AICosts.ai Update: First Paying Customers & Growth Strategy
Quick recap
AICosts.ai is the unified dashboard I built to track AI spending across 50+ platforms after getting tired of juggling multiple billing portals and surprise charges from forgotten automations. We recently tried our first organic launch on PH a few days ago as well so thank you to everyone who upvoted and/or commented!
Milestone Update: First Paying Subscribers!
Just hit two major milestones this week:
First $19.99/month Pro subscriber - A freelance developer who was manually tracking costs across 8 different AI services in a Google Sheet (sound familiar?)
First $49.99/month Business subscriber - A small agency that got burned by a $600 surprise OpenAI bill last month and needed team-wide visibility
Both found us through word-of-mouth and PH, which validates that this pain point is REAL for people actually building with AI tools daily.
What's Working vs. What's Not
The good: Organic discovery is happening. People who find the tool immediately get it.
The challenge: Reaching the right audience at scale. Most AI cost management conversations happen in scattered communities, and traditional marketing feels too broad for this niche.
Testing New Growth Channels
Based on where our current users came from, I'm experimenting with:
LinkedIn Strategy:
Sales Navigator targeting: CTOs, Engineering Managers, and Founders at 10-500 person companies using AI tools
LinkedIn Groups: Joining AI/ML communities, startup founder groups, and developer cost optimization discussions
Cold DMs: Personalized outreach to people posting about AI tool usage/costs (not spammy sales pitches)
Facebook Groups:
SaaS founder communities
Indie hacker groups focused on AI projects
Developer communities discussing tool costs
B2B Communities I'm Testing/Considering:
Indie Hackers - Great for bootstrapped founders tracking costs
r/MachineLearning - Engineers often discuss infrastructure costs
Dev.to - Writing about AI cost optimization strategies
Y Combinator Work at a Startup - Startups burning cash on AI experiments
Slack communities like Startup School, AI/ML communities
Discord servers for AI builders and indie developers
Questions for the Community:
Where do you typically discuss AI tool costs/budgets? Looking for communities I might have missed.
What would make you actually pay for cost tracking? The free version shows basic spending, but wondering what premium features drive conversions.
Anyone else finding success with niche B2B community marketing? This feels like the right approach but curious about others' experiences.
The plan is to stay close to these communities, provide genuine value (not just promote), and let the product speak for itself when people have the problem we solve.
P.S. - Building in public has been surprisingly helpful. The transparency around our journey seems to resonate with other founders dealing with similar challenges. Will keep sharing updates as we scale!
What channels have worked best for you when targeting very specific B2B niches like this?
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