Build Then What
The playbook for the part nobody teaches: getting bought.
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August 11, 2026
The reason for my playbook:
I'm a retired IT guy. I built several apps with AI tools and made $0 across all of them. Instead of quitting, I took my own app apart and wrote down every reason it wasn't converting. This is that teardown, turned into a playbook. I'm not promising you riches — I'm sharing what I found while I'm still in it.
2 Comments
The fact that you built apps that made $0 and then tore one apart to figure out why is a much more interesting starting point than another “how to build a startup” playbook. Build Then What feels like it could be pulling in a lot more organic traffic than it probably is right now, especially with that honest angle while you’re still in the middle of it. Have you found one reason for the $0 that keeps showing up across different apps?
The interesting part here isn't really the playbook — it's that you had actual products to tear apart before writing it.
I'm curious whether the patterns you found were consistent across the apps, or whether each one failed for a different reason. That distinction seems like it could matter more than the individual conversion fixes.