Quick update before we start..
We have a Subreddit now.. and its going viral (sort off…) It got 100K views over the last 30 days..
So if you’re struggling to get eyeballs on your project, feel free to promote it there -
Now, onto Chatbase.
Chatbase is the platform companies use to build customer-facing AI agents — the ones that handle support and sales without going off-script.
$1M ARR in 117 days. Bootstrapped to $10M. Zero VC.
Its at $10M ARR today -
Quick word from Marketing Againts the Grain before we dive in -
22 ChatGPT Agents Built for Every Marketing Job
Most marketers use ChatGPT to do general research and then call it an AI strategy. The ones outperforming them are deploying specialized agents built for specific jobs.
We put together 22 plug-and-play ChatGPT marketing agents that handle the work eating your week, each with built-in instructions and structured outputs ready to go in under 5 minutes.
Subscribe to Marketing Against the Grain and get all 22 free.
Inside you'll find:
Competitive intelligence agent that visits competitor websites and builds detailed comparison matrices automatically
Customer feedback analyzer that ranks improvement opportunities by business impact
Social listening specialist that monitors brand mentions and flags reputation risks before they escalate
Campaign optimization agents that handle attribution analysis and surface what is actually driving results
Your competitors are already running agents like these.
Get 22 ChatGPT Marketing Agents free when you subscribe to Marketing Against the Grain today.
The Backstory - Chatbase
Yasser Elsaid moved from Egypt to Canada in 2019 to study computer science.
He interned at Tesla and Meta — and hated it. Too safe, too structured.
So he started building side projects with OpenAI's API in 2022, before ChatGPT made AI mainstream.
He spotted the gap: powerful models, no access to your specific data.
The first version just let you upload a book and chat with it.
On February 2, 2023, he tweeted a demo to his 16 followers.
It went viral.
He'd launched at 1 p.m. with a pricing page. The first Stripe notification hit 30 minutes later. The second, 10 minutes after that.
He stopped going to class. Failed two courses.
$3K MRR by month-end. $64K by mid-May.
$1M ARR — exactly 117 days after that first tweet.
No marketing budget. He didn't have one. It was 100% organic.
The Grind
Then the grind. He pivoted from "chat with your docs" to B2B support agents and moved the whole team from Toronto to New York.
December 2025: $8M ARR, 92% retention.
May 2026: $10M ARR. 10,000+ customers. Still bootstrapped.
From a tweet to 16 followers to $10M ARR — built on someone else's R&D budget.
The Bootstrapper's Playbook:
Build for the next model, not the current one — wrap a harness around today's weak AI so every upgrade improves your product for free
Master organic before you spend a dollar on ads — the constraint builds a brand that makes paid spend efficient later
Run warm outbound, not cold — chase the high-intent visitors who already know you, never strangers
Ship visibly every day to kill churn — no cancellation trick beats a product customers watch improve
Stop acting like a bootstrapper once revenue is reliable — hire expensive people, run non-ROI bets, buy the billboard
Read the full Chatbase case study →
The exact MRR ramp from $400 to $1M ARR in 117 days
Why he moved the entire team from Toronto to New York
The SEO + "AEO" play that ranks him for humans and AIs alike
How he killed churn without a single cancellation-flow trick
And more...
That’s it for today
See you next week
Best,
Ayush 🙏 (building Voibe)
PS: Do THIS to double your MRR in 6 months