“Pre-2023, unless you were building a marketplace, the idea that you would want to or be able to monetize your users in the first 5 or 10 years was pretty crazy. ChatGPT anchored a lot of people on $20 a month if not more, and when you incorporate usage-based pricing you can have whales paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month.”

ChatGPT anchored consumers on $20/mo — the $60/yr ceiling is dead

For a decade pre-AI, consumer apps couldn't monetize directly — users were the product, you served ads. ChatGPT trained a generation to pay $20/month, and that's the new floor, not the ceiling. The willingness-to-pay shift benefits every consumer app, not just AI ones.