Show HN: From CRUD Dev to AI Founder in 30 Days – Photor.ai

30 days ago, I was just a backend dev writing CRUD APIs. Then AI came along — and suddenly, it felt like my skills might be obsolete.

The past two years have been a whirlwind. AI models now create images, videos, and even code faster than humans. I felt both amazed… and scared. If AI could do my job, what would be left for me?

Instead of waiting for the wave to wash over me, I decided to build something of my own. Video tools were too costly, so I started with images — the foundation of video — and began working on photor.ai, an AI-powered image generation and editing tool.

No design skills. No frontend experience. No budget.

1.V0 for the product page

2.Cursor for both frontend & backend code

3.GitHub for source control

4.Cloudflare Pages for hosting frontend

5.A tiny cloud server for the backend

It wasn’t smooth:

1.Broke deployments at 2 a.m. more than once

2.Rebuilt features from scratch when early versions failed

3.Hit API rate limits just hours before launch

There was a night I nearly quit. I told myself, “Maybe I’m not cut out for this. I’m just a CRUD dev.”

The next morning, I decided to keep going anyway. One bug at a time, one feature at a time, one tiny improvement at a time. Slowly, photor.ai came to life.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: you don’t need to be a “full-stack rockstar” to launch something in the AI era. Curiosity and persistence matter more than credentials.

If you’ve been hesitating, start now. Even if it’s messy, even if it’s small — the best way to understand this new era is to create in it.