The Story
Polus made $30K from an app he built on his morning commute using Cursor and Bolt. Creator Hunter matches startups with influencers, and he built, launched, and marketed it solo in about 30 days.
As Polus explains: "My name is Polus and I used AI to build an app that made me 30K. It's an app that matches startups with influencers and I built and launched it 7 months ago. It's got over 1,000 users at the moment with over 350 paid users. I used Bolt and Cursor to make it and I use Framer for design. I did it all myself without needing a team, all in my daily commute."
The Origin Story
"It started when I was 18 and I needed to make money to get my way through college and the only job that I could get was door to door sales and one day I ended up knocking on the wrong door and someone literally grabbed me and held a knife to my throat."
"After that, I just had enough and I wasn't really employable as a student. So, I dove into every side hustle that I could. So I did web design, I did copywriting, sales funnels. I became kind of like a generalist. It paid enough to get my way through university."
Why AI Changed Everything
"When I was in university, I did computer game development. But funny story, I actually completely sucked at code. I was very visual and I just couldn't understand it. But now AI can actually code for you. And so the limitations that I had before are kind of removed. AI can do the heavy lifting in terms of code and kind of patch up the area where I'm not the best at."
Finding the Idea
"I was going through kind of a rough patch because I tried all these different business models and I wasn't making enough money to break free from a 9 to 5. I got really frustrated one day that none of the things that I did really got me where I wanted to be."
"So I was pursuing creator-led services and products, just work with creators, and the idea of a database came to my mind and I just started building it out because it's something I'd use myself and I figured with AI I could turn this into a fully-fledged SaaS if enough people wanted it."
The First Sales
"When I launched my application, I remember I was sitting with my girlfriend and we were just having dinner. I pull up my phone. I just see sale after sale. I was like, 'Okay, how long is this going to keep going for?' And that night got about like 20 or 30 different sales. So it was very nice feeling that just motivated me to just keep going and pursue this further cuz now I felt like that was a validation that this could be a real product."
The AI Building Process
"If I'm a complete beginner, I would recommend everyone to use Perplexity. It's what I did. I just asked Perplexity because it has the most up-to-date information. So it has all the documentation, anything that you want, any tool, any library, just tell it you're a complete noob and absolutely don't know how to do anything and it'll give you really detailed step by step."
Step-by-Step Playbook
- •Use Perplexity for the game plan
- •Pull up Bolt and implement one step at a time
- •If there's errors, throw the error back at the AI
- •Use Bolt until you get a nice looking MVP with functionality
- •Download the project, put it into Cursor
- •Hook up Supabase for backend
- •Add Clerk for authentication
"Perplexity is a great starting point. Bolt is a great way to make the MVP and then you move to Cursor to dial in the details. So you're 80% of the way there and Cursor will then just get you to the final finish line."
Design Without Designers
"It's really the simplest it can be. First thing I do is I pull up Framer and I pick a free template. So any template that you see on there that you like. It's simple enough and clean for you to edit. And then you just have to pick a nice font and a nice button. And then the rest just needs to be simple and clean."
Landing Page Strategy
"I focus 80% of my time on everything that's above the fold. We'd call this the hero section. This is the first thing that people see when they open the website and has to have your full message just out there and people really need to grab an understanding of what it is within the first couple seconds."
"Anything that you can save them time with, save them money. Anything that solves a painful problem, you should have in a headline and a subheading, and then just a big call to action."
UI Design with AI
"When I'm building it out in Cursor, you get the basic thing done and then you add some things to it. For everything UI related, I just ask it to make it clean, functional, and modern. And I try to have it use shadCN components and they're all free."
"When I have ideas for how I want onboarding flow to be or some other elements of the app, what I would suggest is just creating something in Figma, you can doodle if you want. You just plug it into Cursor and just explain the behavior that you want and then it'll spit out a nice looking page for you."
Growth Strategy
"This post did the most in terms of numbers. It got close to 500K impressions. And I think the reason it worked is because I found an angle to attach it to trends happening in the space."
"A lot of people when they're building in public never go viral because they never join the bigger conversation and human attention span is limited. So it's 100 times easier to just bring your ideas to where the focus is already happening."
Building in Public
"For me what's worked is just shipping often. Don't just have like one big video release like a lot of VC startups. What's not worked for me and what I see is there's been like a lot of competitors and copycats that come up, but they never really take off because either they're copying the exact same thing and people see right through that and you need an edge that no one can easily copy with AI tools nowadays."
Business Numbers
- •$30K revenue
- •1,000+ users
- •350+ paid users
- •Built in ~30 days
- •90% profit margins
Tech Stack
- •Perplexity (research)
- •Bolt (MVP)
- •Cursor (production)
- •Vercel (free hosting)
- •Supabase (free backend)
- •Framer (design)
Day in the Life
"It's a big change. More traveling and more work. When I was building out the MVP I was at the same time traveling to China, New York, France, and seeing revenue while you're out and about exploring is a nice feeling. It's a real blessing."
"I've been working on it full-time on Creator Hunter since the 24th of December when I quit the job. So some days there's more hours that I put in this than my 9 to 5. But I don't feel exhausted at all."
Key Advice
"I think never underestimate how much you can do solo. AI as your CTO is like a superpower. I don't know how long this period of time will last, but we need to take advantage of it."
"Whatever ideas you have, you can probably execute it in a weekend. If you just figure out the most scrappy idea possible in the most scrappy way possible, you can get it out there. And then if you put a buy button on it, share it on Twitter in the most scrappy way or TikTok, I think you'll be surprised by the amount of people that actually want to get it."
"I think people underestimate the knowledge they already have. So like if you have deep domain knowledge, you probably have tons of ideas already on what to build and you probably have like a winning idea already that you could just prompt your way and start building."
Resources
- •Creator Hunter: https://creatorhunter.io/
- •Follow Polus on Twitter