Hey there, Seb here.
While you were sleeping, Google just handed every entrepreneur a $100K development team for free. Their new tool “Opal” lets you build AI mini-apps using plain English—no coding, no developers, no excuses.
Most people will scroll past this thinking it’s just another AI toy. They’re dead wrong.
Quick-Hit Value (Scan This First)
- Turn any workflow into a shareable AI app in under 10 minutes
- Chain multiple AI models together without touching code
- What most miss: This isn’t about building apps—it’s about packaging expertise
- The real opportunity: Create micro-SaaS tools your competitors can’t
- Beta access is US-only right now (first-mover advantage = massive)
What Most People Get Wrong: They think Opal is for developers. Wrong. It’s for domain experts who know problems worth solving but can’t code solutions.
The brutal truth: It’s not perfect yet. Matt Maher’s test produced “Meta’s grand AI plan: Smarter than you, but still needs glasses” but didn’t nail the image overlay. His second test (image → snarky script) worked flawlessly. His third (webpage simplifier) created a newsletter-quality rewrite with custom images.
Action Step (Try This Today)
Visit opal.withgoogle.com/landing/ and request beta access immediately. While you wait, identify one repetitive task in your business that involves multiple steps. That’s your first Opal app.
Template I’m using: “Build an app that takes [customer input] → runs it through [AI analysis] → outputs [actionable recommendation] → sends [follow-up sequence]”
Deep Dive (If You Want the Full Playbook)
Here’s what happened: Google looked at the no-code space and said “hold my coffee.” Instead of drag-and-drop builders that still require technical thinking, Opal lets you describe workflows in natural language and builds the visual logic for you.
What I learned from the demo: Google’s Elle Zadina showed a workflow that chains multiple AI models together—research → blog draft → video creation—all from describing “do deep research on a topic, draft a blog post, and create a video.” The system automatically built a multi-step app with inputs, generation steps, and outputs.
The twist? You can edit every piece. Click into any step to modify prompts, add new steps from a toolbar, or rebuild entirely using natural language. It’s like having a development team that speaks English.
The Pattern I’m Seeing: Every industry expert I know has workflows locked in their head worth $500-$5000 per execution. They’ve never been able to scale them because they couldn’t build software. Opal changes that overnight.
Case Study – Why This Matters: My friend Sarah runs marketing audits for $2K each. Takes her 4 hours per client. With Opal, she’s building an app that does 80% of her analysis automatically. Same $2K price, 30 minutes of her time. Do the math.
The Real Gold: You can publish these apps with a URL and share them instantly. Imagine turning your consulting process into a tool clients can run themselves—then charging monthly access instead of per-project fees.
The companies that grab this early and start packaging their expertise into shareable apps will dominate their niches before competitors realize what happened.
Reader Challenge (Send Me Your Results)
Pick one thing you do repeatedly that others would pay for. Build it in Opal this week. Send me a screenshot—I’ll feature the best one in next week’s newsletter.
Micro-commitment: Reply with just the workflow you want to build. Making it public increases your follow-through by 300%.
Final Thoughts – My Philosophy (Read Before You Close This Tab)
We’re watching the democratization of software development happen in real-time. Not through learning to code, but through AI understanding what we want to build.
The entrepreneurs who win in the next 5 years won’t be the ones who learn to code. They’ll be the ones who learn to think in workflows and package their expertise into tools others can use.
Every expert consultation, every complex analysis, every multi-step process you do manually—that’s a potential AI app waiting to be built. The question isn’t whether this will happen. It’s whether you’ll be first to your market or scrambling to catch up.
Closing Punchline (Remember This One Thing)
Your expertise + Opal + first-mover advantage = your competitors wondering what happened.
If you only remember three things:
- Google’s Opal turns workflows into apps using plain English
- The real opportunity is packaging expertise, not building software
- Beta access is limited—move fast or watch from the sidelines
Stay sharp,
Seb
