# Stories

Retrospectives from earlier work: what was built, what happened, and what I learned from it.

- [Building BuildCanada.com](https://www.mackenziebowes.com/stories/building-buildcanada-com) (2026-05-04): Build Canada is backed by the founders of Shopify, Cohere, and dozens of other Canadian companies. When AI built their new site, it had more features - but it lost the plot. Two weeks of audit and rebuild brought 20-second load times down to under 2 seconds. Markdown: https://www.mackenziebowes.com/stories/building-buildcanada-com.md
- [How to quadruple revenue in six months](https://www.mackenziebowes.com/stories/quadruple-revenue-six-months) (2026-03-16): Marley Baird Media had flatlined at $500k/year with a $50k done-for-you YouTube package. The founders thought they needed better ad management. They actually needed a value ladder. Here's what happened when we built one. Markdown: https://www.mackenziebowes.com/stories/quadruple-revenue-six-months.md
- [Production AI Systems Before the Tooling Exists](https://www.mackenziebowes.com/stories/huzi-ai-infrastructure) (2024-10-31): Thirteen months building production AI systems for real estate. The tooling didn't exist, so I built it. The product found traction, then we pivoted. Both things are true. Markdown: https://www.mackenziebowes.com/stories/huzi-ai-infrastructure.md
- [How I Built (and Killed) an AI Startup](https://www.mackenziebowes.com/stories/gptboss-240k-ai-business) (2023-12-31): My leads evaporated when ChatGPT launched. So I read the OpenAI docs instead. What followed was 60,000 signups, $240k in revenue, and a hard lesson in what users actually want from AI. Markdown: https://www.mackenziebowes.com/stories/gptboss-240k-ai-business.md

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Published 2026-10-02. Web page: https://www.mackenziebowes.com/stories