You have no excuse not to build something

· noise r/entrepreneur · ↑ 74 · 💬 181 · 2025-06-05 · kw: automate review reply · open on reddit ↗

Tool

ChatGPT

Issue

Building complex ecommerce platforms (Expedia + TripAdvisor scale) previously required tens to hundreds of thousands in dev costs or full engineering teams; now achievable in 4 days with AI, but only 19-20% functional MVP created.

Cost

$20/month (ChatGPT premium) vs. historically $50,000–$500,000+ in dev costs

Recommendation

none

Date context

2025-06-05; reflects current AI capability as of early 2025

extracted with

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

Thanks to ChatGPT, I've spent the last five days hacking together about 19-20% of what will be an extraordinarily complex, data-driven travel website (imagine Expedia + TripAdvisor. Normally, building something at this scale would cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in dev time or require a full-blown engineering team. I tried this back in 2018 and gave up. But this time? In 4 days I have a half-functional front-end that handles * Searches, filters, and dynamic results. * A backend that stores structured data, serves APIs, and handles authentication. * An automated data pipeline feeding real-world content into the system. * The foundation for AI-driven features like review summarization and itinerary planning. And I'm doing it all for the hefty rate of $20/month for premium ChatGPT. So anything thinking they can't start a company because they can't build something - get off your ass and start! :)

Top comments (8)

[score=1] AutoModerator

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[score=69] muskateeer

Now is when the rest of the people realize building has always been the easy part.

[score=180] Conscious_Life_8032

Let us know when you monetize it

[score=123] [deleted]

Let us know when it's live, I would love pen test it :)

[score=125] EntrepJ

19-20% is hilarious

[score=138] SrT96

Although I agree AI immensely shortens the development time, I’ve also seen in my own projects that the mocking and basic MVP part is fast. However, actually building robust and fully fledged services takes at least 10x longer than you think. You have achieved a lot on these four days that before took way longer & possibly required more manpower, but it’s easy to get lulled by AI. This is not meant to take away from your progress, it’s just meant as some balanced perspective for others who read. Keep digging at it! I wish you to succeed on this idea. Sounds cool.

[score=44] Curious_Fennel4651

Come back when you actually make any money. What I'm reading here is 'I don't know programming'. I tried drawing and I sucked, in 4 days I generated 500 images with AI :)

[score=17] -brokenbones-

It takes 10% of the time to do 90% of the work. But it takes 90% of the time to do the final 10%.