Own Your Tech

If you didn't build it and you can't replace it, you don't own your business.

Vendor Lock-in

100%

Your Data

Permission Needed

How many tools could shut down your business with a pricing change?

How much of your customer data lives on someone else's server?

How many API keys stand between you and a total outage?

Every SaaS subscription is a bet that the company behind it won't change the price, kill the feature, or lock you out. Most people don't think about this until the email arrives: “We're updating our pricing.” By then you're trapped. Your data is in their format. Your workflows are built on their API. Your team knows their UI, not the alternative.

I've been on both sides. I've built SaaS products and I've been locked into them. The math is simple: if you can't export it, migrate it, or replace it in a weekend — you don't own it. It owns you.

This is where I write about what I self-host, what I don't, and the real cost of each decision. Not ideology. Math.

Essays

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What fine-tuning actually costs (it's not what you think)

Training an AI model is assumed to cost millions of dollars. It's the single most common misconception in the space, and it's wrong by roughly two orders of magnitude for the activity most people actually want to do. This post is a short, concrete breakdown of what fine-tuning actually costs in 2026, what it doesn't cost, and where the real spend lives. I'm writing it now because 'how much does this cost' is the first question I get whenever I mention that I'm training a model, and the answer

Apr 21, 2026·6 min read

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Why I chose Unsloth (before training a single token)

Honest note up front: I have not yet fine-tuned anything with Unsloth. I have not run a single training job. What I did is spend three weeks researching fine-tuning frameworks before writing a line of training code — and at the end of that research, I picked Unsloth and committed to it. This post is about why. I'm writing it now, before I start, for two reasons. First, so that if this decision ages badly I have to own it publicly. Second, so that whoever is doing this research next has a sta

Apr 20, 2026·7 min read

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Why I'm fine-tuning a small model (and why it runs on your laptop)

I'm training an AI model. It's going to run on a laptop. Three weeks ago I would have told you I was training a 70-billion-parameter model, the kind of thing that needs a data center to breathe. I'm not. I'm training a 4-billion-parameter model that runs on a Mac Mini. If the smaller one works, a larger companion model may follow. But the 4B is the bet. This is the first post in a series where I'll share what I'm building, why, how it's going, and what breaks along the way. The small-model

Apr 20, 2026·5 min read

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Free at the Base, Paid at the Frontier

Open source AI didn't die. It ran out of sponsors.

Apr 19, 2026·8 min read

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AI Real Estate: From Apartment to Mansion

AI Real Estate: From Apartment to Mansion A $3,999 Mac Studio runs a 122 billion parameter AI model on your desk. Running the same model on AWS costs roughly $5 an hour. About $3,700 a month if you leave it on. The Mac pays for itself in five weeks. A $3,999 Mac Studio runs a 122B parameter AI model locally. Running that same model on AWS: $5/hour. ~$3,700/month if you leave it on. The Mac pays for itself in five weeks. I didn't think this was possible. Most people still don't. — George

Apr 16, 2026·6 min read

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Your Monthly Invoice

A typical SaaS stack. Recognize any of these?

Monthly Statement

Your SaaS Dependencies

Due: Every month, forever

AI API (GPT/Claude)

Local LLM

$200/mo

Analytics Platform

Plausible (self-hosted)

$50/mo

Email Marketing

Listmonk + SMTP

$99/mo

$5/mo

CMS / Website Builder

Next.js + MDX

$79/mo

Cloud Hosting (per app)

VPS / own hardware

$120/mo

$20/mo

Project Management

Plane (self-hosted)

$30/mo

File Storage

MinIO / local NAS

$25/mo

Monitoring & Logs

Grafana + Loki

$45/mo

You're paying

$648/mo

You could pay

$25/mo

That's $7,476/year back in your pocket. Over 5 years: $37,380.

Real numbers from a real stack migration. Your costs will vary.

The Weekend Test

For every tool you depend on, ask one question:

“If this disappeared tomorrow, could I replace it by Monday?”

Your AI provider raises prices 5x

Run Llama/Mistral locally in an afternoon

Your analytics platform gets acquired and sunsets

Plausible deploys in 10 minutes

Your email platform suspends your account

Can you export your list? Do you own your sending domain?

Your CMS company pivots and kills your plan

Markdown files + Git = forever portable

Your cloud provider has a 48-hour outage

Is your data in one region? One provider? One account?

Your payment processor freezes your funds

Do you have a backup processor already connected?

Your project management tool shuts down

Export to CSV, spin up an alternative, keep moving

Your domain registrar locks your domain

Do you control the DNS? Is the registrar transfer-friendly?

Every is a single point of failure. Start there.

What I Actually Run

George's real infrastructure. Not theoretical — in production right now.

george@sovereign ~ / infrastructure

$ status --all

AI (Local LLMs)RUNNING

Llama 3, Mistral, CodeLlama on Mac Studio

~$200/mo vs API

WebsiteRUNNING

Next.js on Cloud Run, self-managed

~$79/mo vs Webflow

Blog & CMSRUNNING

Ghost (self-hosted) + MDX

~$50/mo vs managed Ghost

EmailRUNNING

SendGrid SMTP, own domain, exportable list

~$80/mo vs Mailchimp

AnalyticsRUNNING

Plausible CE, self-hosted

~$50/mo vs GA360

DatabaseRUNNING

PostgreSQL on managed instance, daily backups

Full data ownership

Code & CI/CDRUNNING

GitHub + GitHub Actions

Portable, git-based

File StorageRUNNING

GCS buckets, own encryption keys

~$25/mo vs Dropbox Business

$ uptime

All systems operational. 0 vendor dependencies critical path.

This isn't about being anti-SaaS. It's about choosing which dependencies are worth it — and owning the ones that aren't.

Part of the Same Thesis

Tech sovereignty is one layer. These are the others.

Sovereign

Sovereignty over your life. Income, location, lifestyle — remove every dependency someone else controls.

AI Displacement Series

7 chapters on what AI is actually displacing and the 5 layers it can't touch.

Start reading

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Self-hosting, AI infrastructure, and the real cost of every tool decision. No hype. Just math.

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