Meet Arib.
During his 19 years on planet Earth, he has already managed to:
- Make $1.5m a year
- Get two million users for his software (100,000 of those coming in the first week)
- Get a cease and desist letter from Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music
- Create a product that is being used by some of the biggest producers in the music industry
- Secure strategic investments to pivot into the $240 billion gaming industry
- Receive (and turn down) multi-million dollar offers to buy his business
This 19-year-old has business acumen and strategic instinct that most people won’t achieve in their lifetime.
In this article, I’ll share Arib’s playbook to create million dollar software products without knowing how to write a single line of code.
What is Arib’s software?
Do you remember the AI Drake song called Heart on my Sleeve?
It went extremely viral precisely because it slapped so hard. The AI voice is, essentially, indistinguishable from Drake’s real voice.
Well, Arib created the AI voice software that the producer used to create Drake’s voice.
Arib’s software is called Musicfy.
Here’s the interesting part: He didn’t make the AI model himself. He simply put a pretty package around the AI model (that someone else made) to make it easy for non technical people to make AI voice clones.
Initially, you could choose between Drake, Ariane Grande and Kanye West. All you had to do was upload a file and press convert.
After receiving cease and desist letters from the biggest players in the music industry (that are now framed on his wall), he pivoted. Now, Musicfy gives people the tools to create any voice clone they want.
He has since scaled Musicfy to $1.5m / year. His customers include some huge music producers like Louis Bell (Post Malone’s producer).
To hear more about Arib’s story, make sure you check out our conversation with him in the WGMI Podcast.
Why should I listen to a 19-year-old?
He didn’t spot this opportunity by accident. It didn’t scale to millions of users by accident.
Arib has spent the last 5 years in the startup scene in San Francisco, surrounded by ambitious entrepreneurs building million dollar businesses.
He learned how to start and scale a large software company, then executed it flawlessly.
We asked Arib what he would do if he had to start all over again… that’s when he revealed his $1M AI SaaS Playbook.
The $1M AI SaaS Playbook: Become a ‘Dealmaker’
Arib strongly believes there is still lots of opportunity to create successful AI software products.
The quickest way to pull this off is to become a ‘Dealmaker’.
Use this method properly, and you’ll be able to build a million dollar software product without knowing how to code and without spending a single penny.
Here’s how:
Step 1: Think of an AI software idea
The trick is to find a custom use case for the open source AI models.
For example, Musicfy uses an AI model that allows you to clone other voices. You could use this model for a lot of different use cases:
- Create backing vocals for songs
- Narrate audiobooks
- Create video game characters voices
Each of these use cases presents a business opportunity. You could create a platform that is specifically designed to help users generate backing vocals, or one that can create video game characters.
There are thousands of AI models out there. Each of them can be manipulated to serve a particular use case. Your job is to find those use cases.
To find the latest AI models that are being released, check out Arxiv and Hacker News.
Step 2: Find distribution
For Arib, this is the most important point.
There is tonnes of opportunity to create valuable software products if you have the right distribution.
In other words, you need to team up with a creator with a large audience. That audience should be made up of people who would be interested in using your software.
For example, if you’re building an AI tool that allows dog owners to make custom images of their dog (e.g. their dog on the moon, their dog in Paris etc.), then you’ll need to find someone with a large audience of dog owners.
To get the creator on board, you’ll need to pitch them your idea. To show the creator how it will work, you have two options:
- Get Figma designs (beginner mode): Get a designer to build a wireframe of how it will look (you can hire a Figma designer cheaply on Fiverr); or
- Build an MVP with No Code tools (intermediate mode): Nowadays, it doesn’t take long to learn how to build a very basic software tool without writing any code at all. In the WGMI Academy, we show you how to build a SaaS from beginning to end in a matter of weeks.
Remember, you’re a dealmaker. Here’s how the deal with look:
- You will make the software
- The creator will share the software with their audience. In return, they will get a percentage of the business.
Now, you just need to build the damn thing.
Step 3: Find a Developer
Armed with a software idea and guaranteed distribution, you have what every software developer dreams of.
Without this leverage, you’ll have to cough up a big chunk of change to get a developer to build your software.
With this leverage, many developers would build your software for a percentage of the business.
To find developers, Arib uses Discord groups like AI Hub.
Step 4: Pulling it all together
Now, you have the software built and you have the distribution.
After the creator starts sharing the tool with their audience, you’ll start to get some paying users.
When you’ve proved their is appetite for your tool, it’s time to scale (a lesson for another article).
I want to learn more about building software
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To learn more about Arib and his software journey, go ahead and watch this episode on the WGMI Podcast.
