How my broken app got #7 on Product Hunt
...and still ended up earning my first internet money of the year.
Launch Day
For my January project I built Theodore AI, a basic Google Chrome extension that simplifies complicated topics in a couple clicks.
I launched it on Product Hunt and the next morning I was stoked to see that it reached #7 spot for Product of the Day!
Not a bad day at the office.
Or so I thought…
🫠
It was broken.
The app was broken.
Here’s a comment someone left:
This would be very helpful. I'm trying to install it. A couple of issues: 1) Where do you add the coupon? 2) When installing getting 'Could not find icon" error. Looking forward to your response so I can start using it.
But before I get into more of the details of this launch day fiasco, let me give you some more of the backstory…
The idea
This project stemmed from a simple annoyance I would encounter fairly often.
I’d be reading some technical docs, or trying to decipher some smart sounding tweet or blog post and it just didn’t make sense to me.
So then I’d take the text, copy it, open up a new tab, write a quick prompt to ChatGPT telling it to explain the text in simple terms using a practical example.
Easy enough.
Buuuuut, also annoying enough to interrupt my workflow every time I had to do this.
Checks all the boxes
This year is all about getting reps in and quickly launching products that I can monetize.
No more spending a year in a cave building some crazy platform that no one even wants.
I wrote a little bit more about this in my last post.
And because I didn’t “formally” decide to build 12 projects this year until January 18th, that left me exactly 2 weeks to build my January project.
That means I would need to keep features to a minimum. Something I haven’t always been good at.
The cool thing, though, was that this little project idea checked all the boxes:
Feasible to build and ship within 2 weeks
Solves an annoyance that I have encountered multiple times
Can definitely monetize it in some way
Bonus: Never built a Chrome extension
Building the MVP
For the initial feature set, I wanted to include one basic piece of functionality.
Allow users to simplify whatever text they highlight in their browser.
On any webpage, the user can highlight some text, right-click, then select “Simplify with Theodore”.
A “ChatGPT wrapper”, if you will.
See the screenshot below to get a better idea of how the extension works.
In terms of building this thing, already had a good starting point for my extension because I decided to use ExtensionKit.io.
That got me most of the way there — saving me at least a day or two of trial and error and learning Chrome extension best practices and conventions.
I mostly just needed to write the backend logic that would integrate with OpenAI’s API so that I could give it a set of prompts along with the text highlighted by the user and it would output the simplified version.
A “ChatGPT wrapper”, if you will.
After building a very basic MVP, I put together a quick landing page wired up with Stripe and a simple feedback form.
It turns out that details still matter
One thing I found, that even though this app and it’s landing page were super basic, little details matter to people.
As I started sharing screenshots on Twitter of the progress I was making on my project, a lot of people commented on the graphics I used, how “cohesive” the branding was, and a number of people let me know my copy was solid.
I was really excited to hear that. Especially the copywriting part.
I’ve been experimenting quite a bit with copywriting the last few months, so that felt good.
People also loved these little graphics I added to my landing page.
100+ little scribbly graphics for only $5, and they were seemingly making for such a delightful landing page experience.
In turn, this delightful experience also helps to build trust with potential customers.
Especially when you’re asking them to open up their wallets.
$5 well spent.
So yeah details still matter.
Even for your MVP.
And as it turns out…
So does the icon size of your production Chrome extension.
If your app icon isn’t the perfect size, people won’t be able to install your extension.
If it’s not exactly 128px x 128px, you’ll see this error when trying to install it:
“Could not find icon”
That’s what broke my Chrome extension on launch day.
Because my little teddy bear icon was a little too chunky at 512px x 512px.
If this was a web app, a fix would’ve been rolled out in 5 minutes.
However, with Chrome extensions, similar to mobile apps, there’s a bit of a delay before your updated app gets released to the marketplace.
This usually take between 24-48hrs.
So I uploaded a new artifact to the Chrome Web Store, and here I am.
My app is featured on Product Hunt, and it’s broken.
All because of this stupid little icon.
And yet — it’s still climbing the Product Hunt rankings.
I forgot to update the launch day.
How I still landed the #7 spot
Of course I don’t actually know how I landed the #7 product of the day with a broken app.
But I can tell you this:
I didn’t care where I ended up.
In my 5 Product Hunt launches prior to this one, I always treated them like this grand spectacle.
Reaching out to all my family and friends, urging them to create accounts on Product Hunt and upvote what I had built. It was always this big celebration.
This time around was different, though.
I hardly told anyone that I was launching ahead of time.
Just gunna launch this thing and get going on my February project.
The other thing I can say is that it all just boils down to solving problems for people.
Super cliché and insightful — I know.
But if you’ve ever built a feature-rich, robust product with all kinds of features, only to constantly feel as though you’re pushing a boulder up a hill trying to get users — you’ll know exactly what I mean.
When the market pulls you it’s a much different feeling.
And luck. I think luck had a little bit to do with my product being featured on Product Hunt.
But I’ll just say, it feels pretty good to spend such a short amount of time hacking on a project and showing it to the world.
Not to mention…
My first internet dollars of the year!
After I fixed the launch day issues, I was stoked to see my first Internet Money™ of the year.
it_aint_much_but_its_honest_work.jpg
I’ll be sure to share more any additional updates on Theodore AI throughout the year.
Stay tuned for more details on my February project, Botroast.io next!