Derek Clair

Most automation tools were built for builders. SMB owners don’t want to build. They want results. Here’s the shift: Old way: learn n8n/Make, read API docs, wire OAuth, test, debug, pray. New way: Type the outcome. Wispix plans it, connects it, runs it, and shows you the receipts. Example: “Create an AI employee that replies to hot leads, chases no-shows, and books time on my calendar.” Wispix: Done. It connects calendar + CRM + email, handles the logic, and logs everything. Simplicity is a strategy. For SMBs, time is the scarcest resource. If the “solution” steals more of it, it’s not a solution. Our design mantra: Plain-English in, production-grade out. Visible, auditable, reversible. Add power without adding complexity. If you’ve been stuck at the starting line— DM me “Simple” and I’ll share the early access link.

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I'm excited to share that my guest post is now live on the official Beaver Builder blog. "Why Agencies Are Switching to Beaver Builder: Performance Testing Results" I built identical agency landing pages in both Elementor and Beaver Builder under controlled conditions to measure the real operational impact on project margins and team capacity. The results: 80% faster build time (10 min vs 18 min) 9-point mobile performance advantage (97 vs 88) 37% leaner markup For a single page, 8 minutes feels minor. At agency scale building 50 pages monthly, that's 80 hours annually in recovered capacity—$12,000 at typical billing rates. The testing methodology is fully documented so you can validate these findings for your own workflow. Read the full analysis: https://lnkd.in/eXd-fmii #WordPress #WebDevelopment #AgencyOperations #BeaverBuilder

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Walk through a no-code Lovable workflow on a video call so churches can launch a real app MVP, validate with people, and protect the budget. The build now includes a form builder, built-in follow-up, and a backend with auth for faster shipping and better stewardship. #NoCode #ChurchTech #ChurchComms #MinistryTech #SaaS #Leadership #CoreyAlderin #SermonShots

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Most startup pitch events have founders pitching to investors. This one flips the script. On February 4th, during Utah Tech Week, Founders N' Funders is hosting the VC ReversePitch™ Event in Salt Lake City. Instead of founders pitching .... VCs take the stage and pitch to founders. Why this event is actually useful for founders: - Learn how VCs think before you pitch them: Hear investors explain their thesis, decision process, and red flags — in their own words — without the pressure of selling. - See how different VCs are not interchangeable: Industry focus, check size, risk tolerance, stage, and value-add vary widely. The VC ReversePitch™ makes these differences obvious. - Avoid wasting months pitching the wrong investors: Clarity upfront saves time, energy, and credibility during a fundraise. - Understand what “good fit” actually means: Founders often optimize for logos. This helps you optimize for alignment. - Get smarter about fundraising — even if you’re not raising yet: The insights compound. Founders who attend earlier raise better later. - Build context before building relationships: Conversations after the event start at a deeper level because expectations are already set. - Meet active VCs in person after determining which VCs might be a potential fit for your company. If you’re a Pre-Seed to Series A founder actively thinking about fundraising (or a VC who believes in transparency and education) this event is for you. 📍 Salt Lake City 📅 February 4th 🗓 Utah Tech Week ------------ Apply to attend here: https://lnkd.in/g7esVJiP Adam Shaw Inger E. Jeff Erickson

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The new Claude for Excel plugin is ridiculous. Claude Code just passed $1b ARR this week 6 months after launch. It’s not hard to imagine this Excel plugin doing something similar in a few months. I recorded a quick demo trying to answer the age-old question for Title Agency owners: Should you sell to PE, take a stock deal from FNF/FAF, or just keep building? The analysis is meant to show off Claude for Excel rather than give advice...but the results were surprisingly sharp. Probably some errors in here but super interesting starting point. Claude for Excel is already a key part of my daily workflow.

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I was showing Ichi to about 120 building department staff when something interesting happened... During my webinar with CALBO last week I was demonstrating how we pull code sections and jurisdiction-specific requirements. Standard demo stuff. But these folks didn't only care about the speed (though yeah, turning 30-minute code searches into seconds is nice). They want to know, how can they trust it. This is where being able to show them the exact source of information matters. Makes total sense when you think about it. These are the people who carry the liability when something goes wrong. They're not going to trust some AI that spits out answers without showing its work. That's why we built Ichi to be completely transparent. The plan reviewers and inspectors I talked to after were genuinely relieved. Someone finally built tech that respects how they actually need to work. If you want to see what transparent AI for building departments actually looks like, I'll share the full demo link in the comments.

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Vibe-coded a bit of PHP and honestly, it’s not that bad. Probably just better training data for LLMs. The code could be more stable, yeah, but it’s hard to switch back when Next.js apps are just so much better for SEO.

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Introducing URL-to-Video Ad in WishBOT "Build it and they will come" is the biggest lie in tech. I'm a builder. I love to code, not to market. I'd build something I knew was great. And launch it to... crickets. That gap between "product is live" and "getting it seen" was a black hole. It was filled with: - Agency quotes I couldn't afford. - Creative briefs I didn't know how to write. - Weeks of waiting that killed all my momentum. I was a builder, not a marketing agency. And I got sick of seeing great products die in that gap. So, we decided to fix it. What if you could close that gap? What if all you needed was a URL? That's what our new feature does.. 🚀 🧠 1️⃣ You paste your product page URL. 2️⃣ WishBOT's AI analyzes your page, finds the key selling points, and writes a script. 3️⃣ You get a video ad. In minutes. From "URL to Ad. Instantly." A great product shouldn't fail just because you're not a video editor. It's that simple. Try it now: https://wishbot.us/

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Machine shops and manufacturers, this is worth checking out. Very inexpensive workflow management software that brings you new opportunities. Pretty cool.

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The internet we use today wasn’t built for AI. It was built to move documents, links, and pages. We call it the Fossil Layer. .com www the web as we know it It still works—but it’s buried infrastructure. 🌱 Gridnet grows above it. Not another app. Not another SaaS tool. A new layer. Built for AI the way the internet was built for information. The internet moves data. Gridnet delivers intelligence. This is what “AI-as-a-Utility” actually looks like. 🔗 www.gridnetai.com #Gridnet #AIInfrastructure #AIasAUtility #TheInternetForAI #Founders #FutureOfAI

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Who would have thought coding agents would evolve from niche assistants into powerhouse developers so quickly? We have witnessed how we’ve moved from simple code completion tools to full agentic workflows transforming software development in less than two years. When Devin launched in 2024, it improved SWE-Bench scores from 1.96% to nearly 14%. That was just the beginning. Now, advanced models like GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3 Pro routinely solve over 70% of coding challenges via agents like Cursor , Claude CLI and more. What’s even more impressive is how these reasoning models reduce costs by smartly splitting tasks between heavyweight planners and lightweight executors. I’ve seen startups cut development time and budgets dramatically by using open-weight models such as Z.ai GLM-4.5 and Moonshot Kimi K2. These models, trained on trillions of tokens, nearly match the power of Claude Sonnet 4. This means companies don’t just get faster coding—they get cheaper coding. Agentic systems now manage complex functionality, multi-agent planning, and even codebase manipulation. Still, the human role in strategic and high-level design remains vital—for now. But as AI agents begin automating senior-level tasks across companies like Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic, I ask myself: Are we witnessing the birth of a new coding paradigm where AI-assisted development simply *is* development or else ? To founders and  leaders navigating AI adoption, how are you balancing the cost savings and speed of agentic coding with the need for strategic human oversight? Where do you see this trend heading in your business?

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I’m redoing our email sequence automation—moving off a simple Apify scrape to a Claude agent that scrapes sites and owner signals for deeper context. We had a simple pipeline: Apify scrape → populate fields → send outreach. It produced surface-level signals (company name, page titles, basic meta) so emails were generic and always took extra manual effort to visit their site to understand more. Refactor: replace the Apify-only step with a Claude agent that pulls deeper site and owner signals, synthesizes role- and business-specific context, and emits structured context blocks that give us short consult-ready brief. Builder insight: shallow scrapes miss the signals that make outreach credible. Structure the agent’s output as discrete context blocks (owner focus, services, likely pain points, tone) so templates and reviewers can consume them reliably. Business outcome: fewer hours on manual research, higher-quality first emails, and consults that start with known pain points (shorter qualification time and better initial conversations). Now we can fully understand the business before sending emails. If you’re building similar systems, the practical win is in extracting contextual signals and making them consumable downstream.

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