There has never been a better time to build. The internet, smartphones, cloud computing, SaaS, AI - each of these has been a game-changer on its own. But together? They've created a perfect storm of opportunity for anyone willing to jump in and create. Whether you're a solo developer, a small team, or just someone with an idea, the tools at our disposal today are unprecedented. I'm going to walk you through why I believe this, share some of my own experiences leveraging these technologies, and hopefully inspire you to start building too. This isn't just about coding or tech. It's about the sheer breadth of what's possible now.
The Dawn of Unprecedented Opportunity
The internet created this equally accessible frontier where anyone could throw up a web page and serve the world. It could be a media company, a store front, a game, whatever. The smart phone put the internet in our pockets adding the gps and cameras to our internet interactions. Cloud computing brought in an era where you didn't have to manage racks of servers in order to scale an internet business. SaaS products have given us a range of applications that used to be whole departments at larger organizations that any little startup can now leverage and compete on equal footing. AI has now supercharged the individual enabling us to write code, copy write, design, and a host of other things at a boosted rate of productivity.
As we've seen, the technological landscape has evolved dramatically, creating a fertile ground for innovation. But how does this translate to individual opportunities?
The AI Revolution: Empowering the Individual
As I said, there has never been a better time to build something. The breadth of things an individual or small team can execute on is historically unparalleled. The smaller the team, the smaller the opportunity they can consider that a larger operation wouldn't find attractive. Even if you don't know what you might want to build, the ability to LEARN is similarly unparalleled right now. An LLM can provide very adequate tutoring and feedback on a range of things enabling us to level up in all dimensions.
With these powerful tools at our fingertips, the question becomes: how can we harness them to bring our ideas to life?
A Personal Journey: Rediscovering Coding
To start my journey, a few months ago I started trying to see how AI crutches could help me to write code again. I have a computer science undergrad and I worked as a software engineer decades ago but I learned to write C in school and professionally I wrote Java and Ruby for a short bit. I have a lot to catch up on. I built smart contracts for digital collectibles and a Next.js typescript app to enable people to interact with those collectibles and contracts. It's not live yet but I'm going to pull the trigger really soon.
It was an amazing experience. It was the first part of my journey so progress didn't follow a straight line. I couldn't plan what I'd be building because I didn't know what I'd be able to build. There were many cases where after seeing what I'd built, I realized that it wasn't the best experience for what I wanted to build. At times I had incredibly satisfying bursts of productivity where it felt that things would just spring forth from my mind into reality. Other times, I might be stuck for a few days as I needed to work through the assorted pieces of my app I was co-creating with AI in order to debug a problem. At one point I realized my app had night mode, meaning it had an alternate darker color scheme for night time vs day time, and it wasn't something I'd explicitly tried to create. As it turns out, yes I could write code again. It's been incredibly empowering.
While my coding journey was exhilarating, I realized that building isn't limited to software development. There are countless ways to create and innovate in this new era.
Experimenting with Quick Builds: The Workout Timer
As a result of all of that learning I'd put together the foundations so that one day I built a workout timer in the space of 25 minutes so that I could have the appropriate intervals displayed on my computer as I moved through the workout. I'd already figured out the basics of what language I could write in, JavaScript, framework to build with, Next.js, CSS tooling to use, Tailwind and where to host it, Vercel. Over the next couple days I polished the timer app and then I manually hosted a fitness fight club with some friends. Everyone put in $20. We all had to do the daily prescribed workout on my app for 5 of the next 7 days. If you did your workout, you got your $20 back. If you didn't, your buy-in was split amongst those that did. Despite the fun (and the $5 bucks I earned off a friend) it didn't make sense to scale up into a larger experience.
This experiment, while fun, taught me valuable lessons about rapid prototyping and market testing. But I didn't want to limit myself to just one form of creation.
Embracing the Writing Challenge
I realized I was leaning deeply into building but I also wanted to flex other creative dimensions. I committed to publishing a piece of writing every day for the next 30 days. This is my piece for day 20. I wrote a little bit about how I've used Anthropic's Claude as a writing partner and it's been eye opening. The necessity of publishing every day has been a helpful forcing function in getting me to get my ideas out there and to not be too precious about it. It's been a little challenging in the last couple days as my family and I are moving back into our house in Brooklyn after a year abroad but even with that, this is the point. I'm leveraging AI tooling to produce in a way I absolutely could not without them.
After this 30 day challenge is over, I hope to continue this new writing habit but at a less intense rate. I'd like to publish maybe 1-3 times a week but I know that doing something every day is in some ways easier for me than trying to do it a couple days a week with a loose schedule. I'll figure it out. I don't want to lose this muscle.
As I push through this writing challenge, I'm constantly reminded of the power of consistency and the tools at our disposal. But what comes after these 30 days?
Looking Ahead: The $10 Internet Challenge
The next stage of my journey will be to make $10 bucks on the internet off of software. Consulting would be cheating. I need to find some niche problem that I can solve and charge for. I've clearly built lots of software over the years and solved many problems, but I've never been this agnostic as to the type of problem. I'm not bound by an existing company or area. I just need a problem software can solve that someone is willing to pay $10 for. Or ten people are willing to pay $1 for. Or I can give 50% off the $20 price tag. Regardless, I'm trying to put together my toolkit to see what I can offer the internet.
This next stage of my journey represents the essence of what I've been exploring: the ability to identify problems, create solutions, and deliver value in the digital age.
Conclusion: Seizing the Moment
There has never been a better time to build. I truly believe that we are in a moment where an individual or small team can punch above their weight drastically. If you have the will to learn and build, that can be you and me too.
In this era of unprecedented opportunity, the only limit is our imagination and willingness to learn. Whether it's through coding, writing, or solving unique problems, there truly has never been a better time to build. What will you create?
