When you have LLM requests you don't mind waiting for (up to 24h) then you can save 50% in costs. Great for document processing, image classification at scale, anything that you don't need an immediate result from the LLM provider and costs play a role.
I helped out in their recent hackathon - https://base4good.com/ - mentoring folks on the app, and I also admin one of the user groups.
I am not a paid member of the team, just an admirer who wanted to get closer to the action. This felt right to me from the first moment, and I'm happy I had a small part in the journey.
I met Maor (the founder of base44) and team and had beers with them. Good people.
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Let me clarify a few things:
1. I don't know exactly how much vibe coding went into building base44 itself. I can attest that Maor's rate of releasing features was absolutely insane - I'm talking major updates every 1-2 days. I assume he's good with Cursor and the like. He's also very, very decisive on what to build and what not to build. Aggressive, even, I would say.
2. Maor had, for the majority of the life of this, no team. The employees joined way after base had customers. Most of what Base is was built by Maor, with 1-2 close friends helping cut out everything that wasn't relevant or wasn't great (so I'm told).
3. It's a different take on lovable/bolt etc. No one argues this.
4. Maor opted to include the db within the platform, rather than enable persistence externally. This really made the output great, and made fixing cross-application things very easy.
5. To me, base44 is PHP. It's a bit ugly, but it works, easy to explain to people, and once you get a hang of it it's a great hammer. It's not going to win the space race anytime soon, but it'll build you a house.
6. Base has resolve with AI functionality, which is far superior to anything I've seen outside of an IDE. It just works.
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To folks trying to win the AI race by building exceptional technology on the bleeding edge, good on you. I don't think Base is that.
I think Maor symbolizes something different: we're in the fast-grab era.
Big cos are not able to build killer AI apps at the rate they're expected to, which means they're circling around looking for what they can snatch with money/equity.
My take?
Build AI things that just work for a specific use case. Release them fast. Make people fall in love with them because they "do AI" for the use case.
Some bigco is flying close by, trying to build it but failing. Be there for the purchase.
We're still in the "gold rush" era: The guy and his team sold a company that sells "shovels" in a crowded market. Good for him for capitalizing on this.
Email: LinkedIn should be fine. If you search for it my email is also there.
I'm an engineer turned marketer, former devrel and VP Marketing.
I've spent a while in consulting, and considering (as in: still contemplating) joining a build again. Looking to join (as a co-founder or early founding team) companies that:
1. are working on something that makes a real impact in the physical world
2. are working on something that is highly technical (not traditional B2B SaaS or B2C)
I'm very good at making early-stage companies look like Series B companies, and making sure they say the right things when talking to the people they sell stuff to.
> 6. Reputation / Brand: Building a strong reputation often directly boosts sales, and AI is likely to make the brand-building process easier in surprising ways. Having a brand with a rich history can also be an advantage, given you consistently keep working on it and maintain its value over time.
Email: LinkedIn should be fine. If you search for it my email is also there.
I'm an engineer turned marketer, former devrel and VP Marketing.
I've spent a while in consulting, and considering (as in: still contemplating) joining a build again. Looking to join (as a co-founder or early founding team) companies that:
1. are working on something that that makes a real impact in the physical world
2. are working on something that is highly technical (not traditional B2B SaaS or B2C)
I'm very good at making early-stage companies look like Series B companies, and making sure they say the right things when talking to the people they sell stuff to.
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