How a privacy meltdown led me to rebuild everything
It was 11 PM on a Tuesday, and I was arguing with a chatbot.
I’d asked it to help me write marketing copy for my calendar app — nothing crazy, just punchy taglines for a local events platform in Vermont. But the AI kept refusing. “I can’t generate promotional content that might be misleading,” it said.
Misleading? It’s a community calendar. I’m helping people find pottery classes and jazz concerts.
That’s when it hit me: I don’t own this. None of it. Not the conversation, not the output, not even the right to ask certain questions. I was renting someone else’s brain, and they’d installed guardrails I never agreed to.
The Wake-Up Call
I run a small web design business in southern Vermont. For the past year, I’ve been building tools — a WordPress plugin for user profiles, a calendar-as-a-service for local businesses, automation systems to help me do more with less.
AI was supposed to be my secret weapon. One guy, competing with agencies, because I had robots on my team.
But the more I leaned on these tools, the more I noticed:
- My prompts were training their models. Every idea I typed was feeding the machine.
- The censorship was arbitrary. Sometimes helpful, sometimes absurd.
- I had no idea where my data went, or who could see it.
I’m not paranoid. But I am a solopreneur. My ideas are my inventory. And I was giving them away for free.
Down the Rabbit Hole
I started looking for alternatives. Self-hosted models. Open-source options. Anything that would let me work without feeling watched.
That’s when I found Venice.
At first, I thought it was just another API wrapper. But then I read the fine print: Your prompts are not stored. Your data is not used for training. We don’t even know who you are.
Privacy wasn’t a feature. It was the foundation.
What Makes Venice Different
Let me explain this like I’d explain it to my neighbor:
Imagine you hired an assistant. Smart, capable, knows everything. But there’s a catch — every conversation you have gets recorded and sent to a company you’ve never met. They use your ideas to train the next assistant. And sometimes, your assistant just… refuses to help. No explanation.
That’s most AI right now.
Venice is different. It’s like hiring an assistant who:
- Doesn’t keep notes. Your conversations disappear when you’re done.
- Works for you, not them. No hidden training, no data harvesting.
- Doesn’t lecture you. You’re an adult. You decide what’s appropriate.
- Speaks every language. Claude, GPT, Llama, DeepSeek — all through one door.
And here’s the clever part: when you use models like Claude through Venice, the original company (Anthropic) doesn’t see you. They see Venice. You’re anonymous.
My New Setup
I rebuilt my entire workflow. Here’s what it looks like now:
I have an AI assistant named Atlas. (I named him — felt right.) Atlas runs through something called OpenClaw, which is like a command center for AI agents. Venice provides the brainpower.
Every night, Atlas gets to work:
- Auditing my websites for SEO issues
- Drafting blog posts from press releases
- Researching trending topics for content
- Organizing my notes from the day
When I wake up, there’s a report waiting. Drafts ready to review. Problems flagged.
I’m still one guy. But now I have a team that never sleeps, never leaks my ideas, and never tells me what I’m allowed to think.
The Crypto Thing (Bear With Me)
Venice has a token called VVV. I know — “crypto” makes some people’s eyes glaze over. But here’s why it matters:
The big AI companies are building walled gardens. Your data goes in, their profits come out, and you get… access, maybe. If they feel like it. If you follow the rules.
Venice is betting on a different future. One where AI is owned by the people who use it. Where privacy isn’t a premium feature — it’s a right.
The token is part of that vision. It aligns incentives: the platform succeeds when users succeed.
You don’t have to care about crypto to use Venice. But if you’ve ever felt like Big Tech treats you as the product instead of the customer… this is the alternative being built.
Who Is This For?
If you’re a developer, you’ll love the API. One key, every model, zero hassle.
If you’re a solopreneur like me, you’ll love the freedom. Build what you want without asking permission.
If you’re just a person who wants to use AI without feeling surveilled — yeah, it’s for you too.
The Bottom Line
I’m not going back.
The old way felt like borrowing someone else’s tools and hoping they wouldn’t notice what I was building. The new way feels like ownership.
Venice isn’t perfect. Nothing is. But for the first time in a year, I feel like my AI works for me — not the other way around.
If that sounds like something you’ve been looking for, check it out.
