rashidae

Some business problems look hard, cost a lot to fix, and yet are surprisingly easy to solve—if you know how to look.

This post introduces the idea of the Asymmetric Leverage Zone (ALZ):

When perceived difficulty × available budget is high, but actual effort is low.

We use this to identify opportunities where small teams can deliver outsized value. Includes a simple scoring formula, pattern recognition cues, and real-world examples (e.g. tax software, no-code, cloud migration).

We used to spend 40–80 hours writing and maintaining brittle ETL code for every integration. Now we spend 4–8 hours deploying MCP (Model Context Protocol) interfaces and letting AI handle the rest. No hardcoded pipelines.

True. I believe the most important question right now is… how to solve for memory.

RAG and/or Fine-tuning is not the way.

Another topic is security, which would consist of using Ollama + Proxmox for example, but of course, right now, as emergent intelligence is still early, we would have to wait 2-3 years for ~8 B parameter local models to be as good as ChatGPT o3 pro or Claude Opus 4.

I do believe that we are close to discovering a new interface. What is now presenting itself through IDE’s and the command line (terminal)… I strongly believe we are 1-2 years away from a new kind of interface, that is not meant for developers only.

That feels like an IDE, works like a CLI, but is intuitive as Chrome is for browsing the web.

I just discovered a new meta-discipline, which most likely will become a new science.

I know, it sounds crazy.

In a month or so, I’ll be sharing some news.

I believe we need to take a more participatory approach to intelligence orchestration.

It’s not humans vs machines.

I’ve been thinking of approaching “vibe coding” through IDE’s like Cursor or even through the terminal with Claude Code, using microservices… Instead of having one single repo for everything, spreading out the apps workflows through a multi-repo, so this way the context window accessibility is better managed. (I’m no vibe coder whatsoever, just referencing the term)

What do you think about this approach? Any recommendations?

I am a full stack hard core developer. I work an average of 12-14 hours a day. (At least 6 days a week)

I can make around $25k usd per month, but I usually don’t spend too much.

I love building products and now with AI, I am getting better at exponential rates.

I’m 33 years old, live in Mexico. I stay fit, maintain a skin care routine and try to be social. I’m single by choice.

I’m sure I’ll be able to find a good wife, once I feel accomplished. But right now, and for the past 10 years, I’ve been going harder and harder.

I’m building an AI-first startup for Latin America, kind of like TaskRabbit but simpler and more aligned with how people actually hire help here. We use WhatsApp for quick updates like ‘Provider is on the way,’ and we focus on getting verified professionals to people’s homes—without getting in the way of payments or how they handle the job.

To fund it, I’m building agentic workflows and automations for insurance, finance, and real estate companies. It’s a way to keep things moving while I get the startup off the ground.

Some losses are inevitable when you overhaul a system. The bigger threat is letting the government drown in debt, which would be an existential risk to democracy. If the U.S. collapses financially, lamprey control is the least of our problems. The idea isn’t to nuke every program. It’s about cutting bloat and reallocating resources. Sure, some useful things might get trimmed. But staying on our current path until the whole system fails would be worse.

Because making the U.S. solvent is critical to preserving democracy. A country drowning in debt with an inefficient government is weak. If the U.S. collapses financially, who do you think fills the void? China? Russia? Do you trust them to uphold free speech and individual rights?

Fixing the system isn’t just about economics… It’s about ensuring that democracy doesn’t get replaced by something far worse.

Resistance is normal. We saw it when he made changes to Twitter, now X. But I wouldn’t bet against Elon.

If I had to guess, he’s trying to get a full map of how things actually work—breaking operations down into numbers, ranking everything by importance, and then… the firings will come. When I say “he,” I don’t just mean Elon himself. I mean the whole system around him—his mind, the engineers, the massive compute power, the LLMs feeding him insights.

One thing is certain: he’s about to shake things up. Ray Dalio has talked about a shift in the world order, and Elon is positioning himself right in the middle of it. But he’s not looking to tear things down—he’s here to protect democracy.

He’s playing a different game. All in on Elon.

AI is spreading across disciplines like science, math, software development, language, music, and health. You’re looking at it too narrowly. Human-computer symbiosis is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, far beyond the pace of something like the iPhone.

AI is getting really good at mimicking emotional cues with emojis. At this point it feels like an engagement tactic, but it’s wild how easily our emotions can be nudged.

Location: Mexico

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No, but I can do temporary visits.

Technologies: • 10,000+ hours in UX design (primarily with Figma). • Built low-code systems handling millions of user events, using both relational and non-relational databases. • Experienced in building interfaces, workflows, automations, tools, scripts, and integrations. • Strong understanding of AI capabilities and integration strategies. • Focused on product growth and well-positioned to lead in startups and mid-sized companies.

Résumé/CV: rashidazarang.com

Recent projects: • Agent Portal: Built for an insurance company in Boston. rashidazarang.com/agent-portal-hwg

• Community Event System: Managing city-wide festivals with over a million unique page views. affihub.com/v/festival-internacional-santa-lucia-2024

Email: rashid@uxrouter.com

Haha, exactly! Now they’re the victims of their own dismay.

AI + VR will most probably create addictive, lifelike experiences that may affect real-world relationships. Like TikTok and Instagram algorithms, this could reduce the desire for intimacy and worsen declining fertility rates.

I don’t think centralization is the real threat. As James Currier [1] pointed out, AI will be commoditized through open-source and model convergence, making oligopoly control unlikely.

The real challenge is standardizing safety across open models and countering malignant AI use, especially amid demographic challenges like declining fertility.

[1] https://x.com/jamescurrier/status/1884057861514485803?s=46&t...

This is amazing!! What kind of applications are you considering for this? A part from saving variable costs, fine tuning extensively and security… I’m curious to evaluate this in a financial perspective, as variable costs can be daunting, but not too much “yet”.

I’m hoping NVIDIA comes up with their new consumer computer soon!

By choosing the secure path of a $120k/year salary, you are taking on a certain level of risk.

However, if you want to protect your future potential, you could retain 20% of the equity and allow for a 80% buyback option.

While Nvidia’s valuation may feel bloated due to AI hype, AMD might be the smarter play.

Today I had trouble using OBS Software with my suite of old MacBooks, IPhones and iPads… I thought keeping them would be useful

1 hour from my tests, my eyes still hurt though!!!

Wow, I didn’t know I could do that!!

I’m not sure how this new learned trick, can apply to other stuff… but I’m happy I tried it and it did amazed me haha thanks for the share dude!

I haven’t used Glide yet, but I’ve worked extensively with other ‘front-end interfaces for Airtable and Spreadsheets’, like Softr, Noloco and Bubble.

The first time I tried Glide, I struggled with the interface, and unfortunately, support didn’t respond to my messages, so I had to take a different direction.

That said, I’d love to give Glide a try. It’s incredible that we have direct access to founders like you here on HN.

Congrats on your success! From your perspective, where do you see no-code and low-code heading, especially with AI dramatically lowering the barriers to coding?

During COVID, I built a quick no-code solution to help ‘all-inclusive resorts’ in Cancun and Punta Cana. It started with guests scanning a QR code, filling out a short form, and scheduling their Antigen/PCR tests. Over time, it evolved to help nurses manage operations, streamline test results, and send certificates via email.

What began as a DIY project during lockdown scaled quickly to Mexico City, the Dominican Republic, and Barcelona, processing over 30,000 tests the day after New Year’s Eve. Using Airtable, an Airtable extension called miniextensions.com, and tools like Docusign, Make, Sendgrid, and Twilio, the solution ended up supporting over 1 million tests. I handled all technical aspects, support, and training myself.

Since the solution was meant to be temporary, I prioritized speed and reliability. Airtable’s relational database capabilities were crucial, especially compared to spreadsheets, for managing multiple linked tables and automations. Airtable also offers a REST API and a pretty amazing self- actualizing database schema that can be copied into tools like GPT or Claude for added context. You can build powerful tools with its scripts, interfaces, and automations.

That said, Airtable is best for use cases with fewer than 250,000 records per month. Above 100,000 records, the web platform’s performance can suffer, though there are workarounds. It’s perfect for small to medium-sized businesses needing custom API integrations for CRMs or internal tools.

If you’re interested, I wrote a brief case study about the project here: https://rashidazarang.com/covid-testing.

On a related note, today I built a cool Airtable automation using ChatGPT and custom scripts. By filling out a corporate email in a form, the system scrapes the web for details like company name, address, phone, fax, and more, which then populates the CRM automatically. I’m still experimenting and plan to make a YouTube video about it soon. Here’s the loom video I sent to a friend about it: https://www.loom.com/share/b9ddbefbdce5434da378667fc2079d00?...

How do you do the indexing? Could you share how you do it?

I’m just going to watch and hold on to my opinions, as time and time again, Musk has championed his will.

I’ve been getting into self-optimization lately, and sleep has been a game-changer. Two books that really opened my eyes are Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker and Outlive by Peter Attia. Walker breaks down why sleep is so critical, while Attia ties it into the bigger picture of health and longevity. Also been exploring Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint Protocol.

This is such a cool angle for lead gen. Just the other day, I saw some kids using those Ray-Ban/Meta glasses through Instagram Live feeds to grab publicly available data from people almost in real time. It blew my mind.

Sure, this kind of tech will probably go through a lot of scrutiny and for good reason, but whether it’s a consumer product or a custom internal tool, it’s happening.

Excited to see where this goes.

I loved the idea!! How clever. Congrats on your accomplishment, I learned a lot from your approach. Thanks for sharing.