Twin Cities IndieWeb - BlogFlock

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-02-17T22:42:39.000Z

I was not looking for a new RSS reader, and I have not downloaded and tried this one yet. Linking because I’m impressed with the thoughtfulness that was put into and the design with which it is presented. Good job.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-02-17T20:49:45.000Z

POAP 7566168 at I passed through Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ) in 2026.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-02-17T20:04:02.000Z

The Lex Fridman Podcast: 491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger is great and I loved his early comment on playing:

“That’s how you learn. You do stuff, and you play.”

Absolutely.

Transcript

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-02-17T19:39:35.000Z

Just ordered a dedicated Mac Mini so I can setup an OpenClaw instance. Can’t wait to experiment with this!

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-02-17T17:22:35.000Z

POAP 7566021 at I passed through Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) in 2026.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-02-16T21:10:40.000Z

Make something that means something.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-02-16T18:28:26.000Z

You don’t have to think outside of the box when you don’t put yourself in one in the first place.

On Fixing Accelerators - Garrick van Buren

2026-02-16T17:08:59.000Z

TLDR; Accelerators prepare founders for conversations investors don’t want to have until founders have done the work accelerators don’t teach.

Over the past 6 months, I’ve been asked by two different pre-seed accelerator programs to look at what’s working and what’s not. In both cases, I see significant mismatches between what the founders need, what the market is asking for, and the structure of the program.

However, this post isn’t about picking on these specific programs, as all these accelerator programs are modeled after the same Ur-program.

The model pioneered by YCombinator twenty years ago; a dozen startup teams (2-3 founders each) relocate to San Francisco for 12 weeks. Through immersion, camaraderie, and intensity, they emerge at Demo Day with a highly polished investor pitch. The price of this experience is typically 7% of your company.

Today, some programs are no equity, some are fully remote, and some that run 6 months or a year. Today, these programs exist in every moderately sized city from Minneapolis to Boulder to Columbus to Mobile.

These programs are typically run by venture capital firms, as such they’re reliant on investors believing this model will provide outsized returns. In a low interest rate environment, from say 2009-2022, this argument was easy to make as more traditional investment vehicles weren’t providing the target returns and money is cheap. The investment argument goes something like: “We’re going to invest a little bit of your money across a wide portfolio of startup ideas. Most will fail, but one will be so wildly successful you’ll thank us. Besides, where else are you going to get your returns from?”. Thus speculative investments like pre-revenue, pre-product, pre-seed tech startups are much more attractive.

This leads us to the first modern-day problem with the current accelerator model: Demo Day.

The original idea behind Demo Day was to get a bunch of seed-stage investors in a room, have a dozen freshly polished founders pitch, and trust it leads to follow-on investment. Win-win.

Unfortunately, since 2022 fewer and fewer investors are attending Demo Days and accelerator programs have noticed. The end-of-program event has shifted from investor pitches to trade show / science fair / showcase to the general public. I’ve attended both formats from multiple accelerators – as personable as the showcase events are, I still find them anticlimactic by comparison – even if they’re more honest about the chances of follow-on funding happening immediately.

According to 2023 Census.gov numbers, 30.4M businesses in the US with zero employees – whether it be 1-person business or a partnership of 2-3 people (like would be accepted into these accelerator programs). Also in 2023, there were 13,608 VC deals nationwide, with 2,040 of those in this Angel/Pre-Seed stage.

That means, 0.0067% of these businesses secure pre-seed funding, which by delightful coincidence is the same chances as a 3+1 PowerBall win.

It’s not just investors stepping back, ‘mentors’ are as well. Mentors are the volunteer network of the accelerator programs, their implied goals is to understand the startups’ value proposition, provide introductions and connections to help the startup, and support the startup in a complimentary way to the accelerator team.

Perhaps you can already spot the mismatches;

The accelerator program needs 12 startups to profitably run the program.
These 12 startups need to be roughly similar in their stage, roughly aligned to the investment hypothesis sold to investors.
The mentors may not have any subject matter expertise directly relevant to the startup team. One of the persistent founder complaints I heard in my research was how mentors’ advice just wasn’t relevant to the stage founders were at.
Programs promise follow on investment, but depending on the startups value proposition and investor hypothesis; that may take an additional 9-12 months post program
30% of these companies shutter each year (“this program accelerates everything” – I still remember one managing director telling a new cohort.)
The 1-company-to-return-the-portfolio mentality means ideas that could be very sustainable small businesses are pressured into incompatible growth trajectories.
Today’s early-stage investors want evidence of sales and sales velocity, not just an idea.

This last point aligns with the most consistent regret I heard from founder in my research, “I didn’t talk to enough customers.”

They also admitted, part of this is; not knowing how to define their customer, not knowing how to find them once defined, and not knowing how to have that conversation once they did.

Some businesses, for example a marketing service for restaurants, you could take an afternoon and walk into restaurant after restaurant, potential customer after potential customer. Customers in other domains are more widely distributed and more difficult to identify – say a the buyer for food manufacturing supply chain automation software.

Either way, another systematic mismatch.

This doesn’t surprise me – for as we’ve already established, these programs are tuned for investor pitches. Not customer discovery or sales conversations. Some startup founders have hired me to sit in on conversations with their prospects – every single time, my first note to them is, “Why are you pitching for the first 20 minutes of a 30 minute call?”

Oh. Right. Pitch practice.

Thankfully, a different model is emerging in 2026.

One tightly focused on a specific domain, and because of this focus – ready access executive buyers clamoring for new solutions.

No need for a Demo Day.

No need for volunteer mentors unfamiliar with the domain.

No need to fill cohorts with sub-optimal teams.

Just build something these executives will buy.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-02-16T02:22:15.000Z

We had a great time at Activate today playing all the various rooms. The new puzzle mode in the Mega Grid was pretty cool.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-02-15T23:06:17.000Z

My POAP2RSS project needed some form of an icon and the design was super bland so I had ChatGPT help me with an image and Claude Code revamped the design. Now it has some style. And I’m using beta feature from Tinylytics so RSS feed calls are now included in site analytics! 🎉

Weekly Thing 341 / Minions, MAX, ReMemory - Weekly Thing

2026-02-15T20:53:02.000Z

Good afternoon!?

Yeah, afternoon. There is late, and then there is really late. Oh well, I'll blame the fact that the weather is ridiculously nice today. Or that yesterday was Valentine's Day. Or that Tyler had a birthday this week. Or that things were super busy at SPS.

Or I'll just say "wow, I got the email out to y'all!"

👏👏👏

Now onto the links and have a great rest of your Sunday!

A rare for Minnesota February day with a powerful and direct sun bringing warmth to the day.

February 14, 2026
Minneapolis, MN

Notable

You can discuss any of these links at the Weekly Thing 341 tag in r/WeeklyThing.

My AI Adoption Journey – Mitchell Hashimoto

Hashimoto shares his journey from chatting with AI to adopting fully agentic processes.

My experience adopting any meaningful tool is that I've necessarily gone through three phases: (1) a period of inefficiency (2) a period of adequacy, then finally (3) a period of workflow and life-altering discovery.

When folks are describing stuff as "life-altering" it is worth taking note.

How AI Goes to Work – On my Om

Om observing how AI is changing how people engage with software.

There was no need to remake the platform (Excel) or write any custom code. I didn’t have to learn yet another tool. I didn’t need to change Excel. I didn’t learn a new interface. AI showed up inside the tool I was already using. It allowed me to just adopt it. And adapt to it. Without much friction.

Agents that are expert in the software and bridge the gap of what you want to do, your understanding of the softwares abilities, and the data you have are going to transform a lot of things.

Claude is a space to think | Anthropic Anthropic

I’m not a fan of advertising in AI solutions and think that is a mistake for ChatGPT. They also have now given Anthropic something to really tout as a differentiator, which is yet another mistake. Related, Anthropics ads here, here, here, and here are brilliant.

ReMemory - Split a secret among people you trust

This looks great and is an example of a small utility that deserves more attention.

ReMemory encrypts your files and splits the key among people you trust using Shamir's Secret Sharing. You decide how many must come together to unlock them — three of five friends, two of two partners, whatever fits. No single person can access anything alone.

Why do I like this? We all have a number of digital secrets and we need much better ways to manage them. This is a good social example. Two things I could see this for right away.

Crypto passphrase to one of my accounts for digital assets.
Master password for 1Password to gain access to all of my secrets.

You could imagine taking one of these and splitting it into 5 chunks and requiring any 3 to be present to reconstitute it. Then distributing this to your family so that if something happens to you they can access these critical secrets, but only if 3 of them agree to come together on it. No 1 person has all that info.

Omni Roadmap 2026 - The Omni Group

Omni is a thought leading Mac developer, and I’m a constant user of OmniFocus, so I’m always interested in their annual roadmap updates. I love the addition of Omni Links. I don't think that they are pushing hard enough with AI thought. OmniFocus is an app that would benefit from AI agentic capabilities in so many ways. I get the strong sense that Case (CEO) is pretty standoffish with AI. He's also a huge privacy advocate which was something I appreciated. OmniFocus is a rare app of its kind that encrypts all data. But I think they need to push harder with more AI capabilities and not take a backseat with Apple Intelligence. Minimally there should be built-in MCP capabilities to allow users to bring their own AI.

Dot: The Menu Bar Calendar That's Become My Main Calendar - MacStories

I wish there was more innovation in calendar apps. The unique thing about these apps is they literally know the future — they know what you are planning. Yet there is little put into bringing intelligence from these. This app has interesting innovation in display and is always ready via the menu bar.

Minions: Stripe’s one-shot, end-to-end coding agents | Stripe Dot Dev Blog

Super interesting read about how Stripe is building agentic capabilities for their development teams.

There was no need to remake the platform (Excel) or write any custom code. I didn’t have to learn yet another tool. I didn’t need to change Excel. I didn’t learn a new interface. AI showed up inside the tool I was already using. It allowed me to just adopt it. And adapt to it. Without much friction.

Doing this, and creating it specifically for your environment, is how you unlock agentic advantage.

I Started Programming When I Was 7. I'm 50 Now, and the Thing I Loved Has Changed

As agentic development techniques improve we are seeing a rapid, actually blisteringly fast, adaptation of a super critical craft — creating software.

I'm not typing the code anymore. I'm reviewing it, directing it, correcting it. And I'm good at that -- 42 years of accumulated judgment about what works and what doesn't, what's elegant versus what's expedient, how systems compose and where they fracture. That's valuable. I know it's valuable. But it's a different kind of work, and it doesn't feel the same.

This post describes what many, particularly those that are most focused on the beauty of this craft, feel. It has changed radically in just a year.

I saw someone on LinkedIn recently -- early twenties, a few years into their career -- lamenting that with AI they "didn't really know what was going on anymore." And I thought: mate, you were already so far up the abstraction chain you didn't even realise you were teetering on top of a wobbly Jenga tower.

I loved this line about "abstraction chain". I comment on this routinely. Every person that builds anything in technology is working on many, many layers of abstraction. We haven't worked "close to the machine" for decades. This is vastly superior. However it is also worth noting that with every layer of abstraction the craft fundamentally changes, the skills needed evolve, and the part we don't tend to consider enough is the risks and challenges are way different. Frankly, most developers today wouldn't even know how to code a linked list or manage their own memory as a language like C requires. Mostly that is a good thing, but it also causes software to be less performant and the failure cases to be entirely mystical.

I started programming when I was seven because a machine did exactly what I told it to, felt like something I could explore and ultimately know, and that felt like magic. I'm fifty now, and the magic is different, and I'm learning to sit with that.

This whole post is about agentic development and everyone (literally everyone) is talking about this. But I will be plain, this type of reinvention will happen to any profession that involves managing, moving, and manipulating information. That isn't to be scary, but to make sure that folks don't look at this transformation and assume that is just something because it is close to technology. Not at all.

picoclaw

Inspired by OpenClaw but made to run on incredibly tiny hardware.

PicoClaw is an ultra-lightweight personal AI Assistant inspired by nanobot, refactored from the ground up in Go through a self-bootstrapping process, where the AI agent itself drove the entire architectural migration and code optimization.

Runs on $10 hardware with <10MB RAM: That's 99% less memory than OpenClaw and 98% cheaper than a Mac mini!

And it seems built by an Agent itself.

What They Copied - PRNDL by Jordan Golson

If you appreciate design this whole article, and the 18 min video, are just amazing. This is a overview of the new Ferrari Luce which was designed by none other than Jony Ive and LoveFrom. Jony Ive of Apple "lore" and designer of the iPhone and the inspiration for so many of the products you use today.

This article highlights how tactile and specific these interfaces are. Specifically how the creator of the touch interface specifically did not make this car a touch interface.

Ive knows this. "The reason we developed touch -- the big idea was to develop a general-purpose interface that could be a calculator, that could be a typewriter, could be a camera, rather than having physical buttons," he told me. "To use touch in a car is something I would never dream of doing, because it requires that you look at what you're doing."

As a Tesla driver for years this stands out as Tesla's design principle has been the exact opposite of this. Tesla has been working for years to remove nearly every button, knob, and stalk they possibly can from cars and move everything to the touch screen where you can innovate and change much faster. Oh, and it is way cheaper to make with fewer buttons and knobs. Every one of those costs money.

This new Ferrari is an absolute thing of beauty.

OpenClaw Is Changing My Life | Reorx’s Forge

These folks going deep with OpenClaw are showing possible paths that sound pretty wild.

This is the biggest shift OpenClaw has brought—it completely transformed my workflow. Whether it’s personal or commercial projects, I can step back and look at things from a management perspective. It’s like having a programmer who’s always on standby, ready to hop into meetings, discuss ideas, take on tasks, report back, and adjust course at any time. It can even juggle multiple roles, like having several programmers working on different projects simultaneously. Meanwhile, I can be the tech lead keeping tabs on specific project progress, or the project manager steering the overall schedule and direction.

I’m about ready to buy a dedicated Mac mini to run one of these.

AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it | Siddhant Khare

I for sure feel what Khare is writing about in this post. AI is a ridiculous unlock to do things that would otherwise not have been possible. With that though our ability to do more fills with more things that we wished we could do. No matter what, there is still only so much time and energy in the day. The fact that Claude is there at 2am while you cannot sleep can be a problem. The fact that you can have five projects going on with different agents is neat, but you still are coordinating them!

The "just one more prompt" trap is real.

Journal

Feb 6, 2026 at 7:26 PM

Mason Jennings show at The Dakota tonight. Lovely. 🎶

Feb 9, 2026 at 5:00 PM

Bought Revenue Architecture by Jacco van der Kooij on a strong recommendation and it looks really great. It has formulas! 🤔

Feb 10, 2026 at 11:23 AM

POAP 7563511 at SPS MAX Introduction.

Feb 11, 2026 at 9:11 PM

I hit 10k in Clash Royale! Go POAP KINGS!

Feb 12, 2026 at 7:00 PM

Tyler wanted to do an escape room on his birthday so we went to Lock & Key Escape and completed the Quest for Excalibur! It was a fun room, not too challenging, with some delightful surprises along the way! Room 87!

Enjoying the Weekly Thing?

Briefly

This makes me happy on two counts — that Ethereum is scaling well and that ENS, one of the most meaningful apps on it, will stay on Layer 1. → ENS is staying on Ethereum | ENS Blog

Marketing collab with Clash Royale. Gaming culture continues merging more into other areas. → Lil Wayne X Clash Royal Music Video - YouTube

This performance of Nessun dorma was incredible and nearly brought me to tears. I listen to this performed by Pavarotti when I make my lasagna. Bocelli's version here is next level. 🥲 → Andrea Bocelli's sweeping vocals overtake Opening Ceremony | Winter Olympics 2026 | NBC Sports - YouTube

Just some of the ways that Agents are going to change shopping experiences, marketing, and payment handling. → The Agentic Commerce Revolution – O’Reilly

Wonderful local musician. 🎶 → Humbird - February (Official Video) - YouTube

I’m so excited to see MAX now getting introduced to customers. This has been one of the most exciting new products I've been lucky to be part of. → SPS Commerce Introduces MAX - SPS Commerce

Snowflake on how they see agentic impacting retail. → AI In Shopping: Implications and a Roadmap for Consumer Goods Leaders

I’m no fan of Ring cameras. I use UniFi devices that record video in our home for this same purpose. Deploying Ring devices is literally building a surveillance network for anyone that is willing to pay Ring a few bucks. → With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet

A haiku to leave you with…

Tiny claws extend,
Picoclaw grips dreams of code —
Future clicks hello.

Would you like to discuss the topics in the Weekly Thing further? Check out the Weekly Thing on Reddit. 👋

Want to share this issue with others? The link is…

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Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-02-15T02:57:53.000Z

Valentines Day dinner at home…

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-02-14T14:22:46.000Z

Today is the day you can go to the grocery store early and watch bewildered men stare at the Valentine’s card selection. You got this guys! 😂

[Stevie Nicks with a Stella Harmony guitar, 1960s via Reddit] - Barry Hess

2026-02-14T14:11:51.000Z

Reply by email

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-02-13T05:13:20.000Z

Tonight was a two glasses of red wine with two different cuts of steak night enjoyed at a Brazilian steakhouse bar with dear friends (and my lovely bride of course). Perfect.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-02-12T03:11:34.000Z

I hit 10k in Clash Royale! Go POAP KINGS!

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-02-11T04:26:29.000Z

Bethany and I are in our bottle of wine a night era.

As you know if you’ve been following along at all, my daughters... - Barry Hess

2026-02-10T17:28:10.000Z

As you know if you’ve been following along at all, my daughters are huge K-pop fans. Pink Floyd has always been my favorite band, so it feels right that we now have a pretty great cover of “Wish You Were Here” by FIFTY FIFTY.

Reply by email

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-02-10T17:23:40.000Z

POAP 7563511 at SPS MAX Introduction.

Prizefighter - Patrick Rhone

2026-02-09T13:00:27.000Z

Sometime shortly before Beatrix was born, Bethany being prescient asked me, “So if there’s a problem during delivery, do you stay with me or go with the kid?”

“What is this? This is like a Cosmo test, right?”

*Does Your Baby Daddy Love You? Find Out With This One Simple Trick!”

“I stay with you, of course!”, I answered.

It was the wrong answer.

So when it came to pass that, after a long arduous labor, many attempts to get Beatrix to come out, finally leading to a c-section, and a heart issue was detected within the first few seconds, Beatrix was whisked away by the team of nurses to the NICU and I followed.

She looked like a prizefighter. One that had gone the full 12 rounds and won only by split decision. Her face was puffy and swollen, one eye a bit blackened, her mouth in a resting scowl.

So there we were, just staring at each other, her first 6 hours on this planet were just Beatrix and me (and the occasional nurse to check in) while we waited for various tests to be run. Bethany was not allowed to be in the NICU. Due to the c-section she was not sterile. They wheeled her down from recovery briefly, a couple of hours in, and I was allowed 5 minutes to bring Beatrix out so her mother could hold her for just a bit before being wheeled back.

It sounds so cliche to say that I remember it as if it was yesterday, because it seems like it was. It’s burned into my memory because for that tenuous six hours, unsure really what the heart issue was and what it all meant, I knew I only had one thing to do — look at her. Look at every eyelash surrounding her blue eyes, every tiny wrinkle on her hands and feet, even her sort-of-black eye.

Beatrix was wide awake too. Blue eyes darting all around intensely interested. A look almost of shock but likely wonder as to how it could be that she wen’t from the relative comfort and security of her mother’s womb to… This! Bright lights and beeps and voices and whirring machines. From safety to life. Her heart may not be perfect but she was going to use every bit of it to survive. She was a fighter.

That was 18 years ago today.

And here is Beatrix now. Still rolling with the punches life keeps throwing at her and her peers. Covid and the George Floyd Uprising and now the Siege of her City. Still surviving each and every round. Keeping her guard up but landing plenty good ones herself.

And here her Mother and I are, on the cusp of sending her once again from safety to life. Just as uncertain as to what the future will hold. Only certain that no matter what she’ll take every hit and survive every round and in the end the judges will rule in her favor. She trained her whole life for this. She’s a fighter.