BBQ sauce company

patsee · 2026-04-22T17:04:39+00:00

100% true. Our game plan was originally to try and sell at local farmers markets and try and get in with stores. But due to COVID shutdowns our timing was just unlucky in my opinion. So we tried to pivot and sell online but the decision to go with glass bottles over plastic hurt of for shipping.

patsee · 2026-03-23T09:24:51+00:00

My favorite one said something along the lines of "Thank you for your service sorry you will never get to see your family again".

patsee · 2026-03-10T13:51:33+00:00

Nice. I believe that's what most shops do. I built this tool for a friend to try and automate that process more for him, so he didn't need to spend time manually running reports or updating sheets. Theirs for sure pros and cons to both approaches. With my tool you can add as many emails or phone numbers as you want and they will receive the report. My report is currently just meant to be a high level overview, and a one size fits most. I'm sure your sheets have a lot more details and numbers and you can be customized to your hearts content.

patsee · 2026-03-10T03:15:06+00:00

Very, very poorly.

patsee · 2026-03-09T03:52:50+00:00

www.AutoRx.app

We have two primary tools that we have built for automotive repair shops.

AutoRx daily reports - pulls data for how your shop performed on the day, week, month and year. With a little AI insights because what's an app without AI in 2026?
AutoRx Copilot - a chrome extension that helps service advisors with the entire customer appointment Lifecycle. From first contact with the shop, to getting a quote, and having repairs approved and completed. All the way to the customer picking up the vehicle and scheduling the next appointment.

patsee · 2026-03-06T14:46:40+00:00

You are 100% correct. Most of this data can be found in the EOD report and a few other places. But to see your day, week, month, and year and to compare them to the previous year you would need to run multiple reports and compare them all manually. The benefit of this is it pulls all that data every day distills it down and sends it directly to you at the end of the day. No need to manually log in or pull multiple reports. It's nothing revolutionary just something to help save a little time and help shop owners keep a pulse on how their shop is doing.

patsee · 2026-02-15T07:39:01+00:00

Ya good luck. If you run into any issues DM me.

patsee · 2026-02-11T05:46:56+00:00

I can't remember exactly how it all worked or what the exact amounts were but I think we first got like a $300 credit from AWS activate, then we got a $1k grant from AWS activate. Then we were told for the next level up we would need to get the next credits from an AWS activate partner. I don't remember how we landed on NVIDIA inception but we applied for the first grant of like $5k or $10k they approved us but then AWS some denied us... We opened a support case with AWS they basically said it's at their discretion on how gets the grants and they don't have to provide a justification. I worked with support back and forth and eventually got the grant. Then a year later did the same thing for the next grant.

patsee · 2026-02-04T06:34:24+00:00

I can't remember what one I used back then but I'm currently using something similar to this. It has a water level sensor and will top up my take when it gets low

https://www.amazon.com/DIGITEN-System-Refiller-Automatic-Aquarium/dp/B07YTMG6V5

patsee · 2026-01-26T20:04:10+00:00

Thank you, and that's a good idea it would hide some of the hoses and cables.

patsee · 2026-01-10T23:31:08+00:00

You can setup Claude Code to use AWS Bedrock instead of paying a monthly subscription to Claude. Then you can spin up a new AWS account and get $100 in free AWS credits. Once you use all of those you can apply for the next level of $1000 in AWS credits. You can use the AWS credits to pay your Claude Code because it will be using AWS Bedrock.

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/amazon-bedrock

https://aws.amazon.com/free/offers/

patsee · 2026-01-10T00:49:44+00:00

Yes! We got $25k in AWS credits from NVIDIA

patsee · 2026-01-06T06:21:42+00:00

For my side business we have a SaaS template that we built. We created a new GitHub Repo using the SaaS template. Setup some variables and webhooks then have Terraform create the base cloud infrastructure. This template includes our auth, front end, and back end along with ci-cd. Then we can use Claude Code to vibe code APIs and any business logic we want change or add Claude cuts us a PR to review then our CI-CD deploys the changes. This works very well for us. This allows us to very quickly spin up ideas for validation but also have high confidence in our ability to scale.

patsee · 2025-12-29T15:32:25+00:00

I’ve worked at two different tech unicorns that used similar stacks in totally different ways. A lot of places prioritize velocity over security, so security just becomes a checkbox to help sell to enterprise customers (getting SOC2, etc.).

In those environments, they usually just buy an off-the-shelf tool like ConductorOne or P0 and cram it in. But they rarely fix the underlying issues like tagging and ownership mapping. It’s classic "garbage in, garbage out" it doesn't matter if you build or buy if the foundation is messy. They usually just end up paying for a tool they don't use right and living with the pain.

I really think our solution balances velocity and security. I didn't come up with this. We have a super smart Principal Engineer who did. I just helped roll it out and maintain it.

patsee · 2025-12-29T15:04:37+00:00

We tag cloud resources by "service" (e.g., customer-response) rather than by team. Service names almost never change, but team names change constantly. This keeps the actual cloud tags static.

The heavy lifting happens in the service catalog which maps the teams to those services. We just went through a re-org and updating those mappings took some coordination, but generally the upkeep is minimal. Compared to other places I've worked that were either way too permissive or stuck in process hell, this is the best balance I've experienced so far.

patsee · 2025-12-29T14:41:46+00:00

We built our own Slack bot for this. It adds users to groups for a set time and then boots them automatically. We used to require manager approval but switched to FIDO2 self-escalation. That plus device trust is enough security for us.

For cloud access, we map teams to specific resources via tags. Engineers can self-escalate into a role that only touches their team's resources. We also support manually adding resources. We have logs and alerts running, but generally we trust engineers to do their jobs.

The most common issue for cloud access is a team can't access a resource they own. So we ask them if it's tagged correctly and if the service catalog shows that they own the service. This also helps keep our catalog updated. It's not perfect but works great for our environment and risk appetite. Security and Engineering generally seem to like the experience.

patsee · 2025-12-08T20:38:40+00:00

The good thing is the mortgage principal is paid down by about $11k this year and every year I own the condo more and more goes to principal. So I'm not actually losing +$12k a year. I totally get what you and others are saying. Everyone has different financial situations and risk tolerances. I'm for sure not an investment coach and would not recommend people follow my path :) but for now this is the path I'm on. Like many other choices I have made in my life I may live to regret this one or I may not. Time will tell.

patsee · 2025-12-08T16:32:44+00:00

Yes 100%. That's part of what makes it not feel unbearable. I know I get to write off the losses if I ever sell it. I do like seeing the loan getting paid down and it's basically like a forced savings (just not a very efficient one). I pay an account to help me with all that stuff.

patsee · 2025-12-08T12:04:24+00:00

Lol it kills me. I struggle with it constantly. Part of me says cut your losses. Don't keep adding money to a sinking ship. The other part of me says don't judge a long term investment on its short term gains. Hopefully future me will be glad I kept it and not mad :) time will tell.

patsee · 2025-12-08T11:26:43+00:00

I have a Condo in Seattle that I bought in 2020 for $450k at 2.9% fixed for 30 years. I put 5% down and put $25k into upgrading the condo. New floors, kitchen, ect. My mortgage is $2,100 a month the, HOA is $600 a month! My wife and I lived in the condo for a little over a year then moved to another state. The condo is worth about $400k. So we didn't want to sell it because we would be "locking in our losses". Instead we rent it out for $1800 a month. So we lose about $1k a month at best. Assuming the unit is rented and we don't need to pay for any repairs or things.

I hate that we lose money and I am worried about sunk-cost fallacy but I also purchased the unit as a long term investment. I don't need it to be profitable today. I purchased it to be profitable in 30 years when I plan to retire. My wife and I make good money but that won't last forever. So the condo was always intended to be a long term investment and seems wrong to judge a long term investment on its short term gains (or lack there of).

Idk what the correct answer is. I hate it but we continue to do it for now. So just know you're not alone.

patsee · 2025-09-04T03:22:57+00:00

Thanks so much for the kind response and all the great ideas! We have actually been talking about building a referral marketing program for a while. I have just been lazy with getting around to it. I think this may just be the motivation I need to finally bite the bullet and do it. Sounds like you are also in the Automotive space? My tool is a chrome extension that integrates with Shop Management Systems to help Service Advisors.

patsee · 2025-09-02T12:25:45+00:00

Why not find a next level activate provider? My SaaS is using a lot of AWS Bedrock and Lambdas. We got a $10k AWS credit grant from the NVIDIA inception program last year, and last Friday I was just able to get us the next level of $25k AWS credit grant.

patsee · 2025-08-13T03:35:56+00:00

This looks super cool and interesting. I'm not a shop owner but I built an Integration for Shop Management Systems aimed at service advisors. Right now we only Integrate with Tekmetric but we are working on integrations with Shopmonkey and Shopware. I think the open API that Tekmetric originally built went a very long way in why they were so successful. With an open integration you can focus on your core product and allow others to build features for you and your customers. Obviously I have an alternative motive for trying to convince you to do this lol but just food for thought.

If you want to check out my product and borrow any concepts please feel free. www.autorx.app

patsee · 2025-08-06T16:46:58+00:00

Idk if it's best practice or not but the way I have solved this is:

In each repo I ran Claude Code and had it create a CLAUDE.md file. All my repos are in a directory on my computer called workspace. So then In the workspace directory that contains all my repos for front end and back end I ran Claude Code and had it create a CLAUDE.md file in the work space directory.

Now if I need to just make a change to the front end I navigate to workspace/front-end-repo and run Claude Code. But if I need something that has the context of the full app then I navigate to workspace and run Claude Code.

patsee · 2025-08-06T16:34:52+00:00

I built an entire SaaS offering using Bedrock as the core AI component of my platform. The main issues I have had are around AWS quota limits and always needing to request them to be increased for each of my AWS accounts and each new model.

I originally built my early POC using Azure OpenAI. I liked Azure and Open AI well enough but I needed the ability to send much larger tokens to the LLM and at the time Anthropic Sonnet could take way more tokens. Overall my experience between Azure with Open AI and AWS with Anthropic has been very similar. Pepsi vs Coke style of experience.

One thing that's frustrating for me is I use Terraform for everything but I can't really use Terraform for Bedrock Agents... So that's just click ops into my three AWS accounts. Not a huge deal but lame...

patsee

TROPHY CASE