Scene Hook
Last Wednesday afternoon at a cafe, I waited two days for an outsourced dev just to change a button color on my landing page. Big tech is offering ¥50K/month to grab devs, and I couldn't even get one to respond.
For small teams like ours, the worst pain isn't lacking ideas — it's ideas getting stuck in our hands. I've been stuck too. Last year I spent ¥30K on an outsourced mini-program, the back-and-forth communication was more exhausting than writing code myself, and it launched two versions behind schedule — I almost gave up on that project those two months.
What This Means + Who's Using It
Citadel Securities just released a report called '2026 Global Intelligence Crisis.' Core finding: software engineer hiring is rising fast, big companies are accelerating talent grabs, but supply can't keep up. In plain English: programmers are getting more expensive and harder to book.
But this is exactly our window. My friend Azhou, who does independent consulting, spent two days last month at a co-working space using Cursor (an AI coding assistant — you describe your needs in natural language and it writes the code) to build a small client management tool — getting someone to build it would've cost ¥20K. He can't code at all; he just iterated with the AI round by round, gradually refining it.
While big tech drives programmer prices sky-high, AI tools are lowering the coding barrier to somewhere we can actually reach.
Your Action Cost Today
Here are the numbers: Money — $0 (Cursor free tier is enough, ChatGPT free tier works too); Time — 3 hours to get your first runnable page; Technical barrier — if you can chat on WhatsApp or WeChat, you can use this, you just describe 'I want a page with a title on top and a contact button below' and AI generates the code; First step — go to cursor.com, click Download, after installing create a new file, type 'help me make a simple landing page.'
But I messed this up before: I thought AI could handle a complete product in one go. Actually it's more like a very patient partner — you go round by round saying 'make the font bigger' 'the button only works on double-click,' slowly grinding it out. But it's way faster than waiting on an outsourced dev.
This tool isn't for everyone. If you haven't figured out what product to build yet, it's fine to skip it for now.
Advice by Stage
If you're just starting out and haven't found your first customer — I'd suggest using ChatGPT's free tier to chat through your ideas, let it help turn vague notions into a presentable one-pager. Don't rush into complex products, first let people see what you're working on.
If you have 1-2 customers already — I'd suggest using Cursor to build a small tool that solves your most repetitive task. Azhou automated the client report he sent 5 times a week, saving 3 hours weekly. Start with whatever annoys you most.
If you're scaling up — I'd suggest drawing a clear line: which work absolutely requires a human programmer, and which can have AI produce a prototype first, then find someone to optimize. Don't outsource everything, and don't rely on AI for everything either. Get that line right, and the savings are substantial.