Millionaire Designer vs AI Designer

Hello my friend,

Today, we’re taking a glimpse into the future. I’m pleased to introduce you to BUILD WARS, a competition in which a professional goes against an amateur using AI.

This is one of the first battles between a knowledge worker (designer in this case) against the AI trying to replace them. You can watch it all here.

Let’s get into it.

The Contenders:

In one corner we have Henrik Westerlund (his LinkedIn is here). He’s leading Growth at lovable.dev an AI platform for creating full websites by typing into a chat and the technology builds everything for you.

Their platform has gone from $0 to $10M ARR is just 2 months. I can’t stress enough how insane this is. They did it with just 15 people. Most recently, they raised another $15M a couple weeks ago. In the announcement, they state they’ve added another $7M ARR in the last month.

In the other corner we have Brett from Designjoy. He’s an amazing designer who leads his agency alone. He has no contractors, no employees, and does over $1M/year in revenue. His work regularly wins awards, as do his clients, and he’s not just good, he’s absurdly fast. Brett completes builds that typically take months in a week or two.

So on one side we have an amateur designer (arguably not even a designer at all), using one of the most hyped platforms available. On the other, we have a seasoned purist.

The craziest part of it all was the gambling/betting around the event. There were $190,000 worth of bets placed on who would win this battle.

How it Started:

Like much of the latest news, it started on Twitter/X when Henrik made a bold declaration, calling out that Webflow (the leading web design platform), is dead. It’s implying that their platform ‘killed’ it.

As great fights usually begin, Brett Tweeted back, and it escalated from there.

Fast forward, and BUILD WARS picked up it, and we had a live match on our hands.

You can watch the entire thing here. Some of our team at beehiiv was keeping an eye on it while it was happening live too.

The Big Takeaway:

This is likely the first of many cases. While the rest may not be as dramatic, it can’t be stressed enough.

This battle between a professional designer against an amateur with AI is happening at work all across the world. Every person who works from a computer should be paying attention to this (I guarantee the owners of many businesses are).

Accountants, lawyers, designers, writers, musicians, photographers, developers (pretty much everyone), is currently facing an AI that can do their job to the level of an entry level professional.

It’s not a year away, it’s right now. So if you’re someone who’s been working at something for five years, and you’re not that good, either improve quickly or start using AI.

I doubt this applies to you because you’re reading this newsletter, but maybe pass it on to your friends if they don’t know this already.

So Who Won?

Brett won and the AI lost. But there’s more to the story.

They both completed amazing websites in the 45min they were given.

Henrik and the AI completed the build, had interactive components, and overall produced a website that someone would have likely paid $10,000 or more for (in 45min).

Brett’s design was obviously great (he won), but it wasn’t a matter of what was ‘working’ per-se. He won on the back of smaller nuances that were judged as better design choices. Better taste, basically. Something AI has not quite captured yet (but the theory is that it will soon).

But that’s the thing. Henrik is not a designer. He’s has no experience in the field, and is not paid $1M per year to design for clients. At no point did he have to manually design anything. It was all from typing at the AI.

Think about that for a second. If you’ve never designed a website, you can watch someone do it in 45min by typing into the screen and getting a very impressive website. Are you sure you still need to hire a website designer for your small business?

Overall, the competition is an insightful look into the future.

If they do it again next year, would Brett still win? I can’t say that for sure, to be honest.

But, he did have some nice words to share over the whole thing.

Thanks again for reading!

Now, a word from today’s sponsor.