Building a Million Dollar AI Business EP.2

this is going to be the second installment of my million dollar AI startup challenge where I'm in the process of building a AI business from scratch and taking it to a million dollars and documenting every step of the way and if you haven't already watched episode 1 it's going to be available up here click through that watch that so you know where we are with the challenge and what we're doing in this episode if you're new to the channel my name is Liam otley and I'm an online entrepreneur from New Zealand now based in Dubai but currently in Colombia I have my own AI development company and AI automation agency called Morningside AI where we help people build AI products and also automate their businesses where they are so we ended off the first episode of me putting a call out to all AI entrepreneurs out there aspiring or established entrepreneurs looking to create an AI business but maybe who didn't have the resources or the know-how to do it but had a bright idea and could potentially partner with me as a co-founder to come on and build something and create a valuable business fortunately the reception to that video was overwhelming and we had over 100 applications on the Google form that I dropped on my Discord and of this one I was only able to review about 50 of them before I had to cut the shortlist off and since you move into the next phase of the applications process so if you applied and I didn't get back to you my apologies but I will be contacting all of you and reaching out to connect on LinkedIn so we can have some sort of communication or at least stay in touch because I really want to thank you guys for making the effort to apply and make this challenge possible essentially and so the first task of this challenge was for me to go through all of these applications manually and just read every single one of them and get to know who you are and what your idea is so that alone was a very big task so I'm working my way through the co-founder proposals now we have had a ton of applications so got a lot of work ahead of me but once I've gone through all of these I'm gonna figure out who's the best and then shortlist a couple and then I'll start reaching out to them by email and start booking in the calls so hopefully it's on screen and then you'll see the interviews next so what I was doing is reading the entire application and doing a summary in my notion and doing a traffic light system on each so red yellow green and green being sort of perfect for the challenge and someone may have been put in yellow or even red if the idea was actually too big or it didn't fit the fit the requirements of the challenge so that was how I was able to organize into people who were ideal for the challenge and could sort of be an easy win for this kind of thing or people who were sort of dreaming too big for what I can deliver on this kind of challenge or what we can deliver within the scope of this challenge now the diversity and the quality of these applications is what really blew me away we had people from 16 years old to 60 we had people from authors to aerospace engineers we had all sorts of stuff in between as well so it was really incredible to see just how many people really showed up and the diversity and quality of this application so once I've taken everyone out of the Google form over to notion and applied the traffic light system I was able to shortlist about 15 to 20 people and then send emails to them asking to book on a call so the purpose of this call was to one get in front of them and start to see who they are as a person and do a bit of a character assessment on who they are and see if they'd be compatible with me see if I'd be interested in working with them in the first place and then secondly of course their idea what they were hoping to build and doing a couple probing questions into okay have you thought about how we can actually distribute this yeah it might be a great idea do you have any experience in the field do you have any connections that can make this easy to roll out so there were some very important questions not only on the marketing side but also have you thought about what an MVP looks like for this because me going in as the development partner or the development a side of this business technically I need to know how much time and energy I need to have a clear idea of what the MVP would need to be for us to be able to start taking this to customers and getting potentially starting to get money back and recouping some of their investment costs so having a clear idea of number one what is your MVP and and I can figure out internally how long that's going to take to build and how much it's going to cost and then secondly how do you plan to distribute this do you have a plan or you can expect me my team to figure that out as well so some very important questions there and I was note taken the whole time and science to piece together who the potential finalists could be hey guys so just getting started today for another day of interviews I've been talking to a bunch of different people yesterday did about five different interviews with people from the community I've got some really good ideas it's great to get face to face with some of these people and actually uh pick their brains to a little bit more exploration of the idea how they of uh how they plan to roll the idea out what's the marketing and distribution channels they have available to them and then also planning out some features and sort of what would this look like and how much work assistant require on the development end had a bunch of good conversations yesterday hoping for a bunch more today so I'm gonna get stuck into it now after all of these calls I was able to do a further round of analysis and figuring out okay if I boil this down even further distill it down to three finalists or two finalists who would they be and I got down to what I thought would be the best fit for the project in terms of the scope and requirements and how easy it would be to build this how easy it would be to get to that first sort of checkpoint of starting to get paid for the service so introducing our two finalists we have Robin and we have Constantine both of these guys made it to be finalists because they not only brought a lot of value with their idea and I thought the opportunity for both of them was great but as a person they bought a ton of energy and they bought a potentially really great business partner moving forward so that was a two sort of key criteria for me is that I liked the idea I saw the potential in it and secondly as a person I thought that I could get along with them and they brought enough human resources and human capital in themselves and potentially their connections as well to make this thing a sort of fair partnership and and have a chance of success now both co-founders brought a lot to the table and it was very difficult to actually choose between the two in the end we had to make a decision and out of respect for the person we didn't go with I'm not going to share their idea now some people go through this video and might want to reach out to them and get working on that idea but you're going to get to see the idea that we did go with shortly at the end of this video but you're not going to get to hear about the specifics of the other idea just out of respect for the guy who didn't get chosen but what we can do in this video is a high level analysis of the finalist as a person and also a high level analysis of their ideas firstly Constantine he sent in one of the best applications he actually bothered to send me a loom video rather than just typing a bit of information and there was actually something I mentioned in the form if you'd like to send me a loom you can send me a loom and him sending me that despite it being small you may think it's insignificant but a little things like that really stand out to me as going the extra mile and I think that's sort of a character trait not just a thing that happens by chance so that really stood out to me that he was the only one that bothered to send me a video like that at least in the ones that I looked at before the short listing secondly from the loom that he had sent over and from the cores that I've had with them up to this point I could tell that he was someone who I could get along with as a co-founder he was a young guy like myself very enthusiastic about starting something like this and I I could see myself getting along with him as a person and that's something that I was looking for in a co-founder thirdly he had experience working in the niche that we were intending to start in and he was able to analyze the opportunity the business idea by being in the mud essentially and figuring it out and seeing it firsthand that yes I know this is a problem because I've seen it firsthand so that's very important in validating the idea and it's important to have experience at least on one side because it wasn't something that I was experienced then so I needed my co-founder to know what he's talking about and know the industry inside out before we jump into anything and finally he'd actually had some experience working in a startup building his own and raising money for it so based on those things that was the sort of best character traits that made him stand out above the wrist and get him to this final stage his business idea was great for a number of reasons firstly it had a huge total addressable Market or Tam an enormous amount of potential customers and businesses that could apply it secondly it was B2B as I mentioned in the video that I would like to be building a B2B SAS rather than a b2c thirdly the industry and positioning of the business was not going to be in the sexiest area and I quite like businesses that are not in the sexy areas because there's less attention on them it's often the most boring and basic businesses that are making the most money behind the scene but even just never hear about them and you never even think of attacking that problem so that could mean less potential competitors for us and an easier ride long term and finally on the technology side we were not going to have to stretch the boundaries or explore the limitations and sort of edge use cases of AI this was a clear use case for AI that just hadn't been built out yet and hadn't been done in a major way and reached the mainstream yet so not being too experimental with the development side of things is also something I'm looking for now we can get on to our other finalist Robin who stood out to me for a number of reasons firstly he's actually unemployed right now and I know that may seem a little bit counter-intuitive but he's only unemployed because he is waiting to do his real estate exam so he's not unemployed I'd say he's idle right now so he's has a lot of time on his hands to be putting into the business and that was something that I was looking for in a co-founder because I need someone who has enough time and energy to be handling the day-to-day operations well I'm able to focus on the technology and the development side so big plus that he's gonna have a lot of time on his hands secondly something that struck me about Robin is that he is a very smart guy he has thought through everything he basically had an answer for every question he's had time to sit and think about this idea for a while so that brought a lot of confidence out in me and the business partner that this could potentially be a very good thing because he's had enough time to think about this idea and finally what's more a con than a pro is that there may be some kind of cultural or Communications mismatch between myself and him and any other team members he's based in Singapore and I'm sort of a Westerner so it could be a little bit of communication issues or just a mismatch of cultures that I'm not used to dealing with definitely something to be aware of when going into a partnership like this now Robin's idea was great for a number of reasons as well firstly it was going to be addressing a market of very wealthy individuals which is always a great thing to do secondly in my opinion and from my experience the application is using AI in a way that plays into the strength of the technology instead of forcing it to do things that it's not really meant to so plays into the strengths of the technology itself and finally it's in a small Niche that we could dominate if we did things right once I'd laid out all of the pros and cons up against each other I had quite clearly a very very difficult decision to make I actually hopped on another round of calls with each of the finalists but this time with my business partner and Mentor Josh he is an absolutely killer online entrepreneur and a trust and respect his opinion immensely so getting him on these calls was very important for me to get some feedback from him and he's also going to be a business partner and handling sort of the marketing and also overseeing some of the operations on the development side of things so he's going to be very involved it was important to get his opinion on both sides hey guys we just got off calls with the finalists so we had calls with uh the two finalists that we've narrowed it down to and now we are I'm just going to hop on a call with my business partner Josh now and have a chat to him he was on the calls I want to get his thoughts on the two fighters we have and uh I mean what he thinks I got about my own opinions and uh um I'll probably need to have a think over the next while but I want to have a call with him so you'll see that now hey mate after those two guys we've just spoken to what are your thoughts I know I've definitely got my my opinions on it but I want to see where you're sitting what do you think of firstly of uh of concertina fesco yes I think he has some great experience in terms of obviously raising money before I think he has a fantastic work ethic uh and he's very aware of obviously how to develop platforms like this looking at that uh board that he put through um of the sigma it's extremely extremely detailed and I like how much authorities put into my only concern would be when obviously we're going into these Consultants there is going to have to be a heck of a lot of work done you know at your feet on the ground obviously going under me with these guys and getting those things sold and I think he's a very smart dude with a lot of other priorities that could potentially hinder the growth and how quickly we want to move on something like this I just don't know if he has the availability to really put in as much time as what we're looking for and you look at Robin the situation that he's in I think aligns a lot more with the objectives that we're trying to try to achieve here yeah no I think um for those of you I'm not sure if we'll show it in the clip but um Robin is is doing his training for us into real estate uh real estate agents at the moment so he has basically all day every day to be working on this so I think that could work out pretty well so I think worth doing maybe another call with Robin just to not necessarily confirm it but just take another step down that that path um as much as I love concertina love his energy he's um it'd be good to good to potentially get something going with him at some point but I think in terms of the the opportunity and the scope of this project could be best to explore a little bit more of the robin right yeah I think the other thing that I really love about Robin is there's potentially two components to that business right and it's something that me and you have spoken about for the past couple of months is building out platforms on the back of these things um and I think that his caves perfectly to that I think we were having discussions for the last couple of months of building something like that anyway at some point I think integrating it obviously into the real estate Niche aligns perfectly with being able to essentially test uh sort of these ad platforms running off the back of these llms and like we discussed previously I think you could even create a separate entity out of that whereas You Know You're Building uh you know ad platforms and allowing llms to integrate with bad platforms and monetize um off the back of these things so I really like that option as well and like you said he sounds like he's got a lot of time on his hands right now which is exactly what we need when we're trying to move as fast as possible yeah I think um well the the market size I think with the consultancy it's such a gigantic industry and it would really take time to really really Corner the market there but for the purpose of this challenge I think going for more Niche and more uh sort of specific on the challenge side of things could be better and sort of easier easier to see that we've succeeded and sort of crushed the market all right I'll uh I'll get a get another call book done I appreciate your time around and helping out with that I'll um I'll get another one booked in with us and hopefully we can move towards what's getting something wrapped up see you later after speaking with Josh it was time to come to a decision and in the end we ended up choosing Robin we just felt like for the purposes of the project it would fit the bill a little bit better I think a smaller Niche could potentially be good to be able to go on a dominate a market and he has a lot of time on his hands has the connections to get this thing up and running quickly so it was more a good versus great comparison I really really hope someone gets in touch with Constantine I'll be leaving his details somewhere down below so you guys can get in touch with him but his idea was really great and I hope one of you guys who's more technical can reach out to him and partner with them and get that thing built up because I'll be pretty jealous this decision between the finalists and really most of the shortlist that I spoke to is a case of Good vs great and I think a lot of the people who made it to the shortlist had really really good ideas it was just a case of for the purposes of this project for the purposes of a million dollar challenge what is going to make this the easiest and what is going to suit what we're after the most so Robin's idea and Robin as a co-founder we felt fit the bill the best he's going to have a lot of time to work on it and really help us out on the operation side he had the connections to get this thing off the ground very very quickly and some really really bright ideas about how we can do that so I sort of ticked all the boxes for us and we're really really excited to get moving forward and now you know who the co-founder is I can tell you a bit about the business I asked Robin to whip together a quick presentation to show you guys so we'll be jumping into that now I'm proud to say that we are going to be building an AI real estate advisor for the Singaporean market so we can jump into the presentation here by Robin Singapore real estate AI advisor problems laws and regulations procedures tax and fees too much info property agents Etc so to give you a high level overview of the Singaporean real estate market and some of the problems that we're going to be addressing within it basically say I'm a investor or an expat looking to invest in Singapore if I want to know where I can invest and when and how much and basically the specifics is a lot of rules and red tape around different areas and different regulations what we're going to do is make that all very very simple through a chat bot so it's going to be addressing the laws and regulations here the tax and fees and as it says here there's two too much info being thrown at people and they essentially have to be going through someone like a Property agent or another person and pay them to guide them through the process of buying a property they want we're going to be simplifying all of that down into a chatbot that people can come on to as potential investors and ask a couple questions or be asked some questions and really get the information they need in a very pain-free and hassle-free way so it's going to be a llm-powered application that has access via Vector databases to the relevant information to solve user queries so a little bit of information on the market size we have 34 000 plus agents 25 of those are active at any one time and they're spending up to 2 000 Singaporean dollars per month on Advertising so what we're going to be doing is tapping into that advertising spend and saying hey instead of spending it over there why don't you send it our way we have this new platform where people are coming to ask questions we can get you in front of these people if you pay us some of your juicy marketing dollars Robin's done a very quick competitive analysis here we have some companies that I assume are based out of Singapore and we also have chat gbt and open AI themselves like potential one day enable this within their own system so there is a slight risk of that but I think in the near term we're going to be fine on that front obviously the main value proposition of this is that you're going to be saving so much time and effort and potentially not even forking over money to other people who would typically tell you how to invest in Singapore the people you'd normally go to and also there's an added benefit of we're going to be pairing people up and suggesting real estate agents that people can get in touch with that are specialized to the area so it's a personalization service that's going to allow you to better connect potential clients with the real estate agents and a mutually beneficial relationship if the real estate agent is high quality and if the client has money to spend so with doing matchmaking for real estate agents and potential investors now I hope that gave you a quick understand of what we're trying to build and why but at this point it's not done yet the deal has not been cut so we had another couple of meetings with Robin we're going over the details of finer details of the deal structure our responsibilities as a development company and business partner and his responsibilities as a co-founder in this business as well shooting down to the Cafe and uh sunny day and uh I'm gonna go down do some work at the cafe really nice quality some good food so silence very nice around here but final stages of the calls and final stages of these the challenge so we're looking forward to getting that that wrapped up in the next next couple of days and should be able to start on development very soon so we're just finishing off the contract finishing off the the details I would essentially um and then being able to move forward so aside from that we've got some interesting stuff going on with the development agency interesting stuff going there so um wrapping up my time here in Colombia soon but I've really enjoyed it and I think I'll be back soon so encounter Colombia if you uh if you're from Colombia it's a beautiful place but have a marathon in a few days here is the Cafe Cafe Dragon it's a nice spot so I'm gonna get some work done in here and see you soon with those last meetings out of the way and the pie defeat up appropriately and the MVP Vision sort of clarified and what we're moving towards with the first stage of development we were done we're ready to get started so I want to know what you guys think are you bullish on our fledging startup or can you poke holes in our logic and our idea either way I want to hear it down in the comments below please hit down below I want to hear your opinion and some of you guys are probably experts in giving fields and can give a bit of a great advice to us before we start on this journey so any of that would be great just head down to the comments below and leave that down there so thank you so much to everyone who applied I'm really sorry that I couldn't get to work with more of you but I know that with the quality of the ideas that I'd received and gone through my applications there's so many of you who can benefit hopping into my community Discord and sort of a place where Technical and non-technical Founders are rubbing shoulders are like a matchmaking service for co-founders in there so if you have your idea and you haven't yet moved on it please head into the Discord please have a chat to some people and start knocking on doors essentially and say I have a great idea who's coming with me that's all for this episode guys thank you so much for watching and the next episode we're going to be launching our MVP so if you don't want to miss that be sure to hit down below subscribe to the channel hit the Bell so you don't mess up when the next one drops foreign

Channel: Liam Ottley

Views: 12,652

Keywords: how to start an ai business, how to use ai in my business, 2023 business ideas, internet business 2023, online business 2023, best online businesses, make money online 2023, business ideas 2023, top business ideas 2023, small business ideas 2023, ai businesses, ai startup ideas, artificial intelligence startups, how to start an ai company, Ai startup challenge, openai, chatgpt 4, ai business ideas, ai business ideas chatgpt, chat gpt to make money, artificial intelligence

Id: 9laUosOPfsc

Length: 19min 51sec (1191 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2023