The Unknown A.I App That Grew To 30,000 Users In The Last 4 Months

In an attempt to uncover world-class ChatGPT-powered apps, I discovered two kids that got over 30,000 users for their A.I app within months.

How were they able to pull it off? I’ll explain.

But first, if you aren’t familiar with ChatGPT-powered apps here’s the gist:

ChatGPT rolled out an “API” under the radar in the last couple of years.

The “API” means that you can add ChatGPT to any product or website.

So if you were smart, you could find a unique way to use ChatGPT and package it up as a product.

That’s exactly what these two founders did.

Meeting The Founders

It's the 6th of May. I'm in Medellin, Colombia.

I check my phone - 5:47 PM.

"Ohh shoot... I gotta go!"

I told a buddy I’d be at his barbecue to meet some other entrepreneurs in 13 minutes.

I ended my light jog to his house by ringing his doorbell.

"Johnathon?! Just in time! I have someone I want to introduce you to."

I was introduced to Jake who told me that he partnered on an A.I app for SEO.

I didn't know it, but I was about to discover the sexiest type of business I’ve ever seen.

What’s it called?

“Byword.” Jake responded

Ah cool, and how’s it doing?

Jake paused, smiled, and replied “Not too bad”

OK - I've been in the game long enough to know “not too bad” means one of two things:

1/ This business sucks. Everything is burning to the ground but he won’t admit it.

2/ This business is a wild success, but he doesn’t want me to know about it.

There’s no in-between, and I had to know which...

So I dug in a little deeper… How’s it work?

“Ah, it’s basically a website connected to ChatGPT. It makes blog articles optimized for SEO. But I’m not into all that techy stuff, my business partner Mack is though.”

The next day I used a tool to spy on Byword’s traffic.

259,000 estimated visitors that month… Yah, Not too bad.

I had so many questions, I had to talk with them so I shot them a text.

3 months later, that call finally happened.

I got to learn the ins and outs of their business.

This is that interview:

Who are you, and how did you build Byword?

My name is Mack Grenfell. I’m a 27-year-old entrepreneur by day and a triathlete by night.

In its most basic form, Byword is an A.I SEO app that creates blogs with the click of a button.

The app itself is pretty simple. I built it on top of a no-code software called Bubble that connects to ChatGPT’s API. We use custom prompts to generate the result we want.

How did you launch Byword?

Mack:

Other apps I launched failed because we had no attention.

So once I was done with Byword, I knew attention was my #1 goal.

I had always assumed “if I build incredible products everyone will see it.” 

By the time I launched Byword, I knew that wasn’t true.

I had failed at every business I launched. I had to make this one work.

I dug around to see where I could get some attention and found a community where early entrepreneurs talked about their businesses.

I spent an entire day typing up the perfect pitch for Byword.

The goal of the post was to drive 1,000+ signups to a waitlist so that I could do a launch.

In the first couple of days after posting I got that 1,000 sign-ups. I hadn’t spent a penny.

The morning after launching Byword I checked the website to make sure everything was running smooth… Overnight, 13 new articles had been generated.

But there was a problem… At this time we had zero customers. I knew immediately we had been hacked.

I stopped everything.

I had to find out who was hacking us and get them out of the system ASAP.

15 minutes of frantic searching later, I was at a loss.

I had checked everywhere.

Nothing. No red flags. I had no idea how they got in.

Then I checked our payment processor… $1,700.

Huh? It was our first customer. Wait… WE GOT OUR FIRST CUSTOMER.

It was a 15-minute heart attack that turned into pure joy.

How did you get the idea for Byword?

When I was in college, I was an internship to work on the Large Hadron Collider.

It was one of the most exciting moments of my life… until I realized they wanted me to write code for them.

I’m not a coder. 

I went to school for Psychics and Philosophy. Not computer science.

But I said yes anyway. 

It’s not that I had the confidence that I knew what I was doing (because I didn’t).

I just had the confidence that I could figure it out.

That was the starting point for me getting more comfortable with development.

I would love to say that the idea for Byword came from a stroke of genius.

The truth is this: Byword is a result of having failed at so many other ideas.

 I made every mistake possible building the other apps.

By the time I got around to building Byword, I was ready - and it just worked.

How many apps have you launched, how’s it been different with Byword?

Seventeen before Byword.

By the time I was building Byword, I had a good idea of how to make it scalable.

We’ve gotten 24,000 users in the last 4 months, which is about 400% growth.

Here are the key differences between my failed apps and Byword:

1/ With Byword we are asking customers to change a habit. Not start a new one.

Products that ask customers to start a new behavior, in my experience, are much more difficult to start and scale.

2/ I found a great business partner, Jake.

The partnership has worked well for two reasons. First, he’s an SEO veteran and can give us feedback to improve the product. Second, he has a massive following of SEO professionals that gets us in front of the right people.

What words of wisdom would you leave us with?

1/ Finding the right partner can be game-changing. If could be worth getting a partner if they have:

• Money you don’t have

• Time you don’t have

• Skills you don’t have

2/ Attention and a great product is everything. You need both.

We have customers that hit us up saying they used Byword to generate over 750,000 organic sessions per month. That feels really good.

If you were to start a business in A.I now, what would it be?

There’s a lot of opportunity in taking tools that are already widely used and plugging A.I into them.

For example if you look at businesses like Tweet Hunter. They help people find interesting content + schedule upcoming content for Twitter.

Building an app that helps create content using A.I wouldn’t be terribly complex.

P.S - I asked the guys at Byword if they could give Synthetic Mind readers a special offer so everyone could try it out.

They were kind enough to give each reader 20 credits to create SEO blogs.

Just click here to get 20 credits for free.

P.S.S - We love doing these stories. But I want your honest feedback.

I do this for you guys so lay it on me below. Let me know whether to keep doing them or not 👇🏻

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