"I like to remain hidden behind my monitors," she told me in a recent interview. NightCafe is similarly low profile. The company, which Russell helped her partner, Angus Russell, launch five years ago, doesn't get the same publicity as some of its rivals, like Midjourney. Yet NightCafe - an entirely bootstrapped venture that's profitable 'most months,' according to Elle - has enormous reach. Its over 25 million users have created nearly a billion images with its tools.
"To pull back the curtain on one of the web's oldest generative art marketplaces, I spoke with Elle about NightCafe's origins, some of the challenges the platform faces, and where she and Angus see it evolving from here."
"So in 2019, Angus, who had a degree in design and who'd co-founded a few design-focused startups, began a side hustle: a website where people could buy and sell AI-generated art. He called it NightCafe, after Vincent Van Gogh's 'The Night Café.' It was an abject failure. People liked creating the art, which NightCafe didn't charge for. But they didn't want to pay for wall prints, which was the only way the site made money."
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