Choose good quests
Artificial Clients | Half-arsed startups | Doodles to code | Multi-layered calendars | Paradigm shifting tech + loads more…
🆕 Personal Updates
Welcome to the last issue of the year! With the holiday period quickly approaching and my child (hopefully) almost ready to grace us with his presence I’m trying to wrap up all my work and get ready to take some extended time off until the end of January with my family. Talking about January, I have something special planned for this newsletter which you won’t want to miss so keep an eye on your inbox in the NY.
If you do celebrate the Christmas and NY period have a fantastic time and don’t forget to take time to switch off! I certainly will. See ya in the NY.
Right, let’s get to it - time for this month’s roundup 👇
🔥 Top post last month: My home office tour (for some reason reason this was the most clicked link last month 🤷♂️)
📓 Articles
Choose Good Quests
Let’s kick off with a thought-provoking post by
and stimulate that grey matter. It’s timely given we are fast approaching the end of the year with time to reflect on our next year’s plans and goals.So, when was the last time you took some time to stop and think about your current life’s quest? Is it the right one? What trajectory are you currently on? Don’t ask me I have no idea!
Trae Stephens & Markie Wagner have sounded the alarm, “We are in a crisis, our top operators, exited founders, and investors — are almost all on bad quests.”
As we know, not all quests are created equal. “A good quest makes the future better than our world today, while a bad quest doesn't improve the world much at all, or even makes it worse.” The question this post looks to explore is, are some of the brightest minds pouring their energy into short-term, safe, small bets? What if they diverted that energy into long-term, risky but highly rewarding quests with positive world-changing consequences?
Check out their 2x2 quest matrix to understand some examples and perhaps try plotting yours to see where it lands.
The Final Chapter of My First Startup
Rand Fishkin finally shares his story after almost 17 years of reflecting on a company which defined his life and friendships. Rand was the founder of Moz - an SEO optimisation and research tool. After spending almost two decades building the company with his cofounder he was fired as CEO.
On a scale of 0-10, where 0 is “fired and escorted out of the building by security” and 10 is “left entirely of his own accord on wonderful terms,” my departure is around a 4.
He can now tell his story due to the acquisition being complete. In this post, he shares in detail his fraught experience of building a successful SAAS product and being ousted and left with $371k in savings (the equivalent of working 17 years as a founder and CEO for $21k a year). Spoiler, there is a silver lining, eventually, the company sold for much less than previous offers (Hubspots 2011 offer) and Rand got his payday but it was bittersweet. In this post, he shares his extremely candidate account of his firing, the stress, broken relationships, lessons learned, how he spent his payout and his new venture SparkToro.
🎁 Bonus content: I highly recommend Rand’s book titled - Lost & Founder.
Multi-layered calendars
Before we jump into this post, I need to point out how much of a pleasure it is to read Julian’s content. His blog is just incredibly designed. The type font, minimal aesthetic, stats on each post at the footer and the cherry on top - his incredible illustrations and visuals which make it seem like you are reading his notebook. Anyway, let’s jump into the post before I get carried away here. Just take a look yourself.
Julian is a designer at Linear. Perhaps one of the most copied websites by designers, so we can assume this guy must be doing something right.
In this post Julian explores calendars. Doesn’t sound that captivating, but when you think about it, they might be the most important tool we have. As Julian points out “These devices help us to plan and optimize how we spend our time.” However, despite there being infinite calendars available and each touting their unique features, there hasn’t been any dramatic innovation in years. Furthermore, calendars are part of our productivity stack, alongside note-taking apps, task managers and email. Julian argues we see these as four distinct activities, yet if you look closer, you’ll realise that they all heavily overlap. Julian provides his thesis on what a new approach to calendars could look like and how adding more contextual data layers on top of your calendar changes them from input only to provide meaningful output.
🎁 Bonus content: Check out his older post titled “AirPods as a Platform”. He provides a very compelling case for Apple to open up AirPods to developers.
Half-Assed Startup: Start your company and keep your day job
There is a captivating and perhaps glamorised idea that one day you can quit your job and go all in on that idea you have been desperate to launch to share with the world. You read about it, see it in movies and it looks pretty fun, however, not everyone has the financial luxury to take such a risk.
In this post, Tony Wright discusses the possibility of starting a company while still employed in another job. What a profound idea! But seriously, you would be surprised how many people don’t consider it or make excuses that they don’t have time. They put off the idea and think they need to go full-time on it. Tony shares his personal experience as a two-time founder (1 exit + 1 current YC-backed startup) and offers tips on how to successfully manage a part-time startup.
This is the approach I've taken in the past. Partly due to my risk-averse nature and also due to the products being somewhat more of a lifestyle business compared to a hypergrowth startup. Carving out time in the evenings and weekends in my calendar has certainly helped me balance my day job, personal life and side projects.
AI is about to completely change how you use computers
Love him or hate him, when Bill Gates gets excited about a new technology it’s worth paying attention. Despite Mircosoft being a $2.8 Trillion business Bill seems to think “software is still pretty dumb”. At least the guy is still humble.
Despite the term AI Agents being a somewhat new concept, Bill’s been thinking about them for the last 30 years, so you can imagine how excited this guy is that we are getting extremely close to fully autonomous personal Agents. As he mentions in this post:
Agents are not only going to change how everyone interacts with computers. They’re also going to upend the software industry, bringing about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to tapping on icons.
But what are AI Agents? As Zapier put it “Every time you want a new output, you have to provide a prompt. There's always a human to start the process. AI agents work in a different way. They're designed to think and act independently. The only thing you have to provide is a goal. They'll generate a task list and get to work autonomously.” Check out xx
Jakob Greenfeld’s AI Agent which scours the web for pain points and then rates them for their monetization potential and difficulty to solve.
In this post, Bill shares his thesis on the future of personal AI Agents. Depending on which angle you perceive this future, it could either be a very utopian future of work and life or a dystopian nightmare. What do you think?
🎁 Bonus content: Even After Freaky Friday, Microsoft is Still the AI King. Also, check out
Almost an Agent: What GPTs can do.🔗 Hyperlinks
Artificial client
Have you ever worked in an agency? or for some odd reason want to experience what it’s like to do so? Well, this beautifully designed and hilarious product allows you to experience the pain.
Disclaimer: If you have PTSD from agencies approach this with caution as it could open some old wounds.
The team at Dentsu Creative have brought to life a series of hilarious artificial client personas which you can select and upload any design to get some critical verbal feedback. I’m seriously impressed with this tool. The design is 10/10, and whatever AI models it trained on they deserve a comedy award. The roasts are brilliant. Fancy winding up a designer? Grab one of their designs, upload it, share the feedback and sit back and watch the colour drain from their face.
Jokes aside, this could be a seriously impressive tool with a few tweaks that allow designers and product teams to get quick unbiased feedback on designs in seconds based on particular artificial user personas.
Software Applications Incorporated
Keep your eyes peeled over the coming months to find out what’s brewing at Software Applications Inc. While it’s still in steal mode, they have shared a few breadcrumbs with their intentions. As you can imagine AI is involved.
The ultimate goal is to recreate the magic that you felt when you used computers in the ’80s and ’90s.
In short, they are looking to bring generative AI to the desktop. They believe current operating systems are too rigid and don’t offer enough flexibility.
Having already raised $6.5 million in funding from OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Figma’s CEO Dylan Field (amongst others) I’m going to be watching this product like a hawk!
Until we find out more, check out their website and get transported back to 1997 with their Mac OS 8 themed site. The entire site is built using an open-sourced Mac OS 8 emulator. I’ve spent the last hour playing around with it digging for some easter eggs. If you find anything let me know.
📱 Products
Musicfy | Your AI Music Assistant
I could write a long summary of this new product, but in all honesty, it wouldn’t do it justice. Instead, just watch this short video clip and get ready for your jaw to drop. Incredible.
I’m no musician so it’s hard to comprehend the impact of this technology but it definitely feels like it’s lowering the barrier to entry. You can give it a shot for free here. Arib (who is just 19) built Musicfy AI during his time at Buildspace. He’s also just joined Founders Inc as the youngest portfolio founder. Keep an eye on this guy!
tldraw| turning dooling into code
If you can’t code I bet you can envisage what you want to create. Imagine you could simply sketch out your idea and let AI bring it to life. Well, that’s pretty much possible with tldraw’s new AI tool currently in beta.
Inspired by Figma engineer Sawyer Hood who posted on X a video showing how he used the tldraw component to draw a user interface, export the drawing as a picture, send the picture to GPT-4V, and get back the HTML / CSS for a working website based on the drawing. Steve Ruiz (founder of tldraw) and the team quickly set out to bring this natively into tldraw.
If you're looking to understand its possibilities, check this out. By sketching out a schematic of the old iPod, tldraw can create a prototype in seconds and export the code. If you had shown me something like this just a year ago it would have blown my little mind - today? anything seems possible.
🎁 Bonus content: Learn how this was hacked together.
ID by Amo | Bringing Social Back
Social media is just an endless scroll of algorithmic content full of influencers and thread boys. What happened to the good ol days when you could creatively design your social profile like Myspace or Bebo, with no grid to curate, followers to collect, algorithms to game, or meaningless story replies from strangers?
ID by Amo is bringing that nostalgic approach back to social apps. ID is an infinite canvas. Think of it as a blend of Pinterest, Miro and Myspace. The app functions like an empty canvas where you can add stickers, photos, text, and drawings. You can also share and steal content from other profiles. After a while, your profile becomes this sort of spatial canvas. But there’s a social twist as you can both see your friends’ profiles and add things to your own profiles. Every virtual object can be moved, resized and rotated.
ID was founded by ex-Zenly founder Michael Goldenstein. In Feb this year, Zenly was shut down by their acquirer Snap despite having 40m active users.
Beta Directory | Discover the latest tech products
This month’s latest early access beta products brought to you by Beta Directory are:
Krea AI: Unlike any other AI design tool you've used before.
Dot: An intelligent guide designed to help you remember, organize, and navigate your life.
Spoke: The Priority Inbox for Product Builders.
🐽 Other links to consume
- - The History of Microsoft Encarta
Turn your LinkedIn profile into a beautiful personal site in seconds
The 12 Hour Walk will leave you brimming with business ideas and clarity
Easlo turned Notion templates into a $1M empire - here’s how.
🔮 Flashback
This month I’ll leave you an icon of 80s and 90s technology. To date, we still use it as the unified save icon. It could store a mere 1.44 Megabytes of data and came in a variety of designs. They were originally designed by IBM and their name comes from their dimensions and their floppiness. In case you were born after the 1990s and haven’t had exposure to these delightful objects, I’m talking about the floppy disk. More specifically the 3.5-inch floppy disk (Originally called a diskette). During the 80s and most of the 90s, there was no internet, and this is why floppy disks became so popular, as they allowed data transfer between computers.
That’s it for this month!
If you made it this far, hit reply or jump into the comments and tell me what you thought of this edition. Was this 🔥 or 🗑. I read every response 👀
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Until next the next issue,
Sam | @thisdickie 👨💻