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Ask HN: What's the verdict on GPT wrapper companies these days?

12 points NewUser76312 | 5 comments | 07 Jul 25 20:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.839s | source

Do you use any, do you find them valuable, do they do something the foundation model companies are not doing?

I wondered this about a year ago and wanted to revisit the question.

Today I did some research on Product Hunt and also looked through various recent YC companies. What hit me immediately was - wow! - there are some really good designers (or maybe it's with AI now) putting together slick product demos and 1-3 min vids. Most of the products I came across are AI for various things like creating office docs, sending emails, creating presentations, web scraping, making mobile apps, managing meetings and relationships, etc.

However, when I get past the flashiness and start investigating a bit, I don't really see what's special or setting these products apart from a foundation model + rudimentary RAG in some cases. In fact, many file-related and memory-dependent applications can be done perfectly well via the base Open AI chat website today. To give credit where it's due, I think some of these products have better 'flows' via various prompt engineering tricks. Enough to justify a big monthly stipend over my existing OAI/Anthropic subscriptions, I don't know.

But my overall take when I see many of these, is that they are probably not startups, at least not ones that I see lasting. They have to go more and more niche to get away from the tentacles of increasingly capable foundation model capabilities. The big ones that seem to be enduring and doing well are Perplexity and Cursor, they seem to have grown quickly enough in the early days to attract a lot of resources and talent to keep building features. So maybe the foundation models can only do ~60% of what they do, while for the products/startups I described above, that number is more like 90%. My conclusion is to be somewhat bearish on 'GPT wrappers', perhaps until more creative ideas (e.g. physical-world use cases) come to fruition, because the SaaS space seems rough.

1. ezekg ◴[07 Jul 25 20:38 UTC] No.44494441[source]▶
No B2B customer really cares what technology underpins a business. They never have, and they never will. They care about two things: does it help them save money, or does it help them make money? And does it do either of those things better than the alternatives? Many GPT wrappers do it better than raw dogging GPT, or for cheaper -- especially when factoring in cost of time -- so it's easy to see the value, albeit technology-wise it's also easy to get caught up in the simplicity; but most buyers don't get caught up in such things.
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2. NewUser76312 ◴[07 Jul 25 21:03 UTC] No.44494642[source]▶
Very valid points, agreed.

I suppose my interest is more in the long-term durability in such companies.

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3. ◴[07 Jul 25 22:33 UTC] No.44495283[source]▶
4. bravesoul2 ◴[08 Jul 25 02:02 UTC] No.44496314[source]▶
There is existential danger for wrappers. OpenAI is running ads for wrapper-like use cases you can run for free right now.

The AIs will be eventually trainable to be a wrapper by ordinary people. I.e. they ask for the wrapped thing. "Make my photo look good for LinkedIn". It will do a better job.

5. HenryBemis ◴[08 Jul 25 11:24 UTC] No.44499000[source]▶
I am thinking that some years ago everyone with a Windows PC had to buy an antivirus SW and then MS added Defender.

And then (in reverse) Windows had Solitaire and Pinball and now they don't.

Right now ChatGPT does 'ten things'. I believe it will be like Amazon. Allow you to build your shop-in-a-shop, and then once they see that they can jump this number from 'ten' to 'twenty', they will start offering the extra services/products within the same price, and cut the wrappers 'organically'. Unless those wrappers innovate and improve forever. Or until ChatGPT will M&A those small wrappers.