This told essay is based on a conversation with Cristina Puder, a 35-year-old solo founder based in Madrid. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
While working full-time on the side, I needed a website and stumbled into the world of building with AI.
After trying old website builders and failing, we hired a designer and engineer part-time. It was a little slow, so while I was waiting I tried building a website using the recommended AI tools.
Since I don’t have any funds or a technical background, I created a free account with Lovable, an AI coding assistant. I started adding some simple information about my website design, and suddenly the AI platform built an entire landing page for me. That was my introduction to all the things AI can do.
With AI, it can sometimes feel like you’re working with the dumbest people you’ve ever met, but when you think about how AI is enabling you to run your business, the word “constraint” is hardly the first thing that comes to mind.
We didn’t set out to build an AI-powered business. I just wanted to move quickly without hiring.
For the past 10 years, I’ve been providing career coaching to product managers in addition to my full-time job. I went from having zero customers to always being fully booked. In 2025, I decided to coach full time.
I wanted to start my own business, but it was too expensive to hire a full-time employee. Part time is also not ideal. Because part-time may not fully understand my business needs. That’s not their main focus.
Puder has no background or technology, but AI helped her build her website. Christopher Gregory-Rivera (BI)
Before building websites, I was a general AI user. I went to ChatGPT for ideas, writing, and research help. I don’t have a technology background. So, at first, I didn’t see AI as an enabler for my business. After building a website, I discovered how useful AI can be for both web pages and the internal systems of a business.
5 free credits a day helped me build a website to expand my company
When I tried to build a website before using AI, it probably took me 30-40 hours and ended up looking very ugly and clunky. I then started testing Loveable with 5 free credits per day. When I saw how fast the AI tools worked and how good they looked, I knew I would come back the next day and keep building.
When I first started using Lovable, I believe credits were correlated to the number of messages sent. I discovered the hack after sending one simple change request to Messages and it cost me my credits. In the next message I entered 6 requests, all 6 changes were made and only 1 credit was re-obtained.
I think they found that loophole. Currently, credit usage appears to be more closely related to the amount of power a request consumes. While building, you may be surprised at how expensive the request is.
I don’t know how many credits I need to build my entire website. It’s definitely more than 5 credits, but some people may be able to build an entire landing page in 5 credits. You can ask an AI tool to create a basic website with three sections and your brand colors. Honestly, I think it only takes two and a half credits.
I use my 5 free credits almost every day even though I have a paid subscription
I switched to a paid account and currently pay a $20/month subscription fee, which I don’t think is that expensive. I get 100 credits every month plus 5 free credits every day that don’t roll over.
I started thinking of AI tools as workers. I always try to use credits that don’t roll over because I want to get the most out of my credits. This is the same as hiring someone full time. I want them to perform well every day.
If it’s been a while since you’ve given your website’s backend any love, create a prompt asking which areas of your code would benefit most from refactoring and ask them to rank them. It then tells you which areas to fix based on how many of the 5 units you have left.
AI reduced task time from 1 hour to 1 minute
One of the services I provide is finding and applying for jobs for my clients. Each client had very specific criteria for the type of work they wanted, and I was manually searching for jobs that fit those criteria for each client.
Puder says that using AI, a task that previously took 60 minutes was reduced to one minute. Christopher Gregory-Rivera (BI)
Previously, manually finding the right job to apply for took about 60 minutes per day for each client. We built AI-driven automation to reduce search time to 1 minute. By giving each client back 60 minutes per day, we’ve unlocked it at scale.
I really didn’t think that was possible.
Sometimes I have to go back to being a human engineer, but I’m still impressed with AI
Sometimes things break or you run into bugs. I was once building something and spent 40 credits fixing it. After some time, you ask the AI to completely remove the feature you’re developing because it encountered a bug. I tell them we’re just going to start from scratch instead of continuing to dig our way.
I once had a problem with some logos on my website. I tried many times to make them all look the same size, but I just couldn’t do it. I ended up going back to my part-time engineer to fix it.
Sometimes I just go back to that engineer and pay him to fix one or two specific things that I can’t do myself.
Do you have a story to share about running your business with AI? Contact this reporter, Agnes Applegate: aapplegate@businessinsider.com.
