How to Actually Make Money With AI in 2026: An Engineer Ranks 13 Side Hustles
An engineer who builds AI systems ranks 13 ways to make money with AI in 2026 by ceiling, moat, time to first dollar, and fulfillment burden.
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Posts tagged business
Prove the Return or Don't Spend the Time
Time is the only budget you can't refill, so every dollar and hour has to show a demonstrable return. The most common way businesses break that rule is buying software nobody asked for.
What 90 Days of a Fractional Security Engagement Actually Looks Like
Most founders who book the intro call have already read three or four of my posts and arrive at the same question: "Okay, but what would the next 90 days actually look like if I hired you?" Here's the answer — week by week, with the real numbers.
AI Won't Shrink Your Team — It'll Expose Why You Needed a Bigger One
Every company rolling out AI is about to discover how much work they were leaving on the table. AI doesn't replace headcount — it surfaces the backlog you never had bandwidth to touch. The math behind why velocity creates surface area, the failure mode that follows, and why the companies cutting headcount now are about to get outpaced.
SOC 2 Is a Revenue Tool, Not a Security Tool
Every AI founder pre-Series A scopes their SOC 2 audit like a security project. Six months later they've burned their best engineer and lost the enterprise deal. Here's how to run it as a 90-day sales project — and unlock the pipeline you're already leaving on the table.
vCISO Math for AI Founders: Why 5 Hours a Month Beats a Full-Time Hire
A full-time CISO costs $200–400K plus equity. A vCISO costs $2–4K a month and gives you 80% of the value at 5% of the burn — until you outgrow them. The math, the deliverables to expect, and the red flags that mean you've hired the wrong one.
Migrating 225K Users from AWS Cognito to Auth0 Without Forcing a Single Logout
How we moved 225K+ users with $400M+ in fintech assets from AWS Cognito to Auth0 without forcing a password reset, breaking MFA, or interrupting active sessions. The lazy-migration pattern, the gotchas, and what I'd do differently.
The Pre-Series-A AI Startup Hiring Plan: Who to Hire, in What Order, and Why Most Get It Wrong
Most pre-Series-A AI founders hire in panic order, not strategic order. The result is a team that can't ship the product the company actually needs. The hire-by-hire plan I'd run, who comes first, and why hire #4 isn't another engineer.