The end of Software ... as we know it
The end of Software | Forged Apple Employee Badge | Pixar's approach to creativity | Bootstrapped to billionaire | Maximalist design is the new minimalist + loads more…
🆕 Personal Updates
I’m considering selling a small side project I’ve been running for the last 2 years.
It’s a directory of software products in beta called ‘Beta Directory’. I’ve had countless ideas of how to grow it but unfortunately, other priorities have taken president.
Currently, over 400 beta projects are logged into the database using Airtable. The front end is built using a no-code web app tool called Softr. It’s got almost 250 subs to the newsletter and a lot of potential. No monetisation is enabled but the entire payment flow is working and ready to activate.
If you or anyone you know might be interested in a new project with minimal work involved to run and maintain hit reply or reach out to me on X.
Right, let’s get to it - time for this month’s roundup 👇
🔥 Top post last month: Time Management Tips of Insanely Busy People
📓 Articles
How MSCHF turns irreverent ideas into a real business
For long-time readers of this newsletter, you’ll have noticed my fascination with the “artist’s collective” MSCHF (pronounced “mischief”). These guys, as the name suggests have been causing mischief since 2016. Located in the trendy neighbourhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn - there a ragtag bunch of artists, creators, tinkers and engineers producing new outlandish “drops” every two weeks consisting of poking fun at contemporary trends and riding on the wave of controversy through a blend of digital and physical treats.
In this post, Even Armstrong gets the opportunity to meet the team to understand how a VC-backed company like MSCHF operates with such an obscure business model and operating philosophy. In short, they basically get to do whatever the hell they want which goes against most conventional wisdom as an operating principle, such as listening to users and finding a customer problem - not for them apparently!
Rather than focus on solving a common customer problem extremely well, they do, well, whatever they want.
If there is one thing I truly admire about MSCHF, it’s its ability to master virality with product launches for each of its hardware and software products.
🎁 Bonus content: Fancy digger deeper? check out this post by the NYT or this post from Disegno providing an office tour.
The end of Software (as we know it)
Before we kick off, let’s just take a step back and consider that Chris here is a VC, and it’s pretty common for VCs to make outlandish/contrarian predictions to garner some attention online, and yes, I’m now sharing it with you so I guess it worked, well done Chris.
In this short but provocative post, Chris outlines his theory that AI will eventually erode the software industry the same way media companies experienced with user-generated content, by driving the cost to create software to zero giving rise to a new set of platforms that control distribution.
Software is expensive because developers are expensive. They are skilled translators–they translate human language into computer language and vice-versa. LLMs have proven themselves to be remarkably efficient at this and will drive the cost of creating software to zero.
Personally, (if you care) I think it’s a fascinating theory with some strong historical analogies that have come to fruition but in my opinion, I respectfully disagree it’s going to follow the same trend. I think AI is going to make a bigger team leaner and able to achieve more in less time and money through efficiencies. It’s going to raise the bar of quality and level the playing field for smaller companies and individuals to compete but it’s hard to imagine anyone and everyone being able to create software at scale and the price to do so nosediving towards zero.
P.S. You know what’s a baller move? writing a blog post on a Google Doc. You know what else is? creating a personal website which looks like a vintage PC operating system - and Chris Paik just did both!
🎁 Bonus content: Ryan Hoover (Founder of Product Hunt & Weekend Fund) hopped on the bandwagon and wrote a response to Chris’s post using, you guessed it, a Google doc. However, this time he crowdsourced other responses and there are some fascinating theories and comments to sift through.
🎁 Bonus Bonus content: While we are on the topic of VCs, Unruly Capital changed their website to a dashboard of all their investments, allowing you to track them in real-time (great move if your returns are strong). Also check out Bloomberg Beta which is hosted on Github or Blueyard, Fundomo for some visual wizardry with audio.
🔗 Hyperlinks
The Forged Apple Employee Badge
Vintage tech memorabilia is pretty hot right now! There being collected by tech nerds like baseball cards and in all honesty I’m drawn to the allure of such collectables. However, recently a 1977 Apple employee badge from employee number 10 went up for sale on eBay which brought some sceptical attention. Turns out, despite the lengths the seller went to with the level of authenticity it simply wasn’t enough! You gotta love a bit of internet sleuthing.
How much would you fork out for a handwritten number 10 employee Apple employee badge?
P.S.: I did some digging and it turns out there are a few more of these vintage Apple employee cards kicking out on eBay, including this hilarious one with a back-of-the-head shot on the reverse side.
Creativity thrives in Pixar's animated workplace
I’m currently reading ‘Creativity Inc.’ by Ed Catmull - Co-founder of Pixar. I’ve heard this book mentioned countless times in podcasts and eventually got a copy. One thing that really stuck out was Pixar animators are encouraged to decorate their workspaces in whatever style they wish. They spend their days inside pink dollhouses, Mayan Ruins, planes, tiki huts, and castles to name a few. So of course the book didn’t provide any images so I had to do some digging to find out more which led me to this article by Peter Hartlaub written in 2010 which outlines Pixar’s fanatic approach to sparking and maintaining creativity in the workspace.
Additionally, Ken Miyamoto chronicled a rare tour of the Pixar offices complete with images here.
🧠 Fun fact: The name Pixar was derived from “Pixer” - an imagined Spanish verb meaning "to make pictures." However, it was between Pixer and Radar (Radar sounding more high-tech) - so they blended them Pixer + radar = Pixar!
Show me your tech stack and I’ll show you mine
There are so many software tools! way too many to choose from. So where do you go to get honest reviews without affiliate links or any incentives? Actually I’ve no idea. I generally wouldn’t trust 9/10 sites for unbiased reviews and recommendations - they are typically rigged by affiliates and ads. But recently Alex Lieberman (founder of Morning Brew) shared a Gsheet with all the software tools he uses to run his business for all to see. I would trust someone like him over a review site any day.
He’s also invited other well-known founders to add their own tech stacks, including Noah Kegan (App Sumo founder) and Austin Reif (Co-founder of Morning Brew). From a recent tweet Alex mentioned he’s considering inviting more founder friends to share their stacks.
How Ben Chestnut Bootstrapped Mailchimp to a $12 Billion Exit
Before SAAS was a thing, a little-known guy called Ben Chestnut was running a web design agency just after the .com bubble bust. After noticing a pattern emerging from his clients frequently asking for help building and designing their email newsletters Ben quickly found newsletter clients felt clunky, complex and plain miserable to use. Interestingly, prior to his design consultancy, Ben had created an e-greeting card product which didn’t do great and was quickly sunsetted. When considering how they might build a better newsletter client they realised they could resurrect the old e-greeting software code and use this as a starting point saving them a lot of time and money. Their clients loved it and continued to pay to use it and Mailchimp was born. They didn’t have any payment processing, instead, customers sent cheques in the post. Later they added a very early version of payment processing which saved trips to the bank and before he knew it he had stumbled into SAAS. Flash forward 12 years and this entirely bootstrapped company was acquired by Intuit for $12b - the largest bootstrapped sale in tech history!
In this interview, Ben discussed his entire story and it’s absolutely fascinating.
Ironically it was an email Ben sent to employees which led to him stepping down from Mailchimp.
Is maximalist the new minimalist in web design?
Yeah, I wrote that title. Sounds like something on the cover of Vogue magazine, but in all seriousness, aren’t you getting a little tired of the minimalist design aesthetic we’ve been accustomed to for about…. way too long? Zach Hamed, Co-founder of Clay just shared his new personal website redesign and I have serious envy. Defying the laws of the grid layout overlords, Zach’s taken inspiration from a variety of old, worn, densely populated notebooks making it seem like you're looking at a birdseye view of his desk.
Zach used mmm.page to create the site with some custom code to bring in all the live data from a variety of sources. You can learn about the creation of his new site here. For the full experience, check it out on desktop.
🎁 Bonus content: I wrote about Clay’s stunning pre-launch site a while back which I suspect Zach was heavily involved in creating.
📱 Products
Notebook LM | Your AI Research Partner
Last month I featured Cubby which in some respects is a similar concept, however, Notebook LM is a new Google product currently in Beta. There are times when you need AI to crawl the entire knowledge of the world and there are times when perhaps you want it to use only the data you provide it. To demo it, I uploaded 7 PDFs which covered a wide variety of dense product creation literature and began throwing a bunch of basic queries at it. The results were pretty good, however, it takes a while getting used to the fact it can only query the data you provide unlike general-purpose LLM models so expect a few empty results.
Curious to learn more about Notebook LMs capabilities? Dan Shipper does a live experiment with bestselling author Steven Johnson to see if we could come up with a concept for his next project—using AI. Give it a listen.
Day Light | The computer, de-invented
When I think of e-ink displays I instantly think of a Kindle and fall asleep of boredom. However, a lot seems to have changed with e-ink technology with the recent launch of Day Light. It looks like an iPad, but with a black-and-white display. The result is something that looks something like e-ink but has an LCD's responsiveness and refresh rate which hasn’t been done before. It runs on Android 13, and unlike most previous and current-gen e-ink devices it’s not limited to reading but can also run Pocket Casts, Spotify, Audible, Notion, ChatGPT, Pocket, Kindle, Google Doc and more. So if you're looking for a tablet that sits in between the calmness of an e-ink reader and the functionality of an iPad this might be an interesting option to consider.
However, with a hefty price tag ($800) it’s going to be a challenge to convince folk to add yet another device type to their mounting suite of hardware.
Garple | Startup names that grow on you
Coming up with a name for your new project or business is tough, but you know what’s even harder? Finding the domain name.
Jonas Templestein - Co-founder of Monzo and now founder of Nustom (a new no-code AI product in stealth) built Garple as a side project and from his latest update it seems to be doing pretty well having sold $16,000 of domains in just over a month.
Beta Directory | Discover the latest tech products
This month’s latest early access beta products brought to you by Beta Directory are:
Wegic: An AI web designer & developer.
Mindtrip: AI-powered travel, personalized to you.
Tidyread: Build your own RSS digest with AI.
🐽 Other links to consume
🔮 Flashback
This month we’re going back to 2004, well not exactly it’s actually May 2024. When I first saw this image being shared online I instantly thought it was AI-generated, turns out it’s not. Gates apparently does dress in basketball shorts and his billionaire hip-hop rapper/CEO friend likes to hang in miniature rooms.
In fact, it’s actually a mini replica Zuck’s wife created for his 40th birthday. This particular replica is his Harvard dorm room where he launched Facebook back in 2004. The attention to detail is incredible in these replicas.
Also, check out his first apartment consisting of just a mattress on the floor where he lived until he reached 100 million users.
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Until next the next issue,
Sam | @thisdickie 👨💻
I read every word and clicked almost all links in this post 😅 geeking out loud