Welcome to Homebase AI - A weekly newsletter where we share our interviews with founders & leaders building next-gen AI companies and curate interesting news, insights & trends in the AI space for our community members.
What’s on tap today:
Our interview with Chris Browning
Weekly Headline Recap
What's trending in AI this week
Deepseek vs OpenAI (We went Viral!)
AI Founder Story
How Chris Built His Portfolio of Bootstrapped AI Products After His $4.5M VC-backed Startup Failed
Quick Background
Chris Brownridge is a British tech entrepreneur living in Seattle who transformed from a non-technical startup CEO to a hands-on builder after his venture-backed company closed in 2019. After teaching himself to code through Google Apps Script, he built and sold a business during COVID, then acquired Flixr in 2022. Today, he runs both a video agency creating short-form content for performance marketers and an AI consultancy, helping businesses develop custom AI solutions while using service revenue to fund new product experiments.
Key Achievements & Insights:
Raised $4.5M across two rounds (2016-2017) for GawkBox, initially growing to $10K/day
Self-taught coding through Google Apps Script, leading to multiple successful ventures
Built and sold a business during COVID, then acquired Flixr in 2022
Developed an AI consultancy generating 70% of revenue through referrals
Created sophisticated AI tools including a Slack bot that processes 100 leads in 10 seconds
Maintains a "ship within a month" development philosophy
Uses modern AI development tools (Cursor, Replit agent) for rapid prototyping
Focuses on spreadsheet-based tools for operational simplicity
Implements innovative referral strategy using AI to analyze work history overlaps
Combines content strategy (including podcast) with targeted outreach
Watch the full interview below! 👇
The Ultimate Lesson
Chris Brownridge's journey from non-technical CEO to hands-on builder reveals a crucial insight about modern entrepreneurship: technical literacy fundamentally changes how you build and scale businesses. His evolution from raising $4.5M in VC funding to running profitable bootstrapped ventures shows the power of understanding technology firsthand.
In today's tech landscape, coding knowledge isn't just about writing software—it's about making better decisions, moving faster, and staying closer to market needs. The ability to understand and build technology isn't just an advantage—it's becoming essential for sustainable success.
HEADLINE ROUNDUP
Headline recap
Blackstone's $300M AI Investment (WSJ) Leading investment firm injects $300 million into DDN, valuing the AI data company at $5 billion.ck, Nvidia, and AMD in latest funding round.
AWS's $11B Georgia Expansion (YF) Amazon Web Services announces massive $11 billion investment in Georgia for AI and cloud infrastructure development.
2024's Record $97B AI Investment (BB) Venture capitalists poured unprecedented $97 billion into US AI startups, setting new industry funding record.
Microsoft's $3B India Push (DN) Tech giant Microsoft commits $3 billion to strengthen AI and cloud infrastructure across India.
Anthropic Seeks $2B Funding (IL) Leading AI company Anthropic aims to raise $2 billion in latest funding round at $60 billion valuation.
TRENDS
What's trending in AI
Blackbox AI - AI Development Assistant
Key Player: Blackbox AI offering comprehensive coding assistance
Market Value: Part of the growing AI development tools market
Adoption: Volume reached 2.24M with explosive 4900% growth from 2022-2024
Recent Developments: Advanced code generation, completion, search, and image analysis features
Growth: The dramatic 4900% surge in Blackbox AI usage since 2022 indicates massive market acceleration. The platform has seen particularly strong adoption among developers, with volume reaching 2.24M users, showing explosive market penetration.
Why It Matters: For developers, Blackbox AI represents a significant productivity boost compared to traditional coding methods. The tool offers comprehensive assistance through multiple platforms (web, mobile, browser extensions) while providing instant solutions to coding challenges.
The Big Picture: The AI development assistance market has evolved from simple code completion tools to sophisticated AI-powered platforms. Blackbox AI differentiates itself by offering a complete suite of development tools including code generation, completion, search, and image analysis. Professional developers are driving adoption, while coding learners are exploring AI assistance for skill development. The market shows continued momentum with exponential growth in user volume and expanding feature sets across the platform.
Blackbox AI
Deepseek vs OpenAI! (We went viral)
Our post about Deepseek went viral on LinkedIn
TLDR: DeepSeek just outperformed OpenAI in 2 months with $6M versus OpenAI's $6B and a decade of R&D.
Join the discussion and let us know what you think about the new player in town!
Join the Deepseek vs OpenAI Discussion
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