OpenAI "Ended" My Startup: Here’s What I Learned (Tokyo coding vlog)

for the past year I've been building a browser extension that allows users to better organize their chats and prompts in chat gbt and Claude and honestly it was going pretty well the extension grew to over 14,000 users and I was getting sales daily it felt like I was finally building something valuable but then open AI released their new projects feature basically their version of organizing chats in chat gbt overnight it felt like my extension just became redundant I started getting feedback from users saying they were leaving because the feature is now built right into chat gbt my strip Revenue took a hit customers were canceling their subscriptions and the uninstall rate was growing and I couldn't really blame them it's hard to compete when the platform itself is offering your core feature right out of the box it made me feel like the past Year's worth of work was a wasted effort so for a few days I was just stuck I thought is this it did open AI just end my startup but after diving into the new projects feature I understood its strengths and more importantly its gaps and there were quite a few for starters you still can't group projects together which makes things messy especially since the sidebar only shows a maximum of five projects at a time and if you're a heavy custom gpts user project currently doesn't support those chats and that's when it clicked I saw this as a chance to build on top of what they released I decided to make their feature better and by proxy my extension as well so I shipped two new features project folders and bookmarks with project folders you can group multiple projects together in a tree like structure and bookmarks keep important projects easily accessible the best part is that these features doesn't directly compete with open AI they complement them users can still use their projects as is but my extension adds that next level of organization for bigger and more complicated workflows and honestly I'm quite proud of how it turned out instead of letting open AI update replace my product I used it as an opportunity to improve it if there's one thing this

experience has reminded me is to ship fast and often it took open AI 2 years to release a folders functionality and during that time I built iterated and refined a feature that matched exactly what their users were asking for sure I knew it could eventually become redundant if they choose to roll out their own version but that's exactly my point when you are working solo speed is your biggest Advantage especially when you're competing with the Giants if users tell you they need something build it quickly and get it in their hands worst case scenario for me open AI eventually implements the features themselves but the best case scenario I gain experience ship valuable features talk with real users and earn some extra income and the bigger takeaway I want to share with you is try to be an optimist there's a quote I love that says optimists often build wealth and get things done while pessimists just get to be right and it's so true when I first released the extension I heard countless people telling me that building this extension was pointless why build something open AI could just ship themselves in a few days and they were right but choosing to stay optimistic despite their comments has paid off in many ways my pointless extension grew to over 10,000 users generated me over $60,000 in Revenue helped me grow a YouTube audience and has taught me so much as a developer and a Founder compare that to what I would have achieved if I took their advice to be clear optimism isn't about ignoring hard facts or just being naive it's about seeing challenges as opportunities to build learn and grow even when the odds seem stacked against you and I think adopting that kind of mindset is what makes all the difference with my

extension now feature complete and running mostly on autopilot I've started thinking about what's next and honestly I feel like it's time to make my first startup exit at this point selling the extension will give me some peace of mind and some extra Financial Security while I travel and focus on my next project it's also a great chance to learn what it's actually like to navigate the process of exiting a startup you've built from the ground up and this experience has made me value the amount of freedom I have as a solo founder I can just brainstorm ideas that excite me and move in the direction that feels right speaking of which I'm already excited about what's next my next project will be built with all of the lessons I've learned from this experience and I can't wait to share it with you guys soon one effective way to

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