A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

zacharyozer

Interesting baseline of how much AI can help with the profitability of a business: > By the end of last year, Medvi had reached $401 million in annual sales and amassed 250,000 customers. It produced 16.2 percent in net profit, or $65 million, with spending going to the fees for telehealth platforms, marketing and then software. Hims, by contrast, had a net profit of 5.5 percent last year.

jgalt212

Based on common AI sales to market cap ratios, this is a $50-$100B market cap company.

amelius

Looks like they are selling GLP-1 prescriptions online, with online consultations. This is borderline illegal.

fontain

The opposite of an “A.I” company, he is reselling the services of another filled with humans. A great, profitable business, sure, a notable success, yes, but a 2-man billion dollar company made possible by A.I? No. Businesses like this have existed for decades and are vulnerable to their service providers stealing the business out from under them.

kleiba

Amazing - an acquaintance of ours when we lived in Germany a couple of years ago had a similar idea. But she found that telemedicine + prescription drugs (and possibly advertising law) are among the most regulated areas in a country already known for its red tape. I didn't follow up what became of her startup idea, but there's no way she could have ever gotten it off the ground in just two months, like the guy from the article and his brother. More like two years ...

croes

Survivorship bias

jimnotgym

'...and some contractors'. So not one person, not two, but many.

samsolomon

On one hand this is so impressive. On the other it seems like a company selling drugs or medical services using misleading/generated photos and reviews is not great and extremely risky. This must largely be going into testing and generating marketing content? I am extremely curious about his processes.

throwforfeds

"That gave Matthew Gallagher breathing room to fix some shortcuts he had initially taken, like swapping out the before-and-after weight-loss photos for ones from real customers. Some photos on Medvi’s homepage remain A.I.-generated." Cool, another scammy internet company preying on people's insecurities. Glad the NY Times spent the effort to tell us about it and didn't spend any time questioning this company [1]. [1] https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-c...

cap11235

The secret ingredient is fraud.

xarchive

The founder is impressive. Truly, if you look over his website, you would not think this is a company that generates millions in profit a year. He claims he has switched over from using AI-generated profits to real customer testimonials. That's a misrepresentation, if not a lie. Most of the images still look like they have the unnatural fuzziness of AI images. Website is also coded as one long-scrolling page, again suggesting this is a company who does not offer a unique product with value proposition. Honestly, this is a company that looks like it succeeded only by optimizing employee head count and customer acquisition cost And if that's what it takes to succeed, fair play.