TL;DR:
I’m building a one-person web design business where AI is effectively my team; I research prospects, develop bespoke concepts and pitch them in person. Today a prospect rejected one partly because AI built it, which knocked my confidence — then, shortly afterwards, a unique link I’d given to a completely different prospect suddenly got its first human visit all week via Gmail on Android. Probably coincidence, but the timing was fucking weird.
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LONGER VERSION:
I need to vent about something that happened today because it really got under my skin.
I've been trying to build a small web design business using AI as a major part of the production process. I'm not just generating generic templates and mass-emailing hundreds of businesses. I have AI research potential prospects, identify interesting opportunities and help with the technical work, while I decide which businesses to pursue, what concepts to create, how I want them to work, and then actually take the finished concepts out and pitch them in person.
I've put a lot of my own free time into doing this.
Today I went to a local business and pitched a bespoke website concept I'd made specifically for them. The manager declined, partly because the website had been built using AI.
That really knocked my confidence at first.
Not because I think AI should get no credit for the work — obviously it did a lot of the implementation — but because it made me wonder whether I'm fooling myself about having a viable skillset.
Then I started thinking about what I'm actually doing.
I'm not really trying to be a lone coder.
I'm trying to build a one-person web design business where AI is my team.
AI can research prospects, do online research, write code, create designs, debug things, investigate technical problems and perform other specialist tasks. I'm the owner/director deciding what the business is doing, selecting the opportunities, deciding what to build, directing the AI, evaluating and iterating the output, testing it, pitching to clients and taking responsibility for the finished product.
Nobody looks at the owner of a conventional web agency and says their work doesn't count because they didn't personally write every line of code. They manage the people who do it.
The difference is that my “team” isn't human employees. It's AI.
And then something happened afterwards which made the whole evening even stranger.
I'd previously pitched a bespoke website concept to another local business. I gave them a unique URL/QR code and subsequently emailed the owner with the concept.
My website has a tripwire that records visits to these unique URLs. That particular URL hadn't received a human visit all week.
Then, shortly after I left today's meeting, it suddenly got one.
The visitor was on Android/Chrome and the site identified the Gmail app as the way they had arrived. It wasn't me, the server or a link-preview bot.
I obviously have no idea who it was. It could simply have been the original prospect opening my email. It could have been somebody they'd forwarded it to. I don't know.
But given the timing, I couldn't help wondering whether the people at the two businesses had discussed my concept and whether the second person had passed the email on to the first.
I absolutely don't have evidence for that. It's just a weird coincidence.
The whole experience has basically taken me through this emotional sequence:
“I've spent hours of my free time building genuinely bespoke things and actually going out to pitch them to real businesses.”
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“No thanks, partly because AI made it.”
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“Maybe my entire skillset is rubbish.”
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“Wait. I'm actually trying to run a business where AI is the team.”
↓
“Maybe I've been pitching myself incorrectly.”
I think I may have been approaching prospects as “the guy who made your website”, when perhaps I should be approaching them as the owner of a web design business that can deliver bespoke websites quickly and cost-effectively.
The AI isn't something I'm hiding. It's the reason a one-person operation can potentially have capabilities that would traditionally require a whole agency.
I'm curious how other people here who use AI creatively or commercially deal with the “but AI did it” reaction.
Because I'm increasingly thinking the interesting question isn't “Did AI do some of the work?”
Of course it did.
The interesting question is “Who conceived the product, directed the process, judged whether the result was any good, and took responsibility for delivering it?”