There has been a growing number of articles and personal stories from people trying to move away from Google, Slack, and other large platforms.

The reasons vary.

Geopolitics plays a role. European governments are pushing toward open source solutions. On Hacker News, you can find countless threads about companies experimenting with alternatives to the big players. Tariffs and regulations dominate the headlines, but underneath that, there is a broader desire for independence.

Personally I think we gave an away a good chunk of the good internet with this centralization. For sure, it helped to spread technology to many people, but it limits our ambitions to developer something new.

At the same time, everything feels like an excuse to burn tokens and do some “vibe coding” building your own thing is coming back.

There is probably more to it, but this is what I observe from where I stand.

Maximizing What I’m Good At

When I decided to start my own business, I realized that my most valuable asset is my ability to maximize my knowledge.

I am selling what I am good at.

To do that well, I need visibility, alignment, and enough exposure to interesting problems. What I am ultimately trying to build is a topic for another day, but the direction is clear: I want to amplify my strengths, not dilute them.

For now, I am pushing hiring as far away as possible. I primarily do consulting, and my current customers are paying for Gianluca — not for someone else. I already see how that model naturally wants to evolve, but before involving other people I need to be fully comfortable with the systems, the positioning, and the long-term direction.

More importantly, consulting alone is not what I want to scale.

Subscriptions Are Not Just About Money

This brings me to the core point: I need to be careful about what I subscribe to.

Not only because of money.

Not only because of bureaucracy — although in Italy, we are particularly talented at that.

With mandatory electronic invoicing, I must register not only the invoices I issue but also reconcile every invoice I receive for services from companies that do not comply with Italian electronic invoicing standards.

Only a few of the large providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) handle this properly. Most of the shiny startups offering interesting services for my type of business do not. So that “simple” €15/month service can easily cost double once you factor in the accounting time and overhead.

The Infrastructure Reality

Even cloud providers are part of this equation.

I currently run some workloads on Hetzner. Many of the people trying to move away from hyperscalers are choosing it. It feels raw enough to be tactically interesting.

But they do not invoice in the Italian format.

That means more administrative friction for small monthly amounts.

So I am looking around for an Italian partner. Since datacenter automation is one of my core areas, it would be ideal to find a company that is not just looking for a customer, but also for collaboration. I have worked with hosting providers of different sizes before — building something together would be much more interesting than simply consuming a service.

Workflow Alignment Matters

The same logic applies to communication tools.

I am trying to push more toward mailing lists. I host Mailman 3 and manage my own setup. But Slack is still where most of the activity happens. I pay for Slack. Some clients invite me as an external contributor. Others give me accounts under their domains.

Context switching between workspaces is real.

My goal is simple: maximize what I am good at. Workflow alignment is critical. With email, I know how to structure information and process it efficiently. Slack does not give me the same clarity.

Tools shape thinking. And thinking is an asset for me.

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The LLM Elephant in the Room

Then there are LLMs.

I move between “free” plan for OpenAI Codex and paid Claude subscriptions that some customers provide specifically for their projects. That creates another kind of fragmentation — switching environments, models, and workflows depending on who I am working with.

I have experimented with Mistral. I have not yet fully explored Qwen. Claude still feels stronger in many cases, but I need more time.

Interestingly, I am not burning tokens aggressively. This tells me I am doing this correctly.

I even forced myself to pick a company project and use it purely for intense “vibe coding,” just to understand the limits and mechanics of these tools. Yes! I am developing the company administrative dashboard for invoices, contacts management, expenses and so on. It feels crucial enough to put care on it and to get back to workflow I feel I can save a lot of time with good automation in it.

Learning agentic coding is necessary but being consumed by them is optional.

Service Proliferation and Fragmentation

Two months into this phase, I am observing carefully how potential customers operate and how I can support them best.

Service proliferation is real.

Fragmentation is real.

Multiple accounts for the same service. Multiple providers solving overlapping problems. Different invoicing systems. Different collaboration tools.

It forces me to constantly switch contexts.

But getting my hands dirty and observing closely is essential. The goal is not to complain about fragmentation — it is to eventually reduce it, or at least manage it strategically.

Because ultimately, everything must support what my customers are paying for: clarity, execution, and leverage.

We Are Aligned

The encouraging part?

My customers are heterogeneous — generative AI companies, backbone networking for the AI era, context-aware systems — but they all share one thing: they accepted a subscription-based collaboration model with me.

We are both measuring the value of the work we do together over time not as isolated transactions, but as continuous improvement. Not based on the hours the right solution takes to be figured out and developed.

And that is why I must be careful about what I subscribe to. Every subscription is not just a voice of cost. It is a commitment of attention, process, and cognitive load. And attention is the real scarce resource.