You can do this before an exit? Build and fundraise for multiple (3?) companies at the same time?

More story:

ElevenLabs launched a few years after FakeYou and Uberduck. ElevenLabs got a lot of attention for their remarkable zero shot model, but their pricing and enterprise focus created an enduring niche.

Companies like Musicfy.lol were what ultimately drew the ire of the music labels and created a lot of friction for consumer UGC audio tools. They ruffled feathers and that created headwinds.

I distinctly remember talking to their founder on a Monday at Founders, Inc. in SF. They were in talks with a16z to raise $10M or so after their first few weeks of wild success - viral marketing and clever positioning for the first RVC music models. By that same Friday the music labels had them shut down the majority of their offering and the funding offers fell apart.

A year or so later, Suno and Udio ultimately took that side of the market. They were more consumer-friendly than raw vocal models and appealed to a broader set of users. Both companies launched to great success despite the risk of lawsuits.

15.ai, FakeYou, UberDuck, and Weights.gg (a latecomer) all gradually wound down due to the founders being pulled in different directions. Weights.gg joined OpenAI, Fifteen.ai became anti-AI and built an art community website, I went into movies/film, and Zach (Uberduck) forged a new path too.

ElevenLabs kind of lost the plot with audio. They've been building a bigger, more comprehensive offering that has scaled their revenue well beyond just TTS and audio. But it also left something of a void to fill.

Last year, Fish Audio launched in our old segment (consumer / UGC TTS fine tunes and zero shot) and built a massive user base and revenue stream. The market was wide open for it. They raised a $40M seed round.

I'm working on https://getartcraft.com which is open source:

https://github.com/storytold/artcraft

We're in use by a few film studios and some pretty popular AI artists. There are a couple of theatrical releases coming out that use us, but I can't talk about it. (Under NDA for the individual projects.)

It's at $5M ARR and growing 65% month-on-month by word of mouth.

ArtCraftX (launching soon) is a new UX that lets you bring your own compute from every single platform and vibe code your own workflow UX. You can clone the repo and easily add/remove things you want. It's okay that people can bring competitor compute - we'll be generous and open.

https://artcraftx.ai/

Think of it as "ComfyUI, but comfortable" and geared to high-volume creators rather than hobbyists. It's written in Rust.

Critically, people should be able to not only own their apps, but be able to deeply customize them.

I've also built an open source FAL/OpenRouter which I eventually want to build RunPod/Featherless (fine tunes) features into. It's called "Foundation", and it's in private beta but launches GA soon. I think it could have good positioning vs. Stripe / OpenRouter since it's open source and is meant to be extensible. Fully BYOK, too.

I'm looking to hire someone to help me build a social layer for creators that ties all of this together. YesAnd got funding to pursue this, but I think they're taking the wrong approach. I think it should be open and hackable. More like Github, but still artist friendly.

A lot of platforms either target B2B enterprise (Runway, Krea) or UGC / "everyone can be a creator" (Higgsfield, OpenArt), but I think creators look more like the Github set. Intentional, and in need of tools they own.

I launched as vo.codes (and two prior names) before 2020 and later rebranded to FakeYou.

https://thenextweb.com/news/celebrity-voices-deepfake-ai-app

Rebranding a domain with traction is a mistake, in retrospect. I think Magnific is learning this lesson now after undergoing a change from the popular FreePik.

I'm a filmmaker and I wanted to get into video models, and FakeYou felt more like a pivot to UGC video (vo.codes was too audio centric) that I could ultimately swing me into cinematic video. I was too slow and that was not a good choice.

But Higgsfield and Bytedance showed you can be late and still win a lionshare of the market.

My video product launched in February and is at $5M ARR / 67% MoM growth.

ElevenLabs was a commercial version of 15.ai. It's crazy, because 15.ai could have had the venture-scale outcomes if he'd fundraised and turned it into a SaaS product. He was in the right place, right time, with tremendous attention, but missed the opportunity.

The other "labs" followed the trend. The {number}labs / {number}.ai domains all quickly got squatted.

I was in the same space and watched it happening. I launched FakeYou about the same time as 15.ai, but 15 had the backing of 4chan and a better model. I still made it to 7M MAU and a million in revenue despite that.

Just last year, Fish Audio picked up where 15.ai / FakeYou / UberDuck / Weights.gg left off and made it to $20M ARR, which is a lesson about abandoning under-served markets when you still have tremendous gravity.

2024: Google is on fire. Sergey coming back helped. Gemini, Veo. They've caught up. OpenAI is doomed.

2025: Google is seriously winning now. Nano Banana!! Google was destined to be the true winner of AI.

2026 H1: Google is slow as hell. Where is Gemini? Google is not launching anything, meanwhile just look at everyone else. Anthropic! And open source. What the hell are they doing over there?

2026 H2: Everyone is leaving Google. Google is doomed. PMs are destroying the company. They don't take risks.

Meanwhile, Microsoft: "Copilot!"

https://github.com/storytold/artcraft

https://getartcraft.com

$3M annualized run rate (looking for more Rust engineers to join me)

https://imgur.com/a/d9DyiIO

What's with the comment flagging?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48821549

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48315968

Points: 568

# Comments: 256

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42729295

Points: 17

# Comments: 2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_ageing

None of these has been proven or widely accepted, and the entire class of theories has many rebuttals. They are interesting to consider, though.

You don't need extra genes or information to prefer organisms that age out of reproductive fitness. If advanced age during reproduction confers lower fitness, then the offspring are automatically less fit. While you could argue that there would be a competition for resources amongst the young offspring, this isn't much different than other scenarios that produce less fit or disabled offspring.

The "diamond alternative" meme is becoming increasingly popular with our generation, such that I predict that in a few generations nobody will care to buy "real" diamonds for engagement purposes. When this happens, the price of diamonds will fall dramatically (if it hasn't already by that point).

Diamonds are so overrated.

Languages such as Rust that lean on inference are an absolute joy to program in.

Whatever this effect is, it is somewhat lessened by adequate sleep, a low-sugar diet, and prescribed medication. It never completely goes away, though. I have good days and bad days; even at my best, though, working through long texts, papers, or technical literature will eventually cause my mind to wander. Whatever this is (I blame ADHD), it's prevented me from ever being able to enjoy reading literature or long-form journalism. It's a pity, too, because I enjoy the content. The task itself is just too mentally stressful. Reading is, sadly, a form of labor.

It's weird, because skimming comes easily. Visual forms of information are also incredibly easy to digest.

Do others with ADHD have a similar problem with this?

Ruby makes for a pretty slow server side language. It's appropriate when moving fast, but at scale it's rather icky. Your other languages seem to fill anything it can do.

Have you considered Go, Java, Scala, C#, etc.? None of these are "low level".

2. Javascript - Both a scripting language and the Web language. If it weren't the lingua franca of the browser I would much rather choose Python or Ruby instead.

3. Java - A typesafe, managed JVM language perfect for writing microservices, Android apps, etc. For anything bigger than would be appropriate for a scripting language or that must be maintained by several people. Java hits the sweet spot.

Another problem is that I often upvote articles by scrolling on my phone. In addition to providing false signal, this has the unfortunate side effect of polluting my "saved stories".

I wish there was a mechanic to change votes after submission (even if the ability to change your vote was only momentary).

Do pg, et al. accept PRs?