You Don't Need a Technical Co-founder
Today, you need an Ai Co-Pilot. Only one year ago, “impossible” were things starting to shape.
The impossible is now normal
Only one year ago, “impossible” were things starting to take shape. We saw the beginnings of Ai coders, Ai video, Ai agents and Ai everything. All at consumer level for a few bucks.
Today, those tools work so great, that anyone with a bit of scrappiness can put 1 and 1 together and build something truly amazing in no time. I’m talking from a short film using Google’s Flow (Veo3) to a realistic clone of your voice as Ai assistant, MCP servers or my favorite > an MVP in days, not months.
This is what changed … to me
You don’t need a CS degree. You don’t need to learn React, Java, C++, etc. You need tools, taste and ideas, not even good ones.
You need to describe those ideas in plain words and talk to the stack like it’s your co-pilot. Your next technical co-founder is Ai
The tech co-founder was never the point. The point was always execution. The point was always speed.
The tools now let you execute fast. It does not mean you don’t need a CTO - that’s a different thing, you really do.
If that still sounds like too much I’ve got you.
A generation of stuck ideas
There’s a whole generation of people with real ideas who’ve been stuck. For years.
They had something. A concept, a tool, a community, a better way of doing XYZ, but no way of actually building it.
I am one of those guys. Full of ideas, and tried always to push and build. From the early era of internet with MS Frontpage, CMS, No-Code, and now Ai Coders.
Back then we get excited every time an idea came up, then we hit a wall. We couldn’t code. Didn’t know who to ask, and if we did we were receiving very cocky answers from those who knew.
Maybe some tried Upwork and got a half-finished Figma or got lucky but with a price.
Maybe we pitched a technical friend who said “sounds cool” and ghosted us (several times in a row).
Maybe even saved up and talked to an agency only to be quoted $100k for a deck and a six-month timeline.
I’ve seen most founders and “idea people” stall out before they ever launch. Or they waste time writing specs, pitching co-founders, or waiting for funding to build. They talk to agencies that want enterprise budgets to prototype a button, etc.
Those days are over …
Re-Launching a Small Studio
That’s why we are re-launching ih1i (“I have one idea”) into a small operator studio built to help non-technical founders and regular folks to bring an idea to life. A studio for the “idea people”. Founders, artists, ex-employees, indie thinkers, first-time builders.
We work with people who have something in their head and no interest in learning to code or waiting six months for validation.
We take the idea > raw, sketched, half-baked, whatever > and we help them ship it. Live, working, usable. In just a few weeks. Or if you are hands-on we guide you.
We are building to be:
A micro-studio that turns early ideas into working products
Fast, Ai-native, founder-minded, for the regular non-technical folk
Not a dev shop, not corporate, not pitch deck peddlers, not an agency.
We’ve been stuck before too. We’ve built decks that went nowhere. Waited for “the right person.” Watched six-week builds turn into six-month projects. We don’t do that anymore. We build real MVPs, and we build fast.
You don’t need a tech co-founder.
You don’t need to raise money.
You just need an idea.
.. and send us an email » hello@ih1i.com
If you are like me and want to do it yourself?
👉 Here's Your Blueprint
If you’re more on the scrappy or technical side, here’s what we run internally. This is how we’ve shipped full-stack products in a week. It’s real. It works.
And if you run into any hiccups please end me a not here in the comments or on X > @orlandopedro_ I’m always happy to help and point anyone in the right direction.
Step 1: Dump your idea into ChatGPT
Open voice chat with ChatGPT. Talk to it. Vomit everything in your head as it comes out, with excitement, don’t organize don’t hold back. Don’t clean it up. Just get it out. Check from time to time if it got it all. Then:
Then ask ChatGPT: “Turn this into a PRD - comprehensive product spec.”
Review, adjust
“Summarize that as a dev prompt.”
“Create a full branding brief that goes with that product and my target as if you were my CPO and award winning brand strategist, be [bold, conservative, crazy, etc ]”
Step 2: Brand it in one hour with Lovart.ai
Go to Lovart.ai you can sign up for free (using my codes). Take the brand brief you produced in step 1, and let it generate a logo, palette, and type system. Play, Tweak. Export. Done.
Use any of these invite codes [ LKMqXn8 - 6Z7XnyU - nqANY48 - ZZk9t8n - gSm5Xu8 }
Step 3: Build with Lovable
Now the fun part
Take your PRD from Step 1 and paste it into Lovable.dev and wait and let the magic happen.
It will build you a shell. If it fails and it’s not what you want. Trash that one, adjust in Step 1 and try again.
After a minute. It will create a live version of the app (with dummy data and functions in a few seconds) This version is the shell, the raw materials for you the next Instagram. You can also use something like Bolt.new - but I rather use lovable
Step 4: You start sculpting.
There are two ways of doing this, the way a designer will do it with technical instructions to polish the designs, and make sure change by change it’s your idea to the letter or my way, talking to the Ai till it get it exactly as you want it.
I call this stage “sculpting” - lovable will initially give you a very vanilla tailwind version of your site. That’s the program (unless you use your own libraries). So it will require quite a bit of fine tuning, slowly to sculpture this into shape.
Tip: use the “chat” function as it will help plan and think without changing the application. And read carefully, sometimes it will overcomplicate simple things, you can challenge and let it know of better, fastest and more logical ways to do something.
Step 5: Use Supabase for backend
Set up your backend with Supabase > auth via Gitgub first please
If you are using Lovable, the MCP servers from Supabase allow it to literally take advantage of the full functions, and bring your app to the next level automatically, just by taking to the ai co-pilot you can create seamless authentication, edge function to connect to basically anythign you want.
Yes, there are different ways to build applications with AWS, MongoDb etc. But we are talking of building MVPs here, and consumer facing applications that get the job done.
gets the job done, and more.
Step 6: Wire up payments with Stripe (or PayPal)
Integrations with Stripe, are super simple, anyone can do it. You can not only integrate with Stripe to charge your customers, but you can also use Stripe Connect to allow your users to charge their clients, get credit cards, obtain credits and more. It’s a full financial backend at your fingertips
Lovable for example integrates with Stripe natively, meaning you can have Stripe payments in your application with only one prompt.
Stripe integrations used to take weeks. This can now be done in minutes.
Step 7: Claude and Copilot for bug fixes
Paste any bug or error into Claude (or ChatGPT). It’ll explain it and fix it.
Why is this the best way, if you can do it in Lovable or Bolt? the advantage is a two-fold. On one side this will cost you nothing, and on the other side you have a new logic to tackle the problem
Ai coders like lovable, most of the times will came out with a very complicated solution. Use GitHub Copilot for autocompleting code and cleaning logic. They’re better than most juniors or you know …
Step 8: Google Cloud for extra power (optional)
Need storage, Vision AI, or cron jobs? Google Cloud has it all. You don’t need an infra guy. Just a bit of curiosity, and an API key. From Auth to Maps and LLMs they have it. And you can apply for startup credits, in their startup program.
So … that’s the whole loop
Idea → Spec → Design → Build → Launch.
With zero full-time engineers.
And almost zero waiting.
Final thoughts
You can wait for a CTO.
You can write another spec doc no one reads.
You can call the agency and ask for a quote.
Or you can open a chat, talk your idea out loud, and have a working product over the weekend
The era of needing a technical co-founder is over.
The era of idea people building things themselves > with or without help > just start.
We’re here for that.