2 years from now, in June 2022, I first discovered DALL.E 2.
That moment changed my life forever. If I had known it...
DALL.E 2 - April 2022:
OpenAI launched a private Beta access for DALL.E 2, their new AI image generation model. It enabled people to easily create images with natural language.
To put it in context, at that time, people were not even aware that this was possible.
You could ask for an astronaut riding a horse on the Moon. And a few seconds later, you’d get it.
I remember seeing my relatives being fascinated and scared at the same time. I remember art galleries saying I was a genius.
ChatGPT - June 2022:
While generating images with DALL.E 2 like a madman, I discovered the OpenAI playground. And quickly realized that they had a technology that enabled people to talk with a "robot" that sound like a "human" and feel "intelligent".
If people were not ready for the image generation thing, here I felt that the world would change forever.
So I spent a full week creating a web interface for it.
And ended up creating a prototype of ChatGPT based on OpenAI APIs, six months before the launch of ChatGPT.
GPT Store - November 2023:
I have been following OpenAI for now a year and a half while working on my 1st tech startup, when Sam Altman announced something big during his keynote. Specialist agents. Launch of the OpenAI Store. Potential reach of 180 million monthly active users.
I have this note on my iPhone, I wrote down around December 2022--a prediction on the futur of AI.
"ChatGPT is what I would call a generalist agent. It is averagely good everywhere, but not excellent. The next step in AI will be when we will enable people to interact with specialist agent, that are excellent at doing one thing—and make them work together."
If no one is deploying the infrastructure for people to do it, I will. I thought at the time. So when Sam announced this, I knew it meant for me.
Dilemma - December 2023:
The past two opportunities with DALL.E and OpenAI APIs were, for me, missed opportunities, in my entrepreneurial journey, this time, I felt, I would never miss something like that again.
The time was coming for me to write down the story I wanted to tell later.
But for the past 2 years, I had only 4 days of holidays. I was working hard. Really hard. My days were something like 7:00am to 1am/2am, 6 days out of 7. And I was facing a dilemma: Do I really want to write down the vision I see or not ?
I thought that taking a 12-day break would be beneficial, but that I would probably regret it my all life, if I didn't not do what should have been done for my future.
I believed that life was testing me, so I answered her: Yes I am going for it. Takes some notes.
12 days rush holidays - December 2023:
What I felt at that time was, driving a car at 130km/h in fog, without being able to see more than a meter ahead. And be ultra-low on fuel, but with no indicator showing how much was left.
The main difficulties:
1) Time was short. We had no idea when the store would be launched. Every minute, I thought I would not be ready for launch.
2) There was no historical data to learn from. Making it impossible to clearly understand what would make an app successful or not.
3) There was no tool to track users behaviour on your app, and understand what people really wanted.
How I solved them?
1) I spent 1 full day planning my strategy for the next 11 days.
2) I learned from day-by-day global market data evolution that I recorded. And tried to find patterns with the daily data I had on my apps.
3) This was probably the most unsettling challenge. I scoured the internet to find the first tools people were creating, finding ways to contact the owners and co-develop their user experience.
DALL.3 Ultra - February 2024:
February 22th, OpenAI released the rating feature, and we instantly got access to all the application rankings.
I will never forget this day.
I saw "DALL.3 Ultra" ranked "#14" with over "+300" reviews. 10.000 chats created.
I felt a strong adrenaline shot in my body.
"Did I really predict the future again?” was my first thought.
I refreshed the page about 20 times to ensure I could trust what my eyes were seeing. I even asked people if we were seeing the same thing.“Yes you are top #14 worldwide on OpenAI Store.” they said.
At a time when, I really needed confirmations about whether this path was for me,
this day came as a relief.