Angelina YangFounder and Host, TwoSetAI · AI builder for visibility and discoverability

Why TLDraw Didn't Become Lovable or Bolt

29 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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0:57

Angelina Yang explains why TLDraw failed to gain traction. OpenAI's APIs had strict per-key limits of about 30 responses per day, forcing users to supply their own API keys. Only 20% of visitors understood how to get and configure a key, creating massive support overhead and preventing the team from selling access.

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Why didn't you become a Lovable or Bolt? Yeah. Oh, you sound like my investors though. I, uh, when we made this again, like the APIs were so new that the only way for us to allow people to work with it was for them to bring their own API keys to the app. I couldn't have sold access to this even if I wanted to because like each API key only had like whatever, 30 responses per day allowed. And when I did eventually kind of get on the phone with OpenAI, they're like, how are you doing this? Are you account sharding? Are you registering multiple? I'm like, no, but like kind of. It's just everyone's bringing their own account. That also meant that only about 20% of the people who visited this website knew enough about API keys in order to actually use it. So if you ever go back to the Twitter threads and stuff about Make.Reel, it was just like, hey, how do I make this work? Hey, this isn't working. It's broken. Oh my God, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. You know, like tons of enthusiasm, but they were, they were split up.