You don’t have to wait anymore

Over the last six months, I’ve built around thirty small app prototypes.

They’re not startups. Most aren’t even products. They’re scrappy, slightly rough things I’ve built quickly with help from Claude Code, sometimes useful, sometimes they’re put aside after a few days.

That isn’t the point here though.

The interesting thing is what’s changing for anyone with ideas.

For most of my career, ideas came with a dependency chain.

First it was a printing supplier (yes, really).

Then you needed a developer.

Plus budget, or time borrowed from someone else’s priorities.

Even personal ideas felt expensive. Too big to try casually.

And that’s what’s quietly changed recently.

If you have an idea now, you don’t have to wait.

You don’t need permission. You don’t really need a polished plan.

With a bit of time, free tools, and a willingness to make something rough, you can have a usable version of an idea in a day or two. Not a slide deck. Not a Figma file. A thing someone can actually use.

That shift matters, I think. It changes where the energy goes. Instead of polishing ideas in your head, you externalise them early. You let reality respond. Does this thing survive being a V1, not just a concept?

The goal isn’t to ship everything. It’s to learn fast, cheaply, and without drama.

Here’s the key though. It’s especially powerful if you’re a designer, writer, or operator. Someone whose real skill is creating and improving systems. We’re not trying to out-engineer engineers, but remove friction between curiosity and evidence.

After a few dozen prototypes, the biggest gain isn’t technical confidence. It’s agency.

Ideas feel lighter now. Less precious. Easier to test or discard. You don’t need a roadmap to learn something small and true.

So I don’t think the real shift is ‘learning to code’.

It’s realising you don’t have to wait anymore.

Talk soon,

Mark

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