Hi Reader,

Welcome to Hal9 Weekly

Insights from our founder Javier on turning AI ideas into real products.

Each week, we share practical frameworks, founder stories, and product updates to help you build faster and smarter.

Javier's Insights: The Hidden Cost of "Free" Development

Vibe coding for free is the most expensive mistake you can make when building a product.

The math is brutally simple, yet most founders miss it completely.

Calculate Your Real Cost

Start by figuring out your opportunity cost. What's your time actually worth per hour?

Maybe it's $20. Maybe it's $200. Maybe it's $2,000. Whatever your number is, write it down—because it's about to get uncomfortable.

Now track the hours you're spending vibe coding. Building a solid MVP isn't an 8-hour weekend project. It's several weeks of prompting, testing, fixing, and iterating through endless edge cases.

The reality check: Let's say you value your time at $100/hour. After a couple weeks—just 80 hours, literally 10 days of focused work—you've already burned through $8,000.

That's more than the cost of working with a team of AI development experts.

But Money Isn't Even the Real Problem

The actual cost is what you're not doing while you're heads-down in code.

The 1% of successful founders aren't obsessing over product builds. They're focused on building a company.

That means:

• Figuring out how to market the product
• Doing actual sales calls
• Finding investors who believe in the vision
• Assembling the right team with complementary skills

Building a product is just one piece of the puzzle. And here's the truth most solo founders don't want to hear: This is a team sport.

Someone who brings in the right resources and expertise will build a better product than someone trying to do everything alone—no matter how talented that person is.

The Real Question

Vibe coding is great for kicking the tires and validating an idea. But if your goal is to make the product successful, not just to say you built it yourself, you need to think bigger than the build.

Ask yourself honestly: Are you optimizing to build a product, or to build a successful company?

Your answer to that question changes everything.

Customer Success Story: HYPD

From No-Code Prototype to Production-Ready Platform in 30 Days

HYPD is revolutionizing how people discover authentic local experiences by connecting them with events and small businesses in their neighborhoods. After validating their concept with a no-code prototype, founder Harrison Rolfes faced a critical decision: how to build a scalable, investor-ready platform without sacrificing months of precious runway time.

The Challenge: Transition from concept validation to a sophisticated, production-ready MVP that could support event listings across launch cities like Seattle and San Diego—all while maintaining an aggressive timeline and preparing for future AI-driven curation features.

The Hal9 Solution:

Over an intensive 30-day sprint, we collaborated closely with HYPD to deliver:

🚀 Dynamic web application with real-time event data integration across target cities

🎨 Polished, intuitive UX designed for immediate user acquisition and engagement

🏗️ Scalable architecture ready to support future business-facing features and AI curation

💼 Investor-ready platform that became a centerpiece of Harrison's fundraising pitch deck

The Results:

In just one month, HYPD launched with a web application that users could immediately engage with to discover local events and businesses. The exceptional design and user experience strengthened fundraising efforts and attracted early adopters in targeted neighborhoods. Starting with curated content and a clear technical roadmap, HYPD positioned itself for seamless AI integration—with the confidence of having AI experts already on the team.

"We proved the concept with a no-code MVP. To build the scalable, real-world version at the speed we needed, we partnered with Hal9."​
​— Harrison Rolfes, Founder @ HYPD

Let's Talk

Wondering if you're vibe coding your way into a costly mistake?

Book a quick call with us — he'll help you calculate your real opportunity cost and find the fastest path from idea to market-ready product.

Don't optimize for the build. Optimize for success.

Talk soon,
​—The Hal9 Team