Local LLM API Shim Service

Developers want to use proprietary AI models (ChatGPT, Claude) locally without cloud API calls for privacy and cost reasons. This shim proxies requests to local models while maintaining OpenAI API compatibility. Target users: enterprises, privacy-conscious developers, and AI researchers.

Ollama already does most of this and is free and open-source, which immediately caps the ceiling on willingness to pay — developers who want local LLM inference with OpenAI-compatible endpoints can grab it in ten minutes without spending a dollar. The enterprise privacy angle is real given increasing scrutiny around data leaving corporate networks, but enterprises buying software for compliance reasons expect SOC 2, SLAs, and support contracts, none of which a solo founder can credibly deliver at the $1k–5k/mo revenue band. That band might make sense for a small number of SMB customers paying ~$50–100/mo, but it's hard to get there when the open-source substitute is dominant and the buyers who'd actually pay are priced out of range. The most likely failure mode is that the addressable paying market is nearly zero — privacy-conscious developers self-host for free, and enterprises want a vendor with more institutional weight behind it.