⚙️ Building an AI indie project in 48hs to sell it for 65K

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Author

Sofia Terlesky
April 05, 2023

Hey there 👋

Last edition we showed you how the Twitter entrepreneur community is using GPT-4 to launch and ship faster. In the past two weeks, we've seen:

But today's edition has more news and updates from the indie makers’ community which is also using AI to change the way they build.

Keep reading to explore:

  • Top profiles of founders building in public

  • Interview with Nico Jeannen, who built MakeLogo.AI and sold it for 65K on acquired.com

  • Latest tweets about building with AI

  • Top AI tools and communities for founders

📣Top profiles of founders building in public

1. Pietro Schirano is using GPT-4 to implement his designs directly

2. Bhanu Teja built a chatbot that you can train with your own website data

3. Tibo is working to save Tweet Hunter after Twitter API prices changed and Twitter banned him for no reason

📣 Asking for a founder: How to build and sell an AI indie project?

We talked to Nico Jeannen to take a deeper look at how he built MakeLogo.AI in 48hs and sold it for 65K. Now, he’s building http://Galeby, an AI customer service app.

1. Why was makelogo.ai successful compared to the previous 4 tools you built and killed? Why do you think you nailed it with this project?

There’s no good answer to that. I didn’t do any market research or anything special. It was really like “Hey, I’m going to just try that” and I think this is what it’s all about… Trying stuff, finding what works.

So I don’t think I “nailed it” even when it resulted very well. It was like a project that a lot of people and indie makers can use because it’s about logos. And it’s AI, so it’s like it’s new. This, combined with the fact that there was the whole story of making an MVP in 48hs made people excited to see how it was going because I have a marketing background and most indie makers don’t.

I think a lot of people thought they could learn from it and that made it viral. The product got a lot of attention. So I think it’s a combination of doing something let’s say remarkable (like making an MVP in 48 hs), the fact that a lot of people can relate to the project, and some luck obviously.

2. Beyond Twitter and Indie Hackers, is there any online community where you found support, feedback, or learning resources?

Yeah, there is Fastlane forum, which is from the book Fastlane Millionaire. It's definitely sketchy, but it's on purpose. The content is very good. It's against all those “get rich quick schemes" and that's actually what motivated me because I saw someone posting a build in public post there.

So it's an amazing community. People are a bit more… I wouldn’t say rough, but there’s no bullshit. If your project is not nice, they will say, yes, that's useless. They will give you honest feedback and I think it's very important.

As for learning resources, recently there was refactoring UI, which is not the cheapest course, but it's amazing. I learned how to make proper UI for like with that. I started, I did it like yesterday. So it's highly recommended. There’s also the indie marketer, which is a free marketing course.

3. Why did you decide to list makelogo.ai on acquire.com?

I decided to sell it first because AI is growing very very fast and I’m pretty sure there will be dozens of copycats within a few months, the tech is going to be improved. And the thing is, I don’t have the skills to follow the progress because OpenAI is nice, but if you want to make the real stuff like AI models, stable diffusion, control nets, and more, you need to know how to use Python. I know the basics but my knowledge is not enough to really train a model with custom things.

I don’t have the skills to make it better and I was stuck, and I didn’t have a real interest in designing logos. I just had this project idea and executed it.

So either I let it slowly die or sell it to someone with skills to improve it. And the buyer I sold it to has people that can make it way better by making custom models, so I definitely think it’s on the good track, and 65K in Bali is a few years of living costs so It gives me some safety so I can focus on playing around with other apps and try new stuff.

✨ Latest tweets about building with AI

⚙️Top and new AI tools

👉 Scrap any website using AI

👉 The dream of copywriters: Grammarly + GPT-4

👉 Create and edit videos using GPT-4

👉 Look for relevant statistics to use in your blog posts and articles

💬 Curated resources