The real cost of building an AI startup — Ricardo Ghekiere @ Patricia

Ricardo Ghekiere bought BetterPic for $1 when the product was still rough, the AI struggled with consistency, and very few people believed AI headshots could become a real business.

Less than three years later, BetterPic had grown into a multimillion-dollar company. But while everyone else was celebrating AI image generation, Ricardo was already thinking about what comes next. That thinking led to BetterStudio, a $2.2M venture-backed bet on AI fashion photography that ultimately failed—and to Runflow and Patricia, the companies that emerged from everything the team learned along the way.

We talked about growing BetterPic through affiliate marketing, why they moved from closed-source to open-source AI models, what actually happens after you raise venture capital, why product-market fit can't be bought with headcount, and how a non-technical founder learned enough about AI infrastructure to build products at scale.

Plus: whether designers disappear before developers, why software itself may eventually become free, and what companies outside the AI bubble are really doing with artificial intelligence.

In this episode:

• Buying BetterPic for $1 and growing it into a multimillion-dollar business
• Why redesigning the product was critical to building customer trust
• How affiliate marketing became one of BetterPic's biggest growth channels
• The AI workflow behind consistent image generation
• Why BetterPic moved from closed-source to open-source AI models
• How open source helped dramatically improve margins
• Raising $2.2M before finding product-market fit
• Why BetterStudio ultimately failed
• The biggest mistake founders make after raising venture capital
• Building Runflow for enterprise AI image workflows
• Why Ricardo believes designers will change faster than developers
• How AI is reshaping internal teams
• Building Patricia—an AI teammate that lives inside Slack
• Why software itself may eventually become free
• What founders outside the AI bubble still misunderstand about AI Ricardo - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricardoghekiere/
• BetterPic - https://betterpic.io
• Runflow - https://runflow.io
• ─── sounds good. — a podcast with Anna Nadeina
• https://soundsgoodpod.com
• sounds good. is sponsored by saas.group — serial acquirer of profitable SaaS businesses. If you're thinking about an exit, they're worth a conversation. https://saas.group/