Comment by MasterScrat

We run an API to finetune text-to-image models (dreamlook.ai), as a two-person team.

When we launched 3 years ago our differentiator was that we could train both cheaper and faster by running on TPUs, these days GPUs have mostly caught up, and open source models are not as competitive as they once were.

It’s making ~5k/month these days, not bad as we’re no longer actively working on it, but a fraction of what we were doing a year ago.

The main challenge for us was the non-technical part. We built an API-first product because we love the tech and felt it’d allow us to focus on that part. But we still had to do marketing, sales support etc which we didn’t enjoy or excel at.

Now we’re both back in larger companies where we can focus on doing ML. It was satisfying to build a working business from scratch, no regrets, but I’m definitely happier now.