Joakim William Hauge

I’m building Monetise, a business gateway for AI builders. Building apps is easy now. Monetising them isn’t. Monetise helps solo founders and small teams turn usage into revenue, connecting payments, AI, and performance insights in one system that just works. My goal here is to share the full journey: • what we’re building • what’s breaking • what we’re learning about monetising AI products Follow along if you’re building in public, experimenting with AI, or trying to turn side-projects into sustainable products. Instant activation. Continuous optimisation.

@Hartdrawss That’s a great habit, treating AI like a second reviewer for security and data access checks is a smart way to catch issues before they ever reach production.

Vibe Coding PRO Hack: Before you ship any API that touches user data, run this in Cursor: "Find every route that reads or writes user data, payments, or PII. For each, list: 1) is there auth? 2) does it check the user can access this resource? 3) are inputs validated with a schema? Save to api_audit[.]md" Then: > Open api_audit[.]md and fix every "no" and every "missing" > Add Zod (or your schema) to every body and query param > Re-run the prompt until the file is clean

@kylegawley Yup, funny how that works. Very expensive freedom, but still freedom.

I quit my $500k tech job to build SaaS products and now I work 20 hours a day for minimum wage.

@johnrushx Yup, so there are people who use it daily and learn its limits and people who mostly debate it from the sidelines. The leverage shows up pretty quickly in practice.

If you think AI can’t, you’re right, if you think AI can, you’re right too. 1. AI disbelievers - when ai can do X, then I’ll change my mind… - AI does the X - when AI does the Y, I’ll change my mind 2. AI believers - they don’t bother proving it and simply benefit from this unfair leverage 3. Theorists - hallucinate opinions without any serious practice and hype things cuz they were paid for it

@ky__zo That’s the moment every builder waits for. The long quiet stretch, then suddenly the signs of life. Sticking with it long enough to see that turn is the real game.

after 14 very difficult months, fluar is finally growing. new users signing up every day. startups rule #1 is don't die. a lot of people told me to drop it, but i never wanted to quit before i make it work. for the first time since 2024 it feels like i got it working. also, very very exciting news coming in in the next days. LFG!!!!

@itsolelehmann Maybe for tactics. But building in public was never just about protecting playbooks, it’s about distribution, trust, and learning in the open. Back then copying might have worked. In the AI age, without novelty and real understanding, copying rarely gets you very far.

I'm starting to believe that in the age of AI, building in public will become negative ROI for most builders it used to take effort to copy the playbooks you share 99% never did anything now it's one copy paste into claude away expecting more building to go quiet again

@beffjezos @extropic Impressive list, I wonder when the real benchmark shifts from raw capability to capability relative to cost. In the end, the biggest breakthroughs are the ones that move that ratio.

In 3.5 years @extropic: -reinvented how to use the transistor -reinvented architectures for probabilistic compute -reinvented deep learning for thermo compute -created our CUDA-like THRML -created our TF-like framework (coming soon) -scaled our systems 1000x yoy (3 gens of TSUs)

@craigzLiszt Fair point, when growth looks that steep, the exact number almost matters less than the trajectory. The slope tells the story.

everyone is complaining about the lack of a y-axis, but that's because the growth is so explosive that the label is too small to be discernible by the naked eye

@starter_story Stories like this show how much leverage has shifted. A small team or even one person, can now go from idea to revenue faster than ever. The barrier isn’t access anymore, it’s just starting and shipping.

The 2 biggest superpowers on Planet Earth: (1) Learn to code. (2) Ship your own products. This is my favorite kind of story: – dude had a secure job – gets fired out of nowhere – locks himself in a hotel room – teaches himself to code in 2 months – ships 17 apps in one year – sells one for $65K – now makes $5,000/mo with his own products 1000s of stories like this on starterstory.com

@VadimStrizheus That’s a nice stack, when one person can run writing, product, design, automation and analytics for a few hundred dollars a month, the definition of a “company” changes pretty fast. 🚀

the founder stack replacing entire agencies in 2026: writing: Claude coding: Claude Code design: Nano Banana 2 clipping: Vugola scheduling: Vugola automation: OpenClaw analytics: Posthog i run all of these. i'm 18. total monthly cost: less than $400 this is what a company looks like now.

@HarryStebbings @gokulr Exactly, expecting every product to optimise for the same outcome is a common mistake.

What Everyone Should Know About Building a Multi-Product Company: @gokulr "Not every product needs to generate profit. Some products are part of the profit pool and some exist to drive retention. You have to be clear which products are built for profit and which are built for retention.” @gokulr What is your single biggest lesson from building a multi-product company @tobi @harleyf @vladtenev @awxjack @brian_armstrong @zoink @howie_tl @Bouazizalex

@hthieblot Makes sense, if the real journey is 10+ years, aligning incentives over a longer horizon is logical. Equity should reward the people who stay and build through the hard middle years.

Unpopular opinion: If I started a company today, founders & founding employees shouldn’t fully vest in 4 years. Building a real company takes a decade. What I recommend to founders: Founders 6-year vesting, 1-year cliff Back-weighted: Year 1 — 10% Year 2 — 15% Year 3 — 15% Year 4 — 20% Year 5 — 20% Year 6 — 20% Founding Eng / Growth • 2–5%+ equity • ~$120k salary • 6-year vesting, normal weight • 1-year cliff Employees • 4-year vesting • 1-year cliff

@Yuchenj_UW Feels like they’re specialising. Claude leans toward taste and product feel, while GPT models seem stronger in complex systems and review. Using both in the same workflow is probably the real power move.

People say Codex generates better UI than Claude Code. I keep seeing the opposite. Claude just has better taste. Also the Claude Code UI/UX is way better. Codex should probably just copy it. GPT-5.4-xhigh is very good at complex systems codebases and code review though.

@sama Makes sense, when tools are built by people who actually live in the workflow, the difference shows up immediately for other builders.

The Codex team are hardcore builders and it really comes through in what they create. No surprise all the hardcore builders I know have switched to Codex. Usage of Codex is growing very fast:

@HarryStebbings @gokulr Workflow moment, you sit directly in the operational loop of how companies run and make money. Switching becomes painful and that’s where durable moats start forming.

Eight moats of a sustainable company in 2026: @gokulr 1. Data (Google) 2. Workflow (Veeva) 3. Regulatory (Coinbase) 4. Distribution (Intuit) 5. Ecosystem (Shopify) 6. Network (Facebook) 7. Physical infrastructure (Amazon) 8. Scale (NVIDIA) What is the most important for you @honam @rabois @shaunmmaguire @JaredSleeper @karimatiyeh?

@ttunguz Exactly, “Bring your own agent” sounds empowering, but the liability doesn’t stay with the employee, it lands on the company. Governance around agents will become as important as access control.

“What happens when a new employee brings their agent to work?” An executive asked this recently. Imagine a few years from now : a student graduates, having trained their own agent through university. It knows everything they’ve learned, every paper, every problem solved. Day one, they bring it to work. It’s like bring your own device circa 2009. The iPhone launched & nobody wanted corporate Blackberries anymore. IT scrambled to adapt. But a rogue phone couldn’t sign contracts. A rogue agent can. Amazon just learned this at scale. $6.3 million in lost orders. 99% order volume drop across North America. Four severity one incidents in one week. Amazon’s AI coding assistant contributed to at least one major production incident. The response : a 90-day safety reset with mandatory two-person review for all code changes. An internal memo admitted what everyone implicitly knows : “Best practices and safeguards around generative AI usage haven’t been fully established yet.” Companies can’t hide behind hallucinations. Utah’s AI Policy Act eliminates the hallucination defense : “It is not an affirmative defense to assert that the GenAI tool made the violative statement or undertook the violative act.” Newer and larger models are smarter and more reliable. But they fail unexpectedly. There is no relationship between size and how failures change over time. AI-generated code creates 70% more issues than human code. The TRUMP AMERICA AI Act would create explicit liability pathways - allowing the US Attorney General, state AGs, & private plaintiffs to sue AI developers for defective design & unreasonably dangerous products. That new hire’s personal agent? The company bears liability for its mistakes. The contracts it signs, the code it deploys, all of it lands on the company. Like a dog or a device, you are responsible for your agent. tomtunguz.com/you-are-respon…

@AlexFinn Insane how this tool unlocks leverage. Removes friction from your workflow and lets you move 10× faster.

OpenClaw changed my life It's completely automated my workflows and multiplied my revenue in just a month It is the single most important software of our lifetimes Here is step by step how to set it up and get the absolute most out of it:

@bindureddy Congrats, lowering the setup barrier is huge, when powerful tools go from “install and configure” to “1-click and chat”, great for adoption.

🚨 Announcing OpenClaw As A Service For Normies Stop installing OpenClaw on your personal computer or Mac Mini, it can be super in-secure. You also need to be fairly technical to get it right! We are excited for you to deploy Open Claw on our AI-native cloud in seconds! - deploy in 1-click - super use-friendly. You can just chat with it and set it up - It only costs a few cents to get started You can literally connect to all your services and get started immediately and pay as you

@Clara_Gold Yup, everything looks easy when you know what you're doing. Getting from 0 -> 1 however is another matter.

The easiest job in tech is Head of Growth at a consumer company with PMF. I did it at Rappi and thought I was a genius. Everything you try works. Tweak onboarding → conversion jumps. Unlock referrals → growth explodes. Turn on paid → infinite scale. And if something fails… it was an “experiment.” But that’s a fallacy. It’s like losing weight on GLP-1 and thinking you mastered discipline. Because when you become a founder, you realize the only hard growth problem is building a product people actually want. I’m a growth person, but I have infinitely more admiration for 0→1 product people than 1→100 growth people.

@thesamparr Exactly, taste often starts as imitation, but it becomes powerful when you understand why things worked and when to break the rules.

How to develop good taste: 1. Copy others 2. Learn the rules 3. Study history and learn why the rules are the rules Good taste = a language. Good taste means speaking the right words so you can say what you're wanting to say. This clip is a great example. "I'm not a good drummer. I just copied what worked. Works every time." He's dumbing it down, but Dave Grohl learned the fundamentals of drumming by copying others then took bits and pieces from history to create something new but effective in the language he wanted to speak (grunge). I define that as good taste.

@marclou That mindset shows, when you treat it like a playground and just keep shipping, the odds start compounding. One idea rarely hits, but hundreds of iterations eventually surface something real.

All time visits & revenue last week for TrustMRR 🎉 I’m having a lot of fun building this because I don’t know where I’m going. Every week I launch new features, check what ppl suggest, build more. I think I’ve tried 20+ verticals already. The marketplace has been the most successful one. The new listing fee is making ~$400/day, and the 3% acquisition fee a few thousands a month (it fluctuates a lot). What im enjoying the most is building something that change people’s life. I know it’s cliche, but when I receive messages from founders getting acquired, it makes me so very happy. I never feel like I’m working. It’s like a giant playground where I can be myself and eventually be helpful to others. It started as a 8hr AI vibe coding session. I never expected TrustMRR to become what it is today. I would like to think I’m smart but I’m not. My best projects are the ones I shipped fast without thinking. I iterate quickly on people’s feedback and I quit when my gut tells me to. And eventually after 30 domains and 300 iterations, some startups will stick around and change my life