Three weeks ago, after signing on ChatGPT as the Chief Technology Officer, I was able to turn a simple Chrome extension into a reality in just 10 hours. This small experiment brought me some great results – I received over one thousand dollars worth of pre-orders within 24 hours.
I’m an entrepreneur from Ukraine, previously having worked in the local startup ecosystem for six years, before transitioning to working solely on my own businesses. From 2017 to now, I have launched several projects, which I currently manage and have formed a diverse portfolio.
I’ve always had a fascination with simple and functional products; a year ago, I put together Lofi Garden: a minimalistic app with a play-pause button, used to control music playlists on Mac and other devices. I decided to take this principle to a whole new level by creating an invisible AI assistant that was able to recognize and carry out commands from any text field on a website. Prompts include original tweets, Replit coding, and more – all that is needed is to type in “/ai prompt” and press Enter.
To produce a working product, I needed to write three JavaScript files, a basic HTML file and the manifest.json to run the extension on Chrome-based browsers. ChatGPT, the AI assistant, was a great help while creating the project and significantly decreased development time. Even though I’m not a programmer and had no prior coding experience, I was still able to take control and guide the AI, using it in accordance with my idea and as a way of creating a prototype.
I uploaded a demo of the product and shared it on Twitter, which went viral and reached 500,000 users. Pre-orders worth $1000 came pouring in, and 50 people contacted me with interest. Five offered bids and I sold it on Acquire the following week.
I was successful in this venture due to the story behind it – someone, with no programming knowledge, utilizing artificial intelligence as a CTO, finally succeeding. A lot of people attempted the same concept and idea, albeit with no success. It’s apparent that the concept was simple and the entry was easily accessible, however, gaining attention was the significant difference. Having a pre-existing understanding of promotion and marketing, I was able to make use of additional channels givern as newsletters, TikTok influencers, media, Hacker News, Reddit, Facebook or even programmatic SEO to attract users.
As a result of the extension taking off, I had to make a decision – grow, sell or wind it down entirely. I chose the latter and put the money towards buying a house with my girlfriend.
From this experience, I learn that products don’t need to be made by a human developer to be robust and successful. Artificial Intelligence can be very useful in creating a rapid prototype and provide a quality product when in the right hands and supervised by a prompt engineer. If one is starting a project requiring JavaScript and/or Python, I strongly recommend using this type of AI to revolutionize their projects. My main advice would be to stick to original concepts and to understand the code before any prompts.
I’m currently inspired by modern thinkers such as Naval Ravikant and psychologist Jordan Peterson, especially when it comes to their theories about developing mental models. I believe these models are essential to gaining a better self-understanding, enhancing decision-making, and overall improvements. Thus, my current venture revolves around helping people develop their own mental models.
Overall, this project was a great learning experience for me. It confirmed the importance of working in a team where tech specialists and marketers pair up to produce a successful product. Furthermore, having AI assistants as partners can expedite the development process and make it easier to realize the project. So if someone wants to make something basic, I would definitely suggest using ChatGPT.
