How I Built It: $20K/Month AI App as a Non-Technical Founder

Colin McIntosh

• Background and origin story
  • Started his career at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, but was let go after five months
  • Was then hired as a recruiter at the same company that had originally hired him at Bridgewater, where he discovered a strong natural talent and passion for recruiting
  • In February 2018, posted resume feedback on Reddit that received 500 upvotes and an overwhelming number of follow-up requests from people asking for help with their resumes
  • Wrote a comprehensive resume guide that became the top Google result for “resume advice Reddit” and the top post on the job subreddit for years
  • Spent six years answering an estimated 20,000 questions from people on that Reddit post, building deep expertise and trust in the resume space
  • Previously appeared on Starter Story to discuss his company Sheets and Giggles
• Pivotal moments and turning points
  • Began doing paid resume reviews with his friend Nate (his old recruiting partner), charging a few hundred dollars per review
  • Demand quickly outpaced supply, and they raised prices from $200 to $300 to $400, but Colin became uncomfortable continuing to raise prices for people in financially difficult situations
  • Nate, a software engineer at Eventbrite, suggested building an AI version of their resume review service
  • Nate built the product over approximately four months based on Colin’s UX notes and resume rules
  • Launched Sheetsres.com on August 26th of this year
• Business growth and current status
  • In the first week after launch, they had their first $1,000 day
  • In the second month of business, they did $220,000 in sales
  • The business operates at roughly 90% net margins
  • Colin runs this as a side project alongside his full-time job, spending only 5–10 hours per week on it
  • He has built the business to scale without his direct involvement

Products and Offerings

• Sheetsres.com — an AI-powered resume builder
  • $99 for lifetime access
  • $29 for one-week access (for people actively starting a job search)
  • No monthly subscriptions, which Colin considers predatory, especially for people going through a difficult time
• Free resume advice content on Reddit
  • Multiple posts covering how to build a resume, top 10 job hunt questions, how to interview, and how to negotiate salary
  • These posts serve as both a public good and an organic traffic driver, with links to Sheetsres.com embedded naturally rather than as the primary call to action

Metrics and Financials

• $220,000 in sales in the second month of business
• Approximately 90% net profit margins
• First $1,000 day came within one week of launch
• Thousands of resumes built for free users in the first week before pricing was turned on

Strategy and Growth

• Overall vision and positioning
  • Focused on genuinely helping people through the job search process rather than maximizing revenue
  • Avoids predatory pricing models to maintain trust and goodwill
  • Views the business as a mission to give back
• Primary growth engine
  • Word of mouth is the most powerful channel — people who received help (whether free, refunded, or paid) spread the word organically
• Key tactics and channels
  • Hired an affiliate marketing agency to scale word of mouth
  • Set up Google ads as a training mechanism for Google’s algorithm
  • SEO strategy that piggybacks off Reddit’s strong domain authority by creating valuable content posts on Reddit with natural links to the product
  • Emphasizes that content should lead with genuine help, not a sales pitch, so people don’t become suspicious of intentions

Tech Stack and Infrastructure

• AI models: OpenAI and Gemini
• Application: PHP built with the Laravel framework, REST API
• Hosting: AWS
• Payments: Stripe
• Banking: Mercury Bank
• Email: Gmail
• Colin describes the stack as not overly complex

Lessons and Advice

• Identify what you do better than anyone else in the world, then start helping people with it for free to prove you’re solving a real problem
• Build a strong, trustworthy reputation by being genuinely helpful before trying to monetize
• Validate an idea by doing it for people in a way that doesn’t scale or isn’t for sale before building a product
• Create a brand identity map before anything else — understand how the brand will look, talk, engage, and who it serves (TechStars offers a free one)
• Write a concise two-page business plan covering what you want to do, why it’s different, and five to seven points of differentiation
• Do not use AI for brand identity mapping, business planning, or strategy — those should come from the founder’s own thinking
• If you’re non-technical, don’t try to convince a random engineer to work for free; instead, work hard, be kind, be the business partner you’d want to work with, and eventually you’ll find the right person
• Move quickly because AI credits are currently cheap, but this window won’t last forever
• The worst-case scenario for starting a business is that nothing happens and you’re in the same place you already are — so just start
• Action is more valuable than watching or planning; start the business, even without thousands of dollars or a full dev team
• Take advantage of the unprecedented number of tools now available to solopreneurs, including AI chatbots for customer care, AI image and video generation, and AI tools for repurposing long-form content into short clips