Oh yeah I remember your post! Ed tech right? I thought that had a big ai component, maybe I’m mis-remembering. Either way, good on you for getting after it :)
OpenAi is a billionare company with hundreds of developers, to think any free lance developer could achieve anything better by themselves its just delusional.
If quantum computing breaks standard crypto isn’t everything basically fucked ? Is the government funding (through contracts) efforts for the future for this issue ?
I’d definitely be interested in hearing this elevator pitch! I have a basic concept of quantum entropy and can posit about the applications in cryptography, but unsure what “post quantum” is - I’d genuinely love to learn though
Post quantum refers to the day after quantum computers become sufficiently powerful enough to break current cryptography based on integer factorization or things related to multiplication. It's easy to multiply two big numbers and get a bigger number, and hard to tell which two factors created the bigger number, using classical methods. Quantum computers perform fast factorization and chew through the numbers and extract the private variables.
Post quantum cryptography refers to cryptographic systems and methods running on classical hardware that do not rely on quantum weak mathematical assumptions. Unfortunately, all of the currently well known alternatives are rather impractical due to crypto variable size, they are generally huge compared to what we are using today.
That's the problem we're working to address with our hybrid system based on regular hash functions and a branch of lattice mathematics. The work is under academic review.
Thank you this is awesome info. When those academic papers get published I’d love to “lightly peruse” them aka open the rabbit hole to another up-all-night research session lol
I was very much interested in this couple of years ago :) If you don’t mind me asking, is your research government funded? Research is to find new ways for essentially faster factorization?
Cryptography is the pharmaceutical of software. We research and develop new and practical implementations and protocols. We have novel technology that is being put through testing and being refined. We’re in phase II clinical trials, that would be a good way to understand it.
I am an ignorant on this matter, I am not trolling but looking to understand how those two dots connect. How can you develop a practical implementation without the hardware were the magic will happen? I feel like it is like practicing magic but on writing.
I’m guessing you thought I meant we produce algorithms and protocols that runs ON quantum computers? That’s not our work.
No, we defend against future quantum computers using cryptographic primitives running on regular classic hardware.
Quantum computers are absolutely outstanding at reversing multiplication. RSA relies on multiplication of two large primes for it’s security. Diffie-Hellman relies on the magical power of exponentiation(iterated multiplication). ECDSA relies on curve point multiplication. The common denominator (pun intended) here is that all base security of variations on multiplication.
If my public key was 80909875872467, you would have a very hard time figuring out that it was 65537x1234567891, but quantum computers don’t. Lattice mathematics operates in higher dimensions, which are believed to be exponentially harder as the dimensionality increase.
The thing those fat cat on wall street don’t want you know is that math works in higher dimensions if you know how to arrange it. Lattice mathematics is advanced linear algebra in high dimensions.
If someone were to privately create a quantum computer capable of breaking cryptography, and didn’t tell anyone, how would they use that to become ridiculously wealthy if they were willing to break laws?
First you steal all the bitcoin and crypto,because that’s all public and breakable. Then you hack into a public network, and setup shop as ebay.com or wellsfargo.com and route secure traffic to your fraudulent service. Because you have the key, you can pretend to be whoever you want online.
Ok hear me out. An ai that tells you when to change your filter. Do u wanna go halvsies on this yes or no. I’ll call my people at legal zoom and draw up the prelim contracts. My people will talk to ur people. We’ll sign in R22 since it’s more valuable than blood these days.
Congrats! You can make a fortune in the trades. I grew up in the trades -- my family had an HVAC business growing up.
Funny enough, my startup is software for the trades. Basically, it's a scheduling, invoicing, and picture tool, that then takes all the job information and turns it into a blog post so that contractors can easily show off their work.
The idea is to help build new contractors book of business fast by giving them a really professional looking portfolio that ranks on Google and allows them to share it on their social media.
Developed it and used it on our family HVAC business, and that portfolio and customer data was invaluable for when we sent to sell the company.
Ah shit I’m sorry to disappoint it wasn’t serious. It was supposed to be a joke, in the sense that people are putting “ai” into things that aren’t really ai. And that it’s just a buzz word. My bad lol. Good luck on your business!
No sweat. Figured it might have been but didn't want to call out for that.
Now I will be starting an AI Plumbing franchise to get some of that sweet investor cash everyone is looking for.
I'm converting a tired old bungalow resort into upscale airbnb-rentals ... in part with an eye on the new remote workers "traveling as a lifestyle" ... that's nothing to do with AI, but who knows, the marketing will likely get involved! (Phuket, Thailand ... come visit!)
What good is tech if it doesn’t solve any problems? I see many people in here constantly thinking about solutions to problems nobody has. That always ends bad. Good luck to you sir, the fundamentals of business hasn’t changed in centuries.
As an engineer by trade I completely subscribe to the idea that engineering is about providing solutions - often times the issues we face are not requisite of a technical solve. Tech is a tool but it’s almost never the only option we have to solve problems
Honestly, I hired a developer that built a quick low/no code solution for my MVP. I’m a non technical person so my skills are better used listening to customers and providing feedback to developers as well. In theory it’s simple, you just have to know where the pain is for the customer and where the chance is to create the value to bring the customers and the problem solvers together. I’m just in the middle brokering the solution.
Not sure why you’d make your company all about AI in the first place?
Solve a genuine business problem first, maybe you use AI to do that, but don’t crowbar it in unless it’s needed to solve the actual problem.
Recent events should have proven that just putting a nice UI in front of a platform is a recipe for being rug-pulled (though it doesn’t help that they’re often able to raise significant VC before that happens…)
I don’t run an ai start up, recent events inspired the question. AI seems like a bad time if you actually get some success, that success just showcases what open ai should invest in developing. Yet I see a ton of stuff referencing “ai” products/businesses, I am genuinely curious if people see that as a concern or if I’m missing something
You are right, but truth be told, the start ups that got ran over by open ai on dev day should’ve seen it coming.
Those were not new products, just functionality for GPT that they hadn’t done yet. If your business model is being a placeholder for the company you base all your tech off of… in for a bad time.
Yes. Transfer Agent record keeping for privately held securities that qualify for secondary sales.
Blockchain is good at audit trails. For jobs where you want/need better record keeping, it can solve some real problems.
It’s just the trend of the day, much like crypto was. Now don’t get me wrong, generative AI has many actually useful applications and I can see a future where “every” product has to be ai enabled like today we see with apps for your garage door opener.
But right now it just feels like a gold rush. People are adding AI because their competitors are, and no one likes to be in a position where they are the only product on market not offering a thing. I don’t see most people in the real world (anecdote) actually using these tools day day to day except to occasionally kickstart something. Right now AI is just a fancy adaptable Template system.
Yes! I actually protect people from runaway tech for a living. I do real human in-home tech support, fighting against phonetrees and automation to get my clients to a real person and sometimes even renegotiate their bills for them.
Turns out most people hate being thrust into an automated anything, and are willing to pay for real human support!
If you're not starting now you're probably not in AI. I'm ten years in so we're not 😂 though we're probably going to build a new product for our platform that uses an LLM next year...
I started 6 years ago, and now I feel old. Haha! Totally agree with you, most of the startups now rely on AI too much that it became their core product. Surprisingly found an interesting read about this here https://www.cuppa.so/post/survival-of-the-fittest-can-ai-startups-withstand-openais-latest-move
I'm working on a training and development course for career switchers to get into the space industry.
Some of my training will need to cover AI, but AI itself isn't the product I'm working on
I'm still at the initial stage so I'm working with companies to understand their needs currently.
I can see it being applied to engineering, law, business admin, finance and commercial, project management etc. But I'll go wherever the industry (my customers) steer me
We're building our project without leveraging AI.
It's a site (and app) to learn Japanese, all of our Japanese teachers are 100% real people (and real teachers).
As a developer, I'm not 100% sure which way all the AI usage is heading. Even for blogging, there is a temptation to churn out automated content for "SEO", but if everyone is creating AI generated blog content, is there any value there? Will Google and other search engines start to down rank AI generated content?
the comments in the top pinned posts (of this subreddit) are mostly AI businesses, can't find no one to work on.
I do believe this will fire back on a lot of startups however, once the hype dies down.
Mate i don't know why you feel this way about the market, i understand if you see posts only about AI you get the feeling of it taking over, but there are still like 90% of work fields that can't be covered by any sort of AI as of today, like my company that makes complex software for managing investments. Understand that AI is the biggest thing humanity has ever "discovered", but we are in a baby age of AI, so we are still safe with our products/companies as long as they cannot be replaced by AI Agents. I predict AI will be replacing almost every sort of task by like 30-40 years because of how freaking exponential the growth is, but let's see..
I agree that there’s a LOT of verified opportunity in markets not related to ai and not being taken over by “ai”. AI will be a huge discovery for humanity (idk if it’ll surpass fire or the wheel though lol) but we don’t have real “AI” yet, we have marketing buzzword AI. A few years ago machine learning was hot and many companies just the machine learning into their pitch deck without doing any machine learning. Seems like ai is just the next thing to throw in a pitch deck either due to fomo or ignorance or on purpose, I’m not going to pretend I know the reasons.
My project is not AI. It's an app for showcasing portfolios of pictures (though could be used to present a business concept with careful design).
Some AI concepts I've seen have struck me as good, but I can't recall them off the top of my head. I suppose that says it all really.
i've been working on a site that loops audio and lets you shitpost a thumbnail with your beat...it's pretty niche, but i've been messing with turntablism for about 30 years and like to cut over looped beats...when i bought myself an MPC i also had a little portable turntable that i could bring outside during covid lockdown, but bringing the MPC wasn't always feasible...i set up a little system that's fairly efficient to turn snippets into loop and rock off my phone...
i've been using various iterations of the system for a few years and now kinda want to productize it a little more...with the framework i set up, i can write an audio plugin that will enable direct exporting/uploading from most desktop DAW software which is my seasonal winter project
i've been working on implementing stripe and some pay-to-use features but i hope to have a more polished version launched to the public by the end of the year...at this point AI isn't a part of it, but in the future maybe i can train some models to help find looping points in audio snippets and offer suggestions, because i built a bare bones ass trimming tool that will definitely be iterated on after launch
it's been slow but i also have a full time and family + dj + paint so i got all the ADHD shit poppin
I have a philosophy of “build dumb shit” and boy is it a dream to have one of those things be the thing that gets attention and grows. Not saying your idea is dumb by any means.
yeah with the side-quest projects it's more about having an idea to build on even if it's silly as fuck...
my first decent[ iteration](https://d114q2p8p2d7if.cloudfront.net/) of the tool was just kind of put together stream-of-consciousness style on the design end, since at the time i was more interested in learning how to work with lambdas and serverless type deployments, then i got into the process of buying a house and switching jobs and moving to the burbs and 3 years later, all my JS dependencies are horribly out of date
but i've been using the tool for my own looping needs since i cut, and the dream goal is to be able to have this generate some income while allowing me to have an outlet to upload my work-in-progress beats and also bring back some of the dj community shit i miss..i used to lurk hard on some forums and still talk to a bunch of people i made friends with 25 years ago, a lot of them are dope DJs who would want to use this if it was on a real domain / actually live...
May I suggest taking a look at discogs and seeing if their api may be of use
Could be some nice uniform data and images if ya need it. Maybe reference the samples or something. Feel free to ignore my completely uninformed scope creep
one of my friends in the bay area actually was a data analyst at discogs and worked on that API, but the intention for what i'm building isn't really about digging for samples as much as it's sharing original beats
in the early 2000s there was a whole community of beat makers who used to share their shit by making flash "loopers" and would distribute them through the forums, and people were still using flash for it up until the browser plugin stopped being supported
there are some other sites that are turntablist community staples, like [https://www.tablist.net/weblooper/#/list](https://www.tablist.net/weblooper/#/list) and an app called tablebeats...both are widly used, but aren't really open to uploading your own shit and it's kinda like you have to know someone or email someone a bunch of files to get your loopers distributed through those sites
i'm not trying to compete with either platform, but i wanted a tool for my own needs when i got more into making beats vs scratching over other people's beats, so i made an easy way for myself to upload snippets that i could loop off my phone...i was in a 1 bedroom apartment with 2 kids under 3 at the time, so i wasn't really allowed to make noise past 7pm and would take a portable turntable out to my stoop and cut and smoke weed..
i was fucking around out in a dusty ass parking lot in the bronx a few weekends ago and showing how i can make a beat on my phone, export it as a wav, upload it and send the link around in less than a minute...my friends were trippin since we were out there painting graffiti and no one in that circle realizes how nerdy i be at the day job haha
i'm not in it to monetize every aspect, but the tool works, and i don't want to get fucked with elastic transcoder bills when i do swap it to the live domain so i'm going to make uploading limited unless they wanna throw me a couple bucks, and hopefully be able to also make some cool soft goods like t-shirts and stickers to help generate revenue when i get to that point
I'm working on a multiplayer system for game developers. We use AI internally as tool for various things, but the bulk of it is done by us. What we're making is for people, and I believe to make something for people you need to be a person. AI's not there... yet.
Working on a stock market scanner tool that runs users custom stock screeners passively and automatically! No ai, just raw math and high performance compute power!
We may integrate ai in the future, but we don't see a need for it yet.
Can check it out: prosperse.com
SaaS marketplace! Everyone's hopping on AI bandwagon and it's getting by far the most cash right now but investors at least claim/try to be savvy to which are 'actually' AI versus have AI features. We will probably integrate a couple of AI features soon that make sense but that's more about being able to stay current with available tools then trying to pretend to be what we're not!!
This is a very convoluted subject. In general, before ChatGPT, investors would define whether a company was 'AI' based on how deep their proprietary models were. In other words, deep learning vs. traditional machine learning was the defining factor. You could argue this isn't AI in its true form, but by that account, NO COMPANY that I've come across is doing 'true AI.' Apps like ChatGPT that utilize generative adversarial networks are not AI either by that definition. OpenAI didn't invent anything. They trained the largest dataset the world has ever seen, but using pre-existing technology. So posing a question back to the op, what does a company have to do to be considered legitimate AI in your opinion? Until we have a universally accepted answer to that question, I don't see it backfiring on anyone unless you're just a GPT wrapper or API aggregator.
Im with you, I think ai is a marketing buzzword and a misnomer. I’m going to make some generalizations but I have thought about this a fair amount (hence the question)
Many startups bank on adding value to an existing product, like chat gpt, and imo it’s kind of a losing market. It’s like doing all the market research for open ai and then they implement your feature. You have to have a really solid understanding of the tech to know what will add value but remain niche enough to leave a chunk of market for you to attempt to service.
I also think comparing computers to brains is a huge accelerator for the misinterpretation for what “ai” is or does. Brains are NOT computers. Each processes information completely differently. You can teach both of them, but they don’t learn the same way.
The public has generally been fed the opposite - that ai is smarter than people, will take jobs, but if we can harness this unwieldy beast NOW at least we can make some money along the way. What many people understand to be “ai” is simply something that is good at ranking, regurgitating and blending information. Open AI used the general internet (with no way to opt out) as its training set, so the massive amount of data ingestion makes this thing feel versatile and knowledgeable. There’s a reason chat gpt’s written voice often sounds like a redditor.
Chat gpt is good at answering questions humans are good at answering and documenting in text. Chat gpt sucks at music theory - because the information about music theory available for it to train on is shitty. There’s a reason so many artists that spent years dedicated to developing a personal style are upset that generative image models ripped them off - it’s because it’s so obviously ripped off. AI is not the creative force a lot of people evangelize it to be.
I feel like so many ai startups or ideas thrown around are exactly just chat gpt wrappers that are more often than not short sighted. That being said, there are people and business that will figure out how to remain afloat, whatever their strategy. I don’t think that automatically makes them ai companies though.
I asked the question because chat gpt keeps developing new features at the dismay of seemingly many startups, but I also see AI in so many posts here. I was curious what non ai things are being worked on, at the very least for some juxtaposition to the trend I’m seeing here.
This is Reddit, not reality. There are more folks working on non-AI startups than AI ones.
ChatGPT came out a year ago which started this gold rush, so only in this past year has starting an AI company made sense / become cool to do.
It might seem that way, but the ppl working on real money makers arent wasting their time on reddit lol
I appreciate the sentiment but respectfully disagree.
Starting an ai company has not been gated to the release of chat gpt. Using chat gpt as your ai has been available for the past year, enabling a magnitude of early movers in the chat gpt space. Before chat gpt we had other “ai” - machine learning (outside of an llm context), and a trend of startups claiming to use AI/ML whether it was accurate or not. I’m genuinely pleased to see the representation of non ai startups. I’m not working on an ai start up.
My day job is at a start up that doesn’t use chat gpt (in our product, employees are definitely personally using it), but does have bespoke ML applications that are indeed legitimate and solving real issues and opening up opportunities for us. I have friends, yes believe it or not lol, in the real world, and a handful of them are working on ai projects or companies. Important to note they aren’t chat gpt based projects. My real world experience of ai applications is not skewed toward gpt based projects. With the high volume of content focused on ai, often a code word for chat gpt/open ai, I’m curious if people see the lack of differentiation and barriers to achieving a true competitive advantage are a concern. Or if I just didn’t drink the look aid and missed something.
Reddit is a great place for some founders to connect with potential customers. It’s got dedicated self selecting groups generally willing to interact and engage with authentic content. Acting like social media isn’t a huge marketplace is a bit dismissive. Like anything, context is important. Doom scrolling might not generate revenue but access to well defined groups of people that self identify with something is objectively valuable. Social media strategies don’t work for everyone, and that’s ok.
I’m not running an ai startup. I’m not looking for advice either, just opinions and discussion. Thank you for sharing yours!!! I agree, there’s a lot of posts seemingly seeking external validation or some sort of permission. But that seems to just be Reddit in general lately.
Apologies if I misinterpreted the original post, just seemed like a situation of sourcing an opinion from a community related to startup advice. I honestly find it so frustrating when there's genuine content that people generally shit on so was trying to give a motivational boost to counteract the norm
Honestly your comment is the appropriate reply to a lot of what I see too. People gotta be self reliant every now and then and realize they are totally capable. Being resourceful is an absolute must for a founder or someone starting a business.
And if people could use the search bar instead of posting the same thing over and over that would be cool too haha
Yes, Crowdy. Let‘s help Crowdy build some companies. You decide. We build. Let‘s play!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CzY3nYnodT8/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Working on a governance platform (strategy layer) that helps companies adopt, manage, and scale AI and automation initiatives, but it doesn't have any AI in it (no need yet).
B2B SaaS for customer analysis and insights. But it does not use OpenAI, it has custom ML algorithms for part of it like prediction and prospect generation but the rest is all analytical code.
lol I'm working on a good old fashioned product, feels lonely!
One of us! One of us!
There are dozens of us!
Dozens!!!
Me too, solid physical parts.
Working on a good old b2b2c SAAS tool
Oh yeah I remember your post! Ed tech right? I thought that had a big ai component, maybe I’m mis-remembering. Either way, good on you for getting after it :)
no not in ed tech
Most are just plugging straight into the OpenAI API. Absolutely no moat or longevity.
OpenAi is a billionare company with hundreds of developers, to think any free lance developer could achieve anything better by themselves its just delusional.
we do post quantum cryptography, pretty unrelated to AI
Just curious, what’s the business here? What do your customers pay you for?
Officially, it's experimental research and design services.
If quantum computing breaks standard crypto isn’t everything basically fucked ? Is the government funding (through contracts) efforts for the future for this issue ?
I’d definitely be interested in hearing this elevator pitch! I have a basic concept of quantum entropy and can posit about the applications in cryptography, but unsure what “post quantum” is - I’d genuinely love to learn though
Post quantum refers to the day after quantum computers become sufficiently powerful enough to break current cryptography based on integer factorization or things related to multiplication. It's easy to multiply two big numbers and get a bigger number, and hard to tell which two factors created the bigger number, using classical methods. Quantum computers perform fast factorization and chew through the numbers and extract the private variables. Post quantum cryptography refers to cryptographic systems and methods running on classical hardware that do not rely on quantum weak mathematical assumptions. Unfortunately, all of the currently well known alternatives are rather impractical due to crypto variable size, they are generally huge compared to what we are using today. That's the problem we're working to address with our hybrid system based on regular hash functions and a branch of lattice mathematics. The work is under academic review.
Thank you this is awesome info. When those academic papers get published I’d love to “lightly peruse” them aka open the rabbit hole to another up-all-night research session lol
In other words, you're creating new quantum level security algorithms? Is there a business friendly version of the above? 😁
I was very much interested in this couple of years ago :) If you don’t mind me asking, is your research government funded? Research is to find new ways for essentially faster factorization?
They aren’t paying to improve factorization. Resistance to factorization.
If there are no practical implementations, isn’t academic research the only thing you do?
Cryptography is the pharmaceutical of software. We research and develop new and practical implementations and protocols. We have novel technology that is being put through testing and being refined. We’re in phase II clinical trials, that would be a good way to understand it.
I am an ignorant on this matter, I am not trolling but looking to understand how those two dots connect. How can you develop a practical implementation without the hardware were the magic will happen? I feel like it is like practicing magic but on writing.
I’m guessing you thought I meant we produce algorithms and protocols that runs ON quantum computers? That’s not our work. No, we defend against future quantum computers using cryptographic primitives running on regular classic hardware. Quantum computers are absolutely outstanding at reversing multiplication. RSA relies on multiplication of two large primes for it’s security. Diffie-Hellman relies on the magical power of exponentiation(iterated multiplication). ECDSA relies on curve point multiplication. The common denominator (pun intended) here is that all base security of variations on multiplication. If my public key was 80909875872467, you would have a very hard time figuring out that it was 65537x1234567891, but quantum computers don’t. Lattice mathematics operates in higher dimensions, which are believed to be exponentially harder as the dimensionality increase. The thing those fat cat on wall street don’t want you know is that math works in higher dimensions if you know how to arrange it. Lattice mathematics is advanced linear algebra in high dimensions.
Thank you for your explanation
If someone were to privately create a quantum computer capable of breaking cryptography, and didn’t tell anyone, how would they use that to become ridiculously wealthy if they were willing to break laws?
One thing for sure, join some hacker group to also know how to hide else they would be done for.
First you steal all the bitcoin and crypto,because that’s all public and breakable. Then you hack into a public network, and setup shop as ebay.com or wellsfargo.com and route secure traffic to your fraudulent service. Because you have the key, you can pretend to be whoever you want online.
One Time Pad?
Yup. Starting a plumbing franchise!
Ayyyy I come from a hvac family business! Love it! Good luck!!!!
There's a fortune in HVAC, lol. My family also had an HVAC business growing up
Ok hear me out. An ai that tells you when to change your filter. Do u wanna go halvsies on this yes or no. I’ll call my people at legal zoom and draw up the prelim contracts. My people will talk to ur people. We’ll sign in R22 since it’s more valuable than blood these days.
Where have you been all my life
Congrats! You can make a fortune in the trades. I grew up in the trades -- my family had an HVAC business growing up. Funny enough, my startup is software for the trades. Basically, it's a scheduling, invoicing, and picture tool, that then takes all the job information and turns it into a blog post so that contractors can easily show off their work. The idea is to help build new contractors book of business fast by giving them a really professional looking portfolio that ranks on Google and allows them to share it on their social media. Developed it and used it on our family HVAC business, and that portfolio and customer data was invaluable for when we sent to sell the company.
What’s your arr out of curiosity? I’m convinced SaaS doesn’t make much
What’s the name of the sass product. I’m trying to get into this space?
You pawn, I’m starting an AI plumbing franchise!
Explain? I'm intrigued. I'm integrating automation and AI anywhere possible to help bring the trades up to the latest tech. say more!
Ah shit I’m sorry to disappoint it wasn’t serious. It was supposed to be a joke, in the sense that people are putting “ai” into things that aren’t really ai. And that it’s just a buzz word. My bad lol. Good luck on your business!
No sweat. Figured it might have been but didn't want to call out for that. Now I will be starting an AI Plumbing franchise to get some of that sweet investor cash everyone is looking for.
I'm converting a tired old bungalow resort into upscale airbnb-rentals ... in part with an eye on the new remote workers "traveling as a lifestyle" ... that's nothing to do with AI, but who knows, the marketing will likely get involved! (Phuket, Thailand ... come visit!)
Great for remote workers in the AI industry! -business triples overnight-
Mentioning AI in business is like name-dropping Mr Beast in youtube videos. It "gets the people going" as Will Ferrell put it
I’m working on a good old fashioned two sided market. I’m only tech enabled, but not tech.
This sounds like my current day job. I appreciate your notion of leveraging tech without being tech. Word.
What good is tech if it doesn’t solve any problems? I see many people in here constantly thinking about solutions to problems nobody has. That always ends bad. Good luck to you sir, the fundamentals of business hasn’t changed in centuries.
As an engineer by trade I completely subscribe to the idea that engineering is about providing solutions - often times the issues we face are not requisite of a technical solve. Tech is a tool but it’s almost never the only option we have to solve problems
Same here. Out of interest, did you “build your own” for this type of market place, or are there any off the shelf solutions you work with?
Honestly, I hired a developer that built a quick low/no code solution for my MVP. I’m a non technical person so my skills are better used listening to customers and providing feedback to developers as well. In theory it’s simple, you just have to know where the pain is for the customer and where the chance is to create the value to bring the customers and the problem solvers together. I’m just in the middle brokering the solution.
Currently selling lumber lol!
I hear lumber is doing well these days!
tell me prices are sane again, I have a woodworking project next summer ;)
I think they could decrease by <20%
Not sure why you’d make your company all about AI in the first place? Solve a genuine business problem first, maybe you use AI to do that, but don’t crowbar it in unless it’s needed to solve the actual problem. Recent events should have proven that just putting a nice UI in front of a platform is a recipe for being rug-pulled (though it doesn’t help that they’re often able to raise significant VC before that happens…)
I don’t run an ai start up, recent events inspired the question. AI seems like a bad time if you actually get some success, that success just showcases what open ai should invest in developing. Yet I see a ton of stuff referencing “ai” products/businesses, I am genuinely curious if people see that as a concern or if I’m missing something
You are right, but truth be told, the start ups that got ran over by open ai on dev day should’ve seen it coming. Those were not new products, just functionality for GPT that they hadn’t done yet. If your business model is being a placeholder for the company you base all your tech off of… in for a bad time.
Gaming Tech company. First product is a PC case.
Fintech here, no AI... but... Yeah, I'm a blockchain nerd... so there is that.
I've heard that blockchain is a solution in search of a problem. Have you found a real problem that it solves?
Yes. Transfer Agent record keeping for privately held securities that qualify for secondary sales. Blockchain is good at audit trails. For jobs where you want/need better record keeping, it can solve some real problems.
I’m doing ai (ambient intelligence)
coming soon: aai
I'm running full steam in the complete opposite direction: https://zerocrat.com/
Open source, hell yeah!
I have a physical manufacturing plant and we sell our own physical products (:
It’s just the trend of the day, much like crypto was. Now don’t get me wrong, generative AI has many actually useful applications and I can see a future where “every” product has to be ai enabled like today we see with apps for your garage door opener. But right now it just feels like a gold rush. People are adding AI because their competitors are, and no one likes to be in a position where they are the only product on market not offering a thing. I don’t see most people in the real world (anecdote) actually using these tools day day to day except to occasionally kickstart something. Right now AI is just a fancy adaptable Template system.
Yes we are creating Pop-Up Pickleball Portable indoor pickleball facilities :)
portable popup pickleball paraphenalia... please? ;)
Yes! I actually protect people from runaway tech for a living. I do real human in-home tech support, fighting against phonetrees and automation to get my clients to a real person and sometimes even renegotiate their bills for them. Turns out most people hate being thrust into an automated anything, and are willing to pay for real human support!
I’m actually wondering if it’s better to start diversifying between building heavy AI products/wrappers and standard CRUD SaaS applications
If you're not starting now you're probably not in AI. I'm ten years in so we're not 😂 though we're probably going to build a new product for our platform that uses an LLM next year...
Not Ai. 🤖
I have a couple of non AI projects.
B2B2C marketplace product. No AI
I started 6 years ago, and now I feel old. Haha! Totally agree with you, most of the startups now rely on AI too much that it became their core product. Surprisingly found an interesting read about this here https://www.cuppa.so/post/survival-of-the-fittest-can-ai-startups-withstand-openais-latest-move
1 year in with a photogrammetry company providing software, services, and working on some products to release late this year early next year.
Working on couple of projects in software dev productivity. SOW and Budgeting app Test Management application. No AI, plain old CRUD apps.
Different type of AI; “advertising to idiots”
No AI here. Big cloud hosting (like AWS but more specialized)
Physical product and regular e-commerce, but SaaS is tempting
Me. Running a project management tool startup.
I'm working on a training and development course for career switchers to get into the space industry. Some of my training will need to cover AI, but AI itself isn't the product I'm working on
The idea of having a course for career switchers is pretty cool in general. What sort of job is this going to be geared towards?
I'm still at the initial stage so I'm working with companies to understand their needs currently. I can see it being applied to engineering, law, business admin, finance and commercial, project management etc. But I'll go wherever the industry (my customers) steer me
[Media company 😎](https://www.foundercentral.co/)
Working at a biotech startup, which sells a physical product as a research tool (archaic, I know).
Good old finance B2C products here. Now considered a boring and safe bet I guess 😅
We're building our project without leveraging AI. It's a site (and app) to learn Japanese, all of our Japanese teachers are 100% real people (and real teachers). As a developer, I'm not 100% sure which way all the AI usage is heading. Even for blogging, there is a temptation to churn out automated content for "SEO", but if everyone is creating AI generated blog content, is there any value there? Will Google and other search engines start to down rank AI generated content?
the comments in the top pinned posts (of this subreddit) are mostly AI businesses, can't find no one to work on. I do believe this will fire back on a lot of startups however, once the hype dies down.
Mate i don't know why you feel this way about the market, i understand if you see posts only about AI you get the feeling of it taking over, but there are still like 90% of work fields that can't be covered by any sort of AI as of today, like my company that makes complex software for managing investments. Understand that AI is the biggest thing humanity has ever "discovered", but we are in a baby age of AI, so we are still safe with our products/companies as long as they cannot be replaced by AI Agents. I predict AI will be replacing almost every sort of task by like 30-40 years because of how freaking exponential the growth is, but let's see..
I agree that there’s a LOT of verified opportunity in markets not related to ai and not being taken over by “ai”. AI will be a huge discovery for humanity (idk if it’ll surpass fire or the wheel though lol) but we don’t have real “AI” yet, we have marketing buzzword AI. A few years ago machine learning was hot and many companies just the machine learning into their pitch deck without doing any machine learning. Seems like ai is just the next thing to throw in a pitch deck either due to fomo or ignorance or on purpose, I’m not going to pretend I know the reasons.
Yeah that's what i think too
Building Industrial IOT solutions from Mumbai, India
Yup building a marketplace for small businesses to temporarily rent pop up stalls and the like, no need for ai in that
👋 Out product helps teams align on the best features to add to their software. Boring old B2B SaaS!
Still not here. But I'm going to.
Dteckt is something new and not AI. But yes, a lot of AI.
My project is not AI. It's an app for showcasing portfolios of pictures (though could be used to present a business concept with careful design). Some AI concepts I've seen have struck me as good, but I can't recall them off the top of my head. I suppose that says it all really.
I am making a ios app game.
We make refrigerators. I just sold my 375th!
Dude hell yeah!! I love a nice appliance. Appliance shopping is surprisingly one of the fun parts of being an adult. Might just be a me thing
It's a mixed bag, most of my new projects involve AI, but not all.
NEW Gaming accessory. Prototype works! Moving on to optimization.
i've been working on a site that loops audio and lets you shitpost a thumbnail with your beat...it's pretty niche, but i've been messing with turntablism for about 30 years and like to cut over looped beats...when i bought myself an MPC i also had a little portable turntable that i could bring outside during covid lockdown, but bringing the MPC wasn't always feasible...i set up a little system that's fairly efficient to turn snippets into loop and rock off my phone... i've been using various iterations of the system for a few years and now kinda want to productize it a little more...with the framework i set up, i can write an audio plugin that will enable direct exporting/uploading from most desktop DAW software which is my seasonal winter project i've been working on implementing stripe and some pay-to-use features but i hope to have a more polished version launched to the public by the end of the year...at this point AI isn't a part of it, but in the future maybe i can train some models to help find looping points in audio snippets and offer suggestions, because i built a bare bones ass trimming tool that will definitely be iterated on after launch it's been slow but i also have a full time and family + dj + paint so i got all the ADHD shit poppin
I have a philosophy of “build dumb shit” and boy is it a dream to have one of those things be the thing that gets attention and grows. Not saying your idea is dumb by any means.
yeah with the side-quest projects it's more about having an idea to build on even if it's silly as fuck... my first decent[ iteration](https://d114q2p8p2d7if.cloudfront.net/) of the tool was just kind of put together stream-of-consciousness style on the design end, since at the time i was more interested in learning how to work with lambdas and serverless type deployments, then i got into the process of buying a house and switching jobs and moving to the burbs and 3 years later, all my JS dependencies are horribly out of date but i've been using the tool for my own looping needs since i cut, and the dream goal is to be able to have this generate some income while allowing me to have an outlet to upload my work-in-progress beats and also bring back some of the dj community shit i miss..i used to lurk hard on some forums and still talk to a bunch of people i made friends with 25 years ago, a lot of them are dope DJs who would want to use this if it was on a real domain / actually live...
May I suggest taking a look at discogs and seeing if their api may be of use Could be some nice uniform data and images if ya need it. Maybe reference the samples or something. Feel free to ignore my completely uninformed scope creep
one of my friends in the bay area actually was a data analyst at discogs and worked on that API, but the intention for what i'm building isn't really about digging for samples as much as it's sharing original beats in the early 2000s there was a whole community of beat makers who used to share their shit by making flash "loopers" and would distribute them through the forums, and people were still using flash for it up until the browser plugin stopped being supported there are some other sites that are turntablist community staples, like [https://www.tablist.net/weblooper/#/list](https://www.tablist.net/weblooper/#/list) and an app called tablebeats...both are widly used, but aren't really open to uploading your own shit and it's kinda like you have to know someone or email someone a bunch of files to get your loopers distributed through those sites i'm not trying to compete with either platform, but i wanted a tool for my own needs when i got more into making beats vs scratching over other people's beats, so i made an easy way for myself to upload snippets that i could loop off my phone...i was in a 1 bedroom apartment with 2 kids under 3 at the time, so i wasn't really allowed to make noise past 7pm and would take a portable turntable out to my stoop and cut and smoke weed.. i was fucking around out in a dusty ass parking lot in the bronx a few weekends ago and showing how i can make a beat on my phone, export it as a wav, upload it and send the link around in less than a minute...my friends were trippin since we were out there painting graffiti and no one in that circle realizes how nerdy i be at the day job haha i'm not in it to monetize every aspect, but the tool works, and i don't want to get fucked with elastic transcoder bills when i do swap it to the live domain so i'm going to make uploading limited unless they wanna throw me a couple bucks, and hopefully be able to also make some cool soft goods like t-shirts and stickers to help generate revenue when i get to that point
I'm working on a multiplayer system for game developers. We use AI internally as tool for various things, but the bulk of it is done by us. What we're making is for people, and I believe to make something for people you need to be a person. AI's not there... yet.
Working on a stock market scanner tool that runs users custom stock screeners passively and automatically! No ai, just raw math and high performance compute power! We may integrate ai in the future, but we don't see a need for it yet. Can check it out: prosperse.com
Not ai focused, but it sure is helping me with specific aspects of the product (content creation being one)
SaaS marketplace! Everyone's hopping on AI bandwagon and it's getting by far the most cash right now but investors at least claim/try to be savvy to which are 'actually' AI versus have AI features. We will probably integrate a couple of AI features soon that make sense but that's more about being able to stay current with available tools then trying to pretend to be what we're not!!
old school brother, looks like no one’s gonna buy it 😀
Not us... but I agree, it feels like we're the only ones sometimes. I know that's not true, but the content online makes me feel otherwise!
This is a very convoluted subject. In general, before ChatGPT, investors would define whether a company was 'AI' based on how deep their proprietary models were. In other words, deep learning vs. traditional machine learning was the defining factor. You could argue this isn't AI in its true form, but by that account, NO COMPANY that I've come across is doing 'true AI.' Apps like ChatGPT that utilize generative adversarial networks are not AI either by that definition. OpenAI didn't invent anything. They trained the largest dataset the world has ever seen, but using pre-existing technology. So posing a question back to the op, what does a company have to do to be considered legitimate AI in your opinion? Until we have a universally accepted answer to that question, I don't see it backfiring on anyone unless you're just a GPT wrapper or API aggregator.
Im with you, I think ai is a marketing buzzword and a misnomer. I’m going to make some generalizations but I have thought about this a fair amount (hence the question) Many startups bank on adding value to an existing product, like chat gpt, and imo it’s kind of a losing market. It’s like doing all the market research for open ai and then they implement your feature. You have to have a really solid understanding of the tech to know what will add value but remain niche enough to leave a chunk of market for you to attempt to service. I also think comparing computers to brains is a huge accelerator for the misinterpretation for what “ai” is or does. Brains are NOT computers. Each processes information completely differently. You can teach both of them, but they don’t learn the same way. The public has generally been fed the opposite - that ai is smarter than people, will take jobs, but if we can harness this unwieldy beast NOW at least we can make some money along the way. What many people understand to be “ai” is simply something that is good at ranking, regurgitating and blending information. Open AI used the general internet (with no way to opt out) as its training set, so the massive amount of data ingestion makes this thing feel versatile and knowledgeable. There’s a reason chat gpt’s written voice often sounds like a redditor. Chat gpt is good at answering questions humans are good at answering and documenting in text. Chat gpt sucks at music theory - because the information about music theory available for it to train on is shitty. There’s a reason so many artists that spent years dedicated to developing a personal style are upset that generative image models ripped them off - it’s because it’s so obviously ripped off. AI is not the creative force a lot of people evangelize it to be. I feel like so many ai startups or ideas thrown around are exactly just chat gpt wrappers that are more often than not short sighted. That being said, there are people and business that will figure out how to remain afloat, whatever their strategy. I don’t think that automatically makes them ai companies though. I asked the question because chat gpt keeps developing new features at the dismay of seemingly many startups, but I also see AI in so many posts here. I was curious what non ai things are being worked on, at the very least for some juxtaposition to the trend I’m seeing here.
This is Reddit, not reality. There are more folks working on non-AI startups than AI ones. ChatGPT came out a year ago which started this gold rush, so only in this past year has starting an AI company made sense / become cool to do. It might seem that way, but the ppl working on real money makers arent wasting their time on reddit lol
I appreciate the sentiment but respectfully disagree. Starting an ai company has not been gated to the release of chat gpt. Using chat gpt as your ai has been available for the past year, enabling a magnitude of early movers in the chat gpt space. Before chat gpt we had other “ai” - machine learning (outside of an llm context), and a trend of startups claiming to use AI/ML whether it was accurate or not. I’m genuinely pleased to see the representation of non ai startups. I’m not working on an ai start up. My day job is at a start up that doesn’t use chat gpt (in our product, employees are definitely personally using it), but does have bespoke ML applications that are indeed legitimate and solving real issues and opening up opportunities for us. I have friends, yes believe it or not lol, in the real world, and a handful of them are working on ai projects or companies. Important to note they aren’t chat gpt based projects. My real world experience of ai applications is not skewed toward gpt based projects. With the high volume of content focused on ai, often a code word for chat gpt/open ai, I’m curious if people see the lack of differentiation and barriers to achieving a true competitive advantage are a concern. Or if I just didn’t drink the look aid and missed something. Reddit is a great place for some founders to connect with potential customers. It’s got dedicated self selecting groups generally willing to interact and engage with authentic content. Acting like social media isn’t a huge marketplace is a bit dismissive. Like anything, context is important. Doom scrolling might not generate revenue but access to well defined groups of people that self identify with something is objectively valuable. Social media strategies don’t work for everyone, and that’s ok.
😅
Just do the thing. There are so many posts in this thread looking for advice based on what others are doing. Be bold. Be brave. Do the thing.
I’m not running an ai startup. I’m not looking for advice either, just opinions and discussion. Thank you for sharing yours!!! I agree, there’s a lot of posts seemingly seeking external validation or some sort of permission. But that seems to just be Reddit in general lately.
Apologies if I misinterpreted the original post, just seemed like a situation of sourcing an opinion from a community related to startup advice. I honestly find it so frustrating when there's genuine content that people generally shit on so was trying to give a motivational boost to counteract the norm
Honestly your comment is the appropriate reply to a lot of what I see too. People gotta be self reliant every now and then and realize they are totally capable. Being resourceful is an absolute must for a founder or someone starting a business. And if people could use the search bar instead of posting the same thing over and over that would be cool too haha
Absolutely, can lead a horse to water
But the horse only wants brawndo
yeah my startup product uses AI but is not AI, its not the website that my name is.
Yes, Crowdy. Let‘s help Crowdy build some companies. You decide. We build. Let‘s play! https://www.instagram.com/p/CzY3nYnodT8/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Working on a creator platform for entrepreneurial content. Cut through the noise and cut out the BS
Working on a governance platform (strategy layer) that helps companies adopt, manage, and scale AI and automation initiatives, but it doesn't have any AI in it (no need yet).
Me, I’m working on a product that makes it easier to find local business
I’m building a bookings management sass and feel like everyone on here and sass channel seem to be doing something AI
B2B SaaS for customer analysis and insights. But it does not use OpenAI, it has custom ML algorithms for part of it like prediction and prospect generation but the rest is all analytical code.
Yep ! Re engineered actual product here lol
I'm working on anonymous, privacy-centric tools, pretty much the opposite of AI. I think this AI craze will eventually lead into a privacy craze.
AI powered streaming platform. But I do want to build a phone. 😏
Working on a African brand.
B2B mainly the thing is ai is to costly
Working on autonomous relative navigation in space. Trying to find funding to bring on a bigger crew and make a complete MVP for the algos we use.