The best productivity tool, another Rocket Lab success and the rise of vibe coding

PLUS: Sign up for a VC 101 series, the importance of workplace 'gossip' and Kathryn Zealand on Diaspora.nz

Good morning, startup land.

We’re kicking off with our regular Tuesday tool feature today. With so many new products launching, it’s hard to know what’s worth your time. We’ll be testing them out and giving you a quick rundown of our experience so we hope it helps.

This week, I chat through the AI tool I get the most use out of in my daily work life (outside of the now ubiquitous GPT/Claude combo).

Here’s what else is brewing in your daily shot today:

• Rocket Lab successfully deploys in-space manufacturing capsule

• Icehouse Ventures hosting free VC 101 series

• What the hell is ‘vibe coding’ and why should you care?

• Pod Pick: Diaspora.nz with Kathryn Zealand

• When is workplace chat ‘just gossip’ and when is it ‘sharing information’?

Keep your stories and updates coming. Have a great day.

Finn & the Caffeine team

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NotebookLM: Being in conversation with all of your work is wildly fun and useful

There's a new productivity tool promising to cut hours out of your work week released almost every minute and they range from brilliant to baffling, so each week Caffeine will bring you the tools we’re finding truly useful.

Notebook LM is one of those AI use cases which makes me go ‘of course, how did did I manage without this before?’ Pitched as your personal research assist, it fits the bill remarkably well while also providing some functionality which is almost troublingly impressive

Basically, it’s a free Google product which allows you to drag and drop any online resource: a hundred page PDF, an hour long lecture on Youtube, a three hour recording of your last DnD session (yes these are examples from my life) and place them in a virtual ‘notebook’.

The AI will parse everything you put in and then answer any questions you have about any of the sources uploaded. What were the three key themes of the video essay I uploaded? What were the primary action items from the meeting transcript I uploaded last week? Why does my DnD character fail so frequently?

It’s an amazing way to get a quick download on a complicated topic you don’t have time to sit through a long video series on, similar to how Chat GPT is great as a basic research assist.

But the difference with Notebook LM is suddenly not having a thousand separate docs, sheets and Google Drives with your work scattered between them but instead an organised central hub, complete with its own virtual librarian that I can ask to help with any task.

The most viral capability, which you may already have seen, is the ability of Notebook LM to generate an ‘audio summary’ i.e podcast, of anything you upload. It’s terrifyingly life like, if a little stilted and full of forced cheer. Ever wanted tot hear a personalized podcast discussing your bank statement? Well now you can.

What’s slightly eerie about it is the new functionality, starting to roll out, where you can interrupt the AI ‘hosts’ and ask questions or get them to drill down further on one specific point. It’s not hard to see the potential use cases more broadly but for now, it’s a fun and fascinating gimmick.