I set out to gather thirteen people,
and ended up with just AI and me

At first there were two of us.

I started with someone I clicked with and grew it to five, but our schedules never lined up. Some were busy, some had time to spare, and without closing that gap, the first team stalled. I thought it hadn’t worked because we didn’t have enough people. So I decided to gather more.

I went out to meet people. About ten times, I set up sessions to explain what I wanted to do and why we should do it together. Some days I spent an hour on a single person, trying to win them over. Before I knew it, there were thirteen of us.

Gathering people didn’t make things run. People who said they were in dropped out a few days later, people who had dropped out came back, and it got blurry who was on the team and who wasn’t. Everyone had their own circumstances, and their enthusiasm and direction all differed. In the end, the problem wasn’t the people; it was mine, for failing to point thirteen people in one direction. The second team scattered too. All that was left was me.

Most of the energy went not into building, but into persuading people, holding on to them, and managing them.

Once I was alone, I redirected that energy to AI. I’d toss it an idea, and it came back organized into a feature list with priorities. It bundled competing services into comparison tables, and drafts of business plans and pitch scripts took shape in no time. For me, someone who can’t really code, it put screens and features together, and it helped me untangle the errors I wrestled with at dawn. Design mockups, market research, organizing material. AI worked right beside me, handling work that would only have piled up if I’d been alone.

The way I saw AI changed. At first it was just a convenient tool, but at some point it had become something closer to a teammate who never drops out and never goes back on their word. Once the time I’d spent persuading people was gone, every bit of it turned into building time.

I took what I built that way to competitions. No people, just AI and me. Last August and this March, half a year apart, I won two awards. Alone with AI, I’d done what thirteen people couldn’t.

Two things stayed with me.

So now, instead of gathering people again, I build alone, with AI as my teammate. Of course, I haven’t pulled off anything big yet. Two awards are all I have, and even those are just a start. I work alone, but I’m not the only one here. Here there are people who went through the same trial and error before me, and there’s a lot to learn from them.

Thirteen became one. This is just the beginning.

Publisher’s note: This is the record of how the energy once spent persuading thirteen people turned toward AI, and came back as two awards in the space of half a year. Whether to fill an empty seat with a person or with AI is a question this notebook keeps testing, so we are running this member’s record as it is.