In the world of AI, there’s some HUGE money being thrown around. Recently, two startups, Pika and Together AI, announced their first big rounds of funding, grabbing $55 million and $102.5 million, respectively.

Pika is a platform that turns text into videos and operates, similar to how Midjourney does.

Interesting tidbit: Midjourney is responsible for 13% of EVERY Discord invite, boasting around 16 million members!! Pika ranks second but is quickly catching up, already having 500,000 users and rapidly growing.

You can create images with Midjourney and animatewith pika like this.

Together AI: Pioneering Generative AI Cloud Platforms

Together AI signifies a leap forward in cloud-based generative AI platforms, offering a comprehensive suite of tools for API calls, fine-tuning, and managing GPU clusters. Its dataset, RedPyjama, has garnered over 1.2 million downloads, indicating a robust demand for customizable AI solutions.

The Business Potential

Together AI’s platform is a beacon for businesses looking to integrate AI into their operations, providing a scalable and efficient solution for developing custom AI models. This opens a plethora of opportunities for service providers and entrepreneurs to offer specialized AI integration services.

https://www.together.ai/

So, how do we spot opportunities here?

Thinking about potential opportunities here,

let’s consider the impact of major platforms developed in the past, using Airbnb as an example. Numerous businesses have generated millions by leveraging Airbnb’s platform.

For instance, Airdna offers insights on the short-term rental market, pulling in roughly $10–30 million annually in recent years. Another lucrative area is property management software, which also earns multi-millions yearly thanks to Airbnb. These businesses cater to a specific group of hosts looking to increase their earnings, making them excellent side ventures born from Airbnb’s ecosystem.

Similarly, Stripe Atlas, a service that simplifies business setup, reported 20,000 customers and around $10 million in revenue as of 2021. Assuming growth, they might have reached 30,000 customers with $15 million in revenue today. Firstbase, offering a comparable service, has assisted 22,000 customers at $399 each, totaling about $9 million in sales (excluding any additional services).

These examples highlight services that streamline essential, yet often complex, business tasks such as legal filings, documentation, and banking, demonstrating the potential for success in providing solutions that simplify these processes for businesses.

While they represent two distinct cases,both provide us with comparable insights into identifying opportunities within these AI platforms.

Opportunities to Explore with Pika, Sora(OpenAI):

Rise of Text-to-Video Specialists:

As creativity isn’t everyone’s strong suit, there’s a market for those who can turn text into compelling videos. People, like myself, would gladly pay for such a service. This opens up several business models:

• Expert Marketplace: Create a platform where customers can find and hire text-to-video creators. Similar to how railsdevs connects businesses with Rails developers, you could charge a monthly fee (say, $100) for access to a curated list of video experts.

• Subscription-Based Creative Service: Offer a service where customers pay a monthly fee to submit video requests. An expert would then craft the video based on the text provided, with the possibility of revisions based on customer feedback. Depending on the level of service, you could charge up to $5,000 a month for unlimited requests and personalized attention.

Getting involved early with platforms like Pika could lead to the platform itself promoting your service as a recommended partner, especially in the beginning stages. This strategy has been seen with other platforms, such as Shopify, recommending theme developers to their users.

Exploring Opportunities with Together.ai:

Together.ai’s goal is to enable businesses of all sizes to create their own AI products, highlighting a significant gap for many companies between their engineering capabilities and the DIY approach, despite the abundance of tools available. The preference for “Do-it-for-me” solutions is widespread.

Consider establishing a service similar to Stripe Atlas. This would involve collecting essential information from businesses upfront, assisting them in launching their own AI chatbots, training these bots with the company’s specific data, and providing ongoing support for a fixed monthly or yearly fee. Much of this service could be streamlined through automation, with the option to hire external engineers for the more technical aspects.

You could offer the initial setup for $500, targeting the considerable number of businesses (at least 10,000) interested in or considering AI solutions in the short term.

For instance, Chatbase offers a platform for companies to create their own version of “ChatGPT” with their data, generating $1 million in annual recurring revenue with just a solo founder at the helm. This success story underscores the market’s potential.

This approach could be adapted and applied across various rapidly growing platforms, indicating a broad spectrum of opportunities in the AI domain.

Have a wonderful day!