Unprompted insights from former VC-backed founders turned bootstrapped builders on how AI is changing what we build, how we work, and the aha! moments along the way.
You remember the story.
Goldilocks stumbles into a cabin in the woods and starts sampling everything:
The porridge? Too hot. Too cold. Just right.
The chairs? Too big. Too small. Just right.
The beds? Same deal.
It’s a tale of trial and error. Of extremes. Of finding the setup that fits you—not the other way around.
Goldilocks wasn’t picky—she was practical.
She wasn’t looking for perfect, she was looking for fit.
Most businesses? They’re still sleeping in the metaphorical bed that’s way too firm—or collapsing under the one that’s way too soft.
Their operations sit on either side of the spectrum:
A patchwork of spreadsheets and manual hacks
Or a bloated stack of SaaS tools that almost work (for a price)
We’re coming to you this Sunday with some good news. AI finally lets you design operations around you — not the other way around.
Legacy Ops: Held Together by Duct Tape and Desperation
In the early days, business operations looked like this:
A Google Form feeding into a spreadsheet... that still needs manual cleanup
Slack DMs, email threads, and sticky notes posing as a task management system
QuickBooks running your books, but invoicing? That’s still in a separate Google Doc
A Zapier flow someone set up two years ago that no one dares touch
Data copied and pasted across platforms because nothing talks to anything else
One client described their invoicing workflow like this:
"First, they’d jot down notes by hand. Then, type them into a spreadsheet. From there, re-enter everything into another system. After that, manually build each invoice—every single month.
Eventually, they hired someone just to manage the data entry. Even then, it still took three days each month just to get invoices out the door.
It worked—until it didn’t.
And when it broke? Pure chaos.
The SaaS Era: Cleaner, but Clunky
Then came SaaS.
Tools like Asana, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Monday.com offered prebuilt structure.
But the tradeoffs?
You had to change your process to fit theirs
You paid for 50 features, used 5
Customization costed extra—or wasn’t possible
You were locked into expensive contracts and bloated user seats
We worked with a creative agency that used ClickUp for task tracking, HubSpot for CRM, and Google Sheets for invoicing—none of which talked to each other. Their “automated” system still required 12 hours a week of manual cleanup.
Enter AI + Low-Code: The Goldilocks Workflow
Here’s the unlock: you don’t need to choose between messy DIY and overpriced SaaS anymore.
AI + low-code tools let you build the just right solution—custom to your team, without custom dev costs.
No more waiting months for engineering.
No more $2,000/month platforms that half-solve your problem.
No more settling.
For example:
Rather than spending thousands of dollars on a focus group with endless user interviews and unclear outcomes, you can create an AI-powered persona generator in a few days so you can stage conversations with real customer data.
Instead of hiring an outsourced development team to build a sales funnel that will take 6 months minimum, in a matter of weeks you can make an AI-powered sales site that guides visitors through the conversion journey and starts converting on sales before month’s end.
Each of these replaces a bloated or broken system.
Each of these can be built in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost.
And each of these works exactly the way your business actually runs.
Just Right is Just Right.
This is the Goldilocks zone of operations.
Not too hacked-together. Not too heavy. Just right.
You’re not contorting your team to fit someone else’s roadmap. You’re building workflows around how you actually work. And once you’ve had that level of control and speed? There’s no going back.
Thinking your current system might be “too cold” or “too hot”?
Hit reply. We’ll help you build the one that’s just right.
