How One Guy Built a $1.8B AI Company

Here's how one guy built a 1.8 billion dollar AI company just two employees and $20,000 to start and he did it from his living room in Los Angeles. His name is Matthew Gallagher He's 41 years old and his company Medve just did 401 million dollars in revenue in his first year this year They're on track for 1.8 billion dollars The New York Times verified the financials and here's the part that breaks your brain Medve has two employees Matthew and his younger brother Elliot. That's it. Sam Altman predicted this would happen in 2024 he said a one-person billion-dollar company was coming something that would be unimaginable without AI He recently emailed the New York Times and said he won a bet with his tech CEO friends When it would arrive and he wants to meet Matthew personally So let me walk you through exactly how he built this because the tools he used you have access to every single one of them Right now Matthew didn't come from money.

He had a Itinerant childhood right he lived out of motels and cars before landing in Cincinnati when he was 12 His uncle gave him a laptop and he taught himself to code so he could make a weird out Yankovic fan page now as a teenager, he started building websites for local business He was selling candles and samurai swords on eBay 18 years old he built a web hosting business and she sold it for $6,000 He then moved to Los Angeles to try out acting that didn't work out. He went back to tech and in 2016 he built a company called watch gang that sold wristwatches by subscription It had fans But it never turned a profit even after hiring 60 people and that experience changed everything about how Matthew thinks about hiring He said having 60 employees didn't help watch gang grow It just increased his costs and slowed down his decisions and more people basically meant more meetings more opinions more friction So when chat GPT dropped in 2022 Matthew started tinkering and in 2024 he met Jitin Chabra a co-founder of care validate a medical startup in Atlanta offers telehealth in a box Basically companies can use care validates tech and network of online doctors to set up a telehealth business They handle the doctors pharmacies prescriptions shipping and compliance now Matthew saw the opportunity immediately GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, for example, like ozempic Weger v Munjaro this demand is through the roof for these right and some people want these but they can't get appointments fast enough There's wait lists everywhere and companies like him and hers health were already selling GLL p1s online Hymns has 2,400 employees and did for 2.4 billion dollars in revenue last year But Matthew for he could do the same thing cheaper and faster with AI. So here's what he built He used chat GPT Claude and grok to write the code for med fees entire platform Mid-journey made all the images runway made the video ads 11 labs handled the customer service calls with AI voice agents and then he built Custom AI agents to switch all those systems together and stitch them So they all work so that the ads drive traffic the site books appointments The AI handles follow-ups and the whole thing runs on autopilot The total cost to build it and launch it was $20,000 that includes the software and the first month of marketing Medve launched in September 2024. It charged as low as $179 for a first month supply of GLP ones that's in line with competitors and from the beginning Matthew's words were Growth was insane 300 customers in month 1 1000 more in month 2 by the end of 2025 med fees first full year.

They had 250,000 customers of 101 million dollars in sales and his was really standing out here med fees net profit margin was 16.2% that's 65 million dollars in net profit hims the company with 2442 employees and a public listing or their net profit margin is just 5.5% Matthew is three times more profitable with two people. Now. Was it smooth the whole transition? No, his customer service chatbot made up prices for drugs that didn't exist sometimes He honored those prices by the way, and the chatbot also hallucinated It told customers that med fee sold hair loss drugs when it didn't he'd Originally trained the bot to transfer customers to his cell phone if they wanted a real person that led to over 1,000 Customer service calls coming to his personal phone There was also a moment where he changed something small on the website and went for a hike Whilst he was on the trail one of his media agencies called and said there hadn't been a single order in the last hour His update had broken the checkout form with no one to fix it.

He sprinted home He lost about 200 customers from the downtime and I want to be real about this as well Matthew had advantages. He already knew marketing from watch gang. He knows how to use AI at a deep level Kobol fuller a VC up from ventures who's advised him said Matthew's combination of marketing skills and AI Fluency is his superpower. Not everyone has that starting point, of course, but the bigger lesson here is it is not about the model, right?

Matthew didn't invent anything new glop one telehealth already existed He just took an existing idea and used AI to implement it faster cheaper and leaner than anyone else now If you want to learn how to actually build an AI automation business how to use AI to launch faster how to automate your operations How to get customers without a big team come check out the AI profit boardroom link in the comments description We've already built 30-day roadmaps around using tools like Claude Chachi Petit and AI agents to generate leads and run a business Lean we've got members in there right now building all sorts of companies service companies agencies ecom brands all using the same tools that Matthew's for coaching calls a week where we walk through Exactly how to set this stuff up and a member map so you can connect with other Solo operators near you who are doing the same things link in the comments description or go to the air profitable and comm to get Access, so let's talk about what happened next because Matthew didn't stop at GLP once He thought about acquiring other health companies and then he realized it was just as easy to build themselves in February this year medfee started selling men's health products, for example All sorts of interesting stuff that I won't mention here, but that business hit 50,000 customers in its first month It's on track to be bigger than the GLP one business within four months last month He added healthy meal delivery plans Next up is women's health so hormone therapy stuff and then hair growth Supplements and skincare all using the same playbook AI builds it AI markets it AI runs customer service the telehealth platforms Handle the medical side medfee is now making more than three million dollars a day and Matthew still works from his house He works basically anytime. He's not sleeping showering or spending time with two kids He even made an AI clone of his voice using 11 labs to manage his personal life It calls and schedules his appointments. So he has more time to work on medfee He asked cobalt fuller if he should raise venture capital and fuller told him that he didn't need the money So he shouldn't raise it right just keep building Matthew later thanked him for that advice medfee has zero outside investors His total profit so far is between 70 and 80 million dollars he said it's made him Emotional given where he came from for the first time. He said I'm not in survival mode He told the New York Times he then set up a foundation with a million dollars Donated to an ally cat rescue and has plans to donate to a non-profit Helping young people experiencing homelessness His goal is to run most of medfee's profits through the foundation now Here's where this connects to you.

So the tools Matthew used cost almost nothing You got chat GPT Claude grog mid journey runway 11 labs You can sign up for all of them today the telehealth in a box platforms He plugged into are available to anyone. The playbook is not secret. What made it work was speed. He saw demand He moved fast.

He let AI handle everything He didn't need to do personally and then he kept the team so tiny So decisions happened in literally minutes not weeks The cost of starting a company has collapsed the cost of building a website Collapsed the cost of running ads collapsed customer service collapsed, right two years ago launching a telehealth company Would have taken like two to five million dollars in funding the team of 50 people Matthew did it with $20,000 from his couch and these tools are getting better every month Claude is now smarter than when Matthew started runways video quality has jumped For example 11 labs sounds way more human than ever did before And what one person can build today is more than what a funded startup could build three years ago Matthew doesn't plan to hire more people He said he just doesn't see how it would help medfee though He did say something that stuck with me at this point. I kind of want to hire people because I'm lonely He did bring on several Contract account managers recently to give a human touch to some customers those account managers remember for example birthdays Names personal details and to keep track across all of those relationships of all those clients. Well, they're using AI now Let's be honest here. Not everyone is gonna build a 1.8 billion dollar company But the lesson for medfee is clear here.

You don't need a hundred employees. You don't need millions in funding You just need a market with real demand AI tools to move fast and the willingness to just go If you want to learn how to actually build an AI business an AI powered one step-by-step The AI profit boardroom is where we break this stuff down every single day We've got 30-day roam ups built around launching AI powered businesses We've got daily tutorials and setting up AI agents automated lead gen using Ford and chat GPT to handle operations and there's 2700 business owners inside there many of them building one or two person companies using the exact same stack Matthew used and Inside there as well You'll get four coaching calls every week a prompt library and a member map so you can find and connect with other builders near you Link in the comments description or just go to the AIprofitboardroom.com to get access. Thanks for watching