Day Four – Building an AI Company. What are the alternatives?

I’ve made the decision to attempt to build an AI Company. The other options were to:

• Find an normal job at a decent startup as a web developer in a leadership role. I have done plenty of project management, product ownership and development over the years so whilst there are many better programmers out there than me, I do have a lot of skill and experience to offer any startup. And I love it, still, 30 years on from building my first website on GeoCities. Problem with employment is I do start to feel trapped in a box, and having to be somewhere every Monday morning.
• Carry on as freelance but improve scheduling workload so I wouldn’t constantly be juggling multiple clients and projects. Freelance is probably the worst way to go self-employed because over the years it’s a war of attrition on your energy levels. If you don’t get it right, it can really grind you down.
• Find a decent contract. Contracting was super attractive because you can make thousands a week if you find the right one, and you get to focus on one project at a time – which is much easier on the mind, and you are able to give your fullest to it. And once the contract is over you can take a well earned break.
• Build a web agency up from scratch. If you are going to manage multiple projects, you are better doing a web agency of sorts. But then you have to deal with people and building a team, and that comes with all sorts of problems. A lot of agencies now are struggling because, in reality, most of the digital transformation has now been complete, and the availability of tools for websites and software, together with the increase of supply of capable people mean the profit margins have been hit. Of course, the best agencies with the great service and product, will do well… but building one from scratch now, was something my heart wasn’t in.
• Do something completely different. Learn a trade such as plumbing or electrician. I may still get training for these qualifications since I’d like to know how to wire up a house or fix plumbing. I think AI will probably shrink the information / service workforce and going back to trades is a good bet for many.

I’d been considering all of these things at once since the start of the new year, perhaps longer. In the end my heart wasn’t in any of them and that’s why I was dragging my feet.

I’d always wanted to build a product, and whilst ten years ago would have been an ideal time to get started, and whilst right now is a really challenging time in my life to do so… it’s also the best time. So I’ve got a hard deadline, a bit of runway, going to do my best.

Some Further Rambles

I haven’t yet got around to doing videos on the tools available to us right now, but some of them are awesome and transformational/paradigm shifting. I will do videos eventually, but the blog is good enough for the moment.

The challenge of building an AI company has a few components:

• Yourself and your energy
• People who want to work on the foundations with you
• Gaining exposure
• Understanding the technology
• Keeping up to date with the rapid progress
• Being willing to keep on working despite realisations of intense competition
• Using AI within the company to build the company
• Working out how to give value to people already running companies in a way that’s different from the plethora of options already out there

It seems to me that people who work hard to keep up to date with the AI world are going to become the experts at making recommendations as consultants, so there’s clearly an opportunity for web design and software agencies to ‘upgrade’ themselves to ‘AI transformation experts’.

Side-note: Brave Browser Leo

Let’s you summarise webpages.

Side-note: Really Simple Example of AI Monetised

I was shown a really simple WordPress plugin today that charged users for filling in alt tags on images. You send the image off to the server and it sends back a really good description. I don’t know how much impact alt tags have on SEO anymore, but it saved significant chunks of time. This is a really simple example of using AI to create an income stream.