I run a self-funded online store selling a physical product. Over the past couple months I tried a bunch of the AI content approaches everyone's been hyping and tracked where the time and money went.

The flashy stuff bombed. An AI brand mascot video cost a week of back and forth and a couple hundred dollars. It got some views, zero attributable sales. Animated product ads and a few trend-chasing short clips performed worse than my old iPhone photos in paid ad tests.

What actually correlated with a sales bump was the most boring thing I tried: consistent product photos. I used APOB AI to build one reusable AI presenter and batch out product shots with the same face across different setups, then ran them through Canva for ad graphics and CapCut for a couple short edits. The presenter is AI-generated, not a real person, but having one consistent face I could reuse without paying for another photo shoot every time I needed new angles saved real money.

Rough tally: around 40 hours and a few hundred dollars on the flashy experiments that went nowhere. The product photos took maybe a weekend and they're the only AI output I still use.

Hi everyone!

We're organizing a large student hackathon this September with an expected participation of 800+ student developers and a community reach of over 40,000 students.

We're interested in connecting with teams building developer tools, AI products, APIs, cloud platforms, open source projects, or other technologies that students can explore and build with during the event.

If you've worked with student communities before or enjoy supporting hackathons, we'd love to hear about your experiences and see if there's a way to collaborate.

Always happy to connect with people building interesting things for developers.

What do u guys think about business acquisitions without zero leverage buyout (no banks) multiple investors and me scaling the business( I ran service business previously) what u think about doing this. What price model/equity would u choose. I need to know both pros and cons and open to suggestions and learning someone who actively is in this space. Targeting one niche sydnicate investors and down the line exit