Hey friends, Sometimes AI gets me excited ("wow, look at what we can build now!") and sometimes it gets me scared ("are my kids going to be able to find a job?"). Brian Casel and Justin Jackson are going live at 12:15 pm Pacific today to chat about it: On today's topic list: Sora V2 app OpenAI eating more SaaS categories? Tony Dinh and TypingMind - super inspiring Agent OS 2.0 is out. What's next? Could we do Aaron's "no-devices vision quest?" How do you introduce tech (or entrepreneurship)...
6 days ago • 1 min read
Hope you're having a good Sunday! Here are a few things on my mind... Thoughts on vibe coding and V0.dev I've been experimenting a bunch with Vercel's https://v0.app/ this week. I used it to build a free tool for podcasters: https://art.transistor.fm/ What blows my mind is V0's interface: you prompt it with your vision for how you want something to work and look, and it provides a near-instant feedback loop, showing you what it might look like. I had to get a bunch of thoughts out, so I did a...
10 days ago • 1 min read
Here are a few things I've been contemplating lately: ------- ⛈️ What kills motivation? Aaron Francis wrote about this in his newsletter, and I can’t stop thinking about it: “Maybe, working hard doesn’t lead to burnout, but the lack of hope leads to burnout. If you're working really hard for something that you don't believe will pay off, it's easy to lose motivation. But if you believe that the thing you're working on will have a payoff, the amount of work almost doesn’t matter.” Working on...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hey friends, This should be fun. Ian Landsman (founder of HelpSpot and "Business Dad" to founders everywhere) is going to hop on the call with Brian and Justin today. You can join us (live) at 12:15pm Pacific: On today's topic list: Can burnout be a lack of motivation? When the reward no longer feels worth pursuing, is that when you lose steam? "What if this doesn't work? What's the backup plan?" Come join us in the chat! Cheers,Justin Jackson – BlueskyBrian Casel – Bluesky | Twitter PS:...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Do you have thoughts on any of this? Some things I've been contemplating lately: ------- ⛪ Popular marketing strategy: start a cult I can't stop thinking about this post by Evan Armstrong: One increasingly popular marketing strategy is to found a cult. Founders have spent the last ten years learning from the successful cults (Tesla, Anduril, Stripe, Palantir, and Airbnb) and the destruction of multiple unsuccessful ones (Theranos, WeWork, Fast, Quibi, and FTX). There is a new playbook of cult...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
I think it's wild that the same amount of effort can produce wildly different results (across different endeavours). For example, you might work on a project for weeks and months, only to have it receive a tepid response. Then, a different piece of work (that you whipped together in an afternoon) takes off and gets a much bigger reaction. (You can read this article online) Anything worth doing will require a fair amount of effort and work. But it's also possible to invest a fair amount of...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
So much of what made culture great between the '60s and '90s was that you had to work for it. There was friction. You'd go to a record store, or a book store, or a thrift store, and browse for hours, just hoping for one good find. Maybe we need more of that on the internet. Do we need to be constantly inundated with a firehose of content tuned to our lowest, base desires? These days, you don't go out and find cool stuff. You get served whatever pablum the platforms think you'll consume. We...
2 months ago • 1 min read
"Never tell me the odds." – Han Solo, Star Wars. What are the odds? Yesterday, I watched my favorite hockey team (the Edmonton Oilers) lose to the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup finals. Every season, all 32 NHL teams have the same goal: "Win the Cup." But only one team can win. Even a strong team (like the Oilers) has only a 12% chance of winning. Put another way: they had an 88% chance of not winning. What are your odds? A founder building a new startup also faces daunting odds. As...
4 months ago • 1 min read
When I got to the address, the door looked like this: sketchy However, once inside, I was surprised to see an incredible podcast recording studio: Justin and Nathan at Kit studios On April 1st, Nathan Barry (founder of Kit) asked me to join him in an industrial area of Chicago to record a podcast. This was for the opening of the new Kit Studios in Chicago. Even cooler: anyone with a Kit account can use it. (I'm told the outside is much nicer now. 😉) Nathan and I sat down, and he interviewed...
4 months ago • 1 min read
