Setting aside the veracity of the $100m claim: Manus is a spin out of a spin out, building on ~10 years of previous work. The “fastest company to 100m arr” has become a meme so it doesn’t deserve much scrutiny but it seems a somewhat tenuous claim in this case.
The thing about ARR numbers is that in most cases they didn't really recur, especially for an 8-month-old company. Also, I don't really care about these numbers anymore unless they share how much they spent on marketing.
Looking at that list, the top three companies are essentially about building apps without writing code. The next one is about helping developers write code. Perplexity is the only real outlier, and even that not by much. I am by no means an AI pessimist, but I can't help think where are all the awesome companies in other sectors that this technology is supposed to unlock.
I understand that many industries will take years to adopt. Fine. But about sub-sectors in tech—gaming, design, data? What is happening beyond "make software development easier"? Is it because ChatGPT like apps are enough for most people?
I co-mentor with a large online school for an AI accelerator course. We get about 600 participants each month, paying about $500-600 for a 14 day course. I only co-mentor for 2 days - the days we teach fundamentals of software development and then show how to code with Replit, Bolt, Lovable, Emergent, etc.
One of the most common questions is "can I build on xyz and shift to abc because I do not want to pay?" And another is "can I host the code myself?"
Customers know they do not need to stay with any of these code builders. The platforms know it too. They spend tons of $ to get customers, who use the credits and then leave.
Each of the players are just eating each others customers and showing growth. Perplexity has acquired who knows how many customers in India through their 12 month free Pro offer via Airtel (a telecom provider): https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/11842322-p...
Never met a single person who used Replit/Lovable/Bolt/v0, all folks have either custom harnesses around top-tier labs' models, or use their dev-tools (cc, codex, etc). It feels like Manus & Co are very niche thing
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 42.3 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manus_(AI_agent)
I understand that many industries will take years to adopt. Fine. But about sub-sectors in tech—gaming, design, data? What is happening beyond "make software development easier"? Is it because ChatGPT like apps are enough for most people?
Just a faster horse.
This just doesn't smell right overall.
One of the most common questions is "can I build on xyz and shift to abc because I do not want to pay?" And another is "can I host the code myself?"
Customers know they do not need to stay with any of these code builders. The platforms know it too. They spend tons of $ to get customers, who use the credits and then leave.
Manus is running $5000 credit for 2000 people. A simple search shows so many offers: https://x.com/search?q=ManusAI%20credits&src=typed_query
Each of the players are just eating each others customers and showing growth. Perplexity has acquired who knows how many customers in India through their 12 month free Pro offer via Airtel (a telecom provider): https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/11842322-p...
I'll let GenAI complete that one.
It saddens me that we're making gezillions in complete hype businesses while people work their butts off for pebbles.
> Let Manus handle the work — you focus on the decisions
As a general comment I am getting tired of AI wishy washy slop. Just tell me how you crunch the tokens and benefits. The marketing has gotten cliche.