How this ex agency strategist built a $2M+ crypto marketing empire using vibe coding

Matt Bond joined me to break down vibe coding and vibe hacking. We talked about why the big agency model looks shaky when small teams can ship interactive tools in the same time it used to take to make a deck. And we built something live, from Reddit research to working prototype in under an hour. Register for upcoming Catalyst webinars to catch more sessions like this.

Top takeaways

1. Vibe coding destroyed the gap between idea and shipped product The barrier is gone. You dont need a dev team anymore to build something interactive. Matt put it clearly:

"The barrier to entry between idea and vision versus shipping a product has been destroyed."

This means if you have a cultural insight or see a gap in a community, you can build a tool that fills it before lunch. We proved this by building brief.wtf, a translator for agency briefs, in about 30 minutes. 2. Vibe hacking is culture hacking with code Building for a scene means the tool has to feel specific. If outsiders get confused, thats actually a good sign. Matt explained:

"To vibe hack something that resonates with a specific group, then it cant resonate with everyone because if it resonates with everyone, then it has no intrinsic meaning to that subculture."

He proved this with agentporn.ai, a site built for developers that got 200 email signups and a dozen job inquiries overnight because it spoke their language. 3. Reddit is free R&D if you actually read it

Every subculture lives somewhere online and most of them hang out on Reddit. The trick is lurking long enough to catch the inside jokes, the pain points that keep showing up, and what gets people roasted. Thats where the real insights live, not in some persona deck about Sally who loves Sunday brunch.

4. AI codes but humans place the cultural bets Claude can help you brainstorm and Replit can build the site but the original idea still comes from a human. As Matt said:

"AI couldnt come up with it. That concept it can code it but its rooted in a human insight."

This is where the perspective premium matters more than ever. 5. The big agency model based on headcount is in trouble When 10 people with agents can ship faster than 1,000 people with process, the whole game changes. Matt sees it coming:

"The next generation of great agencies arent going to have a thousand people. Theyre going to have a hundred people or 10 people and like a hundred agents and like a really freaking strong point of view."

Key learnings

Start with the scene first. Spend time in the subreddit or Discord or wherever they hang out. Learn what makes them laugh and what makes them angry. Build your knowledge base from real conversations, not made up personas. Build tiny and ship fast. Microsites and mini tools beat long strategy decks for testing ideas. Most startups die in Figma and most ideas rot in Notion, use vibe coding to skip that. Make it specific on purpose. Add Easter eggs and language that only insiders understand. If your tool makes sense to everyone it probably wont resonate deeply with anyone. Use persona based brainstorming. Build a custom bot in Claude that thinks like someone from your target scene, then argue with it and push for sharper hooks. You can even have two personas consult each other like a culture hacker talking to a UX designer. Expect bugs at the last mile. What they dont tell you is vibe coding always requires debugging. API keys fail, PDFs dont parse, models hit quota limits. When you get stuck looping, clone the project and start clean.

How to apply this

If youre at an agency or running a startup, think about the scenes your brand wants to join. Find where they hang out online and start reading. Look for repeated complaints or inside jokes that feel universal to that group. Then use the vibe coding build system to prototype something small that solves a real problem or just makes them laugh. Ship it in their community and see what happens. The brands and founders who figure out why vibe coding is actually culture hacking will be the ones building real relationships with communities instead of just talking at them. Want to build your own vibe coded project? Book a strategy call with Catalyst to map your first culture hacking experiment.