Why I quit my job and why I'm convinced my product will take off
Hi! I’m the developer behind Vulpie. I’m currently getting my AI assistant ready for launch, and I wanted to share the story behind its development and a bit of my own experience
Before starting my own product, I worked as a mid-level developer at a company, but things there weren’t really working for me. The job was pretty mediocre, and at some point I realized it was time to move on
What I didn’t expect was how much of a roadblock I’d run into with myself. Without a big boss around, staying focused turned out to be surprisingly difficult, so I decided to build something that would help me stay focused on my work
When I started making Vulpie, I wasn’t planning to build an AI product at all. I wanted a tracker and task manager that would shield me from all the information noise around me
At first, I was coding it locally: I slapped together a tiny jelly square that lived in the system tray and could be summoned by voice. I experimented with models for voice and transcription, while the tracker itself was supposed to work offline
Pretty quickly, though, I outgrew that functionality. And keeping a multi-gigabyte monster on my hard drive wasn’t exactly ideal. I also had to drop live voice processing because of the cost
Then I had an idea: a fox
With the new mascot came the idea of integrating an LLM into the assistant. I wanted to build a tool that would push the user to get things done, just like I do, so they could go out for a walk afterwards instead of sitting there scrolling Reels while their deadlines are burning
At the same time, I kept working on another problem: keeping the tool accessible. Most of my competitors are browser-based, while I wanted Vulpie to stay right there with you and be able to intervene directly in your workflow. So I started building an overlay that could stop you from slacking off and intervene directly in the way you work. And yes, there’s plenty of customization
I also managed to bring the app down from around 800 MB to about 40 MB
Right now, I’m getting Vulpie ready for launch on Mac and Windows, and it’s going public on September 12
For me, this is kind of a stress test. I originally wanted to build a product for myself, but decided to share it with other people too. I believe that success in any kind of business comes when the person behind it is fully invested in what they’re building
For now, I can say that Vulpie has already been pretty damn useful to me, and I hope it’ll be useful to you too
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