mapyourideas.com

The Problem

After building several connected tools, I wanted one place where I could map what I wanted to do, what I did not want to do, and how different ideas related to each other. I could not find a workflow that matched the way my mind moved between ideas.

The Motivation

I wanted to build something like Miro, but with AI doing more of the work. The AI would help create the graph, shape the flow, and turn a rough thought into something structured. mapyourideas.com was my first product with AI built directly into the core experience.

Mistakes

Because this was my first AI product, I made several rookie mistakes. I built around WebSockets even though I did not need them, then discovered that the approach did not fit a serverless Vercel deployment. I also did not know that AI providers already supported streaming, so I made the response flow much harder than it needed to be.

I built something close to my own AI SDK before I understood the existing options. I was also new to React Flow, which led to some messy workarounds. When I listed the product for sale, I was learning the payment and listing process at the same time, including how to use Creem as the payment provider.

Learning

The technical execution was difficult, but the more important lesson came from distribution. I had more courage when I launched this product. I posted about it on Threads, which I had never treated as a sales channel, and that post brought me a customer.

The positioning did more work than a generic mind-map pitch would have done. Instead of saying that I had built another flowchart tool, I described it as a combination of Google Docs, ChatGPT, and Miro. A map could become a document, and the AI could help shape both. That explanation connected with at least one person, and I believe it could have become a proper business if I had continued.

Achievements

mapyourideas.com gave me my first software sale. The customer stayed for four months. I made about $36 in total and received roughly $28 after fees. One paying user did not make it a profitable business, but it proved that someone was willing to pay for an idea I had built.

Even after I shut down the backend and frontend, people still visited the site and emailed me. I did not understand the potential of SEO at the time, so I never doubled down on it. Looking back, the positioning and continued interest showed that the idea had more potential than I gave it credit for.