Ben Katz

Quit my Staff SWE job at DoorDash to build my own businesses

✈️ (directory)
🐶 (ai moderation)
🗽 (nyc makers)

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@Prithvi_Jadwani Yep! already doing that. That’s where I get the information from in a lot of cases.

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

🥳 Just launched https://t.co/D8TKTpW7uQ:

As a student pilot myself, I noticed that finding a good flight school was surprisingly difficult.

Pricing is often unclear, fleet information is scattered, and it's hard to compare schools without calling a bunch of them and making your own spreadsheet.

So I built a free directory that brings it all together:

🤑 Real pricing data
✈️ Detailed fleet and avionics information
📍 Flight schools in all 50 states
✅ Completely free

It's also live on Product Hunt right now:
https://t.co/h6bky9lOvV

I'd especially appreciate feedback from pilots, student pilots, and flight instructors.

Is there anything you wish you would have known when you started flying? I'd love to include whatever that is on the website.

Thanks in advance!

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@marckohlbrugge I had a similar situation where the food showed up like 3 hours late and they refused to issue a refund

I threatened a chargeback but decided it wasn’t worth it to potentially lose access to Uber *and* UberEats

UE I don’t care about but Uber is a useful service

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@apalevich @watchdog_chat

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

Been a minute.

I’ve been building something new (coming soon!), helping @watchdog_chat customers, AND focusing on learning how to fly ✈️

Just finished my 2nd lesson in a Cessna 152 and landed the plane myself!

But the complicated airspace in NYC has made things interesting:

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@NapierHolland @PeterMcCormack Agreed - a lot of people talk about AI taking jobs, but high value products will not be automated so easily

Companies need accountability when one outage costs $5M.

Worked at one such company and it was eye opening to see the real cost of “silly engineering mistakes”

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

On one hand, this complexity will cost me more time, money to master - it’s a struggle so far.

On the other hand, it’s super valuable as I’ll be able to fly anywhere in the US without worrying about airspace complexity too much

So, going to continue w/ it until I’m competent ✅

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

For those of you who aren’t pilots:

There are 3 airspaces almost/exactly stacked on top of each other every time I take off

1. Class D (KFRG)
2. Class C (KISP)
3. Class B (KFRG sits underneath JFK’s airspace)

Notice how close my ground track is to all 3 😅

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@marckohlbrugge We will certainly have AGI before the rest of the world fixes their date formatting to match the superior, American format 😎

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@marckohlbrugge I've mentioned this before, but I think the best way to solve it is require Touch ID/Face ID to post

It will exclude lots of people that don't have a fingerprint reader, but I'd rather have that vs. fake AI posts everywhere

You should consider something like that for BIP v2

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@marckohlbrugge Excluding the Tenderloin of course 💉

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@marckohlbrugge Similar energy to people who get their gf/bf's name tattooed on their chest and then break up 5 minutes later

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@marckohlbrugge Bags competitor that shares all revenue for all coins created on the platform with me at a rate of 0% to the creator, 0% to you, and 100% to me

Thank you in advance

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@thepatwalls Redditors also created a petition to a subreddit that was using my product to remove it and it got like 100+ upvotes.

Good times. I lost a customer, but learned a lesson from that one on how to do better onboarding so it was a win in the end.

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@levelsio I just figured it was an Avicii reference

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@levelsio Sounds like the “outspoken atheist” found God after all 🤖

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@marckohlbrugge @forgebitz To be fair, I haven't tried to solve the same problem with Claude Code Max but I think I'd run into similar issues even in 2026

Undocumented stuff is really where I've noticed these models struggle. MacOS app dev as it relates to privilege escalation is another example

2/2

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@marckohlbrugge @forgebitz At the time I built Watchdog I would have wasted so much more time going back and forth with GPT 4o than I would have figuring out the solution myself

The capability required was signing into X while avoiding bot detection, inspecting web requests, and making decisions

1/

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@marckohlbrugge @forgebitz I bet it’s a similar issue to what I ran into with Watchdog’s X integration

“write browser rendering code using <lib> to fetch posts from the timeline”

-> full of mistakes b/c that kind of info is not public, and it just guesses based on 10yo stackoverflow answers about twitter

[Ben Katz @ben_makes_stuff]

@TheBestOfAdam Campfire by @37signals. Own the code and the data behind your community.

It’s basically a giant group chat with topics, but I’m sure it could be modified to support other features you might need for community management.

@jasonfried would probably agree!