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A Man Built A Billion-Dollar Startup With The Help Of AI
Courtesy of Medvi
A Los Angeles entrepreneur named Matthew Gallagher has built a billion-dollar telehealth startup that sells GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, nearly all of it, by himself… by extensively using AI across every aspect of the business.
Why It Hits: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman once predicted that the day would come when someone would launch a unicorn startup utilizing AI… but it’s amazing that it happened so quickly. (In fact, Altman reportedly wants to meet Gallagher.) Now that there’s a proof of concept, it’s only a matter of time before others follow in Gallagher’s footsteps. The only question is: are we witnessing the future of lean startups, or the dawn of the the startup-slop era?
Behind The Code: Armed with $20,000 and subscriptions to tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney, Runway, and ElevenLabs, Gallagher launched Medvi. The company generated $401 million in sales last year and is projected to reach $1.8 billion in 2026... its second full year of operation.
Here’s how he did it, per The NYT:
He used AI to write much of the company’s code, website copy, ad creative, checkout flows, customer service responses, and performance analytics.
He also built custom AI agents that liaise with the company’s drug providers (CareValidate, OpenLoop Health), connecting products to more than 250,000 customers.
For everything else he couldn’t handle — like some media buying or more advanced accounting — he outsourced to a handful of contractors.
The only other full-time employee he has recently hired is his younger brother, Elliott, along with seven contractors who act as account managers for specific subsets of customers (key as Medvi expands its drug offerings).
Last Prompt: Medvi isn’t exactly a revolutionary company — it’s similar to Hims & Hers and Ro — but AI has significantly boosted the model’s profit margins. Medvi reported a net profit margin of 16.2% last year, while Hims & Hers posted just 5.5%. That advantage comes down to Gallagher’s understanding of both marketing and AI. Kobie Fuller, an investor at VC firm Upfront Ventures who’s advising Gallagher, said, “Those folks that have those skills, it’s kind of like their superpower.”
Next Quarter: As companies like Meta, Block, and Pinterest lay off employees in favor of AI-first business models, expect more companies to start treating individuals like one-person startups within larger organizations.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.