From Twitter to Toolhouse: How 2 Engineers Built a Profitable AI Infra Platform Without VC Bloat

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Founder’s Background and Intro

Daniele Bernardi is the CEO and co-founder of Toolhouse, a developer-first AI agent platform. Before Toolhouse, Daniele worked at Twitter and Meta, where he saw firsthand how bloated infrastructure and talent wars were slowing down real innovation. He started Toolhouse to give developers and lean teams the power to build and deploy AI agents in minutes, without relying on VC-fueled, over-engineered platforms.

From writing code to rethinking the entire backend of AI automation, Daniele is focused on putting power back in the hands of builders—especially those priced out by Big Tech.

What you’ll learn:

1. Why AI infra pricing is broken and who it's built for (spoiler: not developers)

2. How Toolhouse helps 2 engineers ship faster than teams of 50

3. The "Simpsons model" of global product execution

4. How to monetize agent deployments as a consultancy or agency

5. What "seed trapping" means in AI startups—and why it's smarter than chasing unicorns

Some Takeaways:

1. Big Tech is poaching talent and reselling AI tools to the same companies they drained

2. Toolhouse lets devs deploy agents via CLI with no infra overhead

3. Developers retain full ownership of their agents—no vendor lock-in

4. Revenue-sharing models let agencies monetize Toolhouse without deep AI expertise

5. You don’t need a $20M seed round to win in AI—you need leverage and simplicity

Where to find Speaker:

• X: twitter.com/i_am_daniele

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamdaniele/

• Website: https://toolhouse.ai

In this episode, we cover:

00:00 - Why there’s no shortcut to value in AI

01:12 - Daniele’s background & why Toolhouse was created

03:41 - Live CLI demo: building a Hacker News agent

07:37 - Visual interface vs developer-first CLI

12:44 - The problem with current AI deployment workflows

15:25 - The partner program & revenue share for agencies

21:37 - Toolhouse pricing philosophy & Toyota mindset

24:23 - Why VC expectations are changing in the AI era

29:47 - "Dirty secrets" of AI agent pricing and lock-in

35:29 - Breaking down bloated AI infra cost structures

43:22 - The "Simpsons model": build in Italy, deploy globally

46:40 - Why geopolitical alignment matters in AI infra

50:58 - Are jobs really going away? A founder's honest take

56:47 - Indie devs, bootstrapped agencies, and the rise of AI services

01:04:01 - How Toolhouse differs from Crewai, LangChain & others

01:10:28 - Dev-first, runtime-first, and full agent ownership with Toolhouse

For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]

Referenced:

• OpenAI’s $490K engineer offers vs Germany's $53K average

• The "seed trapping" startup model

• Revenue-share programs for agencies

• Zapier vs Toolhouse vs LangChain comparison

• Global pricing accessibility (India, Europe, US)

Find Case Studies of all other episodes here.