I finally found my dream job!

Joe Sanders — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 22:20:00 +0000

Hey eveyone,

For years, I was thinking being a programmer is cool ...

I recently launched www.leapd.ai and realized running a startup is much cooler.

Has anyone had a similar experience, from behind a computer to talking in tech events as a founder!! Such a drastic change.

for context, you can start your business today at leapd.ai

The state of AI-run business, 2026

Joe Sanders — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 21:04:17 +0000

AI adoption is everywhere. AI-run businesses are still rare.

After analyzing 30+ datasets and watching more than 1,000 businesses launch on Leapd, I found clear patterns in what works, what fails, and where founders still need to stay involved.

I broke those lessons down in the 2026 AI-Run Business Report, including how founders are using AI to build products, launch websites, run outreach, create ads, and start finding customers.

Report: https://www.leapd.ai/resources/state-of-ai-run-businesses-2026

Start your business: https://www.leapd.ai/

AI that builds and runs your business, 24/7

Joe Sanders — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 13:03:28 +0000

I spent 2 decades in corporate America building software for different clients, and in the last 8 years was working as a principal engineer at a unicorn company. But last year, I decided to do something different with my life. It all started when I saw my boss was trying to build a personal website so he could sell his books directly, vs through Amazon, that cost %30+ more.

When he asked me to help him, he had already spent a few months vibecoding the landing page and then got stuck in the payment infrastructure and the database to track purchases, returns, etc. When I looked at his vibe coded app, it was a nightmare, all routes broken, api calls sync, event loops booking, etc -> then I realized, vibe coding is great only if you know what you are building in a technical sense. It took me 2 weeks to fix his app and set up the infrastructure - while doing it from scratch could have only taken a few days.

That is when I realized, what if we train an AI to be a software engineer and then that AI do the building, review, and shipping! I spend few month part time working on it and created the first version last summer, soon it started to grab attention, people started assigning an idea to it and walked away, the agent then built most of the app and asked for feedback when was needed - initially it had memory and planning performance issue and I spent the next 4 months optimizing it and re-launched early this year.

In a few weeks after launch, I got tons of requests for adding automatic marketing and sales agents - so I added email campaigns, Meta ads, LinkedIn outreach, and AI viability agents in the next few months. When I closed the loop, a user could bring an idea, Leapd would build the app, and launch marketing campaigns to bring customers, all on autopilot.

The stack I used is: Vercel for frontend deployment, AWS for backend, Stripe for payment, Postgres/RDS, and S3 for database. And Claude for running sessions and coding + custom agents that do the actual tasks - happy to share more if anyone is interested.

Today, hundreds of businesses are running on leapd.ai, and I would appreciate it if you could try it for free - no card needed - and share your feedback.

DEV Community: Joe Sanders

I finally found my dream job!

The state of AI-run business, 2026

AI that builds and runs your business, 24/7