Building a new platform or app has traditionally required companies to invest time, money, and other resources into software development.
Whether you use skilled in-house employees or hire additional developers, coding can pose major challenges to business expansion. But generative AI (GenAI) could change all that.
AI platforms like ChatGPT allow developers to launch new platforms and apps in record time while alleviating budget concerns.
Take David Minns, who runs a dating platform with over 600,000 users around the world. Minns, who has been working as a programmer in the dating industry since 2007, claims that the premium version of ChatGPT enabled him to launch the Android version of the Greed Dating platform in just eight days.
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He told TechInformed that OpenAI LLM not only saved him the equivalent of “two software developers,” but also provided business and marketing support.
The release of Greed Dating’s Android app is a proof of concept for the industry, Minns said. “AI can now assist in almost every aspect of the development process, from creating basic app functionality to debugging and optimizing code,” he enthused. .
end of handwritten code
Greed Dating uses LLM to combine multiple dating niches into one app, making it easy for mins to expand into new segments.
Niche dating sites include Butterfly, a dating site for transgender people. Lisa50 is a site for women over 50. “Bad Boys” has been described as “for alpha males.” Dinky1 is a site designed for gentlemen with below-average penis sizes, and Minns claims it currently has 180,000 members.
Its foundation was built over many years through manual development of a web platform with a backend powered by PHP and MySQL.
Greed then expanded to mobile with a hand-coded iOS app written in Swift, developed entirely in-house using traditional methods.
While this manual process was effective, it also came with challenges, Minns points out. The programmer-turned-entrepreneur added that learning and mastering new programming languages like Swift has slowed down the iOS development cycle.
As the project grew, Minns realized that continuing down the same path with an Android app would take even more time and increase costs.
“As a solopreneur, adding developers is expensive and knowledge transfer is difficult because all the code is written in your head. is difficult,” he explained.
Android: AI-assisted development
Minns decided to take the plunge and embrace AI for Android app development. By using ChatGPT, Minns argued, you can avoid traditional, time-consuming methods of coding from scratch.
Instead of learning a new programming language or outsourcing tasks, Minns leverages AI to write code in the cross-platform development framework Flutter using Visual Studio, Microsoft’s integrated development environment. I did.
He explains: “Using ChatGPT, we asked AI to develop each section of our Android app step by step.
“Not only did we generate working code, but it also helped us fix bugs and improve our app on the fly. It’s like having expert developers on call 24/7. It was like that.”
Minns added: “I’ve been using AI for 12 months and it provides game-changing capabilities for developers. Even if the first and last lines of code are ambiguous, all the gaps in between are You can cut and paste it into your development environment.
Minns said he could ask the AI to find security flaws and software bugs, and “it did a great job.”
Legal, marketing, sales operations
Minns added that he was also able to use ChatGPT to generate name ideas for the new site and assist with trademark filings.
“We applied to trademark this name in all major regions. We received rejections in some EU regions and used ChatGPT to find EU law and make our case. “ChatGPT is strong not only in software development but also in areas such as law,” he explains.
To avoid illusions, Minns suggested that GPT prompt users to find out if there are any sources that corroborate the information they initially provided.
To improve sales, Minns also uploaded a photo of the site’s payment page and asked for “10 ways to improve your sales conversation rate.” “You’ll know what’s working and what’s not working for your business,” he says.
Minns said the decision to use AI has significantly shortened the development cycle, with Android apps now taking just eight days to build, compared to about three months previously.
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Minns believes that AI tools will undoubtedly change the way apps are built in the future, and sees Greed Dating’s experience with AI-assisted development as an exciting indicator of this.
Minns concludes: “$20 a month doesn’t do the same job as hiring two software developers or marketers. In the future, there will be fewer traditional programmers and more AI will guide us in building complex systems. I think the number of “conductors” or “directors” will increase. ”
