The Ledger
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Isenberg: Consumer AI apps aren't saturated; 100+ Cal AI spin-offs will succeed
“And I think that people think that
it's getting saturated with consumer mobile apps, but I don't think that's the case.
That's my hot take.
I think there's going to be so, so many examples of, you know, there's gonna be like a hundred, you know, mini versi…”
Isenberg: Cal AI is generating $30M a year in revenue
“The popular example right now is like Cal AI. And I've had those guys on the podcast that they're doing thirty million dollars a year.”
Isenberg: Consumer AI apps hit $1M MRR via $5 creator CPMs
“Had the founders of in two separate pods Cal AI come and Riz GPT come, come and do an interview. And I asked them how much do they pay per CPM? Like what is successful for them? So they basically acquire, I mean, they're doing like a million dollars a month. M…”
Yadegari: App UI must be immediately clear in two-second influencer clips
“Showing it on an influencer video, when it, when the phone is only on the screen for two seconds, you need the viewer to understand what this app does and why they want to get it for themselves. And if it's unclear, if the app is too convoluted, then influence…”
Appending 'AI' to product names works best in stagnant industries
“Appending AI is valuable when you are creating innovation within a relatively stagnant industry, such as Cal AI.”
Isenberg: AI Unlocks Superior App Experiences and Reverses Mobile Saturation
“People have been building mobile apps since 2008, and it became increasingly harder to build something that people are going to download and pay money for. Until two things happened, actually. AI came. Anyone could create something, but more, even more than th…”
Isenberg: Cal AI generates around $3 million per month
“You have the Cal AI guys doing like three million dollars a month and so many people copying it.”
Greg Isenberg predicts a surge of niche AI apps imitating Cal AI
“You're seeing the Calais of the world making millions of dollars a month with relatively simple apps with AI baked in. So I think that there's going to be a lot of people who want to build something similar in different niches.”
Isaacson: Cal AI succeeded through packaging and onboarding, not proprietary tech
“You know, the reality is anyone can go and make a calorie tracking app, but they built an amazing funnel, right? So I think like the key lesson in a Cal AI is they packaged it really, really nicely and made it seem even more valuable than it is, which I think …”
Wilkinson: Standalone apps like Cal AI will face 100 clones within months
“There's tons of those, but there's going to be like a hundred of them in the app store in like two months. And then Cal AI will not be able to charge what they are.”
Isenberg: Apps like Cal AI are currently generating $20M ARR
“For example, the one, the flavor right now is Cal AI, you know, apps like that. Like those companies are doing like twenty million dollars ARR on, on downloading an app.”
Wilkinson: Vibe is a short-term cash-flow opportunity, not a durable business
“A hundred percent. This is a Cal AI. This is like your, I want like some college kid who's like, I want to get in and get out. I want to come in. I want to get it to a couple million dollars of ARR. I want to cashflow it. And then maybe it's a thing in two yea…”
Yadegari: Most Cal AI clones rely on basic inaccurate prompts
“A lot of people will make GPT wrappers for things like Cal AI. We have so many clones right now, and most of them have done nothing to make the app more accurate. They just put a basic prompt in and have GPT estimate the calories, whatever that means from the …”
Isenberg: 'CalAI for X' represents a new multi-action scanning UI primitive
“Between, you know, between Riz, GPT, Cal AI, you guys have kind of invented this whole new primitive, and there's probably like a thousand different apps that like Cal AI for X could work for it.”
Yadegari: Utility App Users Do Not Naturally Share Food Scans
“And what I noticed with a utility app like Cal AI is that people don't really care to share their food.”
Cal AI reached $1M monthly revenue within six months of launch
“And then most recently Cal AI, which we launched just like a little bit over six months ago and is at about two million downloads and over a million dollars in monthly revenue.”
Cal AI currently generates $50 million in annual recurring revenue
“Cal AI, which does fifty million in ARR”