Ben Ashdown

Prev. Co-founder of ClaimKit (YC F26). Ex-Google. From Australia, now in SF. Looking for new things!

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

@JoshiAbhyudaya @paulg Thanks!

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

@ferngerdy @Martin396929701 Respect. I also see everyone through the lens of sleep apnea vs not sleep apnea

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

When I left Google to build ClaimKit, I brought a mental checklist of engineering best practices. Once we locked in our business model, half that list went out the window.

You can choose your team's values, but your engineering culture doesn't exist in a vacuum. Your unit economics heavily influence your technical constraints. Those constraints shape your daily engineering practices, which ultimately bleed into your culture. Let me explain:

At ClaimKit, we are a high-ACV enterprise product. Our constraint isn't compute or latency; it's a flawless quality bar. We built our system to spin up dozens of agents and grind for multiple hours. I don't lose sleep over the compute bill, because as long as the output is flawless and replaces days of manual client labor, the math works. We gladly trade compute margins for cognitive leverage.

Before we had enterprise margins, we built a Slack bot. Our AI budget was practically zero.

When you build for chat, a four-second delay feels broken. That economic reality forced an entirely different engineering culture. We stressed over latency, built aggressive caching layers, and fought over pennies just to keep unit economics out of the red.

This all affects things downstream, e.g., crunch time, deployment cadence, tolerance for technical debt, risk tolerance, and the definition of a P1 bug. These aren't solely philosophical choices; they are largely influenced by your business model.

Business model -> Technical constraints ~~> Culture.

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

One thing that I notice time and time again is that smart people are by and large, nice people. Generally it's only the idiots who have to be assholes to get ahead.

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

@OfficialLoganK Hi Logan,

Replying here because desperate. Please make whoever is responsible for Google Cloud API/Google Books aware that it's literally impossible to pay for their service and that I would love to give them money. Support and sales channels are not empowered to deal with this.

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

@ThomasOrTK @wiz_io Hi Thomas, fix your Google Cloud API/Google books. It's literally impossible to pay for higher quotas. Also, your sales and support channels are not empowered to deal with this. I used to work at Google Cloud too and this makes me sad.

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

Hey @googlecloud @googlebooks, I literally cannot increase quota for google books. I am trying to give you money, and it doesn't work. Why? BECAUSE YOUR LINK TO INCREASE QUOTAS DOESN'T WORK

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

I'm buying throat lozenges because of @WisprFlow .... new world dev I guess

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

@paulg Come to Australia! Sunny weather, in a somewhat better state than the US, and we desperately need a thought leader to tackle tall poppy syndrome.

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

@LauraDeming It's interesting how even when you think you're being logical, emotions drive everything. Talking about your feelings and resolving issues with loved ones, really opens up so many options in your mind.

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

@danielgross Where do I apply

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

Gluing JavaScript libraries together is the original vibe coding 😎

[Ben Ashdown @bashdown4]

@YamatoMebdi Mate you say this way too often