1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Partner and Founder at Ideaspring Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The other point I want to make in this discussion is that AI is not only generative AI. There are many, very powerful problems that are being solved with AI, but not necessarily generative AI.

Bootstrapping a Generative AI Venture Using Services: Abhinav Girdhar, Founder CEO of Appy Pie (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: You have about a $12-$15 million company right now, is that right?

Abhinav Girdhar: I would say north of that, but i don’t have the real numbers on top of my head.

Sramana Mitra: And it’s a bootstrapped company?

Bootstrapping a Generative AI Venture Using Services: Abhinav Girdhar, Founder CEO of Appy Pie (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Okay, when did the Automate product come out?

Abhinav Girdhar: That was prior to Design. We launched it during the thick of Covid. Now, we’ve got three of these products doing pretty well.

Sramana: The Automate product is also at a million dollar run rate?

Bootstrapping a Generative AI Venture Using Services: Abhinav Girdhar, Founder CEO of Appy Pie (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Can you talk about the pricing strategy?

Abhinav Girdhar: We strategize in terms of what value we are adding to the platform. So we started as an app builder, later on we started offering a free website with an app. So when you create an app you also get a website.

Bootstrapping a Generative AI Venture Using Services: Abhinav Girdhar, Founder CEO of Appy Pie (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Ok, so you spun it out around $1 million ARR?

Abhinav Girdhar: That’s correct.

Sramana Mitra: So now that you’re at $1M ARR, has a shakeout happened in the market? Have some of the other smaller competitors started folding or consolidating? What’s the situation?

Bootstrapping a Generative AI Venture Using Services: Abhinav Girdhar, Founder CEO of Appy Pie (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Out of the 10,000 registrations, how many converted into paying customers?

Abhinav Girdhar: Mostly these were small customers, so people were coming in on a freemium model. I would say the conversion rate from freemium to paid was pretty low – 1 or 2 out of hundred users.

Sramana Mitra: 1-2% conversion rate. That’s normal in freemium. If you can get to 4% conversion in freemium, you’re doing great.

Bootstrapping a Generative AI Venture Using Services: Abhinav Girdhar, Founder CEO of Appy Pie (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: So what precisely was the gap? Is it a pricing gap, was it more expensive, or was it a support gap? What was the gap?

Abhinav Girdhar: The gap was mostly on the support side of things and also servicing in terms of how do we go about serving these customers. The US companies mostly have a ticketing platform; there was no live support to assist these small medium businesses.

Bootstrapping a Generative AI Venture Using Services: Abhinav Girdhar, Founder CEO of Appy Pie (Part 1)

Abhinav has built a $15M+ ARR business by bootstrapping using services. Of his three products, one is a GenerativeAI design tool. Read on for more nuance.

Sramana Mitra: All right, Abhinav, let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from, where were you born, raised, what kind of background?