52 years old, no coding background. Built something in 5 months.
I’m 52. Never wrote code before. About 5 months ago I got fed up with my Gmail, thousands of emails, junk everywhere, and I just wanted something that actually cleans it properly. So I tried to build it. Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing. I was using ChatGPT, Cursor… breaking things every day. Some days I’d spend hours fixing something small. But somehow it started working. Now I have a real app that connects to Gmail, organizes emails, and does some AI things like drafting replies. I use it myself every day. Now I’m trying to get the first few users, not 1,000, just 10, and I honestly don’t know the best way to start. If you’ve been in this stage before, how did you get your first users?
genuinely cool to see someone building without a heavy coding background. what was the single hardest moment in those 5 months where you almost gave up? i'm doing research on how non-coders build with AI - would love a short 20-min call to hear the story.
respect for just starting at 52 with no background. most people twice your coding experience wouldnt have shipped anything in 5 months. for your first 10 users: post exactly what you just wrote here in r/SideProject and r/gmail on reddit. your story is genuinely compelling — non-coder built the thing he needed. thats the kind of origin story people root for. also try searching twitter for people complaining about gmail being a mess and reply with your tool. we did something similar with our web analysis tools — found people frustrated with a specific problem and offered the solution directly. the first 10 are always the hardest. after that it compounds.