The AI platform I use everyday

Author

Eric Ries
October 12, 2025

For the Better comes to you bi-weekly with ideas about how and why to build companies focused on human flourishing and stories of the people who are doing it. Other enthusiasms may occasionally appear.

Two years ago, Jeremy Howard and I co-founded Answer.AI, a new kind of AI R&D lab that creates practical end-user products with a mission to make AI more accessible. The team’s work is based on Jeremy’s years of foundational research done under the auspices of fast.ai, which he founded with Rachel Thomas and has since become part of Answer.ai. 

Jeremy's approach to building has many reflections of the Lean Startup approach, and we've combined our ideas to create a new way to use AI more productively for everything from coding to product management to writing to startups. 

Last year, Jeremy ran a course, “How to Solve It With Code”, to test these ideas out on a preview cohort of 1,000 students (the course filled up in <24 hours!) — many of them already successful AI practitioners — and the results were transformative. “After 25 years of programming, it is refreshing to find a tool that makes me better as a programmer rather than just faster at producing code I don't fully understand,” one of them wrote. He continued on to say:

As I look at my experience with SolveIt, I think this is a better more sustainable approach to AI-assisted development. The current trend of ever more powerful models generating ever larger blocks of code feels unsustainable. SolveIt offers a different path. By maintaining human agency, working in comprehensible increments and building genuine understanding at each step, it creates a positive feedback loop where both human and AI capabilities grow stronger over time. This represents a partnership model that builds competence over time rather than creating dependence.

Jeremy will be leading a new 5-week “How to Solve It With Code” course explaining this iterative problem-solving through detailed examples. I'll be teaching a couple of lessons, too, on how to write using this new approach, and how to incorporate what we’re learning into building successful businesses.

Answer.AI has created a new platform called Solveit that makes the approach easier. It helps you use AI in small doses as you build, without relying on AI. I use Solveit every single day for things like writing, research, and coding, and it’s become one of my most helpful and trusted tools. 

As a special bonus, anyone who signs up will also get a sneak preview of my new (still unannounced) book on how to build organizations that are mission-locked for the long-term. 

Course details: 

  • 5-week (10-lesson) course (Mon/Wed, 3pm PST, starting Nov 3) teaching the Solveit method through real projects, web apps, data tools, article writing, and more (all sessions recorded, watch any time)

  • Free access to all 16 lessons from the first preview course

  • Fully automated full refund any time in first 2 weeks

  • Access to the SolveIt platform: your private, cloud-based Linux dev/writing environment with AI integration

  • Live support from Jeremy, Johno Whitaker, and the fast.ai team

  • Thriving Discord community