The AI is the cheapest part of an AI business

Start with a number that shouldn't make sense.

Louis Pereira pays about $30 a month for the AI that runs his app.

It pays him back around $15,000 a month.

That's a 500 to 1 spread. So if the AI is basically free, where do the other 14,970 dollars come from?

Answer that, and you stop chasing "AI ideas." You start building businesses.

His product, AudioPen, does one thing. You talk, it listens, AI turns your rambling into clean writing.

He built it in 12 hours, in a half-day hackathon, in 2023. No code. Just Bubble plus an OpenAI key. No degree, no team, no funding.

It worked the day he shipped: 100 paying customers in 48 hours. $73,000 in two months. $0 on ads.

Watch him tell it himself (the build-in-public part is the gold):

Everyone obsesses over the AI. The model, the prompt, the tech.

Wrong half. The model is a commodity. Louis rents it for pennies. So does his competitor. So do you. Same AI, one credit card away for anyone. It can't be your edge.

The two things that actually made the money, he got for free:

$30 of AI, wrapped in a problem he knew and a crowd that trusted him. The wrapper is the business.

David Bressler, a data analyst who also can't really code, built Formula Bot over a weekend on Bubble (~$25/mo). It turns plain English into Excel formulas.

He posted it once to Reddit. Woke up to 100,000 visitors and a surprise $5K API bill.

Today: 750,000 users, ~$226,000 a month.

Same shape. Louis earned his distribution slowly (months in public). David earned his in one night (the right Reddit thread). The distribution is the work. Never the code.

Four moves. Each one links to exactly what you need.

Move 1. Steal a spreadsheet.
Find a task people already pay to do badly, in a world you know.
Right now: list 5 annoying manual tasks from your job. The most boring one wins. Boring means painful, painful means people pay.
→ Got an idea already? Score it first with our 3-question test.

No idea yet? Steal one of these. Each is a boring task someone already pays to do badly:

(Eight of 30 validated ideas. We already built the prompt kit for the first one, it's free in our skills.)

Move 2. Earn distribution. Today, not at launch.
The move everyone skips, and the one that decides it. Post in public daily (slow burn), or drop the finished thing where the sufferers already gather (one sharp post).
Right now: pick one platform and post what you're building.

Move 3. Wrap it in a weekend.
No code. Pick a builder, wire in the AI, ship the thinnest version that kills the pain.
→ Bubble (visual) or Lovable (describe it in plain English, AI writes it), plus the OpenAI API for the brain.
On Bubble it's literally this: describe your app, review the blueprint it proposes, refine it, and it generates a working MVP (login, database, search) in 5 to 7 minutes. Then you customize.
→ We walked the whole build before: the 5 basic steps of creating with AI.

Move 4. Charge before it's done.
Pre-sell. The first dollar is the only validation that never lies.
Right now: one-page site on Carrd, a "founding member" price, a payment button. Send 200 people. A few pay before it exists, you have a business. Nobody pays, you just saved six months.

Do not reorder this. Page first, traffic second, calls third, code last. Here's the whole loop:

Do not build "a nicer ChatGPT."

Red flag: your pitch is "it's a bit easier than asking the AI." You're dead.
Green flag: it beats what the user could do alone with the raw tool.

Louis didn't sell "AI." He sold "your rambling, instantly readable." Specific beats smart, every time.

Open your notes app. Write one sentence: the task at your job that everyone complains about and still does by hand.

That's your wrapper. You're already on Move 1. The rest is a weekend and a little nerve.

The code was never the thing stopping you. Look at the number again. It was the cheap part.

— Bissuh

I spent the week trying to poke a hole in the AudioPen number. Thirty dollars in, fifteen grand out, it smells fake. The catch, when I found it, wasn't a catch. It was two years. Two years of Louis posting into a feed that mostly scrolled past him, long before a cent showed up. That's the real price tag, and it's the one that never makes the sales page. The good news: it's the one input you can start buying today, for free, by posting one ugly, unfinished thing before you feel ready.

— Chico

Busy executive. Packed calendar. An inbox that never empties.

Everyone is talking about AI agents. Every week brings another promise of an assistant that can do it all.

Catch is the real deal.

A smart, proactive AI admin agent focused solely on taking administrative work off your plate.

It schedules meetings, triages your inbox, drafts emails in your voice, resolves conflicts, sends follow-ups, and handles the countless small tasks that consume your day.

Available wherever you work — Gmail, Outlook, Slack, WhatsApp, and even over the phone.

No setup. No training. No learning curve.

Catch learns how you work, takes action when it's confident, and keeps things moving without constant supervision.

From swamped to sorted in seconds.

Get started with Catch and have your assistant ready before your next meeting.

Test Catch for free

Sources and further reading: