I Built a SaaS Platform Without Knowing How to Code

Let me be clear about something upfront: I am not a developer.

I spent 18 years in military intelligence as a Master Sergeant, leading over 600 analysts. I got an MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler. I built and exited two businesses. I know how to lead teams, analyze problems, and run operations.

But I never learned to code. Not really. A little HTML in high school maybe. Nothing that would let me build real software.

In 2025, I built a full SaaS platform from scratch. Backend, frontend, database, infrastructure, integrations with external APIs, the works. It passed an enterprise compliance audit. It has real users paying real money.

I didn't hire engineers. I didn't raise venture capital to fund a development team. I didn't go through a coding bootcamp.

I used AI.

How It Actually Works

When I tell people this, they assume I'm exaggerating. Or they think I mean something like "AI helped me write some code" or "I used no-code tools."

No. I mean I built production software. TypeScript. AWS Lambda. PostgreSQL. Next.js. The real stack that real companies use.

Here's what the process actually looks like:

I describe what I want to build. Not in code—in plain English. I explain the problem I'm trying to solve, the behavior I want, the constraints that matter.

The AI writes the code. Sometimes it's right the first time. Often it's not. When it's wrong, I describe what's not working, and we iterate.

Over time, I learned how to describe problems more precisely. I learned what questions to ask. I learned how to review what the AI produced—not to understand every line, but to catch obvious issues and verify it's doing what I intended.

It's not magic. It's a new skill. But it's a dramatically more accessible skill than learning to code from scratch.

What This Took

I won't pretend it was easy. It took months. Hundreds of hours. Countless frustrating sessions where things broke in ways I didn't understand.

But here's the thing: those same months would have gotten me maybe 10% of the way through a coding bootcamp. And I'd still be years away from being able to build what I built.

The AI compressed the learning curve. Not by making it trivial, but by letting me learn through doing. I didn't study theory and then apply it later. I built things, broke things, fixed things, and learned as I went.

Every problem I hit became a learning opportunity. Every error message became a conversation. "Here's what happened, why did it fail, and how do I fix it?"

The AI explains as it works. It's like having a senior developer who never gets frustrated, never judges you for asking basic questions, and is available 24 hours a day.

Why This Matters

I didn't build this platform because I wanted to learn to code. I built it because I had a problem I wanted to solve.

My dad lost his renovation business when I was a kid. Not because he did bad work—his clients loved him. He lost it because he didn't have visibility into his numbers until it was too late. By the time he saw the problem, there was nothing he could do.

I wanted to build something that gave small business owners that visibility before it was too late. Something that watched their financial data and flagged problems early.

For years, I knew what I wanted to build. I just couldn't build it. The cost of hiring developers was too high. The off-the-shelf tools didn't do what I needed. I was stuck with an idea and no way to execute it.

AI changed that.

The Skill That Matters Now

I'm not saying everyone should go build a SaaS platform. That's not the point.

The point is that the barrier between "having an idea" and "building a solution" just got dramatically lower. For everyone.

If you're a contractor who needs a specific workflow that no software handles, you're not stuck buying whatever's on the market. If you're a restaurant owner who wants to track something in a way that makes sense for your business, you don't need a developer.

You need to learn how to direct AI to build it.

That's a skill. It's not automatic. You have to learn how to describe problems clearly, how to iterate when things don't work, how to verify that what got built actually does what you wanted.

But it's a learnable skill. And it's way more accessible than learning to code.

What I'm Not Saying

I'm not saying AI replaces developers. Real software engineers can do things I can't. They understand the underlying systems at a depth I don't. For complex, mission-critical applications, you still need people who actually know what they're doing.

I'm also not saying this is easy. It's not. It takes time and effort and frustration.

But here's what I am saying: the monopoly that professional developers had on building software is breaking down. The gap between "I have a problem" and "I have a solution" is smaller than it's ever been.

If you've been waiting for permission to build—waiting until you have funding, or a technical co-founder, or some credential that says you're allowed—stop waiting.

The tools are here. The window is open. The only question is whether you're going to use them.