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Pre.dev will make your software planning dreams come true, all thanks to AI

Riley Kaminer
Riley Kaminer
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By Riley Kaminer

It was the middle of the pandemic, and Adam Elkassas found himself in Puerto Rico, working at a crypto hedge fund. But US crypto regulations were becoming a bit restrictive, making the job less appealing.

So Elkassas decided to revive a business he started right out of college: tech consulting, helping people build apps, websites, and other software for their business.

Adam Elkassas

“The first challenge that I noticed was that, since the client is often not technical, I’d have to interview them to discover what the product they wanted to build is,” Elkassas told Refresh Miami. 

This was also the time when ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence-powered LLMs were coming into the market, making Elkassas wonder if he could leverage this new tech to make his job easier. “What if I could save some time and scale up the number of projects I could take on by having a bot that would talk to the customer for me?” he pondered.

So he built an internal app to do just that. Customers could answer as few as three to five questions, and that would give Elkassas the info he needed to leverage AI to build out the project plan. “That would immediately save me anywhere from two to six weeks of time chatting with the customer,” he asserted.

In late May of last year, Elkassas decided to create a customer-facing version of this app, pre.dev. In August, he teamed up with co-founder Arjun Raj Jain, who gave him the idea of turning it into a SaaS business.

“Pre.dev solves a major pain point in software development, where people don’t think through the initial project planning phase,” Elkassas explained. “Non-technical founders often struggle to talk to engineers, which can lead to spending too much money because of overcharging. Also, engineers, who aren’t really product managers, end up having to handle product management tasks anyway.”

Users can chat with pre.dev’s AI about their idea, and then the platform instantly architects their software. Pre.dev will also connect users to partner development shops to build out the platform. 

There are two versions of pre.dev’s offering: one for individuals and another for enterprises. The latter is sold to small dev shops that lack product management talent, enabling them to more efficiently plan their projects.

Since launching this past January, pre.dev has already racked up around $400,000 in ARR, with about 800 individual clients plus 11 enterprise subscribers who each pay $2,000 per month. According to Elkassas, pre.dev has enabled users to build over 1,500 projects – and counting.

In October, Elkassas moved to Miami, accelerating the platform’s development and helping him find the majority of his six-person team. Elkassas had dreamed of moving to Miami for a while, lured by the lifestyle. He admitted that the tech scene wasn’t originally a major draw; but over time and hours of in-person networking, he has come to love everything #MiamiTech.

Pre.dev has inked a deal with Venture Miami to help the 200 startups in its Built In Miami accelerator program make their ideas come to life. “We’re really looking forward to helping them get as many companies launched and to their product using AI as a backbone.”

Photo at top of post shows Pre.dev team members, left to right: Devin Mailey, Director of Operations; Paola Shushkovsky – Head of Sales; .Tishel Hector – Head of Business Development;  Adam Elkassas – co-founder; James Hansen, Head of Strategic Partnerships.  (Co-founder Arjun Raj Jain not pictured.)

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