This story is part of CNBC Make It’s The Moment series, in which highly successful people reveal the defining moments that changed the trajectory of their lives and careers, and tell us what inspired them to leap into unknown territory.
Dhruv Amin and Marcus Lowe left Google to build a startup that was “profitable from day one” and operated at a run rate of $2.2 million by September 2023, Amin said. They predicted continued success, predicting at least a 5x increase in monthly revenue by late 2024.
Then I decided to shut everything down and start over. Amin says it’s all ChatGPT’s fault.
Mr. Amin and Mr. Lowe, both 33, are now co-founders and co-CEOs of Anything. The company says it is a vibe coding startup that raised an $11 million funding round in September and is valued at $100 million. The business, originally known as Create, was a marketplace that connected startups with freelance engineers and artificial intelligence-powered coding tools for building websites and apps.
Why blow up? Amin cites a “ChatGPT moment” in November 2022, when OpenAI debuted a generative AI chatbot. The leap in its capabilities from previous AI models “surprised everyone,” Amin says.
Don’t Miss: The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Business – Everything You Need to Know to Be Your Own Boss
Amin and Rowe predicted that by the spring of 2023, AI could finally approach the ability of human developers to write sophisticated code. If that happens, there will be no need for human engineers at all, potentially putting businesses out of business.
But if you restructure your company around AI and the technology doesn’t advance fast enough, your new model will fail. Customers rebel and the company runs out of money.
In October 2023, after months of anxious deliberation, Amin and Rowe embarked on the difficult process of laying off half of their seven-person staff and cutting ties with freelance developers. “Within two weeks, we were back in an empty office,” Amin said.
They first launched an AI-powered tool for building app components like login forms and calendar tools. In April 2025, we launched a new product to build your entire online business, including backend authentication and payment systems. No coding experience required. And we changed our company name to Anything.
“That was actually the moment I felt like it really took off,” Amin says. Within two weeks of the company’s relaunch announcement, Anything’s annual sales reached $2 million, he says.
Amin says the AI coding industry is in a “very early stage” of development, as evidenced by overall mixed reviews of Vibe coding services. Still, non-technical users are also building functional commercial apps with Anything, such as an AI stylist mobile app for a salon owner or an app for a dental hygienist to track the health of your gums, Amin wrote in a Sept. 29 blog post.
Here, Amin talks about the realization that AI has the potential to upend entire business models, the uncertainty of starting over, and the right time to launch a startup in an emerging industry.
CNBC Make It: We have decided to close and rebuild in October 2023. How difficult was that decision to make, and what was the response from your company’s investors?
Amin: It was tough because I went back to zero. We had to let half of our team go. We had to shut down our developer marketplace and tell our customers that we would no longer be doing this with developers.
At the time, people were still scoffing and asking, “Is this AI real? Can we really build real apps (with AI alone)?”
We raised venture capital ($3 million). We had promised (to investors) that we would meet a (specific) schedule. Then we went back to everyone and said, “Actually, no, we’re going back to zero.” Everyone was like, “Really?”
You and your co-founder have been tracking advances in AI, what were the conversations like?
We talked all the time. We revisit the position once a month. It took me and Marcus a very long time to come to the conclusion[of starting the business again]. And I felt like this was one of those decisions that both of us as co-founders needed to agree on.
There was a time when I was more bullish about the (initial) outlook for the market and what we could do with it. There were times when Marcus was more aggressive. And there were times when we both thought, “This technology is advancing rapidly and being used in more and more places. Does it make sense to develop new products?” That was tough.
I think what finally broke the deadlock for us was the following. We launched some prototype builders just to test if there was demand[for code generation products]. There you don’t have to talk to any of us, you can just use it. That gave us an early signal. After speaking with the customer, the code generation system felt like a good fit for their product and market.
How confident were you that the underlying generative AI technology would continue to advance exponentially?
I’m confident, but not confident in the timescale. That was the scariest part. By 2024, there will be some leveling off in the capabilities of large-scale language models. At that point, it was very unclear how good[the technology]would end up being. There have certainly been situations where I’ve been like, “Hey, did I make a mistake trying to pivot?”
Can we build something valuable and useful enough for people to want it and pay us for it? There were a lot of opportunities to pivot to faster wins, like, “Let’s build a prototyping tool. Let’s build a design tool. Because all LLMs can do is components. We’ll sell it to distributors.”
What stopped you?
Marcus and I always had the idea that we had already passed one major turning point in moving closer to the company’s mission. If we didn’t actually accomplish the company’s mission, that pivot would have been a waste. The idea is to allow people to build real products without knowing how to code.
This is now an instructive founding story. Even if technology changes, even if business models change, this company will stick with it. It was difficult at the time. Now I can say this with pride. You don’t have to take my word for it that we’re serious about what we’re trying to do here. We painted it with blood, sweat, and tears.
We expected that it would take about a year for the technology to be good enough to build an actual production system. It actually took me about two days, but I think I’m still at the starting point. The sophisticated apps you can build with Anything will look dramatically different in a year, or even two years.
I hope our hardcore axes are behind us at the moment. I think the mindset now is, “Let’s execute, let’s take advantage of the opportunity, and let’s really grow it.”
Where would your business be today if you hadn’t shut down your market to focus on AI?
It’s very difficult to convey that. Does the company still exist? Is the business we were building then still attractive (to investors) today? I think marketplace models like this, while popular in 2021, are completely outdated unless it’s a purer AI (centralized).
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Want to be your own boss? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course, “How to Start a Business: For First-Time Founders.” From testing your idea to growing your revenue, find step-by-step guidance to launch your first business.
