🚀 HUSTLE GPT

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Entrepreneurs are prompting ChatGPT to decide on their business model— and everything else about the new venture. It’s a valuable experiment. But where exactly does the value lie?

ASKING CHATGPT TO come up with a business model for you is all the rage.

• And it is a cool thought.

• Why spend time coming up with and testing out a business model doing anything, when you can simply prompt ChatGPT to do it for you?

A CLEVER, CREATIVE writer and designer started the trend last week.

• Jackson Greathouse Fall prompted ChatGPT to come up with the best way to make as much money as possible, starting with US$100. Nothing illegal, and no manual labor.

• It’s an interesting read. (I link to the Tweet thread below.)

• As Jackson reported, ChatGPT suggested they “set up an affiliate marketing site making content around Eco Friendly / sustainable living products. It initially suggested a .com that went over budget but we landed on http://GreenGadgetGuru.com.”

• That’s right, ChatGPT not only came up with the business model, it came up with the name— as well as what prompt the designer should use to get a visual AI to generate the logo— and what products GreenGadgetGuru should sell.

IT’S AN EXCELLENT, thought provoking experiment.

• And people like it.

• The original tweet has been viewed over 19m times, and the designer has rocketed to nearly 100K Twitter followers.

• In a short number of days, GreenGadgetGuru has garnered multiple rounds of investment, and at least 1 employee working in exchange for equity.

• And ChatGPT was the one that suggested the specific equity offer… and vesting schedule.

• (ChatGPT could also easily draw up the equity agreement too, leaving the designer to do nothing more than the real world work of pasting it into a doc and getting it signed.

• The whole thing is exciting, and has (understandably) piqued a lot of interest: as Jackson tweeted several days ago, “we've got at least 150+ people building side hustles on GPT-4.”

• This is likely now thousands, or tens of thousands, of people —if not more.

THIS IS A good AI use case…

• After all, coming up with a business idea —and making all of the subsequent decisions that come with running that business— is exhausting.

• And you know what? If you work for yourself, it sometimes just feels good to execute what you’ve been told to do —instead of having to come up with the answers to everything yourself, all the time.

• Entrepreneurs know what I mean.

• (This echoes another concept I’ve recently written about, the “paradox of choice,” or the utter and complete lack of happiness that comes from having too many options.)

…BUT ALL OF this is also an excellent case study about the power of attention, especially in the creator economy era.

• The designer who came up with the initial experiment now has 100K followers on Twitter—and will likely keep them going forward.

• CNN reached out, Fortune and Mashable have written stories, and —as mentioned above— GreenGadgetGuru has garnered investment, while the tweet thread summarising it all has a sponsorship deal.

• The reason why is obvious: this experiment is exciting.

• But people aren’t jazzed about the eco-friendly living products.

• People are into the novelty of ChatGPT having chosen that as a niche.

• The news of Jackson doing it in this way is a bigger deal than him doing it.

OK, WHAT’S THE point here?

• As I’ve written, the ultimate two currencies in the creator economy are attention and discovery.

• And this “HustleGPT” experiment is an attention goldmine.

OUTSOURCING YOUR DECISION making to AI is a time saver.

• Most business struggles are likely the result of human foibles, like poor efficiency, distraction, bad decision making, or compromised decision criteria, or misaligned incentives, among many, many others.

AND AN ECO friendly homewares e-commerce brand is a good idea.

• Bear in mind that, as many, many people have observed, it’s not starting a business that’s hard, it’s running it that’s the hard part.

BUT. THERE ARE 2 immediate lessons from HustleGPT that you can put to use right away—and neither one is about what people think the main point is: the fact that ChatGPT can “run” a business.

• 1. Having the brainwave to ask or employ someone (or something) else to decide things for you is an underrated skill.

• (It’s especially valuable for entrepreneurs to have someone tell them what to do: the psychic relief of simply executing what somebody else instructs is real.)

• But the second lesson is the über lesson here.

• This lesson is timeless, and will never, ever not be valuable:

• 2. Attention is currency, especially in the creator economy era.

• Jackson is proving this point, one Twitter follower at a time.

More:

The original Tweet from Jackson Greathouse Fall »»

A copycat experiment on LinkedIn »»

GreenGadgetGuru.com »»

OpenAI GPT-4 users win followers by sharing how they’re using it—including to start businesses in ‘HustleGPT challenge’ »»

HustleGPT is a hilarious and scary AI experiment in capitalism »»

Written by Jon Kallus. Any feedback? Simply reply.