Last week’s funding news hit, and my first reaction wasn’t excitement
A friend runs an in-person training business. Last year, he wanted a booking mini-program, and the quote came to RMB 12,000. I saw the news and paused—if this tool had existed six months earlier, could it have saved him most of that quote?
What is it, and who’s already using it?
The tool is called Lovable. The pitch is simple: describe what I want in plain language, and it helps assemble a working web app. No coding is needed. I could say, ‘Build me a pet-sitting booking page, with time slots on the left and pet details on the right,’ and it would put that together.
I used to get this wrong too: I assumed these tools were mainly for helping developers move faster. Then I found Lin Xiao on Xiaohongshu. She’s a post-1990s woman running a Xiaohongshu operations service who built a page called ‘AI-Generated Viral Headlines’ in a week with Lovable. It now helps her take on 30+ extra clients every month. She had never written code, and that made me look at this category differently.
Why raise $400 million? Because its user base is growing so fast. The market is betting that, over the next few years, tools like this will erase the gap between people who want to build an app and people who know how to build one.
What does it cost to try today?
Honestly, I also got stuck here—at first, I assumed I’d need a card, decent English, and some technical know-how. After testing it, that wasn’t the case.
Money: The free plan lets me play around with a few simple projects each month; the paid plan is about $25 a month, or roughly RMB 180. I’d stay on the free plan at first rather than paying on day one.
Time: From signing up to getting a usable page takes 1–2 hours. To make something I’d be comfortable showing people: 3–5 days. I once built a simple course-inquiry form for a friend and spent most of a weekend on it.
Technical barrier: Zero. I don’t have to write a single line of code; it’s like typing in a chat. I only need to explain the page I want clearly, the way I’d brief a designer.
First step: Open lovable.dev and sign in with a Google account. A chat box is waiting. I’d start with: ‘Build me a pet-sitting booking page.’ My first result appeared in about 30 seconds.
Which stage am I at?
Just starting out, with little or no revenue: If I had no clients and no product yet, I’d hold off. I’d first serve people in my network and close circle; this tool is an amplifier, not a starter. Once I already have something real, I can use it to amplify that.
Already have 1–2 clients, with work still being done manually or through WeChat: At that stage, I’d definitely give it a try. Even a simple requirements form included in an automated reply to Xiaohongshu DMs can save a few hours a month. I started at this stage myself, and the payoff was immediate: I finally stopped opening a spreadsheet to do the calculations by hand.
Scaling and thinking about a SaaS or paid product: It’s enough for an MVP (minimum viable product—the version that works, even if it isn’t pretty or polished). But I’d keep expectations realistic: complex features, user login, and payments may not work, or may come out rough. For something long-term, I’ll eventually need someone to take over the build or move to a more professional stack.
There’s no harm in waiting. Not everyone needs this tool. If I had a reliable developer friend, enough budget, and no deadline, outsourcing would still be a perfectly sensible option. I’d identify the real bottleneck first, then decide whether trying Lovable is worth the detour.