I shipped an app in 5 hours with Lovable

How I used my AI-First Operator Stack to dominate a Hackathon yesterday.

Yesterday I joined a Hackathon where I shipped a fully built app in 5 hours and won first prize at 2 out of the 3 prize categories. Not a prototype, not a demo, not a single-feature buggy spaghetti. An actual, functioning product which is now live and used by the client.

However, I didn’t write a single line of code, because — and this may come surprising to you, but — I can’t code. Yet I beat veteran software engineers in half a day.

Scroll down to see what happened and how you can do the same.

How to generate leads with AI?

Last week a sports management company came to me with a problem. The founder, Hunor said to me on the introductory call:

"Every year we organize the Sports Forum - our biggest revenue driver - and one of the most important things for us is finding sponsors. It's not so trivial so we can't really outsource it. So several people on our team works for weeks until we have a good list of leads to reach out to. If you want to do anything with AI, do that."

But I wasn't convinced I was needed at first. His problem could be solved easily with Apollo but I didn't consider how complicated the platform is for someone like Hunor who is not very technical. I showed him Apollo's dashboard:

Look. He is not technical. He is a brilliant entrepreneur with a very successful business but when he saw the dashboard he looked at me like this:

What he told me afterwards knocked me out harder than 4 shots of tequila on an empty stomach. (Ugh, even writing that feels horrible, thank God I’m 20 months sober).

He said:

"I don't want to learn how to use another tool. I want AI to use the tool for me."

That’s when it hit me. He needed a personalized microSaaS that’s a wrapper around the tools he already wants to use, but turns his understanding of the business into specialist actions.

One option would be to hire a marketing agency to create a whole lead generation strategy and charge him $20k for a 3 month on-ramp campaign for prospecting only.

The other option was to let me vibe code the shit out of this problem and ship exactly that in 5 hours.

Obviously we did the latter. Now Hunor has an app that:

• Knows his business inside out.

• Understands their market.

• Understands their ICP.

• Has full access to the Apollo database.

• He only needs to click a "Generate leads" button and voilá.

The AI-First Operator Stack in action

How? With using my AI-First Operator Stack. Here's my 8 step process, step by step. I’ve built quite a few solutions with this framework and it’s getting really solid now.

Step 1: 1 hour chat

1 hour kickoff meeting, recorded by Sembly.AI → he told me about his business, his customers, the event, their best sponsors, etc.

Step 2: Deep Research #1 for analysis

I put the transcript into ChatGPT Deep Research to generate a full market analysis and business profile on their business and their events. This filled the gaps and elevated Hunor's answers to my questions to the quality and granularity level of a seasoned marketing exec.

Step 3: Deep Research #2 for lead scoring

I put the transcript AND the profile into ChatGPT Deep Research again to create a lead scoring rulebook. It pulled in sources on how lead scoring works, analyzed it, then prompted itself to create a context-aware, custom rulebook for The Path.

Step 4: Firecrawl for API docs

I searched for the Apollo API link and crawled its contents in 10 seconds with Firecrawl.dev. This allowed me to use o3 in the next step to get valid API calls in the code without me ever having to (a) write code or (b) read the API docs.

Step 5: Generate Lovable Prompt

I put the transcript, profile, rulebook and the crawled documentation into

Cursor as text files. I referenced them with "@" in the Cursor chat using o3 and prompted it to generate "prompt for an AI coding assistant to build me a web app that would find leads on Apollo specifically for my company, score them against the lead scoring rules using GPT-4.1 with an analysis and store them in a fully functional CRM where I can enrich or view leads."

Step 6: Build Prototype

I put the prompt into Lovable and bamm. I got a prototype working.

Step 7: Vibe out bugs

I vibe coded the rest of the functions via prompting only:

• added the company logo and screenshots of the website to have a proper UI (I'd use Google Stitch for that now).

• added Supabase to handle user signup and anything that needed an API call

• I spent the last 2 hours refining the design.

Step 8: Profit

I pitched the fully functioning app I built in 5 hours and won 2 out of the 3 prizes.

Also, apparently I'm Hunor's new best friend now because what used to take his team 2 months now takes them 2 hours. That's a pretty fucking good ROI on a 5 hour investment if you ask me.

Grow into an AI-First Operator

I didn't write a single line of code - I wouldn't know how to do that. I just knew what tools to use to get from chaos to product in less than 5 hours.

This is what it means to be an AI-First Operator. Sooner or later you will become one too. Why not make it sooner so you unlock new opportunities while the space is growing? Grow with the market, into an AI-First Operator

I'm launching a bootcamp to get you to this level in 12 weeks, even if you have zero technical skills or are very busy.

I've designed the program thats:

• Noob friendly: I’m sanity testing the lessons on my wife, who has been using AI only for 1 week)¹

• Skips advanced topics: Learn the bare minimum you need to be dangerous

• Relaxed: requires less than 2 hours of your time per week. But if you miss one, all sessions are recorded and you get lifetime access too in case you miss them.

PS: I also have an affiliate program. Go register here and you’ll get 50% commission after every purchase made through your link.

1. Turns out living with a tech guy who lives and breathes AI topic really makes one not wanting to hear anything about it :D