Hey there!
Meet David Kelly.
He’s the GM behind AppSumo Originals, a $7M/year portfolio of tools like TidyCal, BreezeDoc, SendFox, and KingSumo… all built with a seven-person team. (David’s also big on surfing, burritos, and long walks on short beaches, but let’s stay focused here.)
In the next five minutes, you’ll get:
David’s spreadsheet to spot $1M+ products before building them
The four-tool tech stack that keeps David’s whole operation lean and fast
The TCREI framework for prompting AI
Two pointers from the head of ChatGPT
Let’s do this.
Million dollar spreadsheet
The AppSumo Originals Team started in 2018 as an incubator for new products. The team works fast—shipping a new product every year. 33% of the products have crossed $1M+ in revenue, well above the 4% industry average.
“Okay, but how do they figure out which products to prioritize building?”
David’s Product Modeling Spreadsheet rates each idea on four factors:
Goal impact → Does it move your #1 objective this year?
Ease → Can your current team build it quickly?
Viral potential → Will it grow without a huge marketing budget/sales team?
Excitement → Are you personally hyped to make it?
Steal this template, a simple scoring framework to decide which ideas to pursue.
Example: TidyCal, originally proposed as a simplified version of Calendly, scored high on all four factors (especially Ease and Viral Potential). It went from concept to launch in five weeks, cost about $30K to build, and broke even in under 30 days. Now, with over $2M in sales, it’s one of our most successful product launches ever. (More on TidyCal's success from the man, the myth, the OG himself.)
“Launch fast, iterate, and improve. Don’t waste time aiming for perfection on the first go.”
The four tools David swears by
We love a tech stack around here, and this is the one the small but mighty Originals team leans on daily to run all of their products:
1. Chatbase
What it is: AI chatbot that connects to your knowledge base to answer customer questions automatically.
How it helps: Handles customer questions for TidyCal, SendFox, and KingSumo. In one week, TidyCal’s bot answered 4,800+ messages(!), cutting down volume so the team could focus on creating better help docs, updates, and product improvements.
“We’re constantly testing different models to maximize cost reduction while also trying to optimize responses. Because of the rapidly decreasing costs of LLM models (competition is good!), we’re only spending ~$40 per month on thousands of Support messages.”
2. Claude
What it is: Advanced AI assistant for writing, coding, planning, brainstorming, and problem-solving.
How it helps: Analyzes data to understand how email marketing impacts signups, reworks entire FAQ/help docs, and runs developer ROI analyses to ensure team members are all in the right place.
“I also use Claude Code to launch new features to help out our dev team and to strategize and plan. It’s so powerful, and there’s so much you can do (it’s like a better version of Cursor). You don’t need to be a developer to get use out of Claude Code! There’s a great guide from Anthropic, and the subreddits /r/ClaudeCode and /r/ClaudeAI can really help.”
3. Gemini
What it is: Google's AI assistant that handles text, images, and coding tasks with integration to Google Drive.
How it helps: Takes screenshots of product pages (like TidyCal’s settings) and pumps out better copy, UX tweaks, and grouping ideas.
“I’ve noticed that Gemini excels at product copy, and its deep integration with my Google Drive means it can pull lots of relevant information from years of documents. What would normally be 5–10 hours of back-and-forth with product/design/dev now becomes a 1-hour task.”
Here’s an example used for TidyCal recently:
What it is: Library of high-quality, pre-tested prompts to get better, faster results from AI tools.
How it helps: Gives pre-vetted prompts for ChatGPT and Gemini to quickly turn reviews and feedback on AppSumo Originals products into clear, actionable ideas for improvements.
”Prompting is really important in general, so I also recommend the OpenAI GPT-5 prompting guide, Google’s Gemini prompting tips, and Anthropic’s great Anthropic Academy for Claude.”
Want to see the actual spreadsheet and tool workflows in action?
👉 Check out the full interview with David.
Taskmaster
Last week, we asked you for your favorite ways to prompt your AI assistant.
Shoutout to Sumo-ling Kashif for replying to us with the TCREI prompt framework. Simple way to get muuuch better AI outputs.
Task: Spell out exactly what you want the AI to do.
Context: Share background info: audience, platform, goals, constraints.
Reference(s): Point to examples, frameworks, or experts to model after. Perfect for the high-gravity words we talked about here ;)
Evaluate: Review the output for tone, accuracy, and fit.
Iterate: Give follow-up instructions to refine and improve.
Kashif’s example for sales page copy:
Stuff worth watching
We loved this interview with Nick Turley, VP & Head of ChatGPT.
What stood out:
OpenAI started ChatGPT as a hackathon prototype and shipped it fast, believing you can’t find the real use cases until you launch. Early (and sometimes brutal) feedback is what turned it from a rough idea into a product with 700M+ weekly users.
They priced ChatGPT Plus using a Google Form in Discord (yes, really—a DIY survey) to land on $20/month, a price point everyone ended up copying. Simplicity + speed > overthinking.
There’s never been a better time to build a product. Give David’s framework a try and let us know how it goes. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the next greatest AppSumo launch.
❤️ & 🌮,
The AppSumo Team
P.S. If you’ve got an entrepreneur you love in your life, send them this link. They’ll love you even more.