(Preview) A Summer Break Mailbag: Memory Mania, Vibe Coding, Mafia PR, Caffeine Intake, Garages, and How to Fix Soccer

Summary

Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson – Episode Summary

Episode: (Preview) A Summer Break Mailbag: Memory Mania, Vibe Coding, Mafia PR, Caffeine Intake, Garages, and How to Fix Soccer

Date: June 26, 2026
Hosts: Andrew Sharp, Ben Thompson

---

Episode Overview

In this lively and fun summer mailbag episode, hosts Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson field a range of listener questions. The conversation jumps between major themes in tech—like Apple's recent pricing moves and the global memory market—personal productivity hacks, daily caffeine habits, home organization struggles, and the pleasures and pitfalls of software customization. True to form, Ben and Andrew mix deep tech analysis with candid stories and playful banter.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Apple’s Price Increases and Memory Shortage ([00:08]–[04:06])

• Ben opens by calling Apple's recent price raises “one of the more bearish indicators for Apple that I've seen in a long time” ([00:08]).
• He critiques Apple for not anticipating memory price increases and failing to lock in supply (“didn't see Tim Cook out there securing memory supplies…” - [00:47]).
• Ben and Andrew discuss Apple's steadfast brand promise of rarely changing prices and the awkwardness of a mid-cycle hike.
  • Ben: “My price is my price. It's only going in one direction. It will increase at times. It is never going to be cheaper.” ([01:42])
• The pair reflect on how Apple, despite being out of step with emergent AI trends and supply constraints, continues to succeed, labeling their approach as out-of-touch:
  • Ben: “Apple has become a bunch of normies out there in Cupertino.” ([04:06])
• Ben notes his lost steak dinner bet with Jon Gruber, emphasizing, “Bet is a bet, number one. Number two, it's not enough to be right. Timing matters and so timing does. I got the timing wrong.” ([04:23])

---

2. China’s Role in the Memory Market ([04:50]–[06:33])

• The discussion shifts to China's memory chip ambitions and the implications of export controls.
  • Ben: “We are creating the conditions for inevitable competition. And… China is going to be a dominant player in memory, there's no question, because the conditions could not be better to become one.” ([06:18])
• Andrew remarks that it won’t be economically sensible for US firms to invest in memory today, though security considerations could tip the scale in 5-10 years ([06:33]).

---

3. Caffeine Intake Confessions ([06:33]–[12:36])

• Listener Chris inquires about the hosts’ caffeine habits, sparking a lighthearted digression:
• Andrew details his daily caffeine ritual:
  • “I consume a Venti Starbucks iced coffee every single morning. And then I will go early afternoon with a grande Americano from Starbucks. And then… layer on a yerba madre drink in the late afternoon.” ([08:58])
  • Admits to hitting diminishing returns and tries to moderate intake: “I stick to coffee for the most part.” ([09:27])
• Ben describes a more moderate approach:
  • “I make a pot of coffee in the morning. Absolutely love it. …But… I'm usually good for the day.” ([10:53])
  • “I don't really get addicted to anything… I could go a week without coffee. I have no issue. I greatly enjoy it. It's one of the pleasures of life.” ([12:20])

---

4. The Great Garage Debate ([12:36]–[16:20])

• Listener Daniel brings up a jab Ben made about Andrew’s “messy garage.”
• Ben playfully explains his approach to home organization, highlighting a tendency to acquire tools for solving problems but delaying implementation.
  • “I have ideas of how to solve things. I acquire the components to solve it. And then they are never actually implemented. …I need like a forcing function to get it done.” ([14:20])
• He openly admits to the tension between loving organization and hating the actual work:
  • “I love being organized. …I hate organizing. I hate cleaning and I hate picking up after myself.” ([14:58])
• Andrew describes his own “fake” garage—converted, small, stuffed with storage—while Ben lauds the glories of a proper Midwestern garage.

---

5. Vibe Coding: Custom Home Inventory Software ([16:20]–[25:42])

• Ben discusses his whimsical, self-coded solution for home organization—“vibe coding”—which brings back the spirit of 90s computing fun:
  • “I feel a bit like a kid again back in the 90s, putting computers together… trying to do different things, having all these delusions of grandeur.” ([17:03])
• The challenge: With lots of stuff, unstructured shelving from a recent move, and an assistant eager to help, Ben wants software that makes finding anything trivial.
  • “I want software that will solve this problem… perfectly fitting piece of software to this exact need.” ([23:09])
• Ben breaks down the system:
  • Home mapped by property, room, structure (e.g., shelf), and storage spot (e.g., drawer). ([23:52])
  • Assistant free to organize, catalog everything with photo-based AI, add QR codes for adding new items—making future “where is it?” queries instant and accurate.
  • Ben: “How do you catalog everything? 95% of stuff. You take a picture of it, it gets it perfect.” ([24:14])
• Andrew expresses delight at Ben’s commitment:
  • “I love that you're up late at night testing different objects for your new vibe coded app.” ([25:34])
• Ben admits, “It takes longer than you think.” ([25:42])

---

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Ben (on Apple): “They just don't know what's going on—blind. Yeah, it's not great.” ([03:07])
• Andrew (on his caffeine habits): “Deeply, deeply addicted. …every now and then I would say three out of five work days, I will go with a late afternoon yerba madre.” ([08:58])
• Ben (on organization): “You don't fix your weaknesses. You make more money so you could pay for someone else to fix them.” ([15:20])
• Ben (on software for home inventory): “The magic here is I can make software that is going to solve this problem and I don't need permission to do it.” ([23:09])
• Andrew (on vibe coding energy): “You felt the joy throughout and having a great time with computers. Like, that's the vibe coding experience.” ([17:22])

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:08 – 04:06: Apple’s delayed response to memory cost spikes & brand philosophy
• 04:50 – 06:33: China’s ascent in memory chip production & impacts of export controls
• 06:33 – 12:36: Caffeine confessions, addiction stories, and beverage rituals
• 12:36 – 16:20: The art and agony of garage organization at home
• 16:20 – 25:42: "Vibe Coding"—building custom software to organize home stuff

---

Tone and Language

The hosts maintain a candid, playful, and deeply knowledgeable tone throughout the episode. Their camaraderie shines as both riff on each other's habits and foibles, with Ben’s deeply considered tech and business insights counterbalanced by Andrew's personal anecdotes and quick humor.

---

For full tech analysis, personality, and laughs, this episode invites listeners into the summer mode of Sharp Tech while offering concrete lessons on tech, productivity, and the pleasure of solving problems your own way.

Transcript

[Andrew]

Hello and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

[Ben]

Apple's price raises this week are one of the more bearish indicators for Apple that I've seen in a long time.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Ben]

And the reason is that, number one, I don't think they saw this memory increase coming at all. Right. Because they would have been, they would have made the moves that they made in the past. They would have locked up way like remember Jensen Huang being out there like you know, drinking soju with like the, you know, Sam's like CEO or whatever. Like all those pictures. He saw it coming.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Ben]

He was out there securing supply such that everyone else is having a hard time.

[Andrew]

Wild. Yeah, so. So he was see Tim Cook drinking.

[Ben]

So didn't see Tim Cook out there securing memory supplies. Okay. So number one, I don't think they saw this coming generally.

[Andrew]

No.

[Ben]

Number two, I made a steak dinner bet with Jon Gruber that the new Macs they introduced in March were going to include a price increase. How could they not, given what was happening with memory? It blew my mind. They did not increase prices then because layered on that is one of Apple's brand promises is we don't change prices now. Part of that is we don't decrease prices. So you can always buy with confidence. Like, and I believe this, there's never been a trajectory sale because of the. I don't want someone in the moment,

[Andrew]

someone who paid full price. You don't want to feel like, no,

[Ben]

no, it's not that someone is sitting on that page deciding whether to subscribe or not. I don't want even a hint of in the back of their mind, oh, I'll just wait for the sale.

[Andrew]

Wait for the August deal.

[Ben]

That's right. Like, like the once a year sort of thing, right? No, like it, my price is my price. It's only going in one direction. It will increase at times. It is never going to be cheaper. Now Apple, so Apple is not cutting prices for sure, but they also usually never want to change prices while product is in the market. You should be able to count on Apple. Prices are what they are. We don't like. You know, you go to Dell, a computer is a different price every single day, right? Sure, that's fine. That's part of their promise, right? Like you can customize whatever you want, the price be whatever, who knows? You need a computer, just buy it. Apple doesn't do that. So by not raising prices in March, what that suggests to me is even in March, when all this agentic stuff was working, was in the market, no

[Andrew]

appreciation for what was coming.

[Ben]

They seem to be like, well, maybe it'll blow over. Right?

[Andrew]

It's pretty unbelievable. Maybe, like, maybe it's like the old cycles, right? It's going to be six months and.

[Ben]

Right. We have a lot of temporary. Let's try, let's wait as long as, like see if we can make it through. And they said on the earnings call that, oh, this is definitely going to impact, impact the second quarter a little bit, but it's definitely impact the third quarter. I think they're like, like we're still in the second quarter and they're like, oh, we're out there. Prices are up hundreds of dollars. And it suggests to me this is a company that still has no idea

[Andrew]

what's going on with AI but continues to win.

[Ben]

You know what I mean? That's a Siri thing. Like I said, that's 2024 technology. Now we said in 2024, this stuff is so good. There's tons of products to be built on what exists right now. And that governs the fact Apple is going to ship in 2026 what they promised in 2024. And it's going to be great. It's pretty good because AI is amazing. It is also nowhere close to what AI is capable of right now in 2026, much less going forward. And the fact that Apple. It's not just that Apple missed the memory thing. Fair enough. The fact they didn't raise prices in March when they could have at least preserved their brand promise that when we launch a product at a price, it stays that price no matter what. And they're having to out of band increase prices in this very awkward sort of way suggests that they just don't know what's going on blind. Yeah, it's not great.

[Andrew]

Apple has become a bunch of normies out there in Cupertino. Look, you lost the bet with Gruber, so you do have to buy the stake. Do you think Gruber should have to give you like a third of the stake, like a good chunk of the ribeye that you buy him whenever this bet is finally paid off?

[Ben]

Absolutely not. Bet is a bet, number one. Number two, it's not enough to be right. Timing matters and so timing does. I got the timing wrong.

[Andrew]

I don't know, though. I think directionally you had some good instincts. Chris says we'll keep it going. We went long on the first question, but let's bounce.

[Ben]

You always promise fun, like. I know.

[Andrew]

Well, look, that, that one was very interesting to me and obviously it's germane to The China podcast.

[Ben]

We'll just on the China bit. Remember, DRAM is fungible, right? So if no one's going to let Chinese dram. Well, number one, the Chinese can't make HBM yet. They can make like HBM 1 or 2. We're on HBM 4 now. Like, yeah, so there's all that complexity goes into it.

[Andrew]

The concern would be that this allows them to climb the ladder and make better hbm.

[Ben]

We just need dram. Right. And so if the big three are going to be super focused on hbm, China said we can make dram like, and maybe our DRAM isn't the most advanced or maybe it has bigger problems. How do you get more advanced? And how do you solve your problems? You make a bunch of it. And like. And so a lot of China, you go back to our discussion of China building up their, their, their fab capacity before it was, well, China's willing to bear the cost of selling old stuff, eating it, because you have to move down the learning curve, right? And no one else is going to eat it, but China will eat it. And so they'll make it down. China now can move down the learning curve profitably. They can sell old tech at profitable prices because there's such a shortage in the market. And they're. Soon enough they're going to be good at memory and they're going to be competitive with these companies. And if Nvidia is not allowed to take it, Huawei will take it, other people will take it. Like the, the. We're, we're creating the conditions. This is the problem with cutting stuff off. Cutting stuff off legislatively through export controls, cutting stuff off from a business perspective because you're trying to like, capture the market. You are creating the conditions for inevitable competition. And, and I think the die is cast. Like, China is going to be a dominant player in memory, there's no question, because the conditions could not be better to become one.

[Andrew]

Right. Well, and you mentioned earlier, it doesn't really make sense for American companies to invest in memory, at least from an economic standpoint, but potentially from a security standpoint, it will at some point over the next five or ten years. Here Chris says, how much caffeine do you guys consume on a daily basis as you drink from a coffee cup? As I read the question, what's the pattern? Morning and afternoon coffees? What's the energy drink policy? My wife is making me quit having a Red Bull every single day. So this is top of mind funnel stuff for me. Um, what do you think, Ben? I Don't know how much of a caffeine guy you are.

[Ben]

Yeah, you're. You're the one that needs to answer this question. I mean, one of my all time favorite segments on Greatest of All Talk was you guys did a. You know, in the summer, it's a little more loosey goosey. It's kind of like a holiday mailbag, but every week when nothing's happening in the NBA. And so you have your top five things and you did a top five candy bar or episode. And I've never been more flabbergasted in my life than when the episode starts and you're like, I'm not much of a candy guy. And I'm like, this was.

[Andrew]

No, what I said was, I love candy, but I don't really eat candy anymore.

[Ben]

Whatever it was, it was the biggest crock of BS I've ever heard in my life. No one loves eating terrible stuff more than you. And what was great about that episode is you basically undressed yourself in front of the entire audience. You had so many candy takes, you had so many anecdotes in recent memory about candy that it was so obvious that you have a problem and you, like, exposed.

[Andrew]

It was like Hunter Biden talking about crack cocaine on that episode. I Talked for about 45 minutes about all my favorite candy memories of candy. And it was, it got pretty hierarchy

[Ben]

of candy interspersed with, like, the right times to have the candy. Proper storage for different types of candy.

[Andrew]

It was right. You got to keep certain candies in the freezer. No question about it. On caffeine, I'm not as passionate. I am just as addictive.

[Ben]

Okay, not as addictive, I'll give you that. I was going to say you're going to try to spin the. I'm not a caffeine guy.

[Andrew]

Deeply, deeply addicted. I consume a Venti Starbucks iced coffee every single morning. And then I will go early afternoon with a grande Americano from Starbucks. And then I will sometimes layer on a yerba madre drink in the late afternoon. They have these 20.

[Ben]

So we, we already had the sharp tech discussion about two daily Starbucks visits. I didn't realize there was frequently a third. Holy cow.

[Andrew]

Well, there is a depends on the day, but every now and then I would say three out of five work days, I will go with a late afternoon yerba madre. And in general, though, the challenge with caffeine is I hit a point of diminishing returns if I drink too much of it and my brain just sort of shuts down at a certain point. So I do try to moderate it and energy drinks like a Red Bull. Chris, I think your wife is probably right about a Red Bull a day being a bad idea. I'm not a doctor, but I think she's on the money with that one. So I stick to coffee for the most part.

[Ben]

Yeah. The one other thing when I was considering moving back, you know, it was a very fraught decision, very difficult for lots of different reasons. One of them was we would record Sharp Tech at night for you because you're on the east coast in particular, particularly rough with Taiwan. And sometimes it's like, yeah, Andrew went too far on the caffeine. He's barely functional right now. Cause he's like too on edge. And I'm like, I need to get back. So you can be aware it's like 100% true.

[Andrew]

There would be some nights where I'd be like just completely fried and trying to solve it with more Diet Coke at 9:45 or 10:00 clock at night. I feel great now as we sit here recording this. So I'm glad to have you back in the United States of America.

[Ben]

Yes.

[Andrew]

But you still. Are you dodging the question? How much caffeine do you drink?

[Ben]

I make a pot of coffee in the morning. Absolutely love it. I'm not super fussy about my coffee. I buy very good beans. I grind them right before I make them. But I use like a coffee maker. Like I think I do the Mocha Master. I've like, I like them. So I bought like five of them. There's a new one out there that is like a Mocca Master, but it uses all stainless steel parts on the inside. There's like no plastic, which is like good for like microplastics. Whatever. It's still sitting in my garage. I haven't actually set it up yet.

[Andrew]

The microplastics aren't really moving the needle one direction.

[Ben]

Yeah. As far as I'm concerned, I'm kind of in the same boat, to be totally honest. So I make a pot of coffee in the morning and then I'm usually good for the day. I will occasionally get a Diet Coke, particularly if I'm running at night and in the evening. I don't like caffeine past like noon because I don't want to have any issues sort of falling asleep or whatever. But it might all be theoretical. I'm not sure if I have issues falling asleep. I fortunately have the constitution of I don't really get addicted to anything. So like on the weekends sometimes and I wake up slow, whatever. I just don't have any coffee. Like one of my good friends, if he goes longer, like, there's one like, he's like, oh, shoot. Is at night. He's like, I forgot to have my. I forgot to have my afternoon coffee. I'm like, but you're going to bed. He's like, I know. I'm gonna wake up in the middle of night with a headache because it went too long. I'm like, oh, my God, you have a problem.

[Andrew]

That's what happens. Been there.

[Ben]

Yeah. So I am not. I'm not a. I'm pretty sure I'm not addicted. I could go a week without coffee. I have no issue. I greatly enjoy it. It's one of the pleasures of life. But that is that. That's. That's basically it. I love coffee.

[Andrew]

There we go.

[Ben]

Have it in the morning. Just regular coffee relationship. If I go healthier than me, I have. Americano is my. Go to Starbucks. Americano. Starbucks is a great store. I think I've given this take before.

[Andrew]

I have.

[Ben]

Not because it's great, but because it's

[Andrew]

the same Forward podcast.

[Ben]

That's right. We are pro Starbucks.

[Andrew]

Save your bespoke coffee houses. All right, well, keeping it moving, we have Daniel, who says sharp. I couldn't help but notice that Ben implied on the last episode that you have a messy garage when you said you didn't want to charge your car. Throwing a little shade at you.

[Ben]

I don't think throwing shade. That's just a. I. I'll explain that.

[Andrew]

My summer mailbag question for Ben, he says, is, what is his version of the garage? Is there something that Ben walks by at his house all the time and thinks I need to take care of it, but he never touches it? Is the if. If the answer is no, I won't be shocked, but it will be revealing in its own way. Perhaps maybe he could use a backup antenna on his roof or a third generator or more storage space for generators. You always could use a backup generator for your backup generator, you know.

[Ben]

Well, it is funny. I did just buy a. You know, we're going into this middle of nowhere. I think they. They supposedly have solar panels and batteries, and I guess there's a backup generator. But just in case, I did get like this big, like, anchor battery. It's like this big and it has its own solar panels so you can charge it so you can always have power. But I figure it is a backup to the backup. I could have like an extra battery.

[Andrew]

If you stay ready. You don't have to get ready. You're ready for anything. As you undertake this fishing expedition. I love to see it.

[Ben]

The. Yeah, no, I. Yes, I have. Unfortunately, I have a lot of stuff that I want to get to, where the problems is. I have ideas of how to solve things. I acquire the components to solve it. And then they are never actually implemented. Well, no, they are, but I need like a forcing function to. To get it done. Okay. So like, I have a bunch of networking gear because I have a few ideas of things I want to do. Then something will happen and I haven't installed it yet. And then it's like a flurry of like a weekend of getting this all in and then it's done. But I had the supplies on hand, so it does get done eventually. I would say. In general. Yeah. Organization. I love being organized. I love knowing where stuff is. I love being clean. And I hate organizing. I hate cleaning and I hate picking up after myself. So there's a real. There's a real tension about what I enjoy and what I'm capable of accomplishing. And that is why, you know, I did. I don't like talking about, like, I hire people and have like assistants. That's why you hire someone that. That's like you don't. You don't fix your weaknesses. You make more money so you could pay for someone else to fix them.

[Andrew]

Well, I'm glad that Daniel picked up on the garage comment during the last episode. Cause what you were referring to, there was not necessarily a messy garage at my house. But when I bought the house, the previous owner had converted half of a pretty small one car garage into an exercise room and put up a wall halfway through the garage. So the garage I have doesn't actually fit a car and is full of storage. Maybe my garage project would be knocking down the extra wall and just recreating an actual garage for myself. But it's pretty small. It pales in comparison to your massive Midwestern garage. So it's probably not big enough to fit like a modern suv.

[Ben]

No, I realize this is that like the coastal elites don't appreciate a good garage. Well, super important.

[Andrew]

I'll tell you what, not having a garage has made me appreciate a good garage. I go out to Madison and I'm like, man, this is what I need. I feel like you answered this question in part on strike this week. So I wanted to use this as an on ramp to the vibe coding discussion. So tell people about your problem and your vibe coding solution to the problem.

[Ben]

Well, so I put this one it's just super fun. Like. Like, there are a few people that, like, took it way too seriously. Like, I make you pronounces about the future of AI, and I was just like. Like, there was a bit about, like, look, there's.

[Andrew]

This.

[Ben]

Is this delightful, like, aspect of AI. Number one, there's a bit where I don't think people fully appreciate, like, how good this stuff is.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Ben]

Then number two, it's like, I feel a bit like a kid again back in the 90s, putting computers together, like, acquiring different parts, like, you know, building, trying to do different things, having all these delusions of grandeur. But all these businesses I'm going to start, like, how many people put up websites, like, all the bits and pieces

[Andrew]

and just loving the work. I love the piece on Wednesday because it was pretty whimsical and you felt the joy throughout and having a great time with computers. Like, that's the vibe coding experience that

[Ben]

I came away, which is about organizing my garage. So. So the issue I have is, you know, I moved back and, you know, I took one week off of work when moving back, but then I had shipments arriving at multiple times. I had, like, one air shipment. I had one that came by boat. I had a bunch of suitcases that we brought, like, brought when we came back in June. Then we went back in July to pack up and brought more stuff back then. Just a lot of stuff coming in. I'm also still working full time, and I have a house with all this, you know, lots of good sort of storage opportunities. But the problem is that it's. The first storage run is super important because you have to figure out, this is the cord area, this is the, like, the fishing stuff area, this is the car stuff area. And so that in the future, when you need to find something, you know where to go. It doesn't help put away and you can't find it. So the problem, though, is there was so much stuff. The reality that I live in is the house looks relatively neat and organized because all that stuff was put on shelves with no organization because it's just like, oh, people are coming over. Like, we're hosting. Let's get all this stuff out of the garage. We need to park somewhere.

[Andrew]

Your basement is spectacular and looks really clean and organized. And then I stepped into your office. Last time I was in Madison, I was like, whoa, there's a lot going on in here. So that's a job that still needs to be done.

[Ben]

Because I don't want to put stuff away, because I need to figure out where it needs to be put away first so that I can find it in the future. So you could see I'm in this doom loop. Right. Like it's just. It's just a total mess. Now I mentioned I. I do have someone here that, that works with me. A friend from high school. And it's. You know, it's great. You know, my wife is back and forth. She spends a lot of time in Taiwan part here. So when. Particularly when I'm here by myself sometimes just driving the kid to school or like going to pick stuff up. So I the. The. It's very beneficial. And he's the one who put all the stuff on the shelves in the first place because it's like a panic. Oh, like we need to get the stuff out of here. Just do something with it. Of course the answer is to have him organize everything. Yeah, but if you organize everything, I don't know where it is. So like, like I need to be involved. So the reality is what the answer is. I need to not be involved. How can we get a situation where everything is organized and put away specialized resource. But I can still find it. What I need is software. I need an ability to look something up and know where it is. So there's lots of home inventory products on the markets right there. If you want to imagine having enterprise software for your house. That sounds horrible. There's like a gazillion little forms of a checkbox like because they. They're trying. This is the issue with software. So software. What's the magic of it? You write software once and then you can sell it to a gazillion people at zero marginal cost. The problem is to sell to a gazillion people you have to cover a lot of use.

[Andrew]

Yeah, right.

[Ben]

The whole like everyone complains about. Like I think there's a point that Steven Snofsky made before everyone complains about. Word has so many features. I only need these five features. Everyone feels this way. The problem is their five features are all totally different and they cover the entire gamut of features. The reason why there's so many things there or AWS is like the modern version of this AWS is so complicated. There's so many services. Have you tried navigating their dashboard? It's unbelievable. Could they just like why do they have. But everyone feels that way. But what they want are all totally different. That's what happens to these products when you're. But that's also very profitable because you. You get scale on this. You sell it To a bunch of people. Everyone uses Word and complains about how cluttered it is, but it has the one feature they need and Microsoft makes a million dollars along the way. Right?

[Andrew]

Right.

[Ben]

Yeah. So it doesn't need to be this way. Now what I want is, I want software that will solve this problem. And I think the unique constraint is I don't have a large staff, I have one staff. And the brilliance of having someone that you pay is you could make them do stuff that normal people don't want to do. Who wants to go through and actually do all the cataloging. Right. And do that sort of stuff. Well, if you're getting paid to do it, it's a lot more like acceptable to sort of get it done. And honestly, he's happy about it too because instead of us doing a scramble to find something every other day non

[Andrew]

stop with that's right, it's clearly better for him. That's about it.

[Ben]

So, but, but this is unique dynamic where I have a human to do a lot of this work. So I don't need a lot of complexity. I want to get a software that's perfectly tuned to someone like me and how I work and perfectly tuned to having an asset like this person to implement these pieces and making it super simple, super approachable. Not having a single feature, I don't need only what's there. This isn't an inventory system. These are important notes. I'll come back to this. It's not like a task management system. It's a look, look up something and find out where it is system and that's it. And it's tuned to. There is someone available and capable to do the grunt work and the other person involved, this transaction doesn't want to do any work at all. It just wants to be able to find stuff. So because of this, it's a very. The magic here is I can make software that is going to solve this problem and I don't need permission to do it. I don't need to hire a developer. I don't need to try to bend stuff on the market to fit into my niche. I can build a perfectly fitting piece of software to this exact need. And that's awesome.

[Andrew]

And what you're doing is you're using QR codes right To.

[Ben]

Well, okay, well the details of the system, I don't, you know, basically the idea is I'm defining the house by. So I, you know, I have other properties. You know, here my parents is like right down the street. I got my own place. I have some Stuff stored there as well. Of course, that's actually where the fishing stuff will go long term. But I have. So I have the property. And then within the property, there's rooms. Within the rooms, there's structures like a shelf or a dresser or whatever.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Ben]

And within the structure, there's an actual storage spot, which is like a single shelf or a single drawer or whatever. So the idea is he. My assistant, now owns storage. I'm not gonna. The storage. Everything's gonna be organized and put away, and I'm gonna have zero input into it. He does what makes sense.

[Andrew]

He decides.

[Ben]

That's right. And he decides.

[Andrew]

And we're set.

[Ben]

And then after he's done, he's gonna go through space by space. And this is where the AI is. Super awesome. How do you catalog everything? 95% of stuff. You take a picture of it, it gets it perfect. And then there's like, the edge case where you need to make changes or whatever. There's a little bit of flow. So you check it.

[Andrew]

So you just take an iPhone photo and it just adds it automatically to the app?

[Ben]

Yeah, yeah. And it fills in all the details you could. Like, you could. Theoretically.

[Andrew]

That's incredible.

[Ben]

Yeah. And so. And so you organize everything so the. Where the QR codes come in is. He doesn't necessarily the Q codes at the start, but later, say you get. You have a new something shows up in the mail, right? And he's like, this should go here. So he gets the thing, takes a picture of it, puts it on a shelf, scans the QR code of that shelf, and boom, it's in the system in that spot. And then. So you can always find everything. So you search for something. I need. I have. Right here, I have a windshield washer concentrate with antifreeze. That is like a specific kind of windshield washer concentrate for, of course, you know, the point.

[Andrew]

Winter.

[Ben]

Yeah. You get a nicer car, you pay up in all sorts of ways. One of these is you have to buy special windshield.

[Andrew]

Okay, great.

[Ben]

So I have this next to my desk because this was a test object, like, taking pictures of it. Like, does it already exist in the system, or does it not, like, you know, does have it sitting around? But the. The idea is, yeah, if I need this, I can.

[Andrew]

I love that you're up late at night testing different objects for your new Vibe coded app. How long did it take you to build the app?

[Ben]

It takes longer than you think.

[Andrew]

All right. And that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to hear more from Ben and I. There are links to subscribe in the show notes, or you can also go to SharpTech FM. Either option will get you access to a personalized feed that has all the shows we do every week, plus lots more great content from strikeri and the strikeri Bundle. Check it out and if you've got feedback, please email us at emailarptech fm.