How TypingMind got its users

OpenAI announced the ChatGPT API on March 1 2023. The typingmind.com domain was registered March 2, the MVP shipped March 6, Product Hunt on March 11. The product was the missing client, not a new model. Run the same trigger with zero followers: read provider release notes weekly, and when an API opens a surface that only had a first-party UI, ship a usable client inside a week. Speed onto a brand new API is the one advantage a nobody actually has, and the window shuts in days.

done whenYou can name an API, model or platform capability that opened in the last 30 days and the client nobody has shipped for it. If your idea would have worked equally well six months ago, you have no timing advantage to spend.

Put the trust in the architecture, not in your name. TypingMind is a static web app with no backend and no database: chats and API keys stay in the browser, requests go straight from the browser to OpenAI or Anthropic. A stranger buys from an unknown developer because nothing is handed over and there is nothing to cancel. Copy the escape hatches too: a self-host build published on GitHub, a 14 day refund, one key valid on 5 devices.

done whenAsk someone who has never heard of you: can they buy this without handing you their data, creating an account, or accepting a recurring charge? Every no is trust you are asking for and have not earned.

Price against the category, not with it. While every ChatGPT wrapper shipped a monthly subscription, TypingMind sold a one time license starting at $39 with bring your own key, so the buyer pays the model providers per token directly. His stated reason: everyone was doing subscriptions, so competing there was hopeless. The Product Hunt tagline is the position itself, pay for API key per use, no subscription, 18 model providers.

done whenSay your pricing sentence out loud. If a funded competitor could copy it next week without changing how their product is built, it is a discount, not a position.

Be honest about the asset: Tony Dinh had roughly 76k X followers before launch, plus Black Magic, a Twitter analytics tool sold to creators, which made him known to the people who buy dev tools. He says 99% of sales came from that reach. You cannot replay that. But the same account had sold almost nothing for his earlier AI toys, so reach was delivery, not cause. Post the identical artifact where BYOK buyers already argue: r/LocalLLaMA, Hacker News, provider Discords, the repo README.

done whenList where your first 20 paying strangers would come from. If most of the list is people who already know you, you have friends, not a channel.

Make provider news your news. Each new model or provider becomes a same day integration and a dated entry in the Featurebase changelog tagged New, Improved or Fixed. Shipping on the provider's launch day borrows their attention instead of requiring your own. Feed the queue from typingmind.com/ideas, the public request board, and the awesome-typingmind repo, where community plugins can reach the official plugin store.

done whenLook at your last month of shipping. Can you point to one date where an outside event, a model release or a platform change, gave you a reason to post that was not just about yourself?