How much $ to leave your job?
This I'm sharing a glimpse into how I create this newsletter. In this post, I discuss how I find the content each month, my experiments, how I automate elements of the process, my tech stack, why I created it in the first place and some tips if you're considering starting your own. (8 min read)
📓 Articles
This is the fascinating story of Notions last-minute pivot and epic comeback from the brink of potential failure. Carmel mentions the founders moved from SF to Japan - why? Because "Neither of us spoke Japanese and nobody there spoke English, so all we did was code in our underwear all-day". Ivan Zhao - Notion Co-founder. (6 min read)
In this post, Rik Nieu asks other online creators "how much money would be enough for you to consider jumping in and going full-time on your own projects?" It's a scary thought we've all mulled over. I'm a firm believer in keeping a full-time job and experimenting on the side. Once your closer to that number then consider if you could multiply it by focusing on it full-time. What's your number? (5 min read)
Swyx explains what happened when he crossed $100k in sales with his side-project. His initial goal had always been to quit his job - but when he reached that goal he didn't. "I wondered if something was wrong with me. Being on social media exposed me to a lot of hustle porn constantly telling me to quit my job." I really enjoyed this super frank post and his thesis for "Part-time creators". (11 min read)
🔗 Links
Like most of the good Clubhouse chats, I miss them in the UK. But some genius recorded this one. Facebook, Shopify and Spotify founders and CEO's discuss the future of the creator economy. When do these guys get together like this? Well basically never. They have some really interesting predictions on the future of the creator economy, which, if come to fruition could make for an interesting future economy and a new approach to our traditional work/ life model. (1 hour listen)
I've been sharing a few folks recently in past newsletters that have been part of the On-deck fellowships. They recently completed their first demo-day for the No-Code track. This demo day provides you with a great insight into what can be achieved with No-Code. I'm blown away by these talented founders and their products. (1h 55min watch)
Epic just recently announced 'MetaHuman Creator' - a browser-based app that lets developers and creators create real-time 3D character models in "less than an hour." This trailer provides a glimpse into the new tool and from what I can see it's like nothing else on market. The fidelity is just insane and their library of pre-built components will save creators months. There is no doubt we are at the point of hyper-realistic digital avatars. (1m 30min watch)
📱 Products
I recently watched Rahul Vohra's (founder of Superhuman) demo of Askviable on Twitter using real customer feedback data. It's built on top of GPT-3 and from what I have seen, it provides human-like responses to queries in seconds. I'm often sifting through customer feedback surveys with founders and find the process of moving data around on a spreadsheet really inefficient. I'm looking forward to giving this a shot.
Created by Julien & Amogh - eesel automatically brings together all your work in one place. Google docs, Figma designs, Notion, Miro, Github you name it - if it has a URL, eesel can save it. It’s free, works with pretty much any tool you use and doesn’t compromise on privacy.
Minh-Phuc Tran is building a neat Twitter tool for Notion users. Write, plan, schedule, and see detailed analytics of your tweets seamlessly on Notion, so you can focus on the creative. He's been tweeting his journey throughout the build process.
Bitclout seems to be all the talk on tech Twitter at the moment. It's certainly dividing peoples opinion. Some think it's an awful concept and similar to that of a Ponzi scheme. Others are treating it with caution but find it oddly addictive. In short, BitClout is a new type of social network that lets you speculate on people and posts with real money, and it’s built from the ground up as its own custom blockchain.
⭐️ Community Showcase
Agu Rejón is building Martechbase it helps you plan, document and manage your marketing tech stack. Find the exact tools you need to grow and make smart technology decisions. The craziest bit of it all is that's it's built on Bubble.
Are you working on a new product or side project and want to share it in this newsletter? Hit reply.
🐦 Tweet of the month
I've been a member of many communities of the years and also created one of my own in the past. However, this diagram by Ethan Brooks highlighted a key distinction between what a community says it is and what it really is. Most communities are audiences for its creators - few embody the essence of what community really means.
P.S I'm writing a new post on this. Watch this space 👀
⚡️ Flashback
I'll leave you with this early prototype of the Apple iPad from 1983. The colour scheme is 🤌🏻 and from what I can see the device can be removed from the keyboard and floppy disk drive unit. I found this on Linus Ekenstam's awesome newsletter.
That's it for this month!
If you made it this far, hit reply and tell me what you thought of this newsletter. What did you love? what didn't you like so much? I read every response 👀
Until next month,
Sam | @thisdickie 👨💻
P.S you can view all my past content in this Notion repo 🗄