# Notes from production

For founders: what AI tools skip, and what it costs later. By Venus Paneliya.

- [Should I hire a developer or use AI to build my product?](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/should-i-hire-a-developer-or-use-ai/) (Founders): A founder asked me last week: “Should I hire a developer or use AI to build my product?” My answer: both. But not the way you think.
- [5 products I shipped in the last 12 months](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/five-products-five-lessons/) (Founders): 5 products I shipped in the last 12 months. Not a portfolio. Not a resume.
- [Six questions to check a codebase without reading it](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/six-questions-check-a-codebase/) (Founders): You can’t read code. That’s fine. You can still evaluate whether your codebase is healthy or a ticking time bomb. You just need to ask the right questions.
- [An EdTech platform on a non-profit budget](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/edtech-on-a-non-profit-budget/) (Cloud): A non-profit founder needed an EdTech platform built. Budget was tight.
- [The most expensive hire is the second developer](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/most-expensive-hire-second-developer/) (Founders): The most expensive hire a startup founder makes isn't the first developer. It's the second one. The one hired to fix what the first one built. I've seen this pattern repeat so many times it's almost predictable.
- [That’s not multi-tenancy. That’s a filter.](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/not-multi-tenancy-a-filter/) (SaaS): I asked an AI tool to build a multi-tenant SaaS. It built a single-tenant app with a tenant ID column.
- [Everyone’s adding AI features. Few users asked.](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/adding-ai-features-few-users-asked/) (AI engineering): Everyone’s adding AI features. Nobody’s asking whether their users actually need them.
- [Your AI-built SaaS won’t pass enterprise procurement](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/ai-built-saas-enterprise-procurement/) (Security): Your AI-built SaaS won’t pass enterprise procurement. Here’s what they’ll ask that you haven’t thought about.
- [What a $5K MVP actually costs](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/what-a-5k-mvp-costs/) (Founders): A founder told me his MVP cost $5,000. Six months later, he’d spent another $35,000 rebuilding it because it couldn’t handle real users.
- [Fix the foundation before you add AI](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/fix-the-foundation-before-ai/) (AI engineering): A founder asked me to add AI features to her EdTech platform. I said not yet.
- [One senior developer or a $40,000-a-month agency](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/one-developer-vs-a-40k-agency/) (Founders): I talked to a founder who was paying $40,000 a month to an agency. He still couldn’t get a feature shipped in under 6 weeks.
- [3 architecture decisions AI tools will never make for you](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/three-architecture-decisions-ai-wont-make/) (SaaS): There are 3 architecture decisions that AI tools will never make for you. They’ll generate code. They’ll build features. They’ll even structure your database schema in a way that looks reasonable.
- [The freelance developer market is splitting into two tiers](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/freelance-market-two-tiers/) (Founders): The freelance developer market is splitting into two tiers. - Tier 1: $10 to $20 per hour.
- [The recommendation I didn’t ask for](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/the-recommendation-i-didnt-ask-for/) (Founders): A few months into a contract, the client who brought me in wrote a recommendation on LinkedIn. Unsolicited. I didn’t ask for it.
- [How do you know if your developer understands your business?](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/does-your-developer-understand-your-business/) (Founders): How do you know if your developer actually understands your business? Not your tech stack. Your business.
- [How a 10-minute quote engine got under 2 minutes](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/quote-engine-10-minutes-to-under-2/) (Fintech): A quote engine was taking over 10 minutes to return results. Users were leaving the page before their quotes loaded. The client’s support team was getting calls: “Is your site broken?”
- [Your developer says the MVP is 90% done](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/mvp-90-percent-done/) (Founders): Your developer says the MVP is 90% done. Here’s what that actually means in real numbers.
- [I reviewed a codebase built entirely with Claude](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/reviewed-a-codebase-built-with-claude/) (Security): I reviewed a codebase built entirely with Claude last month. The founder was proud of it. And honestly, he should be. He’s not a developer. He used AI to build a working SaaS product in 3 weeks. That’s impressive.
- [Will AI replace developers? Wrong question.](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/ai-will-not-replace-judgment/) (AI engineering): Everyone’s debating whether AI will replace developers. Wrong question.
- [Five questions an enterprise security review will ask](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/security-questionnaire-ai-built-saas/) (Security): You built a working SaaS product with AI tools. Login works. Dashboard loads. Users can sign up and pay.
- [5 questions to ask before signing a developer contract](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/five-questions-before-a-developer-contract/) (Founders): I've worked with founders who signed developer contracts without asking a single technical question. Not because they were careless.
- [Payouts that were failing silently](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/payouts-failing-silently/) (Payments): A client’s marketplace was processing payments for 200+ creators. Everything looked fine in the dashboard. Stripe showed transactions going through. The founder was focused on growth.
- [3 founders showed me what they built with Cursor](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/what-cursor-apps-skip/) (SaaS): 3 founders showed me what they built with Cursor this month. All 3 had working products.
- [What’s running in production right now](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/whats-running-in-production/) (SaaS): One month into posting consistently on LinkedIn, here’s what production looks like across my active client work right now. This isn’t a highlight reel.
- [Why 3 developers can ship slower than 1](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/three-developers-slower-than-one/) (Founders): A startup with 3 developers should move faster than a startup with 1 developer. In theory.
- [The one question to ask before hiring a developer](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/walk-me-through-your-approach/) (Founders): There’s a question I think every founder should ask before hiring a developer. Not about the tech stack. Not about the rate. Not about availability. “Walk me through how you’d approach building this.”
- [The support problem that was really an architecture problem](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/support-problem-was-architecture/) (SaaS): A client came to me with a problem that looked like a customer service problem but wasn’t. He was running an immigration case management platform.
- [Can you say what AI does for your users in one sentence?](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/add-ai-in-one-sentence/) (AI engineering): Every second startup I talk to wants to “add AI” to their product. Only about 1 in 5 can tell me what AI would actually do for their users.
- [A client who keeps coming back](https://venuspaneliya.com/writing/a-client-who-keeps-coming-back/) (Founders): One of the clients I’ve worked with longest sent me a recommendation a few months ago. We’ve been working together across multiple projects, AI-powered SaaS builds, serverless infrastructure on AWS, and production systems handling real...