O entrepreneur has achieved more than 100,000 euros in investment and sales of more than 12,000 euros since he created the company AIsthetic Apparel at the end of March, exclusively following the instructions given by ChatGPT.
“In the beginning, it was supposed to be a 30-day experience”, João Ferrão dos Santos told Lusa, in an interview in Los Angeles. The idea came from a Jackson Fall tweet about asking ChatGPT to create a profitable company with a very low start-up capital of just $100.
“I saw that idea and I had an almost childlike curiosity”, explained the entrepreneur, who has been working in startups for ten years. “If I actually start building a company around this idea, what will the journey be like?”
The manager gave the instructions to ChatGPT, with an initial capital of 1,000 dollars, and the system did the rest: it suggested an online t-shirt printing on demand business, with a Shopify store and logistics provided by Printful, and conceived the name and logo concept. T-shirt designs are made by generative Artificial Intelligence models.
“In two hours I had a business idea, a logo and 2500 euros of initial capital”, said João Ferrão dos Santos, explaining that some of his friends wanted to invest.
The experience went viral when the entrepreneur wrote a text on his personal LinkedIn account explaining the idea. “The algorithm took that and recommended it to everyone in the world for a week,” he said. The publication now has more than five million views.
“We launched the store in four days, we sold 10 thousand euros in t-shirts in the first five days. All through my post on LinkedIn”, summarized the manager. Sales now exceed 12,500 euros and contracts for 120,000 euros of investment have already been signed, with more in the pipeline.
“As soon as the round is over, we look at the budget and define the future together with our CEO, ChatGPT, who approves all decisions”, he underlined. João Ferrão dos Santos designates his role as the “human co-founder”.
Since two of the friends who initially invested are Danish, the company’s headquarters was opened in Copenhagen and is already attracting the attention of the Danish consulates in the United States, where João Ferrão dos Santos intends to move in the coming months.
In May, the Portuguese manager will be one of the speakers at an event for startups and investors from the Nordic countries in New York. He will also appear in a CBS News documentary on Artificial Intelligence, filmed in the East Coast city last week.
At the age of 34, João Ferrão dos Santos has a degree in Economics with a Master’s in Management from Nova School of Business and Economics. After working as a digital nomad for two years, he has spent the last few weeks in various parts of the United States and is planning to move to the country.
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