After 20+ years of working with small businesses, startups, and advising founders, there’s one mistake I see over and over. It’s even more pronounced now that we have AI tools, but it’s the same mistake entrepreneurs have always made: trying to build everything at once. The tools just make it seem more possible.
Imagine this: You have an idea for something that would help your business. Simple enough. But you decide to have a meeting with your team. You start hearing things like, “It should do X, and also do Y. And what if it could do Z?” Before you know it, you’re planning something much more complex than your original idea. It’s innocent enough, but it happens all the time.
AI tools make building faster. But they don’t fix the fundamental problem: most entrepreneurs overbuild their first version.
I recently spent two days building a family card game app. Here’s what I didn’t include in my MVP: user profiles, leaderboards, social sharing, or any premium features.
Any of those would have been “nice to have.” None of them were necessary to test whether people would actually use the game.
The result? My family plays it. The simple version works. Now I know it’s worth improving.
That’s the discipline entrepreneurs need: resist the urge to build everything. Build the one thing that matters.
How to Pick Your First AI and Automation Build
If you’re looking to find a project or an initiative to start with, you should ask these questions first:
What’s costing you time every week? Not “what would be nice to automate” – what specific task are you doing repeatedly that you wish worked differently?
What do customers ask for that you can’t easily provide? Not “what would make my business better” – what specific thing do customers need that you’re currently handling manually or not at all?
What information do you wish you had? Not “what metrics would be interesting” – what specific question would help you make better decisions if you knew the answer?
Pick the one that’s most painful. That’s what you build first.
But keep it simple. Simple doesn’t mean easy. It means focused.
When I built my game, the simple version still required a clean user interface, mobile responsiveness, clear instructions, smooth gameplay, and testing on real devices. Those things matter because they affect whether people can actually use what you built.
What it didn’t require: user accounts, data persistence, social features, monetization, or a marketing site. Those are all things I could add later if people actually used the game.
Simple means: does the one thing it’s supposed to do, and nothing else.
What You Can Build Following These Steps
Let’s walk through one example that shows how this works in practice.
The Problem: A contractor has all his pricing in a complex spreadsheet – material costs that vary by season, labor rates that depend on project type, markup calculations, add-ons. When he’s meeting with a customer on-site, he either has to guess at pricing or tell them he’ll email a quote later. Half the time, by the time he sends the quote, the customer has already called someone else.
The Simple Solution: An internal quote builder that turns his spreadsheet into a tool his team can use on a tablet. Input the project specs on-site, the tool runs all the pricing logic, generates a professional PDF quote they can review with the customer right there.
What he builds in version 1: A form to input project details, pricing logic that mirrors his spreadsheet calculations, a professional PDF quote that generates instantly, and the ability to email it to the customer.
What he deliberately leaves out: CRM integration, e-signatures, project management features, payment processing, customer portals, analytics, inventory checking, and calendar integration. All things that could come later – if the simple version actually works.
How he tests it: His team uses it on the next 15 on-site estimates. Do quotes get generated faster? Do more customers say yes on the spot? Are the prices accurate?
What he learns: Customers love getting immediate pricing. But they keep asking “when can you start?” – so the timeline input needs to be clearer. Two of his pricing variables confuse his team, so he adds helper text.
What he adds in version 2: An “estimated start date” calculator based on current project backlog, and the ability to save quotes as drafts.
Here’s the takeway: he started with one specific problem, built only what was needed to test the solution, learned from real usage, and added features based on what actually mattered – not what seemed like good ideas upfront.
The AI Problem You Didn’t Know You Had
AI tools are powerful. That’s actually the problem.
Because you CAN build something complex quickly, there’s a temptation to try. You start adding features because they’re possible, not because they’re necessary.
But here’s what hasn’t changed: you still need to validate whether people will actually use what you build.
The faster you can get something real in front of customers, the faster you learn what actually matters. Every feature you add before testing is a gamble.
Be Ready to Be Wrong
Here’s the thing about building to validate: sometimes you learn that customers want something different than what you built. I recently wrote about a Hello Alice community member who kept pushing the products she wanted to sell while her customers kept buying something else entirely. Revenue was sitting right there, ready to be claimed.
The market is not confused. We are.
When you build something simple and put it in front of customers, you might learn they use it differently than you intended, ignore the feature you thought was most important, or ask for something you deliberately left out. That’s not failure. That’s exactly what you’re building for.
What Will Your Build Today?
The tools are here. The barrier to building is lower than it’s ever been. The question isn’t “Can I build this?” anymore. It’s “What’s the absolute minimum that would be useful?”
Most entrepreneurs fail because they build too much, not too little. The discipline of building less – of resisting the urge to add “just one more thing” – that’s what separates products people use from products that never launch.
So what’s the one problem in your business you could solve with a simple tool? Not the platform. Not the complete solution. Just the one specific pain point that, if solved, would make your day easier or your customers happier.
Build that. Test it. Learn what works. Then decide what comes next.
Want to see what’s possible? Check out playtripletake.com. It’s a family card game I built in two days. It does one thing well: lets people play the game. That’s it. And that was enough to validate the idea.
Ready to start building? The Main Street Rising Tour is coming to a city near you. Learn how to use AI to test your ideas faster, automate the tasks that eat your time, and build systems that actually scale your business. No tech jargon, no overwhelm—just practical tools that work for Main Street. Join the entrepreneurs who are rising. Learn more at mainstreetrisingtour.com.
Kelsey Ruger is Chief Product & Technology Officer at Hello Alice, where he leads engineering, product, and design for a platform serving 1.5 million small business owners. He teaches entrepreneurs how to implement AI effectively and believes everyone has the potential to build something extraordinary.