I write a newsletter about startups and investing—for ai builders of all levels.
I record mini-tutorials, review tools I’m testing, share my insights and give you a peek behind the digital curtain from an exited founder turned investor.
Hey folks,
me and satya are not the same (hate to break it to ya). his ‘busy few weeks’ include; model performance is 2xing every 6 months, 365 copilot is used by 100’s of 1000s of customer (yeh, easy if they ‘have to’ use it), customers have built 1M agents, ad rev $20bn+ (weird flex but ok) and…
LinkedIn continues to grow fast, with double-digit membership gains. And we again took share across Bing and Edge. And we are building daily engagement and successful sessions with our Copilot app, which got a big update earlier this month.
SO, nothing notable to actually report but they’re still growing (fine but if you’re microsoft, anything grows if you shove it in front of your users) - sorry to all the msft folks reading this, i don’t wanna be mean - i’ll fund you instead :)
🔎 News worth knowing
Meta AI has a standalone app now. In the US, it is voice first (vs text first), and it also has a social feed. You can choose to share images or prompts, just like an insta post. Plus, Llama has an API (waitlisted). I don’t know what I’d use Llama’s models via an API for (vs say Gemini Flash), but the dashboard for fine-tuning looks really interesting.
ChatGPT is back to old 4o. OpenAI’s head of model behaviour says ChatGPT with multiple personalities is the future.
Mira Murati’s (ex-OpenAI CTO) startup (raising at $10bn valuation) structure is set so she can always out-vote the board…no guesses where that idea came from.
ACI.dev’s Unified MCP Server gives any AI agent instant access to 600+ SaaS tools through a single MCP server and two functions—search & execute. Fully open source and comes with OAuth, natural language permission boundaries and more. Skip months of plumbing; ship production agents now. ⭐ the repo!*
Anthropic’s Economic index: evidence on how coders use AI. 3 key findings (2 you could guess without reading); the coding agent (Claude Code) is used for more automation, coders commonly use AI to build user-facing apps, and startups are the main early adopters of Claude Code, while enterprises lag behind.
*sponsored
want to partner with us? Click here
🌐 What I’m consuming
You can just vibe-code agents now. i tested this a couple times and i like the ‘flow’ feature of seeing your code in a workflow/canvas style - next extension of this i’d want to see/use is to edit the canvas ‘actually do it like this’, i also think they should not ask for your ai api keys and just let users use theirs+markup. It’s basically a create/lovable/bolt interface for agents. tbd if it’s the right one (vs ‘canvases’)
nbd but just a $13bn co publicly showing how claude code; implemented 1M+ lines of AI code in 30 days, with 50% WAUsage and 80% reduction in incidents… Ramp’s one of those companies that I haven’t followed too closely (being a Brit) but it’s hard to ignore; their shipping mentality and the data ‘exhaust’ from their biz i.e. where are all startups spending their money, how much, and how quickly is that ‘ramp’ing up.
A great post on ‘Did notebookLM become way better’ - from a bb member, notebookLM was probably the only launch from the big G that I
likedloved, but I haven’t stuck with it longer term. I really don’t know if it’s Google’s inability to put everything in one place (Gemini is over here, new models over here, notebooklm here, but also kinda different, etc) BUT Josh at the helm + Logan (dev-rel sensation) gives me confidence in big G. People > productsHow DoorDash plugs in LLMs for better search retrieval.
An experiment routing different LLMs based on the complexity of the prompt.
Build your own computer use tool with Vercel’s AI SDK template.
⚙️ Tools I’m tinkering with
Extruct AI - Pipeline without the busywork. Drop your ICP in and download outreach-ready companies before your coffee cools.*
Create (portfolio co) launched its Resend email integration.
Raindrop alerts you if your AI app is not behaving like it should be. kinda like Sentry for AI apps.
Vy - AI that sees and acts on your computer. I havent tested this yet, but plenty of these kinds of tools cropping up…i wonder what opens up when you get past ‘watch your computer do work’
Variant UI looks interesting - the first design tool that is toying with the user experience. but i dont know anyone who’s tried it yet…
Structify pulled together a bunch (a ton) of data from messy and scattered sources so that enriching your custom datasets isn’t a pain.
Granola for iOS is out! I’ve been testing the beta and its great for in-person meetings (so very helpful in SF atm). it’s hands-down the best meeting tool out there, its not even close. and i’ll continually regret not investing…adding to the anti-portfolio 😭.
*sponsored
🍦 Afters
I hung with Jack from Young Money - you should subscribe
Resolvd (i’m an investor) is hiring a founding AI engineer and an SDR/Appointment Setter for solving healthcare supply chain.
Thrive (one of my LPs) announced Thrive Holdings, a permanent capital vehicle dedicated to investing in, acquiring, and operating businesses for the long term. I wonder if we’ll see others follow suit as IPO windows extend and private co’s stay private for longer.
This journalist used an AI watch to track how many times she swears and in what context.
Shadcn has a registry mcp. basically mcp for components and your design system.
Yohei vibe-coded a ‘startup intelligence platform’ with Replit.
That’s it for today. Feel free to hit reply and share your thoughts. 👋
Enjoy this newsletter? Please forward to a friend.
Thanks for the shout out Ben!