I reached $20k in revenue with my 2 smol AI apps 🥳

Here is the story of why I decided to build these apps 😄

⚡ BoltAI

Hi, my name is Daniel Nguyen and I’ve been building KTool in public for more than a year.

KTool’s growth was slow in April, and I need some quick cash.

So I started to look for a freelance opportunity. I figured AI is hot right now, maybe I should learn more about using OpenAI API and find an interesting gig to work on.

I did get an interesting gig and my curiosity grew stronger.

I started to use ChatGPT more and more. One of my pet peeves was switching back and forth between ChatGPT web UI and native Mac apps like Xcode or Apple Notes.

Unlike VSCode, there is no Copilot for Xcode. And I have the habit of writing blog posts in Apple Notes so I figured I need a tool to invoke ChatGPT right within these apps.

So I decided to build the MVP in a weekend. The app allows you to press a shortcut key and invoke ChatGPT/Stable Diffusion in any Mac app.

It was ugly but I managed to ship it anyway:

I tweeted about it, and posted it to multiple communities asking for feedback: IndieHacker, Reddit, WIP…

It went semi-viral and early adopters started to use the app. I got valuable feedback and improved the product accordingly.

Later I learned that this way of using ChatGPT is too complicated, only pro users could use it effectively.

I added the full Chat UI, similar to the ChatGPT web UI. So even an average user could use BoltAI effectively.

BoltAI reached ~$14k in revenue recently.

📄 PDF Pals

This is a fun one.

I was dog-fooding BoltAI with content from a PDF. Then a customer asked if they could use it to chat with the PDF

I recommended him PDFAI by @damonchen. After a few exchanges, I figured that people want a native Chat w/ PDF app.

I set up a presale to validate the idea. I was lucky that it went viral. I got about $1k in presale revenue. Time to build!

After 4 months, PDF Pals generated $6k in revenue.

What’s next?

Honestly, I don’t know. I’m still dreaming of owning a profitable B2B SaaS.

In the meantime, I’m trying to grow these 2 apps to $10k/mo.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

I will try my best to answer them 👋