Built His App With ChatGPT Then Sold It

Andrew DavisonZapier Automation Expert $1000 estimated sale price of Export My Base Published June 27, 2024 by Fardeen KhanReviewed and edited by Niall Doherty

Andrew Davison is an agency founder who helps companies automate tasks or processes with tools like Zapier

We featured him in the newsletter a while back…

$6500/Month Helping People Use Zapier

An interview with Andrew from last November…

Selling a website after learning to code with AI

The website is Export My Base, a simple one-feature app that lets you export all your Airtable databases as CSV

Andrew doesn’t reveal how much it sold for…

While I can’t say the price, it’s not life changing by any means. However, just being able to say I had an idea for an app, built it and I found someone willing to pay money for it is really fulfilling (especially as someone who dropped out of a computer science degree)

The app wasn’t monetized yet, and judging by other projects listed on the marketplace Andrew used, I’d say his sale price was around $1000.

So not big money, but impressive nonetheless

Especially since Andrew isn’t much of a programmer and he didn’t spend a lot of time on it…

Although I couldn’t code, I knew what code looked like, and I had an idea of how concepts like functions, loops, variables etc worked – in my head I could visualise what different pieces would be needed to make my app work.

Then it was a case of just describing that to ChatGPT and asking to show me code…

It probably took 5-10 hours to get the first version working.

Andrew even let ChatGPT choose the coding language and tools for him, which was how he landed on Replit, a coding workspace right in your browser with nothing to install.

That worked out well…

While I was working on the app, Replit launched its Ghostwriter feature which is basically ChatGPT in Replit, with the added bonus of full visibility of your codebase. It can suggest code, troubleshoot bugs and also answer general questions as you’re building.

Deciding to sell…

I thought about just letting it run, but decided on a whim to see if anyone would buy it. Scoring a ‘exit’, however small, seemed like it would be a good confidence boost and a sort of final chapter for my education…

I reckon this is fast becoming the new norm for building apps: someone who doesn’t really know how to code getting AI to do the heavy lifting

Andrew’s advice for non-coders using ChatGPT…

Just get started. 

Even if you don’t have any development background, just think about your app in terms of pieces of a puzzle (an input form, something happening to that data, an output etc), and ask ChatGPT – or Replit’s Ghostwriter – how you’d go about making that happen with code.

It won’t work at first, and you’ll get errors, but go ahead and feed those back into ChatGPT and it’ll help you fix them. With persistence you’ll eventually get something that works.

I liked Andrew’s approach of building a one-feature app. 

That keeps it pretty simple.

Could you try building a one-feature app with the help of ChatGPT and Replit?

Both tools have sufficient free plans.

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