term that is being used a lot, "Boring Business" To be honest, I am not exactly sure what it means but it seems kind of niche online/offline businesses that have demands but yet are underserved. I watched a video on the "Niche Pursuit" channel on which Spencer discussed some truck websites that generate 3-4 grand per month. Having said that, 2025 is starting. I am a developer, know AI/Automation..would not mind working on such kinda apps/websites and automating them. PS: I am OK to partner with marketing/sales kind of people here. Let's grow together! PPS: Many ppl DMing me about my location. I am from Pakistan and currently working for a LA based company remotely in AI and automation

#reddit#kind#online

reddit

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MatthiasMayer•This week

Looking for an AI-driven solution to automate invoice management—any recommendations?

Hey everyone, I’m looking for a tool or service to simplify my invoice management process. Here’s the situation: I deal with a lot of invoices—mostly physical ones (petrol, business dinners, etc.) that I currently photograph and manually input into Excel. I include details like the execution date, invoice date, partner name, currency, and more. For digital invoices (e.g., software and tools we pay for), I often receive them via email or have to download them from a dashboard (we use Revolut Business, SEPA, and an ordinary Visa card for payments). To get everything in one place, I have to sync multiple sheets from different sources—quite the hassle. Currently, this process requires one person full-time, but I believe there should be a better way. Ideally, I’m looking for a solution where: Physical invoices can be photographed and automatically processed (data extracted and stored). Digital invoices can be imported directly from email or dashboards. All invoices (physical and digital) are saved to Google Drive (as proof), with relevant data exported to a Google Sheet. Does anyone know of a service/tool that can handle this in an efficient way, leveraging AI or automation? Any help is greatly appreciated! 😊

#reddit#looking#ai-driven

reddit

0

1

AI_Scout_Official•This week

I run an AI automation agency (AAA). My honest overview and review of this new business model

I started an AI tools directory in February, and then branched off that to start an AI automation agency (AAA) in June. So far I've come across a lot of unsustainable "ideas" to make money with AI, but at the same time a few diamonds in the rough that aren't fully tapped into yet- especially the AAA model. Thought I'd share this post to shine light into this new business model and share some ways you could potentially start your own agency, or at the very least know who you are dealing with and how to pick and choose when you (inevitably) get bombarded with cold emails from them down the line. Foreword Running an AAA does NOT involve using AI tools directly to generate and sell content directly. That ship has sailed, and unless you are happy with $5 from Fiverr every month or so, it is not a real business model. Cry me a river but generating generic art with AI and slapping it onto a T-shirt to sell on Etsy won't make you a dime. At the same time, the AAA model will NOT require you to have a deep theoretical knowledge of AI, or any academic degree, as we are more so dealing with the practical applications of generative AI and how we can implement these into different workflows and tech-stacks, rather than building AI models from the ground up. Regardless of all that, common sense and a willingness to learn will help (a shit ton), as with anything. Keep in mind - this WILL involve work and motivation as well. The mindset that AI somehow means everything can be done for you on autopilot is not the right way to approach things. The common theme of businesses I've seen who have successfully implemented AI into their operations is the willingess to work with AI in a way that augments their existing operations, rather than flat out replace a worker or team. And this is exactly the train of thought you need when working with AI as a business model. However, as the field is relatively unsaturated and hype surrounding AI is still fresh for enterprises, right now is the prime time to start something new if generative AI interests you at all. With that being said, I'll be going over three of the most successful AI-adjacent businesses I've seen over this past year, in addition to some tips and resources to point you in the right direction. so.. WTF is an AI Automation Agency? The AI automation agency (or as some YouTubers have coined it, the AAA model) at its core involves creating custom AI solutions for businesses. I have over 1500 AI tools listed in my directory, however the feedback I've received from some enterprise users is that ready-made SaaS tools are too generic to meet their specific needs. Combine this with the fact virtually no smaller companies have the time or skills required to develop custom solutions right off the bat, and you have yourself real demand. I would say in practice, the AAA model is quite similar to Wordpress and even web dev agencies, with the major difference being all solutions you develop will incorporate key aspects of AI AND automation. Which brings me to my second point- JUST AI IS NOT ENOUGH. Rather than reducing the amount of time required to complete certain tasks, I've seen many AI agencies make the mistake of recommending and (trying to) sell solutions that more likely than not increase the workload of their clients. For example, if you were to make an internal tool that has AI answer questions based on their knowledge base, but this knowledge base has to be updated manually, this is creating unnecessary work. As such I think one of the key components of building successful AI solutions is incorporating the new (Generative AI/LLMs) with the old (programmtic automation- think Zapier, APIs, etc.). Finally, for this business model to be successful, ideally you should target a niche in which you have already worked and understand pain points and needs. Not only does this make it much easier to get calls booked with prospects, the solutions you build will have much greater value to your clients (meaning you get paid more). A mistake I've seen many AAA operators make (and I blame this on the "Get Rich Quick" YouTubers) is focusing too much on a specific productized service, rather than really understanding the needs of businesses. The former is much done via a SaaS model, but when going the agency route the only thing that makes sense is building custom solutions. This is why I always take a consultant-first approach. You can only build once you understand what they actually need and how certain solutions may impact their operations, workflows, and bottom-line. Basics of How to Get Started Pick a niche. As I mentioned previously, preferably one that you've worked in before. Niches I know of that are actively being bombarded with cold emails include real estate, e-commerce, auto-dealerships, lawyers, and medical offices. There is a reason for this, but I will tell you straight up this business model works well if you target any white-collar service business (internal tools approach) or high volume businesses (customer facing tools approach). Setup your toolbox. If you wanted to start a pressure washing business, you would need a pressure-washer. This is no different. For those without programming knowledge, I've seen two common ways AAA get setup to build- one is having a network of on-call web developers, whether its personal contacts or simply going to Upwork or any talent sourcing agency. The second is having an arsenal of no-code tools. I'll get to this more in a second, but this works beecause at its core, when we are dealing with the practical applications of AI, the code is quite simple, simply put. Start cold sales. Unless you have a network already, this is not a step you can skip. You've already picked a niche, so all you have to do is find the right message. Keep cold emails short, sweet, but enticing- and it will help a lot if you did step 1 correctly and intimately understand who your audience is. I'll be touching base later about how you can leverage AI yourself to help you with outreach and closing. The beauty of gen AI and the AAA model You don't need to be a seasoned web developer to make this business model work. The large majority of solutions that SME clients want is best done using an API for an LLM for the actual AI aspect. The value we create with the solutions we build comes with the conceptual framework and design that not only does what they need it to but integrates smoothly with their existing tech-stack and workflow. The actual implementation is quite straightforward once you understand the high level design and know which tools you are going to use. To give you a sense, even if you plan to build out these apps yourself (say in Python) the large majority of the nitty gritty technical work has already been done for you, especially if you leverage Python libraries and packages that offer high level abstraction for LLM-related functions. For instance, calling GPT can be as little as a single line of code. (And there are no-code tools where these functions are simply an icon on a GUI). Aside from understanding the capabilities and limitations of these tools and frameworks, the only thing that matters is being able to put them in a way that makes sense for what you want to build. Which is why outsourcing and no-code tools both work in our case. Okay... but how TF am I suppposed to actually build out these solutions? Now the fun part. I highly recommend getting familiar with Langchain and LlamaIndex. Both are Python libraires that help a lot with the high-level LLM abstraction I mentioned previously. The two most important aspects include being able to integrate internal data sources/knowledge bases with LLMs, and have LLMs perform autonomous actions. The two most common methods respectively are RAG and output parsing. RAG (retrieval augmented Generation) If you've ever seen a tool that seemingly "trains" GPT on your own data, and wonder how it all works- well I have an answer from you. At a high level, the user query is first being fed to what's called a vector database to run vector search. Vector search basically lets you do semantic search where you are searching data based on meaning. The vector databases then retrieves the most relevant sections of text as it relates to the user query, and this text gets APPENDED to your GPT prompt to provide extra context to the AI. Further, with prompt engineering, you can limit GPT to only generate an answer if it can be found within this extra context, greatly limiting the chance of hallucination (this is where AI makes random shit up). Aside from vector databases, we can also implement RAG with other data sources and retrieval methods, for example SQL databses (via parsing the outputs of LLM's- more on this later). Autonomous Agents via Output Parsing A common need of clients has been having AI actually perform tasks, rather than simply spitting out text. For example, with autonomous agents, we can have an e-commerce chatbot do the work of a basic customer service rep (i.e. look into orders, refunds, shipping). At a high level, what's going on is that the response of the LLM is being used programmtically to determine which API to call. Keeping on with the e-commerce example, if I wanted a chatbot to check shipping status, I could have a LLM response within my app (not shown to the user) with a prompt that outputs a random hash or string, and programmatically I can determine which API call to make based on this hash/string. And using the same fundamental concept as with RAG, I can append the the API response to a final prompt that would spit out the answer for the user. How No Code Tools Can Fit In (With some example solutions you can build) With that being said, you don't necessarily need to do all of the above by coding yourself, with Python libraries or otherwise. However, I will say that having that high level overview will help IMMENSELY when it comes to using no-code tools to do the actual work for you. Regardless, here are a few common solutions you might build for clients as well as some no-code tools you can use to build them out. Ex. Solution 1: AI Chatbots for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) This involves creating chatbots that handle user queries, lead gen, and so forth with AI, and will use the principles of RAG at heart. After getting the required data from your client (i.e. product catalogues, previous support tickets, FAQ, internal documentation), you upload this into your knowledge base and write a prompt that makes sense for your use case. One no-code tool that does this well is MyAskAI. The beauty of it especially for building external chatbots is the ability to quickly ingest entire websites into your knowledge base via a sitemap, and bulk uploading files. Essentially, they've covered the entire grunt work required to do this manually. Finally, you can create a inline or chat widget on your client's website with a few lines of HTML, or altneratively integrate it with a Slack/Teams chatbot (if you are going for an internal Q&A chatbot approach). Other tools you could use include Botpress and Voiceflow, however these are less for RAG and more for building out complete chatbot flows that may or may not incorporate LLMs. Both apps are essentially GUIs that eliminate the pain and tears and trying to implement complex flows manually, and both natively incoporate AI intents and a knowledge base feature. Ex. Solution 2: Internal Apps Similar to the first example, except we go beyond making just chatbots but tools such as report generation and really any sort of internal tool or automations that may incorporate LLM's. For instance, you can have a tool that automatically generates replies to inbound emails based on your client's knowledge base. Or an automation that does the same thing but for replies to Instagram comments. Another example could be a tool that generates a description and screeenshot based on a URL (useful for directory sites, made one for my own :P). Getting into more advanced implementations of LLMs, we can have tools that can generate entire drafts of reports (think 80+ pages), based not only on data from a knowledge base but also the writing style, format, and author voice of previous reports. One good tool to create content generation panels for your clients would be MindStudio. You can train LLM's via prompt engineering in a structured way with your own data to essentially fine tune them for whatever text you need it to generate. Furthermore, it has a GUI where you can dictate the entire AI flow. You can also upload data sources via multiple formats, including PDF, CSV, and Docx. For automations that require interactions between multiple apps, I recommend the OG zapier/make.com if you want a no-code solution. For instance, for the automatic email reply generator, I can have a trigger such that when an email is received, a custom AI reply is generated by MyAskAI, and finally a draft is created in my email client. Or, for an automation where I can create a social media posts on multiple platforms based on a RSS feed (news feed), I can implement this directly in Zapier with their native GPT action (see screenshot) As for more complex LLM flows that may require multiple layers of LLMs, data sources, and APIs working together to generate a single response i.e. a long form 100 page report, I would recommend tools such as Stack AI or Flowise (open-source alternative) to build these solutions out. Essentially, you get most of the functions and features of Python packages such as Langchain and LlamaIndex in a GUI. See screenshot for an example of a flow How the hell are you supposed to find clients? With all that being said, none of this matters if you can't find anyone to sell to. You will have to do cold sales, one way or the other, especially if you are brand new to the game. And what better way to sell your AI services than with AI itself? If we want to integrate AI into the cold outreach process, first we must identify what it's good at doing, and that's obviously writing a bunch of text, in a short amount of time. Similar to the solutions that an AAA can build for its clients, we can take advantage of the same principles in our own sales processes. How to do outreach Once you've identified your niche and their pain points/opportunities for automation, you want to craft a compelling message in which you can send via cold email and cold calls to get prospects booked on demos/consultations. I won't get into too much detail in terms of exactly how to write emails or calling scripts, as there are millions of resources to help with this, but I will tell you a few key points you want to keep in mind when doing outreach for your AAA. First, you want to keep in mind that many businesses are still hesitant about AI and may not understand what it really is or how it can benefit their operations. However, we can take advantage of how mass media has been reporting on AI this past year- at the very least people are AWARE that sooner or later they may have to implement AI into their businesses to stay competitive. We want to frame our message in a way that introduces generative AI as a technology that can have a direct, tangible, and positive impact on their business. Although it may be hard to quantify, I like to include estimates of man-hours saved or costs saved at least in my final proposals to prospects. Times are TOUGH right now, and money is expensive, so you need to have a compelling reason for businesses to get on board. Once you've gotten your messaging down, you will want to create a list of prospects to contact. Tools you can use to find prospects include Apollo.io, reply.io, zoominfo (expensive af), and Linkedin Sales Navigator. What specific job titles, etc. to target will depend on your niche but for smaller companies this will tend to be the owner. For white collar niches, i.e. law, the professional that will be directly benefiting from the tool (i.e. partners) may be better to contact. And for larger organizations you may want to target business improvement and digital transformation leads/directors- these are the people directly in charge of projects like what you may be proposing. Okay- so you have your message, and your list, and now all it comes down to is getting the good word out. I won't be going into the details of how to send these out, a quick Google search will give you hundreds of resources for cold outreach methods. However, personalization is key and beyond simple dynamic variables you want to make sure you can either personalize your email campaigns directly with AI (SmartWriter.ai is an example of a tool that can do this), or at the very least have the ability to import email messages programmatically. Alternatively, ask ChatGPT to make you a Python Script that can take in a list of emails, scrape info based on their linkedin URL or website, and all pass this onto a GPT prompt that specifies your messaging to generate an email. From there, send away. How tf do I close? Once you've got some prospects booked in on your meetings, you will need to close deals with them to turn them into clients. Call #1: Consultation Tying back to when I mentioned you want to take a consultant-first appraoch, you will want to listen closely to their goals and needs and understand their pain points. This would be the first call, and typically I would provide a high level overview of different solutions we could build to tacke these. It really helps to have a presentation available, so you can graphically demonstrate key points and key technologies. I like to use Plus AI for this, it's basically a Google Slides add-on that can generate slide decks for you. I copy and paste my default company messaging, add some key points for the presentation, and it comes out with pretty decent slides. Call #2: Demo The second call would involve a demo of one of these solutions, and typically I'll quickly prototype it with boilerplate code I already have, otherwise I'll cook something up in a no-code tool. If you have a niche where one type of solution is commonly demanded, it helps to have a general demo set up to be able to handle a larger volume of calls, so you aren't burning yourself out. I'll also elaborate on how the final product would look like in comparison to the demo. Call #3 and Beyond: Once the initial consultation and demo is complete, you will want to alleviate any remaining concerns from your prospects and work with them to reach a final work proposal. It's crucial you lay out exactly what you will be building (in writing) and ensure the prospect understands this. Furthermore, be clear and transparent with timelines and communication methods for the project. In terms of pricing, you want to take this from a value-based approach. The same solution may be worth a lot more to client A than client B. Furthermore, you can create "add-ons" such as monthly maintenance/upgrade packages, training sessions for employeees, and so forth, separate from the initial setup fee you would charge. How you can incorporate AI into marketing your businesses Beyond cold sales, I highly recommend creating a funnel to capture warm leads. For instance, I do this currently with my AI tools directory, which links directly to my AI agency and has consistent branding throughout. Warm leads are much more likely to close (and honestly, much nicer to deal with). However, even without an AI-related website, at the very least you will want to create a presence on social media and the web in general. As with any agency, you will want basic a professional presence. A professional virtual address helps, in addition to a Google Business Profile (GBP) and TrustPilot. a GBP (especially for local SEO) and Trustpilot page also helps improve the looks of your search results immensely. For GBP, I recommend using ProfilePro, which is a chrome extension you can use to automate SEO work for your GBP. Aside from SEO optimzied business descriptions based on your business, it can handle Q/A answers, responses, updates, and service descriptions based on local keywords. Privacy and Legal Concerns of the AAA Model Aside from typical concerns for agencies relating to service contracts, there are a few issues (especially when using no-code tools) that will need to be addressed to run a successful AAA. Most of these surround privacy concerns when working with proprietary data. In your terms with your client, you will want to clearly define hosting providers and any third party tools you will be using to build their solution, and a DPA with these third parties listed as subprocessors if necessary. In addition, you will want to implement best practices like redacting private information from data being used for building solutions. In terms of addressing concerns directly from clients, it helps if you host your solutions on their own servers (not possible with AI tools), and address the fact only ChatGPT queries in the web app, not OpenAI API calls, will be used to train OpenAI's models (as reported by mainstream media). The key here is to be open and transparent with your clients about ALL the tools you are using, where there data will be going, and make sure to get this all in writing. have fun, and keep an open mind Before I finish this post, I just want to reiterate the fact that this is NOT an easy way to make money. Running an AI agency will require hours and hours of dedication and work, and constantly rearranging your schedule to meet prospect and client needs. However, if you are looking for a new business to run, and have a knack for understanding business operations and are genuinely interested in the pracitcal applications of generative AI, then I say go for it. The time is ticking before AAA becomes the new dropshipping or SMMA, and I've a firm believer that those who set foot first and establish themselves in this field will come out top. And remember, while 100 thousand people may read this post, only 2 may actually take initiative and start.

#reddit#automation#agency

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shanumas•This week

Looking for a business co-founder for my AI startup in manufacturing.

I spent over a decade as a Senior Software Developer building manufacturing optimization products for global enterprises across the Americas and Europe. It’s a million-dollar industry, and I have strong connections with multinational clients. With AI advancements, there’s a huge opportunity to disrupt the market. My plan is to offer locally hosted AI-powered applications with an option for private cloud deployment. I already have 4–5 high-impact use cases, each of which can be built in a month. I’m looking for a business partner—ideally someone with deep expertise in manufacturing and strong connections in Europe, the USA, China, or India. I’ll handle the tech; you drive the business. Beyond optimization, I have additional solid use cases—some aligned with what YC-backed companies are doing. I found a YC company working on something similar, which I can share in DM.

#reddit#looking#business

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Nevoy_92•This week

Building Business Development/Sales Pipeline

Hey all! Happy weekend wherever you may be! Wanting to get some advice and insight into a couple areas as mentioned in the title. Background is the following: My Partner and I started our company about in 2021. When we kicked off we were building a control and camera vision system for automating and optimizing indoor vertical farms. We got to early mvp but market was not as big and barrier to entry was high. So we pivoted early 2023 to utilize components of our technology in a wildfire detection and risk analysis platform. Happy to say we are once again at MVP but need to get PMF and pipeline going both with revenue generating clients and pilots/demos. Through this period we’ve kept the lights on by running a consulting service and digital agency. We’ve also pushed out a couple of AI tools to market. Effectively I need to build out a strong pipeline for each vertical and associated sales team. Right now spread too thin trying to conduct sales and business dev on each front. Challenges: Wildfire: Business to Gov relationships so need to build for that. Additionally early stage technology so imo relationships are critical. Additionally need to take advantage of grant funding. Target Markets: Canada, USA, Mediterranean, Northern Europe/Scandavian Countries. Consulting and Agency: Things feel dry… we have a recurring client list but we want to grow this channel exponentially, focusing on RFP’s and med to large company profiles rather then the current SMB. Our current activités are mediocre imo for outreach and connection. AI Tools: I believe these are great opportunities. TLDR 1)sales based assistant as well as 2)central AI aggregation with prompt repository. Business Dev Energy into this is basically focused on digital means. In the process of generating video content to push via ads and online social platforms. Challenge: low engagement right now users signing up but no commitments to purchase. Need to evaluate value offer and feedback on PMF. From the sales team side, effectively need to generate the sales so I can expand the team and grow accordingly. I’m a huge proponent of commission based compensation. Also open to a base salary. However anyone I onboard at this moment would have to be commission cause cash-flow. On that front, what are current commissions structures looking like for people? What’s engaging what’s worth taking a risk what is just a huge no? On the challenges for the product lines any feedback questions and even poking holes is appreciated! Thanks!

#reddit#building#business

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Boring_Elephant2767•This week

Looking for a Developer Co-Founder to Build an AI-Powered Film Budgeting Tool

Hey everyone, I’m a seasoned producer/line producer with over 10 years in the film industry, specializing in budgeting and production strategy for films, commercials, and music videos. I’ve built over 150 budgets for projects ranging from indie features to large-scale commercials and have worked with major artists, brands, and studios. I’m looking for a developer or AI/ML engineer interested in co-founding a startup with me to build an AI-powered budgeting tool for the film industry. The Problem Creating a budget for a film, music video, or commercial is time-consuming and expensive (typically $3K–$5K per budget for films). Filmmakers, studios, agencies, and managers need a faster, more cost-effective way to estimate production costs without hiring a full-time producer for every project. The Solution The goal is to develop an AI-assisted budgeting tool that takes in scripts, creative decks, or project briefs and outputs a preliminary budget & production schedule. The vision is a hybrid service: • AI-powered script/deck breakdown to extract production elements • Smart reasoning based on real industry budgets • Producer oversight for accuracy before sending budgets to users • Flexible pricing model (lower cost than hiring a full-time producer) What I Bring to the Table Deep industry knowledge – I know how to build accurate budgets & schedules for any type of project. Proven demand – I already have early adopters in indie film, production companies, and agencies. Strong network – I work with studios, reps, and filmmakers who would use this tool. A unique approach – I haven’t seen an AI budgeting tool that truly understands production costs based on creative elements. What I’m Looking For I need a developer partner with experience in AI, automation, and/or SaaS development who can help build this. Ideally, someone interested in co-founding (equity-based, not just a freelance gig). If you have experience with GPT, machine learning, NLP, or building interactive SaaS products, that’s a plus. I’m keeping this low-key for now while I figure out the best path forward. If you’re interested, let’s chat! Even if you’re not a developer but have advice or ideas, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Drop a comment or DM me if this sounds interesting!

#reddit#looking#developer

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Significant_Stable_7•This week

Best AI tools to help company productivity?

Hey guys! I recently did a big restructuring of my production company and moving away from smaller businesses ad’s and moving up to working with larger marketing agencies. My partner and I are brainstorming ways to automate or at least improve certain parts of our business as we also start to expand our team & to improve ease of labour as our turn around times tend to have to be pretty quick. The main things we’re looking to improve is in: • Sales/out reach strategy: we are constantly reaching out to new agencies in different parts of the world. I am already used to manually making a plan for each company we reach out to but it can be very time consuming. I don’t know if there is even a tool that could help with this haha. Even if it helps with pointers! • Organizing/visualizing spreadsheets: we deal with spreadsheets on what we spend per production and how we distribute our total budget per department. If there is anyway to ease the workflow for our managers and on top of that also allow us to expand easier without having to look for someone who is very efficient on excel or spending more time and money on the training. • Scheduling: We already have so much to organize day per day, im not sure if there is any tool or ai system that could help in regards to scheduling meetings, organizing priorities or even just deadlines for certain projects. Example: we need to schedule everything from pre production deadlines (meetings with talent, agency, and crew) production deadlines, & post production deadlines. I’m sure there is other small things I am missing but those are the three main things! There is just so many things i saw on the internet that are “ai powered” or “ai improved workflow” that all claim are the best or some just use chat gpt so its essentially all the same thing. I thought id ask on here to see if anyone has actually tried and could recommend some ai tools out there! Cheers,

#reddit#best#tools

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MatthiasMayer•This week

Looking for an AI-driven solution to automate invoice management—any recommendations?

Hey everyone, I’m looking for a tool or service to simplify my invoice management process. Here’s the situation: I deal with a lot of invoices—mostly physical ones (petrol, business dinners, etc.) that I currently photograph and manually input into Excel. I include details like the execution date, invoice date, partner name, currency, and more. For digital invoices (e.g., software and tools we pay for), I often receive them via email or have to download them from a dashboard (we use Revolut Business, SEPA, and an ordinary Visa card for payments). To get everything in one place, I have to sync multiple sheets from different sources—quite the hassle. Currently, this process requires one person full-time, but I believe there should be a better way. Ideally, I’m looking for a solution where: Physical invoices can be photographed and automatically processed (data extracted and stored). Digital invoices can be imported directly from email or dashboards. All invoices (physical and digital) are saved to Google Drive (as proof), with relevant data exported to a Google Sheet. Does anyone know of a service/tool that can handle this in an efficient way, leveraging AI or automation? Any help is greatly appreciated! 😊

#reddit#looking#ai-driven

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AI_Scout_Official•This week

I run an AI automation agency (AAA). My honest overview and review of this new business model

I started an AI tools directory in February, and then branched off that to start an AI automation agency (AAA) in June. So far I've come across a lot of unsustainable "ideas" to make money with AI, but at the same time a few diamonds in the rough that aren't fully tapped into yet- especially the AAA model. Thought I'd share this post to shine light into this new business model and share some ways you could potentially start your own agency, or at the very least know who you are dealing with and how to pick and choose when you (inevitably) get bombarded with cold emails from them down the line. Foreword Running an AAA does NOT involve using AI tools directly to generate and sell content directly. That ship has sailed, and unless you are happy with $5 from Fiverr every month or so, it is not a real business model. Cry me a river but generating generic art with AI and slapping it onto a T-shirt to sell on Etsy won't make you a dime. At the same time, the AAA model will NOT require you to have a deep theoretical knowledge of AI, or any academic degree, as we are more so dealing with the practical applications of generative AI and how we can implement these into different workflows and tech-stacks, rather than building AI models from the ground up. Regardless of all that, common sense and a willingness to learn will help (a shit ton), as with anything. Keep in mind - this WILL involve work and motivation as well. The mindset that AI somehow means everything can be done for you on autopilot is not the right way to approach things. The common theme of businesses I've seen who have successfully implemented AI into their operations is the willingess to work with AI in a way that augments their existing operations, rather than flat out replace a worker or team. And this is exactly the train of thought you need when working with AI as a business model. However, as the field is relatively unsaturated and hype surrounding AI is still fresh for enterprises, right now is the prime time to start something new if generative AI interests you at all. With that being said, I'll be going over three of the most successful AI-adjacent businesses I've seen over this past year, in addition to some tips and resources to point you in the right direction. so.. WTF is an AI Automation Agency? The AI automation agency (or as some YouTubers have coined it, the AAA model) at its core involves creating custom AI solutions for businesses. I have over 1500 AI tools listed in my directory, however the feedback I've received from some enterprise users is that ready-made SaaS tools are too generic to meet their specific needs. Combine this with the fact virtually no smaller companies have the time or skills required to develop custom solutions right off the bat, and you have yourself real demand. I would say in practice, the AAA model is quite similar to Wordpress and even web dev agencies, with the major difference being all solutions you develop will incorporate key aspects of AI AND automation. Which brings me to my second point- JUST AI IS NOT ENOUGH. Rather than reducing the amount of time required to complete certain tasks, I've seen many AI agencies make the mistake of recommending and (trying to) sell solutions that more likely than not increase the workload of their clients. For example, if you were to make an internal tool that has AI answer questions based on their knowledge base, but this knowledge base has to be updated manually, this is creating unnecessary work. As such I think one of the key components of building successful AI solutions is incorporating the new (Generative AI/LLMs) with the old (programmtic automation- think Zapier, APIs, etc.). Finally, for this business model to be successful, ideally you should target a niche in which you have already worked and understand pain points and needs. Not only does this make it much easier to get calls booked with prospects, the solutions you build will have much greater value to your clients (meaning you get paid more). A mistake I've seen many AAA operators make (and I blame this on the "Get Rich Quick" YouTubers) is focusing too much on a specific productized service, rather than really understanding the needs of businesses. The former is much done via a SaaS model, but when going the agency route the only thing that makes sense is building custom solutions. This is why I always take a consultant-first approach. You can only build once you understand what they actually need and how certain solutions may impact their operations, workflows, and bottom-line. Basics of How to Get Started Pick a niche. As I mentioned previously, preferably one that you've worked in before. Niches I know of that are actively being bombarded with cold emails include real estate, e-commerce, auto-dealerships, lawyers, and medical offices. There is a reason for this, but I will tell you straight up this business model works well if you target any white-collar service business (internal tools approach) or high volume businesses (customer facing tools approach). Setup your toolbox. If you wanted to start a pressure washing business, you would need a pressure-washer. This is no different. For those without programming knowledge, I've seen two common ways AAA get setup to build- one is having a network of on-call web developers, whether its personal contacts or simply going to Upwork or any talent sourcing agency. The second is having an arsenal of no-code tools. I'll get to this more in a second, but this works beecause at its core, when we are dealing with the practical applications of AI, the code is quite simple, simply put. Start cold sales. Unless you have a network already, this is not a step you can skip. You've already picked a niche, so all you have to do is find the right message. Keep cold emails short, sweet, but enticing- and it will help a lot if you did step 1 correctly and intimately understand who your audience is. I'll be touching base later about how you can leverage AI yourself to help you with outreach and closing. The beauty of gen AI and the AAA model You don't need to be a seasoned web developer to make this business model work. The large majority of solutions that SME clients want is best done using an API for an LLM for the actual AI aspect. The value we create with the solutions we build comes with the conceptual framework and design that not only does what they need it to but integrates smoothly with their existing tech-stack and workflow. The actual implementation is quite straightforward once you understand the high level design and know which tools you are going to use. To give you a sense, even if you plan to build out these apps yourself (say in Python) the large majority of the nitty gritty technical work has already been done for you, especially if you leverage Python libraries and packages that offer high level abstraction for LLM-related functions. For instance, calling GPT can be as little as a single line of code. (And there are no-code tools where these functions are simply an icon on a GUI). Aside from understanding the capabilities and limitations of these tools and frameworks, the only thing that matters is being able to put them in a way that makes sense for what you want to build. Which is why outsourcing and no-code tools both work in our case. Okay... but how TF am I suppposed to actually build out these solutions? Now the fun part. I highly recommend getting familiar with Langchain and LlamaIndex. Both are Python libraires that help a lot with the high-level LLM abstraction I mentioned previously. The two most important aspects include being able to integrate internal data sources/knowledge bases with LLMs, and have LLMs perform autonomous actions. The two most common methods respectively are RAG and output parsing. RAG (retrieval augmented Generation) If you've ever seen a tool that seemingly "trains" GPT on your own data, and wonder how it all works- well I have an answer from you. At a high level, the user query is first being fed to what's called a vector database to run vector search. Vector search basically lets you do semantic search where you are searching data based on meaning. The vector databases then retrieves the most relevant sections of text as it relates to the user query, and this text gets APPENDED to your GPT prompt to provide extra context to the AI. Further, with prompt engineering, you can limit GPT to only generate an answer if it can be found within this extra context, greatly limiting the chance of hallucination (this is where AI makes random shit up). Aside from vector databases, we can also implement RAG with other data sources and retrieval methods, for example SQL databses (via parsing the outputs of LLM's- more on this later). Autonomous Agents via Output Parsing A common need of clients has been having AI actually perform tasks, rather than simply spitting out text. For example, with autonomous agents, we can have an e-commerce chatbot do the work of a basic customer service rep (i.e. look into orders, refunds, shipping). At a high level, what's going on is that the response of the LLM is being used programmtically to determine which API to call. Keeping on with the e-commerce example, if I wanted a chatbot to check shipping status, I could have a LLM response within my app (not shown to the user) with a prompt that outputs a random hash or string, and programmatically I can determine which API call to make based on this hash/string. And using the same fundamental concept as with RAG, I can append the the API response to a final prompt that would spit out the answer for the user. How No Code Tools Can Fit In (With some example solutions you can build) With that being said, you don't necessarily need to do all of the above by coding yourself, with Python libraries or otherwise. However, I will say that having that high level overview will help IMMENSELY when it comes to using no-code tools to do the actual work for you. Regardless, here are a few common solutions you might build for clients as well as some no-code tools you can use to build them out. Ex. Solution 1: AI Chatbots for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) This involves creating chatbots that handle user queries, lead gen, and so forth with AI, and will use the principles of RAG at heart. After getting the required data from your client (i.e. product catalogues, previous support tickets, FAQ, internal documentation), you upload this into your knowledge base and write a prompt that makes sense for your use case. One no-code tool that does this well is MyAskAI. The beauty of it especially for building external chatbots is the ability to quickly ingest entire websites into your knowledge base via a sitemap, and bulk uploading files. Essentially, they've covered the entire grunt work required to do this manually. Finally, you can create a inline or chat widget on your client's website with a few lines of HTML, or altneratively integrate it with a Slack/Teams chatbot (if you are going for an internal Q&A chatbot approach). Other tools you could use include Botpress and Voiceflow, however these are less for RAG and more for building out complete chatbot flows that may or may not incorporate LLMs. Both apps are essentially GUIs that eliminate the pain and tears and trying to implement complex flows manually, and both natively incoporate AI intents and a knowledge base feature. Ex. Solution 2: Internal Apps Similar to the first example, except we go beyond making just chatbots but tools such as report generation and really any sort of internal tool or automations that may incorporate LLM's. For instance, you can have a tool that automatically generates replies to inbound emails based on your client's knowledge base. Or an automation that does the same thing but for replies to Instagram comments. Another example could be a tool that generates a description and screeenshot based on a URL (useful for directory sites, made one for my own :P). Getting into more advanced implementations of LLMs, we can have tools that can generate entire drafts of reports (think 80+ pages), based not only on data from a knowledge base but also the writing style, format, and author voice of previous reports. One good tool to create content generation panels for your clients would be MindStudio. You can train LLM's via prompt engineering in a structured way with your own data to essentially fine tune them for whatever text you need it to generate. Furthermore, it has a GUI where you can dictate the entire AI flow. You can also upload data sources via multiple formats, including PDF, CSV, and Docx. For automations that require interactions between multiple apps, I recommend the OG zapier/make.com if you want a no-code solution. For instance, for the automatic email reply generator, I can have a trigger such that when an email is received, a custom AI reply is generated by MyAskAI, and finally a draft is created in my email client. Or, for an automation where I can create a social media posts on multiple platforms based on a RSS feed (news feed), I can implement this directly in Zapier with their native GPT action (see screenshot) As for more complex LLM flows that may require multiple layers of LLMs, data sources, and APIs working together to generate a single response i.e. a long form 100 page report, I would recommend tools such as Stack AI or Flowise (open-source alternative) to build these solutions out. Essentially, you get most of the functions and features of Python packages such as Langchain and LlamaIndex in a GUI. See screenshot for an example of a flow How the hell are you supposed to find clients? With all that being said, none of this matters if you can't find anyone to sell to. You will have to do cold sales, one way or the other, especially if you are brand new to the game. And what better way to sell your AI services than with AI itself? If we want to integrate AI into the cold outreach process, first we must identify what it's good at doing, and that's obviously writing a bunch of text, in a short amount of time. Similar to the solutions that an AAA can build for its clients, we can take advantage of the same principles in our own sales processes. How to do outreach Once you've identified your niche and their pain points/opportunities for automation, you want to craft a compelling message in which you can send via cold email and cold calls to get prospects booked on demos/consultations. I won't get into too much detail in terms of exactly how to write emails or calling scripts, as there are millions of resources to help with this, but I will tell you a few key points you want to keep in mind when doing outreach for your AAA. First, you want to keep in mind that many businesses are still hesitant about AI and may not understand what it really is or how it can benefit their operations. However, we can take advantage of how mass media has been reporting on AI this past year- at the very least people are AWARE that sooner or later they may have to implement AI into their businesses to stay competitive. We want to frame our message in a way that introduces generative AI as a technology that can have a direct, tangible, and positive impact on their business. Although it may be hard to quantify, I like to include estimates of man-hours saved or costs saved at least in my final proposals to prospects. Times are TOUGH right now, and money is expensive, so you need to have a compelling reason for businesses to get on board. Once you've gotten your messaging down, you will want to create a list of prospects to contact. Tools you can use to find prospects include Apollo.io, reply.io, zoominfo (expensive af), and Linkedin Sales Navigator. What specific job titles, etc. to target will depend on your niche but for smaller companies this will tend to be the owner. For white collar niches, i.e. law, the professional that will be directly benefiting from the tool (i.e. partners) may be better to contact. And for larger organizations you may want to target business improvement and digital transformation leads/directors- these are the people directly in charge of projects like what you may be proposing. Okay- so you have your message, and your list, and now all it comes down to is getting the good word out. I won't be going into the details of how to send these out, a quick Google search will give you hundreds of resources for cold outreach methods. However, personalization is key and beyond simple dynamic variables you want to make sure you can either personalize your email campaigns directly with AI (SmartWriter.ai is an example of a tool that can do this), or at the very least have the ability to import email messages programmatically. Alternatively, ask ChatGPT to make you a Python Script that can take in a list of emails, scrape info based on their linkedin URL or website, and all pass this onto a GPT prompt that specifies your messaging to generate an email. From there, send away. How tf do I close? Once you've got some prospects booked in on your meetings, you will need to close deals with them to turn them into clients. Call #1: Consultation Tying back to when I mentioned you want to take a consultant-first appraoch, you will want to listen closely to their goals and needs and understand their pain points. This would be the first call, and typically I would provide a high level overview of different solutions we could build to tacke these. It really helps to have a presentation available, so you can graphically demonstrate key points and key technologies. I like to use Plus AI for this, it's basically a Google Slides add-on that can generate slide decks for you. I copy and paste my default company messaging, add some key points for the presentation, and it comes out with pretty decent slides. Call #2: Demo The second call would involve a demo of one of these solutions, and typically I'll quickly prototype it with boilerplate code I already have, otherwise I'll cook something up in a no-code tool. If you have a niche where one type of solution is commonly demanded, it helps to have a general demo set up to be able to handle a larger volume of calls, so you aren't burning yourself out. I'll also elaborate on how the final product would look like in comparison to the demo. Call #3 and Beyond: Once the initial consultation and demo is complete, you will want to alleviate any remaining concerns from your prospects and work with them to reach a final work proposal. It's crucial you lay out exactly what you will be building (in writing) and ensure the prospect understands this. Furthermore, be clear and transparent with timelines and communication methods for the project. In terms of pricing, you want to take this from a value-based approach. The same solution may be worth a lot more to client A than client B. Furthermore, you can create "add-ons" such as monthly maintenance/upgrade packages, training sessions for employeees, and so forth, separate from the initial setup fee you would charge. How you can incorporate AI into marketing your businesses Beyond cold sales, I highly recommend creating a funnel to capture warm leads. For instance, I do this currently with my AI tools directory, which links directly to my AI agency and has consistent branding throughout. Warm leads are much more likely to close (and honestly, much nicer to deal with). However, even without an AI-related website, at the very least you will want to create a presence on social media and the web in general. As with any agency, you will want basic a professional presence. A professional virtual address helps, in addition to a Google Business Profile (GBP) and TrustPilot. a GBP (especially for local SEO) and Trustpilot page also helps improve the looks of your search results immensely. For GBP, I recommend using ProfilePro, which is a chrome extension you can use to automate SEO work for your GBP. Aside from SEO optimzied business descriptions based on your business, it can handle Q/A answers, responses, updates, and service descriptions based on local keywords. Privacy and Legal Concerns of the AAA Model Aside from typical concerns for agencies relating to service contracts, there are a few issues (especially when using no-code tools) that will need to be addressed to run a successful AAA. Most of these surround privacy concerns when working with proprietary data. In your terms with your client, you will want to clearly define hosting providers and any third party tools you will be using to build their solution, and a DPA with these third parties listed as subprocessors if necessary. In addition, you will want to implement best practices like redacting private information from data being used for building solutions. In terms of addressing concerns directly from clients, it helps if you host your solutions on their own servers (not possible with AI tools), and address the fact only ChatGPT queries in the web app, not OpenAI API calls, will be used to train OpenAI's models (as reported by mainstream media). The key here is to be open and transparent with your clients about ALL the tools you are using, where there data will be going, and make sure to get this all in writing. have fun, and keep an open mind Before I finish this post, I just want to reiterate the fact that this is NOT an easy way to make money. Running an AI agency will require hours and hours of dedication and work, and constantly rearranging your schedule to meet prospect and client needs. However, if you are looking for a new business to run, and have a knack for understanding business operations and are genuinely interested in the pracitcal applications of generative AI, then I say go for it. The time is ticking before AAA becomes the new dropshipping or SMMA, and I've a firm believer that those who set foot first and establish themselves in this field will come out top. And remember, while 100 thousand people may read this post, only 2 may actually take initiative and start.

#reddit#automation#agency

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Neuralearthnet•This week

Giving away AI Startup Ideas - but no traction? What am I doing wrong?

Hi All, I think with AI, tech will be democratized. I am fortunate and working on a new AI company with my technical partners but many do not have tech skills and don't know where to start. So I'm working on giving away ideas that can be built easily using no-code or low-code. However, not sure if I’m presenting these ideas wrong or no one really wants to build it. I mean it's no-code, but doesn't mean no-work. Startups take a lot of time and energy, no matter what. So far I've shared the following ideas and wanted to get your thoughts on it. Is it my presentation that's bad or the ideas. LOL. Honest feedback appreciated. You can see the a sample of presentation here on Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/C69xWvgvPAT/ and here are the ideas I've shared thus far: AI Coin Maker AI ADHD Holo device (a-la Humane or Rabbit AI but with a focus on ADHD) OnlyAIFans - OnlyFans but only using AI models AI Election Predictor and Poll Maker AI Real-Time Gen Z Translator AI Color Analysis for Fashion Thoughts?

#reddit#giving#away

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shidored•This week

Great business idea but no devs.

I have an idea for the Agile and Project management space. It deals with a tad bit of AI but can work completely without it too. Having worked as both a PM and SM I see some gaps in some of the industries that require them. Currently no tools offer this even big names like Microsoft Projects or Atlassian Jira. I'm like 99% sure if marketed correctly this thing will take off. But I have two problems 1) I am tech savy but cannot code well enough. So I need a full stack dev or a devops team. 2) I do not have the money to pay so the only way I can think of is a commission structure so that when the amount agreed is reached you paid in that manner or become a partner and get paid for life. I prefer second option as that means there will be a vested interest in seeing this succeed

#reddit#great#business

reddit

0

1

rasvi786•This week

Founder Pitch: AI Agent for Simplifying Public Cloud Management

Video to understand : https://youtu.be/9ocUjlUrU\w?si=S0ETDbKSdJqlVDyg Are You Ready to Redefine Cloud Management with AI? Imagine an intelligent AI agent that transforms the complexity of managing public cloud infrastructure into simple, natural language commands. No more navigating through endless configurations or deciphering technical documentation—our AI agent is here to revolutionize the way organizations interact with cloud platforms. About the Project We’re building an AI-powered agent designed to handle public cloud management tasks seamlessly. Whether you’re setting up your organization’s cloud foundation or deploying complex workloads, this AI agent makes it as easy as having a conversation. What Can the AI Agent Do? Cloud Foundation Setup: Example: “Please set up a cloud foundation blueprint for my organization on Google Cloud.”* The AI agent will ask key questions (e.g., organization ID) and guide you through authentication. Once authorized, it sets up the foundation using GCP APIs. Workload Deployment: Example: “Spin up a GKE cluster for me.”* The agent will ask for necessary details (e.g., number of nodes, VPC info), authenticate, and deploy the cluster in minutes. Security and Compliance Validation: Example: “Validate my organization’s cloud setup and check for security vulnerabilities.”* The agent audits your setup, identifies potential risks, and provides actionable insights. Current Progress We’ve developed a working prototype that integrates with major cloud providers like Google Cloud. The AI agent can already: Authenticate with cloud APIs Execute foundational tasks such as setting up organizations and spinning up clusters Perform initial security validations Who I’m Looking For I’m searching for a co-founder with enterprise sales experience and a strategic vision to grow our user base. You will be instrumental in helping us: Build relationships with companies willing to pilot our product Develop go-to-market strategies for enterprise adoption Identify opportunities for partnerships with cloud service providers Your Role As a co-founder, you’ll lead efforts to: Secure Pilot Programs: Identify and onboard enterprises for product trials to gather feedback and refine the solution. Drive Growth: Develop scalable strategies to grow our user base across industries. Market Positioning: Work with me to define our unique value proposition and establish thought leadership in the cloud management space. My Background I bring over a decade of experience in tech, with a strong focus on software engineering and infrastructure. My contributions so far include: Developing the core AI engine and cloud integrations Designing workflows that simplify complex cloud tasks Why Join This Project? Revolutionize Cloud Management: Be part of a project that will redefine how organizations interact with public clouds. Tackle Challenging Problems: Work at the cutting edge of AI and cloud computing. High Growth Potential: Join an industry projected to grow exponentially as enterprises embrace AI-driven automation. Build a Company from Scratch: Shape the product, team, and culture as we grow together. What’s Next? Our immediate priorities include: Expanding the AI agent’s capabilities to support multi-cloud setups. Conducting pilot programs with enterprise clients. Iterating on the product based on real-world feedback. What We Need to Succeed Expertise in enterprise sales and partnerships A deep understanding of enterprise challenges and cloud adoption trends A shared passion for leveraging AI to solve complex problems Let’s work together to build the future of cloud management. If you’re excited about this vision and bring the expertise we need, I’d love to connect and discuss how we can take this project to the next level.

#reddit#founder#pitch:

reddit

0

1

Chou789•This week

Digital Analytics and Marketing

I'm a Data Analyst with wide range of experience in this niche. Looking for partner to bring me clients and get a cut on the charges, i.e act as a agency connecting businesses with developers. Lately, I see that Developer costs in US/EU is skyrocketing and hiring a decent Data Analyst costs a fortune for companies, small companies can't even think of getting one. Already working with several small businesses and see that many small businesses have need somebody to play around their data but since it's a costly affair, mostly small businesses stick with Excel and Google Sheets as their database and don't leverage the potential of automation, now with AI/LLM, having proper data strategy is important. We can team up and provide reach these low hanging fruits. What i do: Data Reporting: Move clients current data systems from Excel, Google Sheets into Database/Datawarehouse Integrate data from different sources like Pipedrive, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Shopify etc and create automated custom reports on the data. Digital Marketing: For Shopify/Ecommernce site owners - Google Analytics Reporting Answer questions like Where is my traffic coming from, which traffic is working, how long they are staying in site, which products are working, product views to purchase ratio etc Custom Desktop Applications Custom: Have a custom idea? Let's discuss. DM me. Thanks. PS: Potential customers include ones who can't hire $50-$150/hr full time developers but want one at part time/freelancing type where they can get things done quickly/validating their ideas without burning their business.

#reddit#digital#analytics

reddit

0

1

Apprehensive_Form396•This week

Steep Learning : How I Mapped approximately 10K AI tools to 15K Replaceable Tasks across 4K professions

Hello Everyone , I would like to share some knowledge today which I went towards countless hours to do . I founded a portal called Seekme.ai, a comprehensive platform that houses over 10,000 AI tools and resources. Today, I'm excited to share with you an insightful and enlightening journey of how I mapped these tools to 15,000 tasks across 4,000 professions. This process, which I've named "Learn by Doing," got me the power of determination, collaboration, and adaptability. The Idea: It all started when I recognized the need for a more efficient and accessible way for professionals to understand which AI tools could help them automate their tasks. The traditional approach of manually researching and testing each AI tool for every profession was time-consuming and inefficient. I envisioned a solution that could streamline this process, making AI adoption easier and more accessible for a broader audience. The Planning: To begin, we needed a clear understanding of the task landscape across various professions. With the help of some Reddit communities , we embarked on an extensive study of common tasks in various industries. We utilized various sources, including government reports, industry surveys, and academic research, to create a comprehensive list of tasks. The result was an impressive list of 15,000 tasks. The Mapping: With the list of tasks in hand, the next step was to identify which AI tools could perform these tasks. I meticulously researched and analyzed each AI tool's capabilities and features. We cross-referenced this information with the tasks I had identified and created a mapping between the two. The process involved a significant amount of collaboration and refinement, as we continually updated and expanded our database of AI tools and tasks. The Challenges: The mapping process was not without its challenges. One of the primary obstacles was ensuring the accuracy and completeness of our data. To address this issue, I implemented a rigorous quality control process that included multiple rounds of checks and validations.I also established partnerships with industry experts and AI vendors to ensure our data was up-to-date and accurate. There is also a challenge that I faced was what is the quality of the tools which is the problem and how do I rank multiple tools if they do the same tasks without user feedback The Results: After months of hard work and dedication, I successfully mapped 10,000 AI tools to 15,000 tasks across 4,000 professions. Our new feature, AI by Profession, was born. This innovative will allow users to quickly and easily identify the AI tools that can automate tasks in their profession, making AI adoption more accessible and efficient than ever before. The Impact: The impact of this project has been significant. By making it easier for professionals to identify AI tools that can automate tasks in their industry, we're helping to drive productivity, efficiency, and innovation. Our users are saving time and resources by not having to manually research and test AI tools. Furthermore, we're contributing to the broader goal of democratizing AI and making it accessible to a broader audience. But there is a still an issue we face of ranking tools who does the similar job. For instance for content creation there 10 tools that can do same video editing so how do we rank it . We are planning to add categories to this to make it more exhaustive Conclusion: The journey to mapping 10,000 AI tools for 15,000 tasks across 4,000 professions was a challenging and rewarding experience. It required a significant amount of planning, determination, and collaboration, but the end result was a powerful tool that's making a difference in the lives of professionals around the world. I don’t know yet how useful it is yet for users So I am inviting you all to see if this feature can help you better equip yourself on the new wave and do things better. I am always up for a chat on anything AI and provide my help if needed. Looking forward to some feedback aswell

#reddit#steep#learning

reddit

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thewhitelynx•This week

Idea feedback: AI-native self-improvement & wellness

Hello redditors! Thesis: We're all trying to live our best lives and many of us try to leverage technology to become better faster and easier. I’m trying to build a company that builds an AI-native solution for self-improvement. My thesis is that AI is an incredibly powerful tool for solving problems, particularly in programming and generally life - but ChatGPT isn't really designed to be your long-term 'coach'. It's great for handling specific tasks, answering questions, doing research, etc. - but it's memory and UX isn't optimized around things like behavior change, mental health support, and long-term personal life planning I believe my core problems (which I think are shared by many) are: 1) Staying motivated - it's easy to lose motivation when progress isn't immediately apparent, there are setbacks, etc. 2) Self-doubt - it makes me question myself and waste time wondering if I'm the right person to be doing this, if the idea is too broad, etc. Some of this is good - but a lot of it just makes me less effective 3) Staying on Track - I start a thing, but then gradually pivot a million different directions. This may be a touch of ADHD. I find that I'll have a long-term goal (e.g. launching a successful business), but I'll tend to wonder a lot in the process of executing over weeks and months. Staying on track just feels suprisingly difficult. I do create TODO lists and have a Kanban board I’m considering a bunch of features and have built a version focused more specifically towards mental health which implements a few: \----- • Guided Journaling Guided journaling prompts to facilitate deeper reflection • Specialist AI Coaches Personalized, expert AI coaching for your specific area of focus and goals For startup, marketing, life, fashion, whatever you want. • Goal Tracking Define, track, and achieve your goals • Behavior Change & Habit Formation Leverage the science of behavior change to help you make lasting changes in your life • Mood tracking Track and improve your mood leveraging science-backed techniques • Areas for growth Identify and develop your strengths and manage your weaknesses • Insight reports Get personalized insights into your cognitive and behavioral patterns • Inspirational Quotes Stay motivated with curated daily quotes relevant to your journey • Gamification of Growth & Mood Turn your mental health journey into a game and earn rewards for your progress \---- Would love thoughts on the idea, and feedback - and if anyone is interested in being a design partner / early user, I'd love to chat in greater depth 1:1!

#reddit#idea#feedback:

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tensionreddit•This week

We are looking to solve your problems!

Hello everyone, We are a small team of developers who are passionate about AI and the many ways it can be used to solve real-world problems. We're not looking for any business partners or anything like that. Instead, we are looking for entrepreneurs who have ideas or problems they can't solve by themselves, simply because they don't have the time. Our goal is to combine different existing AI solutions and invest our time into creating new, innovative solutions to help entrepreneurs overcome their challenges. We believe that AI has the potential to make a real difference in the world, and we're eager to use our skills to help make that happen. If you're an entrepreneur who has a problem that you think could be solved with AI, we would love to hear from you. We're open to all kinds of ideas, so don't hesitate to get in touch. We'd love to hear from you! Best regards, James

#reddit#looking#solve

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doubleHelixSpiral•This week

TASVerify

The Opportunity: $10,000 to Launch the Future of Information Verification TrueAlphaSpiral (TAS) is seeking $10,000 in seed funding to develop a working prototype of our revolutionary verification system that will transform how businesses validate the accuracy and trustworthiness of information. The Problem In today's digital landscape: 76% of businesses report significant costs from inaccurate information AI systems frequently produce plausible but factually incorrect content ("hallucinations") Traditional verification tools use outdated binary (true/false) assessments that miss critical nuance Our Solution TrueAlphaSpiral is a next-generation verification system that: Analyzes content across multiple dimensions (factual, ethical, logical, experiential) Self-improves through innovative cybernetic feedback loops Provides specialized verification for high-value industries (healthcare, finance, media) Why $10,000 Now? Your seed investment will directly fund: Prototype Development ($6,000): Build a working demonstration of our core verification technology Technical Documentation ($2,000): Create essential materials for future development partners Initial Testing ($2,000): Validate our approach with pilot users in medical information verification 90-Day Roadmap With your funding, we will deliver: | Month | Milestone | Deliverable | |-------|-----------|-------------| | 1 | Core Algorithm Implementation | Functioning verification algorithm | | 2 | Basic API & Documentation | Developer documentation & test API | | 3 | Medical Verification Prototype | Demonstration with medical test cases | Market & Growth Potential Immediate Market: Medical content verification ($2.8B annual market) Expansion Markets: Financial services, media, and AI governance Total Addressable Market: $47.5B by 2028 Return on Investment Your $10,000 seed investment will: Secure 1.5% equity in TrueAlphaSpiral Position you for priority participation in our $500K pre-seed round (Q4 2025) Provide preferential terms in our $3M seed round (Q2 2026) Why Us, Why Now? Founding Team: Expertise in AI verification, cybernetics, and domain-specific knowledge Timing: Critical market need as AI content proliferates across industries Proven Concept: Preliminary results show 37% better accuracy than existing solutions Next Steps Initial $10,000 funding transfer to begin development Weekly progress updates and milestone reviews Demo day in 90 days to showcase working prototype

#reddit#tasverify

reddit

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1

rasvi786•This week

Founder Pitch: AI Agent for Simplifying Public Cloud Management

Video to understand : https://youtu.be/9ocUjlUrU\w?si=S0ETDbKSdJqlVDyg Are You Ready to Redefine Cloud Management with AI? Imagine an intelligent AI agent that transforms the complexity of managing public cloud infrastructure into simple, natural language commands. No more navigating through endless configurations or deciphering technical documentation—our AI agent is here to revolutionize the way organizations interact with cloud platforms. About the Project We’re building an AI-powered agent designed to handle public cloud management tasks seamlessly. Whether you’re setting up your organization’s cloud foundation or deploying complex workloads, this AI agent makes it as easy as having a conversation. What Can the AI Agent Do? Cloud Foundation Setup: Example: “Please set up a cloud foundation blueprint for my organization on Google Cloud.”* The AI agent will ask key questions (e.g., organization ID) and guide you through authentication. Once authorized, it sets up the foundation using GCP APIs. Workload Deployment: Example: “Spin up a GKE cluster for me.”* The agent will ask for necessary details (e.g., number of nodes, VPC info), authenticate, and deploy the cluster in minutes. Security and Compliance Validation: Example: “Validate my organization’s cloud setup and check for security vulnerabilities.”* The agent audits your setup, identifies potential risks, and provides actionable insights. Current Progress We’ve developed a working prototype that integrates with major cloud providers like Google Cloud. The AI agent can already: Authenticate with cloud APIs Execute foundational tasks such as setting up organizations and spinning up clusters Perform initial security validations Who I’m Looking For I’m searching for a co-founder with enterprise sales experience and a strategic vision to grow our user base. You will be instrumental in helping us: Build relationships with companies willing to pilot our product Develop go-to-market strategies for enterprise adoption Identify opportunities for partnerships with cloud service providers Your Role As a co-founder, you’ll lead efforts to: Secure Pilot Programs: Identify and onboard enterprises for product trials to gather feedback and refine the solution. Drive Growth: Develop scalable strategies to grow our user base across industries. Market Positioning: Work with me to define our unique value proposition and establish thought leadership in the cloud management space. My Background I bring over a decade of experience in tech, with a strong focus on software engineering and infrastructure. My contributions so far include: Developing the core AI engine and cloud integrations Designing workflows that simplify complex cloud tasks Why Join This Project? Revolutionize Cloud Management: Be part of a project that will redefine how organizations interact with public clouds. Tackle Challenging Problems: Work at the cutting edge of AI and cloud computing. High Growth Potential: Join an industry projected to grow exponentially as enterprises embrace AI-driven automation. Build a Company from Scratch: Shape the product, team, and culture as we grow together. What’s Next? Our immediate priorities include: Expanding the AI agent’s capabilities to support multi-cloud setups. Conducting pilot programs with enterprise clients. Iterating on the product based on real-world feedback. What We Need to Succeed Expertise in enterprise sales and partnerships A deep understanding of enterprise challenges and cloud adoption trends A shared passion for leveraging AI to solve complex problems Let’s work together to build the future of cloud management. If you’re excited about this vision and bring the expertise we need, I’d love to connect and discuss how we can take this project to the next level.

#reddit#founder#pitch:

reddit

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Individual_Brain_513•This week

AI ChatBo Business System Digital - Software Bring Yours SALES UP + COSTS DOWN With Digital Systems

Recommend the AI ​​ChatBo Business System from especially for coaches & consultants, e-commerce and retail and build a passive income in the mega-trend of AI & WhatsApp marketing. Your advantages: Lifetime 10 percent recurring commissions for the software licenses. One-off 10% for the service. ​No more losses due to changing browsers and devices thanks to the unique multi-device tracking using hash key technology from our partner Klick-Tip (commissions are 46 percent higher on average). One of the largest companies in the German-speaking region for digital payment processing. Software made and hosted in Germany. Click here to get it now: https://bit.ly/3TXNKm9 Start with a little and let it grow ChatboOne is THE all-in-one solution for marketing and sales and is available in three versions... Base \- reduces your manual effort, improves the overview of your sales campaigns and increases the conversion of your website. Expert \- Automates communication with customers and interested parties, offers campaigns via email and WhatsApp and makes planning your customer appointments easier. Professional \- The complete package including websites and landing pages, member area and affiliate marketing tool. Brilliant for you: no matter where you are with your business, start at the optimal level and let the system grow with you until you reach the professional level. ​ Click here to get it now: https://bit.ly/3TXNKm9 ​

#reddit#chatbo#business

reddit

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1

Chou789•This week

Digital Analytics and Marketing

I'm a Data Analyst with wide range of experience in this niche. Looking for partner to bring me clients and get a cut on the charges, i.e act as a agency connecting businesses with developers. Lately, I see that Developer costs in US/EU is skyrocketing and hiring a decent Data Analyst costs a fortune for companies, small companies can't even think of getting one. Already working with several small businesses and see that many small businesses have need somebody to play around their data but since it's a costly affair, mostly small businesses stick with Excel and Google Sheets as their database and don't leverage the potential of automation, now with AI/LLM, having proper data strategy is important. We can team up and provide reach these low hanging fruits. What i do: Data Reporting: Move clients current data systems from Excel, Google Sheets into Database/Datawarehouse Integrate data from different sources like Pipedrive, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Shopify etc and create automated custom reports on the data. Digital Marketing: For Shopify/Ecommernce site owners - Google Analytics Reporting Answer questions like Where is my traffic coming from, which traffic is working, how long they are staying in site, which products are working, product views to purchase ratio etc Custom Desktop Applications Custom: Have a custom idea? Let's discuss. DM me. Thanks. PS: Potential customers include ones who can't hire $50-$150/hr full time developers but want one at part time/freelancing type where they can get things done quickly/validating their ideas without burning their business.

#reddit#digital#analytics

reddit

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1

Background_Value_610•This week

What are your thoughts on this AI-Powered Interest Rate Negotiation Service Business Model?

Value Proposition: Helps homebuyers secure the best mortgage rates through AI-driven negotiation. Saves time and effort by automating communication with multiple lenders. Increases chances of approval at a favorable rate. Customer Segments: First-time homebuyers Homeowners refinancing their mortgages Investors seeking lower interest rates Revenue Streams: Subscription-based model (monthly/one-time fee for AI-powered negotiation) Success-based fee (small percentage of interest savings upon approval) Affiliate commissions from mortgage lenders for closed deals Channels: Website with a step-by-step AI-powered negotiation tool API integration with mortgage marketplaces Email and social media marketing targeting homebuyers Customer Relationships: AI-powered chatbot and live support for users Automated email sequences keeping users informed Personalized mortgage rate tracking & negotiation updates Key Activities: Developing AI models for lender negotiation Automating email and lender response handling Expanding partnerships with mortgage providers Key Resources: AI/ML engineers to refine the negotiation model CRM system for tracking lender-client interactions Email automation and lead generation tools Key Partners: Mortgage lenders willing to negotiate rates AI-powered email automation services Real estate and mortgage brokers Cost Structure: AI model training and maintenance Web platform hosting and development Compliance and legal expenses

#reddit#your#thoughts

reddit

0

0

doubleHelixSpiral•This week

TASVerify-MTS: The Gold Standard for Al Verification in Healthcare

The Problem: AI hallucinations in healthcare pose significant risks—misinformation can lead to misdiagnosis, malpractice, and regulatory non-compliance, jeopardizing patient safety and institutional integrity. The Solution: MedicalTestSuite is an AI-powered validation and compliance framework designed to ensure that medical AI outputs are accurate, reliable, and fully aligned with regulatory standards. The Market Need: As AI adoption in healthcare accelerates, the demand for verifiable, trustworthy AI-generated medical content has never been greater. Hospitals, AI developers, and healthcare enterprises require robust solutions to mitigate risk and ensure compliance. The Opportunity: We are seeking a strategic business partner to help scale MedicalTestSuite into the leading compliance solution for medical AI. With our automated, regulatory-aligned framework, we offer a competitive edge to organizations aiming to harness AI while maintaining the highest standards of accuracy and safety. If you share our vision for responsible AI in healthcare, let’s connect and drive this transformation together.

#reddit#tasverify-mts:#gold

reddit

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1

Chou789•This week

Digital Analytics and Marketing

I'm a Data Analyst with wide range of experience in this niche. Looking for partner to bring me clients and get a cut on the charges, i.e act as a agency connecting businesses with developers. Lately, I see that Developer costs in US/EU is skyrocketing and hiring a decent Data Analyst costs a fortune for companies, small companies can't even think of getting one. Already working with several small businesses and see that many small businesses have need somebody to play around their data but since it's a costly affair, mostly small businesses stick with Excel and Google Sheets as their database and don't leverage the potential of automation, now with AI/LLM, having proper data strategy is important. We can team up and provide reach these low hanging fruits. What i do: Data Reporting: Move clients current data systems from Excel, Google Sheets into Database/Datawarehouse Integrate data from different sources like Pipedrive, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Shopify etc and create automated custom reports on the data. Digital Marketing: For Shopify/Ecommernce site owners - Google Analytics Reporting Answer questions like Where is my traffic coming from, which traffic is working, how long they are staying in site, which products are working, product views to purchase ratio etc Custom Desktop Applications Custom: Have a custom idea? Let's discuss. DM me. Thanks. PS: Potential customers include ones who can't hire $50-$150/hr full time developers but want one at part time/freelancing type where they can get things done quickly/validating their ideas without burning their business.

#reddit#digital#analytics

reddit

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Apprehensive_Form396•This week

Steep Learning : How I Mapped approximately 10K AI tools to 15K Replaceable Tasks across 4K professions

Hello Everyone , I would like to share some knowledge today which I went towards countless hours to do . I founded a portal called Seekme.ai, a comprehensive platform that houses over 10,000 AI tools and resources. Today, I'm excited to share with you an insightful and enlightening journey of how I mapped these tools to 15,000 tasks across 4,000 professions. This process, which I've named "Learn by Doing," got me the power of determination, collaboration, and adaptability. The Idea: It all started when I recognized the need for a more efficient and accessible way for professionals to understand which AI tools could help them automate their tasks. The traditional approach of manually researching and testing each AI tool for every profession was time-consuming and inefficient. I envisioned a solution that could streamline this process, making AI adoption easier and more accessible for a broader audience. The Planning: To begin, we needed a clear understanding of the task landscape across various professions. With the help of some Reddit communities , we embarked on an extensive study of common tasks in various industries. We utilized various sources, including government reports, industry surveys, and academic research, to create a comprehensive list of tasks. The result was an impressive list of 15,000 tasks. The Mapping: With the list of tasks in hand, the next step was to identify which AI tools could perform these tasks. I meticulously researched and analyzed each AI tool's capabilities and features. We cross-referenced this information with the tasks I had identified and created a mapping between the two. The process involved a significant amount of collaboration and refinement, as we continually updated and expanded our database of AI tools and tasks. The Challenges: The mapping process was not without its challenges. One of the primary obstacles was ensuring the accuracy and completeness of our data. To address this issue, I implemented a rigorous quality control process that included multiple rounds of checks and validations.I also established partnerships with industry experts and AI vendors to ensure our data was up-to-date and accurate. There is also a challenge that I faced was what is the quality of the tools which is the problem and how do I rank multiple tools if they do the same tasks without user feedback The Results: After months of hard work and dedication, I successfully mapped 10,000 AI tools to 15,000 tasks across 4,000 professions. Our new feature, AI by Profession, was born. This innovative will allow users to quickly and easily identify the AI tools that can automate tasks in their profession, making AI adoption more accessible and efficient than ever before. The Impact: The impact of this project has been significant. By making it easier for professionals to identify AI tools that can automate tasks in their industry, we're helping to drive productivity, efficiency, and innovation. Our users are saving time and resources by not having to manually research and test AI tools. Furthermore, we're contributing to the broader goal of democratizing AI and making it accessible to a broader audience. But there is a still an issue we face of ranking tools who does the similar job. For instance for content creation there 10 tools that can do same video editing so how do we rank it . We are planning to add categories to this to make it more exhaustive Conclusion: The journey to mapping 10,000 AI tools for 15,000 tasks across 4,000 professions was a challenging and rewarding experience. It required a significant amount of planning, determination, and collaboration, but the end result was a powerful tool that's making a difference in the lives of professionals around the world. I don’t know yet how useful it is yet for users So I am inviting you all to see if this feature can help you better equip yourself on the new wave and do things better. I am always up for a chat on anything AI and provide my help if needed. Looking forward to some feedback aswell

#reddit#steep#learning

reddit

0

1

Background_Value_610•This week

What are your thoughts on this AI-Powered Interest Rate Negotiation Service Business Model?

Value Proposition: Helps homebuyers secure the best mortgage rates through AI-driven negotiation. Saves time and effort by automating communication with multiple lenders. Increases chances of approval at a favorable rate. Customer Segments: First-time homebuyers Homeowners refinancing their mortgages Investors seeking lower interest rates Revenue Streams: Subscription-based model (monthly/one-time fee for AI-powered negotiation) Success-based fee (small percentage of interest savings upon approval) Affiliate commissions from mortgage lenders for closed deals Channels: Website with a step-by-step AI-powered negotiation tool API integration with mortgage marketplaces Email and social media marketing targeting homebuyers Customer Relationships: AI-powered chatbot and live support for users Automated email sequences keeping users informed Personalized mortgage rate tracking & negotiation updates Key Activities: Developing AI models for lender negotiation Automating email and lender response handling Expanding partnerships with mortgage providers Key Resources: AI/ML engineers to refine the negotiation model CRM system for tracking lender-client interactions Email automation and lead generation tools Key Partners: Mortgage lenders willing to negotiate rates AI-powered email automation services Real estate and mortgage brokers Cost Structure: AI model training and maintenance Web platform hosting and development Compliance and legal expenses

#reddit#your#thoughts

github

0.476

0.004852164397547106

turing-machines•Mar 28, 2025

mentals-ai

Mentals AI is a tool designed for creating and operating agents that feature loops, memory, and various tools, all through straightforward markdown files with a .gen extension. Think of an agent file as an executable file. You focus entirely on the logic of the agent, eliminating the necessity to write scaffolding code in Python or any other language. Essentially, it redefines the foundational frameworks for future AI applications 🍓 [!NOTE] [work in progress] A local vector database to store your chats with the agents as well as your private information. See memory branch. [work in progress] Web UI with agents, tools, and vector storage Getting Started Differences from Other Frameworks Key Concepts Instruction (prompt) Working Memory (context) Short-Term Memory (experimental) Control flow: From strings to algorithms Roadmap The Idea 📌 Examples Word chain game in a self-loop controlled by LLM: !Word Chain game in a loop NLOP — Natural Language Operation Or more complex use cases: | 🔄 Any multi-agent interactions | 👾 Space Invaders generator agent | 🍄 2D platformer generator agent | |--------------------|-----------|--------------| |!react | !spaceinvaders.gen | !mario.gen | Or help with the content: Collect YouTube videos on a given topic and save them to a .csv file with the videos, views, channel name, and link; Get the transcription from the video and create a table of contents; Take top news from Hacker News, choose a topic and write an article on the topic with the participation of the critic, and save to a file. All of the above examples are located in the agents folder. [!NOTE] Llama3 support is available for providers using a compatible OpenAI API. 🚀 Getting Started Begin by securing an OpenAI API key through the creation of an OpenAI account. If you already have an API key, skip this step. 🏗️ Build and Run Prerequisites Before building the project, ensure the following dependencies are installed: libcurl: Used for making HTTP requests libfmt: Provides an API for formatting pgvector: Vector operations with PostgreSQL poppler: Required for PDF processing Depending on your operating system, you can install these using the following commands: Linux macOS Windows For Windows, it's recommended to use vcpkg or a similar package manager: pgvector installation [!NOTE] In the main branch you can skip this step Build from sources Docker, Homebrew, PGXN, APT, etc. Clone the repository Configuration Place your API key in the config.toml file: Build the project Run 🆚 Differences from Other Frameworks Mentals AI distinguishes itself from other frameworks in three significant ways: The Agent Executor 🧠 operates through a recursive loop. The LLM determines the next steps: selecting instructions (prompts) and managing data based on previous loops. This recursive decision-making process is integral to our system, outlined in mentalssystem.prompt Agents of any complexity can be created using Markdown, eliminating the need for traditional programming languages. However, Python can be integrated directly into the agent's Markdown script if necessary. Unlike platforms that include preset reasoning frameworks, Mentals AI serves as a blank canvas. It enables the creation and integration of your own reasoning frameworks, including existing ones: Tree of Thoughts, ReAct, Self-Discovery, Auto-CoT, and others. One can also link these frameworks together into more complex sequences, even creating a network of various reasoning frameworks. 🗝️ Key Concepts The agent file is a textual description of the agent instructions with a .gen extension. 📖 Instruction (prompt) Instruction is the basic component of an agent in Mentals. An agent can consist of one or more instructions, which can refer to each other. Instructions can be written in free form, but they always have a name that starts with the # symbol. The use: directive is used to specify a reference to other instructions. Multiple references are listed separated by commas. Below is an example with two instructions root and meme_explain with a reference: In this example, the root instruction calls the memeexplain instruction. The response from memeexplain is then returned to the instruction from which it was called, namely the root. An instruction can take an input parameter, which is automatically generated based on the context when the instruction is called. To specify the input data more precisely, you can use a free-form prompt in the input: directive, such as a JSON object or null. Using a document for input: Using a JSON object as input: [!NOTE] Instruction calls are implemented independently from function or tool calls at OpenAI, enabling the operation of agents with models like Llama3. The implementation of instruction calls is transparent and included in the mentals_system.prompt file. 🛠️ Tool Tool is a kind of instruction. Mentals has a set of native tools to handle message output, user input, file handling, Python interpreter, Bash commands, and Short-term memory. Ask user example: File handling example: The full list of native tools is listed in the file native_tools.toml. 🧠 Working Memory (context) Each instruction has its own working memory — context. When exiting an instruction and re-entering it, the context is kept by default. To clear the context when exiting an instruction, you can use the keep_context: false directive: By default, the size of the instruction context is not limited. To limit the context, there is a directive max_context: number which specifies that only the number of the most recent messages should be stored. Older messages will be pushed out of the context. This feature is useful when you want to keep the most recent data in context so that older data does not affect the chain of reasoning. ⏳ Short-Term Memory (experimental) Short-term memory allows for the storage of intermediate results from an agent's activities, which can then be used for further reasoning. The contents of this memory are accessible across all instruction contexts. The memory tool is used to store data. When data is stored, a keyword and a description of the content are generated. In the example below, the meme_recall instruction is aware of the meme because it was previously stored in memory. ⚙️ Control flow: From strings to algorithms The control flow, which includes conditions, instruction calls, and loops (such as ReAct, Auto-CoT, etc.), is fully expressed in natural language. This method enables the creation of semantic conditions that direct data stream branching. For instance, you can request an agent to autonomously play a word chain game in a loop or establish an ambiguous exit condition: exit the loop if you are satisfied with the result. Here, the language model and its context determine whether to continue or stop. All this is achieved without needing to define flow logic in Python or any other programming language. ⚖️ Reason Action (ReAct) example 🌳 Tree of Thoughts (ToT) example The idea behind ToT is to generate multiple ideas to solve a problem and then evaluate their value. Valuable ideas are kept and developed, other ideas are discarded. Let's take the example of the 24 game. The 24 puzzle is an arithmetical puzzle in which the objective is to find a way to manipulate four integers so that the end result is 24. First, we define the instruction that creates and manipulates the tree data structure. The model knows what a tree is and can represent it in any format, from plain text to XML/JSON or any custom format. In this example, we will use the plain text format: Next, we need to initialize the tree with initial data, let's start with the root instruction: Calling the root instruction will suggest 8 possible next steps to calculate with the first 2 numbers and store these steps as tree nodes. Further work by the agent results in the construction of a tree that is convenient for the model to understand and infer the final answer. A complete example is contained in the agents/treestructure.gen 🗺️ Roadmap [ ] Web UI -- WIP [ ] Vector database tools -- WIP [ ] Agent's experience (experimental) [ ] Tools: Image generation, Browser ✨ The Idea The concept originated from studies on psychoanalysis Executive functions, Exploring Central Executive, Alan Baddeley, 1996. He described a system that orchestrates cognitive processes and working memory, facilitating retrievals from long-term memory. The LLM functions as System 1, processing queries and executing instructions without inherent motivation or goal-setting. So, what then is System 2? Drawing from historical insights now reconsidered through a scientific lens: The central executive, or executive functions, is crucial for controlled processing in working memory. It manages tasks including directing attention, maintaining task objectives, decision-making, and memory retrieval. This sparks an intriguing possibility: constructing more sophisticated agents by integrating System 1 and System 2. The LLM, as the cognitive executor System 1, works in tandem with the Central Executive System 2, which governs and controls the LLM. This partnership forms the dual relationship foundational to Mentals AI.

#github#mentals-ai

github

0.542

0.07574427540822147

Tencent•Mar 27, 2025

PhoenixGo

!PhoenixGo PhoenixGo is a Go AI program which implements the AlphaGo Zero paper "Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge". It is also known as "BensonDarr" and "金毛测试" in FoxGo, "cronus" in CGOS, and the champion of World AI Go Tournament 2018 held in Fuzhou China. If you use PhoenixGo in your project, please consider mentioning in your README. If you use PhoenixGo in your research, please consider citing the library as follows: Building and Running On Linux Requirements GCC with C++11 support Bazel (0.19.2 is known-good) (Optional) CUDA and cuDNN for GPU support (Optional) TensorRT (for accelerating computation on GPU, 3.0.4 is known-good) The following environments have also been tested by independent contributors : here. Other versions may work, but they have not been tested (especially for bazel). Download and Install Bazel Before starting, you need to download and install bazel, see here. For PhoenixGo, bazel (0.19.2 is known-good), read Requirements for details If you have issues on how to install or start bazel, you may want to try this all-in-one command line for easier building instead, see FAQ question Building PhoenixGo with Bazel Clone the repository and configure the building: ./configure will start the bazel configure : ask where CUDA and TensorRT have been installed, specify them if need. Then build with bazel: Dependices such as Tensorflow will be downloaded automatically. The building process may take a long time. Recommendation : the bazel building uses a lot of RAM, if your building environment is lack of RAM, you may need to restart your computer and exit other running programs to free as much RAM as possible. Running PhoenixGo Download and extract the trained network: The PhoenixGo engine supports GTP (Go Text Protocol), which means it can be used with a GUI with GTP capability, such as Sabaki. It can also run on command-line GTP server tools like gtp2ogs. But PhoenixGo does not support all GTP commands, see FAQ question. There are 2 ways to run PhoenixGo engine 1) start.sh : easy use Run the engine : scripts/start.sh start.sh will automatically detect the number of GPUs, run mcts_main with proper config file, and write log files in directory log. You could also use a customized config file (.conf) by running scripts/start.sh {config_path}. If you want to do that, see also #configure-guide. 2) mcts_main : fully control If you want to fully control all the options of mcts_main (such as changing log destination, or if start.sh is not compatible for your specific use), you can run directly bazel-bin/mcts/mcts_main instead. For a typical usage, these command line options should be added: --gtp to enable GTP mode --config_path=replace/with/path/to/your/config/file to specify the path to your config file it is also needed to edit your config file (.conf) and manually add the full path to ckpt, see FAQ question. You can also change options in config file, see #configure-guide. for other command line options , see also #command-line-options for details, or run ./mcts_main --help . A copy of the --help is provided for your convenience here For example: (Optional) : Distribute mode PhoenixGo support running with distributed workers, if there are GPUs on different machine. Build the distribute worker: Run distzeromodel_server on distributed worker, one for each GPU. Fill ip:port of workers in the config file (etc/mcts_dist.conf is an example config for 32 workers), and run the distributed master: On macOS Note: Tensorflow stop providing GPU support on macOS since 1.2.0, so you are only able to run on CPU. Use Pre-built Binary Download and extract CPU-only version (macOS) Follow the document included in the archive : usingphoenixgoon_mac.pdf Building from Source Same as Linux. On Windows Recommendation: See FAQ question, to avoid syntax errors in config file and command line options on Windows. Use Pre-built Binary GPU version : The GPU version is much faster, but works only with compatible nvidia GPU. It supports this environment : CUDA 9.0 only cudnn 7.1.x (x is any number) or lower for CUDA 9.0 no AVX, AVX2, AVX512 instructions supported in this release (so it is currently much slower than the linux version) there is no TensorRT support on Windows Download and extract GPU version (Windows) Then follow the document included in the archive : how to install phoenixgo.pdf note : to support special features like CUDA 10.0 or AVX512 for example, you can build your own build for windows, see #79 CPU-only version : If your GPU is not compatible, or if you don't want to use a GPU, you can download this CPU-only version (Windows), Follow the document included in the archive : how to install phoenixgo.pdf Configure Guide Here are some important options in the config file: numevalthreads: should equal to the number of GPUs num_search_threads: should a bit larger than num_eval_threads evalbatchsize timeoutmsper_step: how many time will used for each move maxsimulationsper_step: how many simulations(also called playouts) will do for each move gpu_list: use which GPUs, separated by comma modelconfig -> traindir: directory where trained network stored modelconfig -> checkpointpath: use which checkpoint, get from train_dir/checkpoint if not set modelconfig -> enabletensorrt: use TensorRT or not modelconfig -> tensorrtmodelpath: use which TensorRT model, if enabletensorrt maxsearchtree_size: the maximum number of tree nodes, change it depends on memory size maxchildrenper_node: the maximum children of each node, change it depends on memory size enablebackgroundsearch: pondering in opponent's time earlystop: genmove may return before timeoutmsperstep, if the result would not change any more unstable_overtime: think timeout_ms_per_step time_factor more if the result still unstable behind_overtime: think timeout_ms_per_step timefactor more if winrate less than actthreshold Options for distribute mode: enable_dist: enable distribute mode distsvraddrs: ip:port of distributed workers, multiple lines, one ip:port in each line distconfig -> timeoutms: RPC timeout Options for async distribute mode: Async mode is used when there are huge number of distributed workers (more than 200), which need too many eval threads and search threads in sync mode. etc/mctsasyncdist.conf is an example config for 256 workers. enable_async: enable async mode enable_dist: enable distribute mode distsvraddrs: multiple lines, comma sperated lists of ip:port for each line numevalthreads: should equal to number of distsvraddrs lines evaltaskqueue_size: tunning depend on number of distribute workers numsearchthreads: tunning depend on number of distribute workers Read mcts/mcts_config.proto for more config options. Command Line Options mcts_main accept options from command line: --config_path: path of config file --gtp: run as a GTP engine, if disable, gen next move only --init_moves: initial moves on the go board, for example usage, see FAQ question --gpulist: override gpulist in config file --listen_port: work with --gtp, run gtp engine on port in TCP protocol --allowip: work with --listenport, list of client ip allowed to connect --forkperrequest: work with --listen_port, fork for each request or not Glog options are also supported: --logtostderr: log message to stderr --log_dir: log to files in this directory --minloglevel: log level, 0 - INFO, 1 - WARNING, 2 - ERROR --v: verbose log, --v=1 for turning on some debug log, --v=0 to turning off mcts_main --help for more command line options. A copy of the --help is provided for your convenience here Analysis For analysis purpose, an easy way to display the PV (variations for main move path) is --logtostderr --v=1 which will display the main move path winrate and continuation of moves analyzed, see FAQ question for details It is also possible to analyse .sgf files using analysis tools such as : GoReviewPartner : an automated tool to analyse and/or review one or many .sgf files (saved as .rsgf file). It supports PhoenixGo and other bots. See FAQ question for details FAQ You will find a lot of useful and important information, also most common problems and errors and how to fix them Please take time to read the FAQ

#github#phoenixgo

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0.381

0.44

howtoai•Mar 27, 2025

How I run a $13,900/MONTH faceless Instagram theme page [FULL COURSE]

How to create viral motivational videos for Instagram theme pages. Step-By-Step Document 👉 https://go.howtoai.pro/motivational Pre-monetized YouTube accounts with 1,000 subscribers & 4,000 watch hours ✅ https://tikaccounts.com/products/youtube ⭐️ Apply to work with me 1-on-1: https://apply.facelesslaunchpad.com/ 👉 100% FREE community: https://whop.com/howtoai/ 👉 More YouTube Automation videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwcK9-wSIWXHbhznPFFwgXlB1vr-HCkJR 👉 Newsletter about the latest AI news: https://www.dailyaiedge.com/subscribe This video will show you everything related to creating YouTube Shorts automation videos in the animal niche. If you want to start a faceless Shorts channel, watch this video. 🚨 ALL TOOL LINKS ARE IN THE STEP-BY-STEP DOCUMENT AT THE TOP OF THE DESCRIPTION 🚨 🔗 LINKS 🔗 📢 100% FREE Discord community: https://whop.com/howtoai/ 🚀 Viral TikTok Background Footage: https://howtoai.pro/products/viral-tiktok-gameplay 🔥 Trending Sound Effects Pack: https://howtoai.pro/products/trending-tiktok-sound-effects ✉️ Email newsletter on how to leverage AI (100% free): https://www.dailyaiedge.com/subscribe Welcome to howtoai, your ultimate destination for learning how to use AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney. Our channel provides high-quality tutorials and guides covering topics such as natural language processing, machine learning, and computer vision. Our goal is to make complex AI concepts easy to understand and accessible to all, whether you're a beginner or an experienced user. For extra clarification, this video will show you how to start a faceless Instagram theme page to make money online. I will teach you how to use certain AI tools to make money online, and most importantly, get good results running a faceless Instagram account. So if you want to start an Instagram theme page business, watch this video. Sponsorships or other business inquiries? Email us at: partnerships@howtoai.pro #howtomakemoneyonline #instagramreels

#howtomakemoneyonline#instagramreels

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0.384

0.57

Mos Nassar•Mar 20, 2025

AI Created My Game in 6 Hours... Vibe Coding so you don't have to

Vibe Coding with AI promised to revolutionize game development, so I tested it for 6 hours straight. I let AI build my entire Game from scratch. I'm sacrificing my time so you don't have to Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3161930/DuckNorrisTales/ Duck Norris Tales demo : https://octomos.itch.io/duck-norris-cluckys-nightmare Live Da Life discord : https://discord.gg/RfSFtBHy3z Website : https://livedalife.io/ Twitter : https://twitter.com/livedalifeacad Main Twitter: https://twitter.com/MosNassar_ My Gear: Sony a7iii: https://amzn.to/3nJNALH Sony 24-105mm f/4.0 : https://amzn.to/38L7Lo2 Sony FE 28 mm f/2-22: https://amzn.to/35MBviF SONY FE 55mm F1.8 Z: https://amzn.to/3nNsOdW Aputure AL-MC : https://amzn.to/38PlREQ Learn how I edit my videos from this FREE ONLINE COURSE (14 days free trial link) : https://skl.sh/2W9aBMK Color grading Course : https://skl.sh/2QQijM6 Get 30 Days free trial of Epidemic Sound: https://epidemicsound.com/referral/xkr7og/ GET IN TOUCH : Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mosnassar_ Twitter - https://twitter.com/MosNassar_ My Merch : https://teespring.com/stores/uncover If you enjoyed this video don't forget to LIKE, COMMENT, and smash that SUBSCRIBE button! DISCLAIMER: Links above include affiliate commission or referrals. I'm part of an affiliate network and I receive small compensation from partnering websites (at no extra cost to you!) and keep this channel going. Thanks for your support!

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Simon Scrapes | AI Agents & Automation•Feb 21, 2025

The only video you need to Master N8N + AI agents (For complete beginners)

Serious about Implementing AI? Shortcut your Path HERE, and connect with +300 entrepreneurs on the same mission: https://www.skool.com/scrapes This is a comprehensive 4hr course with all the secrets I've learned from 8 months of building out N8N workflows for my clients (over 100+ workflows!). During this course we'll cover everything you need to shortcut your journey into building automations with N8N, AI Agents & workflow automation! 🛠️ Links (affiliate) • n8n: https://n8n.partnerlinks.io/scrapesai 📧 Curated roundups of real-world AI implementations 📧 https://scrapes-ai.kit.com/b6b1a73dfd Want more? https://www.youtube.com/@simonscrapes?sub_confirmation=1 🚧 Looking for custom built AI agents for your business? 🚧 https://automake.io 💬 Share in the comments what you learnt during the video! 0:00:00 - Course Overview 0:04:12 - SECTION 1 - Getting started 0:09:57 - 1.1. Setting up N8N 0:15:10 - 1.2. Building blocks of N8N 0:16:52 - 1.3. The N8N Canvas 0:19:02 - 1.4. Triggers & Actions 0:24:55 - 1.5. Connect nodes 0:30:09 - 1.6. Visualising Data 0:32:13 - 1.7. JSON vs Table vs Schema 0:35:12 - 1.8. Mastering Static Data 0:38:10 - 1.9. Dynamic Data 0:43:21 - 1.10. Referencing Nodes (Foolproof) 0:47:05 - 1.11. Pinning Data 0:49:26 - 1.12. Simple Retry Logic 0:52:15 - 1.13. Node Naming 0:57:38 - SECTION 2 - Building Your First Automation with Data From Your Business 0:58:45 - 2.1. Planning Your Workflow 1:02:05 - 2.2. Monitoring Your Gmail 1:04:15 - 2.3. Setting up Google Credentials 1:09:01 - 2.4. Manipulating Data with Set 1:13:11 - 2.5. Data Format Comparison (HTML, Markdown) 1:15:55 - 2.6. Your First Automation 1:20:46 - 2.7. Building an Invoice Parsing System & Tackling File Formats 1:30:42 - 2.8. Cleaning Data with Code Node 1:39:19 - 2.9. Conditionals (IF) 1:44:24 - 2.10. Multiple Inputs 1:46:04 - 2.11. Merging Data 1:50:03 - 2.12. Memory Management 1:51:15 - 2.13. Large Data Sets (Loops) 1:54:52 - 2.14. Rounding Up Our Automation 1:55:16 - SECTION 3 - Agentic Workflows & AI Agents 1:56:07 - 3.1. Agentic vs Non-Agentic Workflows 1:59:28 - 3.2. Agentic Examples You Might Use 2:05:16 - 3.3. N8N AI Nodes 2:12:55 - 3.4. AI Agents - So What Are They? 2:20:42 - 3.5. AI Agents - What Business Use Do They Have? 2:25:05 - 3.6. Setting Up AI in Our Workflow 2:27:58 - 3.7. Prompting for Beginners 2:33:29 - 3.8. Openrouter for AI Models 2:39:10 - 3.9. Getting Consistent Outputs 2:45:53 - 3.10. Rounding Up Your Invoice Parsing Workflow 2:46:49 - 3.11. Mapping Back to Your Database 2:54:00 - SECTION 4 - Data From Outside Your Business 2:59:10 - 4.1. Connecting to an API with N8N 3:01:29 - 4.2. Reading API Docs Made Easy 3:04:24 - 4.3. API Authorisation 3:06:50 - 4.4. POST Request - PDFco 3:12:47 - 4.5. Uploading Our Files via API 3:22:18 - 4.6. Completing Our API Uploads 3:25:37 - 4.7. Connect to ANY API in 2 mins 3:29:30 - 4.8. Push Data Back to Our Table 3:35:03 - SECTION 5 - Making Your Life Easy & Scalable 3:37:27 - 5.1. Naming Workflows & Tagging 3:38:43 - 5.2. Workflow Separation 3:41:11 - 5.3. Modular Design 3:48:12 - 5.4. Error Handling 3:52:31 - 5.5. Debugging (easy Mode!) 3:53:31 - 5.6. Community Nodes 3:56:31 - 5.7. N8N Template Library 3:59:14 - 5.8. Getting Help #N8N #n8ntutorial #N8NBeginner

#N8N#n8ntutorial#N8NBeginner

github

0.425

0.030325886688162138

canadalearningcode•Feb 19, 2025

llc-intro-to-ai-master

Ladies Learning Code Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Quick Links Preview Slides: https://ladieslearningcode.github.io/llc-intro-to-ai-master/slides.html Special Note for Instructors The dataiku platform will need to be activated ahead of time. If you haven't received a custom bitly link via email already, please let us know at content@canadalearningcode.ca and we'll set one up for you. Attributions Content created by Parinaz Sobhani for Canada Learning Code. Slide presentation created by Christina Truong for Canada Learning Code. Email questions & comments to content@canadalearningcode.ca. If you'd like to contribute to future lesson content development, let us know here. We're really happy to see others leverage our content in their community - we’ve developed it to be used by others with attribution through a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. Here’s an easy way to attribute content back to us - please include it wherever you use or make reference to our content. “Please note that this is not a Canada Learning Code affiliated event, but we want to acknowledge the organization for the creation of the content [INSERT LINK TO GITHUB LINK] being delivered under Creative Commons license" Contributing Our general Rule of Thumb is that it's okay to add examples if you feel it could provide more context for your community. However, we ask that instructors do not remove anything, as the content is designed with intention, whether that be meeting specific learning objectives, or maintaining our organization’s culture through the design. Any suggestions for revisions or updates can be submitted in Github via issues and pull requests. If submitting an issue, please include the slide number(s) in the title.

#github#llc-intro-to-ai-master

github

0.476

0.11235605711653615

noahgift•Feb 10, 2025

pragmaticai

🎓 Pragmatic AI Labs | Join 1M+ ML Engineers 🔥 Hot Course Offers: 🤖 Master GenAI Engineering - Build Production AI Systems 🦀 Learn Professional Rust - Industry-Grade Development 📊 AWS AI & Analytics - Scale Your ML in Cloud ⚡ Production GenAI on AWS - Deploy at Enterprise Scale 🛠️ Rust DevOps Mastery - Automate Everything 🚀 Level Up Your Career: 💼 Production ML Program - Complete MLOps & Cloud Mastery 🎯 Start Learning Now - Fast-Track Your ML Career 🏢 Trusted by Fortune 500 Teams Learn end-to-end ML engineering from industry veterans at PAIML.COM Pragmatic AI: An Introduction To Cloud-based Machine Learning !pai Book Resources This books was written in partnership with Pragmatic AI Labs. !alt text You can continue learning about these topics by: Foundations of Data Engineering (Specialization: 4 Courses) Publisher: Coursera + Duke Release Date: 4/1/2022 !duke-data Take the Specialization Course1: Python and Pandas for Data Engineering Course2: Linux and Bash for Data Engineering Course3: Scripting with Python and SQL for Data Engineering Course4: Web Development and Command-Line Tools in Python for Data Engineering Cloud Computing (Specialization: 4 Courses) Publisher: Coursera + Duke Release Date: 4/1/2021 Building Cloud Computing Solutions at Scale Specialization Launch Your Career in Cloud Computing. Master strategies and tools to become proficient in developing data science and machine learning (MLOps) solutions in the Cloud What You Will Learn Build websites involving serverless technology and virtual machines, using the best practices of DevOps Apply Machine Learning Engineering to build a Flask web application that serves out Machine Learning predictions Create Microservices using technologies like Flask and Kubernetes that are continuously deployed to a Cloud platform: AWS, Azure or GCP Courses in Specialization Take the Specialization Cloud Computing Foundations Cloud Virtualization, Containers and APIs Cloud Data Engineering Cloud Machine Learning Engineering and MLOps Get the latest content and updates from Pragmatic AI Labs: Subscribe to the mailing list! Taking the course AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner 2020-Real World & Pragmatic. Buying a copy of Pragmatic AI: An Introduction to Cloud-Based Machine Learning Reading book online on Safari: Online Version of Pragmatic AI: An Introduction to Cloud-Based Machine Learning, First Edition Watching 8+ Hour Video Series on Safari: Essential Machine Learning and AI with Python and Jupyter Notebook Viewing more content at noahgift.com Viewing more content at Pragmatic AI Labs Exploring related colab notebooks from Safari Online Training Learning about emerging topics in Hardware AI & Managed/AutoML Viewing more content on the Pragmatic AI Labs YouTube Channel Reading content on Pragmatic AI Medium Attend an upcoming Safari Live Training About Pragmatic AI is the first truly practical guide to solving real-world problems with contemporary machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing tools. Writing for business professionals, decision-makers, and students who aren’t professional data scientists, Noah Gift demystifies all the tools and technologies you need to get results. He illuminates powerful off-the-shelf cloud-based solutions from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, as well as accessible techniques using Python and R. Throughout, you’ll find simple, clear, and effective working solutions that show how to apply machine learning, AI and cloud computing together in virtually any organization, creating solutions that deliver results, and offer virtually unlimited scalability. Coverage includes: Getting and configuring all the tools you’ll need Quickly and efficiently deploying AI applications using spreadsheets, R, and Python Mastering the full application lifecycle: Download, Extract, Transform, Model, Serve Results Getting started with Cloud Machine Learning Services, Amazon’s AWS AI Services, and Microsoft’s Cognitive Services API Uncovering signals in Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia Listening to channels via Slack bots running on AWS Lambda (serverless) Retrieving data via the Twitter API and extract follower relationships Solving project problems and find highly-productive developers for data science projects Forecasting current and future home sales prices with Zillow Using the increasingly popular Jupyter Notebook to create and share documents integrating live code, equations, visualizations, and text And much more Book Chapter Juypter Notebooks Note, it is recommended to also watch companion Video Material: Essential Machine Learning and AI with Python and Jupyter Notebook Chapter 1: Introduction to Pragmatic AI Chapter 2: AI & ML Toolchain Chapter 3: Spartan AI Lifecyle Chapter 4: Cloud AI Development with Google Cloud Platform Chapter 5: Cloud AI Development with Amazon Web Services Chapter 6: Social Power NBA Chapter 7: Creating an Intelligent Slack Bot on AWS Chapter 8: Finding Project Management Insights from A Github Organization Chapter 9: Dynamically Optimizing EC2 Instances on AWS Chapter 10: Real Estate Chapter 11: Production AI for User Generated Content (UGC) License This code is released under the MIT license Text The text content of notebooks is released under the CC-BY-NC-ND license Additional Related Topics from Noah Gift His most recent books are: Pragmatic A.I.:   An introduction to Cloud-Based Machine Learning (Pearson, 2018) Python for DevOps (O'Reilly, 2020).  Cloud Computing for Data Analysis, 2020 Testing in Python, 2020 His most recent video courses are: Essential Machine Learning and A.I. with Python and Jupyter Notebook LiveLessons (Pearson, 2018) AWS Certified Machine Learning-Specialty (ML-S) (Pearson, 2019) Python for Data Science Complete Video Course Video Training (Pearson, 2019) AWS Certified Big Data - Specialty Complete Video Course and Practice Test Video Training (Pearson, 2019) Building A.I. Applications on Google Cloud Platform (Pearson, 2019) Pragmatic AI and Machine Learning Core Principles (Pearson, 2019) Data Engineering with Python and AWS Lambda (Pearson, 2019) His most recent online courses are: Microservices with this Udacity DevOps Nanodegree (Udacity, 2019) Command Line Automation in Python (DataCamp, 2019) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner 2020-Real World & Pragmatic.

#github#pragmaticai

github

0.236

0.009333333333333334

bogdanmosica•Jan 23, 2025

internet-tools-collection

Internet Tools Collection A collection of tools, website and AI for entrepreneurs, web designers, programmers and for everyone else. Content by category Artificial Intelligence Developers Design Entrepreneur Video Editing Stock videos Stock Photos Stock music Search Engine Optimization Blog Posts Resume Interviews No code website builder No code game builder Side Hustle Browser Extensions Other Students Artificial Intelligence Jasper - The Best AI Writing Assistant [](https://www.jasper.ai/) Create content 5x faster with artificial intelligence. Jasper is the highest quality AI copywriting tool with over 3,000 5-star reviews. Best for writing blog posts, social media content, and marketing copy. AutoDraw [](https://www.autodraw.com/) Fast drawing for everyone. AutoDraw pairs machine learning with drawings from talented artists to help you draw stuff fast. Rytr - Best AI Writer, Content Generator & Writing Assistant [](https://rytr.me/) Rytr is an AI writing assistant that helps you create high-quality content, in just a few seconds, at a fraction of the cost! Neevo - Neevo [](https://www.neevo.ai/) Kinetix Tech [](https://kinetix.tech/) Kinetix is a no-code 3D creation tool powered by Artificial Intelligence. The web-based platform leverages AI motion capture to convert a video into a 3D animation and lets you customize your avatars and environments. We make 3D animation accessible to every creator so they can create engaging stories. LALAL.AI: 100% AI-Powered Vocal and Instrumental Tracks Remover [](https://www.lalal.ai/) Split vocal and instrumental tracks quickly and accurately with LALAL.AI. Upload any audio file and receive high-quality extracted tracks in a few seconds. Copy.ai: Write better marketing copy and content with AI [](https://www.copy.ai/) Get great copy that sells. Copy.ai is an AI-powered copywriter that generates high-quality copy for your business. Get started for free, no credit card required! Marketing simplified! OpenAI [](https://openai.com/) OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. DALL·E 2 [](https://openai.com/dall-e-2/) DALL·E 2 is a new AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language. Steve.ai - World’s fastest way to create Videos [](https://www.steve.ai/) Steve.AI is an online Video making software that helps anyone to create Videos and animations in seconds. Octie.ai - Your A.I. ecommerce marketing assistant [](https://octie.ai/) Write emails, product descriptions, and more, with A.I. Created by Octane AI. hypnogram.xyz [](https://hypnogram.xyz/) Generate images from text descriptions using AI FakeYou. Deep Fake Text to Speech. [](https://fakeyou.com/) FakeYou is a text to speech wonderland where all of your dreams come true. Craiyon, formerly DALL-E mini [](https://www.craiyon.com/) Craiyon, formerly DALL-E mini, is an AI model that can draw images from any text prompt! Deck Rocks - Create Pictch Decks [](https://www.deck.rocks/) Writely | Using AI to Improve Your Writing [](https://www.writelyai.com/) Making the art of writing accessible to all Writesonic AI Writer - Best AI Writing Assistant [](https://writesonic.com/) Writesonic is an AI writer that's been trained on top-performing SEO content, high-performing ads, and converting sales copy to help you supercharge your writing and marketing efforts. Smart Copy - AI Copywriting Assistant | Unbounce [](https://unbounce.com/product/smart-copy/) Generate creative AI copy on-the-spot across your favourite tools Synthesia | #1 AI Video Generation Platform [](https://www.synthesia.io/) Create AI videos by simply typing in text. Easy to use, cheap and scalable. Make engaging videos with human presenters — directly from your browser. Free demo. NVIDIA Canvas: Turn Simple Brushstrokes into Realistic Images [](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/studio/canvas/) Create backgrounds quickly, or speed up your concept exploration so you can spend more time visualizing ideas with the help of NVIDIA Canvas. Hotpot.ai - Hotpot.ai [](https://hotpot.ai/) Hotpot.ai makes graphic design and image editing easy. AI tools allow experts and non-designers to automate tedious tasks while attractive, easy-to-edit templates allow anyone to create device mockups, social media posts, marketing images, app icons, and other work graphics. Klaviyo: Marketing Automation Platform for Email & SMS [](https://www.klaviyo.com/) Klaviyo, an ecommerce marketing automation platform for email marketing and sms syncs your tech stack with your website store to scale your business. Search listening tool for market, customer & content research - AnswerThePublic [](https://answerthepublic.com/) Use our free tool to get instant, raw search insights, direct from the minds of your customers. Upgrade to a paid plan to monitor for new ways that people talk & ask questions about your brand, product or topic. Topic Mojo [](https://topicmojo.com/) Discover unique & newest queries around any topic and find what your customers are searching for. Pulling data from 50+ sources to enhance your topic research. AI Image Enlarger | Enlarge Image Without Losing Quality! [](https://imglarger.com/) AI Image Enlarger is a FREE online image enlarger that could upscale and enhance small images automatically. Make jpg/png pictures big without losing quality. Midjourney [](https://www.midjourney.com/app/) Kaedim - AI for turning 2D images to 3D models [](https://www.kaedim3d.com/webapp) AI for turning 2D images, sketches and photos to 3D models in seconds. Overdub: Ultra realistic text to speech voice cloning - Descript [](https://www.descript.com/overdub) Create a text to speech model of your voice. Try a live demo. Getting Started [](https://magenta.tensorflow.org/get-started) Resources to learn about Magenta Photosonic AI Art Generator | Create Unique Images with AI [](https://photosonic.writesonic.com/) Transform your imagination into stunning digital art with Photosonic - the AI art generator. With its creative suggestions, this Writesonic's AI image generator can help unleash your inner artist and share your creations with the world. Image Computer [](https://image.computer/) Most downloaded Instagram Captions App (+more creator tools) [](https://captionplus.app/) Join 3 Million+ Instagram Creators who use CaptionPlus to find Instagram Captions, Hashtags, Feed Planning, Reel Ideas, IG Story Design and more. Writecream - Best AI Writer & Content Generator - Writecream [](https://www.writecream.com/) Sentence Rewriter is a free tool to reword a sentence, paragraph and even entire essays in a short amount of time. Hypotenuse AI: AI Writing Assistant and Text Generator [](https://www.hypotenuse.ai/) Turn a few keywords into original, insightful articles, product descriptions and social media copy with AI copywriting—all in just minutes. Try it free today. Text to Speach Listnr: Generate realistic Text to Speech voiceovers in seconds [](https://www.listnr.tech/) AI Voiceover Generator with over 600+ voiceovers in 80+ languages, go from Text to Voice in seconds. Get started for Free! Free Text to Speech: Online, App, Software, Commercial license with Natural Sounding Voices. [](https://www.naturalreaders.com/) Free text to speech online app with natural voices, convert text to audio and mp3, for personal and commercial use Developers OverAPI.com | Collecting all the cheat sheets [](https://overapi.com/) OverAPI.com is a site collecting all the cheatsheets,all! Search Engine For Devs [](https://you.com/) Spline - Design tool for 3D web browser experiences [](https://spline.design/) Create web-based 3D browser experiences Image to HTML CSS converter. Convert image to HTML CSS with AI: Fronty [](https://fronty.com/) Fronty - Image to HTML CSS code converter. Convert image to HTML powered by AI. Sketchfab - The best 3D viewer on the web [](https://sketchfab.com/) With a community of over one million creators, we are the world’s largest platform to publish, share, and discover 3D content on web, mobile, AR, and VR. Railway [](https://railway.app/) Railway is an infrastructure platform where you can provision infrastructure, develop with that infrastructure locally, and then deploy to the cloud. JSON Crack - Crack your data into pieces [](https://jsoncrack.com/) Simple visualization tool for your JSON data. No forced structure, paste your JSON and view it instantly. Locofy.ai - ship your products 3-4x faster — with low code [](https://www.locofy.ai/) Turn your designs into production-ready frontend code for mobile apps and web. Ship products 3-4x faster with your existing design tools, tech stacks & workflows. Oh Shit, Git!?! [](https://ohshitgit.com/) Carbon | Create and share beautiful images of your source code [](https://carbon.now.sh/) Carbon is the easiest way to create and share beautiful images of your source code. GPRM : GitHub Profile ReadMe Maker [](https://gprm.itsvg.in/) Best Profile Generator, Create your perfect GitHub Profile ReadMe in the best possible way. Lots of features and tools included, all for free ! HubSpot | Software, Tools, and Resources to Help Your Business Grow Better [](https://www.hubspot.com/) HubSpot’s integrated CRM platform contains the marketing, sales, service, operations, and website-building software you need to grow your business. QuickRef.ME - Quick Reference Cheat Sheet [](https://quickref.me/) Share quick reference and cheat sheet for developers massCode | A free and open source code snippets manager for developers [](https://masscode.io/) Code snippets manager for developers, developed using web technologies. Snyk | Developer security | Develop fast. Stay secure. [](https://snyk.io/) Snyk helps software-driven businesses develop fast and stay secure. Continuously find and fix vulnerabilities for npm, Maven, NuGet, RubyGems, PyPI and more. Developer Roadmaps [](https://roadmap.sh/) Community driven roadmaps, articles, guides, quizzes, tips and resources for developers to learn from, identify their career paths, know what they don't know, find out the knowledge gaps, learn and improve. CSS Generators Get Waves – Create SVG waves for your next design [](https://getwaves.io/) A free SVG wave generator to make unique SVG waves for your next web design. Choose a curve, adjust complexity, randomize! Box Shadows [](https://box-shadow.dev/) Tridiv | CSS 3D Editor [](http://tridiv.com/) Tridiv is a web-based editor for creating 3D shapes in CSS Glassmorphism CSS Generator - Glass UI [](https://ui.glass/generator/) Generate CSS and HTML components using the glassmorphism design specifications based on the Glass UI library. Blobmaker - Make organic SVG shapes for your next design [](https://www.blobmaker.app/) Make organic SVG shapes for your next design. Modify the complexity, contrast, and color, to generate unique SVG blobs every time. Keyframes.app [](https://keyframes.app/) cssFilters.co - Custom and Instagram like photo filters for CSS [](https://www.cssfilters.co/) Visual playground for generating CSS for custom and Instagram like photo filters. Experiment with your own uploaded photo or select one from the Unsplash collection. CSS Animations Animista - CSS Animations on Demand [](https://animista.net/) Animista is a CSS animation library and a place where you can play with a collection of ready-made CSS animations and download only those you will use. Build Internal apps Superblocks | Save 100s of developer hours on internal tools [](https://www.superblocks.com/) Superblocks is the fast, easy and secure way for developers to build custom internal tools fast. Connect your databases & APIs. Drag and drop UI components. Extend with Python or Javascript. Deploy in 1-click. Secure and Monitor using your favorite tools Budibase | Build internal tools in minutes, the easy way [](https://budibase.com/) Budibase is a modern, open source low-code platform for building modern internal applications in minutes. Retool | Build internal tools, remarkably fast. [](https://retool.com/) Retool is the fast way to build internal tools. Drag-and-drop our building blocks and connect them to your databases and APIs to build your own tools, instantly. Connects with Postgres, REST APIs, GraphQL, Firebase, Google Sheets, and more. Built by developers, for developers. Trusted by startups and Fortune 500s. Sign up for free. GitHub Repositories GitHub - vasanthk/how-web-works: What happens behind the scenes when we type www.google.com in a browser? [](https://github.com/vasanthk/how-web-works) What happens behind the scenes when we type www.google.com in a browser? - GitHub - vasanthk/how-web-works: What happens behind the scenes when we type www.google.com in a browser? GitHub - kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap: Interactive roadmaps, guides and other educational content to help developers grow in their careers. [](https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap) Interactive roadmaps, guides and other educational content to help developers grow in their careers. - GitHub - kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap: Interactive roadmaps, guides and other educational content to help developers grow in their careers. GitHub - apptension/developer-handbook: An opinionated guide on how to become a professional Web/Mobile App Developer. [](https://github.com/apptension/developer-handbook) An opinionated guide on how to become a professional Web/Mobile App Developer. - GitHub - apptension/developer-handbook: An opinionated guide on how to become a professional Web/Mobile App Developer. ProfileMe.dev | Create an amazing GitHub profile in minutes [](https://www.profileme.dev/) ProfileMe.dev | Create an amazing GitHub profile in minutes GitHub - Kristories/awesome-guidelines: A curated list of high quality coding style conventions and standards. [](https://github.com/Kristories/awesome-guidelines) A curated list of high quality coding style conventions and standards. - GitHub - Kristories/awesome-guidelines: A curated list of high quality coding style conventions and standards. GitHub - tiimgreen/github-cheat-sheet: A list of cool features of Git and GitHub. [](https://github.com/tiimgreen/github-cheat-sheet) A list of cool features of Git and GitHub. Contribute to tiimgreen/github-cheat-sheet development by creating an account on GitHub. GitHub - andreasbm/web-skills: A visual overview of useful skills to learn as a web developer [](https://github.com/andreasbm/web-skills) A visual overview of useful skills to learn as a web developer - GitHub - andreasbm/web-skills: A visual overview of useful skills to learn as a web developer GitHub - Ebazhanov/linkedin-skill-assessments-quizzes: Full reference of LinkedIn answers 2022 for skill assessments (aws-lambda, rest-api, javascript, react, git, html, jquery, mongodb, java, Go, python, machine-learning, power-point) linkedin excel test lösungen, linkedin machine learning test LinkedIn test questions and answers [](https://github.com/Ebazhanov/linkedin-skill-assessments-quizzes) Full reference of LinkedIn answers 2022 for skill assessments (aws-lambda, rest-api, javascript, react, git, html, jquery, mongodb, java, Go, python, machine-learning, power-point) linkedin excel test lösungen, linkedin machine learning test LinkedIn test questions and answers - GitHub - Ebazhanov/linkedin-skill-assessments-quizzes: Full reference of LinkedIn answers 2022 for skill assessments (aws-lambda, rest-api, javascript, react, git, html, jquery, mongodb, java, Go, python, machine-learning, power-point) linkedin excel test lösungen, linkedin machine learning test LinkedIn test questions and answers Blockchain/Crypto Dashboards [](https://dune.com/) Blockchain ecosystem analytics by and for the community. Explore and share data from Ethereum, xDai, Polygon, Optimism, BSC and Solana for free. Introduction - The Anchor Book v0.24.0 [](https://book.anchor-lang.com/introduction/introduction.html) Crypto & Fiat Exchange Super App | Trade, Save & Spend | hi [](https://hi.com/) Buy, Trade, Send and Earn Crypto & Fiat. Deposit Bitcoin, ETH, USDT and other cryptos and start earning. Get the hi Debit Card and Multi-Currency IBAN Account. Moralis Web3 - Enterprise-Grade Web3 APIs [](https://moralis.io/) Bridge the development gap between Web2 and Web3 with Moralis’ powerful Web3 APIs. Mirror [](https://mirror.xyz/) Built on web3 for web3, Mirror’s robust publishing platform pushes the boundaries of writing online—whether it’s the next big white paper or a weekly community update. Makerdao [](https://blog.makerdao.com/) Sholi — software for Investors & Traders / Sholi MetriX [](https://sholi.io/) Sholi — software for Investors & Traders / Sholi MetriX Stock Trading Quiver Quantitative [](https://www.quiverquant.com/) Quiver Quantitative Chart Prime - The only tool you'll need for trading assets across all markets [](https://chartprime.com/) ChartPrime offers a toolkit that will take your trading game to the next level. Visit our site for a full rundown of features and helpful tutorials. Learning Hacker Rank [](https://www.hackerrank.com/) Coderbyte | Code Screening, Challenges, & Interview Prep [](https://coderbyte.com/) Improve your coding skills with our library of 300+ challenges and prepare for coding interviews with content from leading technology companies. Competitive Programming | Participate & Learn | CodeChef [](https://www.codechef.com/) Learn competitive programming with the help of CodeChef's coding competitions. Take part in these online coding contests to level up your skills Learn to Code - for Free | Codecademy [](https://www.codecademy.com/) Learn the technical skills to get the job you want. Join over 50 million people choosing Codecademy to start a new career (or advance in their current one). Free Code Camp [](https://www.freecodecamp.org/) Learn to Code — For Free Sololearn: Learn to Code [](https://www.sololearn.com/home) Join Now to learn the basics or advance your existing skills Mimo: The coding app you need to learn to code! Python, HTML, JavaScript [](https://getmimo.com/) Join more than 17 million learners worldwide. Learn to code for free. Learn Python, JavaScript, CSS, SQL, HTML, and more with our free code learning app. Free for developers [](https://free-for.dev/#/) Your Career in Web Development Starts Here | The Odin Project [](https://www.theodinproject.com/) The Odin Project empowers aspiring web developers to learn together for free Code Learning Games CheckiO - coding games and programming challenges for beginner and advanced [](https://checkio.org/) CheckiO - coding websites and programming games. Improve your coding skills by solving coding challenges and exercises online with your friends in a fun way. Exchanges experience with other users online through fun coding activities Coding for Kids | Game-Based Programming | CodeMonkey [](https://www.codemonkey.com/) CodeMonkey is a leading coding for kids program. Through its award-winning courses, millions of students learn how to code in real programming languages. Coding Games and Programming Challenges to Code Better [](https://www.codingame.com/) CodinGame is a challenge-based training platform for programmers where you can play with the hottest programming topics. Solve games, code AI bots, learn from your peers, have fun. Learn VIM while playing a game - VIM Adventures [](https://vim-adventures.com/) VIM Adventures is an online game based on VIM's keyboard shortcuts. It's the "Zelda meets text editing" game. So come have some fun and learn some VIM! CodeCombat - Coding games to learn Python and JavaScript [](https://codecombat.com/) Learn typed code through a programming game. Learn Python, JavaScript, and HTML as you solve puzzles and learn to make your own coding games and websites. Design Useberry - Codeless prototype analytics [](https://www.useberry.com/) User testing feedback & rich insights in minutes, not months! Figma: the collaborative interface design tool. [](https://www.figma.com/) Build better products as a team. Design, prototype, and gather feedback all in one place with Figma. Dribbble - Discover the World’s Top Designers & Creative Professionals [](https://dribbble.com/) Find Top Designers & Creative Professionals on Dribbble. We are where designers gain inspiration, feedback, community, and jobs. Your best resource to discover and connect with designers worldwide. Photopea | Online Photo Editor [](https://www.photopea.com/) Photopea Online Photo Editor lets you edit photos, apply effects, filters, add text, crop or resize pictures. Do Online Photo Editing in your browser for free! Toools.design – An archive of 1000+ Design Resources [](https://www.toools.design/) A growing archive of over a thousand design resources, weekly updated for the community. Discover highly useful design tools you never thought existed. All Online Tools in One Box | 10015 Tools [](https://10015.io/) All online tools you need in one box for free. Build anything online with “all-in-one toolbox”. All tools are easy-to-use, blazing fast & free. Phase - Digital Design Reinvented| Phase [](https://phase.com/) Design and prototype websites and apps visually and intuitively, in a new powerful product reworked for the digital age. Animated Backgrounds [](https://animatedbackgrounds.me/) A Collection of 30+ animated backgrounds for websites and blogs.With Animated Backgrounds, set a simple, elegant background animations on your websites and blogs. Trianglify.io · Low Poly Pattern Generator [](https://trianglify.io/) Trianglify.io is a tool for generating low poly triangle patterns that can be used as wallpapers and website assets. Cool Backgrounds [](https://coolbackgrounds.io/) Explore a beautifully curated selection of cool backgrounds that you can add to blogs, websites, or as desktop and phone wallpapers. SVG Repo - Free SVG Vectors and Icons [](https://www.svgrepo.com/) Free Vectors and Icons in SVG format. ✅ Download free mono or multi color vectors for commercial use. Search in 300.000+ Free SVG Vectors and Icons. Microcopy - Short copy text for your website. [](https://www.microcopy.me/) Search micro UX copy text: slogans, headlines, notifications, CTA, error messages, email, account preferences, and much more. 3D icons and icon paks - Free3Dicon [](https://free3dicon.com/) All 3D icons you need in one place. This is a collection of free, beautiful, trending 3D icons, that you can use in any project. Love 3D Icon [](https://free3dicons.com/) Downloads free 3D icons GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program [](https://www.gimp.org/) GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program: The Free and Open Source Image Editor blender.org - Home of the Blender project - Free and Open 3D Creation Software [](https://www.blender.org/) The Freedom to Create 3D Design Software | 3D Modeling on the Web | SketchUp [](https://www.sketchup.com/) SketchUp is a premier 3D design software that truly makes 3D modeling for everyone, with a simple to learn yet robust toolset that empowers you to create whatever you can imagine. Free Logo Maker - Create a Logo in Seconds - Shopify [](https://www.shopify.com/tools/logo-maker) Free logo maker tool to generate custom design logos in seconds. This logo creator is built for entrepreneurs on the go with hundreds of templates, free vectors, fonts and icons to design your own logo. The easiest way to create business logos online. All your design tools in one place | Renderforest [](https://www.renderforest.com/) Time to get your brand noticed. Create professional videos, logos, mockups, websites, and graphics — all in one place. Get started now! Prompt Hero [](https://prompthero.com/) Type Scale - A Visual Calculator [](https://type-scale.com/) Preview and choose the right type scale for your project. Experiment with font size, scale and different webfonts. DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion [](https://dreamfusion3d.github.io/) DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion, 2022. The branding style guidelines documents archive [](https://brandingstyleguides.com/) Welcome to the brand design manual documents directory. Search over our worldwide style assets handpicked collection, access to PDF documents for inspiration. Super designer | Create beautiful designs with a few clicks [](https://superdesigner.co/) Create beautiful designs with a few clicks. Simple design tools to generate unique patterns, backgrounds, 3D shapes, colors & images for social media, websites and more Readymag—a design tool to create websites without coding [](https://readymag.com/) Meet the most elegant, simple and powerful web-tool for designing websites, presentations, portfolios and all kinds of digital publications. ffflux: Online SVG Fluid Gradient Background Generator | fffuel [](https://fffuel.co/ffflux/) SVG generator to make fluid gradient backgrounds that feel organic and motion-like. Perfect to add a feeling of motion and fluidity to your web designs. Generate unique SVG design assets | Haikei [](https://haikei.app/) A web-based design tool to generate unique SVG design assets for websites, social media, blog posts, desktop and mobile wallpapers, posters, and more! Our generators let you discover, customize, randomize, and export generative SVG design assets ready to use with your favorite design tools. UI/UX - Inspirational Free Website Builder Software | 10,000+ Free Templates [](https://nicepage.com/) Nicepage is your website builder software breaking limitations common for website builders with revolutionary freehand positioning. 7000+ Free Templates. Easy Drag-n-Drop. No coding. Mobile-friendly. Clean HTML. Super designer | Create beautiful designs with a few clicks [](https://superdesigner.co/) Create beautiful designs with a few clicks. Simple design tools to generate unique patterns, backgrounds, 3D shapes, colors & images for social media, websites and more Pika – Create beautiful mockups from screenshots [](https://pika.style/) Quickly create beautiful website and device mockup from screenshot. Pika lets you capture website screenshots form URL, add device and browser frames, customize background and more LiveTerm [](https://liveterm.vercel.app/) Minimal Gallery – Web design inspiration [](https://minimal.gallery/) For the love of beautiful, clean and functional websites. Awwwards - Website Awards - Best Web Design Trends [](https://www.awwwards.com/) Awwwards are the Website Awards that recognize and promote the talent and effort of the best developers, designers and web agencies in the world. Design Systems For Figma [](https://www.designsystemsforfigma.com/) A collection of Design Systems for Figma from all over the globe. Superside: Design At Scale For Ambitious Brands [](https://www.superside.com/) We are an always-on design company. Get a team of dedicated designers, speedy turnarounds, magical creative collaboration tech and the top 1% of global talent. UXArchive - Made by Waldo [](https://uxarchive.com/) UXArchive the world's largest library of mobile user flows. Be inspired to design the best user experiences. Search by Muzli [](https://search.muz.li/) Search, discover, test and create beautiful color palettes for your projects Siteinspire | Web Design Inspiration [](https://www.siteinspire.com/) SAVEE [](https://savee.it/) The best way to save and share inspiration. A little corner of the internet to find good landing page copywriting examples [](https://greatlandingpagecopy.com/) A little corner of the internet to find great landing page copywriting examples. The Best Landing Page Examples For Design Inspiration - SaaS Landing Page [](https://saaslandingpage.com/) SaaS Landing Page showcases the best landing page examples created by top-class SaaS companies. Get ideas and inspirations for your next design project. Websites Free templates Premium Bootstrap Themes and Templates: Download @ Creative Tim [](https://www.creative-tim.com/) UI Kits, Templates and Dashboards built on top of Bootstrap, Vue.js, React, Angular, Node.js and Laravel. Join over 2,014,387+ creatives to access all our products! Free Bootstrap Themes, Templates, Snippets, and Guides - Start Bootstrap [](https://startbootstrap.com/) Start Bootstrap develops free to download, open source Bootstrap 5 themes, templates, and snippets and creates guides and tutorials to help you learn more about designing and developing with Bootstrap. Free Website Templates [](https://freewebsitetemplates.com/) Get your free website templates here and use them on your website without needing to link back to us. One Page Love - One Page Website Inspiration and Templates [](https://onepagelove.com/) One Page Love is a One Page website design gallery showcasing the best Single Page websites, templates and resources. Free CSS | 3400 Free Website Templates, CSS Templates and Open Source Templates [](https://www.free-css.com/) Free CSS has 3400 free website templates, all templates are free CSS templates, open source templates or creative commons templates. Free Bootstrap Themes and Website Templates | BootstrapMade [](https://bootstrapmade.com/) At BootstrapMade, we create beautiful website templates and bootstrap themes using Bootstrap, the most popular HTML, CSS and JavaScript framework. Free and Premium Bootstrap Themes, Templates by Themesberg [](https://themesberg.com/) Free and Premium Bootstrap themes, templates, admin dashboards and UI kits used by over 38820 web developers and software companies HTML, Vue.js and React templates for startup landing pages - Cruip [](https://cruip.com/) Cruip is a gallery of premium and free HTML, Vue.js and React templates for startups and SaaS. Free Website Templates Download | WordPress Themes - W3Layouts [](https://w3layouts.com/) Want to download free website templates? W3Layouts WordPress themes and website templates are built with responsive web design techniques. Download now! Free HTML Landing Page Templates and UI Kits | UIdeck [](https://uideck.com/) Free HTML Landing Page Templates, Bootstrap Themes, React Templates, HTML Templates, Tailwind Templates, and UI Kits. Create Online Graphics Snappa - Quick & Easy Graphic Design Software [](https://snappa.com/) Snappa makes it easy to create any type of online graphic. Create & publish images for social media, blogs, ads, and more! Canva [](https://www.canva.com/) Polotno Studio - Make graphical designs [](https://studio.polotno.com) Free online design editor. Create images for social media, youtube previews, facebook covers Free Logo Maker: Design Custom Logos | Adobe Express [](https://www.adobe.com/express/create/logo) The Adobe Express logo maker is instant, intuitive, and intelligent. Use it to generate a wide range of possibilities for your own logo. Photo Editor: Fotor – Free Online Photo Editing & Image Editor [](https://www.fotor.com/) Fotor's online photo editor helps you edit photos with free online photo editing tools. Crop photos, resize images, and add effects/filters, text, and graphics in just a few clicks. Photoshop online has never been easier with Fotor's free online photo editor. VistaCreate – Free Graphic Design Software with 70,000+ Free Templates [](https://create.vista.com/) Looking for free graphic design software? Easily create professional designs with VistaCreate, a free design tool with powerful features and 50K+ ready-made templates Draw Freely | Inkscape [](https://inkscape.org/) Inkscape is professional quality vector graphics software which runs on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows desktop computers. Visual & Video Maker Trusted By 11 Million Users - Piktochart [](https://piktochart.com/) With Piktochart, you can create professional-looking infographics, flyers, posters, charts, videos, and more. No design experience needed. Start for free. The Web's Favorite Online Graphic Design Tool | Stencil [](https://getstencil.com/) Stencil is a fantastically easy-to-use online graphic design tool and image editor built for business owners, social media marketers, and bloggers. Pablo by Buffer - Design engaging images for your social media posts in under 30 seconds [](https://pablo.buffer.com/) Buffer makes it super easy to share any page you're reading. Keep your Buffer topped up and we automagically share them for you through the day. Free Online Graphic Design Software | Create stunning designs in seconds. [](https://desygner.com/) Easy drag and drop graphic design tool for anyone to use with 1000's of ready made templates. Create & print professional business cards, flyers, social posts and more. Color Pallet Color Palettes for Designers and Artists - Color Hunt [](https://colorhunt.co/) Discover the newest hand-picked color palettes of Color Hunt. Get color inspiration for your design and art projects. Coolors - The super fast color palettes generator! [](https://coolors.co/) Generate or browse beautiful color combinations for your designs. Get color palette inspiration from nature - colorpalettes.earth [](https://colorpalettes.earth/) Color palettes inspired by beautiful nature photos Color Palette Generator - Create Beautiful Color Schemes [](https://colors.muz.li/) Search, discover, test and create beautiful color palettes for your projects A Most Useful Color Picker | 0to255 [](https://0to255.com/) Find lighter and darker colors based on any color. Discover why over two million people have used 0to255 to choose colors for their website, logo, room interior, and print design projects. Colour Contrast Checker [](https://colourcontrast.cc/) Check the contrast between different colour combinations against WCAG standards Fonts Google Fonts [](https://fonts.google.com/) Making the web more beautiful, fast, and open through great typography Fonts In Use – Type at work in the real world. [](https://fontsinuse.com/) A searchable archive of typographic design, indexed by typeface, format, and topic. Wordmark - Helps you choose fonts! [](https://wordmark.it/) Wordmark helps you choose fonts by quickly displaying your text with your fonts. OH no Type Company [](https://ohnotype.co/) OH no Type Co. Retail and custom typefaces. Life’s a thrill, fonts are chill! Illustrations Illustrations | unDraw [](https://undraw.co/illustrations) The design project with open-source illustrations for any idea you can imagine and create. Create beautiful websites, products and applications with your color, for free. Design Junction [](https://designjunction.xyz/) Design Junction is a one-stop resource library for Designers and Creatives with curated list of best resources handpicked from around the web Humaaans: Mix-&-Match illustration library [](https://www.humaaans.com/) Mix-&-match illustrations of people with a design library for InVIsion Studio and Sketch. Stubborn - Free Illustrations Generator [](https://stubborn.fun/) Free illustrations generator for Figma and Sketch. Get the opportunity to design your characters using symbols and styles. Open Peeps, Hand-Drawn Illustration Library [](https://www.openpeeps.com/) Open Peeps is a hand-drawn illustration library to create scenes of people. You can use them in product illustration, marketing, comics, product states, user flows, personas, storyboarding, quinceañera invitations, or whatever you want! ⠀ Reshot | Free icons & illustrations [](https://www.reshot.com/) Design freely with instant downloads of curated SVG icons and vector illustrations. All free with commercial licensing. No attribution required. Blush: Illustrations for everyone [](https://blush.design/) Blush makes it easy to add free illustrations to your designs. Play with fully customizable graphics made by artists across the globe. Mockups Angle 4 - 5000+ Device Mockups for Figma, Sketch and XD [](https://angle.sh/) Vector mockups for iPhone, iPad, Android and Mac devices, including the new iPhone 13, Pro, Pro Max and Mini. Perfect for presenting your apps. Huge library of components, compositions, wallpapers and plugins made for Figma, Sketch and XD. Make Mockups, Logos, Videos and Designs in Seconds [](https://placeit.net/) Get unlimited downloads on all our 100K templates! You can make a logo, video, mockup, flyer, business card and social media image in seconds right from your browser. Free and premium tools for graphic designers | Lstore Graphics [](https://www.ls.graphics/) Free and premium mockups, UI/UX tools, scene creators for busy designers Logo Design & Brand Identity Platform for Entrepreneurs | Looka [](https://looka.com/) Logojoy is now Looka! Design a Logo, make a website, and create a Brand Identity you’ll love with the power of Artificial Intelligence. 100% free to use. Create stunning product mockups easily and online - Smartmockups [](https://smartmockups.com/) Smartmockups enables you to create stunning high-resolution mockups right inside your browser within one interface across multiple devices. Previewed - Free mockup generator for your app [](https://previewed.app/) Join Previewed to create stunning 3D image shots and animations for your app. Choose from hundreds of ready made mockups, or create your own. Free Design Software - Graphic Online Maker - Glorify [](https://www.glorify.com/) Create professional and high converting social media posts, ads, infographics, presentations, and more with Glorify, a free design software & graphic maker. Other BuiltWith Technology Lookup [](https://builtwith.com/) Web technology information profiler tool. Find out what a website is built with. Compress JPEG Images Online [](https://compressjpeg.com/) Compress JPEG images and photos for displaying on web pages, sharing on social networks or sending by email. PhotoRoom - Remove Background and Create Product Pictures [](https://www.photoroom.com/) Create product and portrait pictures using only your phone. Remove background, change background and showcase products. Magic Eraser - Remove unwanted things from images in seconds [](https://www.magiceraser.io/) Magic Eraser - Use AI to remove unwanted things from images in seconds. Upload an image, mark the bit you need removed, download the fixed up image. Compressor.io - optimize and compress JPEG photos and PNG images [](https://compressor.io/) Optimize and compress JPEG, PNG, SVG, GIF and WEBP images online. Compress, resize and rename your photos for free. Remove Video Background – Unscreen [](https://www.unscreen.com/) Remove the background of any video - 100% automatically, online & free! Goodbye Greenscreen. Hello Unscreen. Noun Project: Free Icons & Stock Photos for Everything [](https://thenounproject.com/) Noun Project features the most diverse collection of icons and stock photos ever. Download SVG and PNG. Browse over 5 million art-quality icons and photos. Design Principles [](https://principles.design/) An Open Source collection of Design Principles and methods Shapefest™ - A massive library of free 3D shapes [](https://www.shapefest.com/) A massive free library of beautifully rendered 3D shapes. 160,000+ high resolution PNG images in one cohesive library. Learning UX Degreeless.design - Everything I Learned in Design School [](https://degreeless.design/) This is a list of everything I've found useful in my journey of learning design, and an ongoing list of things I think you should read. For budding UX, UI, Interaction, or whatever other title designers. UX Tools | Practical UX skills and tools [](https://uxtools.co/) Lessons and resources from two full-time product designers. Built For Mars [](https://builtformars.com/) On a mission to help the world build better user experiences by demystifying UX. Thousands of hours of research packed into UX case studies. Case Study Club – Curated UX Case Study Gallery [](https://www.casestudy.club/) Case Study Club is the biggest curated gallery of the best UI/UX design case studies. Get inspired by industry-leading designers, openly sharing their UX process. The Guide to Design [](https://start.uxdesign.cc/) A self-guided class to help you get started in UX and answer key questions about craft, design, and career Uxcel - Where design careers are built [](https://app.uxcel.com/explore) Available on any device anywhere in the world, Uxcel is the best way to improve and learn UX design online in just 5 minutes per day. UI & UX Design Tips by Jim Raptis. [](https://www.uidesign.tips/) Learn UI & UX Design with practical byte-sized tips and in-depth articles from Jim Raptis. Entrepreneur Instant Username Search [](https://instantusername.com/#/) Instant Username Search checks out if your username is available on more than 100 social media sites. Results appear instantly as you type. Flourish | Data Visualization & Storytelling [](https://flourish.studio/) Beautiful, easy data visualization and storytelling PiPiADS - #1 TikTok Ads Spy Tool [](https://www.pipiads.com/) PiPiADS is the best tiktok ads spy tool .We provide tiktok advertising,advertising on tiktok,tiktok ads examples,tiktok ads library,tiktok ads best practices,so you can understand the tiktok ads cost and master the tiktok ads 2021 and tiktok ads manager. Minea - The best adspy for product search in ecommerce and dropshipping [](https://en.minea.com/) Minea is the ultimate e-commerce product search tool. Minea tracks all ads on all networks. Facebook Ads, influencer product placements, Snapspy, all networks are tracked. Stop paying adspy 149€ for one network and discover Minea. AdSpy [](https://adspy.com/) Google Trends [](https://trends.google.com/) ScoreApp: Advanced Quiz Funnel Marketing | Make a Quiz Today [](https://www.scoreapp.com/) ScoreApp makes quiz funnel marketing easy, so you can attract relevant warm leads, insightful data and increase your sales. Try for free today Mailmodo - Send Interactive Emails That Drive Conversions [](https://www.mailmodo.com/) Use Mailmodo to create and send interactive emails your customers love. Drive conversions and get better email ROI. Sign up for a free trial now. 185 Top E-Commerce Sites Ranked by User Experience Performance – Baymard Institute [](https://baymard.com/ux-benchmark) See the ranked UX performance of the 185 largest e-commerce sites in the US and Europe. The chart summarizes 50,000+ UX performance ratings. Metricool - Analyze, manage and measure your digital content [](https://metricool.com/) Social media scheduling, web analytics, link in bio and reporting. Metricool is free per live for one brand. START HERE Visualping: #1 Website change detection, monitoring and alerts [](https://visualping.io/) More than 1.5 millions users monitor changes in websites with Visualping, the No1 website change detection, website checker, webpage change monitoring and webpage change detection tool. Gumroad – Sell what you know and see what sticks [](https://gumroad.com/) Gumroad is a powerful, but simple, e-commerce platform. We make it easy to earn your first dollar online by selling digital products, memberships and more. Product Hunt – The best new products in tech. [](https://www.producthunt.com/) Product Hunt is a curation of the best new products, every day. Discover the latest mobile apps, websites, and technology products that everyone's talking about. 12ft Ladder [](https://12ft.io/) Show me a 10ft paywall, I’ll show you a 12ft ladder. namecheckr | Social and Domain Name Availability Search For Brand Professionals [](https://www.namecheckr.com/) Social and Domain Name Availability Search For Brand Professionals Excel AI Formula Generator - Excelformulabot.com [](https://excelformulabot.com/) Transform your text instructions into Excel formulas in seconds with the help of AI. Z-Library [](https://z-lib.org/) Global Print On Demand Platform | Gelato [](https://www.gelato.com/) Create and sell custom products online. With local production in 33 countries, easy integration, and 24/7 customer support, Gelato is an all-in-one platform. Freecycle: Front Door [](https://freecycle.org/) Free eBooks | Project Gutenberg [](https://www.gutenberg.org/) Project Gutenberg is a library of free eBooks. Convertio — File Converter [](https://convertio.co/) Convertio - Easy tool to convert files online. More than 309 different document, image, spreadsheet, ebook, archive, presentation, audio and video formats supported. Namechk [](https://namechk.com/) Crazy Egg Website — Optimization | Heatmaps, Recordings, Surveys & A/B Testing [](https://www.crazyegg.com/) Use Crazy Egg to see what's hot and what's not, and to know what your web visitors are doing with tools, such as heatmaps, recordings, surveys, A/B testing & more. Ifttt [](https://ifttt.com/) Also Asked [](https://alsoasked.com/) Business Name Generator - Easily create Brandable Business Names - Namelix [](https://namelix.com/) Namelix uses artificial intelligence to create a short, brandable business name. Search for domain availability, and instantly generate a logo for your new business Merch Informer [](https://merchinformer.com/) Headline Generator [](https://www.title-generator.com/) Title Generator: create 700 headlines with ONE CLICK: Content Ideas + Catchy Headlines + Ad Campaign E-mail Subject Lines + Emotional Titles. Simple - Efficient - One Click Make [](https://www.make.com/en) Create and add calculator widgets to your website | CALCONIC_ [](https://www.calconic.com/) Web calculator builder empowers you to choose from a pre-made templates or build your own calculator widgets from a scratch without any need of programming knowledge Boost Your Views And Subscribers On YouTube - vidIQ [](https://vidiq.com/) vidIQ helps you acquire the tools and knowledge needed to grow your audience faster on YouTube and beyond. Learn More Last Pass [](https://www.lastpass.com/) Starter Story: Learn How People Are Starting Successful Businesses [](https://www.starterstory.com/) Starter Story interviews successful entrepreneurs and shares the stories behind their businesses. In each interview, we ask how they got started, how they grew, and how they run their business today. How To Say No [](https://www.starterstory.com/how-to-say-no) Saying no is hard, but it's also essential for your sanity. Here are some templates for how to say no - so you can take back your life. Think with Google - Discover Marketing Research & Digital Trends [](https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/) Uncover the latest marketing research and digital trends with data reports, guides, infographics, and articles from Think with Google. ClickUp™ | One app to replace them all [](https://clickup.com/) Our mission is to make the world more productive. To do this, we built one app to replace them all - Tasks, Docs, Goals, and Chat. The Manual [](https://manual.withcompound.com/) Wealth-planning resources for founders and startup employees Software for Amazon FBA Sellers & Walmart Sellers | Helium 10 [](https://www.helium10.com/) If you're looking for the best software for Amazon FBA & Walmart sellers on the market, check out Helium 10's capabilities online today! Buffer: All-you-need social media toolkit for small businesses [](https://buffer.com/) Use Buffer to manage your social media so that you have more time for your business. Join 160,000+ small businesses today. CPGD — The Consumer Packaged Goods Directory [](https://www.cpgd.xyz/) The Consumer Packaged Goods Directory is a platform to discover new brands and resources. We share weekly trends in our newsletter and partner with services to provide vetted, recommended platforms for our Directory brands. Jungle Scout [](https://www.junglescout.com/) BuzzSumo | The World's #1 Content Marketing Platform [](https://buzzsumo.com/) BuzzSumo powers the strategies of 500k+ marketers, with content marketing data on 8b articles, 42m websites, 300t engagements, 500k journalists & 492m questions. Login - Capital [](https://app.capital.xyz/) Raise, hold, spend, and send funds — all in one place. Marketing Pictory – Video Marketing Made Easy - Pictory.ai [](https://pictory.ai/) Pictory's powerful AI enables you to create and edit professional quality videos using text, no technical skills required or software to download. Tolstoy | Communicate with interactive videos [](https://www.gotolstoy.com/) Start having face-to-face conversations with your customers. Create Email Marketing Your Audience Will Love - MailerLite [](https://www.mailerlite.com/) Email marketing tools to grow your audience faster and drive revenue smarter. Get free access to premium features with a 30-day trial! Sign up now! Hypefury - Schedule & Automate Social Media Marketing [](https://hypefury.com/) Save time on social media while creating more value, and growing your audience faster. Schedule & automate your social media experience! Klaviyo: Marketing Automation Platform for Email & SMS [](https://www.klaviyo.com/) Klaviyo, an ecommerce marketing automation platform for email marketing and sms syncs your tech stack with your website store to scale your business. Online Email & Lead Scraper | Klean Leads [](https://www.kleanleads.com/) Klean Leads is an online email scraper & email address finder. Use it to book more appointments, get more replies, and close more sales. PhantomBuster [](https://phantombuster.com/) Call to Action Examples - 300+ CTA Phrases [](https://ctaexamples.com/) See the best CTA example in every situation covered by the library of 300+ CTA goals. Use the examples to create your own CTAs in minutes. Creative Center: one-stop creative solution for TikTok [](https://ads.tiktok.com/business/creativecenter/pc/en?from=001010) Come to get your next great idea for TikTok. Here you can find the best performing ads, viral videos, and trending hashtags across regions and verticals. Groove.cm GrooveFunnels, GrooveMail with CRM and Digital Marketing Automation Platform - Groove.cm with GrooveFunnels, GroovePages, GrooveKart [](https://groove.cm/) Groove is a website creator, page builder, sales funnel maker, membership site platform, email autoresponder, blog tool, shopping cart system, ecommerce store solution, affiliate manager, video marketing software and more apps to help build your online business. SurveyMonkey: The World’s Most Popular Free Online Survey Tool [](https://www.surveymonkey.com/) Use SurveyMonkey to drive your business forward by using our free online survey tool to capture the voices and opinions of the people who matter most to you. Video Maker | Create Videos Online | Promo.com [](https://promo.com/) Free customizable video maker to help boost your business. Video creator for ads, social media, product and explainer videos, and for anything else you need! beehiiv — The newsletter platform built for growth [](https://www.beehiiv.com/) Access the best tools available in email, helping your newsletter scale and monetize like never before. GetResponse | Professional Email Marketing for Everyone [](https://www.getresponse.com/) No matter your level of expertise, we have a solution for you. At GetResponse, it's email marketing done right. Start your free account today! Search Email Newsletter Archives : Email Tuna [](https://emailtuna.com/) Explore newsletters without subscribing. Get email design ideas, discount coupon codes and exclusive newsletters deals. Database of email newsletters archived from all over the internet. Other Tools Simplescraper — Scrape Websites and turn them into APIs [](https://simplescraper.io/) Web scraping made easy — a powerful and free Chrome extension for scraping websites in your browser, automated in the cloud, or via API. No code required. Exploding Topics - Discover the hottest new trends. [](https://explodingtopics.com/) See new market opportunities, trending topics, emerging technology, hot startups and more on Exploding Topics. Scribe | Visual step-by-step guides [](https://scribehow.com/) By capturing your process while you work, Scribe automatically generates a visual guide, ready to share with the click of a button. Get It Free – The internet's BEST place to find free stuff! [](https://getitfree.us/) The internet's BEST place to find free stuff! Inflact by Ingramer – Marketing toolkit for Instagram [](https://inflact.com/) Sell on Instagram, build your audience, curate content with the right set of tools. Free Online Form Builder & Form Creator | Jotform [](https://www.jotform.com/) We believe the right form makes all the difference. Go from busywork to less work with powerful forms that use conditional logic, accept payments, generate reports, and automate workflows. Manage Your Team’s Projects From Anywhere | Trello [](https://trello.com/en) Trello is the ultimate project management tool. Start up a board in seconds, automate tedious tasks, and collaborate anywhere, even on mobile. TikTok hashtag generator - tiktokhashtags.com [](https://tiktokhashtags.com/) Find out which are the best hashtags for your TikTok post. Create Infographics, Reports and Maps - Infogram [](https://infogram.com/) Infogram is an easy to use infographic and chart maker. Create and share beautiful infographics, online reports, and interactive maps. Make your own here. Confetto - Create Instagram content in minutes [](https://www.confet.to/) Confetto is an all-in-one social media marketing tool built for SMBs and Social Media Managers. Confetto helps you create high-quality content for your audience that maximizes your reach and engagement on social media. Design, copy-write, plan and schedule content all in one place. Find email addresses in seconds • Hunter (Email Hunter) [](https://hunter.io/) Hunter is the leading solution to find and verify professional email addresses. Start using Hunter and connect with the people that matter for your business. PlayPhrase.me: Site for cinema archaeologists. [](https://playphrase.me/) Travel and explore the world of cinema. Largest collection of video quotes from movies on the web. #1 Free SEO Tools → SEO Review Tools [](https://www.seoreviewtools.com/) SEO Review Tools: 42+ Free Online SEO Tools build with ❤! → Rank checker → Domain Authority Checker → Keyword Tool → Backlink Checker Podcastle: Seamless Podcast Recording & Editing [](https://podcastle.ai/) Podcastle is the simplest way to create professional-quality podcasts. Record, edit, transcribe, and export your content with the power of AI, in an intuitive web-based platform. Save Ads from TikTok & Facebook Ad Library - Foreplay [](https://www.foreplay.co/) The best way to save ads from TikTok Creative Center and Facebook Ad Library, Organize them into boards and share ad inspiration with your team. Supercharge your creative strategy. SiteRight - Automate Your Business [](https://www.siteright.co/) SiteRight combines the abilities of multiple online resources into a single dashboard allowing you to have full control over how you manage your business. Diffchecker - Compare text online to find the difference between two text files [](https://www.diffchecker.com/) Diffchecker will compare text to find the difference between two text files. Just paste your files and click Find Difference! Yout.com [](https://yout.com/) Yout.com allows you to record videos from YouTube, FaceBook, SoundCloud, VK and others too many formats with clipping. Intuitively easy to use, with Yout the Internet DVR, with a bit of extra. AI Content Generation | Competitor Analysis - Predis.ai [](https://predis.ai/) Predis helps brands and influencers communicate better on social media by providing AI-powered content strategy analysis, content and hashtag recommendations. Castr | #1 Live Video Streaming Solution With Video Hosting [](https://castr.io/) Castr is a live video streaming solution platform that delivers enterprise-grade live videos globally with CDN. Live event streaming, video hosting, pre-recorded live, multi stream – all in one place using Castr. Headliner - Promote your podcast, radio show or blog with video [](https://www.headliner.app/) Easily create videos to promote your podcast, radio show or blog. Share to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin and anywhere video lives Create Presentations, Infographics, Design & Video | Visme [](https://www.visme.co/) Create professional presentations, interactive infographics, beautiful design and engaging videos, all in one place. Start using Visme today. Designrr - Create eBooks, Kindle books, Leadmagnets, Flipbooks and Blog posts from your content in 2 minutes [](https://designrr.io/) Upload any web page, MS Word, Video, Podcast or YouTube and it will create a stunning ebook and convert it to pdf, epub, Kindle or Flipbook. Quick and Easy to use. Full Training, 24x7 Support and Facebook Group Included. SwipeWell | Swipe File Software [](https://www.swipewell.app/) The only Chrome extension dedicated to helping you save, organize, and reference marketing examples (so you never feel stumped). Tango | Create how-to guides, in seconds [](https://www.tango.us/) Tango takes the pain out of documenting processes by automatically generating how-to guides while you work. Empower your team to do their best work. Ad Creative Bank [](https://www.theadcreativebank.com/) Get inspired by ads from across industries, learn new best practices, and start thinking creatively about your brand’s digital creative. Signature Hound • Free Email Signature and Template Generator [](https://signaturehound.com/) Our email signature generator is free and easy to use. Our customizable templates work with Gmail, Outlook, Office 365, Apple Mail and more. Organize All Of Your Marketing In One Place - CoSchedule [](https://coschedule.com/) Get more done in less time with the only work management software for marketers. B Ok - Books [](https://b-ok.xyz/categories) OmmWriter [](https://ommwriter.com/) Ommwriter Rebrandly | Custom URL Shortener, Branded Link Management, API [](https://www.rebrandly.com/) URL Shortener with custom domains. Shorten, brand and track URLs with the industry-leading link management platform. Free to try. API, Short URL, Custom Domains. Common Tools [](https://www.commontools.org/) Book Bolt [](https://bookbolt.io/) Zazzle [](https://www.zazzle.com/) InspiroBot [](https://inspirobot.me/) Download Free Cheat Sheets or Create Your Own! - Cheatography.com: Cheat Sheets For Every Occasion [](https://cheatography.com/) Find thousands of incredible, original programming cheat sheets, all free to download. No Code Chatbot Platform | Free Chatbot Platform | WotNot [](https://wotnot.io/) WotNot is the best no code chatbot platform to build AI bot easily without coding. Deploy bots and live chat on the Website, Messenger, WhatsApp, and more. SpyFu - Competitor Keyword Research Tools for Google Ads PPC & SEO [](https://www.spyfu.com/) Systeme.io - The only tool you need to launch your online business [](https://systeme.io/) Systeme.io has all the tools you need to grow your online business. Click here to create your FREE account! Productivity Temp Mail [](https://temp-mail.org/en/) The Visual Collaboration Platform for Every Team | Miro [](https://miro.com/) Scalable, secure, cross-device and enterprise-ready team collaboration whiteboard for distributed teams. Join 35M+ users from around the world. Grammarly: Free Online Writing Assistant [](https://www.grammarly.com/) Millions trust Grammarly’s free writing app to make their online writing clear and effective. Getting started is simple — download Grammarly’s extension today. Rize · Maximize Your Productivity [](https://rize.io/) Rize is a smart time tracker that improves your focus and helps you build better work habits. Motion | Manage calendars, meetings, projects & tasks in one app [](https://www.usemotion.com/) Automatically prioritize tasks, schedule meetings, and resolve calendar conflicts. Used by over 10k CEOs and professionals to improve focus, get more done, and streamline workday. Notion – One workspace. Every team. [](https://www.notion.so/) We’re more than a doc. Or a table. Customize Notion to work the way you do. Loom: Async Video Messaging for Work | Loom [](https://www.loom.com/) Record your screen, share your thoughts, and get things done faster with async video. Zapier | Automation that moves you forward [](https://zapier.com/) Workflow automation for everyone. Zapier automates your work across 5,000+ app integrations, so you can focus on what matters. Rows — The spreadsheet with superpowers [](https://rows.com/) Combine the power of a spreadsheet with built-in integrations from your business apps. Automate workflows and build tools that make work simpler. Free Online Form Builder | Tally [](https://tally.so/) Tally is the simplest way to create free forms & surveys. Create any type of form in seconds, without knowing how to code, and for free. Highbrow | Learn Something New Every Day. Join for Free! [](https://gohighbrow.com/) Highbrow helps you learn something new every day with 5-minute lessons delivered to your inbox every morning. Join over 400,000 lifelong learners today! Slick Write | Check your grammar. Proofread online. [](https://www.slickwrite.com/#!home) Slick Write is a powerful, FREE application that makes it easy to check your writing for grammar errors, potential stylistic mistakes, and other features of interest. Whether you're a blogger, novelist, SEO professional, or student writing an essay for school, Slick Write can help take your writing to the next level. Reverso [](https://www.reverso.net) Hemingway Editor [](https://hemingwayapp.com/) Web Apps by 123apps - Edit, Convert, Create [](https://123apps.com/) Splitbee – Your all-in-one analytics and conversion platform [](https://splitbee.io/) Track and optimize your online business with Splitbee. Analytics, Funnels, Automations, A/B Testing and more. PDF Tools Free PDF, Video, Image & Other Online Tools - TinyWow [](https://tinywow.com/) Smallpdf.com - A Free Solution to all your PDF Problems [](https://smallpdf.com/) Smallpdf - the platform that makes it super easy to convert and edit all your PDF files. Solving all your PDF problems in one place - and yes, free. Sejda helps with your PDF tasks [](https://www.sejda.com/) Sejda helps with your PDF tasks. Quick and simple online service, no installation required! Split, merge or convert PDF to images, alternate mix or split scans and many other. iLovePDF | Online PDF tools for PDF lovers [](https://www.ilovepdf.com/) iLovePDF is an online service to work with PDF files completely free and easy to use. Merge PDF, split PDF, compress PDF, office to PDF, PDF to JPG and more! Text rewrite QuillBot [](https://quillbot.com/) Pre Post SEO : Online SEO Tools [](https://www.prepostseo.com/) Free Online SEO Tools: plagiarism checker, grammar checker, image compressor, website seo checker, article rewriter, back link checker Wordtune | Your personal writing assistant & editor [](https://www.wordtune.com/) Wordtune is the ultimate AI writing tool that rewrites, rephrases, and rewords your writing! Trusted by over 1,000,000 users, Wordtune strengthens articles, academic papers, essays, emails and any other online content. Aliexpress alternatives CJdropshipping - Dropshipping from Worldwide to Worldwide! [](https://cjdropshipping.com/) China's reliable eCommerce dropshipping fulfillment supplier, helps small businesses ship worldwide, dropship and fulfillment services that are friendly to start-ups and small businesses, Shopify dropshipping. SaleHoo [](https://www.salehoo.com/) Alibaba.com: Manufacturers, Suppliers, Exporters & Importers from the world's largest online B2B marketplace [](https://www.alibaba.com/) Find quality Manufacturers, Suppliers, Exporters, Importers, Buyers, Wholesalers, Products and Trade Leads from our award-winning International Trade Site. Import & Export on alibaba.com Best Dropshipping Suppliers for US + EU Products | Spocket [](https://www.spocket.co/) Spocket allows you to easily start dropshipping top products from US and EU suppliers. Get started for free and see why Spocket consistently gets 5 stars. Best dropshipping supplier to the US [](https://www.usadrop.com/) THE ONLY AMERICAN-MADE FULFILLMENT CENTER IN CHINA. Our knowledge of the Worldwide dropshipping market and the Chinese Supply-Chain can't be beat! 阿里1688 [](https://www.1688.com/) 阿里巴巴（1688.com）是全球企业间（B2B）电子商务的著名品牌，为数千万网商提供海量商机信息和便捷安全的在线交易市场，也是商人们以商会友、真实互动的社区平台。目前1688.com已覆盖原材料、工业品、服装服饰、家居百货、小商品等12个行业大类，提供从原料--生产--加工--现货等一系列的供应产品和服务 Dropshipping Tools Oberlo | Where Self Made is Made [](https://www.oberlo.com/) Start selling online now with Shopify. All the videos, podcasts, ebooks, and dropshipping tools you'll need to build your online empire. Klaviyo: Marketing Automation Platform for Email & SMS [](https://www.klaviyo.com/) Klaviyo, an ecommerce marketing automation platform for email marketing and sms syncs your tech stack with your website store to scale your business. SMSBump | SMS Marketing E-Commerce App for Shopify [](https://smsbump.com/) SMSBump is an SMS marketing & automation app for Shopify. Segment customers, recover orders, send campaign text messages with a 35%+ click through rate. AfterShip: The #1 Shipment Tracking Platform [](https://www.aftership.com/) Order status lookup, branded tracking page, and multi-carrier tracking API for eCommerce. Supports USPS, FedEx, UPS, and 900+ carriers worldwide. #1 Dropshipping App | Zendrop [](https://zendrop.com/) Start and scale your own dropshipping business with Zendrop. Sell and easily fulfill your orders with the fastest shipping in the industry. Best Dropshipping Suppliers for US + EU Products | Spocket [](https://www.spocket.co/) Spocket allows you to easily start dropshipping top products from US and EU suppliers. Get started for free and see why Spocket consistently gets 5 stars. Video Editing Jitter • The simplest motion design tool on the web. [](https://jitter.video/) Animate your designs easily. Export your creations as videos or GIFs. All in your browser. DaVinci Resolve 18 | Blackmagic Design [](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve) Professional video editing, color correction, visual effects and audio post production all in a single application. Free and paid versions for Mac, Windows and Linux. Online Video Editor | Video Creator | InVideo [](https://invideo.io/) InVideo's Online Video Editor Helps You Make Professional Videos From Premium Templates, Images, And Music. All your video needs in one place | Clipchamp [](https://clipchamp.com/) Fast-forward your creations with our video editing platform. Start with a video template or record your webcam or screen. Get the pro look with filters, transitions, text and more. Then, export in minutes and share in an instant. Descript | All-in-one audio/video editing, as easy as a doc. [](https://www.descript.com/) Record, transcribe, edit, mix, collaborate, and master your audio and video with Descript. Download for free →. Kapwing — Reach more people with your content [](https://www.kapwing.com/) Kapwing is a collaborative, online content creation platform that you can use to edit video and create content. Join over 10 million modern creators who trust Kapwing to create, edit, and grow their content on every channel. Panzoid [](https://panzoid.com/) Powerful, free online apps and community for creating beautiful custom content. Google Web Designer - Home [](https://webdesigner.withgoogle.com/) Kapwing — Reach more people with your content [](https://www.kapwing.com/) Kapwing is a collaborative, online content creation platform that you can use to edit video and create content. Join over 10 million modern creators who trust Kapwing to create, edit, and grow their content on every channel. ClipDrop [](https://clipdrop.co/) Create professional visuals without a photo studio CapCut [](https://www.capcut.com/) CapCut is an all-in-one online video editing software which makes creation, upload & share easier, with frame by frame track editor, cloud drive etc. VEED - Online Video Editor - Video Editing Made Simple [](https://www.veed.io/) Make stunning videos with a single click. Cut, trim, crop, add subtitles and more. Online, no account needed. Try it now, free. VEED Free Video Maker | Create & Edit Your Videos Easily - Animoto [](https://animoto.com/k/welcome) Create, edit, and share videos with our online video maker. Combine your photos, video clips, and music to make quality videos in minutes. Get started free! Runway - Online Video Editor | Everything you need to make content, fast. [](https://runwayml.com/) Discover advanced video editing capabilities to take your creations to the next level. CreatorKit - A.I. video creator for marketers [](https://creatorkit.com/) Create videos with just one click, using our A.I. video editor purpose built for marketers. Create scroll stopping videos, Instagram stories, Ads, Reels, and TikTok videos. Pixar in a Box | Computing | Khan Academy [](https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/pixar) 3D Video Motions Plask - AI Motion Capture and 3D Animation Tool [](https://plask.ai/) Plask is an all-in-one browser-based AI motion capture tool and animation editor that anybody can use, from motion designers to every day content creators. Captions Captions [](https://www.getcaptions.app/) Say hello to Captions, the only camera and editing app that automatically transcribes, captions and clips your talking videos for you. Stock videos Pexels [](https://www.pexels.com/) Pixabay [](https://pixabay.com/) Mixkit - Awesome free assets for your next video project [](https://mixkit.co/) Download Free Stock Video Footage, Stock Music & Premiere Pro Templates for your next video editing project. All assets can be downloaded for free! Free Stock Video Footage HD 4K Download Royalty-Free Clips [](https://www.videvo.net/) Download free stock video footage with over 300,000 video clips in 4K and HD. We also offer a wide selection of music and sound effect files with over 180,000 clips available. Click here to download royalty-free licensing videos, motion graphics, music and sound effects from Videvo today. Free Stock Video Footage HD Royalty-Free Videos Download [](https://mazwai.com/) Download free stock video footage with clips available in HD. Click here to download royalty-free licensing videos from Mazwai now. Royalty Free Stock Video Footage Clips | Vidsplay.com [](https://www.vidsplay.com/) Royalty Free Stock Video Footage Clips Free Stock Video Footage, Royalty Free Videos for Download [](https://coverr.co/) Download royalty free (for personal and commercial use), unique and beautiful video footage for your website or any project. No attribution required. Stock Photos Beautiful Free Images & Pictures | Unsplash [](https://unsplash.com/) Beautiful, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project. Better than any royalty free or stock photos. When we share, everyone wins - Creative Commons [](https://creativecommons.org/) Creative Commons licenses are 20! Honoring 20 years of open sharing using CC licenses, join us in 2022 to celebrate Better Sharing — advancing universal access to knowledge and culture, and fostering creativity, innovation, and collaboration. Help us reach our goal of raising $15 million for a future of Better Sharing.  20 Years of Better … Read More "When we share, everyone wins" Food Pictures • Foodiesfeed • Free Food Photos [](https://www.foodiesfeed.com/) Download 2000+ food pictures ⋆ The best free food photos for commercial use ⋆ CC0 license Free Stock Photos and Images for Websites & Commercial Use [](https://burst.shopify.com/) Browse thousands of beautiful copyright-free images. All our pictures are free to download for personal and commercial use, no attribution required. EyeEm | Authentic Stock Photography and Royalty-Free Images [](https://www.eyeem.com/) Explore high-quality, royalty-free stock photos for commercial use. License individual images or save money with our flexible subscription and image pack plans. picjumbo: Free Stock Photos [](https://picjumbo.com/) Free stock photos and images for your projects and websites.️ Beautiful 100% free high-resolution stock images with no watermark. Free Stock Photos, Images, and Vectors [](https://www.stockvault.net/) 139.738 free stock photos, textures, backgrounds and graphics for your next project. No attribution required. Free Stock Photos, PNGs, Templates & Mockups | rawpixel [](https://www.rawpixel.com/) Free images, PNGs, stickers, backgrounds, wallpapers, graphic templates and PSD mockups. All safe to use with commercial licenses. Free Commercial Stock Photos & Royalty Free Images | PikWizard [](https://pikwizard.com/) Free images, videos & free stock photos. Unlimited downloads ✓ Royalty-free Images ✓Copyright-free for commercial use ✓ No Attribution Required Design Bundles [](https://designbundles.net/) Stock music Royalty Free Music for video creators | Epidemic Sound [](https://www.epidemicsound.com/) Download premium Royalty free Music and SFX! Our free trial gives you access to over 35,000 tracks and 90,000 sound effects for video, streaming and more! Royalty-Free Music & SFX for Video Creators | Artlist [](https://artlist.io/) Explore the ultimate royalty-free music & sound effects catalogs for unlimited use in YouTube videos, social media & films created by inspiring indie artists worldwide. The go-to music licensing choice for all creators Royalty Free Audio Tracks - Envato Elements [](https://elements.envato.com/audio) Download Royalty Free Stock Audio Tracks for your next project from Envato Elements. Premium, High Quality handpicked Audio files ideal for any genre. License popular music for videos • Lickd [](https://lickd.co/) The only place you can license popular music for videos. Access 1M+ mainstream tracks, plus high-quality stock music for content creators NCS (NoCopyrightSounds) - free music for content creators [](https://ncs.io/) NCS is a Record Label dedicated to giving a platform to the next generation of Artists in electronic music, representing genres from house to dubstep via trap, drum & bass, electro pop and more. Search Engine Optimization Keyword Tool For Monthly Search Volume, CPC & Competition [](https://keywordseverywhere.com/) Keywords Everywhere is a browser add-on for Chrome & Firefox that shows search volume, CPC & competition on multiple websites. Semrush - Online Marketing Can Be Easy [](https://www.semrush.com/) Turn the algorithm into a friend. Make your business visible online with 55+ tools for SEO, PPC, content, social media, competitive research, and more. DuckDuckGo — Privacy, simplified. [](https://duckduckgo.com/) The Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs. SEO Software for 360° Analysis of Your Website [](https://seranking.com/) Leading SEO software for business owners, agencies, and SEO specialists. Track your rankings, monitor competitors, spot technical errors, and more. Skyrocket your organic traffic with Surfer [](https://surferseo.com/) Use Surfer to research, write, optimize, and audit! Everything you need to create a comprehensive content strategy that yields real results is right here. Ahrefs - SEO Tools & Resources To Grow Your Search Traffic [](https://ahrefs.com/) You don't have to be an SEO pro to rank higher and get more traffic. Join Ahrefs – we're a powerful but easy to learn SEO toolset with a passionate community. Neon Tools [](https://neontools.io/) Google Index Search [](https://lumpysoft.com/) Google Index Search SEO Backlink Checker & Link Building Toolset | Majestic.com [](https://majestic.com/) Develop backlink strategies with our Link Intelligence data, build the strongest SEO backlink campaigns to drive organic traffic and boost your rankings today. PageOptimizer Pro [](https://pageoptimizer.pro/) Plans Services SEO Consulting Learn SEO About Blog POP SEO Community Podcast Support POP On Page Workshops With Kyle Roof POP Chrome Extension Guide Tutorial Videos Frequently Asked Questions Best Practices Login Cancel Anytime Plans Services SEO Consulting Learn SEO About Blog POP SEO Community Podcast Support POP On Page… Keyword Chef - Keywords for Publishers [](https://keywordchef.com/) Rank Insanely Fast for Keywords Your Competition Can’t Find “Every long-tail keyword I find ends up ranking within a day” – Dane Eyerly, Owner at TextGoods.com Keyword Chef automatically finds and filters keywords for you. Real-time SERP analysis lets you find keywords nearly guaranteed to rank. Try for free → Let’s face it, most keyword tools ... Read more Notifier - Social Listening for Social Media and More! [](https://notifier.so/) Track keywords. Market your product for free. Drive the conversation. Easy. Free Trial. No obligation ever. Simple. Fast. Trusted by Top Companies. Free Keyword Research Tool from Wordtracker [](https://www.wordtracker.com/) The best FREE alternative to the Keyword Planner. Use Wordtracker to reveal 1000s of profitable longtail keywords with up to 10,000 results per search Blog Posts The 60 Hottest Front-end Tools of 2021 | CSS-Tricks - CSS-Tricks [](https://css-tricks.com/hottest-front-end-tools-in-2021/) A complete list of the most popular front-end tools in 2021, according to the Web Tools Weekly newsletter. See which resources made the list. Resume ResumeGlow - AI Powered Resume Builder [](https://resumeglow.com/) Get hired fast with a resume that grabs attention. Designed by a team of HR experts and typographers. Customizable templates with more than a million possible Create Your Job-winning Resume - (Free) Resume maker · Resume.io [](https://resume.io/) Free online resume maker, allows you to create a perfect Resume or Cover Letter in 5 minutes. See how easy it is to write a professional resume - apply for jobs today! Rezi - The Leading AI-Powered Free Resume Builder [](https://www.rezi.ai/) Rezi’s award-winning AI-powered resume builder is trusted by hundreds of thousands of job seekers. Create your perfect resume in minutes with Rezi. Create a Perfect Resume | Free Resume Builder | Resumaker.ai [](https://resumaker.ai/) Create your professional resume with this online resume maker. Choose a designer-made template and grab any employer attention in seconds. Trusted AI Resume Maker Helps You Get Hired Fast [](https://skillroads.com/) Reach a 96.4% success rate in the job hunt race with the best resume creator. Our innovative technologies and 24/7 support help you to become a perfect candidate for any job. Do not lose your chance to become the One. Kickresume | Best Online Resume & Cover Letter Builder [](https://www.kickresume.com/) Create your best resume yet. Online resume and cover letter builder used by 1,300,000 job seekers worldwide. Professional templates approved by recruiters. ResumeMaker.Online | Create a Professional Resume for Free [](https://www.resumemaker.online/) Save time with the easiest-to-use Resume Maker Online. Create an effective resume in just minutes and land your dream job. No Sign-up required, start now! Interviews Interview Warmup - Grow with Google [](https://grow.google/certificates/interview-warmup/) A quick way to prepare for your next interview. Practice key questions, get insights about your answers, and get more comfortable interviewing. No code website builder Carrd - Simple, free, fully responsive one-page sites for pretty much anything [](https://carrd.co/) A free platform for building simple, fully responsive one-page sites for pretty much anything. Webflow: Create a custom website | No-code website builder [](https://webflow.com/) Create professional, custom websites in a completely visual canvas with no code. Learn how to create a website by trying Webflow for free! Google Sites: Sign-in [](https://sites.google.com/) FlutterFlow - Build beautiful, modern apps incredibly fast! [](https://flutterflow.io/) FlutterFlow lets you build apps incredibly fast in your browser. Build fully functional apps with Firebase integration, API support, animations, and more. Export your code or even easier deploy directly to the app stores! Free Website Builder: Build a Free Website or Online Store | Weebly [](https://www.weebly.com/) Weebly’s free website builder makes it easy to create a website, blog, or online store. Find customizable templates, domains, and easy-to-use tools for any type of business website. Glide • No Code App Builder • Nocode Application Development [](https://www.glideapps.com/) Create the apps your business needs, without coding, waiting or overpaying. Get started for free and build an app today Adalo - Build Your Own No Code App [](https://www.adalo.com/) Adalo makes creating apps as easy as putting together a slide deck. Turn your idea into a real native app — no code needed! Siter.io - The collaborative web design tool, no-code website builder [](https://siter.io/) Siter.io is a visual website builder for designers. Prototype, design, and create responsive websites in the browser. Work together with your team in one place. Elementor: #1 Free WordPress Website Builder | Elementor.com [](https://elementor.com/) Elementor is the platform web creators choose to build professional WordPress websites, grow their skills, and build their business. Start for free today! No code app builder | Bravo Studio [](https://www.bravostudio.app/) Your no-code mobile app builder for iOS and Android. Create MVP’s, validate ideas and publish on App Store and Google Play Store. Home [](https://typedream.com/) The simplest way to build a website with no-code, as easy as writing on Notion. Try Typedream for free and upgrade for custom domains, collaborators, and unlimited pages. Free Website Builder | Create a Free Website | Wix.com [](https://www.wix.com/) Create a website with Wix’s robust website builder. With 900+ strategically designed templates and advanced SEO and marketing tools, build your brand online today. Free responsive Emails & Landing Pages drag-and-drop Editor | BEE [](https://beefree.io/) Free responsive emails and landing pages editor. With BEE drag-and-drop builders embedded in many software applications you can start designing now! Home [](https://typedream.com/) The simplest way to build a website with no-code, as easy as writing on Notion. Try Typedream for free and upgrade for custom domains, collaborators, and unlimited pages. Ownit Connected Checkout [](https://www.ownit.co/) Ownit Connected Checkout Bookmark.com | No-code Website Builder to Start Your Business [](https://www.bookmark.com/) Our AI powered platform ensures your business is future proof. Try Bookmark for free. The best way to build web apps without code | Bubble [](https://bubble.io/) Bubble introduces a new way to build software. It’s a no-code tool that lets you build SaaS platforms, marketplaces and CRMs without code. Bubble hosts all web apps on its cloud platform. Responsive Web Design | Website Creation | Editor X [](https://www.editorx.com/) Experience the future of website design with responsive layouts, CSS precision and smooth drag and drop. Create a Website for Free. Tilda Website Builder [](https://tilda.cc/) Create a website, online store, landing page with Tilda intuitive website builder. Build your site from hundreds of pre-designed templates and publish it today. No code required. No-code headless commerce and websites | Unstack Inc. [](https://www.unstack.com/) Deploy high performance eCommerce storefronts and websites without the engineering overhead using Unstack's no-code CMS Best Drag-and-Drop Website Builder | Jemi [](https://jemi.so/) The modern website builder for creatives, entrepreneurs, and dreamers. Build a beautiful link in bio site, portfolio, or landing page in minutes. No-code website builder that works like Notion [](https://popsy.co/) Create a beautiful no-code website in minutes. Popsy works just like Notion but is built from the ground up for building websites. Choose a free template. Edit content just like in Notion. Customize styles without code. Free Notion icons and illustrations. Unbounce - The Landing Page Builder & Platform [](https://unbounce.com/) Grow your relevance, leads, and sales with Unbounce. Use Unbounce to easily create and optimize landing pages for your small business and boost conversions with AI insights. Low-code Front-end Design & Development Platform | TeleportHQ [](https://teleporthq.io/) Front-end development platform, with a visual builder and headless content modelling capabilities. Static website creation, and UI development tools. Other tools used in no code website MemberSpace - Turn any part of your website into members-only with just a few clicks [](https://www.memberspace.com/) Create memberships on your website for anything you want like courses, video tutorials, member directories, and more while having 100% control over look & feel. Triggre | The number one true no-code platform to run your business [](https://www.triggre.com/) The best no-code platform to create highly advanced business applications in hours, without programming. Try it now for free! No code game builder Welcome to Buildbox [](https://signup.buildbox.com/) Welcome to Buildbox Flowlab Game Creator - Make games online [](https://flowlab.io/) Flowlab is an online game creator. Make your own games to share with friends. Make 2D Games With GameMaker | Free Video Game Maker [](https://gamemaker.io/) Make a game with GameMaker, the best free video game engine. Perfect for beginners and professionals. Learn to build your own 2D games with our simple tutorials. Side Hustle Side Hustle Stack [](https://sidehustlestack.co/) Side Hustle Stack is a resource for finding platform-based work, ranging from gig work and side hustles to platforms that help you start a small business that can grow. Fiverr [](https://www.fiverr.com/) Remotasks: Work From Home, Online Bootcamp Training [](https://www.remotasks.com/en) Make money doing tasks. Start earning today! Free bootcamp training offered online. Sign up for a free Remotasks account and work from home. Earn up to $200/month. Transcribe Speech to Text | Rev [](https://www.rev.com/) Transcribe Speech to Text with Rev. Reach your audience with clear and accurate captions, transcripts, and subtitles. AI Training Data and other Data Management Services [](https://www.clickworker.com/) AI training data, SEO texts, web research, tagging, surveys and more - Use the crowdsourcing principle with the power of >4.5M Clickworkers. Automate your Busy Work - Byron People-Powered Assistants [](https://www.hibyron.com/) Byron is an on demand US based virtual assistant platform that gives individuals and teams the ability to quickly outsource their non-essential tasks. Jobs Websites - Remote Latest Crypto Jobs, Web3 Jobs and Blockchain Jobs in the leading tech companies. [](https://cryptojobslist.com/) New Cryptocurrency Jobs, Web3 Jobs and Blockchain Jobs on CryptoJobsList — the leading site to find and post jobs. Connect with companies hiring in a few clicks and begin your next experience in the industry. Updated daily. Remote Jobs: Design, Marketing, Programming, Writing & More [](https://justremote.co/) Discover Remote Jobs from around the world. Give up the commute, work remotely and do what you love, daily, from anywhere. Find your perfect remote development, design, sales or marketing job today. Remote Ok [](https://remoteok.com/) Hire Freelancers & Remote Workers For Free [](https://talent.hubstaff.com/) Find and hire the highest quality freelancers from around the world - for free. Choose from thousands of developers, digital marketers, creatives and more. We Work Remotely: Remote jobs in design, programming, marketing and more [](https://weworkremotely.com/) Find the most qualified people in the most unexpected places: Hire remote! We Work Remotely is the best place to find and list remote jobs that aren't restricted by commutes or a particular geographic area. Browse thousands of remote work jobs today. Angel [](https://angel.co/) Remote Work: Jobs, Companies & Virtual Teams - Remote.co [](https://remote.co/) Remote.co is the definitive remote work job board for online job seekers and companies hiring. Start your remote job search here! FlexJobs: Best Remote Jobs, Work from Home Jobs, Online Jobs & More [](https://www.flexjobs.com/) The #1 job search site for hand-screened flexible and remote jobs (work from home jobs) since 2007. Plus get resume, coaching and career help. Join today! Remote jobs remotefront.io [](https://remotefront.io/) All remote jobs at remotefront.io Daily Virtual Events Helping You Grow Professionally [](https://powertofly.com/) PowerToFly is where you receive expert career advice, free video training, coaching and exclusive access to jobs and events at top companies. Best Remote and Work from Home Jobs - Virtual Vocations [](https://www.virtualvocations.com/) Best work from home jobs and remote jobs in over 50 categories for professionals, digital nomads, telecommuting workers and entry level jobseekers. Education, healthcare, medical, customer support and tech job openings. Remote Jobs | Working Nomads [](https://www.workingnomads.com/jobs) Remote jobs for digital working nomads. Start your telecommuting career and work remotely from home or places around the world. Job Search, Companies Hiring Near Me, and Advice | The Muse [](https://www.themuse.com/) Find jobs at the best companies hiring near you and get free career advice. Startupers [](https://www.startupers.com/) NoDesk - Where Everyone Works Remote [](https://nodesk.co/) Browse and apply to the best new remote jobs at leading remote companies and startups for free. Join hundreds of companies that use NoDesk to build their remote teams. Browser Extensions Blackbox - Select. Copy. Paste & Search - Magazinul web Chrome [](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blackbox-select-copy-past/mcgbeeipkmelnpldkobichboakdfaeon) Fastest Way to Copy Text from Videos & Images Octotree - GitHub code tree - Magazinul web Chrome [](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/octotree-github-code-tree/bkhaagjahfmjljalopjnoealnfndnagc) GitHub on steroids WhatFont - Chrome Web Store [](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whatfont/jabopobgcpjmedljpbcaablpmlmfcogm?hl=en) The easiest way to identify fonts on web pages. Window Resizer - Chrome Web Store [](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/window-resizer/kkelicaakdanhinjdeammmilcgefonfh?hl=en) Resize the browser window to emulate various screen resolutions. Amino: CSS Editor - Magazinul web Chrome [](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amino-css-editor/pbcpfbcibpcbfbmddogfhcijfpboeaaf) Live CSS Editor. Write custom CSS for any website and see your changes in real time. Checkbot: SEO, Web Speed & Security Tester 🚀 - Chrome Web Store [](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/checkbot-seo-web-speed-se/dagohlmlhagincbfilmkadjgmdnkjinl?hl=en) Test SEO/speed/security of 100s of pages in a click! Check broken links, HTML/JavaScript/CSS, URL redirects, duplicate titles... Honey: Automatic Coupons & Rewards - Magazinul web Chrome [](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/honey-automatic-coupons-r/bmnlcjabgnpnenekpadlanbbkooimhnj) Save money and earn rewards when you shop online. Tango: screenshots, training, & documentation - Magazinul web Chrome [](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tango-screenshots-trainin/lggdbpblkekjjbobadliahffoaobaknh) Automatically create beautiful step-by-step guides with screenshots, in seconds. No code browser automation | axiom.ai [](https://axiom.ai/) Build browser bots quickly, without code. Automate website actions and repetitive tasks using just your browser, on any website or web app. No Code Browser extensions builder Bildr - Visual Web Development in your Browser [](https://www.bildr.com/) Visually build SaaS products, Chrome extensions, and web3 dApps Other Repurposing content for social media the easy way » Repurpose.io [](https://repurpose.io/) Repurposing content for social media made easy. Automatically repurpose YouTube, TikTok, Lives, Podcasts, and Zoom calls. Try it for FREE. Smart Serials: Your serial numbers database [](https://smartserials.com/) This is your main source of free serial numbers, unlock keys in a clean environment safe to browse by all ages. Old versions of Windows, Mac and Linux Software, Apps & Abandonware Games - Download at OldVersion.com [](http://www.oldversion.com/) Online Room Planner - Design Your Room [](http://www.planyourroom.com/) Planyourroom.com is a wonderful website to redesign each room in your house by picking out perfect furniture options to fit your unique space. BoredHumans.com - Fun AI Programs You Can Use Online [](https://boredhumans.com/) Fun AI programs you can use online. AI games, fake people, computer generated art, machine learning demos, and more. BNProject | Home [](https://buynothingproject.org/) Open Source Alternatives to Proprietary Software [](https://www.opensourcealternative.to/) Discover 400+ popular open source alternatives to proprietary SaaS. URL Shortener - Short URLs & Custom Free Link Shortener | Bitly [](https://bitly.com/) Bitly’s Connections Platform is more than a free URL shortener, with robust link management software, advanced QR Code features, and a Link-in-bio solution. TinEye Reverse Image Search [](https://tineye.com/) Good Books | Books recommended by successful people [](https://www.goodbooks.io/) Looking for the best books to read in 2022? Discover the best book recommendations from the world's most successful, influential and interesting people. Directory - Website Recommendations [](https://tokapps.com/directory/) 0 TRIED & TESTED WEBSITES LISTED Insanely Useful Websites A combination of useful websites for businesses, freelancers, DIYers, and individuals in a centralised area.All websites have been tried and tested. Filter Websites Audio Business Tools Copywriting Design Entertainment Graphics Guides Health Marketing PC Resources Savings SEO Software Travel Video Apply filter Watch Anime Online, Free Anime Streaming Online on Zoro.to Anime Website [](https://zoro.to/) Zoro is a Free anime streaming website which you can watch English Subbed and Dubbed Anime online with No Account and Daily update. WATCH NOW! Animated Drawings [](https://sketch.metademolab.com/) Bring children's drawings to life, by animating characters to move around! Alternativeto [](https://alternativeto.net/) Chatroulette [](https://chatroulette.com/) Random meetings around the world Tiktok Downloader - Download Video tiktok Without Watermark - SnapTik [](https://snaptik.app/en) TikTok Video Downloader - SnapTik.App is one of the best free Download video Tiktok No Watermark tool available online. You can download TikTok video from any device you have. Imgflip - Create and Share Awesome Images [](https://imgflip.com/) Flip through memes, gifs, and other funny images. Make your own images with our Meme Generator or Animated GIF Maker. Fake Text Message | Make Fake Text Conversation [](https://ifaketextmessage.com/) Fake Text Message is a tool to create a Fake Text Conversation and a Fake iMessage. ✂Templatemaker ︎ [](https://www.templatemaker.nl/en/) Omni Calculator [](https://www.omnicalculator.com/) Omni Calculator solves 2960 problems anywhere from finance and business to health. It’s so fast and easy you won’t want to do the math again! Watch Movies Online Free | Watch Series HD Free [](https://hdtoday.tv/) Free Access to the Biggest library of HD Movies and HD Series online - NO ADS - No Account Required - Fast Free Streaming Students Answers - The Most Trusted Place for Answering Life's Questions [](https://www.answers.com/) Answers is the place to go to get the answers you need and to ask the questions you want Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Intelligence [](https://www.wolframalpha.com/) Compute answers using Wolfram's breakthrough technology & knowledgebase, relied on by millions of students & professionals. For math, science, nutrition, history, geography, engineering, mathematics, linguistics, sports, finance, music… Online Math Tools - Simple, free and easy to use math utilities [](https://onlinemathtools.com/) World's simplest collection of useful mathematics utilities. Generate number sequences, draw fractals, do quick matrix and numerical calculations and more! edX | Free Online Courses by Harvard, MIT, & more | edX [](https://www.edx.org/) Access 2000 free online courses from 140 leading institutions worldwide. Gain new skills and earn a certificate of completion. Join today. Sci-Hub [](https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/) Sci-Hub,mg.scihub.ltd,sci-hub.tw,The project is supported by user donations. Imagine the world with free access to knowledge for everyone ‐ a world without any paywalls. DigitalDefynd - Find the Best + Free Courses Online [](https://digitaldefynd.com/) 4 Million+ Learners | 96,000+ Courses | 45,000+ Free Courses | 1200+ Free Certificates Learn Anything [](https://learn-anything.xyz/) Search Interactive Mind Maps to learn anything HubSpot Academy - Homepage [](https://academy.hubspot.com/) HubSpot Academy is the worldwide leader in inbound marketing, sales, and customer service/support training.

#github#internet-tools-collection

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Nate Herk | AI Automation•Jan 17, 2025

How I Built A Technical Analyst AI Agent in n8n With No Code

In this video, I’ll show you how to build a Technical Analyst AI Agent in n8n without writing a single line of code! 🎉 Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned automation enthusiast, this guide will teach you how to create an AI agent that automates technical analysis tasks, saving you time and effort. You can download all the workflows shown in this video for free by joining my free Skool community! 🎁 📌 Join my free Skool community for access to a learning community and the workflow shows in my videos! 👇 https://www.skool.com/ai-automation-society/about 🌟 Join my paid Skool community if you want to go deeper with n8n and AI Automations👇 https://www.skool.com/ai-automation-society-plus/about 🚧 Start Building with n8n! (I get kickback if you sign up here - thank you!) https://n8n.partnerlinks.io/22crlu8afq5r 💻 Book A Call If You're Interested in Implementing AI Agents Into Your Business: https://truehorizon.ai/ Business Inquiries: 📧 nate@truehorizon.ai WATCH NEXT: https://youtu.be/u2Tuu02r7QI TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Demo 01:56 How to Download the Workflow (FREE) 02:47 The Agent Workflow 04:52 Get Chart Workflow 08:37 Setting Up POST Request to Chart-Img 13:35 OpenAI Analyze Image Node 14:41 Responding to Agent 15:38 Reviewing Agent Log Gear I Used: Camera: Razer Kiyo Pro Microphone: HyperX SoloCast Background Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7HjxOAU5Kc&t=0s

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Nate Herk | AI Automation•Jan 17, 2025

How I'd Teach a 10 Year Old to Build AI Agents (No Code, n8n)

🌟 Skool community to go deeper with AI and connect with 850+ like minded members👇https://www.skool.com/ai-automation-society-plus/about 📌 Join my free Skool community for access to a learning community and the workflow shows in my videos! 👇 https://www.skool.com/ai-automation-society/about 🚧 Start Building with n8n! (I get kickback if you sign up here - thank you!) https://n8n.partnerlinks.io/22crlu8afq5r In this video, I break down building an AI Agent so simply even a 10-year-old could do it! I’ll walk you through what an AI agent is and how to build a basic email agent in n8n that can automatically send emails for you. No coding experience? No problem! I’ll guide you step-by-step, showing just how quick and easy you can get this set up. By the end of this video, you’ll have your very own email-sending AI agent up and running in no time. 💻 Book A Call If You're Interested in Implementing AI Agents Into Your Business: https://truehorizon.ai/ Business Inquiries: 📧 nate@truehorizon.ai WATCH NEXT: https://youtu.be/u2Tuu02r7QI TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Components of an AI Agent 03:50 Step 1: Chat Input 04:18 Step 2: Adding the Brain 05:49 Step 3: Adding Memory 07:45 Step 4: Adding Send Email Tool 10:21 Step 5: Adding Instructions (System Message) 12:04 Testing the Email Agent 13:43 Reviewing the Agent Log 15:00 Step 6: Adding Contact Database Tool 16:57 Final Test 18:05 Final Thoughts Gear I Used: Camera: Razer Kiyo Pro Microphone: HyperX SoloCast Background Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7HjxOAU5Kc&t=0s

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Y Combinator•Jan 15, 2025

How To Use AI In Your Startup

LLMs continue to improve at an exponential pace. So what should you do as a founder to take advantage of this moment? In this episode of Office Hours, YC General Partners discuss what you should consider if you’re thinking about pivoting to AI or incorporating it into your business. Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/OfficeHours-apply Work at a startup: https://yc.link/OfficeHours-jobs Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 00:00 - Intro 01:36 - Trends 05:35 - Pivoting To AI 08:25 - Bay Area 10:07 - Applications 11:33 - Framework

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Nate Herk | AI Automation•Oct 20, 2024

n8n Masterclass: Build AI Agents & Automate Workflows (Beginner to Pro)

JOIN THE FREE SKOOL COMMUNITY👇 https://www.skool.com/ai-automation-society-3440/about 🌟 Join my paid Skool community if you want to go deeper with n8n and AI Automations👇 https://www.skool.com/ai-automation-society-plus/about 🚧 Start Building with n8n! (I get kickback if you sign up here - thank you!) https://n8n.partnerlinks.io/22crlu8afq5r 💻 Book A Call If You're Interested in Implementing AI Agents Into Your Business: https://truehorizon.ai/ Welcome to the ultimate n8n masterclass! Whether you're a complete beginner or have little coding experience, this video will guide you step-by-step through everything you need to know to start automating workflows and building powerful AI agents with n8n. In this video, you'll learn: ⚙️ The basics of n8n, building your first workflow, and connecting with 300+ integrations. 🌐 How to use APIs and HTTP requests in n8n. 🧠 Harnessing the power of RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and vector databases for AI-powered automation. 🛠️ Creating custom tools and integrating them into workflows to build smarter AI agents. 🔗 Advanced concepts like webhooks, error handling, and scaling workflows for real-world automation. 📈 Best practices to keep your workflows optimized, scalable, and resilient. By the end, you’ll have the confidence to create your own AI agent automations, trigger workflows with webhooks, use APIs, and more! 💡 If you found this video helpful, don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more content on n8n, AI agents, and automation. Let me know in the comments what you plan to automate next! Business Inquiries: 📧 nateherk@uppitai.com WATCH NEXT: https://youtu.be/JUx2ZfNfD64 TIMESTAMPS 00:00 What is n8n? 02:50 Why Should You Learn n8n? 04:53 Part 1: Getting Started 05:09 Self-Hosted vs Cloud 08:25 Workflows, Nodes, Executions 09:45 n8n Interface 16:05 Part 2: Core Concepts 16:28 Types of Nodes 19:00 Building Example Workflow 36:28 Part 3: RAG and Vector Databases 36:55 What is RAG? 38:23 What are Vector Databases? 44:07 Building RAG AI Agent 1:01:56 Part 4: Expanding Agents 1:02:31 n8n Workflows as Tools 1:05:23 Showcasing Agent Examples 1:10:20 Part 5: APIs & HTTP Requests 1:11:33 What is an API? 1:12:49 What is an HTTP Request? 1:13:14 How They Work Together 1:15:04 HTTP Request Examples in n8n 1:21:42 Part 6: The Final Part 1:22:24 Error Workflows 1:26:20 Best Practices 1:28:30 Next Steps Gear I Used: Camera: Razer Kiyo Pro Microphone: HyperX SoloCast Background Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7HjxOAU5Kc&t=0s Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell to stay updated with my latest videos on AI agents and automations!

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Learn With Shopify•Sep 2, 2024

How To Start A Business Using Only AI

How to Use AI to Start a Business in 2024. ► Shopify Free Trial https://utm.io/uhpKC ► YouTube takes on TikTok Shop with expanded Shopify partnership https://youtube.com/shorts/XdzbDOak9BI?si=eNUZL8AgZK6f0XJg Unlock Your Entrepreneurial Potential with AI! Ever dreamed of starting a business but felt overwhelmed by the complexity? AI is here to revolutionize the way we work! In this video, we'll guide you through the exciting process of launching your own venture using artificial intelligence. Discover how to: Identify profitable niche ideas using AI-powered market research tools Create compelling content with AI-driven writing assistants Design stunning visuals effortlessly using AI design platforms Build and manage your online store without technical expertise Expand your reach by easily adding your products to social media networks like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, this video will equip you with the knowledge and tools to turn your business dreams into reality. Get ready to harness the power of AI and embark on a successful entrepreneurial journey! –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Watch More Learn with Shopify Video Tutorials: ► How to Connect Your Shopify Store To Your YouTube Channel https://youtu.be/ymD5M8w-drk?si=tLt52iNd0VKrL5eW ► YouTube Shopping Tutorial: The Best Way To Sell Your Shopify Products on YouTube LIVE https://youtu.be/AUtEP7LTNeg?si=imvS2pUTsLvhcZmT ► How To Create Beautiful Presentations With AI https://youtu.be/BZ_ObFC7NVA ► What is Shopify Magic and Shopify Sidekick? (And How To Use It) https://youtu.be/Y7Rlr5gxPp4 ► Prompt Engineering Tutorial Part 1: An Introduction to AI Prompting https://youtu.be/zBaa8Ct2C-k?si=ZshSj72IdgpGrAN5 ► Prompt Engineering Tutorial Part 2: Text-to-Text https://youtu.be/ZlQHPt86h6s ► Prompt Engineering Tutorial Part 3: Text-to-Image https://youtu.be/6RAStep_3OI ► Prompt Engineering Tutorial Part 4: Text to Video https://youtu.be/QgjL0fNTwHc ► How to Sell on Instagram https://youtu.be/cqmUWuA2w2U –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 🔔 Subscribe to @learnwithshopify for more productivity tutorials and tips for entrepreneurs of all stages. Here's what we'll cover in this video: 0:00 Intro 0:48 Idea generation using AI 2:20 How to market research using AI 3:14 Naming your business using AI 4:44 AI Logo Generator 6:10 AI Product Creation 9:48 How to upload products to your website 12:15 How to list your items on Instagram 13:06 How to list your items on YouTube 13:40 How to list your items on TikTok 14:04 Marketing using AI 15:30 Legalization –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 📈 Related Videos: 20 Mobile AI Apps https://youtu.be/OSAFKU8FL44 TikTok Marketing Tutorial (Organic Strategy) https://youtu.be/SeWNUUEtZOY TikTok Marketing Tutorial (Paid Ads) https://youtu.be/RIy9ZN3B5CA Reddit for Business Tutorial https://youtu.be/FcYtZg1uGMA LinkedIn Ads Tutorial https://youtu.be/WMKldiJ8mEw 🔗 Useful Resources: ► 64 Best Small Business Ideas To Start in 2024 https://utm.io/uhpKB ► Free Shopify Business Course https://utm.io/uhpKE ► Join our Shopify community https://utm.io/uhpKC –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– -- TOOLS & RESOURCES – ► Sign Up To Shopify Today https://utm.io/uhpKC ► Shopify Masters Podcast @shopifymasters ► Shopify Podcast https://utm.io/uhlvZ ► 10 Amazing AI Tools For Your Business In 2024 https://youtu.be/TKAO1ykK994 ► 10 ChatGPT Tips & Tricks https://youtu.be/88tVeKj0-7k ► How to make money with Instagram Reels https://youtu.be/U831lmASZRY ► The OFFICIAL Shopify Tutorial - The COMPLETE GUIDE https://youtu.be/ferhOYx1NMo –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– #Shopify #aitools #businesscoaching #businessideas

#Shopify#aitools#businesscoaching

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Philip VanDusen•Mar 26, 2024

AI Tools for Small Business - 7 Ways Small Business Can Use AI Today

Extended 30 Day HighLevel Trial: https://www.gohighlevel.com/philipvandusen So, how can small businesses leverage all the AI tools that are flooding the market? There is so much it’s overwhelming! As small businesses navigate the competitive landscape, AI technologies offer a lifeline, enabling smarter decisions, enhanced customer connections, and expansion into new markets. From revolutionizing content creation with tools like ChatGPT to transforming social media strategies and personalizing email marketing, AI is redefining how small businesses engage with their audience. We’ll dive deep into using AI for marketing automation, competitor insights, local SEO mastery, engaging customers through chatbots, and converting website visitors into loyal customers. With practical insights and our sponsor HighLevel's platform, small businesses can now leverage AI tools to optimize their operations and marketing efforts. Keywords: AI Tools, Small Business, Growth, AI Technologies, Smarter Decisions, Customer Connections, Markets, Content Creation, ChatGPT, Social Media Strategies, Email Marketing, Personalizing, CRM, Marketing Automation, Competitor Insights, Local SEO, Chatbots, Converting Website Visitors, Operations, HighLevel #ai #smallbusiness #marketing WEBSITE https://www.philipvandusen.com BRAND•MUSE NEWSLETTER https://www.philipvandusen.com/muse BONFIRE: The Mastermind Community for Established Creative Pros https://philipvandusen.com/bonfire CREATIVE PROFESSIONAL COACHING https://philipvandusen.com/oneonone BRAND CONSULTING https://philipvandusen.com/brand-consulting BRAND STRATEGY 101 COURSE https://philipvandusen.com/bs101 BRAND DESIGN MASTERS PODCAST https://podcast.branddesignmasters.com/subscribe YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/c/philipvandusen LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipvandusen/ THREADS https://www.threads.net/@philipvandusen FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/philipvandusen.agency/ INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/philipvandusen/ BRAND DESIGN MASTERS FACEBOOK GROUP https://www.facebook.com/groups/branddesignmasters/ AFFILIATE PARTNERS: Bring Your Own Laptop - Adobe Training with Daniel Scott https://www.byol.me/philip GO HIGHLEVEL: https://www.gohighlevel.com/philipvandusen Tubebuddy https://www.tubebuddy.com/philipvandusen Philip VanDusen is a branding consultant and the owner of a brand strategy and design agency based in New Jersey. Philip is a highly accomplished creative executive and expert in brand strategy, graphic design, marketing and creative management. Philip provides design, branding, marketing, career and business advice to creative professionals, entrepreneurs and companies on building successful brands for themselves and the clients and customers they serve.

#ai#smallbusiness#marketing

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Amazon Web Services•Mar 20, 2024

Airtable builds with Amazon Bedrock to transform workflows with generative AI | Amazon Web Services

Airtable, a cloud based low-code platform, enables non-programmers to build next-gen business applications. To democratize AI adoption for non-technical users across organizations, Airtable launched Airtable AI, powered by Amazon Bedrock. Through this partnership, Airtable AI seamlessly incorporates powerful foundation models like Anthropic's Claude and Amazon's Titan on Amazon Bedrock, allowing customers to choose models that best suits their use cases and workflows. Key benefits include a unified API for integrating AWS services, secure hosting of foundation models and data, access to cutting-edge technologies, fostering bottoms-up AI adoption among non-technical teams, and generative AI use cases including content generation, automation actions, and intelligent data Q&A. All this is unified within Airtable's intuitive low-code environment. Learn more at: https://go.aws/3Ta68X4 Subscribe: More AWS videos: https://go.aws/3m5yEMW More AWS events videos: https://go.aws/3ZHq4BK Do you have technical AWS questions? Ask the community of experts on AWS re:Post: https://go.aws/3lPaoPb ABOUT AWS Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. Millions of customers — including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies — are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster. #AmazonBedrock #FoundationModels #generativeAI #AnthropicClaude #AmazonTitan #Airtable #AWS #AmazonWebServices #CloudComputing

#AmazonBedrock#FoundationModels#generativeAI

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Omar Maher•Feb 27, 2024

AI for Business: Course Introduction

Welcome to "AI for Business," a non-technical course designed to help you unlock the potential of AI in your organization. Join Omar as he guides you through the essentials of AI and ML, showcases practical use-cases across various domains, and provides tools to start your AI journey. Whether you're planning your first AI project or looking to scale AI across your business, this course offers actionable insights to navigate the AI landscape effectively. Start transforming your work with AI today! This course is powered by Monta AI: Your Trusted AI Partner (www.monta.ai) 00:28 - Course Overview 01:06 - Episode 1: Understanding AI 02:07 - Importance of Data in AI 02:30 - Episodes 2: AI Use Cases 04:33 - Episode 3: Generative AI Applications 04:54 - Episode 4: Choosing Your First AI Project 05:26 - Episode 5: Designing and Evaluating AI Proof of Concepts 06:36 - Episode 6: Building an AI Team 07:36 - Episode 7: Starting Your AI Journey

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Bloomberg Originals•Oct 22, 2023

OpenAI's CEO on What Kids Should Be Studying

What should kids be learning these days to prepare for an AI future? OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tells Emily Chang on The Circuit. Like this video? Subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/Bloomberg?sub_confirmation=1 Become a Quicktake Member for exclusive perks: http://www.youtube.com/bloomberg/join Bloomberg Originals offers bold takes for curious minds on today’s biggest topics. Hosted by experts covering stories you haven’t seen and viewpoints you haven’t heard, you’ll discover cinematic, data-led shows that investigate the intersection of business and culture. Exploring every angle of climate change, technology, finance, sports and beyond, Bloomberg Originals is business as you’ve never seen it. Subscribe for business news, but not as you've known it: exclusive interviews, fascinating profiles, data-driven analysis, and the latest in tech innovation from around the world. Visit our partner channel Bloomberg Quicktake for global news and insight in an instant.

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Liam Ottley•Sep 24, 2023

The Massive Opportunity in Building AI Businesses | Alex Hormozi

📚 Join the #1 community for AI entrepreneurs and connect with 100,000+ members: https://bit.ly/3uRIRB3 📈 We help industry experts, entrepreneurs & developers build and scale their AI Agency: https://bit.ly/skoolmain 🤝 Need AI Solutions Built? Work with me: https://b.link/qv62vqy6 ⚒️ Build AI Agents Without Coding: https://agentivehub.com/ 🚀 Apply to Join My Team at Morningside AI: https://tally.so/r/wbYr52 Alex Hormozi and I sat down for a chat about how to start an AI business in 2023. Alex shared his advice for people wanting to start an AI Automation Agency, including how to sell emerging technology like AI, the importance of a good development team as an AI entrepreneur and his thoughts on AI businesses and startups that he's seeing at Acquisition.com. Alex Hormozi also gave his thoughts on the huge opportunity for entrepreneurs to help businesses integrate AI into their businesses or "AI-ify" them, including exactly how he'd go about it himself. This call was an exclusive interview for my AAA Accelerator members who were able to watch this conversation LIVE. Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 0:58 - AI Automation Agencies Explained 5:13 - How To Sell Emerging Tech 6:23 - The Opportunity Of AI Automation 10:00 - Choosing The Right Business Partner 11:14 - What Problems To Solve In An Industry 12:06 - Where AAA Might Falter or Excel 14:32 - The Importance Of Development Resources 19:17 - How Important Is Downtime As An Entrepreneur?

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Chastin J. Miles•Jun 25, 2023

Top 5 AI Tools Every Real Estate Agent Needs

✅ Join my Real Estate Learning Community https://powerunituniversity.com 🚀 RESOURCES ➡️ Weekly Newsletter https://chastinjmiles.com/list ➡️ Podcast Spotify https://bit.ly/3Y6HLvj Apple https://apple.co/473jZEH Google https://bit.ly/3Kcao4R === 🚀 CONNECT WITH ME ➡️ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/chastinjmiles ➡️ Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/powerunitmemberslounge ➡️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@chastinjmiles ➡️ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chastinjmiles/ ➡️ Twitter https://twitter.com/chastinjmiles 🏡 Buy or Sell your home https://chastinjmilesteam.com/ === Chastin J. Miles is a licensed TX real estate agent with eXp Realty ➡️ Join Me at eXp https://partnerwithcjm.com #realestate #realtor #realestateagent #realestateinvestor #realestateinvesting #realtorlife #realestatesales #business #businessowner #salestips #sales

#realestate#realtor#realestateagent

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Detour Shirts•Jun 19, 2023

USING AI + REMIX to Create Designs for Print on Demand. Easy Prompts in Leonardo.AI

Remix in Leonardo AI. #Printondemand #onlinebusiness #passiveincome 💻 VIDEOS TO WATCH 🔥 16 TShirt Design Tips: https://youtu.be/jhijPXUM6dQ 🔥 RedBubble Sales Faster: https://youtu.be/L0ie56PBLGU 🔥 Leonardo AI Tool: https://youtu.be/mw5Au6DloZI My FREE Digital Downloads (including Tier 10 Help Sheet & Monthly Upload/Sales Tracker) 👉 https://www.detourshirts.com/collections/downloads 💰 PRINT ON DEMAND SITES I USE ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ MERCH BY AMAZON: https://merch.amazon.com/landing TEEPUBLIC: http://tee.pub/lic/detourshirts (referral link) REDBUBBLE: https://www.redbubble.com/ CAFEPRESS: https://www.cafepress.com/ ZAZZLE: https://www.zazzle.com/ THREADLESS: https://www.threadless.com/artist-shops/signup/default/features SPREADSHIRT: https://www.spreadshirt.com/ SOCIETY 6: https://society6.com/ DESIGN BY HUMANS: https://www.designbyhumans.com/ TEESPRING: https://teespring.com/ DISPLATE: https://displate.com/ 🛠️ PRINT ON DEMAND TOOLS I'VE MENTIONED ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Kittl: https://bit.ly/42Xac0B Vexels: https://www.vexels.com/detour-shirts/?ref=junaduncan2 Pretty Merch Pro: https://ps.carbon6.io/4qnue9hvz6pw Merch Informer (Coupon Code DetourShirts): https://merchinformer.com/933.html Placeit: https://1.envato.market/PPda6 DS Amazon QuickView: https://bit.ly/3hkxDsx Affinity Designer: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/ Repper: https://repper.app/?via=detourshirts Creative Market (for Fonts and Textures): https://creativemarket.com/users/DetourShirts/collections?u=DetourShirts MyFonts.com (for Fonts): https://www.dpbolvw.net/click-2381184-13915248 Creative Fabrica: https://www.creativefabrica.com/promo/8322/0P1016-AFGHIJKLMNO/ref/1113172 Stefan Kunz Procreate FREE Procreate Course: https://courses.stefankunz.com/p/procreate-free-trial?affcode=527238_68xbwon Stefan Kunz FREE 3D Course: https://courses.stefankunz.com/p/3d-masterclass-free-trial?affcode=527238_68xbwoni All Sunsets (for Vintage Sunsets): https://allsunsets.com/?wpam_id=18 RedBubble Tag Generator: https://automation.merchtitans.com/tools/redbubble-tag-generator 100 Scaleable T-Shirt Quotes for POD (US): https://gumroad.com/a/456717427/ffSgH 100 Scaleable T-Shirt Quotes for POD (Germany): https://gumroad.com/a/456717427/yNEGPC Canva: https://partner.canva.com/detourshirts 🧡 TEAM ORANGE STUFF ON AMAZON ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Funko Pop! 10” Thing: https://amzn.to/3IBx0eY Funko Pop! 10” Charizard: https://amzn.to/3XjYdae Orange Lined Journal: https://amzn.to/3GwQNcP Orange EnerGel Pens: https://amzn.to/3GV3xLD Orange Stance Socks: https://amzn.to/3vTCdXX 🎥 EQUIPMENT I USE TO MAKE MY VIDEOS & DESIGNS ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Logitech BRIO Ultra HD Webcam: https://amzn.to/3xSyt8r Neewer 700W Light Kit: https://amzn.to/3kxx4Au Rode VideoMic Pro+: https://amzn.to/3eyCabJ On-Stage Tripod Mic Boom Stand: https://amzn.to/3wIB97n 👪 MY SOCIAL MEDIA ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/c/DetourShirts INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/detourshirts/ 👨‍👨‍👧‍👧 FOLLOW DETOUR SHIRTS ON FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/detourshirts2005 👨‍👨‍👧‍👧 DETOUR SHIRTS FACEBOOK GROUP https://www.facebook.com/groups/606597416437763 👨‍👨‍👧‍👧 FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER https://twitter.com/detourshirts 👋 About this channel: My name is Juna. I am a graphic designer and t-shirt designer. I've been selling t-shirts online since 2005. I started selling with Merch by Amazon in 2017. I am currently a tier 100,000 seller on Merch by Amazon. I also sell products on RedBubble, TeePublic, CafePress, Zazzle, Spreadshirt, Threadless, Society 6, Design by Humans and more. My channel is all about helping you design and sell t-shirts online. Let me know how I can help. The information shared on my YouTube channel & resources made available is for educational, informational purposes.

#Printondemand#onlinebusiness#passiveincome

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The Fast Track Girl•May 9, 2023

How to use A.I to create digital products to sell fast😉🤖

How to use A.I to create digital products to sell fast😉🤖 Welcome Fast Tracker! ⚡️ Check out my links below! 💰💰Online Training: The Fast Track to Passive Income with Digital Products! https://thefasttrackgirl.com/etsy-course FREE 🎉 Digital Product STARTER GUIDE: https://thefasttrackgirl.com/etsy FREE CANVA PRO TRIAL: https://partner.canva.com/doOAny Free $15 credit to tailwind: https://tailwind.sjv.io/x9bMgA