The short version
Most founder content is one of two things: hyped tutorials that don't survive the next model release, or academic essays from people who haven't shipped in five years. 500k.io is neither. It's a daily, opinionated, founder-to-founder log of what's actually working with AI to build toward $500K ARR.
Why $500K?
$500K ARR is the cleanest milestone for a solopreneur. Below it, you're still proving the market. Above it, you're hiring, delegating, optimizing — different problems, different content. The path from $0 to $500K with AI is the bottleneck for most founders right now, and that bottleneck is exactly what AI flattens. So that's the audience.
What's on the site
- The blog. 5 articles a day across news, tutorials, tool reviews, comparatifs, listicles, case studies, skill spotlights, and weekly recaps.
- The skills bank. 200+ Claude / Claude Code / MCP skills indexed, scraped weekly from GitHub, Anthropic, and the community. Every skill has install + use cases.
- The $500K AI Stack. 47 tools, ranked by use case, priced, with affiliate disclosure. Updated quarterly.
- The newsletter. One article a day in your inbox. Unsubscribe in one click. No fluff.
- The course. Claude Code Mastery — 8 modules on running a content factory + ops + sales with Claude Code. Cohort-based, launching Sprint 5.
How 500k.io makes money (transparency)
- Affiliate links. Disclosed. We only recommend tools we use ourselves. Most of the stack is free or under $50/mo.
- The course. $297-$497 cohort-based. Refund window. Real curriculum, not a 5-hour value-stack pitch.
- Newsletter sponsorships. Once we're past 3,000 confirmed subs. Clearly labeled, never camouflaged as editorial.
What we don't do: cookie banners (Plausible / Cloudflare Web Analytics, no banner needed), pop-ups on first visit, fake scarcity, or "best [thing]" listicles where every entry has the same affiliate program.
My stack (used daily)
The full list lives at /the-500k-ai-stack. The short version: Astro on Cloudflare, Supabase, Beehiiv + Resend, Bright Data MCP, Claude Code Max 5x as the orchestrator. Total monthly cost while building this: $110.
What I do when I'm not writing here
I co-founded The Kreators AI — a performance-marketing agency. Combined, we manage about $45M of Meta Ads spend across US bathroom remodeling, US personal injury, US SSDI, and FR senior insurance. Most of what I learn here gets pressure-tested over there first.
Find me elsewhere
- X / Twitter
- GitHub
- Email: maxime@500k.io
One last thing
If you're a founder who reads this site and one of these articles saves you a day, that's the whole point. DM me, tell me what landed. I read everything.