Perks
The tools I build with, and the deals that come with them.
I spent twenty years building products at LinkedIn, PayPal, eBay, and Wells Fargo. Now I build with the same tools you do, and these links get you free months or a discount on the ones I use every day.
Granola
Meeting notesThe notepad that sits in every call I take. It records, transcribes, writes the notes, and I can ask it what was promised in any meeting from the last month.
You get two months of Granola Business free.
Lyssna
User researchThe usertesting.com alternative for people without a research team: unmoderated tests, five-second tests, preference tests, surveys, and a panel to recruit from. It transcribes the sessions and pulls out the themes, so 80 testers do not become 80 spreadsheets.
You get 30% off your first bill.
Before any tool, though: one user, ten minutes, say nothing, write down where they got stuck.
Lovable
AI app builderWhere most of my prototypes start. The five states prompt exists because of what this tool leaves out, and it is still the fastest way I know to get a real screen in front of a real user.
You get 10 extra credits when you sign up.
Wispr Flow
Voice to textHow I write most of what I write, including prompts. You talk, it produces clean text in whatever app is open, and it keeps up when you are thinking out loud.
You get a free month of Pro.
Free, from me to youThe process behind the tools. This is the part that took twenty years.
The five states files
Three filesfive-states-prompt.md, screen-audit-prompt.md, and BRAND.md. The prompts that make an AI builder draw the states it skips, audit its own screens, and stay on brand.
The product lifecycle
GraphicDiscover, Define, Design, Develop, Deploy, Delight, with what lives under each. AI made one of them cheap and easy. The other five are where the product gets decided.
The bottleneck moved
PresentationProduct development, now that building with AI is the cheapest part. Eighteen slides, arrow keys or swipe, press N for my speaker notes.
Also in my stackNo deals here. Just what I build with, and what each one is for.
ChatGPT and Codex
The second opinion. When one model agrees with me too fast, I ask the other, and Codex takes the work I want done without watching it.
Claude and Claude Code
Where the thinking happens, and where the deciding gets written down before a single prompt goes to a builder.
Cloudflare
Hosts this site and runs the form behind the five states page. Deploys on every push, and the free tier covers all of it.
GitHub
The record. Every change to every product, including this site, is a commit someone can read later.
Paddle
Payments and tax handled as merchant of record. Their approval review is also the best free audit your legal pages will ever get.
Resend
Every email this site sends, including the one with the three files in it, goes out through Resend. One afternoon to set up.
Squarespace
eleven11.ai lives here. The right tool for a site that changes twice a year and has to look right every day in between.
UserTesting
The enterprise research platform: moderated sessions, a very large panel, the analysis layer big teams use. Worth knowing when you outgrow Lyssna.
Offers change on the tool's side, not mine. If a link stops working, email me and I will fix it.