# Alchie

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/alchie/ · added 2026-10-26 · updated 2026-10-26

**In short.** Alchie (French AI writer that interviews the user and turns the answers into LinkedIn posts in the user's own voice, France): US$11.6K monthly recurring revenue, October 2026. Evidence grade A: disclosed by a company or a filing, or verified by a payment processor. Team: 1 named founder, Pierre Guilbaud, through his one-person company; headcount not published. Launched 16 April 2026; still running, revenue falling.

French AI writer that interviews the user and turns the answers into LinkedIn posts in the user's own voice · France · AI-native · solo founder · still running, revenue falling · group: Marketing and social content

- Outcome: US$11.6K monthly recurring revenue, October 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: A; headline in US dollars: 138888)
- Launch: 16 April 2026; months from launch to the outcome: 6
- Team: 1 named founder, Pierre Guilbaud, through his one-person company; headcount not published
- Outside funding: Bootstrapped (TrustMRR profile)
- Main factor: Audience
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 3, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 1
- Tags: AI-native, Solo founder, Bootstrapped, Running, B2C, Social media

**The product.** A web app in French (it can also write in English). Alchie asks the user questions by voice or text, about 10 minutes per post, then writes a LinkedIn post from the answers, in a style learned from three posts that the user pasted. Each session also gives two photo ideas, three storytelling tips and the full transcript. Higher plans add a content calendar, scheduled publishing to LinkedIn, a WhatsApp group, and on the Or plan a video course and live workshops with the founder.

**Why it worked.** The founder was a LinkedIn ghostwriter with about 44,000 followers and a newsletter of about 17,000 readers, so he sold to an audience that already read him. He built the product around the interview that he used to do by hand for clients, instead of a text box that asks a model to write. The verified revenue grew from US$574 in April 2026 to US$19,343 in September 2026.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Alchie is a French web app that writes LinkedIn posts. It does not ask the user for a topic and write alone: it interviews the user first, in the way a ghostwriter (a person who writes texts that another person publishes under their own name) interviews a client, and then a large language model (an AI program trained on large amounts of text) writes the post from the answers. The site says the interview runs on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and the writing on Claude Opus 5.5, through Anthropic's API, with speech-to-text from Speechmatics.

The founder, Pierre Guilbaud, works from Biarritz in France through a company with his own name. He says he wrote more than 500 LinkedIn posts by hand for business owners before he built Alchie, which TrustMRR dates to 16 April 2026. TrustMRR, a site that reads revenue directly from a company's payment provider, shows US$11,574 of monthly recurring revenue (MRR, the subscription revenue that repeats every month), 201 active subscriptions and US$61,304 of Stripe-verified revenue in total (synced 26 October 2026). That is grade A.

The best month was September 2026 with US$19,343; the last 30 days show US$13,255, 30% less than the 30 days before. This page also lists, under "Watch", one of the founder's own tactics: a WhatsApp group for paying users in which members can share a post that did not perform, to give it another chance.

## Pricing

Alchie plans read on the pricing page and in llms-full.txt on 25 October 2026, in euros without VAT; US dollar values at the ECB rate of 23 October 2026, 1 EUR = 1.1193 USD (grade C)

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bronze | 17.72 | 21.27 | 4 posts a month, 12 AI edits (19 EUR a month) |
| Argent | 45.70 | 54.85 | 10 posts a month, calendar, scheduled LinkedIn publishing, WhatsApp group (49 EUR a month) |
| Or | 83.01 | 99.62 | 20 posts a month, course and live workshops with the founder (89 EUR a month) |

Prices are "HT", that is before French VAT. Yearly billing costs 10 monthly payments instead of 12 (Bronze 190 EUR, Argent 490 EUR, Or 890 EUR a year); the per-month yearly values are calculated (for example 890 / 12 = 74.17 EUR = about US$83.01). Every plan starts with a 7-day trial with 2 posts, which needs a bank card; from the Bootcamp page the Or plan starts without the trial. The Or plan includes a video course and at least 2 live workshops a month with the founder.

## How much revenue does Alchie make? The numbers, graded

US$11,574 of monthly recurring revenue six months after launch, read from Stripe by TrustMRR, for a French LinkedIn writer built by one ghostwriter

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly recurring revenue, October 2026 | US$11,574 | A | TrustMRR, Stripe API, synced 26 October 2026. On 25 October the same profile showed US$11,381. MRR growth in the last 30 days: -25.2%. | [1] |
| Active subscriptions | 201 | A | TrustMRR snapshot. Calculated: 11,574 / 201 = about US$57.58 a month per subscription. | [1] |
| Verified revenue, last 30 days | US$13,255 | A | TrustMRR, 30% less than the 30 days before. IndiePage's leaderboard showed US$14,015 for the last 30 days on 25 October 2026 (grade B). | [1, 2] |
| Verified revenue by month, 2026 | April US$574, May US$5,476, June US$8,297, July US$7,649, August US$8,975, September US$19,343, October to the 26th US$10,991 | A | TrustMRR monthly timeline. Calculated: September was 115.5% above August. | [1] |
| Verified revenue, all time | US$61,304 | A | TrustMRR, synced 26 October 2026. The monthly rows add up to US$61,305; the difference is rounding. | [1] |
| Run rate from the MRR | about US$139,000 a year | calc | Calculated: US$11,574 x 12 = US$138,888. | [1] |
| Time from launch to the headline figure | 6 months | calc | Calculated: April 2026 (TrustMRR founded date 16 April 2026) to October 2026. | [1] |
| Founder's own revenue claim | 11,000 EUR a month | C | Pricing page: "11 K€ / mois de revenu récurrent pour Alchie" (translation: 11K EUR a month of recurring revenue for Alchie). It agrees with the TrustMRR figure. | [4] |
| Payment data source | Stripe (API key) | A | TrustMRR "Verification Sources". Merchant of record: No. DataFast analytics is also connected: 1,745 visitors in the last 30 days. | [1] |
| Company | SARL PIERRE GUILBAUD, Biarritz, France | C | Legal notice of alchie.fr, updated 20 April 2026: a limited company with 1,000 EUR of capital, managed by Pierre Guilbaud. | [7] |
| Outside funding | none (bootstrapped) | C | TrustMRR profile: "Funding: Bootstrapped", a founder-written field. | [1] |
| Founder's audience | about 44,000 LinkedIn followers and about 17,000 newsletter readers | C | Home page: "Ghostwriter LinkedIn · 44 000 abonnés" (translation: LinkedIn ghostwriter, 44,000 followers). IndiePage profile: "je raconte les coulisses à 17 000 entrepreneurs dans ma newsletter" (translation: I tell the behind-the-scenes story to 17,000 entrepreneurs in my newsletter). | [3, 2] |
| Posts written by hand before Alchie | more than 500 | C | Manifesto: "En 500+ posts rédigés, j'ai compris une chose" (translation: in 500+ posts written, I understood one thing). | [6] |

How to read this table: a grade A value was read by TrustMRR from the company's Stripe account. A grade B value is on a second revenue leaderboard. A grade C value was written by the founder on his own site. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it. Quotes in French are followed by our translation.

## When did Alchie launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From the first Stripe revenue in April 2026 to US$11,574 of MRR in October 2026. Each entry carries its grade.

- **Before 2026** (grade C [6]): Pierre Guilbaud works as a LinkedIn ghostwriter and editorial coach for founders, with a one-hour call every two weeks per client, and writes more than 500 posts.
- **16 April 2026** (grade C [1, 7]): Alchie's founded date on TrustMRR. The legal notice of alchie.fr is dated 20 April 2026.
- **April 2026** (grade A [1]): First verified revenue: US$574.
- **16 May 2026** (grade C [5]): Wayback Machine copy of the pricing page: Bronze 19 EUR, Argent 49 EUR, Or 89 EUR a month, and for Argent "Accès au groupe WhatsApp pour soutenir nos posts" (translation: access to the WhatsApp group to support our posts).
- **June to August 2026** (grade A [1]): Verified revenue between US$7,649 and US$8,975 a month.
- **September 2026** (grade A [1]): Best month so far: US$19,343.
- **October 2026** (grade C [4, 8]): The Or plan becomes the "Bootcamp": a video course plus live workshops with the founder from 29 October to 26 November.
- **26 October 2026** (grade A [1]): US$11,574 MRR, 201 subscriptions, US$61,304 in total.

## Why did Alchie work?

### An audience before the product

The founder already had about 44,000 LinkedIn followers and a newsletter, and the product helps people do on LinkedIn what he did for them as a ghostwriter. TrustMRR lists no marketing channel; the site's own footer has an affiliate program, templates, comparisons and a blog.

### The interview is the product

Generic chat models write a post from a topic. Alchie asks questions first, about a decision, a client or an opinion, and writes only from the answers. The home page says: "Tu n'as pas un problème d'écriture. Tu as un problème d'extraction d'idées" (translation: you do not have a writing problem, you have an idea-extraction problem). This is how the founder worked by hand.

### Plans that add a person

The highest plan, Or at 89 EUR a month, adds a video course and at least two live workshops a month with the founder. Part of the price pays for his time, not only for software, which raises the revenue per subscription to about US$58 a month.

### A WhatsApp group for paying users

The Argent and Or plans include a WhatsApp group for tips, product requests and, according to llms-full.txt, resharing a post that did not perform. This is the founder's own tactic, listed under Watch; Alchie itself publishes only the user's own posts.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's llms-full.txt file, terms and privacy policy, read on 25 October 2026, and from the TrustMRR tech stack. They are grade C.

- Front end: Next.js 16 with React Server Components and Tailwind CSS, hosted on Vercel in the EU.
- Back end: Supabase (PostgreSQL, login, row-level security, storage), with data hosted in Paris.
- Models: Claude Sonnet 5.5 for the interview and Claude Opus 5.5 for writing and review, through the Anthropic API; OpenAI is also listed as an AI provider.
- Speech-to-text: Speechmatics real-time API, with Deepgram as a fallback for uploaded files.
- Publishing to LinkedIn through Zernio, a service that connects apps to social networks through their official APIs.
- Stripe Checkout and Customer Portal for subscriptions; PostHog for analytics; Loops and Postmark for email; Sentry for errors.

Sources: [3, 1]

## Who tried this before Alchie, and why did they fail?

Four companies in the Loot Drop database tried to help professionals write or publish content, or to build a professional feed. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from Loot Drop (https://www.loot-drop.io/), a free database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Loot Drop describes its entries as AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Draft (2011 to 2014; funding US$120K; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A simple online writing and editing tool for writers.
- Why it died: Google Docs gave the same features for free, and Draft did not grow beyond its first feature set.
- Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/1605-draft

### Hyperink (2011 to 2014; funding US$1.4M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Help niche experts publish e-books from what they know.
- Why it died: Amazon's self-publishing tools and free content gave authors more reach than Hyperink could.
- Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/1192-hyperink

### Quibb (2013 to 2019; funding US$500K; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A curated feed of industry insights written by professionals.
- Why it died: LinkedIn offered a much larger audience, and Quibb could not grow or charge beyond a small group of insiders.
- Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/475-quibb

### Vulpine (2014 to 2019; funding US$200K; cause: Ran out of cash)

- Promise: A social media agency that ran data-driven campaigns for companies.
- Why it died: Agency work needed people for every client and did not scale, and clients moved to cheaper software.
- Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/1875-vulpine

## What changed

Vulpine and the founder's own ghostwriting work had the same limit: every client needed hours of a person's time. Draft and Hyperink sold tools that helped people write, but the person still had to find the idea and write the text. A language model can now do the writing, and with a good set of questions it can also do part of the interview that a ghostwriter did by hand, for 19 to 89 EUR a month instead of the 500 to 2,000 EUR a month that the site says a human LinkedIn ghostwriter costs.

Quibb shows the other side: it tried to build a new professional feed and lost to LinkedIn. Alchie does not compete with LinkedIn; it is a tool for LinkedIn's users, so it depends on LinkedIn's rules and on its publishing interface, through Zernio. It also competes with every general chat model that can write a post, which is why the product sells the interview and the founder's method rather than the text.

## Can one person copy Alchie now?

**Verdict: Yes, if you already know the job by hand.**

The pattern is clear: a person who did a service by hand turns the method into software, sells it to the audience that the service built, and keeps a paid plan with their own time on top. It depends on the founder's audience, which a copy would not have.

1. Write down the questions that you ask clients in your service work, and in which order.
2. Build an interview that asks those questions by voice, and let a model write only from the answers.
3. Let the user paste their own best texts so that the model copies their style.
4. Sell three plans, with your own time (course, workshops) only in the highest one.
5. Launch to the audience that your service work already built.

**What is still open.** The same interview method fits other formats and languages: newsletters, podcast notes, posts in German, Spanish or Italian, and posts for one profession such as doctors, lawyers or recruiters.

## What could go wrong for Alchie?

- **The founder's own marketing tactics.** The pricing page of May and June 2026 (Wayback Machine) listed for the Argent plan: "Accès au groupe WhatsApp pour soutenir nos posts" (translation: access to the WhatsApp group to support our posts). The current llms-full.txt (read 25 October 2026) says the group is for questions, product requests and to "repartager un post qui n'a pas décollé pour lui redonner une chance" (translation: reshare a post that did not take off, to give it another chance), adding that this is a fallback and not a reflex. The engagement is done by hand by members; the product does not automate likes, comments or connection requests. This is the founder's tactic, not a feature sold as automation.
- **Revenue is falling from a peak.** September 2026 brought US$19,343, more than twice August. In the last 30 days TrustMRR shows US$13,255 (-30%) and MRR down 25.2%. Yearly plans paid in September may explain part of the peak; the sources do not say.
- **Software and the founder's own time.** The Or plan includes a video course and at least two live workshops a month with the founder, and the October Bootcamp sells the Or plan as a course. The founder also sells LinkedIn ghostwriting and sponsored content to his audience, according to his IndiePage profile. The sources do not say whether only Alchie subscriptions run through the Stripe account that TrustMRR reads.
- **Depends on LinkedIn and on rented models.** Posts are published through Zernio and LinkedIn's interface, and the writing runs on Anthropic's and OpenAI's models. A change in LinkedIn's rules or in model prices would reach the product directly. The terms list Vercel, Supabase, Stripe, Anthropic, OpenAI, Speechmatics, Deepgram, Zernio and LinkedIn as outside providers.
- **Young business.** The product is six months old. The trial needs a bank card and turns into a paid plan after 7 days unless the user cancels; llms-full.txt says there are no refunds after the subscription starts.

## Sources

1. TrustMRR: Alchie (markdown profile) — https://trustmrr.com/startup/alchie.md (grade A). Read the markdown profile on 25 and 26 October 2026 (synced 2026-10-26T22:27). The revenue, MRR and subscription rows come from the Stripe API and are grade A; funding, insights and tech stack are founder-written and grade C.
2. IndiePage: leaderboard (last 30 days) and the founder's profile page — https://indiepa.ge/leaderboard (grade B). Read in full on 25 October 2026: Alchie at US$14,015 for the last 30 days, maker Pierre Guilbaud. The profile https://indiepa.ge/pierreguilbaud lists his other services (ghostwriting, sponsored content) and the newsletter audience.
3. Alchie home page and llms-full.txt — https://www.alchie.fr/llms-full.txt (grade C). Read in full on 25 October 2026 (with the home page https://www.alchie.fr/). Source for the interview method, the stack, the models, the WhatsApp group and the refund rule.
4. Alchie pricing page (Tarifs) — https://www.alchie.fr/pricing (grade C). Read in full on 25 October 2026. Source for the plans, the trial and the founder's 11K EUR claim.
5. Alchie pricing page, Wayback Machine copies of 16 May 2026 and 11 June 2026 — https://web.archive.org/web/20260516055802/https://alchie.fr/pricing (grade C). Read in full (also https://web.archive.org/web/20260611222014/https://www.alchie.fr/pricing). Source for the early plan list with the WhatsApp group "pour soutenir nos posts".
6. Alchie manifesto (Le manifeste Alchie) — https://www.alchie.fr/manifeste (grade C). Read in full on 25 October 2026. Founder's text on his ghostwriting past and the 500+ posts.
7. Alchie legal notice (Mentions légales), terms (CGU) and privacy policy — https://www.alchie.fr/mentions-legales (grade C). Read in full on 25 October 2026 (with https://www.alchie.fr/cgu and https://www.alchie.fr/confidentialite). Source for the company and the list of providers.
8. Alchie Bootcamp page — https://www.alchie.fr/bootcamp (grade C). Read in full on 25 October 2026. Source for the workshop dates and the Or plan as a course.
9. Loot Drop database export, 1,749 failed startups — https://www.loot-drop.io/ (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.