Happy Thursday!
Kia ora Caffeinators,
Busy day ahead so for once you won’t have to hear me prattle on at the top. Let’s just get stuck into it. We will be bringing you a bonus edition of the news letter tomorrow though so dw, you aren’t through with me yet this week.
Here’s what’s brewing in your Daily Shot:
New Caffeine Event: Coffee and Convos
Event: Building your startup operating system with Notion
Thinking Machines is tackling A.I consistency
Helicopters coming to Uber
As always, thank you to everyone who has upgraded to a paid subscription or simply recommended Caffeine to friends and whānau. We couldn’t do any of this without you.
Finn and the CAFFEINE team
Event: Coffee and Convos - There’s one thing I hear most frequently when speaking with founders about what they find hardest: It’s the loneliness. Feeling like they’re consumed by the stress and doubt of what they’re building but every time they look outside its other founders seemingly crushing it.
I think its reinforced by the pervasive, even toxic, levels of positivity and LinkedIn speak which a lot of the startup world runs. Everything is about the excitement, energy and novelty of being a founder. Everything is about energy, passion and momentum.
It can make people feel afraid to speak up about the many times they’re feeling none of those things. Even when people do discuss failure it often gets judo thrown into positivity by being couched as learning.
As anyone who has ever been in a long term relationship has likely learned the hard way, when someone has a problem there’s an important difference between ‘I want hear solutions‘ and ‘I want to feel heard’ and reaching for the right one at the right moment.
That’s why as part of our mission to help founders we’re starting a new series of Coffee and Conversations, where we give you a place to have both. Come and share whatever it is you’re grappling with - whether it’s a specific problem or just a general feeling of burn out.
Other founders and operators will be there not to give cookie cutter advice but share their relevant experience and how they got through it.
We’ve already soft launched a version of this in Tauranga which has sold out so there’s clearly some appetite.
If this sounds like something you’d like to attend in Auckland or elsewhere - let me know at hello@caffeinedaily.co
Who?
If you are a founder or an operator building a company with global ambitions (you don’t have to be global just yet), we would love you to join.
Criteria :
Chatham House rules apply.
No cookie cutter advice, just experiences from others who have been there.
You must be registered to attend.
Format:
5 minutes to share your challenge
10 minutes for us all to share what we've experienced in similar situations and how we overcame it or.
Event: Building your startup operating system with Notion - If you’re anything like me, having ideas isn’t the hard part of the job - it’s the structure which effectively turns those ideas into action. At the end of the day, that’s the difference between dreaming about something and doing something.
Our mates over at Notion specialise in giving you a system for turning thoughts into deeds and are setting up their first interactive workshop designed for startup founders, operators, builders & enthusiasts in Auckland.
In this session, you'll learn how to leverage Notion to build powerful systems that streamline your operations and accelerate your fundraising efforts.
🚀 What you'll learn:
How to build a foundational Startup Operating System in Notion that brings clarity to your team's workflows, such as projects, tasks, docs & meeting notes.
Create a Fundraising Command Centre that organises your investor pipeline, pitch materials, data room and due diligence documents.
Leverage Notion AI to generate investor research, craft compelling pitch narratives, and automate repetitive tasks
Connect with fellow founders and share best practices for your company.
🔧 Who should attend:
Startup founders and co-founders looking to build scalable operational systems
Team leads who want to improve collaboration and documentation
Entrepreneurs preparing for fundraising who need to organise their investor documents & strategy
Wednesday, 24 September
5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
GridAKL / John Lysaght Startup Coworking space
Request a spot here.
Thinking Machines is tackling A.I consistency: The rippling effects of Sam Altman’s brief ousting are still rippling through Silicon Valley years later and one of the biggest side effects is how many former Open AI executives have gone on to work at rivals or found their own companies.
One of the highest profile of these is former OpenAI CTO (and brief CEO) Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines. It quickly received $2b in funding despite not having anything to show for it except the pedigree of its founding team but now we’re starting to get a clearer picture of what will set this startup apart.
In a recently published blog post, Thinking Machines Lab researcher Horace He lays out how the company is approaching one of the root problems with LLMs - reproducibility. You can ask Chat GPT the same question a thousand times and potentially get a thousand good answers but they won’t be identical and trying to make a system which can be ‘deterministic’ in that way is a crucial milestone to making truly dependable AI.
It’s a dense blog post but for anyone particularly interested in the pointer end of the current tech revolution, I’d give it a read here.
Helicopters coming to Uber: This really just screams late stage capitalism, huh? Uber is partnering with Joby to bring helicopter rides to the app in New York, following the latter company’s acquisition of helicopter company Blade. Helicopters could be an available pick up option in the app as soon as next year. The wallet cringes at what a surge price helicopter ride to the airport will set you back but it’s not hard to picture this taking off, if you’ll excuse the awful pun.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Want to get in touch with a news tip, bit of feedback or just to chat? Email hello@caffeinedaily.co