Mohamad El-Esawi is a senior Full-Stack developer and entrepreneur who built ChatGPT Toolbox, a Chrome extension with over 20,000 users that organizes and structures ChatGPT conversations. A few weeks ago the extension was removed from Google's Chrome Store due to a procedural issue, and after a turbulent week it was restored. What happened in the days that followed is the more important story.
What Happens When a Business Falls Apart in Real Time
Every few minutes a notification arrived: another subscription cancellation, another angry email, another refund request. El-Esawi describes watching a product he built day by day for over eighteen months disintegrate without any ability to control the outcome. Support from Gali Meiri and Yuval Passov enabled the extension's return in under 48 hours. But El-Esawi did not stop there.
Crisis as a Lever for Change
El-Esawi sat down to think about how to emerge from the experience stronger rather than simply returning to where he was before. Within a few days of intensive work he identified a fundamental change to the existing product that he would not have thought of without the chaos forcing him to ask bigger questions. The new version has already been submitted for approval.
What the Crisis Revealed About the Product
When everything runs smoothly it is easy to fall into routine and focus on incremental improvements. The crisis broke that routine and forced El-Esawi to ask what the product could become, not just what it had been. This kind of leap is sometimes only possible under external pressure that disrupts the status quo.
The Measure of an Entrepreneur
El-Esawi writes that when everything is thriving it is easy to smile, but real character is measured when everything breaks down. For anyone building a product under uncertainty this is a practical principle: the tool for navigating crisis is not passive endurance but the capacity to convert pressure into forward motion.