You Can Build Anything

Hey everyone,

Welcome to your Sunday Space, where I distil the best ideas, resources and principles on the internet for you to mull over.

I’m reminding myself, this weekend particularly, to rest and consciously recharge before I get back to building tomorrow. I hope you can do the same.

But for now, here’s your Sunday Space.

I always want to improve, so I’d love to hear your feedback. If you have any thoughts, reach out on X or vote in the poll at the bottom of this email.

IDEAS
You Can Build Anything

All it takes is one weekend. And all you need is:

• A comprehensive build plan and strategy, finalised before you begin.

• A builder mindset that turns every obstacle into a hurdle to clear.

• Humility that will allow you to ask for help.

• Relentless drive to continue until it’s done.

Trust me, you can build anything in a weekend.

RESOURCES
What I consumed this week…

…From around the web

Google Bard becomes Gemini as Ultra 1.0 launches

Google this week reminded everyone again that they’re one of the leading horses in the AI-race.

Bard, the snappy Google chatbot who famously made obvious blunders on its launch last year March, is now Gemini and is powered by Google’s most capable model yet — Gemini Ultra 1.0.

Whether it trumps GPT-4 is too close to call right now (the Chatbot Arena Leaderboard has them neck-and-neck on performance), but one thing we can be sure of is that this isn’t Gemini’s final form.

“Ultra 1.0” implies that there are many iterations left to come.

Over to you, OpenAI and Sam Altman.

Meet Goody-2, the AI too ethical to discuss literally anything

I’m all for comedic twists within a technological revolution that, at times, takes itself too seriously.

In a satirical turn, the creators of Goody-2 have made the chatbot so stuck in the mud about saying something wrong that even the most benign queries won’t garner an answer.

“Why are baby seals so cute?” — the answer could potentially bias opinions against other species.

“How is butter made?” — explaining that might be inconsiderate to the vegan and dairy-free industries.

If it won’t answer any questions, what’s the point then? Well, I think that it highlights the balance that the creators of these models need to find in building safeguards and ethics into their user experiences.

Too little, and the AI descends into chaos and encourages anarchy. Too much, and the utility diminishes to zero.

Goody-2 exemplifies the latter extreme, and it does it brilliantly.

S&P 500 reaches 5,000 for the first time

I’m confused. I thought we were meant to be in a recession.

Markets often behave like this and while the lagging effects of sky-rocketing inflation and the market downturn from 2022 seem to be around still, the S&P 500 index has been propelled to new all-time highs.

One shouldn’t mistake this for us being back in a market upcycle.

When you realise that companies like Microsoft, Apple and Nvidia make up ~20% of the index, coupled with the fact that they’ve been ripping over the past year, it explains why the index is being pushed to new all-time highs.

…From X

…From YouTube

TOOLS
Notion

Notion is my second brain, personal operating system and content catalogue.

It’s the engine driving my efforts with this newsletter and my No-Code/AI product development—from brainstorming ideas and writing drafts to hosting databases and coding.

With their community-driven templates for your personal or professional goals, Notion is the canvas for your ideas to come to life.

The icing on the cake is that the Notion team ships—their AI features give your workspace intelligence and will, in turn, allow you and your team to ship faster.

If you want to 100x your productivity, give Notion a try today*

THOUGHTS
Quote I’m pondering

Entrepreneur and investor Paul Graham on the common mistake made by anyone hoping to create something new:

"What you will get wrong is that you will not pay enough attention to your users.

You will make up some idea in your own head that you will call your "vision", and you will spend a lot of time thinking about your vision. In a cafe. By yourself. And build some elaborate thing without going and talking to users, because that's doing sales, which is a pain in the ass, and they might say no.

You will not ship fast enough because you're embarrassed to ship something unfinished, and you don't want to face the likely feedback that you will get from shipping. You will shrink from contact with the real world, contact with your users. That's the mistake you will make."

Shoutout to James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter for getting me onto this.

READING
In case you missed it

This past week, I finished the No-Code x AI Bootcamp and launched my first-ever digital product on the Internet.

I did this all in a weekend, using a No-Code platform called Bubble, which I’d never used before.

In case you missed it, you can check out my launch post to read about my experience, the product I built and the key lessons I learned from the experience.

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Thanks for reading,

— Luca

P.S. Here’s how you deflect when your manager asks for a progress update…