Build a company in a day with AI

Step 1 · 30 minutes · Your Claude plan

Shape the concept with Claude

Start with what you know: your experience, a problem you've seen up close, and who has it. Don't ask Claude for a business idea. Give it yours and ask it to attack it.

Keep going until you can say in one sentence who the customer is, what they'll pay for, and why they'd pick you.

Here's a business idea and my background: [IDEA] [BACKGROUND]. Act as a skeptical investor. Who exactly is the customer, what will they pay for, what are the three biggest risks, and what would you want to see in the first 30 days?

Now argue the other side. What's the strongest case that this works, and what's the smallest version I could launch this week to test it?

Before you move on

• You can name the customer, the offer, and the first test.
• You've written down the biggest risk and how you'll learn whether it's real.

Step 2 · 1 hour · Free

Pick a name and clear it

Have Claude brainstorm names, then check the shortlist in five places before you fall in love with one:

• Your Secretary of State's business search (in Nevada, SilverFlume) for registered names
• USPTO Trademark Search at tmsearch.uspto.gov for federal trademarks in your field
• Domain availability for the .com and any other extension you want
• LinkedIn company pages and Google for anyone using it informally

Brainstorm 25 names for [BUSINESS]. They should be easy to spell, say what we do, and have a plausible domain. For each, note any obvious conflict risk.

I searched these names. Here's what I found: [PASTE RESULTS]. Lay out how each conflict differs from my business in name, services and market, and which name has the clearest field. Flag anything I should ask a trademark attorney about.

Before you move on

• The name is available as a business name in your state.
• No live federal trademark in a related field.
• The domain you want is available.
• For a name that really matters, a trademark attorney has looked at it.

Step 3 · 1 hour · Nevada: $200/yr sole proprietor; $425 year one for an LLC

Reserve the name and register the business

Most states let you reserve and register online. In Nevada it's SilverFlume, the Secretary of State's portal. A name reservation is $25 and holds the name for 90 days.

Pick the structure with your CPA or attorney. Two common routes in Nevada:

• Sole proprietor: file a fictitious firm name (DBA) with your county clerk and get a state business license ($200 a year).
• LLC: Articles of Organization ($75), Initial List ($150) and state business license ($200), $425 in year one, about $350 a year after. Then get a free EIN from the IRS.

I'm registering [NAME] in [STATE] as a [SOLE PROPRIETOR / LLC]. Walk me through each field on the [FORM NAME] form in plain English, tell me what documents to have ready, and list every fee and annual renewal so nothing surprises me.

Before you move on

• You did the filing and paid the fees yourself. AI explains; it doesn't file.
• Renewal dates are on your calendar.

Step 4 · 15 minutes · About $12–$20/yr for a .com; .ai costs more

Buy the domain

Buy it from any registrar (GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Namecheap). We paid $320 for two years of cforesource.ai at GoDaddy. Turn on auto-renew, and keep the login in a password manager.

Before you move on

• Auto-renew is on.
• Privacy protection is on, so your home address isn't public.

Step 5 · 2–3 hours · Free

Build the website

Three free accounts do the work. GitHub stores the website's files. Cloudflare hosts the site and runs the domain's settings; every change saved to GitHub goes live in about a minute. beehiiv (affiliate link) runs the newsletter, the signup form and the welcome emails.

Claude writes the site: the pages, the design, the text and the behind-the-scenes code. You describe what you want, review it, and ask for changes in plain English.

Build a fast, simple website for [BUSINESS] with a home page, an about page, a newsletter signup and [OTHER PAGES]. Audience: [WHO]. Tone: [TONE]. Use a clean, professional design that works on phones and in dark mode, and make it easy for search engines and AI assistants to understand.

Connect my domain to Cloudflare and deploy the site from my GitHub repository. Walk me through each click and tell me what to expect.

Before you move on

• The site loads on your phone.
• Every link works.
• The signup form actually adds you to the list (test with a fresh email).

Step 6 · 1–2 hours · $7/mo for business email

Create the brand

Have Claude design the logo, colors and tagline, then use them everywhere: the site, a LinkedIn company page, your email signature and your social banners. Get a real business email (Google Workspace was $7 a month) instead of a free address.

Design a simple logo and color palette for [BUSINESS]. It should look trustworthy to [AUDIENCE], work as a small square icon, and read well in black and white. Give me three directions, then build the one I pick as an SVG file.

Write five tagline options under eight words, a LinkedIn headline, a 150-word About section in my voice, and an email signature with my name, title, website and a one-line disclaimer.

Before you move on

• The logo reads at favicon size.
• Your name, title and claims are accurate everywhere.

Step 7 · 1–2 hours · Free

Test everything

This is the step people skip. Use the business like a customer would. Our testing caught three real problems:

• Emails landed in spam. Email from a new domain needs its SPF, DKIM and DMARC records set up, and the mail app has to send through the right server. Fixed in an afternoon.
• The signup form was invisible. It worked, but the embed code left it zero pixels tall on our pages. We embedded it differently.
• Checkout had to be proven. We bought our own product with a 100%-off test code to confirm the payment, the download and the receipt all worked, then deleted the code.

Act as a first-time visitor and a first-time buyer. Give me a test script for every path on my site: subscribe, receive the welcome email, buy, download, request a refund. For each step, what should happen, and what would tell me it's broken?

Before you move on

• Send yourself an email from the new domain to a Gmail and a Yahoo address. Check spam.
• Sign up with an address that isn't on the list yet.
• Buy your own product with a test code.

Step 8 · 1 hour · A fee per sale, nothing up front

Turn on payments

Stripe takes the payment. With Stripe Managed Payments, Stripe is the merchant of record, so it also handles sales tax and the receipt. A Stripe payment link plus a private download page is enough to sell a digital product, with no shopping cart software.

Write the product description for [PRODUCT] in under 60 words for the Stripe checkout page, then build a private download page buyers land on after paying, with the files, how to get started and how to reach me.

Before you move on

• A test purchase works end to end.
• Your refund policy and terms are on the site.

Step 9 · Ongoing · Free

Publish, then find out what sells

Go live, then measure. We have not written a business plan yet, on purpose: a plan written before anyone has paid you is a guess. A scheduled task reports every Monday on sales, subscribers and opens, so the plan can come from real numbers.

Every Monday, pull last week's sales from Stripe, new subscribers and open rates from beehiiv, and any customer emails that need me. Write a one-page report with the numbers and one suggestion.

Before you move on

• You know your three numbers: visitors, subscribers, sales.
• You've decided what you'll test next week.

The numbers

What it cost

About $60 a month to run, plus the state fees and the AI subscription.

Honest limits

What AI couldn't do

• Sign and pay. Every filing, payment and account signup was a person.
• Make the judgment calls. Which name, which customer, what to charge. AI argued both sides well. A person decided.
• Test like a customer. It built fast. The problems showed up when we used it.

Educational content, not legal, tax or accounting advice. State fees as published in 2026; confirm current fees and the right entity for you with your Secretary of State and your advisors.