How a Former Flutterwave Engineer Built an AI Tool That Hit 1,000 Users in 24 Days

From Flutterwave to AI Innovation

Building an AI product that does what ChatGPT cannot sounds almost impossible. But that’s exactly what Abiodun Adetona, a former Flutterwave developer, managed to pull off. His new platform, Decide, attracted 1,000 users in just 24 days — without spending a single dollar on marketing.

Decide is an AI-powered data analytics tool designed to make decision-making easier. Instead of giving you lines of code or vague summaries, Decide generates fully functional dashboards from a single prompt.

For example, ask:
👉 “Give me a dashboard of Nigeria’s economic outlook.”

And within moments, Decide produces a website filled with charts, figures, and commentary on the economy.

When the same prompt was tested on ChatGPT, the output was several lines of code. Useful if you’re a developer — but meaningless for most people.

What Makes Decide Different?

At its core, Decide is built on top of OpenAI, Google Gemini, and Meta’s LLaMA. But unlike general-purpose AI models, it is purpose-built for data analysis and visualization.

The 1-Person AI Business Blueprint (Designed for busy professionals who want financial freedom)

Key features include:

Generate dashboards from plain language prompts.
Upload datasets, clean them, and instantly visualize results.
Automatically fetch data from the internet and present it in charts and reports.

This is made possible because Decide doesn’t rely on AI alone. It uses a code interpreter powered by Python, ensuring accuracy in calculations and reducing the risk of “hallucinations” common in AI outputs.

“When a request comes in, we analyse it and route it to the model that can answer it best,” Adetona explained. “Each LLM has its strengths, and we combine them to get the most accurate results.”

Competing in an AI-Dominated World

It’s nearly impossible to create a tool that outperforms giants like ChatGPT or Gemini in everything. Instead, Decide focuses on what these models don’t do out-of-the-box: seamless, accurate, and instant data visualization.

Similar platforms like Julius AI have already attracted millions of users, but Decide stands out with its dashboard-first approach. While it may not yet rival giants like Replit or Poly Search, the platform already has a loyal base of early adopters who have generated nearly 3,000 files.

The Journey to Decide

Adetona’s interest in AI started in 2022, shortly after ChatGPT launched.

First Attempt (2024): He built a Slack bot that translated natural language into SQL queries. While technically solid, adoption was low because existing AI tools already did it well.
Lesson Learned: Competing head-on with AI giants is nearly impossible. Instead, the real opportunity lies in carving out niche use cases.
Breakthrough: With Decide, he’s found that niche — delivering value by making data analysis simple, visual, and accessible.

Adetona quit his role at Flutterwave to focus full-time on Decide. He now runs the platform as a one-man team, leveraging his background as a lead developer at Flutterwave and experience freelancing for international firms like Turing and Snyth.

The Cost of Building Decide

For now, running Decide is relatively affordable, but costs are rising as usage grows:

API Calls: Up to $10 a day depending on user activity.
Server Costs: Around $50/month on Digital Ocean.
Cloud Credits: $20,000 in free credits from E2B to power the code interpreter.

While not yet profitable, Adetona sees massive revenue potential ahead. Possible business models include:

API integrations for financial institutions and enterprises.
Subscription plans for individuals and teams who need ongoing analytics.

The Road Ahead

Most of Decide’s current users are based in Nigeria, but adoption is already spreading to the US and beyond. Adetona believes scaling internationally could unlock millions in revenue if he secures investor backing.

His focus now:

Keep costs manageable while user growth accelerates.
Raise funding to handle scaling demands.
Double down on Decide’s core advantage — building dashboards faster and easier than anyone else.

As Adetona puts it:

“We can’t compete with the AI giants. But we can find spaces where we deliver value, and that’s exactly what Decide is doing.”

Final Thoughts

Decide proves that Africa’s tech ecosystem is more than capable of producing world-class AI products. By focusing on a real pain point — turning raw data into decisions — Adetona has built something unique in a crowded AI landscape.

Whether Decide becomes the “Julius AI of Africa” or carves its own global path remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: this is only the beginning.

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