You build things for a living, Kevin. So this time I built one for you — the stuff that's hard to find and worth a lot, gathered in one place. Four things I'd want to know before spending a dollar.
As business owners, the best thing we can hand each other isn't money. It's the high-leverage stuff — the information that took someone years to learn and takes you an afternoon to use.
Here's mine, in four parts. Take what's useful; leave the rest.
This is the part I actually specialize in. Secret management — where your passwords, your keys, and one day your app's IP really live. Get this right first. Everything else you build sits on top of it, so it's worth an afternoon before anything else.
| What | Do this | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Passwords & logins | Bitwarden, for everything digital — bitwarden.com | One encrypted vault you own. Strong, unique passwords everywhere, without memorizing any of them. |
| Paper that matters | A physical safe — versioned copies, shredded and replaced when they change | An analog backup nothing online can reach. The originals of the things you can't re-create. |
| The bigger toolkit | Bookmark the reference and pick tools as you need them — privacytools.io | The field's shared map for living a safer digital life. You don't need all of it — just know where it is. |
If you only do one thing this week: install Bitwarden and move your top ten logins into it. That alone puts you ahead of most businesses.
Launching an app is the same work as getting customers for any business: talk to them, listen, give them a reason to come closer. The cheapest, most durable way to do that is you. Every brand sits somewhere on a line — the company doing the talking, or the founder. Founder-led wins when the founder has a real story. You do.
Rule of thumb: speak on what you know cold and you build credibility; show your flashiest work and you build reach. You need a little of both — and neither one needs an ad budget.
This is the real reason I'm writing. AI collapsed the cost of building software. The floor used to be servers, a data farm, and a team of coders. Now it's a good PC and the right tools — the cost of your next app is close to zero. You don't need to rent anyone else's cloud to start.
One more, because it's where all of this is heading. There's a growing world of open-source tools built for a private, decentralized web — where you own your platform instead of renting it from someone who can change the rules on you.
Open-source tools for freedom online — a whole family of apps and platforms you can run yourself. It's about building for a web that stays private, open, and safe.
I'll be honest: I'm genuinely excited about this one. Soapbox winning means a private, open, safe, decentralized internet is actually possible. That's a future I want to believe in — and build toward.
I'm not a lawyer or an accountant, and this is really just an email I turned into a page, for you. The more you take in on privacy and IP, the better — so read wide. And honestly? I don't know yet which of these four matters most for what you're building. That's what a conversation is for. Take what's useful. When you're ready to actually build the thing, you know where I am.