5 ms·
Bhutan's first AI startup is seven college kids in a dorm
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago> As of June, NoMindBhutan had 150,000 ngultrum ($1,799 [USD]) in the bank For context, google search puts the average monthly Bhutan salary at ~200 USD.
- __rito__ 2y agoYes, the money is extremely, extremely low. Even from an Indian subcontinent point-of-view. I didn't expect them to boast hundreds of thousands of USD, but they should have at least made 20k-30k USD.
- Ugyen_Tech 2y agoYeah, it's a bit more compared to our average monthly salary, but I'm not sure how much you understand our work and sacrifices to save up this $1,799. We've been running our startup without paying ourselves a single penny for 13 months straight, using our own pocket money for traveling and covering expenses the entire time. We've earned extra funds by developing websites for local people, and every bit of money we get from this goes straight into our bank account. That's how we've managed to save this amount. We have our goals, and getting external funds is like finding a unicorn here, so we want to reinvest in ourselves.
- thaithrowawayy 2y agoSo fascinating, we have 7 college kids "struggling" to build an webapp using AI apis......
- simonw 2y agoAre they using APIs? It's not clear from the article, which mentions that many international cloud services are unavailable in Bhutan (presumably due to those companies not accepting payments from Bhutan residents). > “One of the main challenges we face is the inability to access international payment platforms such as Stripe and PayPal. Additionally, we do not have access to cloud servers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud to host our AI models, which is crucial for reducing costs and improving the quality of our AI,” said Dendup. Many of these services are not available in Bhutan, “making it impossible for us to even open an account,” he said. Hard to tell exactly what they are building from this article.
- airplanejane 2y agoLooking at their website looks like they are building an integrated AI chatbot service - it's inserted via JS using wordpress / other plugin see: https://www.nomindbhutan.com/guide https://www.nomindbhutan.com/guide As a complete aside I enjoyed their about us section: https://www.nomindbhutan.com/#aboutus https://www.nomindbhutan.com/#aboutus
- Ugyen_Tech 2y agoWe have a few more products developed and ready to launch once we integrate with a payment gateway. The reason we are focusing on the chatbot is that it is the only sellable product in my country for our sustainability. So, at least from there, we can generate some revenue to run and build our other products. That's why we mostly showcase it on our website. If you are interested and want to know more, please contact me here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ugyentech/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ugyentech/. I can give a live demo.
- FinnKuhn 2y agoI think this section of their website shows some examples of their work: https://www.nomindbhutan.com/#featuredbot https://www.nomindbhutan.com/#featuredbot It seems to be mostly chatbot integrations and development. I think it is difficult to judge for anyone in a western country, what challenges they are facing regarding services not being offered in their country.
- DowagerDave 2y agoit's probably not unlike what it was like to say "let's build a chatbot company" in the west 20+ years ago. Way less compute power & lego-component services to utilize, higher prices for everything, and much more build evrything yourself.
- mindfullbhutan 2y agoThey have used chatbase api and the funny part is their api key is exposed
- ryanmcbride 2y agothere are lots of different groups of 7 college kids operating at different levels all over the world.
- Ugyen_Tech 2y agomaybe but Let these "different groups of 7 college kids" come to Bhutan and work where they can't even create Stripe or Azure accounts, where you can't pay on AWS or Google Cloud and need to run on free plans, where internet costs are among the highest in the world. I hope they can survive.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Ugyen_Tech 2y agoBy the way, we are not "struggling" to build our web app; we are struggling to get access to cloud services and payment gateways.
- Ugyen_Tech 2y agoHonestly, it doesn’t matter if it’s API or running your own LLMs—users don’t care, bro. What matters most is the user experience and the quality of the output. We wish we could also host our fine-tuned LLMs on the cloud, running all our products like this. Unfortunately, that’s just not possible where we are. So we’re left with using APIs.
- KenArrari 2y agoAlpha signal. Investing asap.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoBhutan looks so cosy. Would love to travel there.
- polotics 2y agoBeen there. When you land in Paro airport be sure to look out to the right, this is one of if not the most challenging landings in the world. Check out the approach https://community.infiniteflight.com/t/a-guide-to-the-paro-approach/500927 https://community.infiniteflight.com/t/a-guide-to-the-paro-a... Be sure you are aware of the tourist fee, aka. sustainable development fee, $100 per day I believe right now. If Barcelona implemented the same I don't think the locals would have to resort to water pistols on the Ramblas. Do visit the Tiger's Nest, be ready for long walks, if the weather is rainy be very careful about some of the trecks, torrents are dangerous. Apart from this, if you like spicy food and the feeling that somehow all the other tourists forgot to come, go for it!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DowagerDave 2y agoMy immediate response was "7? Why does it take so many of them?" but after that it was about all the non-AI challenges they must be tackling.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]