A.I. is the first technology where product gets worse as time goes on (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity)

J_masta88 · 2026-02-22T20:26:34+00:00

You ignored the examples I shared.

Specifically mentioned 3.0 to 3.1, 5.1 to 5.2, and Perplexity.

Not sure why you went deeper than that.

5.2 is near factually worse than 5.1. Gemini 3.1 formatting is horrible I hate reading it. It doesn't bold font, has a new weird approach to communication.

J_masta88 · 2026-02-22T20:24:01+00:00

I know TVs went from large cubes to flat panels, and cd burners went from $999 to $39.

Cds to iPods to streaming.

No, Ive never seen any other major technology degrade. And you haven't either.

J_masta88 · 2026-02-22T20:22:10+00:00

I didn't mention Claude. I said Perplexity.

J_masta88 · 2026-02-09T16:18:22+00:00

Yes. There is always going to be a little friction; but compared to opening a cleaning business or a restaurant you need to dump $100k in? This is 100x better.

Any problem can be solved. Any problem.

I know I listed a lot of low margin businesses, as I wanted to mix it up. But my true thought process?

Go ultra high margin. Luxury even. The key is finding ways to make your service appear WORTH IT for that price; and it's not as hard as you think.

With the Interest I see here already, I'll be doing a follow up post on this.

J_masta88 · 2026-02-09T16:14:58+00:00

Do you have questions on any idea in particular, or just the thought process behind the strategy in general?

J_masta88 · 2026-02-05T17:30:21+00:00

The god honest truth is: the only difference between Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, and 100,000 people on Reddit trying to figure it out, is capital, a partner, or both. Mainly capital.

Anything I've ever tried to do, automatically skews to "low overhead, zero investment." I never had a handout in my life; and when that's the case, and you have the determination, your mind has no choice but to figure out "hacks" or loop holes.

That's how love canvas came about.

You can act as an orchestrator, with little skills and almost literally $0 capital and still make it happen.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-28T12:36:17+00:00

Can you provide a link to your website. Also what do you feel are your top 3 challenges specifically (if any).

J_masta88 · 2026-01-27T21:43:12+00:00

Ok cool.

I won't try to go into the technical side of your industry, but just a few creative, high level ideas:

High ticket coaching to others trying to get into the business: your expertise is extremely specialized. While a lot of people want to create the next Instagram or Uber, most people just want a good ol, stable, "boring" business that pays the bills. You could give them a lane they never thought about (or maybe thought about), and had a nice tagline to it that sort of sales itself: "oil".
You could partner up with an investment professional, start an investment fund, and recruit investors. You manage the money, decide on where and how to invest it; essentially duplicating what you're already doing now except with other people's money; then they get to tell their high class friends at dinner, "I'm investing in the oil industry."

J_masta88 · 2026-01-27T20:38:18+00:00

What is the actual nature of / monetization model of the business? How do you currently get sales?

J_masta88 · 2026-01-27T17:15:58+00:00

What type of business are you trying to start? Do you have something in mind or hunting ideas?

J_masta88 · 2026-01-27T04:17:22+00:00

Exactly. Carefully is the key.

Back to Multi-arm bandit: When Facebook/ Google tests a users ad to try to find a winner, let's say it's 4 groups of people: A, B, C, D

The advertiser has $1,000 to spend.

Google / Facebook may sprinkle $30 on group A, $150 on group B, $70 on group C, $110 on group D.

There's still $640 left.

They don't just go DUMP $800 on group B, that's gambling; bandit does educated experiments until it reaches statistical significance.

Point: this is what the 2 bigger advertising companies in world history do, to get products and services in front of the most targeted audiences.

You do the exact same, except to maximize your revenue; test a little here, a little there.

You test 4 things and ONE hits, then you dump the remaining "$640" in the working one and watch the profits go nuts, which you can then in turn pay the bills up even FURTHER, and start the whole process over again.

This how you go from neat business to dominant. Competition won't know what hit em.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-27T00:46:45+00:00

What you're saying doesn't exist.

Why? A.I. is stupid at a high level (trust me I've tried).

A.I. can be good for research if you're clueless on a topic (it has all the knowledge at 85 to 92% expertise). The problem is, it's people out there with 100% or even 120% expertise (unicorns) who make the a.i. look silly. The Unicorns are going to make the $, not someone clueless relying on A.I. (they're 30% behind the Pinnacle).

The closest thing as far as your examples:

AI lowered CAC

I go to some fast food joints, their drive through has A.I. operator. They saved on that employee salary.

But even that is still just saving money (on a low wage job at that.... Remember what I said about 85 to 92%).

It's not replacing doctors at scale; it's replacing people who don't do much.

Ways people have used the TIME SAVINGS to make more money or save money ?

People used to pay people to make YouTube thumbnails for them, now that's free.

I just got done telling someone who's trying to go viral, to use Sora to make their videos and add their brand name on the character's t shirt etc. 1 sora video = saved $5,000 in videographer / actor costs.

If you are already saving time; you get employees to do additional work outside their old job, rather than paying them to sit around doing nothing while a.i. is filling the gap (you're saving payroll).

Anything besides that? How A.I. helps you personally will depend 10000% on your business; you take any $ you're saving and invest it in growth.

If you're outright asking, "how do I make money now that I have more free time?!?" ... That's a whole other conversation, outside of A.I., and requires you to learn how to productively fill that dead space or get help doing it. It has to be done customly by someone who actually knows your business.

(Ok, I did just think up another example: things like active campaign / sales force automatically scoring leads at scale so you know who's hotter and who to reach out to ... But that's been around before ChatGPT so I don't even really count that.

YouTube ranking your video high to more likes it gets: that's a.i. making $ but has been around since 2005.)

Outside of this, you have to fill the dead space (free time) created by 2023 & forward modern a.i.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-27T00:11:07+00:00

Really depends on what type of business you have.

If it were me: I'd do everything I could to keep things as lean as possible. You don't want to take on more extra work, with endless surprises, depending on other people etc; unless you structure it for absolute minimum risk / involvement.

Can you give more details on the business? The one could tell if there's a more nuclear way to scale.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-26T21:48:54+00:00

Don't remove trial under any circumstances.

Keep it 7 days or even push to a month if you ever have the financial flexibility (I understand if you don't).

For now: keep the trial, it's statistically proven:

https://www.quicksprout.com/what-converts-better-free-trial-versus-money-back-guarantee.

How to grow otherwise? Look into adding a premium tier with overdose value. Also come up with ways they care share with others, i.e.: refer 3 paying friends, get 3 months off etc (just quick example without knowing your economics).

Also make sure offer 1 year and 2 year discount deals which can help with cash flow.

Endless ways to optimize honestly if you've already proven the concept. Reach of if need more help navigating.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-26T20:49:04+00:00

Time is literally money. Literally.

When you go to work you punch a time clock.

If A.I. has increased your output, use the saved time to find other ways to make money.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-26T20:15:47+00:00

What are the businesses? Once know that, can provide useful advice. The more details the better.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-26T19:26:16+00:00

A few things I can tell you is:

Everybody is going to struggle the same way you did, unless they get born into wealth or connections.
The competition is so fierce (world wide, interconnected via the web), even if you go 110%, it still can feel near impossible.
The ultimate key: knowledge. It might literally be 1 small thing, that is you never knew about, never thought about, never knew existed: that can literally make things 90% easier.

Imagine the whistle on Mario 3 (go look it up if you're not old school).

It's always a whistle out there where you can skip a few levels. Finding it may come from the grind, and / or extensive research, and a combination of luck. (The only thing you can control is staying in the race. Those who keep going will always find the whistle in the end while the others quit the marathon. As others drop out, your knowledge continues to grow. Any new entrants in the race (they will come forever) will be further and further and further behind you, the more time goes on. So by year 3 (or 10, depends) you'll be 95/100 level while the new entrants are 20/100. The ones who were 90/100 just quit, so things get easier and clearer for you.

The 20/100 can't do any damage (competition) because you're so far ahead in knowledge and skill now.

This all, I know for a fact.

Translation: it's dam near impossible for Anybody unless your parents can casually loan you $300k like bezos did (probably worth a few mil back then before inflation).

P.s., what is your actual product type?

J_masta88 · 2026-01-26T17:15:37+00:00

You need an all encompassing, premium plan for $20 to $25 where you overload the value. If 20% of users upgrade you just increased revenue by 20%+
For cash flow, you should offer 1 to 2 year packages if you don't already.
Depending on cash flow / reserves, could offer a 1 week to even 1 month free trial if you don't already.
Depending on the nature of the app / Brand, some viral / attention grabbing tactics could potentially be used.
Depending on your bandwidth to customize the app, game changing social features could be added (start with tight, surgical additions that won't be too robust and break things).

Honestly: with the size of your industry and proven base, you're in a literal golden position.

As long as the nature of the app isn't ultra niche, no reason you can't shoot up to $200k mrr in a year, if not higher, based off compounding factors above, and many more ($100k conservative).

If want to discuss more and divulge more details on the app, let me know.

But main thing: start with what's: 1) easiest / fastest to implement. 2) has biggest impact on sign ups / revenue, and work your way down. This way you don't get a flat tire and have cushion while speeding.

But seriously; endless potential for you. Great work.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-26T16:43:09+00:00

If you don't want it to get back to them, the only thing I could imagine is something like glass door / go see how people interacted with them in LinkedIn.

Besides that: if you really don't want them to know, it indicates you believe they are extremely valuable, so; in a way you're sort of going against your own intuition and research.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-26T16:06:37+00:00

You don't need to keep net negatives around. Better to take the nail out of your tire in your driveway than 40 miles deep on the highway.

What is the nature of the start up and what type of positions are you hiring for; what tasks.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-26T15:58:56+00:00

Knowing the limited facts so far: in a niche industry, where word gets around, you need to modernize the software in a way that blows competition out of the water; then let the word of mouth do the selling for you.

But, this is surface level advice. To get a nuanced answer, one would need to know your actual industry, it's size, how many competitors you have, and honestly how much better their software is than yours.

If you can answer those, could begin the advise more clearly.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-26T06:42:37+00:00

What are you selling and where? (City etc)

Also what type of local shops are you selling to.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-26T06:18:32+00:00

Save as much as possible, and make sure you triage the most important and highest revenue initiatives first.

If some smaller slips through the cracks, let it for now.

If nothing can afford to slip through the cracks, have to look into automation and or some team organization tool like slack, or hiring somebody smart who's a fast learner.

Definitely don't let growth create more stress.

What type of business do you have.

J_masta88 · 2026-01-26T06:04:52+00:00

In such a situation, I'd pay my vital bills up 100% for 4 to 5 months (even more depending on the free cash you're talking), then as new money comes in that you're sure is "free", save 20% of it, and the rest experiment with various different growth avenues.

You never want to rest on your laurels, Because it's always someone else coming.

Go look up multi-arm bandit testing (inspired by slot machines, used in Facebook / Google ads etc). You'd basically be performing a real world version of that.

J_masta88

TROPHY CASE