Blake Anderson
Appearances
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
You take a quiz and then at the end of it, it's a nice pretty screen that says, you should go into X, Y, and Z. And then I would probably figure out how to create a trend, which is like people being really excited because they're a senior and they got recommended computer science and that's what they've been studying.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
And then people being like, wait, why did it take until I'm a senior to realize that I shouldn't be studying this? And then create that content on social media. And I think that I can make that viral relatively quickly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Okay, idea number two is journal AI. I haven't seen anyone crack this quite yet. I know people have spoken about it. The way that I would build it is somewhat of an AI second brain, but branded and framed as a journal. And the sort of analysis that you would get would be things that would help increase your productivity, emotional support, relationship analysis.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
And I really don't think it would have to be that technically robust. I would say essentially just chat GBT with more complex memory storage and UI that's more conducive to journaling.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah. So I think one of my theses here is that I've seen people organically use chat GPT as their journal and get a lot of value out of it. I've essentially done that myself. Um, Now I'm not a daily journaler, but when I provide ChatGPT with, I have notes on my computer that just have a lot of information about some topic and maybe too much to be contained within ChatGPT's memory.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah, I think I'm, like I mentioned, I kind of just happened to stumble into this space, but it's a pretty fascinating place of the internet and specifically entrepreneurship to be right now because it kind of takes the intersection of new functionality in terms of applications that can be built as a result of AI crossed with novel distribution tactics, largely pioneered by e-commerce people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
And when I want to go get a deeper analysis, I'll go paste those in. And now I think that, yeah, sort of like an emotional support assistant framed as a journal. would be pretty easy to get it to go viral, as well as I think that there'd be pretty high value add. You know, we have this like one sided relationship with journals, where we put in and get nothing out. And that's great to some effects.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
But I think the ability to get that sort of like intricate objective analysis back out similar to how we, like, I think a lot of people building this or thinking of it as like a therapist AI, but I wouldn't brand it as that. I would brand it as a journal AI, if that makes sense.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah, people ask this question a lot. I think that it's hard to say at this point in time I think that the appending AI is valuable when you are creating innovation within a relatively stagnant industry, such as Cal AI within the calorie tracking space. Like calorie tracking as a whole, people viewed it as archaic and it's slow and it's annoying and it's complicated.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
So then when we add AI, that brings a level of sophistication. Now on the flip side, when it's something where You know, if you're building like a medical document service or something where like you need 100% accuracy and any minor errors would be unacceptable, the system just wouldn't work.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
I would probably not include the term AI as people would be a little bit skeptical or scared that it may become dangerous in some capacity. So that's how I think about it. But, you know, I mean, my co-founder, Zach, from CalAI, recently made a tweet about how adding AI at the end was a negative signal. He and I had a lengthy discussion on that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Kind of came to this resolution that I just referred to just now. But, yeah, I guess that's how I think through it. And now with regards to journal AI, the names that I'm using right now are just because they're easy to wrap your head around. I'm not sure if I would name it Journal AI. Maybe I would try to name it something like Juni or like Journey that feels more friendly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
But yeah, I wouldn't say that I'm by any means a master of naming. So maybe there are better people to go to on that front.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
That's why I think Cal AI is probably the name that I'm most proud of. Um, The reason for naming UMAX, for example, UMAX was because the plan was to become this like all-in-one self-improvement ecosystem that I'm now building with Apex. Now, for a number of reasons, I decided not to pursue that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
But in retrospect, if UMAX, if the plan was to take it to where it is now, I probably would have named it Luxmax AI. as our copycat ended up doing, so.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
And so when you take the two of those together, it creates for this this space where you have like a small proportion of kids, essentially like age 18 to 22. I myself, I'm 23 that are kind of running the entire the entire space and at the forefront of it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah. Shameless plug. Super wall. Absolutely amazing. I'm not affiliated. I just, I love the platform. I think that pretty much everybody should be using Superwall. I don't use Revenue Cat. I only use Superwall. Now, with regards to how I think about paywalls, I think it really depends. So what's amazing about Superwall is it makes split testing incredibly easy. They provide you with all the data.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
But I think that across the industry, a lot of people tend to optimize for like number of users multiplied by profit per user. I am of an alternative thesis. I believe that you should optimize for like number of users raised to the N where N is greater than one multiplied by profit per user. I will take at least at a just pure conversion basis.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
I will accept a lower LTV on a per download basis in exchange for more people being able to use the platform. Now there are a number of reasons for this, but I think one of the, Um, most obvious, if you want to ignore all like the moral, like, oh, I want more people to use the product, more people get value of it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
If you want to completely set that aside, um, which I don't, but if you were to set that aside, the benefit here is that you can more quickly dominate the market. And as a result, um, increase word of mouth, which is pretty much impossible to measure, uh, for most applications. It's easy to measure like if you're just seeding a thousand users onto your product and then letting it grow organically.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
But when you're constantly running ads, you don't know if people are coming, specifically like organic, you have no idea where people are coming from. And so I like to prioritize allowing as many people to use it as possible. Now, moving forward, how do I think about paywalling in itself, like within the application?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Super Bowl is amazing once again, because it enables you to test it at different points and you can assess the relative effects, the conversion basis, how many people are seeing it, that sort of thing. The most standard practice in the industry right now is to take people through some onboarding flow and then hit them with a paywall at the end. It's just like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
you make so much more doing that than pretty much any other paywall strategy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
And then at the end it's like, there's a paywall notifications and put your personal information so we can customize the application for you. And then you get hit with the paywall. Um, I've done this for my applications for the most part. Um, I do not necessarily think that it's great practice, but it is efficient practice, if that makes sense. I don't think that it's morally great.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah, I don't know. I'd like to believe that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah, I mean, so, yeah, I don't even – I don't think that it moves the needle much. Like I don't think that it's that good or bad. I like to believe that with what I'm doing with the money at the very bottom of the funnel, like what I'm using it for with what I'm currently building kind of offsets, not a big deal.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Like I said, I think that this industry as a whole doesn't really move the needle very much, but it is, you know, The way that I generally think about these things is like capitalism is good in my belief and therefore increasing market efficiency in, uh, generally just taking the market in a quicker manner to its inevitable end state.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Um, and so, yeah, I guess that's kind of how I like offload the responsibility.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
So. I think that this is one of the biggest applications on the app store. Duolingo. Duolingo is an amazing application. Like it's built out so well. Now that said, if you can acquire even just a couple percent of the market share by integrating new AI functionality quicker than them, you build a massive product.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
And that's where I would, uh, say that a good idea is a language AI or language tutoring application. Uh, Obviously the chat GPT voice to voice model is currently pretty expensive. My inclination is that that will significantly decrease in cost over time or other models will come out of similar functionality with decreased cost.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
So by building a language tutoring application where you are just always up to date with the newest AI functionality and you build the UI around around sort of dynamic learning. Like as we know, Duolingo generally has more static modules that you go through, A, B, C. You build a language learning application that updates dynamically.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
I think that there's a lot of value there, a lot of value to be created as well as a lot of value to be captured. People who want to learn languages are generally pretty high intent. So I think that that'd be a pretty awesome one to build.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah, this is exactly what people said to me when we were building CalAI. People are like, dude, my fitness pal is so big. They're going to build in this space. And my answer was, well, they won't work as hard as us. Their incentives internally are not aligned to the point where they will be able to iterate and progress as quickly as us. So here's what I mean by that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
The engineers at MyFitnessPal, like MyFitnessPal to begin with, has been like traded back and forth, sold so many times that the people that are doing the groundwork don't like probably don't have that much equity, you know? And so the engineers don't care that much. Like they're just kind of doing their job. similar with the social media managers.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
And so our CalAIs, so calorie estimations based on images are just significantly better than MyFitnessPal. We have a pretty robust system built out at this point. In addition, we're pioneering new ways of marketing on social media. I would wager that the same pretty much applies to Duolingo. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if their engineering team was a lot better. significantly higher valuation.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Now that said, Duolingo is the go-to application for language learning right now. But if you can figure out just like a few percent changes for people to learn languages in different ways, and then some novel distribution strategies for that, Duolingo is worth like, what, $10 billion?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
If you can, like I said, take just 1% of that market share, you immediately have an application worth $100 million. And I think that for the same reason that Duolingo is so big, there's so few people trying, which just makes it so much easier to succeed when applying these sort of new wave tactics.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah, so I believe that, and I'm really excited to get into some of the ideas that we have to share later on, but I believe that we're currently just scratching the surface of new application functionality that can be built and delivered to the end user using these new AI tools. So for example, with Umacs, Umacs was a facial analysis and recommendation application.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
What's going on, Greg? Thank you very much for having me on today.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah, creating new market share. I totally agree. I think that that is a... To dive a little bit deeper into something I'd mentioned earlier, like I think that a lot of these apps are just pioneering new ways for people to learn and improve themselves with the use of AI. I think it's a pretty incredible personalized learning tool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
And when it first, ChatGPT first came out in like December, November of 2022, there was a lot of speculation about the future of AI tutors and within AI or AI learning languages or personal training, that sort of thing. My inclination is that at the very minimum, the first step of this is just AI tools, AI apps that do this as opposed to being like a framed as a tutor.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
It's just, it is doing the tutoring through its UI, if that makes sense.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
So yeah, I think it's, it's really awesome. Like the,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
plenty of room for duolingo to coexist with an application that uses ai to pioneer completely novel um functionality within the language learning space same thing goes with calorie tracking same thing goes with uh career advancement same thing goes with journaling before before we head out like do you have any like i think people listening this are like okay those are three ideas um
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah. So I certainly use Sensor Tower to assess the size of the other players in the space. But I think few things have helped me. One, as you mentioned, walking the beach, like for me, it's generally hiking. I find that I'm able to think very clearly. Two, deliberate scrolling on social media and curating my feed around whatever it is that I'm interested in. So I'll create burner accounts to like
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
When I was building UMAX, I had a burner account where it was like only looks maxing content. Or anytime I build a new application, I create a burner account and I curate my entire feed around that. And I put myself in the mind of someone who's consuming that content.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
And then finally, I'm actually creating like a 30 to 60 minute completely free somewhat of a course or YouTube video that I'm going to be posting in about a month, as well as a completely free viral app playbook PDF. And so if people want to follow my socials, BlakeAndersonW on Twitter or X.com, then ApexBlake underscore on Instagram, I'll be sharing updates there.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
In the past, this was possible to build. However, it would have taken significant investment into developing internal proprietary ML facial recognition models in order to build it. However, with the use of AI, specifically GPT vision, I was able to do so with essentially zero upfront development cost with the exception of my own time.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah. I think that like 10 out of 10 ideas are great in that it's pretty much impossible to fail with them. Like Riz GPT was one of those, obviously with like a relatively low ceiling, but it was a 10 out of 10 idea for getting my first small win. Um, But then with regards to these ideas, it's like they're pretty straightforward. They're pretty boilerplate.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
But if you can just follow the standard methods of the new styles of execution, of building a functionality of distribution, you can pretty easily build a massive application.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
I think that what we're seeing right now, as I mentioned, we're like scratching the surface of these new functionalities. but what AI really enables us to do is to deliver personalized and like personalized functionality that can be updated in real time, um, through the use of these AI backends, as well as building, uh, technologies that previously would have cost a lot of money.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
And so we're seeing the new TikTok AI apps, like this is the start, but as we progress, as AI becomes more advanced and, uh,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
increasing functionality as well as people building more complex uh applications with it i think what we're going to see is just a 10x um an end user experience uh with regard to how we interface with technology cool well yeah let's let's dive in what's idea number one what do you got for us So as you guys have heard, the applications that I've built have really been around sort of AI virality.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
The first two specifically, RISGPT, how to text girls, UMAX, how to looks max, right? But CalAI, that was primarily around functionality. You take an archaic sort of industry calorie tracking where it was not very easy for the end user to A ton of people have greats with apps like MyFitnessPal, and you make it easier with the use of AI.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
And so this is what I increasingly think about, not building apps where you can just kind of leverage the TikTok algorithm to hack your way into a little bit of cash, but how do we redefine the value that people get out of it? So my first idea that I have is an application, for lack of a better word, Career AI.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
As we all know, there are a lot of new, very popular fragmented career advancement tools. By fragmented, what I mean is you have a website that you can go on that gives you an analysis of your resume and it'll give you all the bullet points about how to improve it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
We also have websites where you can take quizzes in terms of that will give you recommendations of what your future career should be based on your personality. We have people that sell courses about how to apply to different jobs.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
But I believe that an all-in-one integrated platform that kind of takes a bunch of these different fragmented tools and puts it into career AI, I think that that would be a pretty amazing application. And specifically as someone who just recently graduated from college, I know the trouble that a lot of people have in finding jobs, finding internships, that sort of thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
um and it's a massive industry to begin with like one of the uh primary selling points of universities is that like they're going to set you up for your future career now i think that a career ai you charge 50 bucks a month for an all-in-one tool to me feels pretty obvious and then with regards to distribution i would go about it you know
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
The pretty standard Instagram, TikTok reels obviously target students, but then you could leverage Twitter or x.com in addition to LinkedIn for some relatively untapped distribution channels.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah, happy to do so. Quick context on myself. I kind of stumbled into this space a little bit over a year ago with an app called RIS GPT. It is now named Plug AI. We ended up scaling that to a little bit over 3 million downloads, 200,000 monthly revenue. Then built UMAX. That has done over 10 million downloads, 500,000 monthly revenue.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Yeah. So I believe that there is a people often fall victim to seeing the new trendy way to go viral and then putting all of their eggs into that basket. I think that's something that all of my applications have really benefited from is I'm engaging in a highly iterative process of generating virality from early on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
And so that means coming up with new hooks, figuring out new ways to position the product. in terms of who you're marketing to and split testing those over a rolling basis. So let's say that I really think that influencer marketing is going to work with this career AI application. I'll find influencers in the general ed tech space that talk about study tips.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
I'll find influencers that give tips on how to apply to jobs. I'll find influencers that give general productivity tips. I will come up with different hooks that could theoretically work within each of those niches. I'll then split test these hooks across different videos, across different creators, and assess the results.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Assess how many views we're generating based on which hook, what the relative conversion is based on a per view basis for each of them. And then over time, you start to develop either a mental or real statistical model that will be able to inform your future distribution strategy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
I hope that makes sense, but somewhat akin to how platforms, meta, TikTok, et cetera, will split test your different creatives, applying the same strategy to influencers or internal UGCs. or, uh, you know, creative hook generation, that sort of thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
I was actually looking at this today cause I thought that this is, uh, pretty indicative of what I do, which is kind of different from a lot of people. Number one, I don't use, uh, influencer marketplaces or databases. Number two, I think that there's a lot of messaging on the internet about various tools. So like marketplace and databases or agencies to find influencers for you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
That's just like outright wrong. What I don't see people talking about is the development of personal relationships with influencers. So I just recently launched my new company, Apex. I can get into that a little bit later, but in short, it's a very content-heavy company. We're creating content in-house. And now you'll see.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
I make this post, and I guess this is backwards, but I've got a bunch of creators. Sam Zia commented. He was a former co-founder from UMAX. 220,000 followers. Dawson Gibbs. 170 or 170,000 followers backstate Carter, 280,000 followers. The list goes on and on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Um, and now the reason that they're commenting on this isn't because I'm paying them to, but it's because I've developed the relationships with them. And I think that, or I know that these influencers are getting hundreds of DMS emails, what have you on a daily basis. It's really hard for them to differentiate what companies are serious and what companies are.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
But if you can embed yourself and develop personal relationships with them, embed yourself within the industry, then they'll connect you with whoever you need to get connected with.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Listen, I totally agree with it. Reach out to as many as you can. I always say prioritize early on both quantity and quality. You got to reach out to thousands of them. If there's a creator that you really want, you have to DM them on every single platform. You have to message their mom. You have to message their girlfriend saying, I want to pay your son money. Please put me in contact.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
I've done that before. That can kind of help solve your cold start. From there, you got to treat them well, become friends with them. And then the opportunities become endless.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
So, okay. First off, I think that similar to what I was saying about split testing different, uh, hooks. across different niches about why people should download your product. If, for example, with Career AI here, if we're embedding multiple different tools into the platform, what we can do is we can also split test different product hooks.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
So we could test, let's say we have three different tools within the application. Then we can test different tools on social media to see what's going to go the most viral. And we can engineer around virality. With UMAX, for example, this was the facial analysis ratings. We found that this sort of six-factor Madden rating system, that's what people were most drawn to.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
That's what people were most likely to like, comment, engage with. And therefore I want the most viral. I want to, I want to, to make that clear from the start, because that is kind of how I begin my ideation process. What are the tools that are going to do well on social media, X, Y, and Z. So, so that will inform design. And then my process for design is usually I do wire frames.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
I have either a professional designer or someone on Upwork convert that into more fleshed out UI. Uh, and then it becomes time to build. With regards to building, I myself, I use ChatGPT to teach me how to code to build RISGPT and UMAX. Now, if you have capital, this is not a route that I recommend. If you have capital connections to great CTOs, you don't need to do that yourself.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
But if you're just getting started, like I was at the time, you get the designs done and then you start, you figure it out. So for me, it was talking to ChatGPT on a daily basis. Originally, I used SwiftUI. So I was getting code from ChatGPT in Swift UI, placing that into Xcode moving forward. Now, when I code, I'm doing it in a cursor with React Native.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
I just started doing this about a month ago. Quick note, I did not code CalAI. So I coded RISGPT in the first version of UMAX. Yeah, I think that people are often looking for like a one size fits all answer when it comes to the development side of things. I just don't think that it exists. I think that it's different for everybody.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
But what I can say is what I'm doing now is React Native and Cursor.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
Now I think it's closer to 400,000, but at our peak, we were around 700,000 in monthly revenue. And then most recently, CalAI. which we launched just like a little bit over six months ago and is at about 2 million downloads and over a million dollars in monthly revenue.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
So I would think around two things, like think about around the cross between functionality and virality. The resume analysis, that's very high functionality. Now, how do we take something that's functional, right? Scanning someone's resume and giving tips on how they can improve it. How do we also make that viral? So what I would probably do here is a six factor rating system similar to UMAX.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build $1M+ Viral AI Apps
I would give them scores based on different sections of their resume. Now I would see, design those scores around the sort of popular ed tech content right now, get in contact with the ed tech creators and then have them start to post. So that's just on the resume analysis side of things. I would also do a career analysis.