Written in Rotterdam by Daan, a former banker. Research summaries with dated prices.
About Daan | Read my story →

Building AI to win back our time and our curiosity.

After twenty years in the high-pressure world of international finance, I traded the daily treadmill for a life built around freedom. After years in Asia we are back in Rotterdam, and I build quiet, autonomous systems that take over the heavy digital work. That gives me room to step away from the screen, spend real time with my wife, and share the good moments together while the days rush past.

This site collects what I learn along the way. A few tools run my own work: a Hostinger VPS, Replit, Bitvavo and Claude. The others are research summaries: what the product does, what it costs and where the catch is, read from the vendor’s own pages and from what other buyers report.

What I actually run
  • Hostinger VPS — hosts Victor, my own AI agent, which maintains my sites.
  • Replit — where I built my crypto trading bot with Replit’s AI agent, without a developer background.
  • Bitvavo — the exchange the bot trades on, through its API.
  • Claude — writes and checks code with me.

Everything else on this site is research, not a hands-on test, and each page says so.

How we got here

Beyond the rat race

For years I lived on a corporate rhythm that demanded constant attention. Now I use my technical background to build systems that give that attention back to what matters. Automating the complex digital work buys me the time to slow down days that would otherwise rush past.

01 / Deliberate presence

My goal is simple: keep my digital systems working quietly for me, so I can be fully present for the people I love most — without the constant pull of a screen.

02 / Keep learning

I use the time I win back to study, to reflect, and to stay curious. The world offers endless room to grow, as long as you step out of the daily rush long enough to see it.

03 / Supporting growth

Our years in Vietnam, guiding our children as they discovered a new culture, showed us what that shared time as a family is worth. It is the whole reason I put digital autonomy first.

04 / A sustainable approach

I have seen demanding corporate life from the inside and know how precious our time is. My mission now is to share how you build something sustainable, deliberate and genuinely free.

Tools I run, and tools I have researched

The first three run my own work. The rest are research summaries: what the product does, what it costs and the catch, read from vendor pages and buyer reports. None of those is a hands-on test.

Some links on this site are affiliate links: if you sign up, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never decides what we write about a tool.

Hostinger logo

Hostinger

VPS hosting · I run this

The quiet backbone of my network. My own AI agent, Victor, runs on this VPS and maintains my sites in 35 languages.

Replit logo

Replit

Cloud coding · I run this

Where I built my crypto trading bot with Replit’s AI agent. I had never written code before; the agent wrote it from plain-English instructions.

Bitvavo logo

Bitvavo

Crypto exchange · I run this

The exchange my trading bot trades on, through its API. I chose it because it is secure and stable.

Softr logo

Softr

No-code app builder

Builds client portals and internal tools on top of Airtable, Google Sheets or your own data, without code.

Dify logo

Dify

AI agent platform

A visual builder for LLM apps and agent workflows. The Community Edition is free to self-host, but you run the servers.

MindStudio logo

MindStudio

No-code AI builder

A visual builder for AI agents and workflows across 200+ models, with model usage passed through at provider cost.

Consensus logo

Consensus

AI research search

Searches peer-reviewed papers and reports what studies found. Whether those studies are sound is still your call.

Aspire logo

Aspire

Finance stack

Multi-currency accounts, corporate cards, bill pay and expense management for businesses that work across borders.

Runpod logo

Runpod

GPU cloud

Rents NVIDIA GPUs by the hour or per second, for training and serving your own models.

Bright Data logo

Bright Data

Web data

Proxies, ready-made datasets and scraping APIs for collecting public web data at scale.

SmartSuite logo

SmartSuite

Work management

Projects, CRM and operations in one relational workspace, with automations.

WebCatalog logo

WebCatalog

Desktop app wrapper

Turns web apps into separate desktop apps, with multiple accounts side by side.

Close logo

Close

Sales CRM

Calling, email and SMS in one inbox, built for sales teams that live on the phone.

CloudTalk logo

CloudTalk

Cloud call centre

Call routing, analytics and CRM integrations, priced per user; AI voice agents are a separate subscription.

Beautiful.ai logo

Beautiful.ai

Presentations

A presentation builder whose templates lay themselves out as you type.

Guides from my own setup

Written from what I built myself: a trading bot on Replit and Bitvavo, and an AI agent on a VPS. None of it is financial advice.

The other sites

The Weekly AI Edge is one of six sites I run. Each one covers a different part of the software a small business buys.

AI and business software, once a month

Honest tool picks, comparisons and time-saving workflows from an ex-banker who cuts through the hype. No spam, unsubscribe any time.

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