I remember back in 2006 or 2007 when I switched from Outlook email to Gmail.
During my Outlook years, I would folder most of my emails and delete the rest so that if I wanted to find an email, I could go look in the folder for it.
I remember back in 2006 or 2007 when I switched from Outlook email to Gmail.
During my Outlook years, I would folder most of my emails and delete the rest so that if I wanted to find an email, I could go look in the folder for it.
I remember back in 2006 or 2007 when I switched from Outlook email to Gmail.
During my Outlook years, I would folder most of my emails and delete the rest so that if I wanted to find an email, I could go look in the folder for it.
When I started using Gmail, I set up the same folders, but quickly realized that wasn't necessary because Gmail search was so good I could just search all of my email and find whatever I needed.
But the truth is Gmail search wasn't that good and like all you I have spent/wasted countless hours trying to find emails that I know exist somewhere in my archives but for the life of me I can't find them.
The arrival of the Gemini logo in the upper right of my browser has changed all of that for the better.
Here are two prompts I did today regarding a multi-family residential property we have owned in Brooklyn for the last ten years:
In this one, I was looking for a proposal we got back in early 2018 for a solar/battery system for the building.
In this one, I was looking for the land survey for the building:
In both cases, these Gemini prompts got me to the exact document I was looking for in less than thirty seconds on the first try.
Before Gemini, I could have spent five or ten minutes looking through many emails trying to find the attached document and maybe would have given up.
If you use Gmail and are not using Gemini to search your emails, you need to start immediately. It's a game-changer.
I started programming when I was in high school and helped pay my way through MIT by writing Fortran code in a research lab. I got a job writing software for a naval architecture firm right out of college, and then helped pay my way through grad school by doing some freelance coding gigs. When I got into VC in the mid 80s, I stopped writing code. Other than some UI/UX tweaking here and there, I have not written much code in almost forty years.
Like so many of us, the arrival of AI-assisted coding tools has made me a coder again. It's not really writing code, though. It's building stuff with code that is written by AI.
It's fun.
Over the weekend, I made two apps, both of which leverage my interest in music.
I used Claude Code, working in the Terminal app on my Mac, to build this web app that pulls all the music I have recently liked on SoundCloud and makes it available to listen on the web.
I also used our portfolio company Neynar's Studio app to build and deploy a mini-app in the Farcaster and Base mobile apps. My mini app is called Music Casts, and it pulls all of the music links from the people I follow on Farcaster and Base and puts them into a mini app that allows you to listen to them. It looks like this in Farcaster:
It is nice to make miniapps in Neynar Studio because Farcaster and Base offer the deployment surface and user base to give feedback. When I casted about Music Casts, I got a ton of suggestions, and I have added some of them already.
Coding in Claude Code in the Terminal app is more powerful, particularly when paired with a deployment tool. I used a deployment tool called Railway to get my web app live.
If you've always wanted to build software applications but have been held back by a lack of programming skills and/or time to learn, your time has come!
If you want to get started on Claude Code in the Terminal app,here are the instructions to get going.
If you want to build in Neynar Studio, go here.
I had dinner on Wednesday night with my friend Seth, who has been building products and companies since I met him over thirty years ago. He was expounding on his newfound ability to build products and companies all by himself with AI coding tools. His enthusiasm was off the charts, and I decided to pour some cold water on it and said, "yeah but it can't do stuff in the real world yet." And he said, "Like what?" And I said, "Like grow corn."
The next morning this landed in my text messages.
As Seth writes in the story tab of that website:
SETH: “I can do anything I want with software from my terminal.”
FRED: “That's not fire. You can't like grow corn.”
SETH: “I bet you I could. You know what I mean? I'm going to grow corn for you.”
FRED: “That'd be great. Thank you.”
SETH: “I'm going to figure it out and I'm going to show you. And that'll be our first vibe coding project together.”
FRED: “It's a physical thing.”
SETH: “I will buy fucking land with an API via my terminal and I will hire some service to plant corn.”
FRED: “Okay, well that's a little different... you're going to get somebody to grow corn for you. But that's not exactly what I'm talking about. Like, you can hire Jeff to come and make dinner for you, but like you can't make dinner.”
SETH: “No, but anything that could be done with technology, I can do now. Anything, which is insane.”
So now, Seth has roped me into his project that he calls Proof of Corn, and we are collaborating in a shared GitHub repo with a goal of growing corn.
He made his point and it landed with me:
Vibe Alignment
When I started using Gmail, I set up the same folders, but quickly realized that wasn't necessary because Gmail search was so good I could just search all of my email and find whatever I needed.
But the truth is Gmail search wasn't that good and like all you I have spent/wasted countless hours trying to find emails that I know exist somewhere in my archives but for the life of me I can't find them.
The arrival of the Gemini logo in the upper right of my browser has changed all of that for the better.
Here are two prompts I did today regarding a multi-family residential property we have owned in Brooklyn for the last ten years:
In this one, I was looking for a proposal we got back in early 2018 for a solar/battery system for the building.
In this one, I was looking for the land survey for the building:
In both cases, these Gemini prompts got me to the exact document I was looking for in less than thirty seconds on the first try.
Before Gemini, I could have spent five or ten minutes looking through many emails trying to find the attached document and maybe would have given up.
If you use Gmail and are not using Gemini to search your emails, you need to start immediately. It's a game-changer.
I started programming when I was in high school and helped pay my way through MIT by writing Fortran code in a research lab. I got a job writing software for a naval architecture firm right out of college, and then helped pay my way through grad school by doing some freelance coding gigs. When I got into VC in the mid 80s, I stopped writing code. Other than some UI/UX tweaking here and there, I have not written much code in almost forty years.
Like so many of us, the arrival of AI-assisted coding tools has made me a coder again. It's not really writing code, though. It's building stuff with code that is written by AI.
It's fun.
Over the weekend, I made two apps, both of which leverage my interest in music.
I used Claude Code, working in the Terminal app on my Mac, to build this web app that pulls all the music I have recently liked on SoundCloud and makes it available to listen on the web.
I also used our portfolio company Neynar's Studio app to build and deploy a mini-app in the Farcaster and Base mobile apps. My mini app is called Music Casts, and it pulls all of the music links from the people I follow on Farcaster and Base and puts them into a mini app that allows you to listen to them. It looks like this in Farcaster:
It is nice to make miniapps in Neynar Studio because Farcaster and Base offer the deployment surface and user base to give feedback. When I casted about Music Casts, I got a ton of suggestions, and I have added some of them already.
Coding in Claude Code in the Terminal app is more powerful, particularly when paired with a deployment tool. I used a deployment tool called Railway to get my web app live.
If you've always wanted to build software applications but have been held back by a lack of programming skills and/or time to learn, your time has come!
If you want to get started on Claude Code in the Terminal app,here are the instructions to get going.
If you want to build in Neynar Studio, go here.
I had dinner on Wednesday night with my friend Seth, who has been building products and companies since I met him over thirty years ago. He was expounding on his newfound ability to build products and companies all by himself with AI coding tools. His enthusiasm was off the charts, and I decided to pour some cold water on it and said, "yeah but it can't do stuff in the real world yet." And he said, "Like what?" And I said, "Like grow corn."
The next morning this landed in my text messages.
As Seth writes in the story tab of that website:
SETH: “I can do anything I want with software from my terminal.”
FRED: “That's not fire. You can't like grow corn.”
SETH: “I bet you I could. You know what I mean? I'm going to grow corn for you.”
FRED: “That'd be great. Thank you.”
SETH: “I'm going to figure it out and I'm going to show you. And that'll be our first vibe coding project together.”
FRED: “It's a physical thing.”
SETH: “I will buy fucking land with an API via my terminal and I will hire some service to plant corn.”
FRED: “Okay, well that's a little different... you're going to get somebody to grow corn for you. But that's not exactly what I'm talking about. Like, you can hire Jeff to come and make dinner for you, but like you can't make dinner.”
SETH: “No, but anything that could be done with technology, I can do now. Anything, which is insane.”
So now, Seth has roped me into his project that he calls Proof of Corn, and we are collaborating in a shared GitHub repo with a goal of growing corn.
He made his point and it landed with me:
Vibe Alignment
This project isn't just about growing corn. It's about documenting what happens when you take AI seriously as a collaborator rather than a tool.
Every decision will be logged. Every API call documented. Every dollar tracked. When we harvest corn in October, we'll have a complete record of how an idea became a reality—with AI as the orchestration layer.
This project isn't just about growing corn. It's about documenting what happens when you take AI seriously as a collaborator rather than a tool.
Every decision will be logged. Every API call documented. Every dollar tracked. When we harvest corn in October, we'll have a complete record of how an idea became a reality—with AI as the orchestration layer.
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