Akool · AI video and avatar maker
Train small AI models for one task each instead of one giant model
Keeps costs down; Coca-Cola picked it after 3 months of benchmarks
Workedfeature-developmentpositioning-niche
What they did
Instead of building the largest general video foundation models, Akool designs and trains smaller models from scratch for specific tasks: human/avatar generation, and a swap series (face, character, motion, head, hair). Different architecture and training data give better quality on corner and boundary cases. Training runs on rented cloud servers (mostly Lambda, plus others depending on workload). Large foundation models are only fine-tuned.
What happened
Controls cost and budget; Coca-Cola came inbound and chose Akool after benchmarking it as best on the market
- Stage
- 2022-present
In their words
Top Founders with Nathan Latka · "I Built My Own AI Video Model, Now Make $3M a Month," Akool CEO Jeff Lu“We are not building the largest video foundation models. We are building like video models for specific tasks.”
“and these models are much smaller than the large foundation models that generate everything. So, that's how we uh control the cost and uh control the budget and make things work.”
“So, uh that's inbound, and they found us, and they uh they see the uh our technology is the best on the market, and uh so they benchmarked a lot, so uh they decided to work with us.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Akool: Post demos of what your tool makes in related Reddit, Facebook and Discord groupsMain source of early users, per founder; no numbers
- Akool: Add a payment page so walk-in users can pay without a sales callUsers began paying on their own; revenue went from ~$100K to $2-3M the next year
- Akool: Spend the first years chasing large enterprise contractsDidn't work; revenue flat at ~$100K for two years
- Akool: Book one-on-one calls with people already using similar tools, and listenPart of how the first 100 customers came in; no numbers
- Akool: Pitch your tool to Fiverr freelancers who sell the same work by handFounder confirms they did it; no results given
- Akool: Hire your first sales rep once enterprise deals start coming in on their ownRevenue $2-3M to $12-13M that year; enterprise now drives most growth
- Akool: Charge businesses by usage so their bill grows as they build you into their softwareLargest contract reached ~$4M a year
- Akool: Add a cheaper starter plan below your existing tiers