The Claim Comes Last

I started Top Corner Entertainment with one very simple question.

On June 14, 2026, I asked the AI: “How would you suggest we build the greatest global soccer trivia game ever?”

That sentence still makes me smile a little. Not because it was brilliant. More because it was so completely me: big ambition, no technical background, and a slightly dangerous willingness to ask a computer to help me build something I had no business building.

The AI came back with a blueprint. A soccer trivia game with daily quizzes, career mode, head-to-head play, and a whole lot of things I definitely would not have thought of on my own.

I didn’t ask it to code right away. I asked it to think with me first. That was one of the first lessons.

Don’t start by asking AI to build. Start by asking it to help you understand what you’re building.

Within an hour, I had a working trivia version live. That part felt almost magical.

Then, a few hours later, I asked one of those innocent little questions that changes everything: “Should we build a fantasy league?”

That was the pivot. Suddenly this wasn’t just a trivia game. It was becoming a bigger soccer platform with fantasy leagues, head-to-head matchups, salaries, real-world fixtures, and a paid data feed. I even agreed to a $25/month API-Football subscription — a data service that feeds real match information into the app.

That was the first time I’d ever said yes to a monthly bill for an app I hadn’t launched.

I’m not sure if that was confidence or temporary insanity.

Probably both.

The next lesson came from a button that did absolutely nothing.

I was testing the fantasy account signup, clicked “Create your account,” and nothing happened. So, naturally, I clicked it again. Then I got red text telling me to wait 49 seconds before trying again.

I felt stupid. I thought I had broken something. Or worse, that I had no idea what I was doing.

It turned out the backend — the behind-the-scenes part that handles accounts — was working. It had sent me a confirmation email. But the screen gave me no feedback. No spinner. No message. No “check your email.” So I kept tapping and hit a rate limit, which is basically the app saying, “Please stop hammering this button.”

The fix was simple: add a loading state and a message.

The feeling was not simple.

That taught me this: when something feels broken, it may just be silent. A lot of app-building is making the invisible visible.

Another lesson came from naming.

I worried “Top Corner” might already be in use, so I asked for other options. The AI gave me batches of names, and I settled on “Hat Trick” for a while. Then it ran a find-and-replace across the whole app — screens, meta tags, legal pages, translations, all of it — in seconds.

That would have taken me a week by hand. Maybe longer, if we’re being honest.

But the biggest lesson was more uncomfortable.

I kept asking the AI some version of: “Do we have the greatest trivia game and fantasy league?”

I wanted it to say yes.

It did not really say yes.

It pointed out that the trivia side only had about 25 static questions in one file. No real image rounds. No audio. Not enough depth to honestly claim “greatest.”

That stung, because I wanted the big headline. I wanted the product to match the ambition already.

But the AI was right.

“Greatest” is not something you paste on a landing page. It is something you earn.

The best moment came when I asked for the fantasy landing page to feel much more bold and exciting. When it came back with the big hero section and the magenta “football” text, I finally had that little jolt of, “Oh. This looks like something real.”

Not finished. Not perfect. But real.

Where it stands now: the trivia is live, the fantasy side works, live and weekly head-to-head duels are built, and I avoided the messy paid-entry fantasy pool idea by using LeagueSafe deep-links instead. There is still monetization plumbing to finish, and the trivia needs much more depth before I can say what I want to say about it.

So what would I tell someone my age, with no coding background, who is curious but intimidated?

Start smaller than your ambition, but don’t be embarrassed by the ambition.

Let the AI help you think, not just build.

And when it tells you the truth about your product, try not to take it personally.

My takeaway: AI can help me move faster, but it cannot make an unfinished thing great just because I want it to be.