The open source side project I ignored for years made my startup profitable overnight
Hey all,
My name is Sam, I have an actual background in AI going back to 2008, with several research papers and a patent.
I launched my first startup straight out of grad school in 2016, we were acqui-hired during the pandemic.
The acquirer was itself acquired by private equity in 2024, and everyone was fired or quit. I decided to start my second startup, but amidst all the hype and froth in Silicon Valley, I decided to start small/by myself, and figure out what was going to work before trying to grow it.
My main idea was around automating video editing, I had/have a thesis around how just sending transcripts to ChatGPT isn't 'AI Video Editing' and you could do a much better job by training actual AI models to think and make edits based on audio, video and text info.
I've been working on it for about 18 months - my app auto-edits video podcasts, and it's going okay, I've found it's a very crowded space but I also found a useful niche: I have a few dozen real users and 10 paying customers ($200 MRR) despite not marketing it.
That said, in 2023 (while still working for my previous employer) I launched a random side project over the holidays, a free open source tool to upscale videos in the browser using WebGPU, posted it once on Reddit and it grew organically by itself to 30K Monthly Active Users despite bugs and not fixing it.
After months of dragging my feet on it (I was busy with my "real project"), I took a look at the numbers this summer, saw it grew to 30K MAU by itself, and I started taking it seriously, fixing bugs and making improvements.
After just fixing bugs and improving SEO on the free website, grew to 60K MAU, and when I added a paid version (with better AI models run on server GPUs), it started generating 10x more revenue than my "main project", enough to make me just about profitable.
I've been in startup land for the last 10 years of my life, and this is still one of the weirdest things to happen to me. It's not 'overnight success', but after years of rolling bolders uphill, it's the second time where after launching a new product, the ball just rolls downhill, and I'm still figuring out what to make of it. Do I spend more time on this free upscaling tool even if it's not what I actually waned to do, and is this a sign that I should re-evaluate what I want to actually do for my main project?
I don't know man, let me know what you think.
The free tool: https://free.upscaler.video
The Open Source repo: https://github.com/sb2702/free-ai-video-upscaler
Longer post about the journey: https://free.upscaler.video/blog/ignoring-side-project-into-profitability/
Here’s the tightened version with that added.
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Sam, this is one of those situations where the market is telling you something useful, not asking you to abandon what you care about.
The upscaler took off because it solves a clear, simple problem with almost no friction. People try it, get an instant win, and come back. That deserves real attention because it’s already pulling its own weight.
I also tried your editing app today and I like it a lot. It has real potential. The idea is stronger than the upscaler’s, but the value story is less obvious and the path to adoption is longer. That doesn’t make it the wrong project; it just needs a sharper point of view and a clearer first win for new users.
The good news is these two things don’t work against each other. One gives you immediate users, revenue, and reach. The other is where your longer-term vision lives. The way forward is probably not choosing one and dropping the other, but letting the upscaler fuel the slower build: brand, traffic, customers, and technical foundations.
If you were starting today, you’d never plan it this way, but the pieces line up better than they look. Let the fast mover buy you the time and space to build the thing you actually want to build.
Ignored side projects succeed when they solve real, habitual pain — not speculative problems.
Profit comes when users feel the impact, not just use the feature. 🚀