Being Held Accountable by AI (Transmission #320)
No-code product building solutions aren’t “new,” per say. Replit was founded back in 2016—nine years ago.
I intuitively knew building products without actual coding is possible. But I hadn’t done the work to know for certain.
I’ve had off-and-on conversations about this topic over the previous months. Then, in February, Nate Smoyer sent me a text: “Wanna build something using nothing but AI as a learning (and potentially teaching/content) experience?”
I mean … YES.
And presenting the learnings at GEM Proptech Getaway was the perfect opportunity to give us a deadline. At last year’s first retreat, I used no-code solutions to conceptualize a startup. This year, we would actually bring a real product to market.
Of course, we wanted to make sure we built a product that addresses a real problem. Not just adds more noise to an already noisy tech landscape.
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PRODUCT IDEA
As part of joining my own “community builder mastermind" last year and launching the Peer Circles initiative, I developed a product hunch.
That entrepreneurs lack a simple way to share core business metrics and goals with trusted friends/family/advisors/peers. More visibility means more accountability, which, in turn, means a higher likelihood of hitting your goals/metrics.
It’s human nature to not want to let people down. Not unlike the Burn the Boats strategy.
The proposed solution: A web-based accountability dashboard that enables entrepreneurs to share key business metrics and goals with trusted peers, family, and advisors to improve the probability they will achieve their goals.
Back when I was bootstrapping Horizon (2014-2016), building such a product would cost tens of thousands if offshored, and hundreds of thousands if built with engineers based in the states.
But, we’re in a new world, where AI can build entire products by simply interacting with a conversational agent that “knows” how to code.
THE RESULT IN 2025
Enter Accountable, a product built fully with AI.
Its key features:
- Monthly check-in with core KPIs and monthly goals, with the ability to share that update with accountability partners
- The ability to add people and peer groups as accountability partners
- Tracking KPIs over time
- The concept of a peer group
No need to go into all the ins and outs of the product, as that’s not the goal of this exercise. It was to gauge the feasibility and effectiveness of the tools available.
PROCESS
To recap what Nate Smoyer and I went through to get here: