Building AI Applications in 2025: What You Need to Know First
O.Translator
Feb 16, 2025
In 2025, the greatest opportunities lie in the AI sector
3. Additional value of AI products
4. Do not fear others' first-mover advantage
In 2025, the greatest opportunities lie in the AI sector
With the advent of DeepSeek in 2025, AI applications are rapidly permeating everyday life, redefining industries from programming, education, and healthcare to industrial control and finance, becoming a revolutionary wave following the mobile internet.
Numerous small teams and startups are leveraging AI to develop new user experiences and product value. The year 2025 is undoubtedly the breakout year for AI applications. As a member of a small team, the O.Translator team has utilized AI to complete millions of document translations globally since 2023. Here is a summary of our experiences, which we hope will inspire you.
1. Cost, Cost, Cost
Small teams must live within their means
For startup teams, limited resources are the norm. Large-scale investments can lead to financial pressure and result in difficulties due to a lack of positive feedback. Therefore, making small investments to gain positive feedback and then increasing investment is a pragmatic approach.
The O.Translator team leveraged its technical advantages to create the first Minimum Viable Product (MVP) at an extremely low cost, launched the initial version of the website with almost zero budget, and supported subsequent optimization and marketing through user-paid revenue. This model helped us steadily expand our user base.
This is what I refer to as 'small investment—positive feedback—increased investment—more positive feedback.'
Leverage team advantages to build low-cost systems
Our technical expertise allows us to develop solutions independently without relying on expensive external systems, reducing costs and enhancing product control.
If the team has an advantage in operations, they can first utilize social platforms for market expansion, leveraging existing platforms (WeChat, Douyin, TikTok) to build a content ecosystem. Once a certain number of customers have been accumulated, they can gradually develop their own technical systems.
Do not get involved in areas you are not proficient in at the beginning, as it wastes both costs and time.
2. Cold start and marketing
Cold start
Leverage high-authority platforms
In the initial stage of content marketing, be sure to choose platforms with high authority:
- Domestic platforms
Leverage platforms like Zhihu, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu to enhance professional opinions and product exposure.
- International Platform
Sharing content on globally renowned platforms like Medium and Reddit can quickly enhance brand visibility.
O.Translator initially used platforms like Zhihu and Medium, and these articles brought in many early users.
Zhihu: How to use ChatGPT to translate documents (PDF/EPUB/DOCX/PPTX/XLSX/SRT/XLF/AI/INDD)?
Zhihu: How to use PDF.js to extract text position/color/font information from a PDF?
Medium: Translating Documents with ChatGPT: A Comprehensive Guide
Advertising
Advertising (such as Google Ads) can increase user attention, but budget management is crucial. Combining team strengths with targeted advertising and word-of-mouth marketing ensures effective returns on investment. However, in the early stages of a product, the focus should be on product refinement and market exploration, and it is not advisable to invest heavily in advertising.
O.Translator did not run any advertisements in the first few months; instead, we published professional articles about document translation on various platforms. The users acquired through these channels were sufficient to complete the full process of validation and iteration. Many users also provided us with valuable feedback, and through these iterations, we improved and stabilized the system components before starting to advertise on Google.
Content marketing
Website Blog
During the first phase of the cold start, we did not establish our own blog system but published articles on high-authority platforms. About six months later, we began to set up our official website blog. Since we are in the translation business, the website blog was designed from the outset to support languages from more than a dozen countries and regions.
- Optimize the SEO of the official website blog to increase organic traffic
We utilize AI to optimize SEO, including keyword selection, titles, content, internal and external links, etc. We will discuss the topic of SEO separately in the future.
We do not use AI to write a large number of marketing articles. This might be useful, but we believe it would undermine the professionalism of the website. We still insist on manually editing the blog outlines (of course, we allow AI to provide some outline suggestions, but we review and modify them) and then use AI for refinement.
- In-depth original content can demonstrate professionalism.
On the official website blog, try to combine original content with SEO keywords as much as possible. It is necessary to conduct some in-depth thinking or display around your own business, which can not only help users better understand you but also improve the website's ranking.
Focus on exploring long-tail keywords in your business domain to avoid intense competition with popular keywords, which is very cost-effective.
Video operations
Two months ago, we launched a YouTube channel with content focused on translation tutorials and demonstrations of translation effects. Currently, the traffic brought by this channel is not much, but it meets our expectations.
If your business is in a more lifestyle-oriented sector, you must pay attention to video marketing, especially on traffic platforms like TikTok.
Currently, we are only using the Youtube channel as a video tutorial platform and have not deeply explored its traffic potential, but video operations cannot be ignored.
3. Additional value of AI products
What is additional value?
O.Translator is an application-based product that does not have its own AI translation model; it utilizes cloud models such as GPT, Gemini, and Claude to perform AI translations.
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Additional industry experience or resources
In addition to AI translation capabilities, document translation requires another crucial ability: document parsing, processing, and restoration, which is the additional value we provide.
Through technological accumulation, we not only support more than 30 formats but have also achieved industry-leading levels in key areas such as document parsing, text positioning, and font recognition. Especially in PDF translation and typesetting, OCR recognition capabilities, and even the translation of EPUB e-books up to 500M, these are our core advantages that allow us to distance ourselves from competitors.
Products that rely solely on algorithmic shells can easily be surpassed by competitors offering lower prices and better experiences.
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Direct communication with customers
In O.Translator, users can directly contact our developers via Email or Discord, which is very important. Users can receive responses promptly, and we can provide feedback and resolve user issues in the first instance.
Our clients are spread across the globe. When users encounter issues, we guarantee a resolution within one day. If we cannot resolve it, we will provide an explanation, and, within reasonable limits, we will refund the user's payment first and then negotiate. This method of communication makes users trust us, and our repurchase rate is very high. Small teams should leverage the advantage of quick action.
Focus on core functions
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Clearly define the criteria for prioritizing tasks
During the product brainstorming phase, we often come up with many creative ideas. At this point, it is essential to prioritize those ideas that serve the core functionality of the product.
For example, after we launched the first version of O.Translator, we listed more than ten things we wanted to do. For each item, we would ask ourselves, 'Will doing this improve the quality of document translation?'
- Developing a terminology database, optimizing post-editing, and offering a free preview feature can enhance the effectiveness and experience of document translation, thus increasing their priority.
- Voice extraction and translation, as well as document output conversion, are bonus features that can be appropriately deprioritized.
- Adopting a subscription model might increase short-term revenue, but it does not significantly enhance the translation experience, so it is ranked last.
In this way, we continuously adjust the TODO LIST, systematically expanding functions around document translation, and this process will not stop.
4. Do not fear others' first-mover advantage
Understand the limitations of first-mover advantage
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Flexibility and Differentiated Competition for Small Teams
First-mover advantage often only applies to large companies with abundant resources. In fact, small teams are more likely to find a unique position in niche markets and quickly adjust their strategies.
Clayton Christensen mentioned in 'The Innovator's Dilemma' that large companies often miss new opportunities due to their stubborn focus on sustaining innovations when faced with disruptive innovations. Although initially low-performing and targeting the low-end market, disruptive innovations gradually become mainstream over time, and small teams can find breakthroughs from the sidelines, leveraging flexibility and low-cost advantages to gain positive feedback.
Small teams should leverage their flexibility and experiment with disruptive innovation.
Clarify your own advantages and strategic positioning
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Take a differentiation approach
Do not worry about the first-mover advantage of large companies, but instead take an indirect approach:
- Clarify your area of expertise and core product advantages, focusing on document translation and processing technology;
- Maintain sensitivity to market feedback, and through continuous adjustment and iteration of the product, gradually form an unassailable competitive barrier.
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Control costs and obtain positive feedback
Take small teams as an example, by continuously optimizing the product, reducing costs, and obtaining positive user feedback, thereby achieving a virtuous cycle for the product and gradually establishing a foothold in the market.
Conclusion
The above outlines the growth journey of O.Translator over the past year. If you wish to use AI to transform existing business processes, we recommend that you start taking action now. Adhere to the principles of 'cost control and core focus,' quickly build an MVP, and continuously iterate by receiving positive feedback from users to develop core functionalities and unique value.
If you don't take the first step, you will never have the opportunity to iterate.
