Ask HN: ChatGPT – GTM Reverse Engineered

Ask HN: ChatGPT – GTM Reverse Engineered – Pre Virality

1 mehra-vaayushop 2 8/9/2025, 4:05:52 PM

Guys - I am reverse engineering chatGPT - pre-launch GTM work...Prior to 2018 that led to its viral loop in 2019...

it seems quite intriguing & has a pattern for innovative products...but not playbook...

Could other ppl share their insights for GTMs of innovative products? (Beyond obvious GTM engines for startups)

for context - Our product is like salesforce agentforce & I am putting GTM engine now...we are humble startup with some angel funding...so have to be super frugal.

Curious case of chatGPT pre-launch GTM My curosity - how come an unkown product(pre-2018) - which wasn't even thought/prepared for consumer launch - had no proof that it will work....noone even knew about it...started going viral... (Contrary to what polished media shows..there were big hardships - OpenAI had from 2014-2019 & little interest)

I am trying to trace their work prior to 2018....to understand their thought process, prep work .......this goes to building organic but more precision work..before doing super duper spend on ads/marketing that I think most ppl are misled to right now

Which is not repeatable...C-suite told me off stage in marketing events at 7-star hotels - that they weren't impressed by show or spend to market AI..which seemed to them as oversell.

This is important as I m putting my GTM Engine..& don't want to just burn funds on marketing

It's not just about product & GTM...& goes beyond playbooks...but has a pattern....

Some key patterns: Inner Trust Circle - maniacic ppl who just loved geeky stuff - Initial Organic growth - Community partnerships - Founders brands - Podcasts - niche communities -- Prep for viral loops...but months & years ahead

Communities are great example of nerdy, maniacs, whom I believe can make things happen

Could you share your thoughts on GTM for AI products? At my startup we are putting GTM Engine for our innovative product...parallel to Salesforce agentforce..... & I can tell GTM code isnt cracked for even bigger companies who are throwing 7 start hotel parties..& doing heavy market spends...

Would like to meet people - over coffee to brainstorm GTM - traditional GTM + discuss/reverse engineer beyond obvious stuff...which can't be taught...just built.

Looking forward inputs from community

Comments (2)

bigyabai · 9h ago

You don't need to do much work to reverse engineer OpenAI's advances circa 2018 to 2019 - GPT-2 is Open Source, you can go inspect the code and run it yourself.

mehra-vaayushop · 8h ago

It's more about GTM than code....but tx for your reply

Hamas Pulls Israel Deeper into Gaza (wsj.com)

Turns out GPT-5 can count but GPT-5-chat can't (bsky.app)

HHS cites list of studies as scientific justification for mRNA cancellation (statnews.com)

Trump administration threatens to strip Harvard University of lucrative patents (theguardian.com)

Subversive of What? (1948) (theatlantic.com)

Galileo's telescopes: Seeing is believing (2010) (historytoday.com)

Official Prompt Optimizer for GPT-5 (platform.openai.com)

Google is killing millions of web links to save a few bucks (washingtonpost.com)

Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets for 401(K) Investors (whitehouse.gov)

Exploring AI Memory Architectures (Part 2): MemOS Framework (blog.lqhl.me)

The Linguistics of Brain Rot (theamericanscholar.org)

AI Image Watermarking Faces New Threat from "Unmarker" (spectrum.ieee.org)

Exploring AI Memory Architectures (Part 3): From Prototype to Blueprint (blog.lqhl.me)

Avatarl: Training language models from scratch with pure reinforcement learning (tokenbender.com)

Apple researchers taught an LLM to predict tokens up to 5x faster (9to5mac.com)

Why good houseguests don't 'make themselves at home' (text.npr.org)

China's Disastrous Demographic Outlook (twitter.com)

AI's Overlooked $97B Contribution to the Economy (wsj.com)

Show HN: Hacker5News is now web available (hacker5news.duckdns.org)

Where Are They? (2008) (nickbostrom.com)

Efficient Strategies for Microglia Replacement in the Central Nervous System (sciencedirect.com)

Show HN: AI Coloring Pages Generator (colori.io)

EPA Registers Novel(dsRNA) Pesticide Technology for Potato Crops (epa.gov)

Nanowhisker glue uses ultrasound to form resilient bonds (phys.org)

Just Buy Nothing: A fake online store to combat shopping addiction (justbuynothing.com)

Tiny Awards 2025 voting is now open (tinyawards.net)

Musicians do not demonstrate long-believed advantage in processing sound (michiganmedicine.org)

GPT-5: Overdue, overhyped and underwhelming. And that's not the worst of it (garymarcus.substack.com)

Eighteen Years of Greytrapping – Is the Weirdness Paying Off? (nxdomain.no)

Interactive UI Components for Django using Htmx (github.com)

Steve Wozniak's Perforated Pads of $2 Bills (coinbooks.org)

Ask HN: How do you pronounce "gradlew"?

Show HN: Connective, Back to the Roots (connective-app.com)

Fitness Landscape (baku89.com)

The Welfare Costs of Low-Friction Idea Production (gojiberries.io)

From GPT-2 to GPT-OSS: Analyzing the Architectural Advances (magazine.sebastianraschka.com)

Show HN: PromptMap – map .NET solutions into AI-friendly context (github.com)

The End of Violence: Why it is a disease and how it can be cured (2026) (penguin.co.uk)

California man's plane keeps getting stolen, taken, repaired and returned (the-independent.com)

About SimulateAI (Quick Overview) (youtube.com)

Your LLM Knows the Future (machinelearning.apple.com)

Prompt injection engineering for attackers: Exploiting GitHub Copilot (blog.trailofbits.com)

Roo Code Workflow: An Advanced LLM-Powered Development Setup (gist.github.com)

Suitely – Your C-Suite, Reimagined by AI (suitely.prisen.co)

Keep the Terminal Relevant: Patterns for AI Agent Driven CLIs – InfoQ (infoq.com)

The rise of the AI native employee (elenaverna.com)

How Streamplace Works: No Microservices (blog.stream.place)

Show HN: Math4Fun – Generate kids' math worksheets from their favorite topics (app.math4fun.io)

GPTs and Feeling Left Behind (whynothugo.nl)

Why Understanding AI Doesn't Necessarily Lead People to Embrace It (hbr.org)

Ask HN: ChatGPT – GTM Reverse Engineered – Pre Virality

Comments (2)