The Exchanges

Q you know, any startup and you see competition, especially well-funded composition, like Lenza is highly funded, Silicon Valley funded, Silicon Valley based, I think you get that bad feeling in your stomach. At least I do. When I see a competitor come out with a similar technology or product, how did you feel when you, when you saw it and how do you think about differentiating your product going forward?

A So with Headline, I, I freaked the fuck out every time a big competitor got VC funding, got exposure, got angry that they stole my ideas, blah, blah, blah. Basically after I sold it a few months later, I just saw like the competition I was afraid of didn't go that far. But also what I realized is, is like, if you want to stay small, you're a bootstrapper, you're an indie hacker. It's only good if a competitor builds something like you, because they have the money to create awareness. Like for Lanza, for example, like I got. 10 times more sales after they launched a product because suddenly people like most of the people, they were suddenly searching for like AI avatar. Right. But some people, they didn't use the word AI avatar. They used AI profile picture. So where do they end up? Because my, my domain name is profile picture.ai. They end up my, my website. So now these days I think like, okay, yeah, it's great if some. Big shots, marketing, money, spender, build something like me because they do the marketing for me. I'll eat the scraps. I'm happy with it. I don't need to do thirty million revenue because I don't have any employees to pay for them. So I've, I only see it as something positive right now, to be honest.

AI assessment note: “I only see it as something positive right now, to be honest.”

Q Right. So yeah, let's talk about that idea. So you've done that for Headshot Pro, and millions of headshots are created per month. Do you, how would you go about thinking about another, another type of service? Like Headshot Pro for X?

A There was a, I was listening to Potas the other day, and they, For example, company doctors apparently have scribes that are taking notes and how it used to work. I don't know which podcast this was on, but it was a really good episode. Probably. Um, I think it was my first million. They mentioned it on there. So basically they said this doctor had a scribe. So before they will be in person. Now they hired someone that was listening in from an iPad. Someone was literally asking, Hey, who's that on the iPad? And we were like, Oh, that's my scribe. He's listening and he's taking notes of this recording. The next step is you need to find ideas that you could literally automate with AI, right? So this person, like it's, it's going to be taught, like people don't like to hear it, but this person is going to be automated by AI because you have open AI whisper. It can literally transcribe what you're saying. You use another LLM to summarize it and you're done. So this person, their job is going to be gone in five years. So this is like a job you could automate. Like you could target doctor practices, the scribes, Literally marketed as that service, but then instead of doing the services before you, you replace it with AI, but you still sell it as that way. So you say, um, Yeah. How would you market it? How would you brand it? Like you would just use the same kind of content. You don't…

AI assessment note: “you need to find ideas that you could literally automate with AI”

Q Does the current way of AI tools make it easier, harder? To rank in, in Google?

A I don't write my copy that much with those tools because I'm afraid Google penalizes it. I just think it's easier to make content in that sense. Cause for example, I have a website, lendingfolio.com. It's a, I sell templates for websites there. Like I had to hire a developer, a designer, wait for six months for them to make content. And only then you can start ranking on Google because you made the product. But with Viike, you can literally on the fly, produce a content, a user goes to your website, generate something for themselves and you use it to publish on your website. So your content gets created for you automatically. So I think it's super easy to grow on social media in that sense. Like for example, the tattoo, like that content ranks, Google likes content where people stay. So if they don't, if they don't bounce off the Like 1:02 and say, okay, yeah, this is garbage quality. I don't want to be here. Like you're going to get penalized, but apparently it's good quality. So Google sees that you stay on the website for one minute. You don't go back to the search. So you're going to stay there.

AI assessment note: “I don't write my copy that much with those tools because I'm afraid”

Q Yeah, exactly. So I think that's a trend that's, that's just begun. And I think with, uh, A-List, uh, your product, this model does not exist. I, I, you know, I could see this taking off. Like what does success look like for you with this product?

A So it's still in my mind to turn this into. A tool to let other people create their own influencers, their own characters and whatever with it. I think that's pretty interesting. People have already reached out on DMS to me, like, how can I create my own? So that's an interesting point, like an interesting way to go to, but for now, yeah, it was just like a fun project, man. I, I probably have ADD. Like I like to ship a lot of new products. I think it's just pretty cool that it's possible to do. Uh, it's like exploring new ways, learning new things, seeing what is like the limit of. AI right now. And it's, it's mental. It's mental what you can do with it right now.

AI assessment note: “turn this into. A tool to let other people create their own influencers”