Everywhere I look, I see founders and operators investing heavily in their personal brand:
LinkedIn posts every day
X threads
Podcasts, YouTube, newsletters and substacks too
Meanwhile, their CV or portfolio gets updated maybe once a year.
I m wondering if we re heading into a world where your online signal (what you say, who engages with you, what you ship publicly) will matter more than any formal CV or resume.
As someone who's worked for a long time in both the "content creation tools" and "educational content" industries, this is a question I get asked all the time.
As someone who's spent a lot of time in both content creation tools and educational content, this is a question I get asked all the time.
It's one of those questions that's neither simple nor complicated.
The trickiest part is that "good" doesn't have a universal answer. "Good" is super subjective. What one person thinks is great, another might find too basic, too difficult, or just plain boring. And honestly, people's judgment about content gets swayed by all sorts of things their environment, social circles, even current trends.
Let's take a step back first and look at why so many products in the past could "lose money" and still take off.
If we look at the evolution of the internet, we've actually gone through two really clear tech booms, and these two booms basically gave rise to most of the tech giants we see today.
The first big boom was: personal tech going from zero to widespread adoption, like the spread of PCs and smartphones. The second big boom was: internet connectivity evolving from dial-up to 5G, bringing massive connectivity and shifts in content consumption.
We can really think of note-taking tools as content creation platforms. Broadly speaking, they actually fall into the same big category as video and audio editing software they're all about helping people create stuff. The main difference is that text is way more flexible and has a lower barrier to entry compared to audio or video. That's why note-taking tools are also better at helping us retain knowledge and express ourselves, and they can even double as knowledge management solutions.
Honestly, no matter what kind of content you're creating or what platform and tools you're using to produce and publish it, the underlying creative process pretty much stays the same. It goes from topic selection, information gathering, and idea formation, to the actual production and finally publishing. These steps make up the core content creation workflow. If we were to map these steps out in a table, you'd clearly see where different types of tools come into play.
ICYMI: 1x launched the NEO Gamma, a new generation of humanoid robots that are designed to help out with things at the home like doing the laundry, cleaning, putting up photos, etc. This is the kind of stuff I used to dream about as a kid but now as an adult I'm not sure if I want a robot walking around my house. Would you let one in and what do you think about home robots? Think they have a future or is it going to be a hype train before fizzling out?
Since Recap s launch in January, we ve received a lot of encouraging feedback and valuable suggestions. Based on these friendly inputs, we ve quickly rolled out an updated version with the following key features:
You can now upload links/images directly from the mobile device, so you can use Recap on your phone!
We ve removed the 20-page limit for PDF uploads, and more importantly, we now support text recognition from images within PDFs.
YouTube content browsing is optimized. Now you can jump to key time points directly on Recap web.
Overall performance improvements: page load speed has increased by over 200%.
It s important to note that all of the above features are available to all users, including those on the free plan.
Someone once told me. "Don't wait for perfect conditions to start." It's been a game-changer for me when I overthink projects. What's the best advice you've ever been given and how has it impacted your decisions or mindset?
For me these are the two most exciting things: 1. Will cash out big time from the crypto markets.
2. My goal to generate revenue with a product that I built and helps people. What's yours?
Personally, for me, the hardest part has been reaching out to others for help. (But this is more of a personal challenge than a technical one.) What has been the most difficult part for you when launching a product?
Is it a good news in the notoriously under-discussed AI climate impact topic? We didn't witness AI losing its job to AI. We witnessed AI getting more useful while spending less money in the process. Which is a great thing. Humanity might've found a climate-conscious way of building AI models. Now just make one that can talk about Tiananmen Square as well as the Spanish Inquisition.
There was a lot of talk in 2023 and 2024 about startups using a one-time payment model, but earlier this year, I started to see founders going back to subscriptions. What do you think?
Many entrepreneurs have had experiences with unsuccessful partnerships. Please share your experiences and tell us about the red flags that let you know that a person is not suitable for you as a startup partner.