In this episode, Craig sits down with Francois Brill, Head of Product at Castos and longtime design collaborator, for an honest and entertaining conversation about what it really takes to build great-looking products in the age of AI. Using Outlier as a live case study, Francois walks through the marketing site and product UX in real time, calling out the small but costly design mistakes that make AI-built tools look generic. From embarrassing mismatched button styles to cognitive overload on ideation pages, this episode is a must-listen for anyone vibe-coding their next SaaS app and wondering why it just does not feel polished.

• AI-generated design is the new "tell" that your product was built without a designer
• Picking one mode, light or dark, is almost always better than trying to do both
• Rounded inputs paired with square buttons is one of the most common and fixable design mistakes
• Color should guide user action, not decorate the interface
• UX is how something works; UI is what it looks like, and they require different thinking
• Cognitive overload kills conversion, especially on feature-rich pages like ideation tools
• A Design MD file can teach AI your brand system so every output stays consistent
• Code is cheap now, so the value has shifted to vision, taste, and design thinking
• Building fast and iterating beats trying to get it perfect the first time
• If everyone can prompt the same thing, standing out requires taste and a real system

• Clearly Design: https://www.clearly.design/
• Francois on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fbrill/
• Outlier: https://outlier.so/
• Castos Free Tools: castos.com/tools
• Email me: podcast@roguestartups.com
• Find me on Twitter: @TheCraigHewitt

If you feel like Rogue Startups has benefited you, and it might benefit someone else, please share it with them. If you have a chance, give Rogue Startups a review on iTunes.

Do you have any comments, questions, or topic ideas for future episodes? Feel free to reach out to me:

• Twitter: @TheCraigHewitt
• LinkedIn: Craig Hewitt
• Email: podcast@roguestartups.com

• (00:00:00) - Francois Brill on Design & UX
• (00:01:26) - How To Design SaaS Companies' User Experience (
• (00:04:04) - Light and Dark
• (00:07:08) - Mixed Bag: Round vs. Square On Mobile
• (00:09:24) - Kanban 2.8: Color
• (00:13:19) - Taste Design: The Future of AI
• (00:16:08) - Onboarding to YouTube
• (00:20:52) - Ideas in the Pipeline
• (00:27:25) - Ideation: A Chatbot Interface
• (00:33:56) - How to Build a Ui with a Human Interface
• (00:38:48) - Design Systems: The Need for Verification
• (00:40:45) - How To Build a Design System?
• (00:49:08) - Top AI Tooling Tips
• (00:53:08) - A Taste of Hard Work

This week on the Rogue Startups, Craig gets roasted. He brought in experienced software engineer Brandon Hancock after building the AI-powered SaaS app Outlier largely through “vibe coding,” so Brandon could audit the entire codebase live during the episode. The result? An honest but useful breakdown of what happens when non-technical founders ship fast with AI tools.

Brandon digs into real security risks, common architecture mistakes, and the best practices every founder should follow when building AI-driven products. If you’re launching SaaS with tools like Next.js, Supabase, and Claude, or simply adding AI features to your existing product, this episode offers practical lessons on building faster without accidentally breaking everything.

Check the episode out on YouTube to see Brandon dig through Craig’s code onscreen.

• What “vibe coding” looks like when building a real production startup
• How a single exposed Supabase key can create major security risks
• Why row-level security is critical for protecting user data
• Using AI to audit code and uncover vulnerabilities in minutes
• Simple fixes that dramatically improve SaaS security
• Why many AI code review tools miss critical issues
• The danger of exposing backend clients in frontend code
• How server actions can replace many API endpoints
• Best practices for managing database migrations with Drizzle ORM
• Why staging environments save founders from catastrophic production mistakes
• The difference between moving fast and building responsibly
• How to structure AI documentation for better development workflows
• Using task templates to teach AI your coding standards
• Practical lessons for founders building SaaS products with AI tools

Resources and Links from This Episode

• Shipkit.ai: https://www.shipkit.ai/
• Brandon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-hancock-ai
• Brandon’s website: https://brandonhancock.io/
• Brandon on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aiwithbrandon
• Rogue Startups on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@roguestartups
• Castos Free Tools: castos.com/tools
• Email me: podcast@roguestartups.com
• Find me on Twitter: @TheCraigHewitt

If you feel like Rogue Startups has benefited you, and it might benefit someone else, please share it with them. If you have a chance, give Rogue Startups a review on iTunes.

Do you have any comments, questions, or topic ideas for future episodes? Feel free to reach out to me:

• T...

• (00:00:00) - Getting Roasted: AI Security Best Practices
• (00:01:42) - What I Learned From Working On EMS Soap
• (00:04:40) - loading pandas in C#
• (00:05:04) - How to hack a Supabase client with a single code
• (00:06:51) - How to compromise a C# project with a phishing
• (00:10:17) - Code Reviewing in the Cloud
• (00:15:10) - Migration workflow in C#
• (00:20:45) - Creating a second branch in the Supabase project
• (00:23:31) - Choosing the right API for your app
• (00:25:59) - Brandon: How do we structure AI Development?
• (00:32:35) - Seeking Compound Engineering in the Code
• (00:33:41) - How to max out Claude Code in 2019
• (00:38:38) - Building a Software Startup With Claude Code
• (00:44:04) - Shipkit AI Announcement

In this episode of Rogue Startups, Craig sits down with Jesse Hanley, founder of Bento, for a wide-ranging conversation about building and growing SaaS businesses in the age of AI. From vibe coding and AI-assisted development workflows to product strategy, business ceilings, and the existential shifts happening across the tech landscape, Jesse and Sandy share candid insights from their own experiences as founders navigating a rapidly changing environment. If you're a bootstrapped founder, indie hacker, or SaaS entrepreneur trying to figure out how to stay relevant and move fast, this one's for you.

• Testing and QA are still the unglamorous bottleneck nobody talks about enough
• The founders who stay close to the code sleep better at night
• Opus 4.5 in Cursor is the closest thing to having a full dev team on speed dial
• Build your foundation like a brick house, and everything else can be Play-Doh™
• AI is making founders fall back in love with parts of their business they used to dread
• Shopify can now build custom apps on demand, and that should make plugin developers nervous
• If your whole product is basically one feature, it might be time to rethink things
• Sometimes the ceiling you're hitting is the category, not your effort
• The best side projects either pay for themselves immediately or swing for the fences
• Building through AI disruption takes the same stubborn optimism it took to survive COVID

• • Jesse Hanley: https://jessehanley.com/

• Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessehanley/

• Bento: https://bentonow.com/
• Castos Free Tools: castos.com/tools
• Email me: podcast@roguestartups.com
• Find me on Twitter: @TheCraigHewitt

If you feel like Rogue Startups has benefited you, and it might benefit someone else, please share it with them. If you have a chance, give Rogue Startups a review on iTunes.

Do you have any comments, questions, or topic ideas for future episodes? Feel free to reach out to me:

• Twitter: @TheCraigHewitt
• LinkedIn: Craig Hewitt
• Email: podcast@roguestartups.com

• (00:00:00) - Testing New Ideas
• (00:00:54) - Bento on Testing in AI Software
• (00:09:18) - How to Start a Startup: Plan Your Startup's Future
• (00:11:06) - Flows: Things are moving fast
• (00:16:18) - Reveal: Learning To Optimize Your Website With Nano Banana
• (00:21:45) - "It'll be hard to get a job in 2021."
• (00:22:12) - How's your team adapting to the AI revolution?
• (00:24:16) - Podcaster on the Future of Podcasting
• (00:27:23) - Shopify's AI Announcement
• (00:34:43) - Bento CEO on His Strategic Plan
• (00:38:12) - Gemini 3.8: Using AI to Make Better Design
• (00:43:08) - Cursor: We're Not Using a CMS
• (00:48:51) - What is the bottleneck in the WordPress vs. Blog?
• (00:50:57) - Have You Got Time for Side Projects?
• (00:54:34) - Custos vs. Riverside: How Big Is the Podcast Market
• (00:59:38) - How Castos is changing the way we edit videos
• (01:01:15) - Bob Dylan on His New Direction