Ben Surman

It’s Going Good! Find problems. Build solutions.
- Part of Uber Eats launch
- Scaled a startup to a $52m acquisition
Building a Balanced Company

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@sydor_greg I bet it’s $100 more than I want to spend

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

Dear @claudeai,

I opened the desktop app. Now I am stuck in design. How do I get out?

Sincerely,
Might be blind but I'm not seeing the exit

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@midjourney where do I invest

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@UltraLinx No. Absolutely not.

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@Seanfrank Prebiotic fiber reset kit

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@dotta @ScottTong @papercliping It’s…it’s a paperclip?! Danggg

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

Ferrari and others have been bombing it. Meanwhile, Audi said, watch this

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@dotta Lookin good!

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@BrenzGarage Where’s the like this but hate it button

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@MitcheIl I do this “in n out” permits in TX. Whatabros go into full “not in my backyard” mode.

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@iamasoothsayer What have you done

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@ndrewpignanelli i need that hat for my bald head

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

There’s an opportunity for a “replacement agency” - simply spin up and manage open source saas alternatives

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

DocuSign Personal: $10 to $15 per month.
DocuSign Standard: $25 to $45 per user per month.
DocuSign Business Pro: $40 to $65 per user per month.

A 10-person team on Business Pro pays $4,800 to $7,800 a year. To put signatures on PDFs.

A team of 50 pays $24,000 to $39,000 a year.

And there is a 100-envelopes-per-year cap on most plans. Send more contracts and you pay extra.

Need SMS delivery? $0.40 per send.
Need ID verification? $2.50 per attempt.
Need premium support? $5,000 to $50,000 per year add-on.

You are rationing digital signatures in 2026.

DocuSign is a $10 billion company built entirely on this pricing model.

Now meet DocuSeal.

A free and open source alternative to DocuSign.

Created in 2023 by a Ruby developer named Alex who was simply trying to sign one document and realised every solution online was overpriced or required a subscription.

Three weeks later he had a working alternative. He pushed it to GitHub under the AGPL-3.0 license.

Today it has 11,800+ stars and over 1,000 forks. Bootstrapped. No VCs. No paywalls.

Here is what DocuSeal does:

- Upload any PDF and turn it into a fillable, signable form
- Drag and drop signature fields, dates, checkboxes, file uploads, and 13 field types
- Send to multiple signers with custom signing order
- Automated email reminders
- Mobile signing on any device
- PDF signature verification built in
- Audit trail for every document
- Bulk send and templates
- Full API access
- Self-host with one Docker command

Here is what DocuSeal costs:

Zero. Forever. Unlimited documents. Unlimited signers. Unlimited storage.

DocuSign limits envelopes. DocuSeal doesn't.
DocuSign charges per SMS. DocuSeal doesn't.
DocuSign charges for ID checks. DocuSeal doesn't.
DocuSign sees your contracts on their servers. DocuSeal doesn't.

Here is the wildest part:

The median DocuSign contract per Vendr is $17,250 per year. One Reddit thread has people saying "they want me to pay $4.80 per e-signature."

Self-host DocuSeal on a $5 cloud server and a 50-person team can sign as many contracts as they want without paying a single dollar.

Your contracts never leave your server. Your client lists. Your NDAs. Your employment agreements. None of it touches a third-party company.

For individuals who only sign a few contracts a year, you save $180.
For small teams of 10, you save up to $7,800 a year.
For a 50-person company, you save up to $39,000 a year.

Your documents. Your signatures. Your server.

100% Open Source. (Link in the comments)

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

You hired a human who knows how to use AI tools. This should be the norm. Like hiring people who know how to use excel (“back in the day”). More founders/leaders need to follow this, not spend hours at late night trying to fire their staff over a vibe coded product or subscription

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

Friendly reminder that while you're trying to make a vibe coded app that makes $10k/MRR, ol boy Bob slings $30m worth of barrels with this website

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

Someone always has the same idea. They’re just executing on it. https://t.co/X9m5QiaK2g

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

Did you ever want to control your browser side-by-side with Claude Code? Now, with /open-gstack-browser skill and GStack Browser, you can

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@samuel_spitz Bring multi-admins back to Pro plans :D

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@Replit pretty lame to not allow app transfers for Pro users. Upgrading to Enterprise makes no sense.

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

@FarzaTV I asked agent to make a desktop app then it just did stuff. Then I had to enable "Allow JavaScript from Apple Events" from Chrome > View > Dev

[Ben Surman @bensrmn]

This is wild. I had it do some "dummy" tasks and it was quite flawless. Clean up my inbox, surf my SPAM folders for legit emails, grift on LinkedIn etc

[Farza 🇵🇰🇺🇸 @FarzaTV]

Here's the new Clicky.

It's the simplest interface in the world to talk to AI + spawn agents.

It builds Mac apps. It does research to help you find IG micro-influencers. It interacts with native Apple Notes, Calendar, Reminders.

Built for consumers, 0 setup.

Try today, free.