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- Tips for AI LLM Builders, What Taylor Swift can teach Founders, Smart Cities, B2C Wisdom, Food Porn, and More
Tips for AI LLM Builders, What Taylor Swift can teach Founders, Smart Cities, B2C Wisdom, Food Porn, and More
Dogfooding OpenAI, The Marketing Brief, Free Audit, See WhatsApp Launch Day Post
Kenny Grant
December 10, 2023
Bonjour!
It's Monday, and we find ourselves in the final stretch, with just a few weeks left in the year. Hope that you discover something valuable. Appreciate receiving your feedbacks.
Tips for LLM thinkers and builders
How b2c startups should allocate $$
What Taylor Swift can teach startup founders
Start and finish with the brief! Free audit to first 3 teams.
Smart Cities, WA Launch Day Post, Food Porn, Hit 2024 strong, and plenty more
Features
🔸 Tips for LLM Thinkers and Builders
Dogfooding OpenAI API and Prompting at Scale
Last week, I explored OpenAI and prompt engineering, enjoying the lovely make crazy hallucination challenges, particularly when running prompts at scale. Fine tuning sorta just sucks rightnow. There are no shortcuts; success seems to be entirely based on putting in the reps. How are your efforts progressing? I'm eager to hear.
Additionally, I came across this video a few days back, and I think it's particularly timely for anyone experimenting in this space, especially SaaS founders using OpenAI and models.
The Where, When, How of AI
Main Themes from the video:
AI and LLM models like ChatGPT are democratizing technology and making it easier for non-technical people to work with data, answer questions, make better decisions in less time, etc. This is transforming many jobs. Things that required mysql, math, or technical chops, are easily performed by anyone. In minutes, not days or weeks.
LLM models need to be customized and fine-tuned for enterprise use cases to reach their full potential. Models trained on public data have limitations.
Integrating AI/ML with production software is crucial - historically ML teams were too separate and models didn't work well in production environments. Bringing skills together is key.
Regarding the question of whether the responsibility for LLM optimization lies with the vendor or internal personnel within the business, it is generally advantageous for each company to handle this internally.
My personal take? Whether you're a builder or part of a larger enterprise, this video has pardon the pun, ‘prompted’ me to reassess my perspectives and future predictions. Although it's still early, i’m very excited.
If you're interested in engaging in R&D, hiring me, sound-boarding, and exploring new possibilities, hit reply.
And you probably don’t need the .ai domain.
🔸 Product Management
“B2C startups shouldn’t buy ads!” - Zillow Cofounder
Six years ago, this fireside chat, recorded in Santa Monica and featuring insights from the Zillow co-founder, provided valuable advice for early-stage B2C startups. The complete video is available below, and a particular quote from it has captured my attention.
Does this still hold true? IMHO, missionaries build phenomenal products and communities when they focus on the end user, and not ads.
“Very deliberately—and this is the advice I would give to any founder—we did no advertising. The philosophy for the first three years of the company was: any money that we might spend on SEM, Google, Facebook, whatever… Let’s invest that in product and try to build something viral… The reason you do that is to build innovation and product development bonafides. When I do angel investing for example, I will never invest in anything B2C with paid marketing.”
A few other Product tweets:
If everything you do needs to work on a 3-year time horizon, then you're competing against a lot of people. But if you're willing to invest on a 7-year time horizon, you're now competing against a fraction of those people...
— Dr Ola Brown, MFR (@NaijaFlyingDr)
Nov 11, 2023
Apple's internal hardware development process starts with mock-ups and demonstrators. These initial models are the most basic representations of the product, often made from materials like plastic or wood, and they don't actually function. They're used to give a physical form to… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Michael Darius (@darius)
Nov 23, 2023
🔸 Marketing Land
Just start and finish with the brief!
Founder friends, before you green light the:
marketing campaign
new logo, homepage or landing page
email product announcement
press release
or anything marketing related
ask your marketing lead or agency to walk you through the brief and what's about to 🚢.
Ask lots of questions.
Push back if it doesn't address your intended audience, campaign objectives, and the criteria for success.
Weak or no brief = misaligned team. This leads to inaccurate success metrics (goals), resulting in a misuse of precious resources and time.
Strong brief = heightened chance of success.
Avoid working with marketers or agencies dismissing these practices as outdated or old school. Regularly revisiting the brief during campaign creation and right before shipping ensures everyone is aligned, moving in the right direction, and significantly enhances the likelihood of achieving maximum success.
Don't be scared to send it back, revise the brief and deliverables. Or even completely scrap the project.
Why invest in shipping, amplifying with ad spend, and aligning your entire marketing effort behind a watered-down campaign set for failure? Allocate the remaining budget to a finely tuned and optimized marketing campaign.
CTA —> Founders or Junior Marketers! Launching a marketing campaign? Secure a sounding board to confirm you, or agency partner are on track. First 3 teams get 20 mins of free feedback. No catch — Reply to claim your spot!
ps - need a marketing brief template? I got you
Commerce
🔸 What Can Builders Learn from Taylor Swift?
Whether you're a Swiftie or not, she's a trailblazer missionary shaping her own narrative. Time named her Person of the Year, and her determination knows no bounds. Honestly, I was aware that Taylor was immensely successful and probably faced significant challenges, but the article provides insight into her journey — how she had to redefine herself, embrace her true identity, persist in creating despite obstacles, and strategically create loopholes in the system.
Her number 1 tip? Keep making things.
Attached a few quotes from the article, perfect for your morning coffee or office commute. [Read the full article]
she began training six months ahead of the first show. “Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,” she said. “Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.” Her gym, Dogpound, created a program for her, incorporating strength, conditioning, and weights. “Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones,” she says. “I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.” She worked with choreographer Mandy Moore—recommended by her friend Emma Stone, who worked with Moore on La La Land—since, as Swift says, “Learning choreography is not my strong suit.” With the exception of Grammy night—which was “hilarious,” she says—she also stopped drinking. “Doing that show with a hangover,” she says ominously. “I don’t want to know that world.”
Swift’s arrival in a city energized the local economy. When Eras kicked off in Glendale, Ariz., she generated more revenue for its businesses than the 2023 Super Bowl, which was held in the same stadium. Fans flew across the country, stayed in hotels, ate meals out, and splurged on everything from sweatshirts to limited-edition vinyl, with the average Eras attendee reportedly spending nearly $1,300. Swift sees the expense and effort incurred by fans as something she needs to repay: “They had to work really hard to get the tickets,” she says. “I wanted to play a show that was longer than they ever thought it would be, because that makes me feel good leaving the stadium.” The “Taylor effect” was noticed at the highest levels of government. “When the Federal Reserve mentions you as the reason economic growth is up, that’s a big deal,” says Ed Tiryakian, a finance professor at Duke University.
…
There is one thing I’ve learned: My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art.” She considers. “But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies,” she says. “Trash takes itself out every single time.”
🔸 Commerce and The Future of Smart Cities
A few months back, some close friends returned from an eye-opening journey through Singapore and various parts of Asia. Their awe at the developments they witnessed shed light on the essence of a 'smart city' and what it could mean for the future. Returning home, they couldn't help but notice a gap – a realization that North America might be falling behind in this era of rapid urban evolution. For those who haven't had the chance to witness the incredible transformations in China over the past 5 years, check out this video below and the Walk East YT Channel.
^^ The video is 4 hours long, but 100% worth skimming. It includes some high-end luxury storefronts. Hoping to visit China in 2024.
Would love to hear your thoughts — hit reply =)
Other
🔸 Proof that big things start really small. And you never really know..
Here’s the first post from Jan Koum, one of the co-founders of WhatsApp asking FlyerTalk forum members if the app is a hit or miss.
The original post on HP screenshot below.
🔸 Interesting Links
Looking for some wholesome, order in your life, ‘food porn’, or OCD release? Look no further than the Produce Art subreddit. [Link]
My husband founded a startup. Then our marriage got weird. [Link]
Simon Fraser University Report - Nearly 40% of surveyed teens between 15 and 17 may have depression. [Link]
Groundskeeper Willie goes back to Scotland to tie the knot, and of course, the Simpson Family is along for the ride! The episode is only available in America, but there’s a few details and clips inside. [Link]
The birth of rollerblading? Oui oui, behold a short video from 1923 in Paris. [Link]
Qs or Quotes Bouncing in My Brain
“Momentum is everything in a startup. If you have momentum, you can survive most other problems. If you do not have momentum, nothing except getting momentum will solve your problems. Founders internalize this during YC; many seem to forget in the few years after YC. Burnout seems to almost always affect founders whose startups are not doing well, and then becomes a downward spiral. In fact, one of my top few startup commandments is “never let the company lose momentum”
Ready for 2024?
Q1 is around the corner! Are you approaching January with full force?
Start laying the foundation for 2024 and beyond. Need a hand? I have a few startup advisory slots available.
Hit reply 📩
What a tree! VanDusen Botanical Garden with my family
Wrap Up
Just 13 work days left in the year.
Plenty of content in the pipeline, but I'm eager to learn about your challenges or the topics you're interested in exploring. Lmk
Thx for reading — have a great week!
Kenny
P.S. Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:
Ready to grow your startup from 0 to 1 in less time? Let's chat. >> Schedule a call with me.
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About
Hi there! I help b2b2c startups go from 0 to 1 with resources, consulting, advisory, and writing, spanning product, marketing, team formation, frontier technology, and the good life. Prev helped 50+ startups and launched 20+ digital products. Although my perspective is universal, I mainly cover the frontier of North America and Southeast Asia.
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