Hi, I'm Daan.

Full name Daniel Haket. Twenty years in international banking — trade finance, operations and risk & control at ABN AMRO and Deutsche Bank — now building and reviewing the AI & B2B tools I actually run my business and my life on. Happiest with my family, anywhere in Asia, surrounded by kind people.

Dutch · building from Asia, with my family · Connect on LinkedIn → · Watch on YouTube

01 — The corporate era

Beyond the Rush

For two decades, my world was international banking. I started at ABN AMRO and spent the back half of my career at Deutsche Bank — running trade finance operations and, later, risk & control across Europe, and leading service teams in some of the world's most demanding markets: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia. I hold a master's in Business Administration from Erasmus University Rotterdam. It was demanding, well-paid work — and somewhere along the way it quietly took over everything else: the evenings, the weekends, the headspace that was supposed to belong to my family.

The part I never tired of was the people — the teams across nine countries, the colleagues who became friends. That's a thread you'll see running through everything here: I'd rather build with good, kind people than chase a bigger title.

When large language models arrived, something clicked. The most interesting work of the next decade, I realised, wouldn't happen inside a bank. It would happen at the desk of anyone who could ship a working system in a weekend with the right AI tooling. So I stepped out of the rush — not to chase a bigger title, but to buy back my own time.

02 — The Saigon shift

The Saigon Shift

We didn't move to Vietnam for a sabbatical. We came to live. My wife and I had already spent years in Asia — we lived in Indonesia before this — and Saigon felt like the place where the whole family could finally breathe. Our son and daughter are at international school here; the city takes care of the rest.

What I was really after was presence. Being at the breakfast table instead of on a 7am call. Watching the kids grow up close instead of over a weekend. Staying curious about the world with the people I love actually in it — a market I've never walked, a fruit I've never seen growing on the tree, a rainbow over the skyline after the afternoon rain.

The whole reason any of this exists.

03 — The validated stack

Technology as an Enabler

Here's the part people get wrong about automation. I don't build autonomous AI systems so I can work more. I build them so the heavy, repetitive work runs itself — so I can close the laptop, step away from the screen, and be where I actually want to be.

That philosophy runs through everything I build. AIBuilder Marketplace is the heart of it: 235 reviewed tools, every one with a hand-researched pricing dossier — explorable in the Honest Atlas (cost-trap flags, each with its evidence sentence attached), actionable through the Stack X-Ray (audit what you already pay) and the AI Roadmap generator, and summarised in our own research, The Hidden Cost Report 2026. Plus 78 free browser tools, the 20-second Tool Finder and the deals hub. Around it I run a small network of focused sites, and The Weekly AI Edge is the personal proof: how I wire those same tools into live workflows to reclaim time and build a more deliberate, offline life. If the Marketplace is the market selection, the Edge is the proof.

And when I say honest, I mean it structurally. In July 2026 I removed every third-party star rating from this site — over a thousand pages’ worth — because I couldn’t source the numbers to my own standard. What replaced them is better: cost-trap flags derived from my own research, each carrying the evidence sentence that justifies it, and a public research report you can check claim by claim. No invented prices, no invented savings, no stars I can’t prove. How we review →

The free tools come from the same conviction. I believe the everyday utilities — 78 of them now, from a PDF merger to the Renewal Radar that guards your subscription deadlines — should simply be free: no signup, no trial clock, running entirely in your browser so your data never leaves your device. Making life easier shouldn’t start with a paywall. But honesty cuts both ways: every free tool ships with a guide that says exactly where and when a paid tool genuinely does the job better — because the goal is the right tool for you, not the free one at any cost.

There's one area where my background isn't just relevant, it's the whole point: business finance. Twenty years in trade finance and banking risk means I read a tool like a multi-currency account, a corporate card or a payments platform the way a practitioner does — what the FX really costs, where the compliance and controls sit, what breaks at scale. That's the lens behind reviews like Aspire and the best business finance & multi-currency accounts guide.

The wider network

One philosophy, six focused sites — each a different lens on the same question: which tools genuinely earn their place, and how do you use them to buy back your time?

• AIBuilder Marketplace — the honest home base: 235 reviewed tools, the Atlas, the Stack X-Ray and 78 free browser tools.
• Office Software Marketplace — the same vetted tools, curated for everyday office & operations work.
• Marketing & Sales Software — high-intent tools for growth, CRM and sales automation.
• ZeroTouchSupport — autonomous customer support, business phone systems and AI voice agents.
• The Weekly 2% Edge — deep case studies on the exact stack I use, with my live trading system.
• The Weekly AI Edge — my personal hub, cutting through the AI hype.

My Operational Foundation

The only tools I review are tools I run on real, live systems — with real money on the line. These are the deep reviews behind my own stack:

• Replit — where I built a fully automated retail trading system.
• Bitvavo — the exchange my trading system executes on (best EUR/BTC pair in Europe).
• Hume AI — emotion-aware voice AI I've put through its paces.
• Beautiful.ai — the presentation tool I lean on when decks have to look sharp fast.

How I review

Every review on this site goes through the same filter:

• Have I actually used the product, or am I borrowing someone else's experience? If it's the latter, I label it that way.
• What did it cost me — in money, time, and frustration — to onboard?
• What does the product do badly? A review with no honest negatives is not a review; it's an ad.
• Who is this not for? The hosting that's perfect for me as a solo builder is the wrong choice for an agency with 80 client sites.
• If I had to renew today, would I? That's the only question that matters.

AI in the writing process

I want to be transparent about this, because the AI-content question is everywhere right now.

I use AI heavily — both Claude (via Claude Code) and my own agent Victor — to draft, structure, translate, and refine articles. I don't pretend otherwise. What I don't do is hit “publish” on raw model output. Every review is shaped by my actual usage of the tool, my own opinions, my own numbers where I have them, and edited by me.

If a section reads like a press release, I'd genuinely like to know — it means I missed something in the edit.

Corrections policy

If I got a price, a cap or any claim wrong, tell me: daniel@aibuildermarketplace.com. Verified corrections go live within 48 hours — pricing pages change weekly, and honest also means correctable. Every factual claim on this site links back to a documented source (usually the vendor's own pricing page, often with an archived receipt), so you can check my work.

Affiliate disclosure

Most of the outbound links on this site are affiliate links. If you sign up for a product through one of my links, I may earn a commission. This costs you nothing extra.

What this doesn't mean: that I'd ever recommend a tool I don't believe in for the sake of a payout. The conversion rates on affiliate links are bad enough without me trashing my own credibility. The math only works if you trust me.

Get in touch

If you spot something wrong, want me to test a specific tool, or just want to argue about whether Cloudways or Hostinger is the better VPS choice — email me at daniel@theweeklyaiedge.com. I read everything.