Nikonomics - The Economics of Small Business

185 - How to Build and Sell Apps with No Code with Billy Howell

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Jun 10, 2025

Billy Howell, an entrepreneur who has created over 60 apps with AI through his agency Stupid Simple Apps, shares his insights on building chatbots without coding expertise. He breaks down practical use cases for small businesses, troubleshooting real-time issues, and efficient data management. The discussion includes leveraging tools like Replit and OpenAI for seamless app development and exploring the importance of simple, functional design. Listeners will discover how to navigate coding challenges while embracing no-code solutions for their entrepreneurial ventures.

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ADVICE

Build Custom Chatbots Cheaply

You can easily create custom chatbots for small businesses using Replit and OpenAI with minimal cost.
Offer to build chatbots for local businesses and charge either a monthly fee or a one-time setup cost.

ADVICE

Manage Large Data for Chatbots

Handle large data by summarizing and chunking documents for the chatbot's context window.
Use OpenAI embeddings (RAG) to condense data efficiently and improve chatbot memory.

ADVICE

Use Spreadsheet Summaries

Summarize transcripts into a spreadsheet database capturing key details for efficient AI chatbot querying.
Use the chatbot to first search summaries before diving into full transcripts for answers.

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🚨MY NEWSLETTER https://nikolas-newsletter-241a64.beehiiv.com/subscribe 🚨

Join me, Nik (https://x.com/CoFoundersNik), as I interview Billy Howell (https://x.com/billyjhowell)! I'm so stoked to have Billy Howell back on the show!

Billy is a prolific entrepreneur who has built over 60 apps with AI despite having no traditional tech background. His agency, Stupid Simple Apps, helps other entrepreneurs build their own custom AI apps.

This episode, I challenged Billy to teach me how to build a chatbot specifically for my podcast, so I can easily query my extensive archive of 200 transcripts. We also dive into practical small business use cases for chatbots, from HR and onboarding to sales processes and internal SOPs.

You'll hear us discuss the challenges of managing large data sets and context windows, exploring solutions like OpenAI's embeddings (also known as RAG) and document summarization. I even share a Google Apps Script I built to summarize my transcripts into a spreadsheet database, which we then use as the foundation for our chatbot.

Billy walks me through using Replit and its powerful AI agent, leveraging ChatGPT to create a PRD (Product Requirements Document) and build a functional web app in minutes. We troubleshoot real-time issues, from CSV upload failures to database storage (shifting from in-memory to Postgres), and even touch on managing OpenAI API costs.

Enjoy the conversation!

Questions This Episode Answers:
How can a small business use AI chatbots for internal processes?
What's a cost-effective way to build a custom AI chatbot?
How do you handle large data sets, like 200 podcast transcripts, for an AI chatbot's context?
What's a PRD and how does AI use it to build an app in minutes?
How can you manage AI API costs and avoid unexpected token spikes?

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This week we covered:

00:00 Building Apps with AI: A New Era

03:01 Chatbots: Revolutionizing Business Communication