I’m Ben 👋
I write a newsletter about startups and investing—for ai builders of all levels.
I record mini-tutorials, review tools I’m testing, share my insights and give you a peek behind the digital curtain from an exited founder turned investor (real original, right?).
A bit more on that & me…
I’m kind of an imposter. But my choices + a generous dollop of luck got me here.
I got into tech via Product Hunt. I was very active in the community and got hired in 2015 to help launches & run community. I caught the builder bug (but can’t code) so I built 50+ products with no-code tools and made $0.
Cool. Founder confidence = -10.
Those who can’t do, teach. After 100s of messages asking ‘how’ I built them, I started a no-code tutorial site, Makerpad, in 2019. It went from 0-$30k/mo profit in like 2 months. I raised $350k ~6 months later from Calm Fund, Andrew Wilkinson, Balaji, Sahil Lavingia and others to finally go full-time and hire some help.
Zapier acquired Makerpad in March 2021 because of a tweet (seriously). I’m desperate to say how much for…because that’s all you’re thinking, especially now. But lawyers don’t let you 😥 — I did ask. What I can say is; it was $millions, I owned 85%, deal was cash + equity vested over 4 years (I did 2).
2022 was a learning year for me, I’d joined the AI team at Zapier and needed to know everything I could (I still can’t code). So I started Ben’s Bites—six weeks before ChatGPT was birthed.
The investor bug bit me too (filling out my founder bingo card). I scouted for a16z and run 2 funds of my own. I’ve invested in companies such as; Supabase, Flutterflow, Etched, SF compute, Pika labs, Gamma, Julius, and my fund is backed by truly great people; Sequoia, O’Shaugnessy Ventures, Ron Conway, Thrive, Ryan Hoover and more. Now I’m planning the next fund focusing on pre-seed, pre-company, pre-idea (more details soon - email me for now 🙂).
So there’s Ben’s Bites and Ben’s Bites Fund.
When I launched this newsletter, there was nothing else like it. Every piece of news or new product felt like a massive "oh, shit!" moment. But AI moves fast—really fast.
Today, this newsletter is to share my point of view; what do I find interesting at the moment, what tools are actually worth using - how do I use them, I’ll share company deep-dives and founders stories from in-and-out of the portfolio. I’m out here learning and wiping the fluff off before I show you. It’ll give you a peek behind the digital curtain of investing, building and founders.
Ben’s Bites isn't just me, it's a tight team collaborating on everything we do. Shanice is my right-hand woman; she joined me at Makerpad as COO and has supported me ever since. She creates great content, fixes mine, and keeps a million other things running smoothly behind the scenes. Then there’s Keshav—I hired him from a tweet (Twitter’s been good to me). He started out helping pull the newsletter together, but he's quickly grown into our AI expert, constantly testing models, coding, and sharing his insights. Adam, my younger brother, is our design guy. He helps shape the look and feel of what we do, regularly building new things and sharing them.
Whats in the newsletter:
Tuesday & Thursday summary of news and new launches—vetted by us
Videos on how to build things or reviewing tools
Insights and how-tos for using AI in your business
Commentary and deeper-dives on founders and companies
Updates from my life and all aspects of my work
Community access to chat with me and 1000s of AI builders from developers to non-technical folks. Share your work, blockers, and supporting one another.
Community access is paid only but other posts by us are a mix of free & paid.
It costs $80/year. But if you refer a few friends, it’ll be free!
I’ll chat to you soon!
Cheers,
Ben
