What I Learned: Some Cool Stuff
An entrepreneur with a refreshing take on business metrics, an AI tool for research and some AI user guides.
Hi everyone,
The last few weeks have been crazy busy, and as such, I haven't had time to really think through the things I've learned. But I'm committed to posting on this blog once a week!
So as an alternative, I thought I would just quickly share a few cool things I've come across recently, but not had time to write about. Some of it is pretty mainstream, some of it is pretty niche. Either way, I hope it can provide some value.
Podcast
My First Million - Jason Fried
I have been commuting a lot this week due to one of my clients being based out of Surrey. While I definitely prefer my regular train ride into the city, the drive has given me a chance to listen to a few interesting podcasts. My favourite, linked above, is from the My First Million podcast, which is a pretty entertaining podcast where the hosts casually discuss interesting businesses or interview entrepreneurs. This week they had on Jason Fried, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with a refreshing take on caring more about profitability and cash flow than revenue and growth. I often grow frustrated with the world's obsession with short-term sales growth rather than sustained profitability. Ultimately, you can grow sales as much as you want and still lose money. There are, of course, exceptions and examples where this benefits society, but most of the time I feel this just destroys value. Jason shares this perspective, and I found it very enjoyable to listen to someone who believes in this philosophy and has exemplified it.
AI
I have less to say here for once, but I've come across two great AI resources you might find helpful. The first is a tool, the second is information.
Perplexity
This is a pretty amazing AI search tool that has replaced a lot of my Googling. It allows you to search the internet, Reddit, YouTube, Academia, and more, while allowing for in-depth customization of responses like LLMs. The paid version, which I haven't used, also gives you access to multiple LLM models like ChatGPT, Claude, and others for you to experiment with. There are a lot of great guides out there on YouTube, so if you're interested, I definitely recommend checking it out.
Claude 3 User Guides
I've been using Claude 3 a lot lately as I've found some kind of intangible quality difference over ChatGPT. Not to mention the free Sonnet model is perfectly fine for my main use cases, so it saves me about $30 per month. However, the company behind Claude, Anthropic, has also posted some really nice, useful guides on their website for improving LLM performance. Here are a few useful links worth reading:
Conclusion
That's it! As I mentioned, just a short one this week. I'm really looking forward to the end of our busy season so that I can get back to pursuing some of my non-career goals.
Hope you're all well and have a great Sunday.