← The $100 MBA Show
The $100 MBA Show
Can You Build A Profitable SaaS In 7 Days With Just AI? My Experiment With Proof!
00:15:36
Building software is supposed to take years of coding, endless stress, and a long grind to profitability. Omar wanted to test that belief. After a decade running WebinarNinja, he set out to answer one bold question: can you build a real SaaS product in just 7 days using nothing but AI?
Loading summary
Transcript46 lines
- [00:00]
Commercial Announcer
Does it feel like it's getting really hard to figure out the best way to save for retirement? Fidelity can help you find clarity so you can save the best way for you. With a free personalized plan, goal tracking and timely insights, you'll be set to take on retirement your way. Get started@fidelity.com future expenses charged by your investments and other costs and fees associated with trading or transacting in your account. Apply Fidelity Brokerage Services member nyse, SIPC
- [00:29]
Omar Zenhom
and this just in.
- [00:30]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
The Comcast Business Price Lock Guarantee is back.
- [00:33]
Omar Zenhom
For a limited time, you can lock
- [00:34]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
in the same great rate on gig speed, Internet and advanced security for five years, all from the company with 99.9% network reliability. Switch to the Comcast Business 5 Year
- [00:45]
Omar Zenhom
Price Lock Guarantee today.
- [00:47]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
Learn more at comcastbusiness.com ends March 29,
- [00:52]
Omar Zenhom
2026 I spent 10 years of my life building, scaling and eventually selling my software business webinar Ninja. And to be honest, it was an absolute battle all 10 years. But I wanted to test myself. I wanted to see if I can do it again, if I can build a software that really rivals the industry leaders. But I wanted to do it this time only using AI. And one more thing. I wanted to do it in just seven days. I'm talking about a fully functional, fully deployed, ready to take payments app. I have to ask the question, is this even possible? This episode is about, you know, building with AI and we're going to get into that. But it's really about can you build something under constraints? Can you do it under a ridiculous timeline? And maybe you can. I'm going to share with you exactly what I went through day by day for seven days so that you can follow along. Welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host Omar Zenholm where I
- [01:50]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
deliver practical business lessons three times a
- [01:52]
Omar Zenhom
week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday 10 to
- [01:54]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
help you start, grow and scale your business. If this show has helped in any
- [02:01]
Omar Zenhom
way, it would be amazing if you
- [02:03]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much.
- [02:20]
Omar Zenhom
With this new wave of AI, you can pretty much build anything that you imagine. There's no shortage of ideas. You can go down rabbit holes. It could get really complex and overwhelming. But as someone who's built and sold a software business before, I'm going to share with you what you should do and what you shouldn't do. If you're thinking about doing this yourself, first things first, I had to work out, what am I going to build? What is this app going to do? So I decided to build an app for creators that want to sell their courses, want to sell their products, or coaching easily and not in a clunky complex. I decided to call it Nikki, after my co founder and wife, Nicole. So the goal is to make sure, number one, the product actually does what it says it's going to do, but number two, that it's an easy to use app that customers can get set up and running and sell their products in minutes. Our first step was to build out a plan. I knew that if I was going to pull this off, I'm going to need some help. So I called upon a friend of mine, Chris Ashby, who's the best in the game when it comes to building with AI. So, Chris, I'm so happy that I got to sit down and meet with you. Is it possible to build a SaaS product in seven days that's ready to be sold to customers?
- [03:26]
Chris Ashby
Yeah, 100% doable. And I think this is like a huge opportunity in the application layer for AI is building apps that have agents built into them. And you've seen the success of apps like Cursor, like the web browser dia, from the browser catalog. Yeah, I think it's a really good idea. It's got a lot of potential and it's got an agent built into it as well, so that's great.
- [03:47]
Omar Zenhom
So we built a plan for each day. This is where we ended up. So in day one, we're setting up and creating the foundations of the app. That means we're setting up the project with Leap, which is the software I used, and making sure that we integrate with OpenAI's APIs. Day two, this is all about user flows. We want to know what the user is going to experience when they're using the app. Day three, we're going to work on the AI sales page generator. Day four, we're building the AI pricing engine. One of the features in the app is that you can upload your product and then the AI in the product is going to tell you how you should price your product. Day five, UI and polish. Day six, we're going to test payments and we're going to make sure that we can onboard our customers. Day seven, the glorious day where we ship our product and demo it to make sure it all works. Sounds good in theory, but this is what actually happened. So day one didn't go as bland. I was blown away by how powerful AI was. This is like my first full day trying to build a product with AI. And what took me three or four hours of work would have taken a developer like a month to build. What I built in three or four hours, I accomplished way more than I was expecting. The only thing I didn't get done was the branding at this point. But I got done pretty much all the bare bones of building an app, like being able to have logins, like authentication, being able to take payments so I can charge customers. I even had some of the basic database schemes built up and being able to create a product. So I had a lot done in just one day. So this is what I learned in day one. I learned that you need to treat AI like a highly skilled developer. And through my experience of building, building and growing webinar Ninja, one of the things I learned is you need to give proper instructions. You need to know what you want so that you can tell the engineer and in this case, AI, what you wanted to build. On day two, I decided to step away from the computer and focus on the user experience. I wanted to make sure that we had a seamless user flow. From the moment the user signs up to, they get a win out of the product, meaning they get what they signed up for. And in my case with Nikki, they. They want to be able to create and sell a product as fast as possible. Even like Netflix, for example, when you sign up and you create an account, the first thing they do is they ask you what kind of movies you like to watch so that they can curate some suggestions so that you can have a great experience. You can do this yourself. You have two options. You can go classic and just use paper and pen, or you can do what I did, I use my iPad and I drew out each flow. So each step I wanted to make sure is clear and mapped out. And then when I was done with each flow, I just screenshot it and I upload it to the AI building app, like Leap, for example, so that the actual AI knows what you're building. It has a blueprint of the build. Let me give you a quick rundown of my tech stack, the tools that I use to build my software. First thing was Leap New. This is like lovable, sort of like a GE version of lovable, so that you can create apps using AI. The next thing is GitHub. GitHub is a code repository. This is a technical term, but basically your code has to live somewhere on the Internet so that the world can access it when you're running your app. The next thing that I use is Stripe, and Stripe is a payment processor. If you can't collect payments, you don't have a business. So you gotta be able to take money from your customer's pocket to your pocket. Another tool I use is called Cursor, and it's like a secondary coding tool that would allow me to fix any bugs that I saw in Leap. I also use OpenAI's API, by the way. OpenAI is the company that creates ChatGPT, and I used basically their software or their code so that I can create my own AI features in my app. So, for example, if I wanted my software to use the power of AI to create copy for a sales page, I don't need to create that AI magic. I can just borrow the magic that OpenAI already created through their API. The next tool is one of my favorite tools of all time. It's called Whisper Flow, and basically it allows me to just talk instead of type. And you can use it on your phone, you can use it on your laptop, you can use on your computer. And it allowed me to quickly prompt the AI without having to type and make typos and all that kind of stuff. It's super simple and super easy to use.
- [08:05]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
Two more tools.
- [08:06]
Omar Zenhom
One is called Mux, which is a video hosting tool, and the last tool is actually ChatGPT. Now, it's funny to hear me say this, but ChatGPT is one of the best copilots when you're building an app, because you can actually ask Chat to build the prompts for for you that you want to put into your AI building tool like Leap or Lovable or whatever you're using.
- [08:28]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
Today's episode is sponsored by Rosetta Stone. If you have travel coming up, spring break, summer vacations, weddings abroad, or an international work trip, imagine arriving, actually understanding the language, ordering your food and coffee confidently, connecting with locals, feeling immersed instead of just visiting. For example, Nicole and I are going to Europe this summer. We're going to Paris, we're going to Italy, we're going to Greece. And I've been working on my Italian Rosetta Stone. And boy, am I making progress. And it's for good reason, because Rosetta Stone has been the trusted leader in language learning for over 30 years. Their immersive, intuitive method helps you naturally absorb your new language. No memorizing random vocabulary lists and no relying on translations. Instead, you learn by connecting words visually and meaning in context, the way language is meant to be learned. I love how simple the lessons are. It's very, very easy to jump into a lesson and do five, ten minutes of language learning. My favorite thing about Rosetta Stone is that my pronunciation has improved with their true accent feature. For example, as I'm learning Italian, I don't say Grazzi anymore.
- [09:36]
Omar Zenhom
I say Grazie. I can't wait to feel like a
- [09:39]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
local as I travel through Italy in my upcoming trip. Ready to start learning a new language this spring? Visit Rosetta Stone.com MBA today to explore Rosetta Stone and choose the that's right for you. Go to Rosetta Stone.com MBA now and begin your language learning journey. Today's episode is sponsored by Quo. This year, let's make it all about not missing opportunities. And that starts with not missing calls. Because a missed call is money out the door. Quo helps you and your team share one business number, reply faster, and stay on top of every customer conversation so you never miss an opportunity to connect with your customers. Which is why today's episode is sponsored by Quo, spelled Q U O. The modern alternative to run your business communications. Quo works everywhere you are right from an app on your phone or computer and lets you keep your existing number, add new numbers or teammates in minutes, sync your CRM, and rely on seamless routing and call flows as your business scales. Quo isn't just a phone system, it's a smart system. Quo's AI automatically logs calls, generates summaries, and highlights next steps so nothing gets lost. Make this the year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo for free plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com MBA that's QU-U-O.com MBA no missed calls, no missed customers.
- [11:21]
Omar Zenhom
I was having a lot of problems in day three as I was developing and building the app using Leap New now. Leap is a great tool and it does a lot of things well, but I was getting a lot of bugs and these bugs were not easy to fix. It was almost like it was building on bad code. I really felt frustrated because I started to first feel like I'm not going to hit this deadline. I'm not going to be able to build this in seven days. I thought to myself, do I need to start from scratch again? Do I need to start using something else to make this possible? And I had that feeling of sunk cost. Like, oh man, did I just waste two days of my life and am I behind by two days? But at breakfast I sat down and I decided, no, I can't think this way. I gotta pull this off and build a strong app. So I decided to switch apps. I started using a software called Windsurf. It's basically a code editor using the power of AI. So it's a lot more flexible, a lot more powerful. Yes, I still had bugs, but the bugs were fixable, and I was able to get over those hurdles. When you're building any app, you're going to have bugs, there's no doubt about it. But the question is, is that are you going to be able to fix those bugs fast enough to keep your momentum going? The biggest lesson of day three was not to worry about the past, not to worry about your sunk cost, and to just admit to yourself that, hey, I need to do this all over again. I need to build from scratch, but I need to do it right. As I wrapped up day three, I was a bit behind, but that's okay. I kept moving forward. Day four, I was tired, I was frustrated. I felt like I was really working against time. I was making up for lost time. And I didn't know if this was really going to work out or if I was actually going to pull this off. But I had a little bit of a glimmer of a hope because Windsurf was working better and I was able to make some progress, faster progress than I was doing before. So after a nice break and I jumped back onto the computer in the evening, I started to realize that this
- [13:17]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
actually could be possible.
- [13:18]
Omar Zenhom
I was making progress. I was building the app out, the features are starting to flush out, and I really started seeing a functional app on the horizon. So I started to feel pumped. Sometimes you're going to hit some brick walls and get frustrated and you can really start to lose hope. But when you step away for a moment, you get perspective and you start feeling re energized to get back into it. But this got me asking a big question. Do I want to do this long term? Do I want to build this app and sell it for the next 10 years? On day five, I really focused on the UX and the UI. That's user experience and user interface. Now, this only works if your app actually works. You need to make sure that your product does what it promises to do. And then once you have that nailed, you can then focus on how does the customer experience the product? Are they able to use your product without any instruction manual? They're able to know what the next step is intuitively. And this is where I really focused on in day five to make sure that each step is super clear. On day six, I had one goal. See if I can break this product. If I can get the product to cough up an error or some sort of bug, and if it didn't, I was successful. That entailed making sure that I can sign up, I can make sure that the customer's onboarded properly, but also that I can charge properly. Now I need to charge the customer. That's one form of payment. But then the customer also needs to charge their customer because they're selling products and services through the app. So as you can see, it's complex and that's why it's so important to test. Quick tip. When it comes to testing, when you test your product, make sure that you test in different ways. Don't just repeat the same steps over and over. Maybe skip a step, maybe change the order of what you do in each step, because you might find the software will cough up an error when you do something a little bit different. So you're really trying to break your product, really trying to almost hack it to make sure it doesn't fail under any conditions. In 24 hours, I was planning to go live and I wasn't 100% sure it was going to work. Day seven, the big reveal. Was I able to pull this off? I'm happy to say after seven days, I was able to build a app that rivals some of the biggest players in the game. That's great and I'm happy and I'm proud of, but I want to share with you how I was able to make this happen. And it really is just one word, focus. I was able to focus for hours on end certain pockets of the day. So I spent three or four hours in deep work with no distractions. I'm talking about notifications off, earphones on. So for each day, I had one core goal and I wanted to make sure that each day didn't go by without me ticking that box. And because of that, after the seven days are up, I had a fully functioning app that was amazing. I can't wait to show you now.
- [16:15]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
If you're listening to this episode right now, this next part is best viewed
- [16:19]
Omar Zenhom
on YouTube where I walk you through
- [16:21]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
a demo of the app that I built, Nikki, over the seven days of the experiment.
- [16:25]
Omar Zenhom
You're going to absolutely love it.
- [16:27]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
If you want to check it out, head on over to YouTube.
- [16:29]
Omar Zenhom
The link is in the description, or you can go to 100mba.net YouTube.
- [16:34]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
But for now, here's what happened and my final takeaways from this experiment.
- [16:39]
Omar Zenhom
The question I Keep getting asked is, when can I buy Nikki? When is it for sale? And in order for me to answer that question, I gotta share with you my three biggest takeaways from the seven day challenge. The first takeaway is, AI is more powerful than I ever thought. I mean, this is absolute insanity, what AI can do. The second takeaway is it's incredibly fun. AI is magical. It's like having a genie grant you wishes. You just type in a prompt and tell it to build you something. And it builds it. So here's the thing. Building a product is exciting. It's a lot of fun. But building a business is something completely different. It's a lifestyle choice. And I lived that lifestyle for a decade and I don't want to do that for the next 10 years again. I want to go all in on media, on our podcast, on the YouTube channel, and building great content and lessons for you. Every opportunity has a cost. Everything in life has a cost. So you got to ask yourself, are you willing to pay that cost? Are you willing to dedicate the next decade of your life building a great business? Because that's what's going to take. So as good as Nikki is as an app, I'm not selling it, but damn, it was a lot of fun to build. This whole experiment taught me so much about AI, but it also taught me about myself. You know, we answered the question, can you build this app using AI in seven days? But the question that you need to answer is should you? Maybe the answer is yes for you, but it's a question that you need to answer. I had a lot of fun during this seven day experiment. If you want me to do another one on something else, let me know in the comments.
- [18:13]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
Thanks for tuning in to this special episode of the $100 MBA show. Now, this was a different kind of episode, but I hope it was valuable. As I said, you can check out the demo of the Nikki app by going to our YouTube channel and jumping ahead to see the fruits of my
- [18:27]
Omar Zenhom
labor during this seven day experiment.
- [18:30]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
I would love to hear your thoughts.
- [18:31]
Omar Zenhom
Why don't you go over there now, comment on that video, tell me what
- [18:35]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
you think of how the experiment went
- [18:37]
Omar Zenhom
and what you think of the app
- [18:38]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
Nikki that I built.
- [18:39]
Omar Zenhom
Would love to hear from you. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and stay scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast, hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. Whether it's Apple or Spotify or ever. You listen to podcasts by hitting subscribe. You get our next episode automatically, and
- [19:03]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
it's the best way to support the show.
- [19:04]
Omar Zenhom
It's absolutely free and it's a way
- [19:06]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
for you to commit to growing your business.
- [19:09]
Omar Zenhom
And now that you subscribed, I'll check
- [19:11]
Podcast Co-host/Producer
you in the next episode.
- [19:20]
Commercial Announcer
If you your parent or spouse served in the military, you could join our family. Our members saved an average of $70 a month on auto insurance when they switched tap the banner or visit usaa.com join today to check your eligibility restrictions apply.