This is where your builds leave your laptop and meet the real world. Once you add users, payments, and a public URL, the rules change. This module walks through the real economics of cloud builders versus Claude Code, what happens the moment you take on users and money, where your secrets and data live, and the bootstrapper mindset that keeps small products profitable.

What to Watch For

• How token pricing actually works across Claude plans and when to jump tiers.
• The cascade of decisions that fire the moment you add auth and payments.
• Where your data lives, what a dot env file is, and how to audit your own code for leaks.
• The bootstrapper lessons from thirteen years of running a SaaS that apply directly to solo builders.

Key Takeaways

• Plan with the expensive model. Build with the cheap one.
• Users and payments are an exponential jump in complexity, not just another feature.
• Free tiers on Vercel and Supabase can carry a real product further than you think.
• Building is the fun part. Selling is the hard part. Plan for both before you ship.