I don't know for sure, but I've been in software for decades and you don't just get 10 million people to pay for something in a few months. Conversion rates are always lower than people expect.
For something like ChatGPT, the math is going to be something like this:
- something like 150M unique users have tried it[1], which is probably < 50M people (I myself would look like at least 5 users)
- most will never try it again
- of the ones who try it again, a very tiny minority will be interested enough to pay for it because it's just a novelty to the vast majority of people (the only people I know using it for work are researchers and content marketers)
- of the ones interested enough to pay for it, only a fraction will
So I'd wager they're in the territory of 20k-500k users, not 10M.
> Given the worldwide buzz and a small sample around me
People who are educated, live in the West, and pay attention to news always dramatically overestimate the number of people with a similar media diet. ChatGPT is discussed in your circles far more than elsewhere. There are literally billions of people who haven't heard of it or don't care.
Don't let your anecdata fool you. Your sample is not representative of humans at all. 60% of the world lives in Asia, after all.
1. https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-faste...
Here is the math I do, starting from the addressable market.
There are 60M professional workers in the US [1].
The number is probably similar in EU and APAC.
This yields ~200M professional workers in the world.
If 5% of them have a paid subscription, that's exactly how you get 10M paid subscribers.
Of course, the debate is around the 5%. The rate in the pure tech industry is much higher (10-20% around me), and it is probably much lower in other areas (e.g. architecture). But 5% as an average is not unrealistic.
[1] https://www.dpeaflcio.org/factsheets/the-professional-and-te...
