Built in 48 Hours with AI

EconPulse started with a simple observation: A-Level economics students are expected to reference real-world news in their exams, but most teenagers don't read the Financial Times. The gap between what examiners want and what students actually consume was obvious — and so was the solution.

We wanted to build a daily economics digest that takes real news, runs it through AI analysis, and maps it directly to exam board specifications. Every morning, students would receive a brief they could read in ten minutes that would make them the most informed person in their economics class.

The question wasn't whether this was a good idea. The question was whether a solo developer could build it — a full-stack application with authentication, payments, an AI pipeline, email delivery, and multi-board curriculum mapping — in a weekend.

The answer, it turns out, is yes. Using Claude Code as an AI pair-programming partner, the entire platform was architected, built, and deployed in roughly 48 hours. The stack: Next.js 15, React 19, Tailwind CSS 4, PostgreSQL via Neon, Stripe for payments, Resend for email, and Claude AI for the content analysis pipeline itself.

This is a case study in what happens when the economics of software development fundamentally change. When a single developer with AI tooling can produce work that previously required a team of five working for three months, the implications extend far beyond technology.

For a platform that teaches economics, it seems only fitting to analyse the economics of how it was built.

Cost Disruption in Software Development

Traditional estimates for a platform like EconPulse — authentication, payments, AI pipeline, email system, multi-tenant content management — would place development costs at approximately £15,000 to £25,000 with a timeline of 8 to 12 weeks. The AI-assisted approach reduced this to effectively zero direct development cost (beyond the developer's time) in 48 hours. That's not a marginal improvement. It's a 10–50x reduction in the cost of production.

Implications for Solo Founders

The barrier to entry for software products has collapsed. A single developer with domain expertise and AI tooling can now build and ship products that previously required venture funding and a development team. This democratisation of capability means the constraint has shifted from “can you build it?” to “do you understand the problem well enough?” — a far more meritocratic filter.

The Economics of AI-Assisted Coding

What we're witnessing is a classic productivity shock. AI coding tools don't replace developers — they amplify them. A senior developer who understands architecture, security, and user experience can now execute at the speed previously reserved for large teams. The knowledge and judgement remain human; the implementation velocity is augmented.

Creative Destruction in the Development Industry

Schumpeter would recognise this pattern. The development industry is experiencing creative destruction: lower costs of production, faster iteration cycles, and a redistribution of value from labour-intensive implementation toward design thinking and domain expertise. The developers who thrive will be those who understand what to build and why, not just how.