Corporate Misfits and New Productivity Tools

Hello, and happy Sunday! It’s summer blockbuster season, and so far, it seems like no one has noticed. The Memorial Day box office, which officially kicked it off, was down 20 percent from last year, and it’s only been more bad news since then—at the current rate of decline, 2024 ticket sales could be down 6–11.5 percent. We saw Furiosa: A Max Max Saga (epic), Challengers (horny and well done), and The Fall Guy (stupid and fun). Movies are an art form! Go see them in the theater if you want them to endure.

Now, on to everything we published this week, along with our take on the latest tech and business news.—Kate Lee

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Our stories

"The Misfit Who Built the IBM PC" by Gareth Edwards/The Crazy Ones: In the early 1980s, IBM executive Don Estridge achieved the impossible—he created the IBM PC in just 12 months, seizing 70 percent of the microcomputer market. How did he do it? By breaking all of IBM's rules and assembling a team of quirky underdogs in the corporate backwaters of Florida. Read this to learn about the man who ushered in the era of personal computing, only to be betrayed by the company he loved.

🔏 "How AI Can Supercharge Your Favorite Productivity Frameworks" by Stella Garber: Garber, the former head of marketing at Trello, walks us through how ChatGPT can level up tried-and-true productivity techniques like the Eisenhower matrix and the Pomodoro method. Read this if you want to learn how to use AI to capture information, categorize your to-do list, manage your calendar, and even be your creative sidekick.

🎧 "Is NotebookLM—Google's Research Assistant—the Ultimate Tool for Thought?" by Dan Shipper/Chain of Thought: NotebookLM is Google's new AI-powered research tool that allows you to upload sources, ask questions, and generate insights. In this episode, Dan and bestselling author Steven Berlin Johnson use it to find Steven’s next book idea. If you want to see how one of the world’s most successful authors uses AI to write, this is the episode. 🔏 Paid subscribers have access to the episode transcript.

"LLMs Turn Every Question Into an Answer" by Dan Shipper/Chain of Thought: Language models expand any prompt you give them into something new—an answer, a story, an entire world of possibilities. In the second installment of his series on redefining creativity in the age of AI, Dan explores how you can use language models as comprehensive, contextual, and creative expanders to level up your work and imagination. Read this to learn how to harness the power of generative AI for your own creative purposes.

"AI Is Transforming the Nature of the Firm" by Evan Armstrong/Napkin Math: Economist Ronald Coase argued that firms exist to reduce transaction costs. Platforms like Uber and Airbnb have followed this playbook, using technology to minimize search, bargaining, and enforcement costs. AI is poised to revolutionize these dynamics by seamlessly connecting various applications and workflows, automating tedious tasks, and potentially reshaping how companies operate and interact. Read this to understand how AI, as a universally flexible technology, could be the last technology we ever need.

The backchannel

Steven Berlin Johnson wrote about his experience on AI & I with Dan in his newsletter:

But the thing I also want to draw your attention to is how much Dan is driving the process, by suggesting a series of prompts that ultimately elicit some astonishing—even to me—results from NotebookLM…What you can see in this sequence are two things: 1) a remarkably capable language model doing things with a large corpus of source material that would have been unthinkable just a year ago really—but just as importantly 2) a very smart human being who knows how to probe the source information and unlock the skills of the language model to generate the most useful and interesting results. The skill that Dan displays here is basically all about being able to think through this problem: Given this body of knowledge, given the abilities and limitations of the AI, and given my goals, what is the most effective question or instruction that I can propose right now? I don't know whether you're better off with a humanities background or an engineering background in developing that talent, but I do believe it has become an enormously valuable talent to have.

On the heels of his profile of MSCHF, Evan solicited feedback on X about which startup he should profile next. The complete list:

Arc (aka The Browser Company), Block, Corteiz, Cosmos, Daylight, Discord, Gumroad, Halide, Huckberry, Kino, Liquid Death, Mad Happy, Masterclass, Melanzana, Metalabel, Midjourney, Not Boring, Nothing, Nothing, Notion, Ojas, Phish, Poolsuite, Prophetic, Rainmaker, Rive, Runway, Superhuman, Superplastic, Teenage Engineering, Telfar Paynter, Tldraw, Vacation Inc., Wander, Whoop, Yuga Labs

Reply in the comments with which one you’d like him to cover, or if there are any missing.

Want to chat? DM Dan or Evan on X.