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The ChatGPT wave is coming. Major manufacturers are intensively developing large-scale models. Startups are developing applications such as content production and tools under the vertical ecology. Many front-line developers and enthusiasts use AI to improve work efficiency. Started a part-time and sideline business.
In this regard, there is also a website called Million Dollar AI that has made an aggregation page to share some of these products that have been expanded and developed based on existing AI models, some of which are now very profitable, which is enviable.
However, what is little known is that some of these products are created by college students. For example, Chatbase, which has an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of 1,008,000, is one of the typical representatives.
From: https://millionsdollaraihomepage.com/
In fact, who would have thought that this foreign boy named Yasser Elsaid was a college student studying undergraduate just a few months ago.
In a blink of an eye, how he turned into the boss of the chatbot company Chatbase.co, and how he achieved a monthly recurring revenue (MRR) of $64,000 (approximately 452,000 yuan) and ensured that the traffic of the website remained high No more? Next, let's walk into Yasser Elsaid's entrepreneurial career based on ChatGPT.
The goal was FAANG, but accidentally stepped into the "pit" of entrepreneurship
Originally from Egypt, Yasser Elsaid moved to Canada in 2019 for his undergraduate studies.
After entering university, Yasser Elsaid, like ordinary students, did not know which way he should go in the future.
Later, many college students who are about to graduate will aim to work in FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Alphabet-Google) technology giants. Under the influence of this atmosphere, Yasser Elsaid also chose the same goal and worked hard for it.
During his junior and senior years, he entered Tesla and Meta as an intern as he wished.
The two internships, in Yasser Elsaid's own words, were "everything was super exciting. There was free food, massage chairs, and smart people to work with. I couldn't find anything I didn't like about it." .
However, with the passage of time, the work of interns in large factories, day after day. Although it would not be called bad, it will slowly wear down people's enthusiasm.
Yasser Elsaid said, "I realized that the lifestyle of these big companies was too safe and tidy for me. Those internships taught me a lot, but most importantly, they taught me that I wanted to be an independent. Developer."
During college, Yasser Elsaid, in addition to taking classes and internships, was also doing some side jobs and wanted to follow the path of a solopreneur (individual entrepreneur, a person who creates a business and runs it on his own without the help of other employees).
What is quite realistic is that in the past, none of the side businesses he started has really made any money, and most of the projects have died down.
Of course, failure is failure, which does not affect his continued attention to the stories of other successful entrepreneurs in the industry. For Yasser Elsaid, the success stories of others have always inspired him to believe that earning $10k a month from a side hustle is not a wishful thinking goal, after all, many people have succeeded.
In the process of groping and waiting, in November last year, OpenAI brought ChatGPT, an innovative AI product, to promote the development of the entire artificial intelligence industry. Yasser Elsaid, who has always been interested in AI, also saw that many people developed cool products based on this. AI products.
Inspired by this, he began to try to use the OpenAI API and figured out Chatbase.
Hang two subjects, create Chatbase
Chatbase, citing the explanation of the official website - builds ChatGPT for you to apply to your own website.
This is an AI chatbot builder that allows third-party developers to build, train and embed intelligent chatbots powered by ChatGPT on their websites.
What is more unique is that it can train ChatGPT chatbots suitable for each other based on the data of different customers. For example, in an e-commerce scenario, you can attach your own product information and materials to Chatbase, and this robot can answer some questions about your product.
To this end, Chatbase also has a Slogan that "lets you build an AI-driven chatbot in seconds."
However, the current Chatbase is after all a product that has been iterated for several months. In fact, a few months ago, Yasser Elsaid, who first realized something with ChatGPT, just used it as a "chat robot that interprets PDF documents" tool .
To put it simply, we upload a PDF file in the Chatbase chat dialog box, and then we can ask Chatbase to help extract the content of the PDF file and give answers through natural language dialogue.
The first version of the MVP build, Yasser Elsaid revealed, took about two months to build.
In the technology stack dimension, React, Next.js, and Supabase are mainly used to build web applications. Additionally, he uses OpenAI's API, Langchain, and Pinecone to develop the AI part of the application. Finally, Stripe is used to process the payment.
In February 2023, Yasser Elsaid revealed his latest results on Twitter, when his followers were only 16 people.
However, during the period when ChatGPT was gaining momentum and AI hype, Chatbase launched by Yasser Elsaid quickly received great attention. At that time, he did not have time to launch a paid service, that is, anyone can upload any number of documents and send The bot sends any number of messages.
Based on this, Chatbase also gained its first batch of users.
At that time, when seeing this trend coming, Yasser Elsaid, who had not yet received a diploma, chose to stop attending classes and put 100% of his time on Chatbase.
"I knew I couldn't screw up this opportunity," Yasser Elsaid said in an interview with creator community Indie Hackers.
Not surprisingly, Yasser Elsaid failed two subjects at school.
Of course, if it is worth it, in Yasser Elsaid's own opinion, the answer must be yes.
Income from 0 to $64000
Today, Yasser Elsaid has 9,300+ fans on Twitter, and the Chatbase he created has been iterated continuously. After three months, he quickly achieved an MRR of $64,000:
February 7th: $0 MRR
February 11: $400 MRR
February 16: $900 MRR
February 28: $3,000 MRR
March 15: $10,000 MRR
May 13: $64,000 MRR
In terms of commercialization, Yasser Elsaid chose the SaaS model for Chatbase, adopting a subscription service and providing four packages.
According to Yasser Elsaid, most users will buy the lowest-priced plan at the beginning (mainly to test the chatbot), and after using it, they will quickly upgrade to a higher plan or stop using it. Most of Chatbase's current revenue is mainly generated by the $399 per month package.
Regarding the popularity of Chatbase and the growth of MRR, Yasser Elsaid also knows that this is because the AIGC market is in its early stage, and ChatGPT technology has experienced a hype period in the past few months, pushing Chatbase to more users.
Yasser Elsaid said frankly, "I don't know how long this situation will last, because there are now a large number of tools that provide similar services, and larger companies are also interested in this field. But I will not be looking for a new graduate in the short term." work. Instead, I'm going to focus all my energy on Chatbase. I just added two employees to help code new features and customer support, and I imagine the team can grow to five or six people."
Advice and Suggestions for Entrepreneurs in the New Era of AI
In fact, the success of Yasser Elsaid has inspired many people. In the new era of AIGC, application developers have many opportunities.
Of course, starting a business is not something you can do on a whim.
From his own experience, Yasser Elsaid said, "Keeping up with new technologies and trends will help you find opportunities faster than others. If you can grasp these opportunities, one of them will succeed. In my case, I am Be in the right place at the right time. I'm interested in the application of artificial intelligence, I have time for a side hustle, and I found a useful direction fairly quickly. Plus, my twitter became viral Channels, also played a role. These were forces beyond my control that contributed to the success of Chatbase. But give myself some credit, I also worked really hard (12 hours a day) and took advantage of the opportunity well .”
Yasser Elsaid believes that for entrepreneurs, the advice to find a good product is to find a space with certain competition. If there's no competition, you're either a genius, or nobody needs what you're building. If there are many competitors, it is also bound to be a competition for phase-out.
Therefore, for developers who really want to start an AI sideline, Yasser Elsaid also shared four suggestions:
Start as fast as possible. Skip creating a waitlist, just create a very basic MVP and go live.
Be sure to post multiple times if possible. If you make significant changes to your app, you can always showcase them as if it were a new product launch.
Build in public. When developing your program, there is no need to hide it, and you can share your every step in public. Because, every new post of yours has the opportunity to become the entrance of effective marketing and change your life. Plus, you'll meet cool, like-minded people. You don't need to share specific income figures, just what you're doing today.
Engage with the community. Follow successful independent entrepreneurs, start creating content, share your learnings, meet other independent entrepreneurs near you, and more.
So, this is a good time for AI developers, why not try more.
