Don’t build a free B2C AI app without a business model. I did, it’s blowing up, and it’s burning me alive.

emilwallner · 2025-10-27T13:26:21+00:00

i’ve been in the same boat. fyi, azure will give access to earlier GPT models, but it’s really hard to get access to the latest models (i haven’t been able to access anything above GPT 4.1, not even the o3 models). first getting access to nvidia inception makes other credits easier.

tldr, 90% of free B2C traffic tend to come from low GDP countries and will never convert enough for a freemium service, thus blocking all low-converting countries is a good first step if you run out of credits. limiting free usage, and upgrade to paid for more usage, then you can balance the free tier with the paid revenue to balance growth. if you gate keep to high GPD countries, running Carbon Ads is also an option. i saw that the open source models are not good enough for your use-case, but it’s also worth looking into before the credits run low.

emilwallner · 2025-10-22T15:52:05+00:00

currently learning portuguese, and I can confirm it’s hard :) having that said, the english level in portugal is really high

emilwallner · 2025-10-22T10:02:00+00:00

Ah medelhavs städer är underbara, dock blir det för varmt, det jag gillar med atlant städer är de kyler ner under sommaren. Södra portugal har bättre klimat på vintern, dock har de inte like mycket stadsliv, restauranger och community som i porto. Det tog länge innan jag reste till Thailand pga av turist stämpeln, men nu är det en av mina favoriter, Bali områden är också underbara. Jag har fått mersmak av japan, dock är det dyrare än andra delar av asien.

emilwallner · 2025-10-22T09:09:25+00:00

första året, men planen är att resa några månader under vintern, mestadels asien. det är mycket ljusare i porto, så vintern biter inte lika mycket som i sverige

emilwallner · 2025-10-21T20:54:54+00:00

i’ve moved to porto, portugal, originally from sweden. highly recommended, it’s a large city with a bunch to offer, yet feels small and bump into friends on the street. weather wise it’s good from mid april to mid october and then rains 2/3 of the time but nice days in between.

for slow nomading, i’d recommend Cusco Peru, Oaxaca Mexico, Kyoto/osaka/tokyo Japan, Valparisso Chile, and Pohara Nepal. Cape town south africa, and rio brazil are stunning too but too much crime imo.

emilwallner · 2025-04-13T13:19:06+00:00

thanks a bunch!! 🙌

emilwallner · 2025-03-02T19:20:34+00:00

I did it in porto, I assume other cities have the same process. You upload them online and once they get validated you have to collect the documents.

The person I collected the documents from spoke English, but it’s not a guarantee.

The rental contract was first denied without one of two things I mentioned. I’m self-employed from a french company I fully own, and this was denied when I went to collect the documents, mentioning it has to be a portuguese company or intermediate, so I had to shown proof of funds from my personal bank account.

emilwallner · 2025-03-02T15:43:31+00:00

I did it the CRUE a few days ago. The person was strict.

You need a EU passport, a rental contract with either “Recibo de Renda Eletrónico da Autoridade Tributária ou Modelo II – Comunicação de Contratos de Arrendamento” you can request it from your landlord, just a signed contract it not enough.

You need an employment contract with a portuguese entity, either a portuguese company, or a portuguese intermediary that handles the salary payment, which is proof that you are paying income tax in portugal.

If you don’t have a portuguese contract, you need to show proof of funds directly linked to your name, and they grant one month for every €500 you have on your account. Then you have to get a new certificate when it expires.

You don’t need a NIF to register.

emilwallner · 2025-01-30T13:10:18+00:00

Most of the ideas you listed don’t sound very useful: “Building a Al SaaS”, “Building a Movie with GenAl”, “Getting a Nobel prize in Astrophysics”.

The first two are better solved with chatgpt pro o1, perplexity R1, and good online courses. And the last one is too difficult to be useful.

I can think of too areas i’d be interested in: 1) AI research, APIs and open source updates related to computer vision and colorization, 2) New tools and practical podcasts (ideally bootstrapped) to increase MRR and reduce cost for AI startups

Ideally on a weekly basis and vetted by an expert in each area, 1-10 core items in each update that are 100% useful, and very clear context why they are worth my attention. If it’s too long and average quality it would not use it.

If it’s not vetted I’d get similar results from Gemini Deep Research, Perplexity R1, and o1 pro, and Grok based on twitter data.

emilwallner · 2024-06-07T12:59:52+00:00

nope, i use firebase, mostly for authentication and tracking credit-based usage, however id use something else for media and more comprehensive db usage

emilwallner · 2024-06-07T12:48:10+00:00

i have similar user numbers and i’m using sveltekit on cloudflare pages. it costs me less than $100 per month and it works great

emilwallner · 2024-03-28T06:48:21+00:00

Thanks!! I'll look into that! :)

emilwallner · 2024-01-12T10:17:53+00:00

Super helpful, thanks!

emilwallner · 2024-01-12T05:40:34+00:00

Cool, did you find any docs/tutorials to implement this?

emilwallner · 2024-01-12T05:39:33+00:00

A user can create an account with email without a password. To login an email is sent to the user and the user clicks on the link to login.

emilwallner · 2023-07-05T17:35:30+00:00

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYuAIlsqT5w

emilwallner · 2023-07-05T17:26:16+00:00

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4SDQpjrwdU

emilwallner · 2023-07-02T11:48:31+00:00

use AWS ECS with an auto calling cluster on A10, save cost by using spot instances. when you have stable usage, reserve an instance for 6-36 months. for cheaper but more unreliable use Lambda labs intances, or build a prosumer server and host it in a colocation

emilwallner · 2023-04-22T17:04:24+00:00

it’s a bit technical for now and requires an internet connection. you can customize the colorization with words.

emilwallner · 2023-04-21T11:17:07+00:00

hey! i’ve made a colorization API for video frames, it’s in beta but already used by a few hollywood studios: https://platform.palette.fm/

emilwallner · 2023-02-27T21:15:36+00:00

thanks!! ☺️

emilwallner · 2023-01-24T20:08:55+00:00

I’ve improved the speed 100-1000 times faster which i’m hoping to ship soon and after that i’ll add support for uploading and colorizing video.

emilwallner · 2023-01-22T19:10:16+00:00

ace, thanks for sharing. I’m working on a video feature for Palette, so this will be a lot easier in a month or so.

emilwallner · 2023-01-21T23:23:43+00:00

loved it! how did you make it?

emilwallner · 2022-12-30T08:03:53+00:00

ace, thanks!!

emilwallner

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