Comment by davidheikka
Comment by davidheikka 8 days ago
Yes, doing it full-time. Cost to acquire new customers has been $0, we're growing organically and through content marketing.
I believe we could hit $10k just repeating what we're doing now. But we're currently looking at where to best spend our earnings in order to scale faster.
I get the AI wrapper objection, but Chatgpt or other LLMs can't do what Buildpad does. For example, when verifying demand for your solution (this is one of the phases users go through) Buildpad will generate and host a "research page" for you that will help with taking in feedback from your target audience and make the whole validation process a lot easier.
I appreciate your perspective and I'd be lying if I said that what we're doing isn't a risk. But I personally get so much enjoyment out of building my own product and having users that appreciate it, that all the hard work makes it worth it. And the idea that we can make it into something huge is very motivating too. For me, it's a risk well worth taking.
That's great, I forgot to mention but I'd also look very closely at user retention. Because maybe there's a risk people try it and realize they can do enough with conventional AI tools, which would indicate you should add new value-add features, etc.
In general, I think these niches can work if the startup is consistent about adding new valuable features ahead of what broad AI can do, so the users feel like they're getting value going to their "all in one" place for this. For example, maybe your research page helps people who don't want to use a separate site to make surveys.
It's still not my cup of tea but perhaps I'll see it sometime down the line and change my mind :)