It's not easy to build a product that's not AI related nowadays
At least that's what I feel. The gold rush, the stress and pressure of indie builders like me to find product ideas, to ride the hype train ... is draining af.
I believe it's about focus. There's no easy money in AI. Don't buy the clickbait thumbnails you see on Youtube with "get rich with ChatGPR, $10K/day" — ALL BS!
On the other side of the coin, this is an incredible/pivotal moment in history. Most people have no idea what's ChatGPT, OpenAI, Midjourney, Dall-e, etc. meanwhile we are here! grinding, learning, and experimenting. We're the pioneers, the early adopters, the misfits. Start writing! Honestly, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing right now 🤣 it doesn't have to be online, do it physically in a notebook/journal. Just leave a mark in time of the feelings you have.
Today, I launched an open-source product I was working on for the past 3 months. If any of you are interested to test the pre-alpha, let me know!
This is the website → https://selfbase.app
In a gold rush, always sell the shovels.
What I'm doing with Evoke basically
We help others build AI apps with the API
+1 . I am also of the same opinion. AI has just presented us indiehackers with a great oppertunity to ride on new trend before it gets taken over by the big players. Remember when iphone was launched and fart apps were making millions :-) and now it has become incredibly hard to to get traction even for good apps because marketing costs have become prohibitive for indiehackers.
Hah, I’ll remember this! Such a good quote. Well done, man! More power to you 👏
I guess I am building shovels for the shovel sellers right now (working on a web app template ha ha)
Congratulations on the launch!
This is how I look at AI:
Microsoft, Google, Open AI will always lead in terms of creating the most powerful AI. To keep up product wise, your product is going to be a layer on top of their offerings, not some original AI code (for most of us).
Now to flip that on it's head, you still need the same basic thing - to solve users problems, to attract users and so on. Adding AI will be like your insurance company adding a self-service website in 1999: it is still an insurance company, and that is where it's value is.
Therefore I am not in a rush to "create something with AI", but rather curious about how to add AI to something already useful.
One of my ideas is a kind of personal second brain for busy people (dual income and kids family, for example). If I go with this idea I would create it, then consider adding AI as a user experience enhancement after.
Of course if you are skilled enough, go ahead and start an AI start up, create your own models, raise a million to pay for all the compute power needed and so on. I don't want to discourage that. But at the same time no need for AI-FOMO either.
Perfect advice. Any AI product from small companies will be based on models created by big companies
Even with AI based app, 80% of the app still remains the same. The other 20% is improved by user experiance and other features.
In most apps, that 20% improvement will be helpful to just 15% of their user base.
solid advice & a very level-headed take on the whole thing! appreciate your time.
nice concept !
I do not do any social media. Otherwise i would test.
thank you! It's true it's designed for people that are active on social networks, but we'll have the ability to add text, images, video and links too. Let me know if you'd like to see more 🙏
mm like a personal porfolio ?
yeah, it could be anything really. Even a moodboard, a collection of links, notes, etc.
We will add custom domains for the beta launch.
thanks, will keep watching. In a few weeks I will have more time, so may play then.
appreciate it 🙏 I'll keep u posted
Most AI products are really volatile. For ex - copy ai or headlime. If you want to build a long term business it's best to work on solving a problem instead of jumping on the AI hype train.
Even though it's really inciting I am still working on my text to speech app. No GPT hype for me.
Most entrepreneurs are still out here building real, sustainable businesses that have nothing to do with AI. All the "get rich quick" stuff you're seeing is a niche in and of itself, so unplug from that and leave that world. You don't need it.
I share the same thoughts as you, Andrei. It's overwhelming to see AI everywhere and still not making anything based on that. I'm not buying AI-for-everything or AI-is-everything obsession to protect my focus. The Selfbase app looks great BTW.
So it lets you build your personal website, but it's actually updated? ✨
I love the design, feels very polished. Where's the source? 🙃
Exactly! Personal websites don’t see much love after you make them and quickly become outdated, but you’ll keep posting stuff on other platforms like Dribbble, Behance, Twitter, etc because that’s how you reach an audience.
With Selfbase, your website always shows your last work/activity.
appeal to maslows hierarchy of needs. AI will burnout sooner or later. Crypto suffered burnout as well. AI will too. Big trend pumps always have dumps.
these things always thrive. target them in a modern way. explodingideas.co did it pretty well appealing to the money need. tinder did it really well appealing to love.
these things always work, just need to revamp and modernize how you target them.
I love the product you made, more than any of the recent ai product, I am excited to try it out!
hey! thanks a tone, man! I'll keep you updated, or make sure you join the waitlist (easier that way)
Already joined!
I work in no-code automation sector & what you said is absolutely right. All the players in no-code industry are focussing on how to integrate openai. The amount of content on these topics has sky-rocketed like a exponential curve on steroids.
All this madness is happening but small business owners are embracing this change towards optimisation & providing more value to their customers, even making their jobs easier, in some cases fun as well.
We are at that stage where AI has not become the norm or a standardisation for example googing queries is a habit & literally a phrase. Everyone is exploring & learning their way around this technology. In some time, we will start hearing AI as a regular part of our lives.
It's a interesting analogy.
my other opinions: https://journalsbycreativepie.substack.com/
IMO people are too focused on building (or hating on) AI apps, and not focused enough on using AI to build non-AI apps.
While there are naturally many AI apps to be built, I think there's a real risk of big incumbents just bundling these use cases in themselves.
It just makes certain things faster. I know a founder on $15k MRR who recently started using ChatGPT to refactor code, find bugs, speed things up etc, and it's a key part of his workflow now. My relative works at a giant global bank, and they are secretly using it internally for certain things (obviously not everything). People should lean into this side of it. Unless they have some kind of ethics against using it.
Exceptional post Andrei,
Nothing comes easy in life, and even AI seems like a gold rush as you perfectly said, few could be able to build profitable products around AI. This doesn't men that everything else outside the hype can't survive. We need just to adopt, and evolve with evrything in our belt.
As example, we build Vieden, we don't use AI, but we build a radical scenario around it. You can check us out if you want at https://vieden.io/
I would love to get your feedback!
I like your product, very unique.
I do think AI can be used very effectively to build a profitable business BUT not mainstream. Niche markets and specific industries are where the successes will be. The likes of copywriting apps etc have been done, but can still work in specialist markets. For example, in the legal profession, I have been asked to build something specific using AI
Thank you Rtg123,
I highly appreciate it! As to AI and business, can't agree more, but I do believe that people could find positions where AI is underperforming or just can't affect.
Andrei, I feel you! Building a non-AI product in today's world can be tough. But don't let the hype drain your energy!
You're right, it's all about focus. Ignore those "get rich quick" clickbaits, and remember, we're the pioneers here! Let's keep learning, experimenting, and making our mark.
Congrats on launching your open-source product after 3 months of hard work!
I appreciate it, man! We're the pioneers indeed, or at least we are around pioneers, and sometimes just being around matters :D
I feel Selfbase is trying to bring focus and consistency on our activities across social platforms. This is very needed in this social era. Great work.
I can resonate what ever is there in the Title. If we just think, AI can help us provide thoe features that users would think as common sense, and hence a great user experience.
For example, If we are building a map application, we can integrate with weather api and suggest users on what they need to do... That will be a real value.
Thanks a lot, Abdur! Appreciate your reply & well said.
Very cool project you have. I think it will be a great success. But you should try to build a few side projects based on AI. There are many low hanging fruits in the AI market currently. I have also build an AI chatbot for iOS (https://apple.co/40oSG45) and I am currently working on more AI based projects.
Thank you so much! I’ve been dabbling with some ai stuff with a friend — it’s called https://www.songlyricsai.com/
But the building part is the easiest part, the hard one is to sell it 😁 do marketing and all.
Your product looks great btw! Congrats
Can I ask how you get your users?
Nice tool. I get most of my users from reddit and aso. I have launched it recently.
Yeah, we tried Reddit too, but I feel like you don't have many chances of "promoting" a project. You need to find a good angle to spark interest without clearly plugging your app.
Can you list a few subreddits that you found success on?
sideproject,iosapps worked best for me.
I have one set of words to explain it, FOMO and that shows how most of the people follow just because of a hype without actually putting any intellect or thinking in it.
Maybe that's why the 1% is the 1%, and why the rest 90% loses when time to lose comes.
exactly and it's 100% true. People follow hype blindly
Yup. Well said
Congratulations! I completely agree with your point of view that AI is the future trend and will be integrated into various fields, changing people's way of life.
This week, we also released a Web3 + AI product called Mest, a practical and straightforward wallet analysis tool designed to help you easily manage your crypto assets. Mest combines essential features like bookkeeping, cost analysis, and personalized sharing, utilizing Web3 and AI natural language interactions to deliver blockchain data queries and simplify the management of your exchange and crypto wallet accounts.
Our goal is to tackle the complexity of blockchain data with an honest and user-friendly Language User Interface (LUI), ensuring that our users have a reliable and high-quality wallet management experience.
If interested, try it now!
Website: https://mest.io/
Waitlist: https://forms.mest.io/waitlist
very cool project! Congrats as well. I run an NFT community called Deskheads.
Give us a look → https://deskheads.co
Awesome! The website UI is very interesting and unique, I like it a lot
And most AI products are just frontends that calls either ChatGPT or Mid journey with an API...
Congrats! You've offered a balanced perspective on the highs and lows of being an independent builder and this inspires me and others to keep grinding and innovating.
Thank you!
Appreciate your comment 🤝
If it's not easy - that's actually the direction in which most successful businesses are built. Sure. Everyone wants to do AI. But AI related business have never been easy, they weren't before Chat GPT and they aren't now.
Really nice UX! Love it
Agreed, I'm really interested to see if in the next few months the AI hype dies down the same way the Metaverse hype did. Don't get me wrong, I believe this new generation of AI will be game changer (in the same way I still believe in the Metaverse concept) but its still going to be a while before people figure out how to use it and how their users want to use it.
It looks like we've got a good few months still of ChatGPT proxy apps for now though!
Hey, Loved the Landing Page, and the Product looks Interesting too.
I like the minimalistic vibes also.
I would add a Video where it shows how it works, like someone using it.
Good Job!
And it starts not to be easy to build a product related to AI neither, as the market gets saturated and everybody tags ChatGPT in their products ahah.
Actually just did the same but different with whisperize.me, leveraging OpenAI's Whisper's API (not so popular amongst the products we see yet) to boost the productive on WhatsApp, turning voice messages to text with their summary, will see ahah. But gonna have to find the next trends, AI + web3 maybe? 👀
That being said, very clean design for selfbase.app man 💪
Very nice to see a open source project but what is the benefit of doing so for you?
Open-sourcing is part of our vision to allow third party devs to build upon our modular system. You’ll understand more when we show the UI, but in simple words you, as a dev, can add cards to our card library. Same as wordpress has their plugins
I like it <3
Honestly, I feel this way about most existing businesses. They don't seem to realise that right now their rug is being pulled.
I look at the non-AI equivalents of my product (personalised picturebooks with kids dreamboothed into the pics, shameless plug https://artificial.pub), like Wonderbly and Lovebook and others, and their non-AI product seems so lame in comparison!! They have so much that I lack in terms of good design, great people, mad skills, reach etc etc... but I feel like they either have to start doing things my way, or someone like me will eat their whole market in the next 12 months.
This is just one super-specific vertical... but my gut says nothing is safe. Crazy times.
I was talking to a guy yesterday who was using AI to create personalised kids books. Even had a subscription model going. wouldn't have even considered it this 6 months ago
Amazing! Where is he at? I'd love to check it out. Seems like a few indies are tackling this
It is a rug pull. Very similar feeling to the hype train around crypto and blockchain where we saw blockchain being applied in place of a general purpose relational database because of its "immutability".
Surely, there are many areas where AI can improve processes and workflow, but there are also equally many where people are just throwing things against the wall to see what sticks!
PS - Are you building your whole app on framer, or just the beta signup page?
no, just the landing page was in framer! I have to say, Framer is incredible!
On the other hand, I built an AI-powered app without promoting it as AI product. My app won't work without AI. But I have been promoting without much mention of AI because I'm not selling an AI product. I'm selling a product created by AI.
By pasting an article link, you can listen to its summary in 1-3 minutes. You can get it from https://beseek.app
Very smart! As with any new technology, people are quickly divided into two camps: The enthusiasts and the deniers. Positioning yourself as a neutral app might see traction from both sides... at the same time you are chasing two groups and might not be as effective as pinpointing a niche. 🤷♂️
Currently I'm talking to most people that haven't try ChatGPT first-hand even though they have heard about it in the news. Some would ask if I use GPT, some think it's like magic that we can summarize an article and narrate it instantly.
nice! keep on it then & congrats on the product! The idea is brilliant.
Just checked the website, and the only quirk I have is the Appstore/Playstore buttons are pixelated. I'd try to use svg
Thanks for the feedback. Will check on those download buttons.
I feel is a bit the same of last year with NFTs , but maybe last longer, what I don't want tondo is building saas ai projects just because people buy things related to this. Perhaps just adding an ai feature to a solid saas project is the way to go.
You're right, man. Nowadays, it has become a mentality to add AI to any project. People love to hear and see that because it can skyrocket growth. However, in reality, the situation is completely different.
Most founders have been working on their projects for 2-3 years. This AI trend may burst in a short time, but it's now compulsory to go with the trend to make a product successful and effective.
In the last ai is good for those who know how to use it effectively.
I think this is different to other trends but it needs to be managed as to not be detrimental
Yeah, same with blockchain, VR and all the other buzzwords, founders add in their pitch decks to appear as they understand the new technologies.
You are correct that building a product that is not AI-related nowadays can be challenging. However, it's important to remember that there are still many successful products and businesses that are not AI-related.
Overall, while AI has the potential to revolutionize many industries, there are still many opportunities for businesses and entrepreneurs to create successful products and services that are not AI-related. It's important to focus on providing value to customers and finding solutions that meet their needs, regardless of whether or not AI is involved.
BTW I really like your idea and I have other suggestions and opinions.
https://prosnowmobile.com/
I agree with @Tomii19 but I’d go further.
The world is not going to end because of AI.
Business will not grind to a halt because of AI.
People will still buy things from businesses made by creative humans.
Software and tech are not the only startups in the world. But they are the most over-saturated and over-hyped markets.
Think laterally and use your creativity to find new markets, rather than fearing what may happen to the one you’re in.
Think about how you can use tech in a business rather than as a business.
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