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 from an exited founder turned investor.

Hey folks,

some tiktokers are playing uno reverse, using real footage and faking it as veo 3 videos³⁵⁴ to get attention, and we have a new ai safety meme (which sounds like something you’d get from veo 3¹⁷⁵)

🔎 News worth knowing

• Perplexity launched Labs³⁹⁰ - A new mode to use deep research, codegen and image generation all together. built for complex tasks like: building apps, writing in depth reports, analyzing data, designing and planning marketing campaigns, and basically anything else you could get from a small creative or research team. They also launched hotel discovery and booking on Perplexity²²⁹ in partnership with stripe.

• Flux.1 Kontext²¹⁸ is a new image model from Black Forest Labs - It’s powerful at image editing, while being cheap and fast. You can restore old photos⁹², combine multiple images⁷⁴ and more. You can try it for free here²⁷⁰ or read Olivia’s comparison¹⁹⁷ of Kontext, Gemini and ChatGPT. share with us³¹ if you are building with flux

• DeepSeek released a new version of R1¹⁴⁸, which is nothing like the original R1. For one, the new R1 seems to be trained on synthetic Gemini outputs¹²⁹ instead of OpenAI’s

• Automate real work with AI agents. Retool Agents⁴¹⁵ don’t just chat, they connect to your business systems—databases, APIs, tools—to execute real workflows. Use any model, skip integration code, and get enterprise-grade security. Trusted by 10,000+ companies—from startups to Fortune 500s.*

• GitHub released an early preview of Copilot Spaces¹⁴¹, and Bing has a video generator⁷⁴ using Sora.

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want to partner with us? Click here¹⁹

🌐 What I’m consuming

• Trends in AI⁷³⁹ by Mary Meeker and the Bond Capital team.

• Lovable has a security flaw¹⁴⁸ when connecting to external databases.

• 10 vibe coding ideas for GTM teams⁶⁶².

• Why I have slightly longer AGI timelines²³² than some of my guests from Dwarkesh Patel.

• The recent history of AI^499† in 32 otters.

⚙️ Tools I’m tinkering with

• Chronicle⁸²⁸ helps you make designer-grade presentations with AI for free. It is like Cursor for presentations!*

• Underlord by Descript²⁰² - AI editor for videos. Looks like it’s been out for a while and the examples on their landing page are mostly around talking head videos

• VerbalCode^135† - Smart assistant to help you navigate and understand code right in your terminal

• Donut Browser²⁶⁰ - Spin and manage multiple browsers with unlimited profiles.

• Mindly AI³²⁴ - Organise your saved items, thoughts and more with a Mac app

• Netic AI²²³ - Growth engine for essential services businesses (raised $20M²⁰)

• Serif⁴⁹¹ - Your 24x7 executive assistant that you can handoff⁷⁰ tasks to

• Manus has a dedicated feature to create slides²⁸⁰ now

• Mirage Studio³⁰³ by Captions - hyper-realistic, compelling video content for UGC, ads and marketing content

*sponsored

🥣 Dev dish

• This MCP server²³¹ from Browser Use runs parallel agents to test your vibe-coded app for UI bugs, broken links and more.

• Charlie⁷³ - Review typescript code, fixes bugs, opens PRs—directly in existing GitHub and Linear workflows.

• llm-ui¹⁵⁰ - React library for flawless markdown rendering in LLM outputs.

• A lightweight version of MCP in bash.⁶⁹

• Cloudflare built this Auth provider library⁹⁴ with Claude.

🍦 Afters

• Anthropic has a new course on AI fluency focusing on delegating your tasks to AI.^1,056

• Play AI open-sourced Play Diffusion⁸⁶ - their new model for editing audio in the middle.

• IBM³⁶ acquired Seek AI and Salesforce³⁸ bought moonhub.

• Snowflake announced integration with Julius AI¹⁵⁵. (i’m an investor)

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

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• Read about me²³ and ben’s bites