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A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company
- binarysolo 6mo agoSo if I understand this correctly, Medvi is basically a frontend to white label telehealth services, with wildly successful targeting on an exact niche (GLP-1 served online). So the 1.8B is effectively sales on a lead-generation opportunity where he gets to capture 20% of the sale (assuming that since his net profits are 16%), and then the backend guys do all the work and probably profit the remaining bit, assuming this line of business has ~50% margins, to these companies doing the actual work they're basically spending 20% on sales and marketing to Medvi. Because this is subscription-based, most of the costs are acquisition, and preventing churn (which is why he hired 7 contractors). As another poster mentioned - basically this guy is dropshipping GLP1 with no moat, and my guess is that he was keeping quiet and making money till the market got saturated and now he gets to use his success as a puff piece to parlay into a bunch of other verticals like supplements, mealprep, and all that. This guy's success is basically predicated upon him managing the branding and experience -- so good for him, but this is a middleman opportunity that is likely already going away due to me-toos (and that's why he's milking it one last time on NYT).
- G650 6mo agoBingo. Couldn't have explained it better myself.
- helenazdenova 6mo ago[flagged]
- zacharyozer 6mo agoInteresting 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.
- brysonmeunier 6mo agoI’d argue this is more of an extreme outlier than a baseline. While it shows the 'ceiling' of what a hyper-lean AI-enabled team can do in a white-hot market (GLP-1s), it’s hard to call $200M+ revenue per employee a 'baseline' for any industry. It’s a remarkable anomaly. A dream of every vibe coder like myself, but not a realistic target for most.
- gedy 6mo agoIt also relies on many outsourced doctors, correct? In this particular case, this is not a great vibe code business example imho.
- couscouspie 6mo agoThat's like saying Spotify wouldn't be a good example, because it outsourced music production to musicians and just not a meaningful point.
- fragmede 6mo agoWhat is this platonic ideal of a vibe code business that doesn't rely on some outside vendor to create value? If all you're offering is something for a niche (CRM just for car repair business), that's getting cloned yesterday. Unless your value is locked behind some moat, like hiring licensed doctors, you won't survive, and even then.
- gedy 6mo agoJust pointing out a business that is fundamentally about doctors prescribing and delivering compounded GLP-1 is not something "agents" will whip up for you, nor is it a one-man business.
- fragmede 6mo agoMy one-man business uses AWS and a bank and some vendors. AWS and the bank and my vendors have many people working there. Is it still a one man business?
- jgalt212 6mo agoBased on common AI sales to market cap ratios, this is a $50-$100B market cap company.
- jimnotgym 6mo agoAnd that is what this article is, an attempt to get a business with a doubtful future valued as AI
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- amelius 6mo agoLooks like they are selling GLP-1 prescriptions online, with online consultations. This is borderline illegal.
- an0malous 6mo agoSeems like that’s basically what entrepreneurship is now
- netsharc 6mo agoIsn't it capitalism? Adobe fucks you, Microsoft will "upgrade" your Office^W Copilot 365 license to 25-seats(1) if you don't notice, Tesla promises self-driving but drives you into the back of the trucks (what, you didn't read the disclaimer?), even the "leader of the free world" is now a crypto-huckster selling you bibles with his name on it... and is killing civilians in the Middle East and making profit by saying "Oh I'll stop soon!". (1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47474827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47474827
- neom 6mo agoNot capitalism in the way many of us capitalists think it should be practiced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Moral_Sentiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Moral_Sentiments
- dudefeliciano 6mo agoIsn't this the same no true scotsman argument as "true communism, as Marx envisioned, has never been put to practice"?
- neom 6mo agoAbsolutely.
- azan_ 6mo agoThe beauty of capitalism is that you can just not use Adobe, Microsoft or drive Tesla. Blaming Trump on capitalism is also quite a stretch.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- fontain 6mo agoThe 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.
- samsolomon 6mo agoWell, this guy isn't training models in his basement—if that's what you're looking for? I think the point of this article is that AI enables people to do so much more? Much of marketing is creating engaging content and AI allows people to create more than ever.
- jimnotgym 6mo agoSeems that a motivated person with the right skillset could have done this with traditional tools. A WordPress site, a copywriter of Fivver etc.
- strange_quark 6mo agoI’m struggling to see how anything he did is AI at all. Literally everything about his company is outsourced to an army of contracting firms. All this guy did was generate a marketing site that was filled with fraud.
- jimnotgym 6mo agoA very astute comment. While the service providers are experiencing massive growth they are happy to share. When growth plateaus they will go after every cost reduction, including squeezing out non-value added resellers. Especially those with warning letters from the FDA for making false claims, as noted below. As a distributor your value add was always making me markets. Once made, those markets are now trivial to take direct unless there is some advantage to having a local take a risk on stock- holding. I have worked in distribution and seen Amazon refuse to deal with the distributor and go direct as soon as they see decent sales, for instance.
- kleiba 6mo agoAmazing - 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...
- coffeebeqn 6mo agoThis was quite a popular business in the US during covid. I had someone prescribe benzos after a 15 minute call where they didn’t seem to be paying attention. I believe they’re shut down down due to legal issues
- Obscurity4340 6mo agoI think there's a place for it, there are services that help people access things naltrexone and baclofen for alcohol addiction or finasteride for hair loss and probably many other potentially life-changing scripts that can sometimes be difficult to access even by those who need them. Its a lot easier to get a dr to continue a prescription than to initiate it if you dont have a great dr who listens and works with you
- croes 6mo agoSurvivorship bias
- game_the0ry 6mo agoTechnically, all journalism pieces on successful businesses are survivorship bias. No one writes and reads about the business that failed to find PMF.
- croes 6mo agoAnd that’s the problem. You find the same traits they claim that made them successful by those who failed. Cherrypicking the winners creates a false reasoning of success.
- game_the0ry 6mo agoIs it a problem? Bc I know there is survivorship bias and also still want to hear about the successes, so what is the problem then?
- croes 6mo agoHow many readers don’t know that? And how many fall for the false reasoning of those success stories?
- game_the0ry 6mo agoYou are assuming most readers are dumb. I do not have that assumption.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- jimnotgym 6mo ago'...and some contractors'. So not one person, not two, but many.
- samsolomon 6mo agoOn 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.
- adamsiem 6mo ago>> " I am extremely curious about his processes." Yes - to be applied in less nefarious and dubious ways.
- throwforfeds 6mo ago"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-criminal-investigations/warning-letters/medvi-llc-dba-medvi-721455-02202026 https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-c...
- karmakurtisaani 6mo agoIn the US, the culture is to celebrate success and wealth. Not how you achieved them.
- 1attice 6mo agoYes and look how well that's working out for most
- xarchive 6mo agoMost of us should be honest and admit we're jealous of this guy. He basically chose a sector where customers are desperate (weight-loss drugs), slapped a website and an interface for connecting with a drug prescription provider together, did effective marketing, and now his business generates millions a month in profit. Like, there are a half dozen companies like his running around that essentially offer the same product and prices because they are all customer interfaces stop the same provider.
- Arodex 5mo agoYou got played by a scammer. https://bsky.app/profile/masnick.com/post/3miwsjejfhk2i https://bsky.app/profile/masnick.com/post/3miwsjejfhk2i "Turns out basically every aspect of that story is bullshit and the story should be retracted."
- 6mo ago
- cap11235 6mo agoThe secret ingredient is fraud.
- xarchive 6mo agoThe 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.
- solomonyardley 6mo agoThe poor website quality struck me as well - and the images are clearly AI, everything is clearly AI. Yet the guy is doing $400m in sales. Even the quiz flow to check eligibility is using old icons and just feels super spammy. His ads must be crushing it, I guess?
- JimsonYang 6mo agohelp me understand this. This guy is dropshipping glp-1's from a company that has a network(?) of trusted vendors which they get from the big pharma companies. And now he's doing the dropshipping thing of building a brand I'm highly suspicious of these revenue claims because how is he doing any of the marketing? Tiktok bans you if you post ugc content saying anything about peptides. FB doesn't allow medicine to be marketed nor does google. If he's dropshipping how is he doing the marketing?
- bonsai_spool 6mo agoIt's in the article—he buys advertising on news sites. They claim to have verified his financials
- StacyRawls 6mo ago[dead]