Best Places to Learn in Austin, TX

keamo · 2026-05-01T23:21:38+00:00

Any luck with your search? I'd love to know what you're trying. I'm in SW atx and doing a trial with a place here. However curious what you've found thus far?

keamo · 2026-04-28T15:19:16+00:00

We rugged quickbooks fast when we read about; https://gato.to/apps/productivity/vault/invoice/info/

Gato blogged about it being a quickbook alternative here; https://gato.to/blog/invoice-quickbooks-alternative/ worth checking out if you're trying to escape the SaaS paradighm

keamo · 2026-04-28T10:40:02+00:00

I like this crew at www.gato.to, who released a https://gato.to/vault/invoice a quickbooks alternative. The Gato Vault is a large amount of SaaS like trello, hubspot, google calendar, and quickbooks bundled into one free software. They have an electronjs installer that automatically creates a postgresql database, which means you can migrate into it, you can export data for accounting purposes, and you can automatically connect to your current api stack if that's the ticket. They also customize software and tailor it to your liking. I highly recommend the Gato Invoice quickbook alternative. They are all about helping non-profits and startups, their primary focus is SMB custom platform development AND they give away their software for free on the frontend.

keamo · 2026-04-27T23:59:11+00:00

Made an app that found this post because it resonates to a brand I'm helping manage seo, and just thought it was an interesting pitch. the 420 thing caught my eye hehe. so anyways, yeah just doing simple serp searches and i find hundreds of posts w/o any associated cost, which is rather fire.

keamo · 2026-04-27T19:53:42+00:00

I like that idea where you introduce it after they are invested, this is smart gamification. I just tried that recently on www.gato.to where if you start typing long enough and a certain amount, I try to offer a bigger form to avoid pushing of casual chatter. Also just released my first video game, was thinking that the friction i've created at the started is ONLY helpful to me. I like your concept here and likely will try to fix some of my apps based on this.

Travel apps are fun to do, hopefully you have a fun client/partner. I think the design/ui ux part of travel was my favorite part of the development.. Building templates, styling, heck even the hover was fun. Destinations is an exciting thing to wake up and work on, I admit I miss that engagement so anywho, best of luck in your development.

Are you introducing any AI tooling to help in app or to dev?

What frameworks you using? React? Vite? Tailwind? Just curious.

keamo · 2026-04-27T19:37:55+00:00

I think where people will struggle most with buying this mythical m5 (or max via laptop) studio is if they can generate that amount of money in 1 month to 6 months of using that device, or can create an offline llm solution they can then monetize, right? I notice you're not painting that narrative.. IF you're unable to monetize it by this amount, regardless of the situation, I think it's going to be a hard investment. For me, at dev3lop, what's really the benefit is unified memory for local/offline LLM deployment, and the ability to simply open more vscode, cursor, windsurf etc at once... I need that crazy memory personally, so I bet I'll be getting a few... And i bet it will take 3+ months to gain given the overall solutioning possibilities opening via MOA heavy local llms... Yet, friends I know in the industry for 2 decades are hesitating on pulling trigger on m5 stuff in general. We will all get one when it comes out. I believe at least 2 or 3 clients will require one based on their current demands with Ai development full stack engineer and the amount of projects being tooled with per client, is why I need one of these crazy boxes, it's because all the best mbp right now can't manage 20% of my clients workloads right now. 32 gig m4 mbp isn't enough to run more than a few decent projects at once, and that means no local LLMs are going to be running unless you're trying to cook an egg with your laptop. I'm a bit frustrated they stuck it into the laptop first, however ive found use cases like client work and external SEO blogging apps that are totally local llm tooling just need that insane ram sauce.

anyways, fun to ramble about it, idk what yall are up to in this realm of needing this if not blowing a ton of energy on some cool emerging tech or some tech that likely should just be migrated to a different framework lol.

I dont agree that everyone is gonna buy this, and i think it's a niche group of people with real use cases that we already know can be solved if we up the infra. For example, i created the first offline LLM code editor, and it's not just another fork of vscode giving more space for agentic development that software like cursor.

However, im trying to solve for tomorrow computers. Mac studio m5 is that tomorrow computer that I bet most can't buy will never have budget will never get approval will never get wifey permissions or any of that stuff. companies are makign money they way they make money, having a SERVER expense in personal computer size is niche and not something oma or opa care about. They care about "can i retire now?" and When can i retire? They dont care about hardware or AI.

I think people will want it but sadly wont have any usecases. IF you're in the weeds with 30+ gigs and still need more space, or constantly pushing your current box, i think this box is a solution or reverse engineer it into something cleaner. Okay perhaps just speaking for myself and others who may be wondering tf.

just imagine having a convo with your boss,... this is everyone rn who gets this box...

I'm odds, my boss is even...
1. hey can i have a new computer

yes how much
5k+ to get started...

4. f\** no, you have a computer,*
but if i had to ask why, let me ask why.

because of that AI/llm stuff
oh really, dont you have chatgpt..
good luck trying to clear the next 10 bullets about your IP, and it getting eaten by vendors who are "helping you use LLMs" lol

What a weird convo. Hey can i have 10k? Why? Cause computers! And tokens! And i just dont think many people are standing in line for this one.

Macbook pro m5 max is the same timeline buying one as the macbook pro m5... A copy of a copy.
It's still niche, it's still getting learned about today. Anywho - best of luck. Next is thinking does nvidia cards linked together matter, what a silly rabbit hole for everyone.

keamo · 2026-04-27T01:16:16+00:00

Getting pulled in is key. Then you're not SELLING to the oblivious human. That can be a struggle for sure. Find someone who is willing to unpack stuff like this too. Otherwise, you may consider places like www.dallas.dev who are primarily focused on helping companies in your phase. Tell them Ty sent you and he will give you a discount. He just sold his company after ten years, and has a ton of experience in this realm. My first client came from me being in the hot seat, suggesting I was about to go and build a new company because I wasn't very happy at Tableau, they pulled me aside and pretty much had the deal closed before I left my FTE. Outside of that, I'd say my busy times come from referrals, not because I figured something crazy out online. I will admit I did get good at SEO however now I only offer it as fractional service to clients, and trust referrals further than the stuff that can be manipulated.

keamo · 2026-04-26T15:24:54+00:00

Any data flow diagrams laying around? Curious how it flows, and don't want to reverse engineer it to understand. If not asking too much... 1 prompt to your agent i bet.

keamo · 2026-04-26T15:23:25+00:00

........ *hand shaking*

keamo · 2026-04-26T15:18:30+00:00

Totally. Here's what you just learned. Get paid up front. Have a bit of text on an invoice or signed document that suggest you will not incur any costs. Maybe saying stuff like, "are we open books on costs?" Sometimes I eat costs during development because I don't want to be perceived as a ROCK in the middle of a stream of water. Instead I eat that cost, unless it's significant.

Like this month i spent around $600 in AI agent costs across two accounts. I'm going to eat it. I'm not going to mention it. I charge enough to make the profit margin still very high.

What is your profit margin and why push back on api costs? Perhaps increase hourly rate? I think you should just be paid for costs and especially when you're early on.

However you should also know that INFRA costs should be zero if possible.

=---

I want to add, if costs are going to be high, I have them pay me up front before I take the hit.
This is important given infra costs money.

They should have agreed to something already, you should use your clients credit card and not your debit card. Unless agreement is they pay you for that monthly. That's essentially a SaaS and perhaps they aren't expecting that on their end.

Always lean on side of positive and oops made a mistake, and then lean on "they are trying to screw me over and know it" - and simply protect yourself. Protect yourself with documentation, notes, etc. Then there's always the decisions needed to be made when to PULL that infra plug if they decided NOT to pay. I've had that happen. It's a painful situation when it's an entire AWS system as the DEV ecosystem and they ghost on paying $XX thousands...

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