"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].
The 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.
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.
but this is the opposite right? they own the customer relationship. Amazon does the opposite. They control the customer relationship. Can the supplier raise prices possibly but so can they middle man. if they turn over the relationship to the provider then use bad business.
Well, 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.
I’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.
Isn'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!".
at least the 3-card Monty guy is dealing with you one on one. These companies hire lobbyist to make the illegal, immoral sh*t legal. Easy to keep winning the game when you write the rules.
Just because a law is bad doesn't mean breaking it is a good thing. The laws against gambling are bad, but that's because they're too loose, not because they're too strict. Breaking those laws to gamble doesn't make gambling a good thing.
The in person businesses selling them don't do much more thorough consultations in my experience, although at least they try to track your muscle mass and be sure you're not losing too much there.
The whole business model probably just comes down to high demand over supply and traditional primary care doctors not being ready to keep up with prescribing it, though? It's a temporary gap being filled in. I wonder how long it can last.
It seems Nowadays for new businesses, lawsuits, maybe even a stint in prison with a 1 million presidential pardon at the end, is all incorporated into a business cost line, in a VC investment funds planning...
It has become a bit of a pest in Germany since weed was legalized. Every other method of distribution is either inconvenient, like growing it yourself, or borderline difficult to establish, like the social clubs. Now, you just pay 10 euros, fill out an online form, and receive a prescription.
I’m not against legalization, quite the opposite but these empty promises that weed is a "cure" for anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses are dangerous. Advertising it this way without a proper medical examination or proper follow ups is wrong. People are going to get hurt because of it and like this fellow here they started to do other drugs like GLP-1, Viagra and ofc peptides as well.
You said it yourself, people are just paying the 10 euro for the prescription to avoid the hassle of growing themseleves or establishing/becoming part of a social club. It's a loophole that works, I doubt those people actually think that it is curing their illnesses.
On 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.
Amazing - 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...
This 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
Interesting 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.
I’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.
What 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.
Just 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.
My 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?
"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-c...
The 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.
A 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.
but this is the opposite right? they own the customer relationship. Amazon does the opposite. They control the customer relationship. Can the supplier raise prices possibly but so can they middle man. if they turn over the relationship to the provider then use bad business.
Well, 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.
I’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.
Seems that a motivated person with the right skillset could have done this with traditional tools. A WordPress site, a copywriter of Fivver etc.
Looks like they are selling GLP-1 prescriptions online, with online consultations.
This is borderline illegal.
Seems like that’s basically what entrepreneurship is now
Isn'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
Not capitalism in the way many of us capitalists think it should be practiced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Moral_Sentiments
Isn't this the same no true scotsman argument as "true communism, as Marx envisioned, has never been put to practice"?
Absolutely.
The beauty of capitalism is that you can just not use Adobe, Microsoft or drive Tesla. Blaming Trump on capitalism is also quite a stretch.
So the beauty of capitalism is billion dollar companies are free to try to scam you, because you're also free to avoid them?
Maybe I should just stand on the street and be a 3-card-monty...
at least the 3-card Monty guy is dealing with you one on one. These companies hire lobbyist to make the illegal, immoral sh*t legal. Easy to keep winning the game when you write the rules.
Dude go touch some grass
This was the same criticism levied against AirBnB, Uber, cryptocurrency, prediction markets, sports betting apps, etc.
The border of legal and illegal is a good place to make money and change.
Yes doing illegal things and getting away with it is a great way to make money.
Some laws represent moral truths and some laws represent the attempt of a prior generation's upper class to protect that wealth.
The willingess to break a bad law is a sign of a good person.
Yeah illegally running a cab is basically the same thing as being Rosa Parks.
Correct. While ride-sharing services aren't perfect, they have significantly reduced rates of service refusals and long-wait times based on race.
By that argument, start a company selling fentanyl because there will be demand for it?
Sorry, but your implied argument is flawed.
Just because a law is bad doesn't mean breaking it is a good thing. The laws against gambling are bad, but that's because they're too loose, not because they're too strict. Breaking those laws to gamble doesn't make gambling a good thing.
The in person businesses selling them don't do much more thorough consultations in my experience, although at least they try to track your muscle mass and be sure you're not losing too much there.
The whole business model probably just comes down to high demand over supply and traditional primary care doctors not being ready to keep up with prescribing it, though? It's a temporary gap being filled in. I wonder how long it can last.
It seems Nowadays for new businesses, lawsuits, maybe even a stint in prison with a 1 million presidential pardon at the end, is all incorporated into a business cost line, in a VC investment funds planning...
They were already warned by the FDA: https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-c...
So it's legal?
It has become a bit of a pest in Germany since weed was legalized. Every other method of distribution is either inconvenient, like growing it yourself, or borderline difficult to establish, like the social clubs. Now, you just pay 10 euros, fill out an online form, and receive a prescription. I’m not against legalization, quite the opposite but these empty promises that weed is a "cure" for anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses are dangerous. Advertising it this way without a proper medical examination or proper follow ups is wrong. People are going to get hurt because of it and like this fellow here they started to do other drugs like GLP-1, Viagra and ofc peptides as well.
You said it yourself, people are just paying the 10 euro for the prescription to avoid the hassle of growing themseleves or establishing/becoming part of a social club. It's a loophole that works, I doubt those people actually think that it is curing their illnesses.
No, it sounds like you're against legalization.
How so?
They legalized it, but not the "right" way, according to you.
On 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.
Amazing - 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...
This 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
Interesting 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.
I’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.
It also relies on many outsourced doctors, correct? In this particular case, this is not a great vibe code business example imho.
That's like saying Spotify wouldn't be a good example, because it outsourced music production to musicians and just not a meaningful point.
What 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.
Just 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.
My 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?
By doing false claims: https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-c...
The secret ingredient is fraud.
'...and some contractors'.
So not one person, not two, but many.
Based on common AI sales to market cap ratios, this is a $50-$100B market cap company.
And that is what this article is, an attempt to get a business with a doubtful future valued as AI
Survivorship bias
Technically, all journalism pieces on successful businesses are survivorship bias. No one writes and reads about the business that failed to find PMF.