Dave Sumter

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💻 coding 🎿 skiing ⛰️ hiking 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 family 🇿🇦 🇬🇧 .

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

I’m always amazed by the hills people choose to die on…

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

@marclou You are not wrong… building marketplaces are incredibly hard for indies. You usually have to invest heavily in one side of the marketplace to get the other side moving first.. ⚖️

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

@Hey_builds @marclou I’ve found through the years $1 trials to be hugely effective. It validates the user as a payer, and ironically makes them more committed to using the trial and trying out your product. And it’s very low friction..

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

@pmarca FOMAI?

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

@RhysSullivan You ain’t lying.. after 25 years making html, I’m still torn between the diff solutions to preserving input state.. all trade-offs..

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

@twlvone Distribution is now infinitely harder than building.. I used think of them as sort of 50/50, now distribution is everything…

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

The solo unicorn isn't happening in 2026...

AI closes 99% of the gap, but at unicorn scale, that last 1% explodes into dozens of problems across support, legal, sales, and ops.

One person can build more than ever before. But a $1B company solo? Not yet.

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

Good catch Dave, but I still can’t open the airlock doors….

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

@tangming2005 Honestly not my experience at all… these days I just post some screenshots, a file reference or two, and ramble into the microphone for a minute.. Claude reproduces it and fixes it every time now. 🤷‍♂️

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

Running a local model server on my Mac with something like LMStudio + hitting it from ai terminals (Codex/ClaudeCode/OpenCode) occasionally is probably the sweet spot rn.

Resource utilization is solid, tech is stable. OpenClaw still too bleeding edge for daily productivity driver 🤷‍♂️

Great hobby project for weekends though. Probably the future..

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

The level of abstraction you can achieve with AI agents today is just insane. 🤯

I'm completely rebuilding many of my automation workflows to just use an agent with thinking rather than tons of hard-coded rules for doing things.

The speed to get complex workflows up and running now is mind-boggling fast...

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

Just automated the whole house with OpenClaw.
Runs 24/7. Supposedly “hands-free”.

Wife: “fine” detector (still broken)
Son #1: bedtime negotiations like a corporate lawyer
Son #2: screen time negotiations like a hostage negotiator
Dog: everything is P1 URGENT
Neighbour: passive-aggressive updates on the doorbell cam
TV: recommends a show, instantly forgets my taste
Laundry: washes everything except the one thing I actually needed
Dinner: “healthy” optimisation (nobody asked)

It planned 12 meals and held a “family stand-up” without me.
Then the gateway needed a restart, the local model refused bedtime, and now I’m “Stakeholder” on my own life. 🦞

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

Holy moly, every day is a new discovery. This is like being on 'computers' back in the 90's...

AI is so awesome.

Managed to get AI terminals launching directly from my app admin portals today, doing work directly for me.. So simple, why didn't I think of this last year...

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

@bradmillscan Shit, glad it’s not just me then…

I mean, I like it, and I love what it’s going to enable, but fuck it’s sucking a lot of time..

It the moment I’m carrying on with Claude Code as my daily driver and then playing with Claw in the evenings when time permits …

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

@juntao Bravo 👏👏

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

@RhysSullivan this flag should be the default... 🤣 I can always recover if it fucks up..

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

@trikcode Naaaa, we just start writing the code again... No biggie...

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

@asaio87 Isn't that normal..? It's new, it has be learnt and set up.

My bet is they will reap the benefits at some point, while those that don't bother and work a nice comfortable 9 to 5 get obsoleted...

[Dave Sumter @davesumter]

I've stopped trying to figure out the business model before I build the thing..

just create what should exist, talk about it, and see what happens. money is a lagging indicator. the building is the signal.