6 Startups, 6 Websites Live in One Afternoon: Building a Digital Presence with AI at INiTS
In September, six early-stage startups from INiTS, Vienna's university startup incubator, joined a FutureHabits.Tech workshop with one goal: leave with a live website. Not a mockup. Not a plan for a website. A real site, online, by the end of the afternoon.
They all made it.
The challenge: a great idea and no way to show it
Early-stage founders hit the same wall again and again. They need a website to talk to customers, apply for funding, and look credible to partners. But a website usually means hiring an agency, waiting weeks, and spending money they would rather put into the product.
So many founders put it off. They run on a pitch deck and a LinkedIn profile for months. That costs them customers, feedback and momentum.
The founders at INiTS were no exception. Most had no technical background. Some had tried website builders before and given up halfway, because templates never quite fit what they were building.
The approach: three tools, one clear order
The workshop follows the same flow I use with every founder group. The tools matter, but the order matters more.
Step 1: Research with Perplexity
Before building anything, each founder researched their market with Perplexity. Who are the competitors? How do they describe themselves? What do customers search for when they have this problem?
This step does two things. It gives founders the language their customers actually use. And it shows them what everyone else in their market already says, so they can say something different.
Step 2: Write the brief with Claude and the PRD template
This is the step most people skip, and it decides everything.
Using Claude and the FutureHabits.Tech PRD template builder, every founder answered five simple questions:
- What problem am I solving?
- What does the solution look like?
- Who is my customer?
- What does the user journey look like?
- What does success look like?
Claude turned those answers into a structured prompt for Lovable.
Why does this matter? Because AI builds fast, but it won't make decisions for you. If you open Lovable and type "build me a website for my startup," you get a generic page that could belong to anyone. If you start with a clear brief, you get a site that sounds like your company and speaks to your customer.
Several founders said this was the hardest part of the afternoon. It was also the most useful. Answering "who is my customer" in one sentence forces decisions that a pitch deck lets you avoid.
Step 3: Build live with Lovable
With the prompt ready, each founder built their site in Lovable, live in the session. Lovable sponsored the credits for every participant, so nobody had to worry about hitting a limit halfway through.
From there, the work was iteration. Change the headline. Move a section. Add a contact form. Adjust the colors to match the brand. Each change was a plain-language instruction, not a line of code.
The results
- 6 startups took part
- 6 websites launched during the workshop
- 0 lines of code written by hand
- 1 afternoon, from research to live site
Every founder left with a working website they could share the same day, and with a brief they can reuse for the next version, a landing page for a new offer, or an investor one-pager.
What this means if you're building a business with AI
The technical barrier is gone. Every time I run this workshop, I see the same thing. Founders who have never built anything launch a website in a few hours. The tools are not the bottleneck anymore.
Clarity is the new bottleneck. What separates a strong site from a weak one is not the tool. It's whether the founder knows who they serve and what problem they solve. The five PRD questions are where the real work happens.
Research before you build. Ten minutes in Perplexity saves an hour of rewriting copy that doesn't match how your customers talk.
Your first version doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be live. A real site you can send to customers today beats a perfect site you'll launch in three months.
Want to go further?
Websites are the start. On October 14, I'm running a free online session with Founder Institute Austria: Build a Mobile App Without a Developer, in 90 Minutes. You build a working mobile app alongside me, and it runs on your phone by the end. Already have a web app built in Lovable? You'll learn how to turn it into a mobile app without starting over.
See upcoming workshops or get in touch to bring this workshop to your program.