I did something dumb last weekend
Friday I shipped a small product with off-the-shelf tools. Saturday I polished and launched. Sunday... I stared at a blank doc for 3 hours, no clue what to build next. My friend Lao Chen asked what I'd been up to. I said, "I build faster than I can come up with ideas." He laughed it off as humble-bragging. I was dead serious.
This is actually a new problem
Ten years ago, if I wanted an e-commerce site, I needed three dinners with a programmer friend just to get an MVP out. But now? Xiaoliu, a freelance designer, shipped 3 client landing pages solo last week. Ailin, a Xiaohongshu blogger, used AI to write a whole course outline in one night. Building got crushed by tools.
But where do they get stuck? On "what to make next." It's not that they have zero ideas — they just never stop to ask "what's actually bugging users?" I've been stuck there too. Last year I shipped 4 tools back to back. All died of "nobody wanted them."
You can copy "ship fast" today too
Money: Bubble, Notion AI, Windsurf's student tier all start free. Monthly fees run from a few dozen to just over a hundred.
Time: with a clear idea, you can build a working prototype tonight.
Tech barrier: drag-and-drop + text prompts. No code needed. But — you need a problem worth solving first.
First step: open your phone notes, write 3 things you heard someone complain about this week. "Digging through chat history to find an invoice" counts.
Different stages, how we'd use this
Just starting: don't rush to build. Spend a month talking to 10 people. Ask "what headache did you pay to solve recently?" This whole toolkit isn't for everyone, and it's fine to skip for now — but I wish someone had told me that back then.
Have 1-2 clients: the problem isn't the next product, it's the right one. List the 5 questions your clients asked you this week. Pick the one that comes up most. Use tools to build a minimal version tonight. Even if you're wrong, you only lose a night.
Scaling: you're short on judgment, not tech. Every week, block half a day, don't touch tools, and read 5 rants your target users post on social media. Shipping fast isn't the edge. Thinking right is.