When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
When you have an AI hammer, you swing it as hard as you can, and watch the nail disintegrate.
I've been building AI applications for four years now. Before that, I raised money to build software. Before that, I worked in marketing and did everything by hand.
The manual work made me good. I learned what actually moved the needle.
When I discovered no-code and automation, I didn't use them to build entire systems. I used them to fix things that were already broken. A process taking too long. A task eating my mornings. One problem at a time.
It was gradual. Each tool earned its place by solving something I'd already felt. I knew what I was optimizing for because I'd done it wrong a hundred times first.
Then I made a critical error: I assumed that because technology was infinitely scalable, it must be infinitely valuable.
App = leverage = value.
AI = more leverage = more value.
Wrong.
Here's what actually happened. Before LLMs existed, I had an idea to automate buyer qualification for real estate agents. Handle the SMS conversations. Filter the leads. Put the lukewarm ones on autopilot.
I should have tested this manually. Hired a few people. Or just done it myself. Seen what conversations actually mattered. Proved the problem was worth solving.
Instead, I built a platform. Spent tens of thousands of dollars. Then more.
I burned our entire runway on a technical proof of concept, proving it could be done, instead of a market proof of concept, proving it should be done.
The thing is, the idea was good. The problem was real. Real estate agents were drowning in unqualified leads. I still believe that.
But I never learned it from them. I learned it from my own head.
I was so busy building the perfect machine that I never shipped an imperfect one. Every feature was a guess. Every decision was based on conversations I imagined having. I had a roadmap full of assumptions and zero signal to tell me which ones were wrong.
By the time I had something to show, I'd spent months in a feedback vacuum. No users. No data. No course corrections. Just me and my hypotheticals, convinced I was making progress.
Meanwhile, someone else shipped something ugly. Got real feedback. Iterated toward the truth while I was still architecting.
They cornered the market. Got acquired by a billion-dollar company. We faded into obscurity.
The lesson:
0 × ∞ = 0.
Leverage multiplies what's already there. If there's nothing underneath, you get nothing back.
Before you build the machine, ask yourself:
If automation is a multiplier, what are you multiplying?
Tap the nail before you swing.