The demo took 5 minutes. The actual launch took 3 weeks and $31 a month I didn't fully account for until the second credit card statement arrived.
A while back I wrote about spinning up a working AI prototype in roughly the time it takes to brew coffee. That post somehow became the most-read thing on this blog, which tells me people are hungry for the "you can do this fast" story. Fair enough — you can build fast. But a few readers emailed asking the same thing: okay, but what does it actually cost to go from working demo to something real people can download?
So here's the follow-up nobody asked for but a few people specifically did.
The Prototype Wasn't the Product
The BOGO deals app from episode 10 was the guinea pig here. The AI prototype ran locally on my machine. No server. No database. No store listing. Just a script that made API calls and printed JSON to a terminal. Total cost at that point: whatever electricity my laptop used.
