$10K MRRin 4 days

3 milestones

Current revenue

$145K MRRas of October 2025Source

B2B Team version now >50% of revenue; rapid growth from $45K MRR (Sep 2024).

Cómo hice $22K en 7 días con una herramienta de UI de ChatGPT

Founder

Tony Dinh

Fundador en Solitario•Technical•Vietnam

Commitment

Full-time

Experience

Experienced

Product

TypingMind

Una mejor UI para ChatGPT con plugins, librería de prompts y organización de chat.

Type

SaaS

Industry

AI / ML

Model

Híbrido

Marketing Strategy

How Tony acquired customers

Growth Channel

Twitter / X

Also Used

Product HuntComunidades

Tech Stack

Tools used to build TypingMind

Next.jsTailwind CSSOpenAI APIStripeVercel

The Full Story

El 1 de marzo de 2023, OpenAI anunció la API de ChatGPT. Justo ese día, se me ocurrió la idea de crear una nueva UI para resolver mis propios puntos de dolor con la interfaz de ChatGPT.

La construcción

El 2 de marzo, registré el nombre de dominio typingmind.com (sugerido por ChatGPT mismo). El lunes 6 de marzo de 2023, lancé la primera versión al público y la anuncié en Twitter.

Tracción instantánea

La app recibió inmediatamente mucha tracción. Añadí un plan pagado a $9, luego aumenté el precio lentamente mientras agregaba más características. Dentro del primer día, hice $1K en ingresos, luego $2K al día siguiente, luego $4K al día siguiente. En 7 días, hice un total de $22K en ingresos de licencia.

El hito de $1 millón

Me tomó 20 meses alcanzar $1M en ingresos totales. Desde su lanzamiento en marzo de 2023, TypingMind ha logrado un ingreso anual de $1 millón. Recientemente, pudimos cerrar algunos contratos grandes, incluyendo un acuerdo de 3,000 asientos y varios acuerdos de 1,000 asientos.

Día 1: $1,000
Día 7: $22,000 total
Mes 20: $1,000,000 total
MRR actual: ~$83,000

Key Takeaways

Muévete rápido cuando una nueva plataforma/API se lanza, el tiempo lo es todo

Resuelve tus propios problemas primero

Tu audiencia de Twitter puede convertirse directamente en clientes

Comienza con pagos únicos, añade suscripciones más tarde para empresas

Originally published onTony Dinh's Newsletter

Founder proof brief

A one-page proof brief turns Tony's TypingMind playbook into your next test.

See what it covers before you sign up: the pattern worth copying, the channel to test, and the risk to avoid when you adapt this story.

Pattern

$10K MRR

Channel

Twitter / X

Output

Action checklist

What a proof brief covers

A one-page brief that turns Tony's pattern into a testable plan
Channel bet: start from Twitter / X
A risk check before copying the TypingMind playbook

See what a proof brief covers

See what it covers first. Create an account only if you choose to unlock.

Inspired by Tony's journey? Generate a business idea in the AI / ML space using AI and real founder data.

Milestone Journey

Tony achieved 3 milestones on the path to $10K MRR

Primer Cliente

1 days

March 2023

99% faster

vs avg 3 months

+1 days to next milestone

$1K MRR

$1,000

2 days

March 2023

99% faster

vs avg 11 months

+2 days to next milestone

$10K MRR

$10,000

4 days

March 2023

99% faster

vs avg 1 year

4 days

Total journey time

Milestones achieved

Tony's Path to $10K MRRPremium

The journey, decisions, and context behind this milestone

How Tony actually did it

7/7 funnel stages sourced

Reconstructed from Tony's own published sources. Quoted claims are the founder's words, verified verbatim; anything marked as our analysis is exactly that.

Where the idea came from

Personal pain

Tony had been using ChatGPT's web interface heavily and was frustrated by specific, concrete annoyances: being logged out daily, slow token-by-token typing, and no way to search past chats. When OpenAI announced the ChatGPT API on March 1, 2023, he decided the same day to build his own UI on top of it to fix those pains for himself.

“I must create a new UI to solve my own pains”

Tony Dinh, "Making $22K in 7 days: the story" (the record's existing sourceUrl)

Validation

Built first, validated after

First test users

Existing audienceFree testersX / Twitter (@tdinh_me)

Tony shipped the first version on March 6, 2023 (5 days after the API announcement) and announced it directly to his existing X following. The app was initially free to use with the visitor's own OpenAI API key; a paid plan was added the same day after it started getting traction.

“My weekend project is now available”

Tony Dinh, TypingMind launch tweet on X

First paying customer

Existing audienceFree to paid upgrade$9

The app launched free (bring-your-own API key). Once it started getting attention, Tony added a $9 one-time paid plan the same day and got his first sale within hours, announced on X via Lemon Squeezy.

“First sale on”

Tony Dinh, "Making $22K in 7 days: the story" (the record's existing sourceUrl)

Acquisition channels, and whether they worked

Twitter / XLaunchWorked~99% of growth

He shipped features continuously in the days after launch and tweeted every addition, generating a steady drip of new sales with each tweet.

“Every time I add a new feature, I tweet about it, and more sales come in”

Tony Dinh, "Making $22K in 7 days: the story" (the record's existing sourceUrl)

He attributes it to years of prior audience-building, not the launch tweet itself: he had spent roughly two years growing his X following and newsletter before TypingMind existed, so the launch tweet reached a warm, pre-built audience rather than starting from zero.

“I spent a lot of time and effort over the past 2 years building an audience”

Tony Dinh, "Making $22K in 7 days: the story" (the record's existing sourceUrl)

Product HuntLaunchWorked

Launched on Product Hunt five days after the initial Twitter release, timed as the second leg of launch week.

“On 11 March, I launched the product on Product Hunt”

Tony Dinh, "Making $22K in 7 days: the story" (the record's existing sourceUrl)

He credits the same pre-built Twitter and newsletter audience for driving the votes that got TypingMind to #1 Product of the Day, not the Product Hunt platform working on its own.

“With a lot of help from my audience on Twitter and in this newsletter, TypingMind got to #1 product of the day”

Tony Dinh, "Making $22K in 7 days: the story" (the record's existing sourceUrl)

Communities · Reddit (organic mentions)ScalingWorked

No deliberate Reddit campaign; TypingMind gets discussed unprompted by users on Reddit as one of the more comprehensive LLM frontends, which he treats as free, ongoing distribution roughly 20 months after launch.

“It gets mentioned positively on Reddit almost every day”

Tony Dinh, "Nov 2024: My first million!"

Paid AdsScalingDidn't work

As of the November 2024 update he says he still has not found a working paid channel for TypingMind at all.

He tried both paid ads and newsletter/creator sponsorships to grow TypingMind and abandoned both; he does not explain what specifically made the results bad, only that they were.

“I tried to run paid ads and sponsorships, but the results were terrible, so I stopped”

Tony Dinh, "Nov 2024: My first million!"

Other · Branded resellers (local partners deploy TypingMind Custom under their own brand)ScalingWorked

Resellers who understand AI and have local business connections sell TypingMind Custom under their own brand, pay Tony a platform fee, and layer their own consulting/training/onboarding on top for their own margin.

“I will negotiate a deal with the resellers to sell TypingMind under their own brand while I act as the technical partner”

Tony Dinh, "Nov 2024: My first million!"

He reports it as validated, with active relationships already running in some regions, though without a number attached.

“I have successful reseller relationships in some regions and am looking to expand this further”

Tony Dinh, "Nov 2024: My first million!"

What didn't work

ChannelScalingCost: money

Ran paid advertising and newsletter/creator sponsorships to acquire TypingMind customers.

“I tried to run paid ads and sponsorships, but the results were terrible, so I stopped”

Tony Dinh, "Nov 2024: My first million!"

What they did instead: Stopped paid channels entirely; relies on the individual license's organic word-of-mouth, Reddit mentions, and his own Twitter following instead, and says as of Nov 2024 he still has not unlocked a working paid channel.

How it changed as they grew

At launch: 1 person (Tony Dinh, solo)

Today: 5 people (Tony Dinh (founder) plus 1 full-time employee (content, marketing, support) and 3 freelance developers. Stated as his team across all products (DevUtils, Xnapper, TypingMind) as of September 2023, not confirmed as TypingMind-exclusive headcount.)

Pricing increase: $9 one-time license → $39 one-time license

He started at a low $9 one-time price on launch day and raised it in steps over the following days as he shipped more features, reaching $39 by the time he wrote this recap (about 6 months post-launch).

“I added a paid plan at $9, then slowly increased the price as I add more features to the app”

Tony Dinh, "My solopreneur story: zero to $45K/mo in 2 years"

Pricing new tier: One-time individual license only → One-time individual license plus TypingMind Team/Custom subscription (B2B, internal AI platform for companies)

Over the year before this November 2024 update, he pushed to convert individual license buyers into the Team version, adding a recurring-revenue tier on top of the original one-time-purchase model.

“I've been working on converting more customers to our Team version”

Tony Dinh, "Nov 2024: My first million!"

What broke as they grew

As TypingMind moved into enterprise (B2B Custom) deals, growth became bottlenecked on Tony's own bandwidth for sales calls: long cycles (sometimes months), video calls he tries to attend personally because he understands the product best, and physical fatigue from the volume of calls. As of November 2024 he was looking to hire a dedicated "Sales Closer" to take over the talking part.

“I was already feeling dizzy and had a sore throat”

Tony Dinh, "Nov 2024: My first million!"

Sources (4 in the founder's own words)

Tony Dinh, "Making $22K in 7 days: the story" (the record's existing sourceUrl) · founder-authored · 2023-04
Tony Dinh, "My solopreneur story: zero to $45K/mo in 2 years" · founder-authored · 2023-09
Tony Dinh, "Nov 2024: My first million!" · founder-authored · 2024-11
James Fleischmann, "Tony Dinh hit $22k in 11 days by decoupling input from output" (Indie Hackers interview, Tony's answers quoted) · third party · 2023-11
Tony Dinh, TypingMind launch tweet on X · founder-authored · 2023-03

Persistence

Projects attempted before finding success

failed projects before this one worked

High persistence — rare trait among founders

Launch Strategy

How they introduced the product to the world

Product Hunt

Initial go-to-market approach

High-visibility single-day launch

Validation

How they tested demand before building

MVP

Method used to confirm market interest

Most common approach — build and learn fast

Launch Pricing

Price point when the product first launched

Menos de $20/mo

Initial pricing strategy

Starting Audience

Whether they had followers before launch

Existing Audience

Leveraged existing followers

Having an audience accelerates early growth

Biggest Challenge

Marketing y promoción de productos efectivamente después de construirlos

Unlock Tony's Full Journey

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Frequently asked questions

How much does TypingMind make?

TypingMind reports $145K MRR as of October 2025. B2B Team version now >50% of revenue; rapid growth from $45K MRR (Sep 2024). Source: Founder blog.

What is TypingMind?

Una mejor UI para ChatGPT con plugins, librería de prompts y organización de chat. It operates in AI / ML.

How long did it take TypingMind to reach $10k mrr?

Tony Dinh took 4 days to reach $10k mrr with TypingMind.

Was Tony Dinh a solo founder?

Yes. Tony Dinh built TypingMind as a solo founder.

What marketing channel did TypingMind use to grow?

TypingMind grew primarily through Twitter / X.

What industry is TypingMind in?

TypingMind operates in AI / ML.

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The Full Story

El 1 de marzo de 2023, OpenAI anunció la API de ChatGPT. Justo ese día, se me ocurrió la idea de crear una nueva UI para resolver mis propios puntos de dolor con la interfaz de ChatGPT.