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Hey there, I’m Joshua, and welcome to the NCF Weekly newsletter where we share actionable guidance on building a business as a non-technical founder.

Check out our other newsletters: Tiny Empires and Seedstrapped

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You’re a no-code founder, not a full-time engineer. Dreamflow lets you ship real mobile apps without leaving your comfort zone. Start with a prompt, shape your product in a visual builder, and test it on real devices in minutes. When you’re ready, publish to the App Store/Play Store, and if you ever hire devs, they get clean, editable code instead of a locked-in no-code maze.

In case you missed the Tiny Empires podcast this week, you can catch up here.

With an app built on Bubble, they reached $1 million total revenue in 10 months as a team of 2.

I received a ton of questions about the Macaly site I shared last week, so I’ve put together a short video recreating it from scratch.

In today’s video, I walk through how I built my new Build-in-Public site using Macaly - starting from a single (very rough) prompt:

This time, Macaly did something even more impressive. Rather than just building the landing page, it also built:

I didn’t set up auth.
I didn’t design a CMS.
I didn’t touch a database schema.

I logged in as admin, clicked “Post new update”, published, and it was live.

The big takeaway: we’re moving from building pages to generating functional systems. For solo founders, speed like this dramatically lowers the friction to ship and iterate in public.

If you’re curious, the full walkthrough shows the exact prompts, the editor, and how everything fits together end-to-end.

If you’ve ever thought, “I wish I could build this myself, but I don’t want to spend three years learning to code,” Cursor 2.0 is probably the closest thing to cheating you’ll find.

At a glance, it looks like VS Code. Under the hood, it’s an AI-powered editor that can spin up entire projects from plain English prompts. You still need to think, plan, and test, but the heavy lifting is no longer on you.

Cursor is a code editor with AI baked into it. You describe what you want, and it writes the code using models like Claude, GPT, and its own Composer model.

The easiest way to think about it: it’s like having a senior developer sitting next to you, translating your ideas into code as you go. There’s a free plan to try it out, and paid plans if you need more usage.

Download Cursor from their site and open a folder for your project. That folder is where everything lives - files, configs, the lot. If you skip this step, things get messy fast.

The interface looks intimidating at first, but you’ll spend most of your time in just two places:

You can switch between panels with the buttons in the top-left, so don’t stress about seeing everything at once.

Cursor has three modes. Learn these and you’ll avoid most beginner mistakes.

If you’re ever thinking, “I don’t want this to change anything yet,” you should be in Ask mode.

Most people mess up by jumping straight into “build me X” prompts. Don’t do that.

Before you touch Cursor, get clear on what you’re making. Is it a website? A game? A backend script? Write down features. Sketch a rough layout if it’s visual. Decide what “done” actually means.

Cursor isn’t mind-reading. Vague prompts lead to bloated, confusing code. Clear prompts lead to clean, usable results.

When Cursor finishes a task, it pauses and waits for review. This is where you slow down.

Do not blindly click “accept all.” The code is already in your files. If you close the project and come back later, it’s still there. “Undo all” is your safety rope - and once you move on, that rope disappears.

Switch to the editor and look at what was created. Then ask Cursor (in Ask mode) how to run the project. For simple web projects, this usually means opening index.html with something like Live Server.

Test it. Click around. Break it on purpose. Only accept the changes once you know they actually work.

After your project runs, you’ll mostly be making small tweaks. Cursor is great at this if you use the right tools.

Highlight a section of code and press Ctrl+K / Cmd+K to edit just that part. This is perfect for changing a function or fixing a bug without rewriting everything.

Autocomplete is another quiet superpower. As you type, Cursor suggests the next line. Hit Tab to accept it. It feels subtle, but it saves a lot of time.

You can also reference files directly in chat using the @ symbol, which helps the AI understand exactly what you’re talking about.

Version control sounds scary, but it’s really just save points. Tell Cursor to use git and commit your work regularly. When something breaks (and it will), you’ll be glad you can roll back.

Rules let you set expectations once and stop repeating yourself. You can tell Cursor things like:

Set these in Settings → Rules, and they’ll apply automatically going forward.

Cursor lets you run multiple AI agents at the same time. Use this intentionally.

If you’re continuing work on the same codebase, stick with one agent so it remembers context. If you’re doing something separate - like building a landing page while another feature is being worked on - spin up a new agent.

Think of agents like separate brains. Keep their responsibilities clean.

Cursor 2.0 doesn’t magically turn you into a developer - but it massively lowers the barrier to entry.

If you plan carefully, explain clearly, review everything, and save often, you can build things that would’ve felt completely out of reach a few years ago. Start small. Learn how the tool behaves. Then slowly push it further.

Cursor is powerful, but it’s still just a tool. The better you think, the better it performs. Take your time, stay in control, and never skip the review step.

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