Starting Business With AI in 2024

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AI is NOT for Fun

It’s much more than just fun. You know how bullish we are about AI, and we believe AI can play a significant role in any sphere of our lives. It’s not only about ChatGPT giving a recipe for Curry Chicken 🍗 or generating images. It is a powerful tool and a big market for making businesses, improving existing ones, or learning life-changing skills. Here is my perspective as an AI founder and creator of Creators AI and a bunch of other AI projects.

In this post, we go through the following:

• Easy-to-slide-in Business model ideas with AI
• Real cases where AI is not just fun but also a market & product that generates revenue
• My personal experience of launching products related to AI

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# Idea 1 💡 Create Content

Everyone has an interesting perspective on how AI may improve something or be valuable. That viewpoint may not be available to others (that’s UVP already). So, creating content may become a way to extract that value. And it’s worth trying to start sharing it.

For example, I have a unique perspective on AI for the eCommerce industry because I was working in it, on Fashion as I was building a fashion startup, and finally on Creators & Founders as I consider myself and have a connection to that community. This helped me build Creators AI and start writing content.

Actually, starting to publish content in discovery platforms (TikTok, Substack, LinkedIn, X) dont require an audience. Starting a newsletter may sound a bit more difficult, but it is a great place to launch and validate your content's value. In the end, choosing the content form and place to publish it - is very unique.

What can I do? You can bring an interesting perspective on using AI from your work, hobbies, studies, or personal life situations.

Cases:

1. Write with AI by - is a newsletter about using AI for writing. Nicolas is a Digital Writer and co-founder of the famous writing accountability project Ship 30 for 30. He saw a fantastic opportunity to combine his writing community expertise with AI. The result is a Paid Newsletter with 39,000 subscribers.
2. Educating AI by - is a newsletter about Generative AI in classrooms. PhD and English Teacher Nick started sharing his perspective on AI for teachers, parents, and educational workers. The newsletter has more than 1000 subscribers and good engagement rates.

# Idea 2 💡 Create a Web Platform or Directory

Creating a website with valuable content for a specific group of people is easy and requires nothing but a weekend, and with SEO-optimized content, you can drive free traffic there. You can find tools in our posts on building projects with AI.

I have done it many times, and one of my recent projects, the GPT Academy, is designed to be a directory of AI Tools for consumers, which also works great for AI founders who want to promote their AI Apps.

This project took only a few evenings to design & develop. Since its launch, it has gotten many thousands of views per month organically and has generated a total of $5,000+ in passive income. Check our AI SEO Post to understand the SEO Game with AI Content.

Here is my framework to start a similar project:

1. Find a topic you like. (It should interest you and have some organic traffic) You can also use tools like Google Trends and Keywords Everywhere to validate other people's interests. We have a dedicated post about researching audiences with AI.
2. Design the Concept of MVP. What value can you provide in the simplest possible form?

It could be a directory of other websites and services, or it could be a simple cheatsheet with useful AI prompts for {{your target audience}} or a database of valuable content for {{your target audience}}. Dont be stuck at this part, as you dont need to build an Amazon-like platform, just one simple value delivered as simply as possible.

1. Develop the MVP. Build your product using no-code tools like Softr, Bubble, Shopify, and Brevo. No one will judge your code or hack you after you launch. Check this Post and this story for inspiration on what can be achieved with different low-code and no-code tools.
2. Promote your Product. The simplest way is to allocate some budget for Paid Ads, go to Meta Ads Manager, and launch a few Ad campaigns. If you feel it is not what you want to spend money on, consider these platforms to launch: ProductHunt, Reddit, X. And dont forget to prepare your website for SEO Optimization.

Few Inspiring Cases:

1. PromptBase by Ben Stokes. Ben is a full-stack developer who is obsessed with building tiny side hustles. You can learn more about his project here. By now, his side hustle has grown to a platform with 500k Monthly Visitors and $100k Revenue.

> Building sidehustles or indie making is quite popular pattern and we have bunch of heroes in our newsletter who did that: Piter Levels, John Rush, Yasser Elsaid

Get AI Courses—by Anonymous Redditor. It’s a simple directory of AI courses—nothing complex or unique, but very useful! And I guess it has excellent SEO potential.

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# Idea 3 💡 Help businesses you know (Consulting or Agency)

Sometimes, I have a question: why create something new if there is already market validation ($$$) in other business models? And it is true. Taking something that works (especially if it has an established market and volume) is a more sustainable strategy with higher returns. Therefore, I would not skip applying AI capabilities to existing businesses.

Everyone has a founder friend or knows a community of SMB owners and entrepreneurs. They already have a business that generates value (money), and you have access to the decision-making level (which is crucial). So, if you want to apply your AI knowledge, what are you waiting for?

We already covered the topic of the AI Agencies Business Model, but I want to extract and add my own experience (as an agency owner) to the framework. Get Access to the framework & 2 other Ideas to Start an AI Business as a Paid Subscriber 🔓

The Simple Framework to Start the AI Consultancy/Agency:

1. You need a basic knowledge of AI Tools to understand what is possible.

Don't skip our posts on recent Open AI models and News Digests, where we cover recent AI Tools. Always stay updated

1. Find Problems worth solving.

If you don’t know the obvious problems to solve, go and ask the business owners you know about their main pains. You need to find bottlenecks, routine pains, causes of failures - everything that makes them earn less and potentially increase their revenue.

Sometimes, it’s about the comfort of the business owner or manager (yes, that’s a conflict of interest), but you need to address that.

Do phone calls, interviews, shadow-follow, and analyze.

1. Design a simple solution for ONE specific problem.

Dont make a Swiss knife.

Just pick one thing and come up with a simple solution that you can understand and explain.

This should be technically feasible and deployable in one week.

Existing AI apps and services could be used to create customer chatbots, automate calls, and recognize text/objects. These can be deployed in hours, not weeks.

1. Prepare a pitch

Sometimes, you need just tissue and pen; sometimes, you need a website landing page. It depends on who you are talking to.

1. Build the solution

Do it yourself and think about how to outsource that in the future. Good question: Can I set up this service without myself in the workflow? That’s how you can build an agency in the future.

If you fail to build the solution to satisfy everyone, that’s fine. You learned a lot in the process. Go back to step b. or c.

dont forget about Lean Methodology. Picture by @ankleio

1. Now, when you build it successfully once. Scale it.

Only at this stage will you need email outreach, marketing, Stripe Automation, and all the BS promoted on YouTube tutorials for building agencies. Everything should be in the right order.

Cases:

Ken Leaver - AI & Freelancer Consultancy. Ken is not setting up agencies or cold outreach without validation of value. He finds great opportunities in his network and improves services/operations/processes with AI.

# Idea 4 💡 Build a Product

We moved here after all the previous ideas because this one is for buddies who are not scared.

If that diagram doesn’t scare you, move on. Haha

Internet says Paul Graham made it.

Launching a product without thinking of all previous ideas & steps - is very risky. Unique Perspective, Research Ideas, Problem, Value - you need to have all these in place. But if you have at least some progress, you can further develop that into the product. Your blog, newsletter, directory, or AI consultancy may turn into a proper startup.

Do you have friends who are stuck in building a product?

Refer a friend

When I say product, I don't necessarily mean SaaS or an app. It could be a simple service, but it should be scalable and not directly correlate to hours spent.

Building products is much easier now than ever before. If you haven’t seen our post on tech stack for your AI Startup, check it out!

If you still haven’t come up with an idea, you can follow the advice of taking something that already works and checking what the most prominent startups are building at the moment. There is a fresh list of AI Startups in YC (famous startup accelerator).

These startups are often easy to repeat and compete with because most of them use the same ChatGPT API. Dive into the building with ChatGPT API and Custom GPTs.

Cases:

1. Pieter Levels, again, has a great framework for building products with AI. It’s a must-read if you are about to build a product.

1. Even red oceans can be a great spot to start. Omosayansii created and sold an AI text generator, while billions of dollars have already been invested in AI text generation.

I also recommend checking Paul Graham essays on bulding a product

Sharing is caring! Gift & Share this newsletter to someone who may enjoy it!

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# Idea 5💡 (Bonus Track)

The bonus track is for those with the greatest curiosity. It’s about the compound effect and the perfect complement to any of the previous business models.

Build a network (Community)

While creating content, building a directory, or a product, you can always benefit from community (~~human capital~~) in many ways: hire, get early adopters, sell products, or get feedback. Plus, communities can also be monetized with Paid Membership.

I have no exact framework here because I am still figuring out how to build a community. But there are a few platforms to consider when designing a future community:

Skool (all in one platform created for community management), Telegram (variety of functions in messenger like-community), Discord (ga’ choice and also home for largest communities in the world).

Moreover, tech companies already understand that the community is a superpower for business.

Insightful Cases:

1. HuggingFace is a community-led project for Open-Source AI exploration. The model behind it is fantastic. They created a convenient space for developers to build and launch their AI models.
2. Midjourney launched its product in a community. It uses its community space (Discord server) as a main interface to access the AI model.
3. ChatGPT Community—This Discord community is not affiliated with Open AI but is actively developing. It provides access to different AI models, including ChatGPT, inside its Discord Server.
4. Liam Ottlety, the YouTube guy famous for AI Agency Success (a questionable thing featured in our post about agencies), is definitely an info businessman who makes money on content, education, and community. His community on Skool allows him to create an evergreen sales funnel.

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# Wrapping up

It’s just a tiny glimpse of what could be done in AI, and the business models above are the simplest way to start a business with AI in 2024. Most of all, the entry barriers do not exist, as you can start a project about AI without coding skills.

If you want to use AI to power up your career or launch something with AI, you have the necessary toolset now. Good luck in building with AI

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