53-year-old pool tech ships an AI app with zero coding — Build 19 update
Hey IH. First post. Been building in silence for about 4 months and finally ready to share.
The backstory
I'm Jason. 53 years old. Been in the pool service and repair business in Ventura, CA for 19 years. Started playing with AI tools last July. Built some things that never shipped. Listened to a ton of podcasts. Then I heard someone describe recording herself thinking out loud and reviewing transcripts — and I thought, what if the app actually did something with what you said instead of just writing it down?
That's Think Out.
What it does
Record yourself brainstorming or record a team meeting. The app:
Transcribes in real-time — words appear on screen as you speak (Deepgram Nova-3 via WebSocket)
Automatically researches every topic you mention with citations (Perplexity + Tavily)
Extracts action items, generates a summary, identifies topics
In meetings: identifies speakers, logs decisions, assigns action items by name, gives each person their own follow-up thread
Session Follow-Up lets you continue any session with voice or text — it's an addendum that extends your thinking
Cross-session intelligence finds patterns across all your brainstorms and meetings
Auto-tags sessions with consistency across your history
Syncs action items to Notion, Motion, Todoist, or Google Tasks
Exports to Obsidian with markdown, tags, and wikilinks
Works offline — records without internet, processes when you reconnect
No other voice app does the research part. Not Otter. Not Fireflies. Not Sembly. Not TalkNotes. I checked them all.
How I built it
I never learned to code. I used Claude to write the PRD (product requirements document — it's up to version 1.4 now with four addendums). Then I used Claude Code to build the entire React Native/Expo app. I'd describe what I wanted in plain English, Claude Code would write the code, I'd test it, and we'd iterate.
I'm a systems thinker, not a programmer. I understand architecture, workflows, and product logic. Claude Code handles the syntax.
The stack
React Native / Expo (frontend)
Supabase (backend, auth, storage, Row Level Security)
Deepgram Nova-3 (live transcription via WebSocket)
Claude API (AI analysis, topic extraction, summaries)
Gemini Flash (lighter AI tasks)
Perplexity + Tavily (research with citations)
Make.com (PM tool integrations)
EAS Build for TestFlight distribution
The numbers (radical transparency)
Revenue: $0
Active users: 0
Downloads: a handful, nobody has recorded a session yet, well my wife has.
Build version: 19 (lots of iteration)
Total budget: ~$800 over 4 months
Time investment: nights and weekends, probably 300+ hours
The problem
Marketing. Building the product was the hard-but-fun part. Getting people to actually try it has been brutal. I've never used social media before this year. I just signed up for X, LinkedIn, and now IH. I'm learning everything from scratch at the same time.
I know the product works. Build 19 is solid. But I can't get traction.
What I need
Beta testers. Specifically people who:
Brainstorm out loud (solo founders, PMs, creative thinkers)
Sit in meetings where decisions and action items get lost
Want to try a new AI tool and give honest feedback
iOS only right now (Android build exists but not on Google Play yet).
TestFlight (free): https://testflight.apple.com/join/Gpzv4Q6y
Landing page: thinkingoutai.com
What I'd love from this community
Feedback on the product. Feedback on the marketing. If you've been where I am — 0 users, good product, no idea how to get traction — I'd love to hear what worked for you.
Happy to answer questions about building with AI tools as a non-developer. It's been the wildest year of my life.
Real respect for shipping Build 19 with zero coding background — the "systems thinker, not a programmer" framing is exactly why the AI-build path is unlocking a different kind of founder. On my own iOS side project (a tiny memo app, a Captio replacement) the brutal lesson from going 0→first real users wasn't a channel — it was the cold-start question: what specific moment in someone's day does this replace? For Think Out maybe the 11pm voice-memo-and-forget loop, or the 2-min post-meeting "what did we just decide?" panic. Picking one of those and writing a short post about that exact moment in r/productivity or r/PKM tends to pull in 5–10 honest testers fast. Have you tried framing Think Out as "what you wish your voice memos became overnight" rather than via features? Also curious whether the no-coder angle pulls more interest than the AI-research angle when you A/B them.
Jason, the product itself sounds much stronger than the current positioning.
From your description, this is not just a voice notes app. The strongest part is that it turns spoken thinking into researched context, decisions, action items, and patterns across sessions.
That is a bigger category than “Think Out” or “thinkingoutai.com” suggests.
Right now the name makes me expect a personal brainstorming tool. But the product sounds closer to an AI thinking/research layer for founders, PMs, and teams who lose context across meetings and ideas.
I’d seriously consider whether the name is creating a traction problem before people even test the product.
A cleaner .com like Exirra.com would fit this direction much better if you want it to feel like an intelligence/research system instead of another voice-note app.