Why We Stopped Selling to Developers

We all grew up on games that showed us exactly where we stand – levels, skill trees, an auction house with clear yardsticks. Then we run our businesses on numbers scattered across multiple sources, and nothing tells us the next best move.When we put our lead numbers on a board for the first time, it showed two weeks with no ads running: 11 and 26 leads. The week after: 127, our best in twelve weeks. The errors board counted 104 errors in four weeks and a fixer whose queue went from 47 items to zero – with nine decisions left waiting on me.In this episode I walk through my two live boards – lead flow and errors – each with a quest log that hands the next step to Claude Code. Then the chess position from the 2013 World Championship: once you know the better move, you never play the second-best one. In business we do it all the time. And how to draw your own board: a floor, a healthy zone, a streak, and an agent that picks the highest-value move.WHO THIS IS FORA founder who grew up on games and runs the company without a boardA founder whose ads and follow-ups slip through a busy weekAnyone with a coding agent looking for an afternoon project they will look at every dayCasual or min-maxer – the board works from either endIN THIS EPISODE00:00:00 – World of Reallife – my childhood dream00:00:21 – Two live boards: lead flow and errors00:01:15 – Why games feel better: WoW and the Air Force years00:02:46 – Designing the board with Claude00:03:56 – Two weeks without ads00:04:43 – Nobody plays the second-best move00:06:46 – Drawdown and the best opportunity00:08:44 – Min-maxer or quality of life00:11:30 – The admin boards00:12:55 – The product scout and runner00:15:03 – Draw your own board00:17:30 – Don't just be busy00:18:27 – Pirate Lab, AI Compass, Vibe Coding Cologne, Hackathon, ForgeDEEP DIVE LINKS📖 Full Article + the five steps: https://pirateskills.com/insights/world-of-reallife🧪 Pirate Lab – 11 November: https://pirateskills.com/pirate/lab/2026-11-11🛠️ Vibe Hackathon Cologne – 20 November: https://pirateskills.com/events/vibe-hackathon-cologne/2026-11-20🧭 AI Compass – 25 November: https://pirateskills.com/aicompass/2026-11-25🏴‍☠️ Vibe Coding Cologne – 2 December: https://pirateskills.com/events/vibe-coding-cologne/2026-12-02⚓ Pirate Forge: https://pirateskills.com/pirate/forge🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7kFl0BJiOYih8yqQTRR9SN🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/build-grow-repeat/id1870561487🗓️ All upcoming events: https://pirateskills.com/events💬 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensufiani/

I come from marketing and have never been a developer. Jens Dressler has written software for more than 20 years – semiconductor test equipment, then CTO of the event app Vamos, then CTO at Fanmiles after it bought Vamos. We both spent years trying to build for and sell to developers, and we both ended up somewhere else: helping people who don't code get AI to build real things for them.Jens tells what selling to CTOs was really like – "I want more control" – and what changed when he started talking to people without a development background: "It was not about the stack. … It was really about, I want to achieve this. Can you help me?" We talk about the hard parts non-developers never see coming (data privacy, auditability, race conditions, the happy path), why he thinks no-code was too restrictive, how Turbofy hides the lower layers so you only think about your business logic, and where a chat builder stops and Claude Code or Codex takes over.WHO THIS IS FORA founder or marketer without a developer background who wants to build real softwareAnyone stuck between a no-code tool and a developer quoteA technical founder who keeps getting asked "can you build my idea?"A builder deciding between a chat builder and Claude CodeIN THIS EPISODE00:00:00 – Two sides, one problem00:01:06 – From chip-test software to Berlin startups00:02:26 – Why selling to developers is so hard00:04:31 – Great ideas, 500-euro budgets00:06:23 – My side: the CTO who said "almost ready"00:08:23 – A crash at lunch, and why developers overbuild00:10:18 – Velocity of value: frame it as an experiment00:13:55 – Straight into Claude Code – every bucket at once00:15:11 – What non-developers miss: privacy, auditability, race conditions00:21:53 – How Turbofy hides the lower layers00:23:15 – Developers move up: raising the floor and the ceiling00:26:47 – Why code, not no-code00:27:52 – The December moment: 95% of the code with AI00:31:20 – A Turbofy app in three prompts00:33:05 – Where chat builders stop and Claude Code takes over00:39:14 – What to build this week00:41:17 – Where to find JensDEEP DIVE LINKS🚀 Turbofy: https://turbofy.com📚 Turbofy docs: https://docs.turbofy.com💬 Jens on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jensdressler/🗓️ All upcoming events: https://pirateskills.com/events🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7kFl0BJiOYih8yqQTRR9SN🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/build-grow-repeat/id1870561487💬 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensufiani/

At a Product Night in Cologne, people tried my app Zawq and left five post-its of feedback. Feedback is a gift and a trap: there is a gap between what you want to build and what a new user wants.In this episode I sort the notes, pick one and build it live with Claude Code: letting users choose the AI model that writes their content. You'll hear how I decide which feedback to follow, and how I apply the same filter to my agent – it looks around the code first, asks me questions, and I go my own way on most of its recommendations. Then it builds, tests itself on iPhone and iPad, and hands me a test guide.This is a real build, not a demo. My part of the two hours was about ten minutes.WHO THIS IS FORA founder who gets more feature requests than they can buildA vibe coder without a developer background who wants to see a real sessionAnyone building an AI product who is wondering whether to let users pick the modelA builder who wants to listen to users without giving up their product tasteIN THIS EPISODE00:00:00 – Five post-its from one Product Night00:03:37 – The one I picked: model choice00:04:52 – Your taste is the filter00:06:52 – Sort it before you build it00:08:27 – Briefing the feature in Claude Code00:14:31 – Use the same filter on your agent00:28:07 – Linear, and letting it grind00:29:36 – Let the agent prove it first00:35:40 – The test guide – my turn to click00:44:01 – Two hours of agent work, ten minutes of mine00:46:22 – Upcoming events and the Pirate ForgeDEEP DIVE LINKS📖 Full Article + the five steps: https://pirateskills.com/insights/feedback-to-feature🧭 AI Compass – 28 October: https://pirateskills.com/aicompass/2026-10-28🏴‍☠️ Vibe Coding Cologne – 4 November: https://pirateskills.com/events/vibe-coding-cologne/2026-11-04🛠️ Vibe Hackathon Cologne – 20 November: https://pirateskills.com/events/vibe-hackathon-cologne/2026-11-20⚓ Pirate Forge: https://pirateskills.com/pirate/forge🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7kFl0BJiOYih8yqQTRR9SN🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/build-grow-repeat/id1870561487🗓️ All upcoming events: https://pirateskills.com/events💬 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensufiani/

Your agent can build almost anything now. So why did my projects still move in bursts?Because the agents were never the slow part. I was. With several projects and a full calendar, a project only moved when I sat down with it – and sometimes that meant a whole week without progress. In this episode I show what changed it: one roadmap per project. Two jobs stay with me: deciding what gets built next, and reviewing it before a customer sees it. Everything in between is the agent's.You'll see it in practice: one idea for Customer Magic that became a roadmap item, a brief the agent wrote itself after talking to my compliance session, and a finished trust page I only had to review. Then why the deciding stays human, what a roadmap holds in four stages, and three places to keep it – an artifact in Claude Code, a page in your codebase, or a tool like Linear.This is not theory. I run four projects this way and check in about twice a day.WHO THIS IS FORA founder with several projects where one always waitsA vibe coder whose agent builds fast, in no clear directionAnyone who starts every session by explaining again what comes nextA small team that wants steady progress without a project managerIN THIS EPISODE00:00:00 – Your agent needs a roadmap from you00:00:36 – The bottleneck is you00:01:38 – Two jobs stay with you00:02:04 – One idea, from message to finished page00:05:07 – Why deciding stays human00:06:58 – What a roadmap holds00:07:51 – Three places to keep it00:11:17 – Deciding what's next, twice a day00:13:31 – Give your agent a roadmap00:14:48 – Upcoming events and the Pirate ForgeDEEP DIVE LINKS📖 Full Article + the starter prompt: https://pirateskills.com/insights/agent-roadmap🧪 Pirate Lab – 21 October: https://pirateskills.com/pirate/lab/2026-10-21🧭 AI Compass – 28 October: https://pirateskills.com/aicompass/2026-10-28🏴‍☠️ Vibe Coding Cologne – 4 November: https://pirateskills.com/events/vibe-coding-cologne/2026-11-04🛠️ Vibe Hackathon Cologne – 20 November: https://pirateskills.com/events/vibe-hackathon-cologne/2026-11-20⚓ Pirate Forge: https://pirateskills.com/pirate/forge🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7kFl0BJiOYih8yqQTRR9SN🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/build-grow-repeat/id1870561487🗓️ All upcoming events: https://pirateskills.com/events💬 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensufiani/

What if a full-time designer was never out of reach for a small team – you just didn't have the process yet?Two weeks ago, screen designs looked dead to me: the old Figma chain where a product manager briefs a designer who briefs a developer. Then one weekend on a design canvas changed that. Nine hours, 77 messages and 79 versions later there was a brand for Zawq, my new project – and not one line of product code. The agent serves the buffet, you are the curator.You'll see the whole canvas: the first six website directions that all sucked, the gardening idea that stuck, the low-poly 3D scene built with Three.js, and the landing page at draft nine. Then the logo that could never have been briefed – from generic wordmarks to an app-icon bonsai in the Moyogi shape, and why the 2D version only worked after going 3D first. And what gets decided before any code exists: colors, dark mode, accessibility checks, a component library and a few app screens.This is not done. The real app isn't built, and the 3D scene still has to run on an average phone. My own design level is a solid six out of ten – so find a friend with real design chops and let them tell you what's still weak.This is not theory. The new homepage went live today: https://zawq.aiWHO THIS IS FORA founder who ships straight into code and ends up with a generic-looking productA vibe coder who has never run a design round before buildingA small team that can't afford a designer or an agency back-and-forthAnyone starting a new product who wants a real brand from day oneIN THIS EPISODE00:00:00 – The design process I got addicted to00:01:43 – Screen designs are back00:04:17 – One weekend, one canvas00:08:57 – Nine hours, 77 messages, 79 versions00:10:46 – How a design round works00:12:30 – The logo I couldn't have briefed00:17:45 – Decide it before it's code00:20:58 – What's not built yet00:22:05 – Your vibe design weekend00:25:06 – Upcoming events and the Pirate ForgeDEEP DIVE LINKS📖 Full Article + the starter prompt: https://pirateskills.com/insights/vibe-design-process🏴‍☠️ Vibe Coding Cologne – 7 October: https://pirateskills.com/events/vibe-coding-cologne/2026-10-07🧪 Pirate Lab – 21 October: https://pirateskills.com/pirate/lab/2026-10-21🧭 AI Compass – 28 October: https://pirateskills.com/aicompass/2026-10-28🛠️ Vibe Hackathon Cologne – 20 November: https://pirateskills.com/events/vibe-hackathon-cologne/2026-11-20⚓ Pirate Forge: https://pirateskills.com/pirate/forge🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7kFl0BJiOYih8yqQTRR9SN🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/build-grow-repeat/id1870561487🗓️ All upcoming events: https://pirateskills.com/events💬 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensufiani/

In many companies, nobody can name the person responsible for their AI. So the answer defaults to "no".Nur Aslan founded IADM, the International Academy for Digitalization and Management – a CPD-accredited academy that trains Certified AI Officers. She came to AI governance from HR: for her doctorate she surveyed 397 HR professionals across Europe and kept finding the same gap between AI adoption and AI readiness.In this episode we pick up where the conversation with Dr. Alexa Scheffler ended. Alexa answered "can we use AI for this?". Nur answers the people side: who is responsible, and how do they need to be trained?We talk about why big companies say no to AI for months – in one case, a year and a half – why governance should be an enabler and not a brake, and why a small team doesn't need to hire an AI officer. By the end of the episode, I'm the AI officer at Pirate Skills.Nur's Monday list for a new AI officer: list your AI tools, classify them by risk, name who is responsible for anything high risk, and get technical help where it gets technical.IN THIS EPISODE00:00 Welcome – a compliance academy incorporated in England02:50 The gap between AI adoption and AI readiness06:31 Governance vs compliance – what's the difference?08:18 Why big companies say no to AI11:03 Does a small company need an AI officer?17:02 Training your team: risk classes and the AI inventory18:29 Building the academy: from live Zoom to AI avatars24:28 Is there a Claude skill for the EU AI Act?27:02 The Monday list for a new AI officer32:02 Why Europe needs to move faster34:50 See you at Vibe Coding CologneDEEP DIVE LINKS– The companion article: https://pirateskills.com/insights/navigating-ai-governance– Part one, with Dr. Alexa Scheffler: https://pirateskills.com/insights/navigating-ai-compliance– Pirate Forge – Build phase starts this Wednesday, 30 Sep: https://pirateskills.com/pirate/forge/q4-26– Meet Nur live at Vibe Coding Cologne, 7 Oct: https://pirateskills.com/events/vibe-coding-cologne/2026-10-07– Connect with Nur: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nurgul-aslan-70600833b/– Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensufiani/

A native mobile app, built in one weekend and running on my own iPhone – with my kids over for most of it.Two years before Pirate Skills, at Maple Apps, a designer and three full-time developers still needed two weeks to get from finished screen designs to the App Store – and that was a high-performing team. The industry standard is months of work and tens of thousands of euros you'll probably never make back. This time it was one founder and Claude Code, and that was fascinating to me: it's truly possible now.You'll see the Maple Apps rule – no line of code before 1,000 people are on the waitlist – and why an app is not your business but one more door into it. There's the choice between going fully native (Swift and Kotlin) and React Native with Expo, and why that took a weekend instead of a debate. You'll see screen designs made with Claude Design, the first screens on the phone through Expo Go, and the moment the app was really installed, on an hour-long ride to a kids' birthday party.To be honest about where we are: it's not in the App Store yet. The Apple and Google developer accounts are waiting for approval, then come the store rules and the review. Test users are planned for Vibe Coding Cologne on 7 October, with the app live in the stores by November at the latest.The push to finally try came from a first-time builder at our hackathon who shipped her first app without any technical background. If she can do it, and I can do it, you can too.IN THIS EPISODE00:00:00 – A native mobile app in a weekend00:01:05 – Maple Apps: 1,000 sign-ups before a line of code00:03:30 – Two weeks vs. months and tens of thousands of euros00:04:15 – The app is one door, not the business00:06:19 – Native or React Native + Expo00:08:36 – Friday: a protected API and new screen designs00:11:21 – Saturday: the first screens on my phone00:12:52 – Installed for real, on the way to a birthday party00:14:39 – Not in the App Store yet00:15:46 – Your weekend: the step-by-step guide00:19:41 – Upcoming events and the Pirate ForgeDEEP DIVE LINKS📖 Full Article + the starter prompt: https://pirateskills.com/insights/mobile-app-in-a-weekend⚓ Pirate Forge – 30 September : learn vibe coding and vibe marketing by building a real app alongside me: https://pirateskills.com/pirate/forge🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7kFl0BJiOYih8yqQTRR9SN🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/build-grow-repeat/id1870561487🗓️ All upcoming events: https://pirateskills.com/events💬 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensufiani/

Your users can now send their own AI agent to get what you offer: find an event, sign up, search your knowledge, even prepare a checkout. They never have to open your website.Most vibe-coded Next.js apps can't do that yet. Your website is a teller who needs to see a face: the code behind every button checks the browser's login cookie first, and an agent calling from ChatGPT, Claude or a server has no cookie. So it gets turned away. Not because it isn't allowed, but because the teller can't see a face.On 13 September I connected pirateskills.com to my own Claude.ai, sent one chat message, and it registered me for an event. Here is how we got there, explained for people who vibe-code, not for senior engineers.First, build the vault once. Each valuable action (discover events, register, search the knowledge, start a checkout) becomes one server function that is told who is asking, with the same AI SDK tool card for every door.Then open thin doors onto it. The Captain, our on-page chat built with the Vercel AI SDK and the AI Gateway. An MCP server with OAuth sign-in for Claude, ChatGPT and Codex. API keys you create and revoke yourself. And a CLI for anyone in a terminal, you or your coding agent.Why not stop at MCP? I personally am annoyed that these types of connections rarely hold. An agent running in the cloud, on OpenClaw, Hermes or a scheduled job, has nobody there to click "allow". OAuth is the convenience. The key is the guarantee.A public SKILL.md is the treasure map: which door, when to use each tool, and an explicit yes before anything that changes something. And for money, the crew prepares the Stripe checkout and you sign. No tool can charge a card.You don't need five doors. One vault and one door is the whole first version, and the article has the six steps plus a prompt to hand your coding agent.IN THIS EPISODE00:00:00 – Open your vault to agents00:01:52 – The teller problem: six clicks to join an event00:02:49 – Demo: signing up for the AI Compass from Claude00:04:26 – What's in your vault00:06:02 – Five doors into one vault00:08:58 – How to build it with Next.js and the Vercel AI SDK00:11:59 – Your own chat, MCP, and why an API key holds00:15:45 – The skill: a map for your users' agents00:17:52 – Agentic commerce: the agent prepares, you pay00:20:26 – Open your first door, with a live build00:26:26 – Where to go from hereDEEP DIVE LINKS📖 Full Article (with the four doors, the handshake-vs-key table and the prompt for your coding agent): https://pirateskills.com/insights/open-your-vault🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7kFl0BJiOYih8yqQTRR9SN🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/build-grow-repeat/id1870561487🗓️ All upcoming events: https://pirateskills.com/events💬 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensufiani/

Your product can keep fixing itself while you sleep — and so can your marketing.For two weeks pirateskills.com has run on a loop I set up inside Claude Code: a scout that reads every data source once a day, a fixer that works the queue every four hours, and me answering a question only when the system is unsure, changing product direction, or about to do something risky. 142 passes, 38 product fixes, 39 signals watched, a test suite that more than doubled.PostHog proposed the self-driving product. This goes one step further. The same shape watches your marketing, your funnel and your money path, not just your code — which is why I've started calling it the self-driving startup.You'll see my actual screen: the loop's setup and the cloud routines it runs on, the Linear board the agent manages on its own, the Vercel runtime logs and PostHog events it reads, the database advisors and Stripe checkouts it checks, and the skill file that decides how far it may go without me.The shape matters more than the tools. Many sources feed one queue. Two roles, finders and finishers. A verification bar instead of a reviewer. A human who answers questions instead of doing tasks. And re-measurement, so what ships changes what the loop reads next.You don't need my setup to start. One source, one queue, one agent working it is the whole first version — and the last stretch of the video is the seven steps to build it this week.IN THIS EPISODE00:00:00 – Beyond the self-driving product00:01:25 – What you don't see happening in your own app00:04:02 – The shape: one scout, one fixer00:06:41 – The numbers after two weeks00:08:56 – Source one: your runtime logs00:13:18 – Source two: analytics and the money path00:17:04 – Database, payments and dependency updates00:19:22 – The same loop for marketing, and moving it to the cloud00:23:24 – Linear is the inbox, and the rules the agent lives by00:33:51 – Build your own: the seven steps00:39:01 – Where to go from hereDEEP DIVE LINKS📖 Full Article (with the live coverage map, the one-day timeline and the free 7-day checklist): https://pirateskills.com/insights/self-driving-startup📈 The Meta Ads Loop — the marketing half of this shape, in detail: https://pirateskills.com/insights/meta-ads-loop⚓ Pirate Forge — Q4 cohort starts Wednesday, 30 September: six weeks to vibe code your first revenue-ready SaaS, then six weeks to vibe market it: https://pirateskills.com/pirate/forge🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7kFl0BJiOYih8yqQTRR9SN🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/build-grow-repeat/id1870561487🗓️ All upcoming events: https://pirateskills.com/events💬 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensufiani/

Marcus Haas is a mechanical engineer. Paul Anduschus is a former event manager who studied business psychology. Together they run DreamyTales, selling personalised AI-generated books, songs and videos in more than ten countries — and neither writes code.This is the conversation I've wanted to record for a year: how do you actually find a positive-ROI campaign instead of guessing, and how much of that can you hand to an agent?They cancelled Triple Whale and rebuilt blended ROAS themselves. Meta comes in through the Meta Ads MCP, Shopify through an app they built, and three skills merge the data into a dashboard that runs every morning inside Codex. No database. Why two sources? Because Meta only shows you 60 to 70 percent of the truth.The most interesting part is how the automation was built. Paul already had rules for scaling, killing and creating campaigns. He talked them out loud, had AI turn them into a document, and that document became skills.That's the real lesson: the ceiling on your automation isn't your technical skill. It's how much of your own judgment you've made explicit.They haven't gone fully automatic. The agent creates campaigns, but Paul still approves daily budget moves because his rules still have gaps. Marcus supervises the big steps while openly admitting the model makes fewer mistakes than he does.And on creative, AI is good at describing what's in a competitor's winning ad but, in Paul's words, “really bad at describing the aesthetics of it.” So the humans work out why it performs, and the machine generates ten videos per prompt.IN THIS EPISODE00:00 – What a €90 subscription actually costs the people selling it01:22 – Meet Marcus and Paul: a mechanical engineer and a jack of all trades08:08 – Running a whole backend without being a developer15:17 – Three years of organic didn't work. One euro of paid did.23:00 – The Triple Whale problem every D2C brand has28:23 – Meta only tells you 70% of the truth30:15 – The three skills that replaced the dashboard32:25 – "We are not operators anymore. We are supervisors."35:51 – Where they give the agent the leash, and where they don't49:22 – The creative pipeline: from the Ad Library to ten videos1:01:08 – The real superpower isn't finding the secret ingredientDEEP DIVE LINKS📖 Full article — the argument, not a recap, with every quote timestamped to this episode: https://pirateskills.com/insights/vibe-code-ad-reportin🏴‍☠️ Vibe Coding Cologne — Wednesday 2 September, 18:30–21:00, STARTPLATZ Cologne: Paul and Marcus are on stage on agentic performance marketing. Free: https://pirateskills.com/events/vibe-coding-cologne/2026-09-02🎁 DreamyTales Marcus and Paul's company: https://www.dreamytales.de🔗 Marcus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-haas-212a77215/🔗 Paul on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-anduschus-912060190/🗓️ All upcoming events: https://pirateskills.com/events💬 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensufiani/