Empowering Collaboration with AI: The Rise of Team-GPT and the Vision Behind Its Success
Team-GPT is helping teams and individuals make the best of AI. It offers a shared workspace of chatgpt where coworkers collaborate, share knowledge, and increase productivity. The project was started merely 9 months ago, and it has already attracted more than 24K users.
Team-GPT was born from the collaboration between Ilko, one of the Camplighters, and the great team of Iliya Valchanov, a co-founder and CEO of Team-GPT.
As a service venture building cooperative, Camplight thrives on implementing proven venture building strategies to nurture innovation and deliver outstanding final products across diverse industries.
In this interview, we sit down with Ilko, who is also one of the co-founders behind Team-GPT, to uncover how the implementation of these strategies has played a pivotal role in shaping the success of the groundbreaking platform. We delve into the passion, challenges, and insights that drove the success of Team-GPT.
We have divided the questions into a few different categories:
Venture Building and Collaboration
Hi, Ilko! Thank you for taking the time for this interview. Please tell us, how did the collaboration between you and Iliya come about, and what inspired the venture building of Team-GPT?
Hi, thank you for the interest.
Let’s see… With Iliya we’ve got a history of building collaboration tools for the business world that started as an outsourcing partnership and grew into the so-called Venture Building where the two companies build and grow a product together. The product we’ve been growing in the last 10 months is Team-GPT – an AI collaboration workspace for teams.
How does Camplight’s venture-building model differentiate itself from traditional startup incubators or accelerators?
The great differentiator is that the two companies share the heavy lifting of bootstrapping a business, while they remain focused on delivering maximum value. In the traditional world, a single founder or group of founders tries to impress an incubator or accelerator in their early days to receive seed funding, so they can build the product.
Can you elaborate on how Team-GPT has benefited from this model, especially in its formative stages?
Coming from the outsourcing business and other ventures, we’ve been well aware of the business processes that will help the product and the team grow. Learning from the mistakes of others and providing our sense of product magic we’ve been able to deliver outstanding results in no time.
How does the culture at Camplight contribute to the growth and success of ventures like Team-GPT?
Sharing a culture of transparency, openness, and responsibility we’ve been able to build a team that can achieve huge milestones in days, not months. Having a system for the common processes helped us bootstrap the team, plan sprints, deliver value, and contribute to product growth.
People are motivated and do not need micromanagement but work hard as this is their own product. When someone on the team sees a better way to do something – he does it and shows it to other team members for feedback – requirements are not built in stone but flexible so people have freedom not just to code something but craft it.
Can you share an example of how collaboration within the Camplight community has propelled a project or solved a complex problem at Team-GPT?
- Ideation and coming up with the concept to ride the biggest technical wave in the last decade
- Fast MVP delivery for de-risking
- Ramping up development services for hypothesis validation and go-to-market
from 0 to 1 software architecture handling the loads to first $200k ARR and 20k users
- Above average DORA metrics in first 9 months in turbulent startup
- Unblocking product-led and founder-led growth by having a product first before doing customer development
- QA for system stability and preparing the maturing from startup to scaleup
- From vision to engineering of billing and pricing pivots
- Open-sourcing paddle-billing-sdk
Passion for development
Please share a bit about your passion for software development and how it shaped Team-GPT.
Being a fanboy of popular open-source technologies I’m closely following the development of different frameworks over time and how they combine and generally fit together. In Camplight we’ve got an internal initiative to collect and evaluate different tools, to be well-prepared with suggestions for the next project that comes in the pipeline. Having this knowledge and field experience with various technologies is helping us be prepared for the challenges of the startup world.
What specific aspects of your work on Team-GPT ignite your enthusiasm as a developer?
AI. Definitely, AI is what rocks the boat these days for the whole world. Or at least that’s in my bubble. The latest AI developments are moving not only the business world but they change the technical aspects. Many new technologies found their way out since chatbot platforms became the standard. For example, streaming data from the server to the client wasn’t anything that brought so much attention before the AI revolution.
Project Genesis
Take us back to the beginning. How did the idea for Team-GPT originate, and what motivated both companies to embark on this venture?
Together with Iliya and Yavor we needed a place to collaborate with AI in a private environment. We knew that OpenAI doesn’t train on data when using the API so we started a shared instance of a simple app to ramp up our GPT knowledge and skills. In a few days we knew that this collaboration is the real deal and many other teams would love to do the same.
Were there any specific market needs or gaps that you aimed to address with Team-GPT?
We solved the human to human to AI collaboration – this will need to be solved for many organizations, so this is the reason why we built a tool to help with this goal. We also have a strong belief that in the next 10 years automation of simple processes will be taken to a new level.
How did you decide to build in public? What did it feel like and was it your first time doing so?
We follow many people who build in public and we know the value from the customer perspective of the transparency and trust it creates. We want to achieve a similar level of transparency and trust in our company, for the team members, and for the general public.
We’ve been tirelessly documenting this journey and the recommended ‘experience’ is to go through these articles in chronological order and also feel the emotion with which these were written at the time of writing:🔗 From 0 to 10K users | Team-GPT Getting Ready to Scale (5 Oct 2023)
🔗 **What was achieved in 2023 in terms of marketing and sales memo** (6 Dec 2023)
🔗 **Team-GPT 2023 Retrospective – LinkedIn Carousel** (22 Dec 2023)
🔗 From 0 to 25K in 9 months: How we did it? (29 Jan 2024)
Technology and Decisions
Choosing the right tech stack is crucial for any startup. What was your approach in selecting the tech stack for Team-GPT, and what factors influenced your decision?
As a tech lead, I had the opportunity to pick the initial stack and it was based on years of research and development in different applications and for different industries. In the last 6 years, my core experience and expertise were around Next.js and TypeScript, so this was a no-brainer. We added an all-time favourite tRPC to ease the communication flow between the frontend and backend. The new player around was MongoDB cloud database with the mongoose ORM. It was a worthy pick even though we didn’t have any experience with Mongo back then. MongoDB Atlas helped us scale our business and operations with ease and trust. All of these technologies were swiftly combined in the Vercel Edge network and helped us deliver huge traffic with no need for a dedicated devops person.
This holistic approach to selecting our tech stack not only catered to immediate development needs but also strategically positioned Team-GPT for future growth and innovation, demonstrating a deep understanding of the interplay between technology choices and business objectives.
Looking at the future, how do you ensure that the technology decisions made today will continue to support the growth and evolution of Team-GPT?
The next iteration of our product is called Team-GPT Enterprise and it presents our vision for how enterprises will collaborate together in a private self-hosted, on-premise setup. It’s a complete rebuild of our core product maintaining the core values but built with expansion in mind. It’s based on our proprietary data of how teams collaborate.
Overcoming Challenges
Every project faces challenges. What were some key hurdles encountered during the development of Team-GPT, and how did the team overcome them?
One of the biggest challenges was finding the right team members. In this collaboration Camplight community has helped a lot by presenting different candidates and complying with the project requirements. The tech team of Camplight was engaged in doing several rounds of cultural and technical interviews and evaluating the candidates. This has saved many hours for the small in-house team.
Were there moments where you had to pivot or make significant decisions to keep the project on track?
We’re doing the so-called planned pivots, developing the product towards a desired vision, achieving it, and then moving to the next step stone. We’ve done a couple of these. For example, we’ve added tons of value to our customers after we released the ChatGPT for Work interactive course that dwells in-depth into how to get better results from your interaction with ChatGPT. Be sure to check it out. Another big decision was to change the payment provider to Paddle to join and be one of the top 5 finalists in the Paddle AI Launchpad
Funding
We’re pretty sure everyone is interested to hear a bit about the project’s funding. How did you deal with it?
We have been self-funding the company up until now. This year we’re currently looking for mission-aligned investors to join our efforts to become the leading software for LLM model adoption at scale.
The End Result
Looking at the success of Team-GPT now, what are you most proud of achieving?
We’re pretty happy with our ever-growing user base, which at this moment consists of 28k users and 3000 separate companies. We’ve got outstanding SEO results and our content is helping people understand how to collaborate with AI better.
Can you share any memorable user feedback or success stories that highlight the positive impact of Team-GPT?
Team-GPT has received overwhelmingly positive feedback for its innovative approach to integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT models into team collaboration. Users praise its cost-effectiveness, noting significant savings over individual ChatGPT Plus subscriptions, which has been a game-changer for many businesses. Its ability to facilitate effective collaboration, streamline communication, and enhance project ideation has been consistently highlighted. Notably, the platform’s user-friendly features such as shared folders, message deletion options, and the flexibility to work on collective topics have been commended for simplifying daily activities and promoting the adoption of AI technologies in professional settings.
Future Impact
Are there upcoming features or developments in the pipeline that you believe will further enhance its significance in the market?
Team-GPT is dedicated to continuous innovation to maintain its market significance. Plans include advanced AI-driven collaboration tools, enhanced data security measures, and more personalized user experiences to meet the diverse needs of businesses. The introduction of features designed to facilitate deeper insights into team dynamics and productivity, as well as tools for prompt engineering and AI model training within the platform, are also in the pipeline.
How do you foresee Team-GPT evolving and adapting to meet the ever-changing needs of businesses and individuals in the dynamic landscape of collaborative technology over the coming years?
Looking ahead, our team aims to stay at the forefront of the collaborative technology landscape by leveraging the latest advancements in AI and machine learning. We anticipate evolving with the ever-changing needs of businesses by integrating more nuanced natural language processing capabilities, expanding the range of supported languages, and offering more scalable solutions for enterprises of all sizes. By encouraging a culture of innovation and responsiveness to user feedback, Team-GPT will continue to adapt its offerings to empower businesses and individuals with cutting-edge collaborative solutions.
As Team-GPT continues to grow, what are some of the milestones or goals you are most excited about achieving in the near future?
We’re excited about reaching several key milestones, including expanding our user base to over 10k active users, launching our next-generation AI collaboration platform, and establishing strategic partnerships with leading technology providers. Achieving these goals will not only solidify our position in the market but also enable us to deliver more value to our users by enhancing our platform’s capabilities and reach.
Advice for Aspiring Founders
Based on your experience, what advice would you give to founders who are on the brink of choosing a venture builder for their startup?
When selecting a venture builder for your startup, look for partners who offer not just financial support, but also strategic guidance, access to a broad network of industry experts, and a strong track record of building successful startups. It’s crucial to choose a venture builder that aligns with your vision and values and is committed to a culture of innovation and growth.
In the context of technological innovation, what are some key trends you believe aspiring founders should be aware of or prepare for in the coming years?
Founders should keep an eye on several key trends in technological innovation, including the rise of generative AI, the increasing importance of cybersecurity in the development of tech products, and the growing demand for sustainable and ethical technology solutions. Staying ahead of these trends and understanding their implications for your business will be critical for success in the coming years.
Thank you for providing such insightful perspectives on the intricate journey of venture building, Ilko. Your expertise has truly shed light on the complexities of the process. We’re sure it will inspire many people.
Let’s wrap it up:
In our journey with Team-GPT, led by Ilko Kacharov, we’ve seen a masterclass in leveraging strategic collaboration and innovation to drive success. Our approach, grounded in rapid prototyping, MVP strategies, and a user-centric focus, highlights the importance of design thinking and agile methodologies in scaling both team and startup efficiently. This tale of growth from the ground up showcases how aligning services such as these can transform ambitious ideas into tangible outcomes. If you’re inspired by the power of effective collaboration and keen on making a significant impact in the tech world, let’s explore how our paths can converge. Together, we can light up the future of innovation.
Do you want to get a taste of venture buidling yourself? Contact us to discuss your ideas with us. We can’t wait to hear from you!
