Why "Build Slow"?

An introduction to my attempt to build, maintain, and grow a fully functioning iOS app with no coding knowledge

Welcome to "Build Slow"! This space exists to document my journey as a Product Manager with no coding skills as I attempt to use AI to help me build, launch, and grow a software product. Specifically, I'm going to build an iOS app.

And let me reiterate: I have no idea how to code. In fact, I'm so bad at it that I need to Google the correct way to write print("Hello, World!") every single time. So hopefully this journey will be fun, insightful, inspiring, and not too personally embarrassing for me.

Why build an app?

I'm a Product Manager at a tech company where I work with two different teams. One team builds a web application, while the other builds the iOS and Android mobile versions of that same application. I entered tech product management from outside the industry, and have very limited technical knowledge.

While I've been in tech for a decent amount of time now, I feel like I need to do more to empathize with my teams. So I thought I would do what they do (well, sort of... they actually write their own code). I want to understand the cathartic experience of seeing something you built work for the first time, to feel the frustration of debugging an error, and to experience the satisfaction that comes from closing your laptop after a productive building session.

I chose an iOS app because it seems like the most straightforward path to distribution. I don't need to pay for a web domain, I can release through the App Store (though "easily" might be stretching it), and I don't need to account for users on multiple interfaces.

But my intent goes beyond simple empathy. The advent of AI tools has unleashed capabilities I never had before. I use AI constantly in my role to be more efficient and insightful. I see tech influencers everywhere talking about how easy it is to build products with AI. So, I'm going to put that to the test and see if I can evolve from being a PM empowered by AI to becoming a fully technical builder.

Finally, building an iOS app just seems fun. You get to release something, hear what people think of it, and solve new problems. Best of all, you decide the goals and metrics, you choose when the work gets done, and you get to deal with all the tech debt!

So here we go!

Who knows where this app will end up. I might not even make it to the App Store. But you better believe we're going to try. Make sure you subscribe to keep up to date with my progress and find out what it is I am actually building.