This essay as told is based on a conversation with Christina Puder, a 35-year-old solo founder based in Madrid. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
When I started working full time, I needed a website and accidentally stumbled into the world of construction with AI.
After trying an old website builder and failing, I hired a part-time designer and engineer to do it. They were a little slow, so while I waited I tried using a suggested AI tool to build my website.
I have no financing or technical training, so I created a free account with Lovable, an AI coding assistant. I started adding simple information about the website design and suddenly the AI platform created the entire landing page. It was my gateway to everything AI can do.
Sometimes using AI makes me feel like I’m working with the stupidest person I’ve ever met, but the word “compulsion” very rarely comes to mind when I think about how AI allows me to run my business.
I had no intention of starting an AI-based business. I just wanted to move quickly without hiring.
For about 10 years, I’ve been doing career coaching for product managers alongside my full-time job. I went from zero customers to constantly having a full plate. In 2025, I decided to become a full-time coach.
I knew I wanted to be bootstrapped and hiring full-time employees was way too expensive. Part-time is also not ideal, as it involves someone who may not fully understand the needs of my business; this is not their main objective.
Puder doesn’t have any experience or technology, but AI helped her build her own website. Christopher Gregory-Rivera for BI
Before I started my website, I was a casual AI user. I would like go to ChatGPT for help with ideas, writing and research. I don’t have a background in technology, and for that reason, I initially didn’t see AI as an enabler for my business. After creating my website, I discovered how useful AI could be for both my web page and my company’s internal system.
Five free credits a day helped me build my website to scale my business
When I tried to build my website before using AI, I probably put 30 or 40 hours into it, and it turned out so ugly and clunky. Then I started test adorable using five free credits per day. After seeing how fast the AI tool worked and how beautiful it looked, I knew I would come back the next day to continue building.
When I first started using Lovable, I think the credits were correlated to the number of messages I sent. I discovered a hack after sending a message with just one simple edit request, and it cost me a credit. In the next post, I submitted six requests, and he made all six changes and only took back one credit.
I think they discovered this loophole. Now, credit use seems more closely linked to amount of power a query consumes. There are times when I’m building, and I’m surprised because I don’t realize I’m making such an expensive request.
I don’t know how many credits it took to create my entire website. It’s definitely more than five, but someone could create an entire landing page with five credits. They could ask AI tool to create a basic website with three sections and brand colors, and I think it would honestly only take two and a half credits.
I still use my 5 free credits almost every day, even though I have a paid subscription
I upgraded to a paid account and now pay $20 per month for my subscription, which I don’t think is that expensive. I get 100 credits per month, plus my five free credits every day which are non-renewable.
I started thinking about my AI tools as workers. I want to make sure I’m using them to their full capacity, so I always try to use credits that aren’t renewable. It’s the same as if I were hiring someone full-time: I would want them to provide high output every day.
If it’s been a while since I’ve given my website’s backend some love, I’ll write a prompt asking which areas of the code would benefit most from a refactor and ask it to rank them. Then, depending on how many credits I have left out of the five, I will tell him which areas need to be corrected.
AI helped me reduce the time it took to complete a task from an hour to a minute
One service I offer is finding and applying for jobs for my clients. Each client has very specific criteria for the types of jobs they want, and I would manually search for jobs that match those criteria for each client.
Puder says she used AI to help her reduce a task that previously took 60 minutes to one minute. Christopher Gregory-Rivera for BI
It used to take me about 60 minutes per day per client just to manually find the right jobs to apply for. I’ve built AI-powered automations that reduced search time at a minute. Recovering 60 minutes a day for each of my clients was a large-scale release.
I really didn’t think it was possible.
Sometimes I have to go back to a human engineer, but I’m always impressed by AI
Every now and then things break, or I encountered bugs. There have been times where I build something and spend 40 credits trying to fix it. After a while, I will ask the AI to completely remove the feature we are working on because we encountered a bug. I will tell them that instead of continuing to look for a way out, we will simply start from scratch.
There was a problem with some logos on my website. I tried and tried to ask him to make them all look the same size together, but it didn’t work. I finally went back to my part time engineer and asked him to fix it.
Every once in a while I go back to that engineer and just pay him to fix one or two specific things that I can’t do.
Do you have a story to share about running an AI-powered business? Contact this reporter, Agnes Applegate, at aapplegate@businessinsider.com.