Ben Fisher✨

Founder @ Rodeo and Fractional CTO to 8-figure DTC brands, sharing learnings as a Full-stack Coder, Designer and Shopify Expert

My friend Paul says I'm a "Human Zapier." That checks out. 

I'm a solid programmer and a decent designer, but they're really a means to an end: I love to build things and solve business problems. 

I'm a product person, a technologist, and an entrepreneur at heart. 

My superpower is at the intersection of tech + design + automation/optimization. And I love dtc ecomm.

I get a DISGUSTING amount of satisfaction by eliminating inefficiency. And I do it through building software tools.

I am obsessed with Systems Thinking and love to experiment with new ways to connect disparate systems.

I won't stop until we've got a deceptively simple solution that's damn fun to use.

**

For the past 10 years, I've built "commerce enablement" tools in the Shopify ecosystem that help DTC brands make more $$$.

With CartHook, we brought post-purchase upsells to the Shopify ecosystem and worked directly w/ Shopify to add it natively. 

CartHook processed > $1B GMV and added $250MM/year in revenue through its post-purchase upsell tech. It was acquired by Pantastic in 2022.

At Rodeo, we released one of the first native Shopify subscription apps (acquired by Recharge) and pivoted to a LTV Growth platform that originated as a small feature. Ultimately, wound it down as Shopify actively started building a solution themselves.

I'm on a mission to build damn good tools that help you make more money and have fun doing it.

Co-founder, Technical CEO

CEOs trying to get their teams using AI — this might be the problem.

Most AI conversations go sideways in the first message.

Not always because people are "bad at prompting" – but because they're thinking out loud. Half-formed ideas, missing context, vague asks. The AI takes that initial direction and runs with it. Now you're course-correcting for the next 10 messages.

For people who steer AI all day, that's fine. You recover and keep going.

But when someone on your team tries AI once, gets garbage, and decides "it doesn't work for me" — that's expensive. And often, it's just a bad first message.

I built Promptó to fix the 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁-𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺.

It's a desktop app – one shortcut from anywhere. Copy your rough thought, press the key, and it turns your half-baked idea into a clear starting point. Then you paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, whatever you use.

What it actually does:

- Asks clarifying questions when you're too vague
- Adds the structure AI needs to run useful
- Saves your context window for actual work, not course-correction

The reason it's a desktop app (not a browser tab): 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗱𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. A shortcut becomes muscle memory. People use it for everything, not just "important" prompts.

The compound effect of starting clean – hundreds of times a week – is real.

One early user told me it writes better prompts for his vertical than his best employees.

If your team has quietly decided AI "isn't for them," it might just be a first-message problem.

𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗻𝗼𝘄. Link in the first comment.

Struggling with AI adoption on your team? What's worked (or hasn't)?

--

Link: https://tryprompto.com

Its companion desktop app: https://lnkd.in/ePSw5UHS

Ben Fisher 🏴‍☠️

Playing w/ AI + Automation | Prev @Rodeo, @CartHook (trusted by AG1, Four Sigmatic)

graphical user interface, text, application

Founders / PMs: stop me when this sounds familiar.

You have a great product call. Ideas, constraints, edge cases all get talked through. Everyone hangs up and... nothing really happens.

A week later you're trying to recreate what you already figured out on that call.

Last week I had a 45-minute product brainstorm with my friend Jared Cocken. By the time I closed Claude, I had:

- A first-draft spec the team could actually build from
- User stories mapped to the core problem
- A short list of questions we hadn't answered yet

Total time after the call: ~15 minutes.

In my setup, AI does the boring part:

- Pulling the relevant parts of the conversation out of the call notes
- Turning messy ideas into something an engineer can react to
- Pointing out gaps and edge cases I didn't cover

I still keep the actual thinking:

- Is this even a problem worth solving right now?
- Which requirements are real vs "nice to have"?
- What actually makes it into the doc we share?

Most teams just let transcripts pile up in whatever tool they're using and tell themselves they'll "get to it later."

In practice, later rarely happens.

This little workflow has made it way more likely that good calls turn into actual work instead of just... more recordings.

If you want to see exactly how I run this, I recorded a short "Dear Ben" episode walking through the flow step by step, plus a small Claude skill + GitHub repo you can hand to your team.

(Link in first comment)

--

Show notes & grab the Claude skill: https://lnkd.in/emJ8AbjQ

𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 (𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁) 𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀.

They feel efficient. They're actually kind of rude.

"Here's my calendar. You do the work."

Open link → load page → scroll days → do timezone math → fill the form. All the friction is on the other person.

The most respectful thing you can do instead:

- Propose specific times
- In 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 timezone
- With a backup link if nothing works

Something like:

> Would any of these times work for a 25 min meeting (ET)?
> • Wed, Jan 7: 10:30am, 10:30am, 1:00pm
> • Thu, Jan 8: 1:00pm, 3:00pm, 3:30pm
> • Fri, Jan 9: 7:00am, 9:00am, 10:30am

> If none of these work, here's my full calendar: [link]

Doing this manually every time sucks:
check calendar → convert timezones → format nicely.

Even premium tools miss this. 

Superhuman has a built-in scheduler, but you still have to *manually* select your available slots. Every. Single. Time. 

I thought AI agents might solve this, but they got timezone conversions wrong or inconsistently replied.

So I did what I usually do with this kind of annoyance:
I built a small tool for myself.

- Raycast extension that pulls from SavvyCal or Cal dot com
- You pick the recipient's timezone
- It batches times around your existing meetings—not random scattered slots & respects your scheduling preferences (buffer times, working hours, etc.)
- Each time is a clickable link to book  

Both are open source.

Same pattern as Promptó for me: build something I genuinely rely on in my own workflow, then see if it quietly becomes indispensable for other people too.

This one just attacks a very specific kind of friction: making other people do the work to meet with you.

👉 (See link in first comment)

Curious: how are you making scheduling less painful for the people you work with?

--

- "Propose Times" — Raycast extension (https://lnkd.in/eVSrzFrp)

- "SavvyCal Booker" — one-click booking form (for Cal.com or SavvyCal) https://lnkd.in/e5P-AVqb

Everyone's hyped about how fast AI can ship features.

Almost no one is talking about the fights it's causing inside engineering teams.

I had two conversations last week with CEOs trying to get their teams to adopt AI. Same pattern both times.

The CEO discovered vibe coding. Built a feature themselves — maybe a proof of concept, maybe a working prototype. Felt the speed. Got excited.

Came back to the team with, "We should all be doing this."

And hit a wall.

Here's what I've realized: the engineers pushing back aren't all pushing back for the same reasons.

I'm seeing two camps:

𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿𝘀 — product-oriented. They care about what gets shipped. AI is leverage. Less boilerplate, more interesting problems. They're often already experimenting. (That's me.)

𝗔𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗻𝘀 — craft-oriented. They love writing code. The problem-solving, the shaping, the control. They'll happily spend an afternoon refactoring a module no one else will ever see, because the code "wasn't right." AI doesn't just change how they work — it threatens something they've built their whole career around.

The artisan isn't wrong. They're assessing AI through a different lens. And as a leader, you need to recognize: adopting AI might mean giving up parts of the job they genuinely love.

What I've seen work:

𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗻𝘀 — don't lead with "look how fast it codes." They've seen the output. They're not impressed. Start with workflows that protect the craft: scaffolding, guardrails, and reviews that produce code they'd actually be proud to ship.

𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿𝘀 — they might need the opposite. Coaching on product thinking, not just AI enthusiasm. Sometimes they're over-indexed on the tooling.

The starting point is the same: stop selling AI as a productivity tool. Start by understanding what each person stands to lose — and what they might actually gain.

Which camp are you in? And if you're leading both, what's actually working (or not) on your team?

𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀.

They feel efficient. They're actually kind of rude.

"Here's my calendar. You do the work."

Open link → load page → scroll days → do timezone math → fill the form. All the friction is on the other person.

The most respectful thing you can do instead:

- Propose specific times
- In 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 timezone
- With a backup link if nothing works

Something like:

> Here are a few options that should work on your end:
> • Tues, Jan 14 – 10:00–10:30am your time
> • Wed, Jan 15 – 1:30–2:00pm your time
> • Thurs, Jan 16 – 4:00–4:30pm your time
> If none of these work, here's my full calendar: [link]

Doing this manually every time sucks:
check calendar → convert timezones → format nicely.

𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗶𝘂𝗺 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀. Superhuman Mail has a built-in scheduler, but you still have to manually pick your available slots every single time. No memory, no defaults. It's just a slightly faster version of the same repetitive work.

I thought AI agents might solve this. Tested three: Howie, Fyxer, and a custom Lindy agent. None of them nailed it. They either got timezone conversions wrong, inconsistently replied, or made the back-and-forth longer instead of shorter.

𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸, 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 *𝗺𝗲*. The other person still gets a link. Still has to check their calendar, do timezone math, fill out a form. The friction just moved—it didn't disappear.

So I did what I usually do with this kind of annoyance:
I built a small tool for myself, then opened it up.

So I did what I usually do with this kind of annoyance:
I built a small tool for myself, then opened it up.

- Raycast extension that pulls from SavvyCal or Cal dot com
- You pick the recipient's timezone
- It spits out a preformatted message with a few options
- Each time is a clickable link—there's an optional Vercel app that pre-fills the time slot (neither SavvyCal nor Cal dot com support that natively)

Both are open source:

- Propose Times (Raycast extension)
- SavvyCal-Booker (optional one-click booking form)

Same pattern as Promptó for me: build something I genuinely rely on in my own workflow, then see if it quietly becomes indispensable for other people too.

This one just attacks a very specific kind of friction: making other people do the work to meet with you.

👉 (See link in first comment)

Curious: how are you making scheduling less painful for the people you work with?

Venture Athlete & International Expansion Expert | Thriving as Generalist in a Specialized Economy

I’m Dominik, founder, athlete, & creator. A proud generalist. This is my story: 

For the last 7 years, I helped bootstrap one startup from 0 to 1M in revenue and built the international business from scratch for one of Europe’s fastest growing EdTech companies (50 -> 240 employees in my three years there).

All while competing at the highest level of the beautiful sport of Lacrosse, including an appearance for the German National Team at the 2022 World Games (the Olympics’ little brother).

While my professional achievements may seem more impressive on paper, representing Germany on an international stage is the feat that I’m most proud of.

I wasn’t very athletic up until my mid-twenties. Very little talent, but a lot of injuries to make up for it.

Until one day, I started working with a personal trainer. He helped me break down the fundamentals I needed to fix.

I worked hard, and I worked consistently. Showed up to every practice, every gym session. Did my recovery & mobility work daily.

4 years later, I made the national team roster.

The potential was in me. But it needed help unlocking.

Throughout my entire career, I’ve also helped humans unlock their potential, just in different ways:

- By teaching people in rural Rwanda and Brazilian homeless shelter how to make glasses for less than $1, and how to build a business around it
- By bringing unemployed nurses from Italy to Germany and teaching them German, opening a completely different career path for them
- By expanding the leading operating system for schools throughout Europe, so that education becomes more digital and thus accessible
- By writing about my experiences online and sharing them with the world

In late 2023, I made the decision to quit my cozy, well-paid, full-time job that fit my profile perfectly.

I'm on a mission to build my own portfolio career - and help others to unlock theirs. Join me on my journey towards building a portfolio of cashflow-positive, impact-driven businesses.

These businesses have one goal: help others unlock their potential. Just like my personal trainer did for me.

I wish that some of the best portfolio company owners turned creators had documented their journey from day 1, and not retrospectively.

So that’s what I’m doing.

I write for generalists like myself, who want to make a living in a specialized economy without specializing themselves. 

You can do more than one thing in your life. 
Let’s design that life together. 

Sign up for my newsletter here: www.dominiknitsch.com/newsletter

Dominik Nitsch

The cool thing about a portfolio career: you can literally just do things. Like, star in a Prime Video series. 

The guys from Maxton Hall needed some people who actually play Lacrosse to play in the series. Shooting was in Berlin. So I took 2 days off and became the oldest high schooler you'll ever see. (and had to keep my helmet on at all times 😂)

Would I do it again? Probably not.
Was it fun? Absolutely. 

PS – wanna build your own portfolio career where you do more than just one thing? Download the Portfolio Career Playbook here: https://lnkd.in/dGZaPsrv

Founder @ Generalyst | building talent infrastructure for early-stage startups | 1,163 generalists read my newsletter to future-proof their career

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When I graduated from university, I was the perfect business-school cliché. 

Top 11% at TUM.
760 GMAT.
Ran a student org with 120 people.
Startup experience at a massively scaling company (Flix). 

What do you do as high-potential graduate? It felt like I had two options: 
1. Apply to McKinsey, BCG, or Bain. 
2. Apply to Siemens, Allianz, or BMW. 

That's what everyone did. It was the safe, high-status, well-paid career path. And at 22, I just didn't know any better. 

But here's the uncomfortable truth: 
Following the beaten path is intellectually lazy.

You don’t have to think about what you actually want.
You just copy-paste the life everyone around you is living.
Go to business school. Get a master’s. Work in consulting. Buy real estate.

But in the end, by doing so, you postpone the only decision that actually matters:
→ What do I want to spend my life building?

To answer this, you don't need more information. You need action. 

The beaten path is paved with other people’s dreams.
Build your own instead.

(Photo: me, fall 2016, on my way to a consulting interview)

Gonna be a busy week at Generalyst: 

- 3 startups pitching to a pool of ~80 hand-picked candidates (feels like quality on both sides is going up)
- launching a new product (in beta) on Wednesday 
- 10 in-person meetings with startups, candidates, partners 
- fully onboarding a new team member 

Guess the late evening sessions (photo below) paid off. 

LFG. 🔥

PS – 2 out of 3 of the positions being pitched currently aren't published anywhere else (in case you needed another reason to apply). 

PPS – just kidding, this was at 16:45, Berlin is just dark af in the winter

In 2025, Generalyst was just for full-time hires. In 2026, we’re adding internships. ⬇️

Starting today, you can hire interns via Generalyst. 
Why? 

Throughout my career, I’ve always had interns. Having them on board was awesome; some of them developed into close friends. 

Finding them was the difficult part. I remember vividly scouring university Facebook groups and posting my internship ad everywhere, with little resonance. If you don’t have a strong brand or infinite time, this intern sourcing can get kind of … tedious. 

I would’ve needed this back then. And I’m not the only one: when several companies started reaching out about hiring generalist interns, we HAD to do something. 

At the same time, throughout my studies, I would’ve needed to hear that it’s actually possible to build a career as a generalist. Even when I graduated, I believed that the only valid way to build a career was to go into consulting or join one of the Munich corporate behemoths. 

Little did I know that startups are a possibility, and that jobs where you can do a little bit of everything exist. 

Today, I believe the future belongs to generalists. This message needs to reach not just people actively looking for a full-time job, but also students. And by opening up the hard-to-navigate world of early-stage startups to them, I hope to spread the gospel of generalism. 

Here’s how it works: 

1. Aspiring interns apply to the Generalyst Internship Program 
2. We screen all applications and pick the very best (using our expertise from ~2.5k screened CVs)
3. Those create a profile in the Generalyst Internship Database 
4. As a founder, you can access this database (if you agree to our terms) – it includes everything you need to know and then some
5. You can request an interview with the candidate directly and set it up within 1-2 days 

From a company perspective: 
→ skip the entire job posting draft
→ skip the screening of 100s of applications (we do this for you)
→ skip the guessing game of who’s available now vs. later 

From an intern perspective: 
→ apply once, get several interviews
→ see companies you would’ve never found otherwise
→ access help from professional generalists 

Sounds too good to be true? Maybe, we’re just launching this thing. Probably will have a few kinks that still need to be worked out. 

But as with the Generalyst Flagship Program (see what we did there?), we’re trying to create an offer that’d be stupid not to take. 

For aspiring interns: apply via the link in the comments below. 
For founders looking to hire: email me (dominik at generalyst dot de) and I’ll send you the sales deck. 20% discount on your first internship hire if you comment on this post. 

LFG.

Simple trick that’ll 10X your networking ability: the “to-see list”. 

I keep an Apple Note with different cities in the world. Whenever I meet someone online that I want to meet, I simply add them to the list. 

And when I eventually come to the city, I simply reach out to all people on the list. Usually leads to 3-4 in-person meetings that I otherwise wouldn’t have had. 

Feel free to add me to yours for Berlin. (Or shoot me a DM if you wanna be on mine :)).

In my bubble, it’s become so sexy to be an entrepreneur that it’s almost cringe not to be one.

That’s not healthy – it pushes people into entrepreneurship who really shouldn’t be in entrepreneurship for their own sake.

If you value security, sleeping through the night and not waking up drenched in sweat, being able to buy nice things and watching movies on an airplane (like everyone around me as I’m typing these lines), then being an employee is absolutely, perfectly fine!

At the end of the day, most entrepreneurs do what they do simply because they can’t be bothered to do anything else (such as being stuck working for someone else).

I’ve tried the employee thing, it’s nice to close the laptop at the end of the day and say “not my f**king problem”, to receive a salary no matter how good or bad your performance was.

I realized: I just f**king hate following instructions that I don't agree with. I don't want to sit in meetings where I shouldn't be. I will not make decisions that are beneficial to investors and bad for everybody else involved. 

This doesn’t make an entrepreneur better or worse than someone who prefers the full-time job.
It’s just .. different.

This is the story of how I accidentally ended up working for one of Germany’s fastest growing startups (and how you can do it, too): 

During my studies, I was so busy with running a student org, playing Lacrosse, bartending, and sometimes studying, that I somehow didn’t see the need to do an internship throughout my first four semesters. Going into my fifth semester of Bachelor’s, I still didn’t have one. 

And it started to become problematic: a lot of applications were rejected because by that time, I should’ve already done one. 

One guy from my enactus team mentioned that the startup he’s working for always hires interns. They did like, long-distance buses. Flix or something 

I thought, man, I hate long distance buses. But out of desparation gave it a shot anyway – and got the invitation to interview. 

For the interview (it was a business development internship), I thought about what else Flix could do. At the time, I was going to a lot of festivals, and thought: man, if you don’t have a car, going to festivals sucks. Why not implement bus lines? 

Cool. Did that. Went to the interview. 

Then, the interviewer walked in. 

Wrist full of FESTIVAL BANDS. 

Oh f**k yeah, I had struck gold. She loved the idea, I got the internship, didn’t do anything for a few weeks besides moving boxes around on PPT slides, and eventually got reassigned to a new division. 

Together with Dominik Eggert, I started building out FlixCharter - a bus rental company inside Flix. Kind of in a Founder’s Associate function, learning from an experienced founder. 

That, in turn, gave me the confidence to start my own company after my studies. But had it not been for this internship, I might well have been a management consultant today. 

A seemingly random internship changed the entire trajectory of my career. 
I got lucky to find the right startup at the right time. 

So now, I want to re-engineer that luck for others like me, early in their career, not sure what they want to do. 

That’s why last week, we’ve launched the Generalyst Internship Program. Application-only, and free. 

We’re reversing the internship search process: instead of you applying to internships, hiring managers reach out to you. 

Apply today: https://lnkd.in/dVe7TGR3

PS – looking to hire a generalist intern? Email me at dominik at generalyst dot de. 
PPS – thank you, Tamara Christoph, for believing in me back then and making that offer! 🤝

Advice for anyone who wants to become a Founder’s Associate / Venture Builder: 

The best thing you can do is to show that you can build something yourself. 

A side hustle. 
A website. 
A social account. 

Entrepreneurs appreciate other entrepreneurs who don’t just talk the talk, but walk the walk. 

Building something yourself is the best entrepreneurial education, no matter what business schools are trying to sell you. 

PS: Have built something, however tiny it may be, yourself? Consider applying to Generalyst. Link is in my bio.

Last October, I spent a few hours playing Lacrosse against pro players from Canada. Here's what it taught me about B2B sales: 

(like, actually)

Chatting with Owen Grant (first-team all-star in college, now field and box pro), he told me: “when I got to the pros, practice was completely different – the focus was much higher on nailing the fundamentals perfectly, instead of running complex plays or doing crazy stuff individually.”

Running a business feels very similar: it comes down to making something people want, and then telling them about it. 

This doesn’t mean that it’s easy (it’s not); just simple.

Stop using complex 17-step AI-based outreach sequences (that you have to comment, idk, “AI overlords” or something to receive in your DMs). 

Focus on nailing the fundamentals.

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