Before you build something with AI, find out whether anyone will pay for it.

You’ve probably seen the videos. Build an app in an afternoon. Launch a business with a few prompts. Use AI to turn something you know into an income.

And people are earning money this way. In an Adobe Express survey of 1,010 gig workers, published in February 2026, 46% said they were earning income with AI as a side hustle.

But there’s a question I’d ask before opening another tool: if someone else can create the same thing, why would a customer choose yours?

In the video above, I share how Lovable turned a familiar frustration—“I’ve got an app idea, but I can’t code” — into an AI-powered business that reached a reported $400 million in annual recurring revenue by February 2026. What interests me is what you can learn from it: how do you spot a problem people would pay you to make disappear?

You don’t need to build the next Lovable to learn something from that. Think about the people you already understand. What do they keep putting off because it’s too difficult, too expensive or takes too much time? That’s a much more useful place to start than asking AI for another list of business ideas.

Of course, even when people want what you’re selling, you still have to reach them. Dropbox learned that the expensive way. Its early advertising experiments cost $233–$388 to acquire a customer for a $99 product. Then a referral program helped increase signups by 60% .

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