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A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

nytimes.com

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Re: A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

#71

Post by zcw100 »

xarchive wrote: post #58
1attice wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and look how well that's working out for most

Most of us should be honest and admit we're jealous of this guy. He basically chose a sector where customers are desperate (weight-loss drugs), slapped a website and an interface for connecting with a drug prescription provider together, did effective marketing, and now his business generates millions a month in profit. Like, there are a half dozen companies like his running around that essentially offer the same pro…

This is just like when Paypal got started and was basically operating their own bank. Good luck doing that without getting in trouble. This is selling pharmaceutical drugs over the internet. You're playing chicken with going to jail they just happened to get lucky.

Re: A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

#72

Post by rdevilla »

1attice wrote: post #64
xarchive wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us should be honest and admit we're jealous of this guy. He basically chose a sector where customers are desperate (weight-loss drugs), slapped a website and an interface for connecting with a drug prescription provider together, did effective marketing, and now his business generates millions a month in profit. Like, there are a half dozen companies like his running around that essentially offer the same pro…

Speak for yourself. My skin crawls. Do not universalize your temptation to graft

Just the other day I was downvoted and called out for suggesting that perverse incentives are hard to resist, yet here we are with the Times (apparently) showcasing another such instance.

In this case GLP1's clinical effects are widely understood though, so it is immaterial if an "artist's depiction" (artificial agent's depiction) is of a real person or purely hallucinated.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47581021

Re: A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

#73

Post by amelius »

hermannj314 wrote: post #56
amelius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that argument, start a company selling fentanyl because there will be demand for it? Sorry, but your implied argument is flawed.

You might have to hold my hand on how you got there. My actual argument was the ride-sharing addressed systemic racism that yellow cab companies did not, that is a good thing. What net good would fentanyl do to society? If it exists, then yes, sell it. Clean, reliable fentanyl might be a good thing, I don't know.

> hold my hand

The fentanyl using part of society thinks it is great. There you go.

Re: A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

#74

Post by daniel_martinez »

jimnotgym wrote: post #29
fontain wrote: post #10

The opposite of an “A.I” company, he is reselling the services of another filled with humans. A great, profitable business, sure, a notable success, yes, but a 2-man billion dollar company made possible by A.I? No. Businesses like this have existed for decades and are vulnerable to their service providers stealing the business out from under them.

A very astute comment. While the service providers are experiencing massive growth they are happy to share. When growth plateaus they will go after every cost reduction, including squeezing out non-value added resellers. Especially those with warning letters from the FDA for making false claims, as noted below. As a distributor your value add was always making me markets. Once made, those markets are now trivial to t…

he's making 400M+, so not a big deal, the distribution leverage is massive and now it's time to pivot and add real value appart from the huge brand he has now, i.e. through a unique customer support or who knows what. anyways, after 400M, one can say he already won the game

Re: A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

#75

Post by gedy »

fragmede wrote: post #53
gedy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just pointing out a business that is fundamentally about doctors prescribing and delivering compounded GLP-1 is not something "agents" will whip up for you, nor is it a one-man business.

My one-man business uses AWS and a bank and some vendors. AWS and the bank and my vendors have many people working there. Is it still a one man business?

Come on, you know what I'm talking about - those aren't your main products and customers aren't dealing with them instead of you. If you were paying 1000 people to wrap gifts and deal with customers it's a stretch to call your biz a one man operation. That's just outsourcing.

Re: A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

#76

Post by solomonyardley »

xarchive wrote: post #55

The founder is impressive. Truly, if you look over his website, you would not think this is a company that generates millions in profit a year. He claims he has switched over from using AI-generated profits to real customer testimonials. That's a misrepresentation, if not a lie. Most of the images still look like they have the unnatural fuzziness of AI images. Website is also coded as one long-scrolling page, again s…

The poor website quality struck me as well - and the images are clearly AI, everything is clearly AI. Yet the guy is doing $400m in sales.

Even the quiz flow to check eligibility is using old icons and just feels super spammy.

His ads must be crushing it, I guess?

Re: A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

#77

Post by fragmede »

gedy wrote: post #75
fragmede wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My one-man business uses AWS and a bank and some vendors. AWS and the bank and my vendors have many people working there. Is it still a one man business?

Come on, you know what I'm talking about - those aren't your main products and customers aren't dealing with them instead of you. If you were paying 1000 people to wrap gifts and deal with customers it's a stretch to call your biz a one man operation. That's just outsourcing.

Yeah, man, I'm sayin' that that is what a vibe code business looks like. It's gotta do something in the real world. No one's making a million dollars off of leftpad as a service so it's a fine example of a successful vibe code business.

Re: A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

#78

Post by bdangubic »

1attice wrote: post #57
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, the culture is to celebrate success and wealth. Not how you achieved them.

Yes and look how well that's working out for most

“working out for most” is socialism ;)

Re: A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

#79

Post by croes »

game_the0ry wrote: post #68
croes wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that’s the problem. You find the same traits they claim that made them successful by those who failed. Cherrypicking the winners creates a false reasoning of success.

Is it a problem? Bc I know there is survivorship bias and also still want to hear about the successes, so what is the problem then?

How many readers don’t know that? And how many fall for the false reasoning of those success stories?

Re: A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

#80

Post by JimsonYang »

help me understand this. This guy is dropshipping glp-1's from a company that has a network(?) of trusted vendors which they get from the big pharma companies. And now he's doing the dropshipping thing of building a brand

I'm highly suspicious of these revenue claims because how is he doing any of the marketing? Tiktok bans you if you post ugc content saying anything about peptides. FB doesn't allow medicine to be marketed nor does google. If he's dropshipping how is he doing the marketing?

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