The storyHow they got there
Mike and Alex Heap built the My AskAI MVP in late 2022 using Bubble and the OpenAI API — under $1K in total initial cost, funded by earlier micro-SaaS flips — timing the launch to coincide with the ChatGPT API release and the wave of "AI on your data" demand.
The first ten customers came from Twitter posts riding the ChatGPT hype immediately after the API opened. The first hundred came from listing the product on every AI tool directory — theresanaiforthat.com, futuretools.io, and dozens of others that were the 2023 equivalent of Product Hunt for AI tools.
At maturity, the channel mix: Twitter/X build-in-public and AI hype wave (~40%), SEO and comparison content (~25%), Product Hunt and AI directories (~20%), and word-of-mouth among AI-curious SMBs (~15%). Cold outbound was killed. AI directory listings and Twitter timing were doubled down on.
Unit economics: ARPU around $30–80/month, LTV around $400–800, CAC around $30–60, and margin around 50–60% with OpenAI API costs material. Each customer's chatbot embed included a "Powered by My AskAI" widget — product-led virality built in. The pivot from "ChatGPT for your docs" to "AI customer support agent for Intercom and Zendesk" was the unlock that pushed growth past the initial $10K MRR stall.
Channel MixWhere the growth actually came from
Most case studies hand-wave channels. Here's the rough allocation — not in dollars spent, but in users acquired — across the routes that actually mattered.