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A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

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Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#81

Post by hgsgm »

cddotdotslash wrote: post #33
abxytg wrote: post #8

there is literally a "how to" in the open AI api docs for the exact use case. I need to be more shameless the next go around.

I’ve seen this argument repeatedly. The example is just that - an example. It doesn’t cover anything related to productionizing the application, dealing with user management, rate limits, cost controls, hosting the service, data persistence, documentation, billing, marketing, or any of the other 100 things you need to do to turn a simple script into a product that people are willing to pay for, trust with their data,…

OP didn't worry about any of that stuff, which is why they got a first mover launch and quick revenue.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#82

Post by anonzzzies »

ulrikhansen54 wrote: post #2

There are several stories of companies going from $0 to >$5M ARR in just a few months with the boom in LLM-driven applications. The downside for these types of apps is that churn rates are through the roof, and will probs die when the LLM fad inevitably fizzles.

My company is considered 'late moving' ; we like stability, no stress, high profits, healthy growth (no growth is better than unhealthy growth) etc. We are at almost 2 decades of profit (and a lot of profit at that), no VC capital or other capital for that matter.

We have been adding LLMs to our products in a little test for clients who want to try it. It's not a fad as far as I got the feedback; it saves people are lot of work and allows juniors at our clients to do far more. I believe it retains clients and will pick up new ones. So when the fads with LLMs die out, the products that have marketshare and add them (b2b anyway), will benefit a lot.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#83

Post by gusgus01 »

dgfitz wrote: post #47
becquerel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

communism, because when everyone's basic needs are guaranteed they have the mental/physical bandwidth to be innovators, and without commodity fetishism, scientific advancements can be made for the sake of responding to human needs, rather than facilitating the creation of products

Communism in the US is just never going to happen. Full stop. Just. Not. Happening. Following your line of reasoning to conclusion, what incentive do I have to work if all my "needs" are provided already? Extrapolate that out to the rest of the population. Oh so now I am being forced to work? What motivation do I have to do a good job? What will happen, I'll get fired from the job? Who cares, all my 'needs' are alrea…

Well the question wasn't "What's a system that could happen in the USA", it was specifically asking about theoretical systems.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#84

Post by cddotdotslash »

hgsgm wrote: post #81
cddotdotslash wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen this argument repeatedly. The example is just that - an example. It doesn’t cover anything related to productionizing the application, dealing with user management, rate limits, cost controls, hosting the service, data persistence, documentation, billing, marketing, or any of the other 100 things you need to do to turn a simple script into a product that people are willing to pay for, trust with their data,…

OP didn't worry about any of that stuff, which is why they got a first mover launch and quick revenue.

I beg to differ. They worried about marketing (this article is marketing. Their tweets about building it are marketing). And you expect me to believe that they just lumped the example from the docs straight to production? No user management? No website? No auth? Everyone’s data just commingled so the chat bot is responding to user A about user B’s website.

Why does the audience of HN insist on being so dismissive of effort. Yes they moved quickly. No, that doesn’t mean they just copied an example with no other work.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#85

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

nicoburns wrote: post #61
janalsncm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interview people and ask LC-style questions. It’s not the only part of my interview nor is it a dealbreaker to not get the optimal solution. Being a savant capable of finding a mathematical breakthrough in 30 minutes is not important. But it gives me a chance to see how nimble you are with code which is important.

Why ask leetcode questions rather than realistic ones that represent the sort of code someone might actually be expected to write during the course of their job?

There is no "course of their job" at the largest FAANGs since they work in so many domains and markets and an employee may migrate between several different teams over the course of their stay. FAANGs want people that are adaptable, not one trick ponies.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#87

Post by rShergold »

jrpt wrote: post #12
k2enemy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did he win the lottery though? There's a lot of MRR, but I didn't see anything about profit. He could be losing money.

You're right that this stuff isn't cheap. I'm running https://Docalysis.com/ (a chat with files website) which has expenses growing every month, so you need to make sure your price is above what it costs you, and can't give everything away for free. His product gives you a few thousand tokens for free, then makes you add your own OpenAI API key after that, so that he isn't paying for the chat responses from then on.

How does Docalysis.com work? I'm presuming you take the user input then search the documents for matching words to get snippets then add the snippets to a prompt (along with the original query) you send to an LLM.

What does the cost look like? Are you running your own llama.cpp or just using the ChatGPT API?

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#88

Post by ravenstine »

nicoburns wrote: post #59
ravenstine wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ton of HN'ers seem woefully butthurt over AI. I'm not saying that the current generation of AI is "smart" or "AGI", but every thread mentioning AI has a disproportionate amount of naysayers who think LLMs are either totally useless or that anything involving AI is "the next bitcoin." When people knee-jerk react negatively to these kinds of stories, I can only picture envy and an insecurity of not truly knowing wher…

I think the hype around AI is more like the dotcom boom. Like the internet (and mostly unlike cryptocurrency), AI is a genuinely useful technology and likely to be transformative over the long term. On the other hand, (and also like the internet) it's currently being peddled as the answer to absolutely everything, much of which is pretty ridiculous.

That's a good point. And a bit of a chilling revelation given how the words "recession" and "this year" keep getting thrown around. Hopefully the gap between the boom of AI and the bubble popping is at least as long as the one between the boom of the Web and the Dotcom bubble.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#89

Post by ravenstine »

granshaw wrote: post #76
ravenstine wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ton of HN'ers seem woefully butthurt over AI. I'm not saying that the current generation of AI is "smart" or "AGI", but every thread mentioning AI has a disproportionate amount of naysayers who think LLMs are either totally useless or that anything involving AI is "the next bitcoin." When people knee-jerk react negatively to these kinds of stories, I can only picture envy and an insecurity of not truly knowing wher…

The crowd here just wants to ensure their high paying mega tech jobs stay safe. Can’t blame them, kinda in the same camp

I can't blame them either, though I guess I skipped right ahead to the "acceptance" stage of grief.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#90

Post by ravenstine »

prottog wrote: post #65
nicoburns wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the hype around AI is more like the dotcom boom. Like the internet (and mostly unlike cryptocurrency), AI is a genuinely useful technology and likely to be transformative over the long term. On the other hand, (and also like the internet) it's currently being peddled as the answer to absolutely everything, much of which is pretty ridiculous.

The number of ads on YouTube that peddle an "AI-powered X" is a clear tell. Just last night, I saw an ad for an "AI golf swing aid"!

Probably a shoddy product in reality, but that concept sounds awesome in principle.

Imagine an AI that's an LLM, TTS engine, computer vision, a specialized neural net, and various sensors tied together that can help teach you a motor skill any time and anywhere. Even better if it could somehow provide haptic feedback. I think there's something to this, but perhaps it will truly develop out of novel therapies rather than some dudebro startup.

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