As a Gen Z consumer and serial founder, Joseph Franklin wanted to develop a fintech solution to help the Gen Z subset of the market save money. After receiving a gift card that he didn’t have much use for, Franklin sold it to his friend at a discount to its total value and began to wonder if there was a broader mismatch between the holders of gift cards and the true beneficiaries of gift cards. He sought out Sutro’s AI app builder so he could quickly develop a prototype of Savvy, test his hypothesis, and assess market appetite for this product.
As a non-technical founder, Franklin understood that he would need the assistance of a no-code platform or AI app builder to bring his idea to life. Given the high number of gift cards that were never redeemed, he hypothesized that a marketplace to resell gift cards would be a way to help consumers avoid unnecessary spending and get discounts if they already knew of a purchase they needed to make. Franklin wanted to quickly build an MVP of Savvy that he could test within the market during the holiday season to determine if this was an idea worth investing significant resources into.
When building Savvy, Franklin considered all of the options available to him to develop the product, including hiring a development agency, recruiting engineers, finding a technical co-founder, and using no-code platforms. Although agencies are talented at building products, Franklin was looking for an engineering solution that would allow him to continue iterating affordably. Given his constrained resources and product goals, he decided to go with Sutro to build his app and get to market as quickly as possible.
Building an app with a company like Bubble requires intense effort and time. Whereas, with Sutro, actually building and getting the idea out of your head and into a product is a simple, easy and incredible experience for a non-technical founder. - Joseph Franklin, Founder of Savvy
Franklin was able to share his idea with Sutro and immediately see a fully-generated prototype of a gift card marketplace. He intentionally kept the features limited and simplistic in the initial prototype to ensure he could get to a MVP without a technical co-founder. Savvy was at its core a marketplace, and based on Franklin’s initial prompt, Sutro built an app that had buyers and sellers on either side of the marketplace with the ability to add items for sale and make purchases. For small touches, Franklin was able to use the Sutro Studio to update design elements and change the layout of pages within the app.
Franklin was able to launch an MVP of Savvy right before the start of the busy holiday season when gift cards are often received and given by consumers. By building with Sutro, Franklin was able to test his idea during the period with the highest likelihood of success and determine market appetite for the product. Ultimately, Franklin decided that Savvy was not the right idea for him to pursue on a larger scale, but he was able to make that decision without expending extensive time, money, or resources.
When you’re at such an early stage where you don’t have the luxury of significant funds in the bank or technical expertise, Sutro is incomparable in speed, execution, and costs. You’re able to get a product into the market at an incredible pace and at a fraction of a fraction of the cost of building technical teams. - Joseph Franklin, Founder of Savvy
Sutro is challenging traditional product development timelines by leveraging LLM-powered AI to instantly build apps from a single text prompt. Founders should consider Sutro as their partner and app builder if they are looking to get to market with zero time, zero coding, and zero hassle.
Let’s level the playing field.
