How a VC and tech founder used AI to launch a brick-and-mortar business in their spare time

there's this kind of renaissance going on with board games that I've just gotten clued into in the last couple of years. Both of us had independently thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if there was, like, a membership-based social club, like a physical space that you could go to and just show up and play board games, either bringing your own friends, like you might do at a board game cafe, if you've ever seen one of those, but also you could play with other members?"

If you're starting your board game navigation, and maybe if you've ever been inside of a board game cafe, you've had this feeling, you walk in, and you've maybe played Catan, and maybe your friends had you play Wingspan, and now there's just, like, a wall of games, and you have absolutely no idea where to start. Well, this has been solved. In libraries, you have a card catalog library system where all of the French history books are next to each other, and so on and so forth. This is the kind of thing that would be, like, literally impossible without AI, but we basically have a bunch of design prompts in Claude, back in those projects, that help to categorize into kind of a Dewey Decimal System of board games.

I've seen how AI can help you code at an extremely proficient level. You can PM, but you are showing me how you can take your slightly nerdy, little bit niche hobby to an extreme level, [chuckles] and even turn it into a business.

It's truly the most ridiculous idea. If he had proposed this and we didn't have AI, I would've gone to the mat, like, "This is such a crazy thing that nobody's gonna want, and it's gonna be such a waste of time." But because we do, we can indulge in this kind of stuff, and it's really fun. And maybe for every five of these, one of them will be the best thing ever.

[upbeat music] Welcome back to How I AI. I'm Claire Vo, product leader and AI obsessive, here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. Today, I have Andrew Mason, CEO of Descript, and Nabeel Hyatt, VC at Spark Capital. Sure, they're a founder and a VC by day, but by night, they used AI to take their hobby and turn it into an in-person business. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by Lovable. If you've ever had an idea for an app but didn't know where to start, Lovable is for you. Lovable lets you build working apps and websites by simply chatting with AI. Then you can customize it, add automations, and deploy it to a live domain. It's perfect for marketers spinning up tools, product managers prototyping new ideas, or founders launching their next business. Unlike no-code tools, Lovable isn't about static pages. It builds full apps with real functionality, and it's fast. What used to take weeks, months, or even years, you can now do over the weekend. So if you've been sitting on an idea, now's the time to bring it to life. Get started for free at lovable.dev. That's lovable.dev. Nabeel and Andrew, thank you for being here. What I love about what we're gonna talk about is I've seen how AI can help you code at an extremely proficient level. You can PM, like, 10 PMs, but you are showing me how you can take your slightly nerdy, little bit niche hobby to an extreme level, [chuckles] and even turn it into a business. So Andrew, can you tell us a little bit about what you built with AI?