Make Money Developing Software | Zvi Band

Zvi Band is a developer, serial founder, and relationship-driven entrepreneur best known for building Contactually, the much-loved CRM he scaled to over $10 million in revenue before selling to real estate giant Compass in a deal valued north of $20 million. In addition to founding and exiting venture-backed companies, he’s written a book, coached thousands of professionals, and now leads Relatable, a personal CRM designed to help people deepen trusted relationships instead of just “monetizing contacts.” In this conversation, he unpacks how AI is blowing the doors off traditional software gatekeeping and what non-technical founders can realistically build in the next 30 days.

On this episode we talk about:

• How AI has collapsed the barrier to building software—from needing a technical co-founder or expensive dev team to being able to spin up a working web app in a matter of hours.

• What non-technical founders should actually learn first (hint: product thinking and clear specs) instead of trying to become full-stack engineers.

• Which AI-powered tools can help you go from “idea in your head” to V1 MVP—covering product specs, code, hosting, and iteration.

• How to think about UX/UI in an AI world, including using real-world visuals and brand cues to guide your app’s look and feel.

• Where AI is taking the software and career landscape next, from solo-built seven–eight figure products to massive retraining opportunities as lower-level jobs get automated.

Top 3 Takeaways

1.  You no longer need a technical co-founder to ship a real product; if you can clearly describe what you want and think like a product manager, AI can handle most of the coding and infrastructure for a basic business app.
2.  The real “execution risk” has shifted from writing clean code to building the right thing, matching real user journeys, and finding distribution in an increasingly noisy, AI-generated world.
3.  AI will both automate low-level work and open up huge opportunities in enablement—helping industries adopt AI, retraining displaced workers, and giving more people a viable path into software and entrepreneurship.

Notable Quotes

•   "Even if the code is ‘throwaway,’ it costs you next to nothing now to have AI build a V1 while you sleep."

•   "Anyone can tell an AI to make a CRM; very few people can make a CRM informed by fifteen years of thinking deeply about relationships."

•   "As AI takes more tasks off your plate, the real question is whether you’ll use that freed-up time to invest in relationships or just scroll more content."

Connect with Zvi Band:

• Website: https://www.zviband.com

• Relatable (personal CRM): https://relatable.one

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