I wasted 3 years building nothing. Not "building the wrong thing." Building *nothing*. Chasing SaaS templates, sprinkling AI into todo apps, arguing about tech stacks on Twitter while my bank account bled out. The wake-up call? My then girlfriend got pregnant. Suddenly I couldn't afford to "build in public" anymore. I needed to eat. My family needed to eat. And none of my "AI-powered productivity tools" were going to pay for diapers. So I stopped asking "what should I build?" and started asking "who's hungry right now, and what do they need?" Found a local HVAC company manually entering invoice data into QuickBooks for 3 hours every Friday. Built them a CSV import script in an afternoon. They paid me $300. Then asked if I could do their scheduling. Another $400. No AI. No SaaS. No logo with sparkles. Just boring Python scripts solving boring problems for people who actually pay money. **Here's what pisses me off:** We've gaslit an entire generation of developers into thinking software is about "disruption" and "AI-powered" buzzwords instead of solving real problems for real people with real budgets. "AI-powered" is the new "cloud-powered" or "internet-enabled." It's table stakes. It's plumbing. Nobody cares. They care if their problem goes away and they can go home on time. I see junior devs on Reddit asking "should I add AI automations or SaaS?" before they've talked to a single potential customer. Before they've identified one person who would pay them $50 to make their Tuesday easier. Software was supposed to be leverage. A way to solve problems at scale. Somewhere we confused "scale" with "build something nobody asked for and hope someone pays for it." **The real question isn't "what tech should I use?"** It's "who do I want to help, and what do they actually want to achieve?" Answer that, and the tech becomes obvious. Usually it's boring. Often there's no AI involved. Always it pays better than your SaaS idea. I'm curious: **What's the most valuable software you've built that had zero AI at the end, zero "disruption," and just solved someone's actual problem?** Bonus points if it was boring as hell but paid your rent. Ps: It's fine if you use AI as part of the building process Me first: [www.blackbox\[.\]ai ](http://www.blackbox[.]ai%20/): let's you build meaningful projects with AI at the cheapest cost.