How DevClarity Built an Enterprise-Grade Platform with One Developer and $0 Raised with AI-first Development
"AI didn't just give a small bump in productivity; it helped us meet the high standards set by our customers faster than anyone would have thought possible."
Challenge
Build fast. Prove it works. Don't run out of money.
When the DevClarity team set out to build a new kind of engineering management platform for software teams, they had conviction in the idea - but not much else.
The startup was fully bootstrapped. The founders were taking no salary. And for most of the early journey, the entire product was built by one person: technical cofounder Will Blackburn.
More than anything, they were trying to ship fast to validate market demand, but they knew it had to meet the standards of their customers.
"We knew we needed to get a real customer using the platform quickly, but we also knew the high expectations that companies have for the products they use. With almost no resources, we had to find a way to build quality software fast."
Hiring wasn't an option. Outsourcing would slow them down. Building everything manually? Too slow. They needed a force multiplier, and they found it in AI-powered coding.
Solution
AI coding tools became their second developer.
Will adopted Cursor as his main dev environment, integrating AI into every part of his workflow. It allowed him to generate large, functional code blocks in seconds - automating what used to be slow, manual work.
That speed meant he could spend more time making high-level decisions about architecture, product flow, and user experience instead of getting bogged down in boilerplate coding.
"Cursor made coding feel seamless. It gave me the confidence to take on more complexity quickly because I wasn't the only one writing the code - it was like pair programming with a tireless teammate."
When DevClarity eventually hired its first full-time engineer, Rick Moore, the transition was immediate. Coming from large companies, Rick was used to big, segmented teams. But with AI in the mix, he was able to deliver massive features end-to-end, solo.
For example, a recent release that pulled data from Jira, calculated key developer metrics like cycle time and velocity, and surfaced them in a custom UI? Rick built the entire thing himself in under four weeks.
"At my last job, this would've involved three teams - Jira integration, metrics backend, and frontend. Probably 9-12 devs. It would've taken 9 months," Rick said.
Results
Enterprise-grade software. One and a half devs. Zero capital raised.
Within one month of launching, DevClarity had shipped an MVP and landed its first paying customer. From there, the team built out a feature-rich platform now used by engineering orgs inside multi-billion dollar enterprises - all with 1.5 developers and $0 in outside funding.
Will estimates AI tools cut his development time by at least 50%, unlocking the kind of velocity that typically requires a full team.
"What we built would've cost over a million dollars in traditional headcount. We did it in a few months, on a startup budget, because AI let us operate at a 10x level."
The key investment wasn't capital - it was time and curiosity. The team committed to using AI tools daily, learning their strengths, and building new habits around them.
The payoff? A working product, happy customers, and proof that the next generation of technical teams can ship world-class software with a fraction of the people, and none of the overhead.
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- Industry
- Engineering Management
- Stage
- Bootstrapped
- HQ
- Birmingham, AL