As a Product Manager, I always felt a little handicapped not knowing how to code. It's that feeling of having to rely on someone else to build your vision. I'm pretty sure every PM feels this, even if they don't say it out loud.

So, I did what any logical person would do: I left my job last month to build a startup. With pockets that were more lint than cash, hiring a developer wasn't an option. The task fell to me. It wasn't that I wasn't interested, I just hadn't really coded before, and it felt intimidating.

Thankfully, I wasn't starting from absolute zero. My time as a PM meant I'd worked closely with amazing developers and tech leads. I understood the basics of programming, had a good sense of high-level design, and even a strong intuition for how to structure a database for a given problem. I'd also tinkered with Python in the past, building simple scraping scripts and AI voice bots, so terms like variables, arrays, and functions weren't completely alien. Plus, my experience with designers meant I was very comfortable with UI/UX.

Our startup idea? A website builder for the real estate industry, connected to an inventory management system where developers can upload their properties (with a sprinkle of AI magic from OpenAI and Gemini).

The first step was mapping out the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The scope was huge, but AI tools made it seem doable. We then designed the database schema, a huge shoutout to drawdb.app for being such an amazing piece of software! We used Gemini extensively to critique our decisions and suggest improvements, acting as our digital tech lead.

This is what the schema looked like:

With the blueprint ready, we started with the frontend, even without a designer on board. We tried a few tools like Lovable, Bolt, and Replit, but ultimately settled on v0. We're big fans of the ShadCN library, so our UI has that clean look. We even custom-coded a few elements to give it some extra polish. Soon enough, the product looked ready. The only problem? It was a beautiful house with no plumbing or electricity.

Our platform’s UI. I know it looks exactly like ShadCN, because... well, it is. And honestly, users don't care much about the UI as long as you're solving their problems.

For the backend, we chose Supabase. It provides so much out of the box, and since we're B2B, we figured it would be a long time before we hit any limits. Then came the actual coding, powered by AI assistants. I used Copilot; my friend used Cursor.

Honestly, I don't get the fierce debate between the two. They both work wonders if you know what you want to build. Magic isn't the tool; it's how you think through logic and write your prompts. (Though I must admit, I found Claude Sonnet 4 to be the best for this).

We wrote down the basic CRUD operations we needed and got to work. It took us about four days to get the website builder wired up and working. We probably could have done it in two, but other tasks needed attention.

About 95% of our code was written by AI. But here’s the crucial part: You have to be the architect. The AI is your intern. It can lay the bricks, but you have to design the building, decide where the rooms go, and ensure the foundation is solid.

For less critical parts of the platform, like the user signup flow (since it's a Sales Led flow initially) and settings pages, we even used n8n to automate the process, relying heavily on simple forms.

This is how our Signup UI looks like:

And this is the flow behind it:

We are piloting with two clients this week, and the initial reactions look good. Looking back, it's incredible how much has changed.

The fear of not being able to code is being replaced by the power of knowing how to think and using AI to execute. It's not about replacing developers; it's about empowering builders. If you're a PM or an entrepreneur sitting on the sidelines because you think you can't code, I hope this shows you there's a different way. The tools are here. You just need to bring the vision.