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 now⁴⁰⁵. 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 API⁶⁵ (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-tuning¹⁷⁹ looks really interesting.

• ChatGPT is back to old 4o²¹⁰. OpenAI’s head of model behaviour says⁶⁷ 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 board¹⁹⁹…no guesses where that idea came from.

• ACI.dev’s⁴⁹⁷ 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 repo⁴⁹⁷!*

• Anthropic’s Economic index: evidence on how coders use AI²⁰³. 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.

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🌐 What I’m consuming

• You can just vibe-code agents⁷⁷⁷ 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 code³⁴⁶; 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 better³⁵¹’ - from a bb member, notebookLM was probably the only launch from the big G that I liked loved, 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 Josh⁹⁷ at the helm + Logan⁶⁷ (dev-rel sensation) gives me confidence in big G. People > products

• How DoorDash plugs in LLMs for better search²⁰¹ retrieval.

• An experiment¹⁷³ routing different LLMs based on the complexity of the prompt.

• Build your own computer use tool with Vercel’s AI SDK template¹⁸¹.

⚙️ Tools I’m tinkering with

• Extruct AI²⁴⁴ - Pipeline without the busywork. Drop your ICP in and download outreach-ready companies before your coffee cools.*

• Create (portfolio co) launched its Resend email integration¹¹³.

• Raindrop¹⁶⁰ alerts you if your AI app is not behaving like it should be. kinda like Sentry for AI apps.

• Vy¹⁸⁴ - 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 UI³⁰⁴ looks interesting - the first design tool that is toying with the user experience. but i dont know anyone who’s tried it yet…

• Structify¹⁸¹ 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 iOS⁵⁰⁶ 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 😭.

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🍦 Afters

• I hung with Jack from Young Money²³³ - you should subscribe

• Resolvd (i’m an investor) is hiring a founding AI engineer³⁸ and an SDR/Appointment Setter²⁹ for solving healthcare supply chain.

• Thrive (one of my LPs) announced Thrive Holdings⁶², 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 swears¹²⁹ and in what context.

• Shadcn has a registry mcp¹³⁴. basically mcp for components and your design system.

• Yohei vibe-coded a ‘startup intelligence platform²²²’ with Replit.

That’s it for today. Feel free to hit reply and share your thoughts. 👋

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