At the kitchen table with Ruud — three months in
Ruud checks his portfolio four to five times a day. Not to trade — just because he likes to. For the past three months a small Aurono device has been running in the utility closet at his place. Last week we sat down at his kitchen table — for me, to hear how it’s going; for Ruud, just to talk about it, which he does with people in his network anyway.
What follows is an edited version of that conversation.
How did you start investing in the first place?
Ruud: With a stock-market competition at school, somewhere around 16 or 17. With pretend money, mind you. It went well, but pure luck. It did push me to start setting small amounts aside.
Eppo: And crypto?
Ruud: In a bar in Amsterdam-Zuid, with you actually. Someone brought up Bitcoin in a group chat and I thought: this is cool. I really had no clue what’s behind it, how you can invest in it, what the different ways are. We started trying tools together after that — algorithms, buy and sell triggers. That was the trigger to dig in deeper.
What does a normal week look like?
Ruud: Honestly? Pretty passive. No time or energy to put a lot of effort in. For the long term I do fundamentally believe in crypto, and that’s why a chunk of my portfolio sits there.
But I do look. Four or five times a day, just because I like it. At home I open Aurono on my phone, and when I’m out, Kraken and Bitvavo. It’s more monitoring than trading.
Eppo: Any manual trading next to Aurono?
Ruud: Yes, especially in hard crashes. When Bitcoin dropped from €88K to €55K, I bought more manually. Long term — for me, that’s exactly the moment.
What rules have you set for yourself?
Ruud: Honestly, not many. I used to mess around with penny stocks — pure play money, just to fool around with. Sometimes it went well, often not.
These last few years I put something into ETFs every month. Stable, long term, for myself and the kids. A nest egg for someday. That’s by far the biggest part of my portfolio.
Eppo: So no real strategy.
Ruud: No, more gut feel. If it’s high, I take some profit. Other than that, nothing.
Then Aurono came into the picture. How did that go?
Ruud: We were already working together on a PoC, so I knew the idea. What struck me back then was how bad the existing tools were that we were playing with. Linking multiple strategies together didn’t work, and there was no way to see which one was actually performing best. That really fed into the thought: this needs to be better and easier.
Eppo: And the moment you decided to join?
Ruud: Super cool, enthusiastic about the project. Plugged the device in and connected it. Did let it run in shadow mode for a while first — that way you can see, on real market data, what it would do, without orders actually going to the exchange. When that looked good, after about two weeks, I switched it to live so it could really get to work.
Eppo: Any doubts?
Ruud: Not really. It’s a physical device, not a cloud. If it doesn’t work, pull the plug. The only real mistake you can make is setting a bad strategy yourself — and that’s on you. The risk of trying it out is relatively low.
And the setup itself?
Ruud: I did need help with that. Installing, the first pilot, with Python. The manual was fine, but to be honest: when everything goes well, it’s great, but the moment something goes wrong, you get stuck immediately.
That said: I can see that the manuals and the devices get better release after release. For non-technical people, you’re already a long way along.
Eppo: And the first trade?
Ruud: In the first week, yeah. What struck me right away: most trades happen at night. On the daily and the 4-hour. I get notifications on my phone, and when I wake up I see what happened. It just works. And it’s clever how it works, you know. This is already a serious application.
How often do you check Aurono now compared to those first few days?
Ruud: At first I looked almost non-stop. Four, five times a day. Now it’s become a routine. In the morning, the news, a quick look at the major stock prices, and what Aurono is doing. Part of my standard ritual.
Eppo: You didn’t turn it off during the crash.
Ruud: No, I wouldn’t do that easily either. When we last spoke, Bitcoin was at €88K, and after that it touched €55K. I actually bought more manually during that period. Long term — for me, that’s the moment to buy, not to switch off.
What does Aurono do that you didn’t expect to appreciate?
Ruud: The Lab. Backtesting. I didn’t have that on the PoC, and I’m not actively using it right now because my current strategy is stable. But the moment I want to start a new strategy, I’ll definitely dig into it.
And the thinking itself — what makes a good strategy? What percentages? When to buy, when to sell? You’ve made me think about that differently than I did before.
Eppo: What would you want to see different?
Ruud: Two things. One: I’d like to see the price on the dashboard itself. Two: I’d like it to go beyond just crypto. A connection with stocks, for example.
Maybe one more: for beginners I’d offer a few common strategies as standard. Otherwise it’s pretty hard to put something good together from scratch.
Who is Aurono actually for?
Ruud: For anyone who invests. I even recommend it to people who don’t want to hear it, hahaha. I talk about it pretty often.
But it lands better with people who already invest. Someone who doesn’t do anything with investing and wants to start — I’d send them to standard ETFs first. You invest with money you can afford to lose. But the moment someone is investing? Then Aurono is a no-brainer as part of your portfolio.
Eppo: What would you tell someone setting it up for the first time?
Ruud: That the device is cool — and that you turn it on and it works. But that you do need to think about your strategy beforehand. That’s ultimately what it comes down to.
What didn’t I ask, but should have?
Ruud: What it’s worth, maybe. For the device, I’d definitely pay — how much exactly, I don’t know. And a transaction fee under one percent — I don’t even notice it. There’s room there for you to work with.
What I’m taking away
Four things stick with me after this conversation.
Aurono has become part of a morning ritual. Not “occasionally something to look at,” but standing alongside the news and the stock prices. That’s exactly where you want to be as a product.
The story about those first tools is worth its weight in gold. That it didn’t work to compare strategies, to see performance, to make one whole out of them — that’s what Aurono ended up being built on. A layer above the exchanges, not next to them.
Shadow mode is cheaper than buying trust. Two weeks watching what it would do on real market data, without a cent moving. That’s what takes someone from “I want to try this” to “I’ll let this loose on my portfolio” — proof on live data beats a promise every time.
During the crash, he bought more. That’s not an Aurono feature — that’s character. But the fact that he left Aurono running while Bitcoin lost a third of its value — that says something about trust in the system. And the local device plays a bigger role in that than I initially thought. Pull the plug whenever you want. He never has to use that option, but the fact that it’s there lowers the threshold to begin.
Aurono is still in early stages. Curious, or want to talk yourself? Send me a message — every conversation teaches us something new.
— Eppo