Source: InfoQ, finishing: Nuka-Cola, Chu Xingjuan
In the face of the overwhelming OpenAI ChatGPT, some people take a quick look at the flowers, and some people use it to make a lot of money.
There is such a college student who is still an intern in big factories such as Meta and Tesla. Half a year later, the chat robot company he founded has a stable monthly income of 64,000 US dollars (about 450,000 RMB), and since its first launch, the business flow has increased from Not down and shrinking. In order to meet the huge demand, he also hired two employees. Although he failed all his university exams, Yasser at this point didn't care.
"Life in Dachang is too conservative for me"
Yasser is originally from Egypt and only moved to Canada in 2019 for undergraduate studies. When he first entered college, Yasser didn't know what he wanted to do. Many classmates around him wanted to go to the big factories of FAANG. Affected by this, Yasser also began to work towards this goal.
During his junior and senior years, Yasser interned at Tesla and Meta. “Every internship starts off great, with free food, massage chairs, talented co-workers, everything is super exciting. But as time goes on, I feel like I’m actually repeating the same day. Such a life It's not bad, of course, but it doesn't inspire excitement anymore. I realized that life in Dachang was too conservative and clear for me. I learned a lot from the internship, but this experience made me determined to do independent technologist,” says Yasser.
Yasser has been working side hustles for little money, but the success stories on the Indie Hackers podcast keep him motivated. As his studies progressed, Yasser no longer simply focused on how to get into a big factory, but thought more about which sideline projects to develop.
“I found in practice that I am the kind of person who is willing to work hard, and entrepreneurship is the most exciting and rewarding for me.” By his senior year, Yasser developed a keen interest in the application of AI. He was inspired by individual entrepreneurs like Pieter Levels developing cool AI products. Yasser started experimenting with the OpenAI API and sensed its potential.
"Chatbase's market positioning is not complicated, and I haven't done any verification or business research. After all, the field of AI has just been born. For me, 'using ChatGPT to process data' must be interesting, and it can help many users solve practical problems. demand," Yasser said.
Give up your studies to start a business
Chatbase originally wanted to be a ChatGPT tool for PDF processing, which was the most intuitive use case Yasser thought of at the time. For example, users can upload a PDF and let ChatGPT summarize the content.
This version of MVP took Yasser about two months. On February 2, 2023, Yasser posted it to all 16 of his Twitter followers, and it went viral.
Yasser doesn't even have a billing page, anyone can upload any number of documents, send any number of messages. Feeling the huge business opportunities, Yasser immediately stopped his school work and concentrated all his time and energy on Chatbase. "I know that I must not miss this opportunity."
In the end, Yasser failed two classes, but he thought it was definitely worth it!
Chatbase.co is a tool for building a custom ChatGPT interface for websites. Users only need to upload documents or add links to websites to get a ChatGPT-like chatbot and add it to the website as a widget.
Yasser uses React, Next.js and Supabase to build web applications. Yasser also uses OpenAI's API, Langchain, and Pinecone for the AI portion of the application. The payment part uses Stripe. The current technology stack is working well, but Yasser may need to make some adjustments to control costs in the future, such as trying different Vector databases or hosting options.
As for the reason why Chatbase was able to quickly gain attention at first, Yasser believes that Chatbase may be the first SaaS tool that "uses ChatGPT to process data", which is a huge advantage in itself, so the rapid spread is also reasonable. Users can flexibly upload their own documents and talk to AI to extract the highlights.
"Besides, now that AI and ChatGPT are so popular, I don't need to deliberately promote them to get enough heat. I sent a few tweets, and the dissemination effect was very good. Later, influential celebrities in the AI field also began to retweet." Yasser said .
The hype helped Yasser land its first customers, but the problem was that it certainly wasn't enough to support a long-term business strategy. Now too many similar tools occupy the same ecological niche as Chatbase, and it is impossible for AI celebrities to endlessly recommend homogeneous tools. So, Yasser came up with some other ways to attract customers:
Post a Product Hunt on the Indie Hackers website.
Post on the Reddit subforum (a great tool is better than a great story).
Stay active on Indie Hackers.
Submit Chatbase to various AI product directories.
Therefore, after the product was launched, business traffic has also maintained growth.
"No rush to find a job"
Chatbase is a subscription service with four different options. Most subscribers initially opted for the lowest tier (mainly to test the chatbot), but were quickly shunted away—either opting for a better plan or walking away. Most of Yasser's income comes from a $399-a-month plan.
Chatbase uses Stripe to process subscription payments, and it works well so far:
February 7: $0 monthly;
February 11: $400 per month;
February 16: $900 per month;
February 28: $3,000 monthly;
March 15: $10,000 monthly;
May 13: $64,000 monthly.
Currently, Chatbase's monthly recurring revenue is $64,000. Yasser believes that this crazy growth is of course due to the fact that AI is still in the early stages of market adoption, and the hype surrounding ChatGPT has not yet faded. Yasser is not sure how long this temperature can last, after all, there are already a large number of tools that provide similar services, and the technology giants have already left.
"But for entrepreneurs, the best products are definitely inseparable from healthy market competition. If there is no competition at all, either you are very talented and discovered a business that no one else thought of, or you developed something that no one else has. No. Only if there is competition will it prove to be a promising path," Yasser said.
Yasser said that Chatbase will continue to implement the purpose of "processing data with ChatGPT". "I will add more features based on customer feedback, and this is also an easy way to build a custom AI chatbot based on personal data, which can be easily interacted with through the website or API."
In the short term, Yasser said that he should not be as busy looking for a job as a freshman, but instead focus all his energy on Chatbase. Yasser just hired two people to help write new features and provide customer support, and estimates that the team size will grow to five or six people.
What Yasser is most worried about now is whether the competition will intensify rapidly, and he does not know what the future of this field will look like. This is a whole new world, and disruptive changes can happen at any time (such as OpenAI's sudden introduction of new regulations), and the development trajectory of all AI tools will change accordingly.
Work 12 hours a day for virtue
Yasser admits that, by far, the biggest challenge has been convincing himself to devote himself to a side hustle with no immediate payoff. "After passing this hurdle, it doesn't matter if you fail. Even if Chatbase fails to be recognized by everyone, I will learn a lot from it, experience a lot, and have a wonderful journey in life."
Yasser claims that he rarely thinks about doing it again, choosing differently, "because I am now shaped by each decision. I think I am fine now."
During the entrepreneurial process, Yasser felt that the most important thing for him was to listen to the stories of other successful entrepreneurs. Those stories taught him that making $10,000 a month from a side hustle is not impossible, and that it's being achieved every day. As long as you can keep up with new technologies and trends, you can find opportunities faster than others. As long as you can grasp these opportunities, even if you only grasp one of them, it is enough to lead to success.
"Personally, I was doing the right thing at the right time. I was interested in AI applications, had time for side projects, and found valuable use cases very quickly. Of course, my tweet It was an accidental hit. To be worthy of it, I would work really hard (12 hours a day) just to get this rare opportunity,” says Yasser.
For other technologists just starting out, Yasser also gave the following advice:
act as soon as possible. We've had enough red tape and it's important to get the base MVP version up and rolling out quickly.
Do multiple releases if you can. Whenever you make a major change to your application, display it as proudly as a new product release.
Open the entire development process. Experience has shown that each new post in the development process has the opportunity to go viral and eventually change your own life. In addition, you can also meet cool, like-minded friends in the process. There is no need to disclose the revenue figures, and what is released is mainly the bits and pieces in the development process. At present, Twitter is still the best platform for publicity, but considering the popularity of TikTok and the lack of publishing content, there may also be good opportunities there.
Interact more with the community. Follow successful independent technical people, write content, share experience, and make friends with independent technical people around you.
Reference link:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-a-college-student-reached-64-000-mo-in-6-months-by-being-an-ai-first-mover-ba7981f6e1
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