AIM v0.1 and Our First Million
~100 weeks, 10+ cohorts, 400+ Customers, 1M+ automated emails, $1M in Lifetime Revenue, and a lifetime of building 🏗️, shipping 🚢, and sharing 🚀 ahead.
AIM v0.1
AI Makerspace, v0.1, or AIM v0.1.
That’s the title of our next chapter.
Somehow, in the first 6 months of the business, from July 2023 through the beginning of 2024, it felt like so many chapters and milestones were hit.
One day, when I write a book detailing the journey, you might see chapters like:
Prologue: VCs and Mickey D's
Chapter 1: The Real Silicon Valley
Chapter 2: Cohort 1
Chapter 3: Frank
Chapter 4: The Band
Chapter 5: Llamas and Langs
Chapter 6: The AI Engineering Bootcamp
Chapter 7: AIM v0.1
We launched the first cohort of The AI Engineering Bootcamp in January, 2024.
We’re going to launch the 7th cohort in a few weeks.
Since early 2024, we’ve been keeping our heads down. It’s felt like the part of the story that is a montage in the movie - the kind that shows Rocky crushing it.
In reality, it doesn’t feel that way. It feels more like “and then for a long time we kind of just worked really hard.”
Every week since we started this journey we’ve been doing lots of things things.
Literally every single week … (well, mostly every week):
Teaching The AI Engineering Bootcamp on Tuesday and Thursday evening
Hosting weekly YouTube Live events on Wednesday
Sending our weekly newsletter The LLM Edge out
Managing our Discord community (s/o to The Wiz)
That means, like almost 100 weeks! Next week will be the 99th week since incorporating the business.
In short, we’ve been running a business for 2 years!
In production, or in prod, you might say. That is, without going down.
Well, mostly.
On Metrics, or Our First Million
A few weeks ago, I saw that we had sent 1M emails from our Kit account.
Those were just the automated, scalable emails, too. Not the 1:1 grinding emails associated with closing sales, or the countless DMs in Discord or LinkedIn.
Now, we’ve just crested the $1M in total revenue.
Like total, lifetime revenue.
That means we built a business that made $1M.
Whoa.
Dope.
While this is a clean stripe screenshot that doesn’t do a perfect job of capturing all transactions, it does get 95+% (maybe more like 99%) of the information right.
Most of all, it indicates what the journey has been like.
Ups. And downs.
It took something like 100 weeks, 1M automated emails, 10+ cohorts, and 400+ paying customers.
As of Monday, June 2, here’s a snapshot of the community we built, by the numbies.
Newsletter = 18,691
YouTube = 12,673
LinkedIn = 10,932
Discord = 2,555
X = 918
What do I see when I look at all of this?
Vanity metrics. Duh.
Stepping Back to Reflect
My partner in crime (and in business) Chris “The LLM Wizard 🪄” Alexiuk has inspired me with his shipping recently, from his vibe-coded blog to finally trouncing my LinkedIn following a few weeks ago - WTG my dude 🤘. Nothing like a little healthy competition between co-founders ;)
There are two other important factors here though: one personal, and one social.
Personal Reflections
First, the personal side.
I’m 36 years old, going on 37. I’ve only got until 40 until I’m 40. So it goes.
So I’ve been reflecting heading into the second half of life.
Specifically, this is the vibe.
I am not just the Co-Founder & CEO of AI Makerspace.
I am not just “Dr. Greg” from YouTube and from our courses.
I am not just a community meetup leader for our local trail-running community in Dayton, Ohio the last Saturday of every month around Sunset.
I am not just a full-time dad to a lovely 18-year old daughter who just graduated high school a few weeks ago.
I am not just part of the Loughnane family, nor am I just a friend to a small circle of legends in my life.
These are roles that, historically, I might say that I “played.”
These days, I like to think about them as roles that I’ve “arrived into” or are “arriving into.”
This blog, once something I took very seriously, kind of fell by the wayside as things got busy with the business.
Last time I was writing a blog here I was coming from the perspective of “Greg, Head of Product, Content Strategy, and AI Curriculum at FourthBrain.” I was also kind of coming from just “Greg’s Personal Brand.”
When I’m writing this blog now, my context is somewhere between “Greg’s Personal Brand” and “Dr. Greg, author of the Unautomatablog.”
I’m not sure yet, really. It’s still a role I feel like I’m playing as I stay on my path.
I haven’t quite arrived into it yet.
But arriving into writing blogs is something that I value - no different than giving an old friend a call.
We can take this idea further: there are other roles are on my list to arrive into. Roles like book author, startup community leader, investor, musician (still can’t play the guitar!), husband, and more.
As we like to say at AI Makerspace, it’s important to “🛣️ Embrace ‘I don’t know’ on the path of lifelong learning, especially in the age of AI.” [Ref] This is a core value across our company and our community.
One of my personal core values is that 🧠 And is genius and I try to embrace the genius of the and.
I can play roles and arrive into them.
Another one of my personal core values is to 🖼️ Confidently create; to have confidence in what’s possible and to embrace my potential; to focus on my strengths while minding my weaknesses.
What I’m doing right now writing this is, in some sense, combining the ideas I value above; and ultimately, living out our ethos of 🏗️ build, 🚢 ship, 🚀 share, while staying on my personal path to becoming unautomatable.
OK, OK.
Enough.
What I want to tell you is that the coolest freaking thing is starting to happen around me.
Or perhaps, I’m just finally noticing what’s happening and am able to articulate it because I’m conscious of it at last … 🤔
This vibe - of playing roles to arrive into them - of confidently creating - in short, of building, shipping, and sharing - appears to be catching on…
Which brings me to the social factor motivating my writing today.
Community Reflections
I’ve been inspired recently by the impact that our work at AI Makerspace has had on individuals in our community.
While so much has changed since we started this great adventure, so much hasn’t.
The Vision, the Mission, and Core Values haven’t changed.
Our ethos of Build 🏗️, Ship 🚢, and Share 🚀 hasn’t changed either.
In fact, it’s been an epic journey of building, shipping, and sharing with our community.
Of course, Wiz and I believed all this would work from Day 1. You kind of have to believe and be a little crazy and out there to do this startup thing after all.
Now, others have felt the impact that this approach has on their own life.
A few long-form examples:
May 2025: Mo Afzaal (@Mo), Build, Ship, Share is the way
Nov 2024: Todd Deshane (@ToddLLM), Transition from SWE to ML
July 2024: Mike Chrabaszcz (@MikeC), AI Makerspace
So many legends have turned up in our community. Some of them, like Todd and MikeC, have been around for what feels like forever. They were believers and early adopters too. Now, we have new folks buying in and jumping in to spread the world - people like Mo.
Many of the other community legends we’ve met over the last few years have gone from students and learners to peer supporters, instructors, and even consulting contractors doing AI Makerspace-referred consulting work for their own businesses!
A very select few of the best of them decided to going all in with us (s/o to Jacob and Laura The Legend!).
I’m not sure what’s happening - but it feels like the right mix of the right people, in the right seats on the bus, at the right time for the industry.
And you know what?
This vision that Wiz and I had for AI Makerspace - that this company could create the world’s leading community for people who want to build 🏗️, ship 🚢, and share 🚀 production LLM applications - it feels like more like something we are arriving into than a role that we’re playing.
That’s distinctly different, for me at least, than it used to be.
And that - well, that - feels even valuable than $1M in lifetime revenue.
Well, CEO Greg just reminded me that the cash and the feels this gives me are both valuable ;)
So welcome everyone, to AIM v0.1.
Thanks for joining us on the next leg of this grand adventure.
I hope this inspires you to build, ship, and share something soon. If you need more fuel, keep an eye out for incoming emails and banger web pages highlighting community wins from Lusk, or hear from Laura The Legend about community wins on Discord, LinkedIn, or through our Newsletter. Our team is working hard all the time to get the good word out better than ever!
And until next time, keep building 🏗️, shipping 🚢, and sharing 🚀, and we’ll do the same.
Stay on the path,
Cheers,
Dr. Greg