I build my own payment apps.
All with the help of AI.
The only thing is that no one cares.
No users. No traction. No profit.
This is not true, but there is a pattern behind it.
I scroll past three or four of these every morning: polished landing pages, zero reviews, founder celebrating the launch. Nowadays building an app is not a big deal, especially if you have basic technical knowledge.
After a few prompts any AI tool is able to deliver good looking app with basic functions.
Most of it doesn’t even work and doesn’t have real people who would like to use it, but AI allows you to build everything you can imagine.
This leads me to another conclusion. I noticed that building apps has become something of an addiction.
It constantly gives you approvals and keeps asking to continue as the next iteration will resolve the error.
You keep buying tokens that you keep spending like it is a slot machine.
You believe that the AI engine will build you a super app the same as you believe that slot machine will give you 3 numbers and a reward.
Ultimately the only one who wins is the AI engine as you keep spending money on dream that the tool is selling you.
The psychology is straightforward: variable rewards, just enough progress to keep you going, and a product that profits whether you win or not.
I am far from saying that it is impossible to build a meaningful product with the help of AI, however I noticed that people get this thing completely backwards.
Before AI there was already a pattern of building products that no one really wanted to use. It was a common problem as still is.
However, I noticed that this has escalated significantly.
The daily surge of new apps is overwhelming.
The thing that everyone is struggling with is distribution.
I’m guilty of this mistake too. There is also a chance that I will do it again.
Distribution is not a step you add at the end; it is the only question worth asking on day one. With the era of social media and AI mix people are extremely confused about that appears on the internet.
Even for myself it is sometimes difficult to distinguish what is real and what is AI-generated.
I think it went a bit out of control like for example AI faceless channels, AI ads and fake social media profiles.
Companies exploit this trend to their advantage.
When you see people want to dig gold the most money can be earned by selling shovels and this is exactly what all the AI engines are doing.
People keep seeing how others “earn 10k a month” using AI, then they believe it and replicate it.
They want to believe the dream so let them have it.
That sounds cold, and I mean it exactly as cold as it sounds.
People follow every instruction from self-appointed gurus convinced they are accessing some secret the rest of the internet missed.
If it were that simple, everyone would have already done it.
Everyone would quit their job and start these “faceless channels” if it requires less effort and you can do it remotely from home or even while travelling.
The question I now ask before I open a new project: who is already waiting for this, and how do I reach them before I write a single line of code.
The apps I built taught me nothing about building. They taught me that the only prompt that matters is the one you ask your potential user before you start.