Gondola operates a platform designed to help creatives show what they made, demonstrate its impact, and turn that work into future opportunities. Founder Jared Kleinstein started the service after noticing during his time running Fresh Tape Media that excellent social media creative often didn’t result in proper credit for the creators.
With a small team, Gondola faced limits on how much product and operational work it could handle: even minor experiments competed with core priorities for engineering time, and staff spent time searching across tools and systems to assemble information and drafts.
Recently the company began using Codex to explore code, prototype features and test assumptions, while relying on ChatGPT to simplify and automate daily operations. Jared says the changes have allowed the team to convert more ideas into software without increasing engineering headcount.
Key metrics and outcomes
- Since adopting Codex in early 2026, the lead engineer’s monthly shipped (merged) changes have increased by about 50%.
- Across the engineering team, monthly output has risen roughly 25%, while pull request review time has remained steady.
- Company revenue has more than doubled year over year, without added payroll or significant overhead.
- Brands hired 2.5 times as many creators year over year through Gondola.
How workflow has changed
Many product ideas come directly from customer conversations and operational observations. Previously, the team needed to define requirements and then wait for an engineer to have capacity to build a first version. Now they use Codex Cloud to inspect the codebase, prototype interfaces or workflows, and often produce a functional first version before an engineer needs to intervene.
Both Jared and Gondola’s Creator and Client Partnerships Manager, Jojo Hesketh, have merged their first code contributions into the main codebase as a result of this approach.
Examples: Programs and the Creator Map
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Programs: a tool to help companies discover creatives, review applicants, manage projects, and track budgets, with plans to assist with contracts and payments. Jojo sponsored Programs and prototyped its workflows with Codex before engineering refinement and release. The team began work with GPT‑5.4, did most development with GPT‑5.5, and used GPT‑6.1 for later features, optimizations, and bug fixes. Jared estimates Codex saved days or weeks of development time and contributed to a launch with fewer bugs than a hand‑coded alternative.
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World Cup Creator Map: because of time sensitivity, Codex enabled the team to quickly turn existing data into a map that helped brands, teams, and agencies find photographers and videographers in World Cup host cities. Jojo built a fully working prototype with Codex and engineers polished it for launch. Jared describes the build as “incredibly quick,” helped by the project’s small, self‑contained scope and firm deadline.
In both cases, the company found the features launched with fewer bugs and greater polish than they expected would have been possible without Codex prototyping.
ChatGPT in daily operations
Beyond product work, Gondola uses ChatGPT to draft proposals, manage schedules, search across company systems, and automate tasks. The team created a daily report template that pulls together Google Workspace (Gmail, Calendar, Sheets, Drive), Asana, Slack, QuickBooks, weather data and other sources so employees have a comprehensive view of the day’s priorities. Jared says producing such a report manually would take “hours and hours,” while the ChatGPT setup assembles it quickly; consequential outputs are still reviewed by a person before being sent externally or used for major decisions.
Outlook
Gondola plans to have AI take on more of the connective work between companies and creatives, such as reducing coordination for talent discovery, managing budgets and approvals, handling contracts, and facilitating payments. The company intends to keep expanding what its small team can deliver in support of its founding mission: helping creatives get credit for their work and turn it into new opportunities.
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