AI Builds
A working marketplace prototype in days, not a development quote in weeks
You have a marketplace idea and one question that decides everything. Will providers actually list? Will buyers pay a take rate? Does the booking flow make sense to someone who is not you?
The traditional way to answer it is to hire an agency, wait four to six months, and spend a developer's salary finding out. AI Builds answers it in days: a real, working, clickable marketplace prototype, built by someone who has spent a decade building marketplace products, using AI development tooling that has genuinely changed what one experienced person can ship.
One build week, $9,500. Two, $18,500.
Bring Me Your QuestionWhat Fits in a Build Week
A prototype, and the judgement behind it
A build week is 32 hours of my time, run against the one question we agreed on the first call. Here is what that buys.
A working prototype of your core loop
Listing, browsing, matching, or booking, whichever loop your riskiest question lives in.
Real screens on a real URL
Something you can put in front of providers, buyers, or investors, not a deck describing it.
The product thinking underneath it
I have run supply and demand acquisition, take rates, and trust and safety on live marketplaces. That experience shapes what gets built and what gets deliberately left out.
A written read-out
What the prototype tells you, what it cannot, and what the honest next step is.
What This Is Not
Read this before the pricing conversation
This is the part that protects you. A prototype is built to answer a question, not to serve customers. It does not include real user accounts, payment processing, hosting for production traffic, or ongoing maintenance. Those things belong to a production build, and bolting them onto a prototype is how a two-week validation quietly becomes a six-month engagement with the wrong foundation.
If the prototype answers your question with a yes, you graduate, and that is a separate engagement with its own price: a production build with me or with a development partner, or a fractional product engagement where I help you take it to market properly. If it answers with a no, you just saved yourself the cost of finding out the slow way. Both outcomes are wins.
Pricing
You are buying a week, not a deliverable
A fixed price on an outcome invites an argument about what counts as finished, and that argument is how a two-week validation turns into a six-month build. A fixed price on a week cannot do that. The week ends when the week ends, and anything that did not fit is named in the read-out rather than quietly absorbed.
One build week
$9,500
32 hours
One loop: the one your riskiest question lives in. Listing, browsing, matching, or booking.
Two build weeks
$18,500
64 hours
Both sides of the marketplace, or two loops, when one question does not cover it.
For comparison: an agency build for the same idea runs four to six months and a developer's salary, and answers the same question at the end of it. If what you need afterwards is ongoing product leadership rather than another build, that is the fractional engagement.
If the Answer Is Yes
I can build it, and half your prototype fee comes off
A prototype that says yes has earned the expensive conversation. If you want me to be the one who builds it, development starts at From $15,000 per month of effort, priced the same way as a build week: you are buying the month, not a fixed deliverable.
Half of what you paid for AI Builds comes off your first month. That is $4,750 after one build week, or $9,250 after two. The credit applies to the first month only and holds for 30 days from your read-out, because it exists to keep momentum rather than to be banked.
This is deliberately a separate engagement with its own price and its own start. The prototype ends when its week ends. What it earns you is the evidence to decide whether the build is worth having at all, and if it is, a month of it costs less than it would have before you had proof.
Who This Is For
Founders whose next step is blocked by a build
Founders who cannot code and do not want to hire a developer to find out if the idea holds. Operators inside a company who need to show, not tell, before a budget conversation. Anyone whose next step is blocked by "we would need to build something first."
If you searched for marketplace MVP development, this is probably the thing you actually need first. An MVP has users, uptime, and obligations. A prototype has answers. Most ideas deserve answers before they deserve obligations.
How It Works
Three steps
The question
We get on a call and define the single riskiest assumption in your marketplace. Not five assumptions. One.
The build
I scope the smallest prototype that tests it and build it. You see progress, not a black box.
The answer
You get the prototype, the walkthrough, and the read-out. What you do next is a decision you make with evidence instead of hope.
Why Me
Not an agency, a freelancer, or a no-code tool
An agency will build what you spec, and the spec is exactly what is unproven. A no-code tool will get you screens but not the marketplace judgement: what a take rate does to supply, why the chicken-and-egg problem eats generic launch plans, where trust and safety cannot be faked. I have built and advised marketplace platforms since 2016, including the parts that went wrong. The prototype is cheap because the tooling is new. The judgement behind it is not.
Building vs Proving
Building an online marketplace vs proving one
If you set out to build an online marketplace today, the honest sequence has two builds in it, not one. The production build comes with accounts, payments, moderation, and uptime obligations, and it deserves real engineering. The proving build comes first: the smallest working version of your core loop, existing only to show that providers will list, buyers will move, and the take-rate conversation survives contact with strangers.
AI Builds is the proving build. Create the online marketplace for real when the proof says so, and you will create it once instead of twice. If you are not yet sure which question the prototype should answer, start with how to validate a marketplace idea.
Common Questions
Before you ask
Is this an MVP?
No, deliberately. An MVP serves early customers, which means accounts, payments, support, and maintenance. A prototype answers a question and retires. If what you need is marketplace MVP development, the prototype is still the right first step, because it tells you what the MVP has to be before you pay MVP prices.
What happens after the prototype?
One of three things, and they are all fine: the answer is yes and you build, either with me from $15,000 per month of effort, with a development partner, or into a fractional product engagement; the answer is yes but differently, and the next prototype iteration costs days; or the answer is no and you retire the idea for the price of a proving build instead of a production one.
How long does it take and what does it cost?
One build week is $9,500 and buys 32 hours. Two build weeks are $18,500 and buy 64 hours, for both sides of the marketplace or two loops. You are buying the week, not a fixed deliverable: we agree the question on the first call, I build against it, and the week ends when the week ends. Anything that did not fit is named in the read-out rather than quietly absorbed.
What if I want you to build it after the prototype?
Development starts from $15,000 per month of effort, priced the same way as a build week: you are buying the month, not a fixed deliverable. Half of what you paid for AI Builds comes off your first month, so $4,750 after one build week or $9,250 after two. The credit applies to the first month only and holds for 30 days from your read-out, because it exists to keep momentum, not to be banked.
Why price a week instead of the prototype?
Because a price attached to an outcome invites an argument about what counts as finished, and that argument always drags a prototype toward becoming a production build. A price attached to a week cannot do that. It also matches what you are actually buying, which is fast, senior marketplace judgement pointed at one question.
Want to build it yourself instead? I wrote the full method up in how to build a marketplace with AI, including the four things that reliably break.
Bring me the question keeping your marketplace on the whiteboard.
One call to define it. Days to answer it.
Book a Call