💻 AI Software Engineers: Coding Assistants, Growing to $5M ARR, Training AI Models

In this Trends.vc Report, we talk about IDE plugins, sample code snippets, chatting with code, building in public and more.

🔍 Problem

Software engineers are hard to find, recruit and compensate.

Once you hire them, you risk knowledge being lost when they leave.

💡 Solution

AI software engineers can increasingly solve specific issues on their own.

While engineers focus on domain rules and high-level problems.

🗺️ Roadmap

1️⃣ Pick Your Niche

AI Coding Assistants

• CodePal • Dozens of AI code generation tools
• CodeWP • AI chat and coding tools for WordPress creators
• GitHub Copilot • The world’s most widely adopted AI developer tool
• Bito • Accessible, accurate AI tools trusted by developers across the world
• Amazon CodeWhisperer • Your AI-powered productivity tool for the IDE and command line
• Tabnine • Private and personalized AI coding assistant
• Codeium • The most intelligent AI code generation tool
• Sourcegraph Cody • Search, write and understand code fast
• CodeGPT • AI code chat, auto-completion, explanation, error-checking and more
• AutoCode Pro • Build Chrome extensions, web and mobile apps from text
• AlphaCode • Competitive programming tool with critical thinking, logic, algorithms and more

2️⃣ Build Your App

• Build a plugin for popular code editors such as VS Code and JetBrains IDEs. You can reach your target audience with lower market risks.

• Tabnine works with 15 code editors.
• Codeium works with 40+ code editors.
• Codebuddy works with 16 code editors.

• Build an AI agent that completes coding tasks on autopilot.

• Devin can do Upwork gigs on autopilot.
• CodeGPT can handle coding tasks on your behalf.
• ReactAgent builds React components from user stories.
• Fine has AI agents that understand, analyze, generate and test code.

• Train your own model to differentiate from competitors.

• Tabnine is trained on open-source repositories.
• Refact combines its custom and third-party AI models.
• GitHub Copilot is trained on all languages from public repositories.
• CodeWP offers AI chat and coding tools trained for WordPress creators.

3️⃣ Pick Your Monetization Strategy

• Charge per user to grow as your customers grow.

• Codacy costs up to $18 per user/mo.
• Tabnine costs up to $39 per user/mo.
• AskCodi costs up to $29.99 per user/mo.

• Offer subscriptions to get predictable revenue.

• Sweep costs $480 per month.
• Replit AI costs $20 per month.
• Fine costs up to $99 per month.

• Build a monetized open-source tool. Let customers self-host or pay for a managed solution.

• Sweep has open-source and pro versions.
• Refact has open-source and cloud versions.
• CodeGeeX has open-source and paid enterprise versions.

4️⃣ Find Your First Customers

• Build a playground to help users experience value faster.

• Tabby has a playground with a sample coding task.
• Blackbox AI has a playground with pre-built coding prompts.
• Codeium has a playground with Python, JavaScript, Go, C++ and Java.

• Share sample problems that your tool can solve. This helps customers understand your value better.

• Sweep shares sample coding issues it can solve.
• CodeWP shares AI code snippets and plugin examples.
• Bito shares AI prompts for generating new code or fixing existing code.

• Build in public to get trust and early fans. Share challenges, milestones and product updates.

• Shawn Wang is building smol.ai in public.
• William Zeng and Kevin Lu are building Sweep in public.
• Sandeep Pani and Naresh Ramesh are building Aide in public.

5️⃣ Improve User Experience

• Let users chat with the code. Make it easy to write and edit code with natural language.

• Tabnine has an AI chat that can generate and document code.
• Cursor lets you edit an entire method or class with a single prompt.
• Replit Ghostwriter lets you generate and summarize your code via a chat.
• GitHub Copilot lets you chat with your code to build new features and fix bugs.

• Offer personalized services to show commitment to your customer’s success.

• Fine can build custom tools and integrations for your use cases.
• Replit AI offers personalized onboarding to enterprise customers.
• Codeium offers personalized onboarding and training for your organization.
• Aide offers personalized onboarding and weekly office hours with the engineering team.

• Have a strong privacy policy to address concerns about code and know-how privacy.

• Tabnine has a dedicated privacy page.
• GitHub Copilot has a trust center with privacy and security policies.
• Codacy shares security policies on infrastructure, data encryption and more.

6️⃣ Boost Brand Awareness

• Use programmatic SEO to target high-intent keywords.

• AskCodi targets dozens of programming languages.
• ZZZ Code AI targets dozens of code generator and explainer tool keywords.
• CodePal has dozens of pages for the query “Code Generator for \[Programming Language]”.

• Become a guest on interviews to boost your visibility.

• Amar Goel shared Bito on the AI Chat podcast.
• Eran Yahav talked about building Tabnine with Kyle Simpson.
• Kevin Hou talked about building Codeium at the Syntax podcast.
• Allan Mørch shares how he beat cancer and grew AskCodi to $5,000,000 ARR.

• Launch on Product Hunt to get more traffic.

• Bito got “3rd product of the day” with 460 upvotes.
• Fine got “2nd product of the day” with 737 upvotes.
• Sourcery got “4th product of the day and week” with 1,036 upvotes.

7️⃣ Scale Your Business

• Use freemium to lower customer acquisition costs.

• Codeium is free for individual users.
• AskCodi has a free plan with access to its base model.
• Replit AI has a free plan with limited access to AI features.

• Make your tool free for individual developers. Happy users will spread the word about you at work. This can lead to the adoption of your tool at the company level.

• Fine is free for individuals and small companies.
• Amazon CodeWhisperer is free for individual use.
• Codeium offers unlimited AI usage for individual developers.

• Use side project marketing to generate leads. Target search intents for solving development tasks.

• AI2sql has a free SQL formatter.
• Codepal has dozens of tools for generating, analyzing and improving code.
• aiXcoder has a code search engine that lets you search API use cases, GitHub repos, similar code and more.

🔗 Links

1. The world's first AI software engineer • The thread behind this report.
2. Building a Report on AI Software Engineers • The tweet behind this report.
3. Can AI Replace Software Engineers? • Software engineers discuss Devin and how to future-proof your career.
4. How AI Code Generation Works • The benefits of AI code generation for developers.

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