Everything Billy Howell said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Howell: AI coding tools consistently struggle with dates and time zones
“AI in general gets kind of mixed up with date formatting and time zones. So that's something to look out for sure.”
Howell hires specialized developers to finish the final 15% of AI code
“What I do now that this is like a real agency is I kind of have a dev that specializes in this kind of stuff. Go through and do like the last 15% and kick the tires, right?”
Howell: Paying $50 for debugging bounties beats hours of AI troubleshooting
“It's just like, 50 bucks to troubleshoot something is such a good use of money versus me banging my head against the wall, burning 10 dollars in AI credits and six hours of my night, you know?”
Howell: Pitch custom AI apps to replace clients' most expensive SaaS
“So I think what you can do if you're like an entrepreneur trying to do this is like, Build like one or two apps, like probably more than that, like get good at it. Like I made like 40. And then just call business owners and be like, what's the most annoying th…”
Howell: Running One Newsletter Consumed 90% of His Weekly GrokBot Limit
“I think in the first week I used it pretty heavily but was able to get through week one with like, 10% of my usage left. And that's me running one newsletter.”
Howell: Letting Users Paste Invoice Links Reduces Onboarding Friction
“And that also, that features a good way, I think, to get users who, you know, may not want to switch over their whole billing to you, right? They just want to use this to push existing invoices.”
Howell: Legacy Email APIs Are Too Complex For Rapid MVP Development
“Setting up transactional emails for your SaaS is like such an annoying step. And all the traditional ones like are for some reason, like such a pain to use, like an arduous setup process, weird billing, like a zillion features. And so when I found this, I was …”
Howell: Sending Loom demo prototypes wins $2,500 Upwork gigs
“If it's a simple enough app, and it's 2500 bucks, right you could go ahead and build the prototype, and then in the proposal, send it as a Loom link of you, like, demoing it for them, which I've done, and it worked for the first one I ever did.”
Howell built over 40 AI applications within four months
“Like four months ago, I made a captain's log app that you just talk into and uses AI to like summarize your day. And since then I made like 40 more.”
Howell: Aspiring vibe coders should rapidly build a high volume of apps
“Go out there and build something, just vibe code, make a game make something cool and then move on. I would move on to the next one. I would just make a ton of apps. That's my advice.”
Howell charged $750 for his first vibe-coded Upwork project
“The first one I did for 750 bucks.”
the Startup Ideas Podcast 1