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Intro
Hey, my name is Luke
What are you working on these days?
Right now I'm working on virtual tourism and using machine learning / cv for 3d rendering.
My current product is Mused (https://mused.org/), and you might've seen us with the virtual guided tour inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.
What can the WIP community help you with right now?
I'm trying to understand how to monetize because my server bills are really high ($6k/mo in Nov $3k/mo in Dec)
I have 50k users and 2k users signing up per day
Right now I just have donate links and require a login to view some of our tours
Should I try to spin off our tour-building tools and sell them to a different market (real estate, corporate education, etc) or make more comprehensive membership experience for people who donate? Or provide institutional membership for schools teaching our tours?
What can you help others with?
I can help easily share huge 3d datasets, make NeRFs for AI-assisted 3d rendering of spaces from image/video (like this https://twitter.com/asierrios/status/1601778161380835328), or provide information about product development, python/js/c#/etc, 3d capture, etc.
Also if you're looking for something meaningful between product dev, can help you get connected to local archaeological projects and historic places where you're living.
Something else you want to share?
More location independent entrepreneurs could read the Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman
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Hi Luke, I never formally welcomed you here so here it goes: welcome to WIP :)
Mused seems really cool and your signup numbers confirm it.
For those server costs, have you reached out to your hosting provider to see if they are willing to sponsor you? Or perhaps some other hosting providers? Your tech is really cool, so I can imagine a forward-looking provider would want to be associated with it. Even if NeRF tech you use isn't directly related to their products.
For long-term monetization, it's hard to predict what would work. I think it's a matter of trying a bunch of things. Try to get into a routine of trying one new monetization approach every week or so. Put yourself out there in different fields to increase your "luck surface". Create a bunch of different applications for Muse and share them on relevant sites.
Also make it easy for someone that sees your work, to reach out and share feedback with you. This could lead to new ideas you haven't thought of yet.
I'd also follow up with some of the press that already covered you. I could totally see National Graphic become a customer for example.
Hey Marc, thanks again for the invite, and great idea on testing a new version every week. I'll start doing that. I've never had subscription revenue before, so it's important learning from everyone here.
I'm on Google Cloud Platform right now, and they sponsored me 2,000 USD but will sponsor 200,000 USD if I get venture funded... which I was kind of torn about because it would pay for a lot of GPUs. Azure has a similar program I was testing out.
Great idea about Natgeo too.. I'll reach out to them.
It seems like virtual tourism is hit- or content-focused right now so have been testing out nerfs to try to differentiate to help other creators instead.