this isn’t a popular take anymore, but I think every founder should have a passion project on the side
I run a 130-person team at
@beehiiv. we have a mature product… there aren’t many greenfield opportunities for me to build something from the ground up anymore
earlier this year, a couple of friends and I invested in and launched a luxury wellness club in Medellín. it was the perfect excuse to scratch that creative itch
so I spent a few weekends building the website myself: no designers, no engineers, just a whole lot of curiosity
prior to that, I had never truly vibecoded anything
learning how to actually use these AI tools totally changed how I approach problems back at
@beehiiv
since then:
> I’ve built a customer support agent that gathers data and context so our team can answer tickets faster
> I’ve built a dashboard to proactively monitor and detect fraud in the beehiiv Ad Network
> I’ve vibecoded tons of pages for the marketing site to test new positioning
> my default for any problem now is to build a prototype for the team to evaluate
even if just for those few weekends, giving myself permission to tinker on something new provided such a fresh perspective. it genuinely made me a much better operator
I know Alex Hormozi told you not to, but I think there’s a lot to gain from tinkering on something on the side