Theory Of Everything
Junior Member
- Apr 18, 2020
- 150
- 158
TL;DR: Scroll down to the 5 listed bulletpoints bit
I spend 20 minutes a day scrolling Reddit looking for posts where small business owners say “this is a nightmare” or “I wish there was a simple tool for this”.
Not habit trackers or “track your water intake” nonsense. Proper operational headaches.
Last week I found one in r/smallbusiness A guy running a UK trades company was losing his mind trying to track tools, inventory, and who had what on which job site. Spreadsheet hell. Lost tools. Arguments with the lads. Loads of replies saying the same thing.
I copied the whole post and dropped it into ChatGPT with this prompt:
“Turn this Reddit pain point into a clear, detailed prompt I can paste straight into Lovable. Include full backend logic using Supabase (auth, database tables for tools, jobs, users, check-in/out system). For the frontend, make it clean and modern like the dashboard on xxxxxx.com, simple tables, status cards, easy search, mobile friendly. Keep it dead simple for a solo founder.”
ChatGPT spat out a massive, ready-to-use prompt in about 30 seconds.
I pasted it into Lovable. It built the whole UI and basic logic in one go. Looked decent straight away.
Then I connected a real Supabase project (free tier). Important: Skip Lovable Cloud completely. It’s basically just a more expensive wrapper around Supabase. Same database, same features, but you pay extra for the privilege. Go direct to Supabase from day one, it's cheaper, full control, easy to move later.
For Stripe billing I just went into Lovable settings, pasted my test secret key and publishable key, then swapped to live keys when I was ready. Took two minutes. No code. Works perfectly for subscriptions.
Over the next three days I prompted Lovable to fix the usual rough edges like “make the check-in button actually save to the database”, “add a simple report page”, “fix the mobile menu”. Nothing fancy, just small fixes.
By day four it was a working MVP. I threw up a basic landing page, posted in a couple of private UK trades Facebook groups and one Reddit thread, and launched quietly.
First month: 12 paying users at £29/mo. £348 MRR. Not life-changing on its own, but it took almost no ongoing work.
My whole portfolio is now sitting at just over £3,300 MRR from half a dozen of these little tools.
The method is stupidly repeatable:
I spend 20 minutes a day scrolling Reddit looking for posts where small business owners say “this is a nightmare” or “I wish there was a simple tool for this”.
Not habit trackers or “track your water intake” nonsense. Proper operational headaches.
Last week I found one in r/smallbusiness A guy running a UK trades company was losing his mind trying to track tools, inventory, and who had what on which job site. Spreadsheet hell. Lost tools. Arguments with the lads. Loads of replies saying the same thing.
I copied the whole post and dropped it into ChatGPT with this prompt:
“Turn this Reddit pain point into a clear, detailed prompt I can paste straight into Lovable. Include full backend logic using Supabase (auth, database tables for tools, jobs, users, check-in/out system). For the frontend, make it clean and modern like the dashboard on xxxxxx.com, simple tables, status cards, easy search, mobile friendly. Keep it dead simple for a solo founder.”
ChatGPT spat out a massive, ready-to-use prompt in about 30 seconds.
I pasted it into Lovable. It built the whole UI and basic logic in one go. Looked decent straight away.
Then I connected a real Supabase project (free tier). Important: Skip Lovable Cloud completely. It’s basically just a more expensive wrapper around Supabase. Same database, same features, but you pay extra for the privilege. Go direct to Supabase from day one, it's cheaper, full control, easy to move later.
For Stripe billing I just went into Lovable settings, pasted my test secret key and publishable key, then swapped to live keys when I was ready. Took two minutes. No code. Works perfectly for subscriptions.
Over the next three days I prompted Lovable to fix the usual rough edges like “make the check-in button actually save to the database”, “add a simple report page”, “fix the mobile menu”. Nothing fancy, just small fixes.
By day four it was a working MVP. I threw up a basic landing page, posted in a couple of private UK trades Facebook groups and one Reddit thread, and launched quietly.
First month: 12 paying users at £29/mo. £348 MRR. Not life-changing on its own, but it took almost no ongoing work.
My whole portfolio is now sitting at just over £3,300 MRR from half a dozen of these little tools.
The method is stupidly repeatable:
- Find real pain (Reddit is full of it in every niche).
- Use ChatGPT to turn it into a Lovable prompt (backend + frontend inspo).
- Build in Lovable, connect real Supabase, add Stripe keys.
- Fix the bugs over a few days.
- Ship the MVP and see if anyone pays.
