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Everywhere you look, AI developers are talking about scaling. Build one little thing, charge $20 or $200 or $2,000 a month, get a bunch of customers, automate everything, and watch the money roll in.

And listen, I get it. The math is beautiful!

I've built and scaled multiple businesses myself over the years. I actually wrote a post here a while back about my very Forrest Gump approach to entrepreneurship, so I'm certainly not knocking scaling. Been there, done that, and loved it!

But I've been finding almost the exact opposite in my AI development business.

I think there's something we keep forgetting in the AI world, and that's just how much people DON'T trust AI yet.

There's so much anti-AI sentiment out there, and honestly, some of it is for very good reason. People are skeptical, overwhelmed, or just don't understand what AI can actually do for their businesses.

They might be curious enough to spend a few hundred dollars trying something, but they're certainly not ready to throw their entire business into the hands of some AI developer they just met.

And that's where things get fun.

I'm currently working with a family-owned company that's been around for generations. They're in the dry-cleaning supply industry, and they've got decades of business history and some seriously old-school systems.

They originally hired me to build a field service tool for their sales team. Basically a specialized CRM. I think my original quote was around $700.

Simple enough, right?

Well, one of the people at this company is really excited about modernizing things. And once we started working together, he began realizing just how much more we could accomplish.

Suddenly we're migrating decades of historical data, improving internal processes, building better tools for the sales team, and looking at ways AI can help them identify potential customers.

That little $700 project is now approaching $15,000 worth of work over four or five months.

And the hilarious part is I'm not even pitching him. He's pitching ME!

He comes up with another idea. I look into it, figure out whether it's possible, tell him what I can do and what it'll cost, and send him an invoice.

He pays it. We do the work. Then he gets another idea.

Rinse and repeat. 😂

And this isn't some magical unicorn client I happened to stumble across. I'm seeing the same pattern with other clients.

I land a project for less than $1,000, do the work, and suddenly I'm the first person they call when another problem comes up.

They already trust me. They know I understand their business. And because of AI, I can tackle problems that would have been much more difficult or expensive for me to solve before.

I'm seeing these little sub-$1,000 projects grow into five- and six-month relationships, sometimes in the neighborhood of $20,000.

And I just keep sending invoices. Lol.

But here's another part of this that I really love.

I'm making more money, and I'm sleeping better at night.

Because let's be honest, $15,000 or $20,000 is a LOT of money for a solo freelancer, especially one who's living on around $1,000 a month in Paraguay.

But I feel good about what I'm charging because I actually know these people. I know what problems they're dealing with, and I can see how the solutions we're building could save them time, make their employees more productive, or help them bring in more business.

Sometimes they come to me with an idea and I say yes. Sometimes I explain why something isn't practical. Sometimes I suggest something they hadn't considered.

And every time, we're having an actual conversation about what they need and what it's worth to them.

Personally, I don't think I'd sleep particularly well at night if I were charging hundreds of people for some generic automation without knowing whether they needed it or were getting their money's worth.

There's something really satisfying about knowing exactly who you're helping, what you're charging them for, and why you believe it's going to benefit their business. Earning that business with each new fix rather than locking them into a software...

And apparently, actually caring about your customers is pretty darn profitable. Who knew? 😂

I think there's a sweet spot right now with businesses that are interested in AI but don't quite trust it enough to dive in themselves.

They don't necessarily want another subscription. They want an actual human being who will listen, figure out what's possible, and help them solve real problems.

Once you do that successfully, they start selling themselves on all the other possibilities.

I find this particularly interesting in AI because the entire industry is obsessed with eliminating human interaction.

And here I am, finding that the human interaction is the most profitable part of my business.

I'm genuinely curious if anyone else is experiencing this.

For those of you doing AI development or automation, are you making more from scalable products and subscriptions, or from smaller clients who turn into much bigger relationships?

And for people in completely different industries, is this just good old-fashioned relationship selling that the AI crowd is rediscovering?

A bit of background. I'm an American and I moved to France because my wife is French. The job hunting went nowhere because my French is still pretty basic. I wanted to create something that would generate some extra income without a huge risk or a ton of money invested.

We came up with the idea of putting honor system snack boxes into businesses' break rooms for their employees. I already had a 3D printer, design experience and software development experience, so I designed a box, started on the software, we bought some snacks and started pitching businesses. My wife did the pitching, since she is a native French speaker. A few businesses nearby agreed to try it.

It started out very basic. Cash only, and every time we serviced a box I was manually checking each snack's tiny, hidden lot number and expiration date. Then we bought a second stock lot of the same snack, and now different lot numbers were getting mixed in the boxes. I had to completely rewrite my software.

The second version added credit card payments via a printed QR code on the box, a mobile-first design, and first in, first out (FIFO) to handle the mixed lots. We picked up a few more locations, and tracking snacks was still a complete nightmare. Still reading tiny numbers, still making sure no expired snack ended up in a business's box. I'd had enough. We needed labels on each snack. I had to completely rewrite my software.

For the third version I fixed every pain point I'd noted over months of using it. I bought a $20 Nelko thermal label printer, created a labeling system, and added QR scanning with your phone right in the app. Now you scan snacks in or out of a box, and that's it. No more squinting at dates, no more worrying. Later we added a tax system that exports PDFs or spreadsheets, automatic status report emails and a bunch of other features.

Somewhere along the line I started thinking: this whole system that took nearly a year to build is just for us? There have to be people out there who want to start their own business but don't know where to start, and we'd already paved that path with the 3D printable boxes and the software to run it. But the software wasn't multi-tenant. So I bet you can guess what comes next. I had to completely rewrite the entire software (keeping the good stuff).

The fourth and hopefully final version lets you create your own business, set up Stripe with a guided wizard to take payments, and customize and 3D print your boxes. It has roles, so if someone only services the boxes and collects the money, that's all they see. Every step is guided, so it's very hard to do something wrong.

So that's where I'm at today, Snack-it is now a platform for people in the US to start their own snack box business. Here's where I could use your help... How would you price something like this? I'm thinking a flat monthly fee plus a bit extra per host location, but I'd love to hear how you'd do it.

I'm also thinking about starting a small pilot program for a few people who want to try it out. Would anyone be interested, or how should I set that up? Thanks!

Disclosure: I'm the founder of snack-it.us.

Run Monster Piercing (body jewellery). Couldn’t win the price war, so we stopped fighting it. Instead of racing cheap “titanium” sellers, we list the real spec on everything (ASTM F-136, solid gold karat). Customers pay a bit more because they finally trust what they’re buying. Turns out people don’t want cheapest, they want to stop getting burned. Anyone else raised prices by being more transparent, not less?

We run a small ecommerce business selling kitchen products and one of our packaging suppliers recently offered us a $600 discount on a $12,000 invoice if we pay it this Thursday instead of the original due date two weeks later.

Normally I'd take the discount without thinking too much about it but we've currently got around $29,000 in our business account with payroll coming up next week which is roughly $11,500 + another $7,000 in supplier payments due around the same time.

We do have customer payments expected to come in over the next couple of weeks but the exact timing isn't guaranteed so I'm a little hesitant to pay the supplier early and leave ourselves with a smaller cash buffer. On one hand saving $600 on an invoice we'd have to pay anyway sounds like a pretty good deal but on the other hand I'd rather not put ourselves in a situation where we're depending on customer payments arriving exactly when expected to cover our regular expenses.

Fellow entrepreneurs running businesses with inventory and supplier payments would you take the discount or stick to the original payment date and keep the extra cash available?

Last week we posted here when Brand School had 40 sign-ups after 5 days. Thanks to everyone who commented. A few of you asked what happened next, so here’s the honest update.

Where we are now: 80 founders signed up, and 10 have made it to Level 2 (the part where a mentor helps you plan how to reach your first customers).

What went wrong:

• Our first 4 users never came back after day one. We had set up automated emails to bring people back, and they did nothing.
• Two early testers told us parts of the output felt generic. One took our channel plan and finished the rest in ChatGPT. That was fair, and it stung.

What we changed:

• We turned off all the automated emails. Now we write to founders personally and see which messages actually get a reply, before we automate anything again.
• We read every mentor conversation. Most of what we build next comes straight from there.
• We’re working on making the channel plan specific to each business, so it beats what you’d get by pasting the same question into ChatGPT.

What we learned: founders don’t need more information. They need the one next step for their brand, and someone to check in when they go quiet.

Question for this community: if you’ve built something, what was the first thing that made you come back to a tool after day one? A person, a reminder, a result? We’re trying to get this right.

20 spots are left in the first 100, which are free. Link in the comments if you want to try it, and tell us where it feels generic.

Bifurc is now on the Microsoft Store, the Chrome Web Store and Firefox Add-ons.
I am already at 45 downloads

Which channel should I spend the next two weeks on? I am already spending time trying to fix bugs that me and my friends are facing during daily dev work.

Since URL's are not allowed you can search for the application in stores / internet "Bifurc"

Hi I am a university student and my parents can only provide basic facilities, I always wanted to start my own business but it all takes capital which i don't have , even if I have some I can't risk it because I have very limited resources. Do anyone know how to start something with no money or something. I really need a side income for my expenses.

I have reached a crtical point in my Journey where i dont know if i buy a new used laptop as mine is dying or use the money i have on Facebook Ads.
This will be the first campaign for the business after launch in beta.

What will you do in a situation like this ?

Journal entry. I’m a solo founder building BreakEven, a DaVinci Resolve script for freelance editors on flat fees. It tracks time against your fee and shows your real hourly rate.

This week: wrote better ad copy, added a 14 day refund window to lower purchase risk, and started asking real users what’s missing instead of guessing.

Next week I’m testing which channel brings actual clicks. I’ll report back with numbers.
I'll send the link to anyone who find it useful for them :)

Every launch thread here has someone dropping the reid Hoffman line. “if you’re not embarrassed by your first version you launched too late”

and like... yeah. for most stuff that's right

But I build software for fintech-ish clients and it just doesn’t work like that there

Had a client a while back who shipped a payouts feature fast, very much in the spirit of that quote. worked fine for like 2 months. then a rounding issue started paying some users a few cents off

Nobody caught it bc there was no reconciliation yet, that was gonna be “phase 2”. By the time someone noticed it had been going on for weeks and it became a very serious call with their bank partner.

That's what embarrassing looks like in fintech.

Now, I’d still ship small. I’d just cut features before i cut the boring stuff like logging and reconciliation, cause thats what you need on your worst day

Has anyone here actually shipped a scrappy v1 with real money moving through it and had it go fine? genuinely curious