AI Wrappers in 2024 — Should you build one?
The Internet is flooded with AI tools, most of them — wrappers that use a bunch of API calls, lacking any MOAT
But, there are tools that make much more recurring revenue than a lot of established startups
PhotoAI: $77K MRR
Chatbase: ~$70K MRR
InteriorAI: ~$53K MRR
PDFai: ~$30K MRR
SiteGPT: ~$17K MRR
Why are only these tools successful?
- Users don’t care whether you are building a wrapper or not, as long you solve a problem for them — Users will use your product
- Some of these have had an early mover’s advantage
- They have a good product and they have cracked distribution
Are these Venture Scaleable?
- In their current form — most likely, No. Tech is of course not the moat here. Anyone can build but their distribution and deep consumer insight can become a moat helping them transform their current product into a highly defensible product or their B2C product becomes their segue into B2B SaaS.
Worst case — these can be great Internet businesses to run :)
Are you looking to build a tool that leverages Generative AI?
- Early mover advantage is prominent — If you can build something novel, Go build it but make sure you focus as much on distribution
- If you’re building something that already exists (or something similar exists), build only if you can distribute the product well enough
At 1811 Labs, we build, grow, scale, and sell products. We’ve built out six products to date, and sold two, and generated ~$30K in the past three months in revenue.
Here’s a framework that we use to pick ideas
1. Product can be built out in 3–4 weeks
The generative AI landscape is volatile. With new innovations happening very fast — It is very important to
I don’t think there’s any point in building out complex workflows after spending months only to realize that a large model solves your use case out of the box.
2. Clear Path to first 100 paying customers
No point in building if you don’t know who your user is and if they can’t pay. Always build for users who have paying propensity and to whom you have clear access.
3. The Idea shouldn’t be operationally intensive
Just so that you focus more on the product and growth
Looking to build one? Check out our AI SaaS Boilerplate — Builderkit.ai. Builderkit comes loaded with landing pages, important modules (auth/payments/database/email/seo etc) and ready to deploy apps.
