2023 Year-in-Review: $100K in AI Micro-SaaS

This year, I moved out of my VC job to start a micro products studio: 1811 Labs.

The idea was to assemble a group of builders and hackers who would come together to ship fun products very quickly. We have shipped a total of six products:

1. Avatarize,
2. AIPickUpLines,
3. VisualizeAI,
4. HeadlinesAI,
5. Audionotes, and
6. Podnotes.

1. Early failures and a ray of hope

Inspired by Pieter Levels, we started off with an Avatar Generator App - Avatarize. Took some time to figure out the tech and finally launched just before the start of the year.

At the same time, we were playing around with GPT-3 and ended up building out a Pick Up Lines Generator - AIpickUpLines.com. It sort of went viral and we got to ~50-60K monthly visits.

We could barely touch the surface with Avatarize in terms of Revenue and failed to capitalize on the Avatar wave. While we were lucky to sell AIPickUpLines on acquire.com for a small amount of money.

Stack:

• Avatarize: Bubble, Stable Diffusion 1.4/2.1 hosted on AWS
• AIPickUpLines: Vercel, NextJS, Supabase, OpenAI APIs

2. The golden goose and a half-baked viral product

In March, we built out VisualizeAI (www.visualizeai.pro), a controlnet-based visualization tool for Interior designers. We hit a few thousand in revenue within three months and found a buyer by the end of June. VisualizeAI was acquired for $30K.

Around April, we were looking to build a mega GPT tool - a tool that would solve a lot of smaller use cases at one avenue. This led to HeadlinesAI (www.headlinesai.pro), a headlines, hashtags, and description generator for Videos and Blogs. HeadlinesAI has had 345K Visits and 190K+ Signups till date, with again a few thousand dollars in revenue. We sold it just a few days ago, again for a small amount.

Stack (VisualizeAI):

• Bubble,
• ControlNet and Stable Diffusion hosted on Replicate

Stack (HeadlinesAI):

• V1: Bubble, OpenAI
• V2: NextJS, Supabase, Vercel, OpenAI APIs

3. Building complex products and growth

In May, we were playing around with Whisper (OpenAI's speech-to-text model) and thought of building out a cool voice-first note-taking app - Audionotes (https://www.audionotes.app). We launched the first version in May only to find out that a competitor who had already gone viral existed.

We shipped two iterations of the tool to make it stand out and we finally started getting traction in September. But we also saw a copycat tool come up (who ripped us off in terms of design as well as bought the .ai domain for the same name). We kept on shipping and growing the tool to hit ~$24K in Revenue. We are super bullish on the product and are actively working on growing the product to a sizeable revenue.

Stack:

• Bubble,
• Whisper,
• GPT-4,
• GPT-3.5,
• APIs on Digital Ocean

4. A spin-off and the AppSumo deal

In June, we built out Podnotes (https://www.podnotes.app), a sister product of Audionotes. On the same platform as Audionotes but serves Podcasters. Audionotes can record notes up to 50 mins without total recording limits whereas Podnotes can transcribe as big a file with monthly minute transcription limits. We launched Podnotes on AppSumo and crossed $23K in 5-6 months. At present, we are rolling out an all-new version (based on user feedback) and moving to a MRR-based model. Early leads look very promising. We have crossed $500 in recurring revenue.

Stack:

• Bubble,
• Whisper,
• GPT-4,
• GPT-3.5,
• APIs on Digital Ocean

5. What we couldn't ship and one last simple summary tool

We failed to ship two products which could have been big but that's how it is :). We also shipped a simple summarization tool (for any file type) called Summarify (www.summarify.me), which has generated ~$350. We also revamped Avatarize (www.avatarize.club) just for fun.

Stack:

• Vercel,
• NextJS,
• Supabase,
• OpenAI APIs

6. What's next?

Our focus is to grow Audionotes & Podnotes and reach bigger revenue milestones quickly as we continue to make the products better.

We are also working on a couple of more exciting products.

Our Idea is simple - Build products, Build Distribution, and Hit those amazing Revenue Milestones while building in public so that a lot more people can get inspired to build.

We are a floating team of five. Each one of our projects may have a different team and some of us work on individual projects as well. Of those, I am super excited about Spark Social (www.sparksocial.io) and an FPL Fantasy tool that is being built by my amazing co-builders.

The $100K Breakdown:

• Acquisitions: ~$50K (AiPickUpLines, VisualizeAI & HeadlinesAI)
• Audionotes + Podnotes Revenue: ~$50K
• HeadlinesAI + Avatarize + VisualizeAI Revenue: ~$10K

Aiming to 10x these numbers in 2024, Wish us Luck ❤️

If you want help in building out your AI MVP, hit us up 🙌