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Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in last month• "I created a chatbot with my dog" was a presentation I gave at a meetup. (Here's the chatbot and source code) • My dog Queso got a foxtail seed in his paw and needed surgery, so he's recovering • Had a quick trip to Texas for a wedding • Been busy with work • Continuing to cycle a few days a week Things to share• Articles: College Towns: Urbanism from a Past Era with Ryan Allen, AI Horseless Carriages, The Dark World Of USAF Special Ops Air Refuelers And Their Modified KC-135RT Tankers • Books: Craig Mod's Things Become Other Things is out - I've been following its journey for years, and read the original fine art edition. Samin Nosrat (of Salt Fat Acid Heat) announced a forthcoming book, Good Things. (Many "Things" books!).  • Podcasts: Samin Nosrat's show Home Cooking is back after a long hiatus, ahead of her podcast launch. The show helped me get through the pandemic. • Videos: Tim Wendelboe's short documentary about Finca Tamaná. The Oner was such an impressive episode of The Studio - all done in one take. "I Fixed Stripe" has good advice on building billing integrations. • Tools: I finally began using the iA notebook, and then it won a design award. Plans for the next month• Working on some new articles for Contraption Co. • Spending memorial day weekend in LA

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in last month• I published How to host web apps on a Mac Mini, a follow-up to my piece A mini data center. It's a technical guide to hosting web on a Mac Mini, and includes a new open-source repo I made called Toolbox.  • I got a gravel bike and have been riding it a few times a week. The Bay Area is so dense with cycling options, and it's such a fun form of exercise.  • I've been using OpenAI Deep Research a lot lately. For instance, I used it to find cycling clothes that match my preferences (its top recommendation was Sigr, though it missed The Black Bibs). I used it before a meetup to give a background on the companies that would be presenting. I recommend asking it to summarize learnings with a table at the beginning.  • Emma's company Velvet was acquired. Things to share• Articles: The Age of the Double Sell-Out. Signal comes installed by default on CIA computers. Is the Restaurant Good? Or Does It Just Look Good?, How This Former Apple Engineer Uses Coffee Equipment to Create 5 Minutes of Bliss - "Good products are not born in labs or factories. I think they are born in workshops." Scott Rao's Coffeehouse Stories. Glydways, a company I invested in in 2022, just made some exciting product announcements.  • Books: Art and Fear, which all new Chroma employees receive. • Coffee: Noma's first batch of coffees arrived - wash-processed coffee from Mexico and a natural from Ethiopia. Both are good, though the natural is a little too funky for me.  • Videos: Probably Riding in Tokyo was relaxing. TBPN, a daily tech talkshow by the founder of Soylent, seems to be blowing up right now. James Hoffman - 3 Rules for Life. Bad Bunny Tiny Desk. • Podcasts: Tyler Cowen DJing for Rick Rubin was a fun podcast to listen to on a plane.  • Tools: I love that Craig Mod built a private social network for his members. Make the web quirky again! Plans for the next month• Mostly in San Francisco • Biking • Building

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in February• I published "Why Ruby on Rails still matters", and it went a little viral and was read by 36k people. (Ruby Weekly said: "This post doesn’t say a lot[.]") "A mini data center" also became popular and was read by about 10k people. Finally, I published "What worked for finding a software engineering job" and it was read by 162 people. • Been working hard at Chroma. Some of my work gets to be open-source, which is fun: I added OpenAPI support to Chroma's new Rust server, and even got a small PR merged into Next.js. • I spotted a Martin Mars flying boat in WWII livery flying over the Golden Gate Bridge I learned later it was its last flight. • I got an e-bike when I moved to SF, and I've had a lot of exploring the city on it.  • Currently watching the new season of Drive to Survive Things to share• Articles: How Ozempic is changing the food industry. "Uber with guns" is so American, but also might finally get Manhattan residents to visit Williamsburg. "A strong relationship can increase your likelihood of happiness by 5x, more than wealth and career success combined." How to Be an American Carpenter in Japan. "In an Age of Right-Wing Populism, Why Are Denmark’s Liberals Winning?" -> I think this article foreshadows the near future of US politics.  • Books: Standart: 10 years in Coffee is a beautiful book and fun read. • Coffee: Been drinking some coffee from my favorite farm, Finca Deborah, roasted by Rosso. I'm amused to see my favorite restaurant launch Noma Kaffe - an in-house coffee brand. They've always worked with the legendary Tim Wendelboe, so I am skeptical about the project. But, I ordered some and will report back. Coffee Movement has become my favorite cafe in SF.  • Tools: "Why This Cult ‘$40 Pencil’ Almost Went Extinct" had me almost buying pencils. Plans for March• Building a lot with Chroma • Exploring north of SF • Looking forward to Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari debut Where I'll be:• 🌁 San Francisco

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in January• Moved to San Francisco 🌁 • Joined the engineering team at Chroma • Bought a record player. I've been listening to records from The Marias and Fred Again's Actual Life. I managed to track down a Pablo Casals recording of the Mendelssohn's first piano trio. • Published some essays: craft in the digital era, joining Chroma, and a mini data center. Things to share• Articles: Neutraface is the "font of gentrification". Mocktails are coming to coffee shops, Paul Krugman on Departing the New York Times. Earth is two floating rocks. Craig Mod's 2026 Membership Program Recap had some great lessons.  • Books: I'm reading From Nerd to Pro about the story behind one of my favorite cafes in Denmark. The Almost Perfect book about the residency program I did last year just came out and it's great. • Podcasts: "Is it ok to just work all the time?" was a thought-provoking episode about finding meaning in work. • Documentary: Ants on a Shrimp was fun. • Videos: I loved Magnus Nilsson's Talk at Google about The Nordic Cookbook, especially how he justifies including a taco recipe.  "My gift to USA" by a Norwegian comedian. • Coffee: Been drinking a lot of pacamaras recently. Also, I spotted a first Bellweather coffee roaster in the wild at CoffeeShop.  • Tools: Brick is an interesting approach to managing screen time (but, I haven't tried it). Pencil Type-C is an iteration on my favorite pen.  neal.fun is crazy - I got to the stock market stage. Plans for February• Working • Writing • Exploring SF Where I'll be:• San Francisco 🌁

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in December• I'm amid some big life changes. I'm joining an AI startup in San Francisco, and moving out of NYC. I wrote more here: Lost and found. • Visited Prodigal Coffee's roastery in Colorado, which was fun. I've been mail-ordering their beans and it was fun to get a behind-the-scenes peek. • Spent some time in Boulder and loved the Portal pop-up sauna. I wish there were more social saunas in the USA, especially in San Francisco. • Made the decision to move out of New York City, and had vacated it within two weeks. Things to share• Articles: Paklan is my favorite new newsletter. MAMICs: the Middle Aged Man Into Coffee. The year I learned to stop hating the robotaxis - Waymos are magical. "[Waymo insurance data shows] 86% reduction in property damage claims and 90% in bodily injury claims" - similar to properties, I expect insurance costs to drive the adoption of self-driving cars.  The science of love had some actionable advice. The changes in vibes — why did they happen? was prescient and explains a lot of shifts in US politics. Norwegian Fishermen Hunting for Halibut Caught a US Nuclear Sub. Taxing unrealized gains has caused an entrepreneurial exodus in Norway. • Resources: San Francisco Night Java - a map of late-night cafes. • Books: I've been enjoying Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track, re-reading Slow Productivity, and The Finnish Way. • Podcasts: Peter Thiel with Rick Rubin was an unexpected pairing with a great discussion. Plans for January• Moving back to San Francisco and starting a new job • Thinking about starting a vinyl record collection Where I'll be:• San Francisco 🌁

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in September• Visited San Francisco and rode in my first Waymo • Launched Find AI on Clay.com, our first major integration • Published two essays: Having a TJ, and Innovation versus distribution Things to share• Articles: Arne Jacobson petrol station. Rewrite it in Rails. Adam Savage on post-COVID San Francisco rang true. So did Marc Andreesen on why not to do a startup. Why does this building by the subway need 193 parking spots?  • Books: Good Work is a sequel to one of my favorites, Pathless Path. Pattern Breakers provides a pragmatic framework for startup success. Sinan published an update to his LLM Quick Start book that I'm enjoying and recommend for any engineers who have to get up-to-speed on the latest AI tools. • Gear: These electrolytes have been a favorite of mine  - especially after exercise or a wine tasting. This notebook has become my favorite pocket notebook (with a Pen Type-C).  • Quote: “I think

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in September• I've started publishing on Contraption Company every Friday. My posts last month: Internal Tools of Find AI - a recording of a presentation I gave at an event in NYC, Wine Craft - a video about winemaking in Alsace, How I use data to optimize AI apps - a collaboration with Velvet about workflows for running and managing LLM models, Is fractional work the future? - an interview with Taylor from FractionalJobs.io about whether knowledge work should be part-time, and How to self-publish a programming book - an interview with Ayush Newatia about how he wrote a book about building applications in Ruby on Rails. The next post comes out this Friday! • Lots has been happening with Find AI. We announced an algorithm upgrade, new logo, and early access to our API.  • I visited Washington, D.C., briefly - it was fun to explore the East Coast via train. • Spent a weekend up in Hudson, where I always enjoy visiting Moto Coffee/Machine. Things to share• Gadgets: I'm enjoying the new Aeropress Premium. I love coffee. Years ago, I decided to keep my home coffee setup minimal by only having an Aeropress. As I decreased my plastic usage, the old Aeropress became one of the last big pieces of plastic in my life. The new Aeropress Premium updates the coffee maker with glass and metal and is beautifully designed. • Articles: Have hobby apps like Strava become the new social networks?, The untold story of Sqlite, The CIA is using social media to recruit informants  • Fun fact: MMA is illegal in Norway Plans for October• Making some big announcements with Find AI • Continuing to publish on Contraption Company • Returning to San Francisco for two weeks to reconnect with the city Where I'll be:• 21 Oct - 2 Nov: San Francisco 🌁

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in AugustHello from a train somewhere in the French countryside. I just finished spending a few days in London, where I met a coworker from Find AI. The best part was eating Dishoom for three days in a row. (Enough to earn a secret keyring). Find AI has been busy—building many new features and growing the crew. Subscribe to the newsletter to follow the latest updates. We concluded a year of wedding events with a final celebration party in Cleveland. I also redid the Contraption Company website, which is now built on Ghost. Below are more details on it! Things to share• Articles: Repair and Remain. How to Make a Nation of Meat Eaters Crave the Humble Bean. Four Years of Scite. Fewer teens want to drive. Silicon Valley canon. Founder Mode. • Podcasts: Ben Thompson on How I Write. Fred Again interview on Apple Music. Peter Attia on How I Write. • Music: I've been listening to a lot of Fred again.. Plans for August• I'm on an annual food trip with a friend, trying new wines, returning to some favorite cafes, and visiting new restaurants. • I plan to publish more consistently on Contraption Company. Stay tuned for a new essay tomorrow and an interview with an author shortly after that. • Launching some really big features at Find AI. Where I'll be:• 1-3 Sep: Alsace 🇫🇷  • 4-5 Sept: Basel 🇨🇭 • 6-9 Sept: Copenhagen 🇩🇰 + Mälmo 🇸🇪 • 27-30 Sept: Washington, D.C. 🇺🇸

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in late June + July • Been working hard on Find AI - rolling out lots of feature and updates, starting an official fractional work program, and hiring a bunch.  • Published an essay: The opportunity of tech talent agents • Went to Colorado for our wedding celebration party there, then spent some time catching up with friends before heading into the mountains for a wedding.  • Started going to The Joyce Theater in NYC - I like their modern dance programs. • Switched from HEY.com email back to Gmail+Superhuman because I want to try more AI tools. Things to share • Links: Zero Draft is a concept I love and have used a lot at Find AI - like "MVP, but for multi-part systems." Top 100 Coffee Roasters of 2024. The case against morning yoga, daily routines, and endless meetings. GrowSF is interesting - I've been thinking of starting a similar PAC in NYC. "Business is a video game". The Rise of the Software Creator. On ultra-processed content. Slow PhD. MI-6 Helicopter. The USV Librarian -> I think more people will have personal AIs like this soon. If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need To Prioritize Dignity. • Apps: Call List is a Calendly alternative. Pokemon Sleep is something to keep an eye on. • Coffee: I ordered coffee over SSH - the coffee wasn't very good, but the UX was novel. • Shows: Omnivore is a cool show by one of my favorite chefs. The first episode includes an anthropological deep-dive into Serbian food culture, which I wasn't expecting. • Books: Been reading a mix of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (reread), Anxious Generation, and Notes from a Fellow Traveler. Plans for August • Working hard • Heading to Cleveland for a wedding celebration party • Stopping in London for some work before making my way to Alchemist in Copenhagen. Where I'll be: • 16-18 Aug: Cleveland, OH • 28-31 Aug: London

Here's my monthly newsletter (a couple of weeks late!) about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in May  • Summer weather has hit NYC - it's great to be back outside • Published a podcast about creator versus software businesses • Published a video of live-coding an AI feature on Booklet • Built a lot of Booklet features - auto-linking of URLs, a public API, the ability to disable the membership directory, anti-scraping protections on emails, a new writing UI, and a Zapier integration.  • Went to a concert under the Kosciuszko Bridge, which was such a cool venue. Things to share • Books: Unreasonable Hospitality was a fun look at how Will Guidara built the #1 restaurant in the world to balance art and business. I've also been re-reading What I Know About Running Coffee Shops. The Interior Design Handbook explains Scandanavian design and how to achieve hygge. Algebra of Wealth distills some good advice. • Coffee: I've been having a lot of espresso tonics this week- perhaps it will be my Summer drink. • Companies: I'm obsessed with CW&T, a little physical product studio in Brooklyn. I don't own any of their products (yet!), but I love their approach to building. • Articles: "Turn your iPhone into a dumb phone" taught me how to quickly switch between grayscale and color mode. "Why Members-Only Clubs Are Everywhere Right Now" shows the unbundling of the office with remote work and people seeking out-of-home spaces. "Colorado's Bold New Approach to Highways" is great. This article about Kintsugi is inspiring - we have one vase repaired with gold, and perhaps I'll repair more. The Economist' Style Guide as a ChatGPT prompt. Is parallel entrepreneurship / the "studio" model a trap? (2012) • Music: Ivy Queen Tiny Desk. Promises is such a cool collaboration. • Apps: OpenAI for Mac is surprisingly good and keeps AI help just a quick keyboard shortcut away. • Videos: About Gotye - an independent musician.  • Trends: I've been trying to buy mostly plastic-free clothing. It's surprisingly hard.  • Words: A flock of ravens is an unkindness. Bildungsroman is a cool word. • Food: I've made a loose habit of going to the #1 restaurant in the world most years since since 2017. I find it inspiring to see what elite performance looks like in food, and what goes into achieving it. So, I was excited to see Disfrutrar named #1 in the world for 2024 - I had visited there in November and found the food to be innovative. (I won't go back to Disfrutar this year, so I've decided to go to the 2022 #1 restaurant - which I had missed.) Plans for June • Just moved within NYC - I'm now living closer to Washington Square Park. • NY Tech Week had some fun events.  • Visited Cleveland for four hours. • Building! Where I'll be  • NYC

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in April • Cat's out of the bag - the "Shenanigans" I referenced in March and April are revealed. I eloped and got married in a small village in Mexico about six weeks ago. Text or email me for photos and more details.  • Took some French lessons at the FIAF in NYC. It was a fun experiment, but I unfortunately don't think I have the time or headspace to continue them. Pronunciation was more subtle than I expected.  • I've been leaning into more intentionally analog habits, with single-purpose notebooks a at the core. Instead of doing most of my daily writing + notes in Day One or Obsidian, I'm mostly just carrying a stack of these Leuchtturm1927 notebooks. • Waited four hours to go to a Noma pop-up in NYC. I enjoyed chatting with their head of production about how they apply koji techniques to make vegan garums. • Rewrote Booklet's docs and overhauled its member management tools.  • Started a three-month experiment in eating a plant-based diet. It's been surprisingly easy and enjoyable. I've been eating a lot of Bottas-inspired porridge, Rancho Gordo beans, rices, lacto-fermented vegetables (I had made a lot of fermented daikon), and Noma's vegan xo sauce and other projects. Things to share • Articles: We need to rewild the internet. Adulting fast and slow. LARPing your job. Bicycle use now exceeds car use in Paris. Mechanics of a water fountain button. • Music: Promises. Various sets at Aimé Leon Dore. • Podcasts: How I Write - Founder of Levels on building a writing culture was fantastic. Just a spec. • Videos: Thom Browne on the Business of Fashion.  • Trends: I've been interested in wind-powered shipping since reading Silo's cookbook, and it seems to be going more mainstream. I think the Apple Vision Pro is going to lead to an increase in lasik surgeries. Plans for May • I have a couple of podcasts coming out - get updated by subscribing at podcast.contraption.co • Building out Booklet's API and adding more functionality there Where I'll be  • NYC

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. I'm a little late on the April edition, but better late than never. What I did in March • Spent some time in Todos Santos, a small town in Baja California Sur • Shenanigans - more details soon • Postcard got a shoutout in Forbes • Continued building on Booklet, introducing better member management tools • Published "How I build multiple products" • Had a great meal at Ilis Things to share • Articles: Why are there suddenly so many carwashes?, Swedish composer becomes Spotify’s most-famous musician you’ve never heard of, • Music: Aya Nakamura • Videos: Enjoyed watching these videos about three of the coffee roasters I enjoyed visiting in Japan: Leaves, Glitch, Nagasawa. • Podcasts: Money Stuff Podcast Plans for April • Hanging out in NYC and working on Booklet • Starting French lessons Where I'll be  • NYC

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in February • Finished my residence at Almost Perfect in Tokyo. I gave a presentation Rethinking Work Beyond the Factory Model, about how most of our knowledge work practices have carried over from factories, and are in the process of being rethought. The original talk wasn't recorded, but I published a write-up and recording on the Contraption Company website.  • I was fascinated by stamp culture in Japan. When I returned home, I made some stamps so that I could stamp my own business cards. I've been collecting different business card papers.  • I enjoyed some amazing coffees in Japan. Leaves Coffee and Glitch Coffee were good enough to be among "my top cafes in the world" (alongside April in Copenhagen, Tim Wendelboe in Oslo, and Substance Cafe in Paris).  • I'm experimenting with more content from Contraption Company, and published an podcast-style interview I did with Aaron Cohn about our competing website builders. We chatted about personal email newsletters, craft software versus indie companies, and web trends. If you want to follow future conversations I have, subscribe at podcast.contraption.co. • Booklet had a lot of improvements - including push notifications and PWA support, unified login, search, passwordless login, mentions, and a refreshed website.  I'm embarking on some ambitious new features this month that will drastically improve the product.  • I was a guest on the SaaS Growth Podcast, where I talked about running multiple products, building a product studio, asynchronous communication, and building differentiated products. Things to share • Gear: I switched to the Rode VideoMic NTG as my standard microphone for podcasts and content - it's been great. Nord Theme has become my preferred color scheme for coding. • Tech: Switched from Google Calendar to HEY Calendar. Descript makes audio and video editing so easy - it lowers the barrier to content production significantly.  • Podcasts: Write of Passage Podcast is a fascinating look at the craft of writers.  • Articles: Are small books the future? The Road to Ruin - how cars drove US cities to the brink. Maslow’s forgotten pinnacle: Self-transcendence. Study puts fermentation, not fire, as pivot point behind our ancestors’ increasing cranial capacity. The cities stripping out concrete for earth and plants. • Books: I just started Slow Productivity, which I've been eagerly awaiting. Second Mountain makes the compelling case that we should seek self-transcendence over individualism. Feel-Good Productivity has been more actionable than I expected. Slowly working my way through Isaacson's Einstein. Things Become Other Things. Plans for March • Building some big Booklet features. • Taking a week with no work, which I haven't done in a long time. (I travel a lot, but rarely take time off.) • Shenanigans Where I'll be  • 21-31 March: Todos Santos, MX 🇲🇽 Let me know if we overlap!

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in January• Hello from Tokyo! I'm here doing a creative residence at Almost Perfect. If you're in town, come join my presentation Rethinking Work Beyond the Factory Model tomorrow night.  • I published Digital Product Studios, an essay about product studios and a return to craft-focused knowledge work. It includes some photos of my trip to a watchmaking studio in Morioka.   • FRCTNL, the community for fractional tech workers I run, has steadily been growing. Come check it out if you're interested in part-time technology work.  • I've been hosting 6-person dinners for people in the tech industry in New York. If you're interested in joining a future one, let me know. • I've been building a lot of new things on Booklet: More design refreshes, a powerful search engine leveraging OpenAI, and image improvements - with more coming soon. It seems to be working - usage and revenue are steadily increasing.  Things to share• Articles: What is Fractional Work - on the new Fractional Jobs site from Taylor. • Tech: Apple Stolen Device Protection is a new security feature on iPhones you should enable. Screen Studio is an amazing little utility for making screen recordings on Mac - I'm using it for Booklet updates. Inter Font is configurable. `text-wrap: pretty` is my new favorite CSS property.  • Podcasts: Rosalía on Rick Rubin. • Music: Rosalía's first (flamenco) album. A jazz kissa played Under Fire for me when I said I liked music from Argentina. Nina Simone. Young Miko x Bizarrap. • Coffee I'm drinking: Two coffees fermented with an enzyme from Kopi luwak, served at Koffee Mamaya. Nagasawa Coffee in Morioka was amazing. Plans for February• Finally spending some time in NYC. • Continuing the momentum on Booklet's feature development. Where I'll be • Now - 6 Feb: Tokyo 🗼 If you're reading this, let me know if we overlap!

Happy New Year! Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in December• Published updates to Booklet, including a design refresh, dynamic opengraph images,  and showing viewers on posts. • Wrote essays on the Contraption Company site: Digital Quiet, Booklet's Architecture, Community-Powered Media Companies, and Engineering Over Enforcement. • Spent some time in Southern California - I went hiking in Joshua Tree, and am currently in Santa Monica. Things to share• Articles: Writers who operate. Blue for self-driving, Claxonomy of Mexico City's Horns. • Films: Angèle, Windfall. • Coffee I'm drinking: A cappuccino from Dayglow, my favorite cafe in LA. Plans for January• I'm headed to Tokyo for two weeks to do a creative residence at Almost Perfect, co-run by one of my favorite illustrators Luis Mendo. It will be my first time in Japan, and I'm looking forward to wandering, drinking coffee, and exploring the infrastructure. • Working on a lot of new features for Booklet, and preparing to make some education content around how venture capital funds have mde private networks for their portfolio company founders using Booklet. Where I'll be • Now - 4 Jan: Los Angeles • 4-8 Jan: Cleveland, OH • 22 Jan - 6 Feb: Tokyo 🗼 If you're reading this, let me know if we overlap!

This is my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in November• Started writing some essays about online work, dependability, tools, and craft on the Contraption Company site. Subscribe there if you want to follow them. First essays: Booklet's Architecture, One Year of Dependable Software, and The Transition from Indiehacking to Micro Companies. • Had a great food-focused trip through Europe with a friend. I started up north in Oslo, and ended south in Barcelona. I went to some old favorites such as Noma, April, Popl, and Dishoom, and found some new favorites such as Disfrutar and Silo (whose book I read in April). Highlights included jumping in the Oslofjord from a floating sauna, eating a food that's legal in only three countries, walking an F1 track, and seeing the Pope's old residence. I also got to meet customers of Contraption Company products along the way. • Started a Postcard for some photography experiments - here's my favorite so far.  • Continuing to work hard on Booklet. A lot of new communities and members joined in November, and I'm working hard on some new features.  Things to share• Articles: Maybe don't drive into Manhattan. A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft. SHARPE is FAANG for defense. Anti-tank Vespa. The Indie Era of Startups. • Podcasts: Tim Cook on Dua Lipa's podcast. Brian Chesky's new playbook. Craig Mod on Longform.  Lenny Rachitsky on How I Write. • Music: MØ • Apps: Ruter, the official transportation app for Oslo, is fantastic.  • Coffee I'm drinking: Los Pirineos Pacamara – Christmas Edition Plans for December• Rolling out some new Booklet features. • Working on more essays. • Thawing in California. Where I'll be • 22-23 Dec: Cleveland, OH • 23-27 Dec: Joshua Tree, CA • 27 Dec - 3 Jan: Los Angeles If you're reading this, let me know if we overlap!

This is my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in October• Switched my daily driver Aeropress coffee recipe to this one by Jonathan Gagné. It produces delicious results. (His book Physics of Filter Coffee is excellent.) • Witnessed the aftermath of a bike crash, did some activism, and got featured in an article on Curbed. • Booklet, the modern email software I make, as a bunch of new features.  • Postcard, the personal website software I make, continues to grow as people leave the site formerly known as Twitter. • Made some light updates to the Contraption Company website.  Things to share• Articles: How Linear builds products. "What I tell employees about negative press." How Not To Sort By Average Rating. • Music: nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana • Podcasts: Charlie Munger on Acquired.  • Apps: Cursor, an AI-first code editor, has replaced VSCode as my daily development tool. Dutch Cycling Lifestyle  is a fun use of AI. • Trend: While chat is the best-known product from OpenAI, the Embeddings feature is powerful and being incorporated into many products in ways that are not obviously "AI."  • Videos: Magnus Midtbø did some videos with Norwegian military that gave a documentary-like glimpse into their lives.  • Coffees I'm drinking: Tim Wendelboe Caballero Geisha. Plans for November• Continuing to build Booklet features. • Spending a couple of weeks in Europe for a mix of work and fun.  • Working on essays for Contraption Company. Where I'll be • 12-14 Nov: Oslo • 14-16 Nov: Copenhagen • 16-19 Nov: London • 19-24 Nov: Nice, FR • 24-26 Nov: Barcelona Let me know if we overlap.

This is my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. ✨ What I was up to in SeptemberI launched Booklet, a forum as an alternative to chat. It's my attempt to make communication more asynchronous for professional groups. Knowledge workers check chat every 6 minutes, fracturing their attention and preventing deep work. Booklet solves this by encouraging long-form, threaded discussions - and summarizing all activity into one single email per day. I wrote about my motivation for Booklet on the Contraption Company site. The actual launch of Booklet went better than expected - with thousands of visitors in the first day, and hundreds of communities created. I've been iterating rapidly based on user feedback, including rolling out a variety of OpenAI-powered tools to improve the email summary.  Some of the early use case for Booklet have been: • Investors connecting their portfolio founders in a network • A marketplace building a community of workers to engage them between gigs • A Substack newsletter adding a subscriber community • Companies replacing Google Groups for internal announcements If you know anybody looking for a solution like these, please send them to Booklet. And, you can try out Booklet by joining its customer community at hq.booklet.group Besides that, I had a wonderful trip to Stockholm where the Vasa Museum fascinated me, I ate too many cardamom buns, and I stopped by the Nobel Prize Museum. I also attended the New York Coffee Festival, and briefly stopped by Chicago for a wedding. 🤔 Things to share• Articles: The Magical Japanese Art of Luggage Forwarding, The Loneliness Economy, Protocol Daddies, The Jargon File. • Books: Coddling of the American Mind. • Podcasts: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on early rejection, customer focus - a look at how Jony Ive is turning Airbnb into a centralized product organization (see "Trend" below). Three Star Coffee Service: Coffee at restaurant Noma. • Apps: Helicone for OpenAI monitoring and caching. • Video: "How to Live an Asymmetric Life"  • Trend: With the downturn, more tech CEOs seem to be retaking the "Head of product" role. • Coffees I'm drinking: Man Vs. Machine Supernatural, Heart Guatemala Amate, and notable IRL coffees at Café Pascal and Drop Coffee. 📫 What I'm up to in September• Working on Booklet, and enjoying a first month without travel in a long time. 📍 Where I'll be • NYC all month 🗽 (Let me know if we overlap) 📸 Photo  

I'm Philip, and this is my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. ✨ What I was up to in August• Launched FRCTNL, a community of fractional tech workers. • Continued building Booklet, which is the software powering FRCTNL. • Returned to Mexico City, where Quintonil reaffirmed its rank as my #2 favorite restaurant in the world. • Ate a lot of tsukemen. • Graded at a crossword puzzle tournament. 🤔 Things to share• Articles: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company. (See "News Minimalist" below). Walk for the Boredom of it All. Scans of coffee equipment.  • Books: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (re-reading after a decade). Cold Start Problem (again), Hacker and Painters.  • Podcast: Frank Slootman on The Knowledge Project (a refreshing take on high-performance cultures). • Apps: News Minimalist (now the only news I'm reading). • Video: Tunnel Vision: An Unauthorized BART Ride • Other: Noma Projects finally ships to the USA. Once, a new project from 37Signals.Thinking about Eichler homes. "Where founders live matters again." • Trend:  PE for startups (such as Third South Capital and Tiny). • Coffees I'm drinking: La Cabra Elida. 📫 What I'm up to in September• Making a couple of brief trips for weddings • Hoping to open Booklet access more broadly 📍 Where I'll be • Sept 21-25: Stockholm 🇸🇪 • Sept 29-Oct 1: Chicago 🏢 (Let me know if we overlap) 📸 Photo

I'm Philip, and this is my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. ✨ What I was up to in July Booklet is a product I've been building to help communities communicate in a more structured and readable way. This month I finally had some people besides me start to use it. It's been fun to get the product into the wild, and now I'm iterating rapidly based on their feedback ahead of a more public release. I finally got to reading the Noma Guide to Fermentation after visiting there last summer, and I've been doing a lot of experiments with lacto-fermentation. (See some photos below). It's been fun to go to the farmer's market every week and to cook with what's local and seasonal. I recently celebrated one full year of working full-time on Contraption Company. Building new ways to help people work online has been a fun, rewarding, and creatively fulfilling journey. I'm proud of our commitment to keeping the business intentionally small and independent, and I'm excited about what the next year holds. 🤔 Things to share • Articles: The Carlota Perez Framework for thinking about technology cycles. How to Do Great Work. • Books: Designing Coffee looks at interior design of cafes around the world. A Work in Progress: A Journal documents a fascinating creative process. Algebra of Happiness has some good advice.  • Podcast: Robin Sloan on Social Media After Twitter. • Apps: Collective automates and optimizes the back office for one-person LLCs. • Trend: Location sharing between friends - with granularity of either "City" or "Exact." • Coffees I'm drinking: Prolog Aquiares Anaerobic Natural was yummy. Prodigal Finca La Soledad Geisha was clean. Process Nestor Lasso Ombligon was funky. 📫 What I'm up to in August • Traveling back to Mexico City, where I'm excited to try some new restaurants and cafes. • Welcoming more Booklet users. • Launching a couple of my own communities with Booklet. 📍 Where I'll be  • Aug 3-7: Mexico City 🇲🇽 (Let me know if we overlap) 📸 Photos A fermentation in three photos . . . -- Thanks for reading! If we haven't chatted in a while, I'd love to hear from you. Send an email to say hi, share your thoughts, or just catch up. 

✨ What I've been up to We finished moving back to NYC last month. I made a quick stopover to Canada for Tailwind Connect, where I met some interesting people and  learned some new CSS techniques. I also visited Puerto Rico for a few days. The book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community was a fantastic read. One thing I'm thinking about is telephones versus televisions - telephones are bidirectional while TVs are one-directional. As a society, I think we under-appreciate how shift from telephones to TVs has driven a move toward more parasocial relationships.  Social media followed this trend - it started more telephone-like, promoting social relationships, but moved over time became more TV-like (epitomized by Tiktok) where people consume rather than create. 🤔 Things to share • Articles: Cities and Ambition. How Parking Ruined Everything. Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media. How to Do Great Work - "... the right strategy is to not plan too much". • Books: Watching the English. • Apps: Anki, Preply. • Coffees I'm drinking: Heart Honduras Encarnación Enamorado. 📫 What I'm up to this month Booklet, a new Contraption Co. product, is welcoming its first users this month. Stay tuned for more details. 📍 Where I'll be  • July 10-14: San Juan, PR 🇵🇷 (Let me know if we overlap!) 📸 Photos

✨ What I've been up toIt's been a busy month at Contraption Company. I'm amid building a new product called Booklet, which I plan to launch this Summer. It's a community platform designed to be a calmer alternative to Discord and Slack. I've also been helping some startups launch new generative AI products, which has been rewarding. My 2015 article How Operations Research and Artificial Intelligence Overlap has been picking up traction as AI is in the zeitgeist. I've been trying to use my Airpods less and be bored more often. It's so easy to plug in and tune out the world. I got a shout-out in Emma's Indiehackers podcast. 🤔 Things to share• Articles: The Tyranny of Convenience. Yes - "In sum, get out of the house." Ryan Holiday's content marketing strategy, which I'm taking to heart. We stand with the Underdogs. The luxury of building without metrics. It's cheap to build suburbs but expensive to maintain them, creating a "ticking time bomb".  • Books: The Pathless Path - highly recommended for capitalist creatives. The Carbon Almanac - data-focused approach to understanding carbon emissions. Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behavior - who doesn't love an entire chapter dedicated to how to talk about the weather, or a section about the "proper" way to eat peas? • Trends: Fractional labor. Everybody in my network seems to be talking about it. • Video: Sonobuoy deploying. • Podcasts: The Infrastructure of Community - "Efficiency is the enemy of social life.” • Gadgets: Flipper Zero is fun.  • Coffees I'm drinking: April Pillcocaja - Ecuador - Anaerobic Pacamara (noteworthy!). Kahiwa El Obraje.  • Quote: "Startups mostly don't compete against each other, they compete against no one giving a shit" -Justin Kan 📫 What I'm up to this monthWith Emma graduating, we're moving back to NYC this month, and will be living in the Lower East Side. 📍 Where I'll be (Let me know if we overlap!) • June 20-21: Cambridge, ON for Tailwind Connect 🇨🇦

✨ What I've been up toApril was a blur - I was in the Bay Area, NYC, and Cleveland. I'm looking forward to spending the next three weeks without travel. I am currently immersed in the development of Booklet, a new product from Contraption Co. designed for online online communities. I started building Booklet to address the shortcomings of using real-time chat apps for communities. Booklet strives to be calmer - it combines a forum and member directory, and generates a customized email newsletter for the 99% of community members who consume content rather than create it. If you're intrigued and want early access, register at booklet.community. 🤔 Things to share• Articles: Less Cars, More Money - ". . . the only reason we think we need cars to get around, is because we have wasted most of our space on accommodating cars, which spread everything out so far (and made everything so loud and dangerous) that nobody feels like walking or biking!" • Books: Let My People Go Surfing. The Rails and Hotwire Codex. • Coffee I'm drinking: Santa Teresa Natural Geisha from Prolog. 📫 What I'm up to this monthWorking and relaxing, with a short trip to Colorado. I hope warm weather returns soon!  📍 Where I'll be (Let me know if we overlap!) • May 24-28: 🏔️ Denver

✨ What I've been up toWow, it's Q2 already! I spent a couple of weeks in Paris last month, where I worked remotely and found some amazing coffee. For Postcard - I rebuilt the post-writing flow, which makes the entire product feel much more polished. I also hired a product marketing intern to help with some growth initiatives. I wrote about improving my motivation in "Hacking Dopamine for Entrepreneurial Success." I also enjoyed a more spontaneous trip to Atlanta for work, where Valor Coffee was a highlight.  🤔 Things to share• Articles: What Happens When a Company (Like Patagonia) Transfers Ownership to a Nonprofit? (I was surprised this is common in the Nordics, e.g., Maersk shipping and Carlsberg beer are run by trusts), Maybe Treating Housing as an Investment was a Colossal, Society-Shattering Mistake, Hardware Microphone Disconnect as another example of Apple going above-and-beyond in security. • Books: Silo - The Zero Waste Blueprint is about a restaurant in London with no trash bin, which seems like the future to me. I Know This to Be True: Rene Redzepi: On Teamwork, Creativity, and Kindness. • Trends: Dead Internet Theory is accelerating due to AI. • Video: Ludovico Einaudi Tiny Desk. • Apps: VideoAsk - like Typeform, but more personal. • Coffees I'm drinking: Panama Finca Deborah Geisha Echo from Substance Cafe (fantastic!), Ethiopia Worka Sakara Natural from Valor Coffee • Quote: "Every founder I meet wants to build a consumer business when they start out, and then they realize consumer is really freaking hard." - Alex Boaziz, founder of Deel, in Stratechery 📫 What I'm up to this monthI'm working on an update to the Contraption Co. website, which I will publish soon. I also plan to launch a fun mini-project this month inspired by laptops in cafes.  I have two major Postcard features coming out this month, and I plan to spend some time getting a new project going.  Besides that, I have more travel planned.  📍 Where I'll be (Let me know if we overlap!) • April 9-12: 🌉 Bay Area • April 23-30: Cleveland

I just returned from two weeks of "slow travel" in Paris. Instead of visiting museums and attractions, "slow travel" consists of living my everyday life, but in a different city. My trip generally consisted of working during the day, then going out to dinner at night. Every afternoon, I would take a break from work and walk to explore a local coffee shop. Throughout the trip, I visited numerous cafes and had much delicious coffee. But, one place stood out as particularly special - Substance Cafe. Located in the heart of Paris, Substance Cafe is the brainchild of Joachim, a competition barista who has transformed his passion for coffee into a unique and captivating experience.     I am consistently captivated by independent creators operating at their peak potential. Joachim is one of those people. He flies around the world to participate in coffee competitions, then returns to Substance Cafe as his workshop to train and hone his skills before the next event. He operates the cafe mostly alone, and has worked meticulously to control and optimize every step of coffee-making from the farm to cup. He sources and roasts the beans himself, formulates custom water recipes, and rebuilds his equipment in pursuit of the perfect coffee. At Substance Cafe, guests are offered a front-row seat to Joachim's creative pursuit. Substance Cafe is a far cry from your typical neighborhood coffee shop. You won't find people queuing for their morning caffeine fix, as the doors only open at noon. In place of tables, takeaway cups, and sugar, you'll discover 15 stools at a bar arranged around the espresso machine, inviting guests to become an audience to the coffee-making process. While a concise standard menu of familiar cafe drinks is available, the pièce de résistance at Substance Cafe is the Omakase experience. Joachim curates a symphony of flavors through a rotating selection of a dozen specialty coffee beans, personally chosen to transport patrons on a sensory tour of the coffee world. This Omakase menu lies at the heart of Substance Cafe's ethos – a celebration of the finest coffees, brewed to highlight the unique terroir of the farm where it was grown. The experience is akin to a tasting menu at Noma, where every course challenges your preconceptions about coffee. While the price of an espresso can reach $20, it's a small investment to partake in an experience that is among the best in the world. During my trip, I went to Substance Cafe three times, pulled in by the allure of its exceptional espresso offerings. Although Joachim is equally renowned for his V60 pourover coffee, I focused on espresso - a complex art form I'd never dare to attempt at home. Furthermore, it's a rarity to find cafes that can expertly pull shots from specialty light-roasted beans. Within the walls of Substance Cafe, I experienced the pinnacle of espresso – a Geisha from Finca Deborah in Panama. According to Joachim, this remarkable coffee is the only one he has ever bestowed a perfect 10 out of 10 rating for flavor. Each sip was akin to a kaleidoscopic journey, with a dynamic array of tastes unfurling on my palate – from vibrant orange to delicate jasmine. As the coffee cooled, its floral notes gracefully emerged, adding yet another layer of complexity to this unforgettable espresso experience. In an age where remote work and digital interactions dominate our lives, Substance Cafe serves as a refreshing reminder of the power and beauty of purpose-built physical spaces that foster engagement and connection. The cafe itself is a living testament to the artisan's relentless quest for excellence and the enriching experience it offers to its patrons. I can't help but dwell on the role the Internet plays in Substance Cafe. It enables Joachim to find and connect with niche community of coffee aficionados who share his values and devotion to the craft. These customers are willing to spend $20 on an espresso shot, visit the cafe only on weekday afternoons, and dedicate an hour to appreciating a cup of coffee. In this sense, the story of Substance Cafe serves as a testament to the positive effects of technology, enabling passionate individuals to create unique and meaningful work that resonates with a global audience. Ultimately, Substance Cafe exemplifies the remarkable potential that lies at the intersection of passion, craftsmanship, and technology. It serves as a beacon of inspiration for creators everywhere, reminding us that in a world that often moves too fast, there is still room for those who dare to slow down and strive for perfection in their craft.

✨ What I've been up to Part of my work at The Contraption Company includes helping startups develop new products. For the last six months, I've unintentionally been working almost exclusively with AI-focused startups, and I've seen the rise of OpenAI first-hand. While the broader tech market shows signs of slowing, the hype in AI has been exploding. One Contraption Co. client went from an idea to >$7m in seed funding within five weeks. (They're still in stealth - but are hiring in engineering, growth, and design. Email me for an intro.) I summarized my observations and predictions about this AI hype cycle in this post: OpenAI, the path for OpenAI-powered startups, and the AI hype cycle. Finally, I've been contemplating this thought: Businesses like to buy from businesses, and people like to buy from people. 🤔 Things to share • Articles: Why Social Media is Bad for Artists (via Chris L-T). The Build-Nothing Country. Rise of the Silicon Valley Small Business.  • Books: Dopamine Nation - a takeaway for me has been that adversity results in pleasure while pleasure results in pain. • Trends: Vector databases, such as pgvector. • Audio: Derek Sivers on Remote Ruby. • Video: Why single-origin coffee is so expensive (featuring Metric Coffee, my favorite Chicago roaster). • Fun fact: Cede and Company and Depository Trust Company are two of the most important companies in the USA. • Gadgets: Umeshiso Chopsticks. • Apps: Bartender adds the ability to reorder and hide Mac menu bar items, which I find essential on the new notched laptops. uBlock Origin can block elements on pages - I started using it on Linkedin to block  the feed + notifications, and on Amazon to make the homepage just a search bar. You can subscribe to Youtube channels via RSS - allowing you to set up email notifications. • Coffees I'm drinking: Comparing geisha varietals from Prolog, April, and Prodigal.  📫 What I'm up to this month I'm in the process of building 1,000 websites for people on Postcard. I'm also working on a post-writing experience I hope to launch soon. 📍 Where I'll be (Let me know if we overlap!) • March 8-24: 🇫🇷 Paris

✨ What I've been up to Hello from Cozumel, Mexico! It's 80° F here - a welcome break from the Chicago Winter. Since last Summer, I've been taking a "solo week" trip every quarter as a creative recharge. This trip to Cozumel is one of these solo weeks, and I've been spending a lot of time in cafes exploring new Contraption Company projects. It's a ritual I plan to continue - I've already scheduled solo weeks over the next year to Copenhagen, Mexico City, And Tokyo. Postcard continues to do well. I built new features and did a short interview with GoSolo.  Robin Sloan mentioned Postcard in his newsletter. I enjoyed Robin's book Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore while living in the San Francisco neighborhood where the story is set. 🤔 Things to share • Articles: Nash Equilibria and Schelling Points. Underutilized fixed assets and how marketplaces inevitably shift from retail to professional sellers. The Digital Workplace Is Designed to Bring You Down. The uncovering of a real Tom Cruise-style dogfight between US and Soviet fighters during the Korean War. All of Bits about Money (like Money Stuff for financial systems).  • Books: Intrigued recently by the Nordics, I read every book by Kay Xander Mellish - even a guide to American culture for Danes (!).  • Trends: Starlink is popping up on Airbnb listings. • Listening: Creativity by John Cleese. A 2019 interview between Lex Friedman and Donald Knuth (personal takeaway: seek simplicity in tools I build, but embrace complexity in tools I use). • Fun fact: Many Russian submarines have a sauna. • Apps: Obsidian replaced Notion as my personal organization tool. Quitter closes my calendar, messages, and email after 5 minutes of inactivity.  • Cool infrastructure: Chicago Deep Tunnel project. • Coffee I'm drinking: Metric Costa Rica La Bandera Geisha. 📫 What I'm up to this month • Writing a post about the AI hype cycle • Launching some new Postcard features • Researching online communities • Prototyping a new project 📍 Where I'll be (Let me know if we overlap!) • Feb 18-24: 🗽 NYC

✨ Highlights of last month • Traveled to Hilton Head, Savannah, and Denver for the holidays • Had a couple of flights canceled by Southwest • Published "Why I built Postcard: A calmer alternative to social networks" and "How to replace social media with a personal newsletter", which were popular online  🤔 Things and thoughts to share • Articles I've been reading: ‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes, How I got my attention back, Overton window (Wikipedia) • Been reading Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami. Lots of great insights - including how he avoids writer's block.  • Been drinking the Prolog Jorge Vasquez Geisha, which is one of the better coffees I've had. Also, I've been enjoying a Kenyan coffee from Kahiwa Coffee Roasters in Finland. Kahiwa caught my attention because it's co-owned by F1 driver Valtteri Bottas.   • PromptHunt aggregates the prompts that people are using with AI. "Prompt developer" is an emerging job.   • Apple's new end-to-end iCloud encryption is a win for consumer privacy - I'm in the process of switching from Google Photos to iCloud because of this. • Why are we rating everything? A former #1 restaurant in the world only has 4.6 stars on Google. Is that really useful? 📫 What I'm up to this month • Adding lots of refinements to Postcard, and helping people switch over from Twitters's Revue product • Working on some interesting projects with crypto and AI  📍 Where I'll be (Let me know if we overlap!) • Jan 28 - Feb 4: 🇲🇽 Cozumel • Feb 18-24: 🏙️ NYC

Last week I shared how I'm building Postcard as a calmer alternative to social networks. I believe that personal newsletters will replace social networks like Twitter and Facebook as a dependable, personal way to stay in touch. People responded positively to the post, but asked how to get started. "Personal newsletter" is a great idea - but what should you write about? This post explains my philosophy and strategy for replacing social media with a monthly newsletter. A personal newsletter should sit somewhere between social media updates and a blog. Friendly, calm, and timely - but not too academic, formal, or permanent. Twitter and Facebook showed that people want a way to stay in touch with friends and family. But, in a tragedy of the commons, their newsfeeds rewarded people for being noisy and controversial. Over time, posts went from personal updates to stream-of-consciousness "hot takes" competing for likes. People flee these networks seeking a calm, personal alternative. Authors shouldn't think of their newsletter as a traditional blog.  The word "blog" has baggage - drawing to mind stodgy long-form essays that expound on abstract ideas and remain on the internet forever. That's why most people who start a blog never publish a first or second post - a blog is intimidating. Newsletters can be more temporary and lighthearted - closer to an email you'd send to friends. Here's the personal newsletter strategy that works for me: I publish an update on the first day of every month titled "What I'm up to." The newsletter has three sections, and I fill in each section with bullet points. I start drafting the next update as soon as I publish the previous one so that I can add thoughts throughout the month. On the first of the month, I finalize the post, email it to my list, and share the post on some social networks. Here are the three sections I include in every newsletter: • ✨ Highlights from last month • 🙌 Things to share • 📫 What I’m up to this month (Check out a recent example here). This newsletter strategy works because it has structure and a cadence. The structure of these sections makes both the reading and writing experiences easier - it's not a freeform essay. The monthly cadence means that I keep updates timely - I'm not waiting for some newsworthy "announcement" as an impetus for a post. Sharing the post on social networks lets me bridge my newsletter to people who still choose to use those networks. When creating your newsletter, start with this structure and cadence - then modify it to suit your personality. Success with a newsletter requires some recalibration of feedback. There's no "like" button and little data about what people like. Instead, pay attention to the improvements in your human connections. I feel fulfillment from the thoughtful replies people send to my newsletter. And, I enjoy it when people bring up something from a newsletter when we're chatting. If the idea of a personal newsletter appeals to you, try out Postcard. It's an app I'm building for hosting a personal newsletter and website. You can host it on your domain, and I'm working to make it the most powerful way to run a personal newsletter. 

During the pandemic, I deleted most of my social media accounts. While social networks started as a great way to stay in touch - the websites evolved into addictive entertainment platforms. But I still wanted to keep in touch with friends and family. So, I started a personal newsletter, and that's how Postcard was born. Facebook was the first and last great social network. That’s because the assumption was that every person was on Facebook, and it was a way to keep in contact that you knew in real life. Facebook was ubiquitous. As other websites like Twitter and Instagram grew, they never reached the scale of Facebook. These networks moved away from friends because they needed more content. This change happened when social networks began to make money on ads. Ads seek attention - driving social networks to move from helping people connect to capturing your attention for their advertisers. Social networks slowly evolved into social media. While social networks promoted knowing friends and staying in touch, social media promoted consuming content and following media personalities you didn’t know. Social media has become closer to a customized, 24/7 TV channel than a way to keep in touch. With the rise of AI, humans will no longer be creating content. Algorithms will study each user and generate custom content designed to addict that person, all in the pursuit of feeding them more ads. It sounds dystopian - but we’re not far from it. Social media is no longer about community - it’s about ad impressions. There’s good news, though. There's a calm way to stay in touch with everybody: Personal newsletters. Even the staunchest anti-social media advocates keep a newsletter. Cal Newport, the author of “Digital Minimalism,” eschews all social networks but has maintained a personal newsletter for over a decade. This is because newsletters go to your email inbox and skip any algorithmic boosts or manipulation that control what content you see. If you are ready to break the cycle on addictive social networks, try setting up a personal newsletter with Postcard. You can still participate in social networks by sharing posts on those sites. But you can build a newsletter over time that you own. 

✨ Highlights of last month • Launched Postcard. Had >15k visitors on the first day and hundreds of signups, which was more than I expected. Overall, a great start! • Did a smaller launch for The Contraption Company, the product studio I started where I'm building tools like Postcard. • Spent a week in London and took a spontaneous side trip to Copenhagen. I enjoyed lots of fantastic coffee - highlights included Prolog, April, Prufrock, Origin, and Omotesando.  And, the new King waved at (or toward) me 👋 • I joined as a guest caller on one of my favorite podcasts, Cal Newport's Deep Questions. • Moonlight, the company I co-founded in 2017 and sold in 2020, was just purchased by its top customer. I'm happy to see it continue to exist, and I've been helping the new team.   🤔 Things to share • Appreciated City of Gold, a documentary about the late food critic Johnathan Gold  • This post by Fred Wilson about Paris resonated with how I feel about London.  • It's fun to see so many new tools leveraging AI, such as Lex and InteriorAI. The maturation of AI technologies has changed the "adjacent possible," resulting in an explosion of applications of these technologies. • I've been reading many books about Nordic societies, which have impressed me as being well-positioned to succeed in technology-based economies.   • The Physics of Filter Coffee has been a fun read. It's by an astrophysicist who explores the science of coffee brewing. Since reading the book, I've started making my water for coffee.   • "In My Newsletter I Trust", "The Age of Social Media Is Ending" 📫 What I'm up to this month • Continuing to iterate on Postcard in response to user feedback and building some quirky experiments.  📍 Where I'll be (Let me know if we overlap!) • Dec 15-20: 🏝 Hilton Head • Dec 20-26:  🏔 Denver

✨ Highlights of last month • Enjoyed my time in NYC catching up with many people • Released some new features for Postcard • Got a new photo 🤔 Things worth sharing • Reading How to make great coffee at home has me drinking two different cups of coffee at a time, so I can compare them side-by-side • I enjoyed Cal Newport's advice about what to have on a personal website • This Twitter thread highlights some of the many ways that consumers have lost trust in the reliability of their software  • Apps: I can't use a large monitor without Magnet to manage windows - its keyboard shortcuts make it powerful. Sendy is like Mailchimp but self-hosted like Wordpress - a quirky but powerful little piece of software for managing email lists. MeetingBar keeps me on-task and on-schedule. • Gadgets: I upgraded the burrs in my coffee grinder this month, which was pretty easy but had a major impact on coffee quality. • Coffees: Enjoying the Onyx Decade Blend 📫 What I'm up to this month • Some exciting announcements coming from The Contraption Company - stay tuned there!  📍 Where I'll be • Nov 11-19: 🇬🇧 London  • Nov 22-26: 🏔 Denver 

✨ Highlights of last month • I spent a week in the Catskills and saw a wild bear for the first time 🐻 • Shipped an archive page, social sharing improvements, and a showcase of customer websites for Postcard • Update the Contraption Co. website with a focus on "dependable tech tools"  • Published "When are low-code prototypes useful?" for a presentation that gave 🤔 Things worth sharing • I started replacing work-related video calls with "walk and talk" phone calls. It's also been a fun way to talk to friends. If you want to chat, let's walk and talk.  • Books: Small Giants is a good reminder of small businesses' impacts on local communities. Status and Culture made me realize that many online communities function as scoreboards for niche status groups. For example, Strava measures how quickly bicyclists ride common routes, and Nomad List measures how many places travelers have visited.  • Startups: Nexus combines checking + investment accounts into a single, auto-managed tool that keeps cash consistently invested but instantly accessible. Kindred lets you swap homes - we've used it while traveling a few times already, and it's an almost-free alternative to Airbnb. • Gadgets: Adhesive pen loops are a helpful add-on for any notebook.  📫 What I'm up to this month • Updating the onboarding for Postcard ahead of a broader launch • Spending a much-needed week in NYC 📍 Where I'll be (via Nomadlist) • Now to Oct 8: NYC 🗽

Ask for advice on how to make a startup, and most people recommend starting with a low-code prototype.  There are categories of businesses where low-code prototypes can help you de-risk a new idea: • Blogging software (like Ghost did) • Marketplaces (like we did with Moonlight) • Delivery (like Savioke did) But, there are other categories where a prototype won't provide a meaningful signal: • AI / deep tech (like DALL·E) • Search engines (like Google) • Space travel (like Blue Origin) To decide which ideas benefit from low-code prototyping, you can apply the frameworks of execution risk and market risk. Execution risk: Can you develop the technology to make this work? For example, making a website in 2022 has low execution risk because many people possess the skills, and there are tools such as Squarespace or Webflow that simplify the process. Building a self-driving truck has high execution risk because nobody has achieved level 5 autonomy with any self-driving car. Market risk: Do people want this, and is there a big enough market? For example, there is a low market risk for an apartment finder in Manhattan because people are already actively seeking that product and are willing to pay for it. Conversely, building a new social network has high market risk - because its success means competing with Tiktok and Instagram for a person's finite attention. Comparing market risk with execution risk, we can categorize businesses as Applications, Moonshots, Copycats, or Hard Tech. Applications leverage known technologies to solve a problem in a new way. Many well-known consumer tech startups, such as marketplaces and ecommerce, fall into this category. Airbnb is a great example - the software for booking hotels existed, but nobody thought to apply that software to booking peer-to-peer. The success of Airbnb was limited by whether people wanted to sleep in somebody else's apartment, not whether they could build it. Moonshots invent new technologies to solve new problems. Bitcoin was a great example - Satoshi sought to develop a digital currency that nobody controlled. To do it, Satoshi had to invent blockchain technology. Bitcoin had both technology and market risks - not only had nobody created a decentralized currency before, but Satoshi did not know whether anybody would adopt Bitcoin. Copycats use existing technologies to address a known problem. These can still be lucrative businesses - most often when an existing business adds a new feature that its customers already want. For example, the success of Slack removed market risk from workplace chat products. So, when Microsoft built Microsoft Teams as a chat product and offered it to their existing customers, Microsoft Teams became more successful than Slack. Hard tech companies invent new technologies to solve complicated unsolved problems. For instance, Boom is building an airplane that flies twice as fast. Airlines already buy aircrafts and know customers would pay more money to arrive in half the time. Boom's success isn't limited by whether airlines want a faster airplane - it's determined by whether they can build a cost-effective aircraft that meets existing safety and reliability standards. So, when are low-code prototypes useful? Low-code prototypes work best for Applications - where there is low execution risk and high market risk. When your business doesn't require the invention of a brand-new technology to succeed, then execution risk is low. But, when you don't know whether people want it, the business carries significant market risk. Building a prototype and showing it to users can help you de-risk whether people want it.

This is a monthly email about what I'm up to! ✨ Highlights of last month • Had a relaxing, Walden-esque week in Mexico City, spent mostly in Parque México. I spent a lot of time reading - including Digital Minimalism, Deep Work, and Shop Class as Soulcraft.   • Went full-time on The Contraption Company, where I'm incubating new projects and collaborating with startups. • Got Postcard closer to a launch with faster page speeds, design improvements, and more customers. 🤔 What I'm pondering • Portable Billboards: Inspired by Digital Minimalism, I've been reflecting on how iPhones started as an integrated phone + iPod. But, they've evolved to be a ubiquitous billboard in your pocket, designed to constantly draw attention so that they can show more ads. • Knowledge work commodification: It's becoming harder to get an entry-level software job, especially out of coding schools. I think this signals a shift in tech toward more performance-based hiring instead of personality-based hiring. This all seems to be a second-order consequence of remote work - where coworkers spend less time socializing. A problem is that there is not (yet) a reliable, quantitative way to measure the productivity of knowledge workers, especially in software development. But, that isn't stopping people from trying! 📫 What I'm up to this month • Spending lots of time in New York • Working on getting Postcard launched, and exploring some new projects around gamification and recommendations 📍 Where I'll be (via Nomadlist) • Sept 5-12: 🌳 Catskills, NY • Sept 29 - Oct 8: 🗽 NYC (If we cross paths - let's meet up!)

This is a monthly email about what I'm up to! ✨ Highlights of last month • Spent almost the entire month traveling. It was great to be back in LA and Denver for a bit. • For coffee on the road, I got some new gadgets: an Aeropress Go and an Aergrind grinder. They brewed fantastic coffee, and took up little room in my backpack.  • I'm continuing to build Postcard, a way to set up an easy homepage + blog + mailing list. Dozens of new sites were published last month, and Postcard made its first revenue 🎉 📫 What I'm up to this month • Passing through Mexico City and perhaps stopping by the ETH conference there • Working on some new projects - details coming soon! 📍 Where I'll be (via Nomadlist) • Aug 14-20: 🇲🇽 Mexico City (If we cross paths - let's meet up!) P.S. - If you like this newsletter, why not make one of your own with Postcard?

This is a monthly email about what I'm up to! ✨ Highlights of last month • Launched Made in Webflow, a project I've lead to redesign and rebuild a popular social site for Webflow creators • Seeing some cool Postcard sites published - such as ericoneil.me and heyitsaaron.com. Continued to improve the project - including making posts easier to share.  • Been getting deeper into Web3. Bought my first NFT and set up Ledgers. The processes felt clunky, but I can see how smooth the experience could become with further refinement. • Took my first post-COVID trip outside of North America, which was fantastic. I had too much great food, coffee, and wine. Copenhagen impressed me as a city optimized for the Information Age. • Reactivated my twitter after two years of inactivity, and wrote some scripts to auto-delete old tweets and to auto-tweet my travel in real-time. • Favorite read from last month: What I Know About Running Coffee Shops, by an Irish barista and cafe owner who recounts his experience and lessons scaling a group of specialty cafes in Dublin. 📫 What I'm up to this month • Attending 3 weddings - will be traveling for almost the entire month!  • Adding some new features to Postcard. 📍 Where I'll be (via Nomadlist) • July 2-4: 🌽 Marion, IN • July 8-15: 🏔 Denver • July 15-17: 🚡 Breckenridge • July 17-28: ☀️ Los Angeles • July 29-31: 🚣‍♂️ Duluth, MN (If we cross paths - let's meet up!)

I'm testing a monthly email about what I'm doing! ✨ Highlights of last month • I finished the first version of Postcard, which is a personal website + mailing list tool I'm building. (If you want to try it out, use code june2022 this month for free-forever access and let me know your feedback!) • I enjoyed the book Reality is Broken, which talks about applying video game design to business problems. It complements lessons from some of my favorite books like Flow, World After Capital, Deep Work, and Infinite Game.  • Mentoring again with a new cohort of Creative Futures  📫 What I'm up to this month • Working on some fun stuff with Webflow. That's all I can share 👀 • Improving Postcard based on some feedback from people who have tried it so far. • Leaving North America for the first time since the pandemic 🦠 📍 Where I'll be (via Nomadlist) • June 16-19: 🇬🇧 London • June 19-22: 🇮🇹 Rome  • June 22-26: 🇩🇰 Copenhagen  (If we cross paths - let's meet up!)

Over the last two years I've quit Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.  I replaced social media with newsletters and blogs as the ways I stay in touch. Not many people have blogs - so I built a bot to let me follow Twitter users over email. Getting tweets over email is a fantastic, calm experience. That got me thinking - What would social media look like without a central service? Social media platforms promote dangerous viral dynamics. Plus, as social media platforms rise and fall - you can't move your followers between sites.  I tried hosting a blog as an alternative to social media. But, blog posts felt so permanent and formal that I rarely posted. Email newsletters feel more ephemeral - but existing tools tend to be complicated and business-focused. Nothing out there served as the harmonious integration of a personal website with a personal mailing list that I sought.  To recap, here's what makes a great, decentralized social media service: 1. Self-hosted profiles: Instead of twitter.com/philipithomas, use a domain I own - like philipithomas.com 2. Updates over email: Meet people on the tools they already use and keep updates less formal than a blog post  3. Data ownership and portability: You should be able to change tools and keep your followers. That's what I've built - a project called Postcard. And, you're looking at it right now - this newsletter is sent through my Postcard, which I host at philipithomas.com. If you want to set up a personal website, or if you want to move off of social media - take a look and let me know what you think:  www.postcard.page. 

Marketplace businesses connect buyers and sellers, and they typically make money by taking a cut of transactions. Some of today's largest companies are marketplaces, such as Amazon, Airbnb, and Uber. I spent three years building a marketplace for software engineering gigs called Moonlight. It took us about two years of experimentation to make something that people wanted, then another year of growth to get acquired. Those two years of product development became a crash course for me in how to build a marketplace as we constantly experimented with our business until something worked. For startup founders interested in starting a marketplace business, here is my distilled advice that I hope will save you two years of work. Focus on demand. Many founders approach marketplaces from the supply side - a group of people looking for work. But, be careful - the actual group that defines the marketplace is the buyer. Ask yourself: who wants to buy this product, and what problem do they want to be solved? Does the buyer even have the budget to purchase what I'm selling? What you sell is your product. That is where the market risk lies for your business. How you fulfill that product has operational risk but isn't typically where the "secret sauce" for a company lives. Uber didn't start their business by saying, "Wow, lots of drivers are sitting around with no work." Instead, they began with the ideal customer experience - on-demand rides. Over time, Uber grew the number of people working as professional drivers because they offered fair pay and stable work. Why a marketplace business model? For a marketplace to work, you need to deliver ongoing value to both buyers and suppliers, and you need to have the supply work on multiple projects. Often, many different business models could apply to the same problem. If your supply prefers full-time jobs over gigs, then maybe you should monetize in contingency agreements where you earn a recruiting placement fee. If companies wish to work directly with suppliers, then perhaps you should be selling a lead generation service like Craigslist. If companies want to outsource projects, then maybe you should build a full-service agency. Most marketplaces start as an agency where humans manage the entire process from end to end. Beginning as an agency proves that buyers want to buy your product and is an excellent way to get started. But, the difficult part is transitioning from a service business into a technology business. Some companies navigated this transition well, such as Airbnb, and others navigated it poorly, such as Gigster. Think about commoditization. Are you selling the individual skills of each worker on your marketplace, or can any person do any job on the marketplace? There are some significant implications here for how matching works. If hiring is such a "considered purchase" for the buyer - how can you automate it enough to get buyers to make a decision instead of taking weeks to interview tons of people? Airbnb successfully pushes customers to pick between drastically different listings at different prices. But, that same model doesn't work in every business. As a rule of thumb, every decision you ask buyers to make in a marketplace is an opportunity for them to drop off without making a purchase. Sidecar was an early ridesharing startup that competed with Lyft and Uber. But, Sidecar let drivers set their price - and it turned out that customers were not equipped with the information or patience to choose the exact driver they wanted every time. Uber's innovation of constant pricing meant that every driver cost the same. So, they could route the closest driver to you, and if there was a problem - they could reassign the driver without your approval. For your marketplace: does letting your customer pick the supplier and price improve or detract from the experience? Beware disintermediation. Agencies have recruiters that make sure that the demand and supply follow the rules. Once you become too big to manually handle every deal (and truly become a marketplace), then you need people to follow the rules still. If people don't follow the rules, then you spend a lot of money acquiring customers and suppliers who cut you out of the deal. The more a company thinks they've hired a particular person, instead of hiring your company - the more likely you will get disintermediated. Yes, you can write any rules into contracts about fees and needing to go through you. But, suing customers isn't a viable growth strategy. You can only get compounding growth if you can consistently grow the number of working suppliers. And, if you need humans to enforce the rules - then your business is an agency, not a marketplace. The home cleaning startup Homejoy failed because their customers had a stronger loyalty to a cleaner than the Homejoy brand. So, Homejoy would pay for ads to get customers, but after a first cleaning - the customer would typically rebook directly with the cleaner instead of the app. Managed by Q innovated on this cleaning model and managed to make it viable. They sold cleaning services to companies who were less likely to form loyalty to individual cleaners, and they made their cleaners full-time employees with benefits so that they could rely on the company for all of their income. The frequency of purchase will determine whether your marketplace can experience exponential growth in the number of active customers. So, ask yourself - why would a customer use this marketplace the second, third, or hundredth time? Also, can your suppliers rely on your marketplace for stable income? Your pricing is too low. At a 5% take rate, you need about 20 full-time working placements to pay one internal employee. That's crazy. I always recommend that marketplaces aim for closer to a 50% fee. With a 50% fee, you only need one full-time working placement to support one internal employee. High prices might seem like a problem - but it's a competitive advantage. If you differentiate on nothing but the price, then your business is a commodity and can get replaced. The amount of money you make dictates how much money you can spend to acquire new customers - which drives faster growth. Low fees can hurt your ability to pursue enterprise customers, too. Big companies will want you to invoice them with 90-day payment terms, but suppliers don't want to wait three months for payment - which means you're factoring invoices and taking on the risk of non-payment. High margins help make both of these risks more palatable. Consider TAM. To raise VC, you need a path to $100m net revenue per year. (Probably higher because your revenue isn't recurring). How many suppliers could work on your site, and how much money could you earn? Is that even possible? And, why would that labor continue working through you instead of leaving the platform to go work for somebody else? Small decisions in marketplace businesses have significant impacts on the viability of the business. So, be strategic about every detail, and focus on creating the ideal customer experience above all else.

In 2017, I co-founded Moonlight as a professional community for software developers with Emma Lawler. We were both leaving San Francisco, and wanted to make it easier for all developers to find specialized, remote work options. We envisioned a Silicon Valley diaspora that would permanently transform knowledge work into a distributed, work-from-home career. Starting with a no-code prototype, we slowly built a web application and iterated on different parts of the business model. In 2019 we raised a pre-seed round of funding. Fathom Capital and Goldcrest Capital co-led the round, and other participants included Haystack, Jeremy Yap, Quinn Slack, Luke Kanies, Hampus Jakobsson, and Aghi Marietti. In 2020, PullRequest acquired Moonlight. Their developer marketplace, funded primarily by Google, continues to operate and grow the product today. Here, I'm publishing the pitch deck that we used to raise investment money for Moonlight in 2019. I want to share the vision we had pitched for the future of knowledge work, and I want to demystify the process of fundraising for other founders. Below each slide, I've included prose typical of how I would present the slide. As a reminder, this presentation is being shared for informational purposes only. Moonlight is not raising money, and no offer of investment is being made or solicited. Moonlight's pitch Send me your deck! If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at philip@contraption.co. If you're working on a pitch deck, I'd love to provide feedback! Please send it to me. If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy my 2017 article Staffjoy's Pitch Decks That Raised $1.7m.

A marketplace business connects buyers and sellers in exchange for a cut of the revenue. Some of today's biggest companies, such as Amazon, Uber, and Airbnb, are marketplaces. Yes, these companies changed how millions of people work and earn money. However, the core innovation of these businesses is how they use technology to solve customer problems. In 2017, I struggled to hire full-time software developers but found many that were willing to work nights and weekends for extra money. So, I started Moonlight as a marketplace to connect developers with weekend work. Thousands of software engineers quickly signed up, but hiring managers showed less eagerness to join. It turned out that you cannot kickstart a marketplace with sellers alone. I learned a valuable lesson: buyers define the market. Startups seek to build something that people want. Finding this product/market fit once is hard - but in a marketplace, you must do it twice. Buyers and sellers on a marketplace have separate wants and needs, each with a distinct set of quirks. The critical insight is that these challenges are not equal - because you are dealing with money. The demand from buyers will inevitably attract a supply of sellers. There are more professional drivers today than there were ten years ago because Uber and Lyft expanded the market. When there are new ways to earn money, labor will follow. Fair pay gets sellers on a marketplace. Aggregating sellers does not make a marketplace. Marketplaces earn their cut of revenue by being able to find buyers better than the suppliers alone. Personal shoppers existed long before Instacart, but it was hard for them to find customers. If sellers can find enough customers on their own, they don't need the platform - leading to disintermediation. Disintermediation killed marketplaces such as Homejoy and Handy. Marketplaces justify their existence by solving a buyer's problems in a novel way. They identify some business transaction where the buyer is under-served by an existing seller, and where technology can transform the relationship. People couldn't reliably get transported by taxis and were happy to spend more money on Uber. Hotels were expensive and conventional, so travelers spent money on Airbnb instead. Searching for a particular product at stores was hard, so Amazon built a product search engine. Technological innovations such as the internet and smartphones meant that these businesses could not have existed sooner. Marketplaces must create demand, then that demand attracts sellers. After the initial influx of developers to Moonlight, we spent most of the next few years changing the product and pricing to attract hiring managers as buyers. The business grew and was ultimately acquired earlier this year. We thought that Moonlight found a new way for developers to work, but its real innovation was changing how software teams hired.