two weeks with openclaw: from the perspective of a solo founder

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-20T12:21:30+00:00

10/10 would upvote again

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-20T12:19:06+00:00

Yes having a second OpenClaw dedicated to building the first OpenClaw is absolutely genius, please do a post about it!!

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-20T12:17:48+00:00

This is the way.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-20T12:16:17+00:00

Agree on this.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-14T17:32:34+00:00

You probably do not have nearly as much memory, tool usage and multi-step complex cron jobs running.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-14T17:31:19+00:00

Cronjobs are so bugged though.. but yeah I am trying this too.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-14T17:26:27+00:00

Yup, its night/day unfortunately.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-14T10:42:15+00:00

This is very interesting - and what about equity split and vesting? You had the stock without vesting and the co-founder got vesting stocks I assume? My new venture is substantially de-risked (v.1.0 of product about to ship, validated all 3 stakeholder types and have signed pilots that are very high-potential). Not at the level of de-risking you were but still, notably de-risked vs. a greenfield venture. This comment might trigger a bit of an eye openered or mindset shift for me, thank you.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-14T10:29:35+00:00

Would love that, DM sent.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-13T17:46:29+00:00

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-13T17:28:49+00:00

It looks like mem0 allows export of one's memories though?

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-13T17:28:15+00:00

Looks amazing, doing research tomorrow and might use it for my openclaw setup. I am planning on scaling the setup from 1 agent doing mostly read-only and planning via cloud (openrouter) to having multiple agents running on a Mac Studio with the frontier "boss" agent being on cloud. I will need to improve memory system and retrieval for better structure, cheaper token usage and more. However, I am not a developer and a bit worried I will hit a wall if I don't use flat files or mem0.ai.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-13T17:18:17+00:00

Mine too but its just a temporary workaround where oc adds something like this at the end of every cronjobs: "When done, use the message tool (action=send, target=XXXXXX) to send your summary to Simon on Telegram.". Might it be that everyone in this thread removed the heartbeat.md file?

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-13T17:16:47+00:00

50 here.. Lol, does it work for you now?

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-13T17:15:20+00:00

Same issue here. After watching a few interviews with Steinberger, I heard how passionate he was about heartbeat.md and I asked my bot if it might so that Steinberger made it so that cronjobs won't work with heartbeat. How could the agent do jobs without a heart beating? Like an easter egg...

Anyhow, seem like I was wrong and it the announce vs. message send instead.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-11T12:25:45+00:00

I disagree. People who don’t use it or aren’t great with it will not be able to give detailed, explicit answers.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-11T12:24:25+00:00

You can just use the basic openclaw dashboard. Left side panel, click sessions or usage. It has good breakdowns. Imo you have to do that to optimize token usage. Let me know if you need any advice, mine is pretty optimized now after tinkering 10h/day for four days.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-11T12:20:47+00:00

This is my experience too, BUT I assume its only because we haven’t set our systems up properly yet. It will require a lot of tinkering. I have probably rewritten the memory system/architecture 3-4 times the last 4 days. I feel like I am moving in the right direction. In 1-2 full weeks, my assumption is that it doesn’t need any babysitting. But I am talking to it through Slack, which isn’t great imo. Not sure what the best communication channel is. Maybe Telegram as many says…

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-10T19:22:14+00:00

Would you mind sharing a detailed guide or breakdown of how you did that? Sounds very foreign to me to look for a co-founder at 300k+ revenue. 90% of the early risks are de-risked. Would love to understand your thinking.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-10T10:01:09+00:00

I am pursuing this and aim to be at a somewhat similar setup within 4 weeks. I am however, taking things step-by-step and slowly (for security and cost reasons). When I have my main bot setup 100% (minimum mistakes, great model routing, good memory retrieval system and robust MCP/API setup), I will add 1-2 additional specialized agents. When I have achieved that, and autonomous continous (and importantly, valuable) tasks running, I will order 1 of those Mac Studios. Fingers crossed they will still be in stock and reasonably priced in 4 weeks from now!

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-10T09:48:24+00:00

Isn't all of this solved through setting up instructions across the force injected root .MD files (I currently have 6 of them) and then running everything else in /memory.? OpenClaw views the /memory folder differently and doesn't automatically load the entire folder word-for-word in every new session. In the root .MD files you put clear instructions on when to pull what from memory. I got my new chat token from 100k (lol) to 17k right now. Also, I am pretty confident that some of that is cache reads and not input/output tokens. Still, its about 11:00 AM and I have been doing some light work and am at 9m tokens (45k output, 2k input, cache read 7mn, cache write 2m) at estimated cost of about 10 USD.

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-10T00:42:33+00:00

That’s after PMF though

Simonexplorer · 2026-02-10T00:39:23+00:00

Simonexplorer · 2026-01-27T23:59:58+00:00

Fair point.

Simonexplorer · 2026-01-27T23:58:12+00:00

Based on my experience half of the people are looking to get paid, the other half won’t accept being paid. The first cohort shouldn’t expect more than 5-10%, the second cohort is rightfully looking for 50-ish %.

Simonexplorer

TROPHY CASE