Imagine coming up with an idea for an app and, for once, getting further than explaining it to your friends. The conversation might once have ended with someone asking whether you knew a developer, followed by the realisation that you could not afford one. With platforms such as Lovable, users can now build web applications by describing what they want. For anyone whose entrepreneurial ambitions have exceeded their programming abilities, that is an appealing prospect. But if more people can turn their ideas into products, what will make someone choose yours?

Lovable’s 2026 Build Economy report offers an early glimpse of who is taking up this opportunity. Based on platform activity and a survey of more than 14,300 users, it reports that four in five respondents identify with non-technical roles. Yet 60.5% say they are not yet earning from their projects, although they plan to. These are Lovable’s own users, so the findings do not represent entrepreneurs as a whole. The survey also captures a single moment, rather than showing how many projects eventually become viable businesses.

It would be unfair to take that lack of income as evidence that the technology has failed. Some products may still be in development, while an internal tool can be useful without ever charging a subscription. Nevertheless, there is a considerable difference between wanting to make money and persuading somebody to part with theirs. Being able to build a product leaves the question of demand open.

The economic appeal begins with lower barriers to entry. Building an initial product takes time and money before a founder knows whether enough customers will want it. If AI reduces that investment, more ideas become affordable to test, including those serving markets too small to justify an expensive development team. Consider a booking tool designed for a few independent music venues. It might never interest a venture capital fund, but it could still save its customers time and give its founder an income. That would be a worthwhile business, even without becoming the next European unicorn.

However, lower development costs can also work against the founder. If competitors can easily offer similar features, customers may have less reason to pay a premium for yours. Economic theory suggests that easier entry can increase competition and put pressure on profits, especially when products are close substitutes. This does not mean every software market will become perfectly competitive. But simply having built something may offer less protection when others can build it too.

Getting noticed presents another problem. Imagine launching a study-planning app that organises deadlines slightly better than the alternatives. Potential users still have to hear about it and decide that the improvement is worth switching for. Cheaper development does not automatically persuade them. If many similar apps compete for the same students, reaching those students could absorb much of the money saved on programming. A founder with an existing audience would have a head start, even if somebody else had built a better calendar.

Trust matters too. A hotel manager choosing a reservation system has more at stake than how its dashboard looks. Moving bookings takes time, staff need training, and a failure on a busy weekend has consequences. Sticking with familiar software can therefore be rational, even when a cheaper alternative looks impressive. A new supplier has to show that the system is reliable and that help will be available when something goes wrong. From the customer’s perspective, somebody still needs to answer the phone.

This is where industry experience could become particularly valuable. In an October 2025 case study, Lovable described how Swedish founders Henrik Skagerlind Fasth and Peter Thörngren built Lumoo, a content creation platform for fashion brands. According to that account, they brought 25 years of combined fashion and retail experience to the project. They also hired an engineer to help the system handle growth. This is a success story selected by Lovable, so it cannot tell us what a typical user achieves. It does, however, show how these tools can work alongside practical experience and technical support.

Knowing an industry helps a founder judge which problems customers will pay to solve and who makes the purchasing decisions. It also helps explain why a feature that looks useful might never be adopted. For someone entering an unfamiliar market, adding features may be easier than finding out why customers are indifferent. I would be cautious about treating that indifference as a programming problem.

Even after customers arrive, the arithmetic still matters. Lovable’s documentation lists usage charges for development, hosting and AI features in live applications. The costs therefore continue after the first version is built.

Take a hypothetical app charging €10 a month, with €4 in monthly costs to serve each customer. That leaves €6 per customer per month. If someone stays for three months, their €18 contribution would not cover a €20 advertising cost to acquire them, even before accounting for the founder’s time or other overheads. Building the app faster does not change that calculation. Keeping customers longer or serving them more efficiently might.

Some of the value could also stay within existing businesses. A small company might build a tool to handle a repetitive administrative task and never sell software to anyone else. It would benefit through saved time or fewer mistakes. Counting only new startups would overlook those gains, while counting every prototype as a business would exaggerate them. What matters is whether people keep using the tool once the excitement of building it wears off.

For European founders, expanding across borders creates further challenges. In March 2026, the European Commission presented its EU Inc. proposal, an optional common set of corporate rules intended to make it easier to set up and run companies across the Union. The Commission pointed to the difficulties created by 27 national legal systems and more than 60 company legal forms. An app builder cannot resolve those differences for its customers.

Founders therefore still need access to customers and enough money to keep operating while they establish demand. Established businesses can use the same AI tools while retaining their customer relationships, so newcomers gain no automatic advantage. Nevertheless, cheaper development can give a specialist serving a neglected market the chance to test an idea that was previously too expensive. Europe has reason to welcome that opportunity without expecting every new app to become a multinational.

Making software easier to build allows more people to find out whether their ideas are useful. Some will build businesses, others will improve the ones they already run, and many will discover that their idea was more exciting to them than to anyone else. The technology can make that discovery less expensive. The founder still has to give customers a reason to try the product and keep using it. The friends who liked the idea at the beginning may even become the first users. Whether they renew their subscription is another question.