This past weekend, my developer friend and I chatted with a founder friend about the book library project. This founder has a unique perspective because he’s a self-taught developer, a trained designer, and a self-taught user experience (UX) person. He can take a product from idea to launch by himself—and has done so successfully by scaling and selling a software company—so he has credibility.

I wasn’t sure how the user experience should flow, so I wanted his input. The conversation was helpful, and he made a key suggestion: since the solution is being built to solve a problem that I’m experiencing firsthand, I could start with the output I’d be happy to see as a user instead of starting with the user experience. That is, I could create hypothetical examples of what kind of output I’d want this solution to create that would be tremendously valuable to me.

His point was that we could work backward to determine what the UX would need to create the output. But also, looking at this way would inform what would technically need to be built to create that output. My developer friend and I agreed that’d be a great exercise, so I’ve been working on it.

Doing this analysis has been a great exercise. It’s forced me to think about how the tool will improve my current workflow and, hopefully, that of other users. With so much information in so many books, whittling it down to the key pieces of valuable information in response to a specific question was thought-provoking. Thinking about how information and the connections between it (ideas, people, books, etc.) should be presented and how to do this without drowning myself in information was eye-opening.

I’ve completed one of these, and I’ll do a few more. A big takeaway is that the connections between information in various books make the library unique and valuable. Connections can uncover new insights. New insights help entrepreneurs develop unique solutions to problems or identify the unconventional next action to take given their goals. Today, the people who are able to take advantage of this process are mainly those gifted with a photographic memory, which isn’t me (more thoughts on that here). Showing these connections can’t be done using only text. A visual component allowing people to easily see the connections from a high level and decide where to double-click is necessary.

I’m a big proponent of starting with the end in mind and working backward, but I didn’t do a great job of doing that with this project. My friend pointed out that since I’m experiencing the problem myself, I’m too close—it’s hard to see past the details and stay focused on the big picture. He’s right. His suggested exercise is forcing me to articulate what will add value and how it looks. This will help my developer friend and me reprioritize the features and also highlight shortcomings in what we’ve already built and plan to build.

Sometimes, bringing in a fresh pair of eyes to look at things from 50,000 feet can be helpful. I’m glad my friend made the time to chat and share his candid feedback.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 42
• Total book digests created: 15
• Total blog posts published: 259
• Total audio recordings published: 103

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Book digests created: 0
• Blog posts published: 7
• Audio recordings published: 0

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Finished reading Robert Hagstrom’s The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategy, a framework book about building a concentrated investment portfolio
• Reviewed data set in Looker Studio
• Experimented with ways to visualize data in Looker Studio
• Evaluated NoteBookLM Plus
• Updated UI sketches based on learnings
• Linked blog posts about the same book
• Updated descriptions for blog posts about the same book
• Identified one strategy for titling blog posts based on Google Analytics
• Created draft of process flows for two core functions of the application

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Create a list of potential metrics for weekly updates that better reflect this project
• Identify root causes of and fixes for data quality issues
• Share taxonomy draft with one person
• Continue linking blog posts about the same book
• Continue updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book
• Analyze Google data to generate more ideas for creating blog post titles

Asks:

• None

Week two hundred forty-seven was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No struggles this week.

What I learned:

• I need to do a better job of articulating the problem I’m trying to solve. I pitched it several times this week in different ways, and I wasn’t happy with my performance. I need to make it shorter and to the point.
• I need to do a better job of crystallizing the target user’s profile.
• Focusing on features that add value for a small group of people who are already passionately reading biographies is more important in the early days than trying to add value for people who aren’t reading biographies. The value proposition will be clear to them. Targeting them will be easier. They can also be early champions who convince the nonreaders.
• Sketching out the technology’s process flow—how it works—was a valuable exercise and helped me understand more of the specifics of the technology.
• Solving a problem for yourself can make it harder to build a solution that brings value to others.
• Looker Studio will help me evaluate the quality of our data. It isn’t the right tool to use as a dashboard to present the data externally to users.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

Today, I caught up with a founder friend who sold his software company for a few hundred million dollars. As entrepreneurs do, we started talking shop about business ideas and what each of us is working on. I pitched the idea of the “book library.”

I’ve talked to him about this project as it’s evolved throughout the year, and he’s been skeptical each time—rightfully so, because I wasn’t clear on many things. Today was different. He listened as I described the MVP I was building. He immediately got it. He had some great questions and great feedback.

One big point he brought up was that though entrepreneurs often have hair-on-fire problems and want ideas about how to solve them, there’s also a desire for ideas about the tactics of executing solutions. He gave an example: needing to reduce burn. The solution could be to significantly reduce the workforce (which he’s done). Most entrepreneurs don’t do that often, so they’d want to understand the nuances of executing the reduction in a way that treats employees as well as possible. To fill this tactical knowledge gap, most entrepreneurs learn from others who’ve recently made a reduction or botch it and learn from their own mistakes.

His points were valid and got me thinking. There’s a difference between tactical learning and strategic learning. Tactical learning involves learning what’s working in the current environment. And tactics are constantly evolving. Strategic learning is about learning the concepts and frameworks that solve problems that all entrepreneurs encounter. Strategies do evolve, but they tend to be more timeless. The bid ideas around marketing haven’t changed in decades, but how those strategies are executed continuously evolves. Marketers advertised heavily in newspapers forty years ago, but today it’s Google and Facebook.

I wasn’t aiming to provide entrepreneurs with a library of tactical wisdom. I feel like many resources, such as YouTube, make tactical learning accessible. But my friend got me thinking. The application of wisdom is a big thing entrepreneurs struggle with. Am I overlooking an opportunity to bring massive value to entrepreneurs by not including tactical wisdom? I’m not sure now, but I want to think about this more, with an open mind, during the holidays.

In 2023, I set Thanksgiving and Christmas reading goals: to read an 800-page book and then a pair of books that totaled about 700 pages. I didn’t hit either goal deadlines; I finished the books a few days late. But I did finish them, so I was happy!

In hindsight, I was ramping up my reading in a major way and then developing a daily reading habit. That set me up for 2024, during which I’ve read one book a week on average and started my book-related personal project. I had no idea this would happen when I set those goals in 2023, but I didn’t see much downside and went for it.

I want to repeat that this year by setting a goal for Christmas (setting a Thanksgiving goal slipped my mind)—but not reading. I want something challenging but different than reading. I want to get back to writing blog posts series on books I’ve read and creating podcasts from those series. Hopefully, I can form a habit that will be useful in 2025.

Some background for context: I did blog and podcast series over the summer. For example, see the Ted Turner series here and here (episodes 98–103). Writing a series of blog posts about a book required that I create a digest of the book, which took a ton of time. Recording and editing the podcast did too. It wasn’t sustainable, which led to my stopping after my summer experiment. Over Christmas, I’ll have more time.

My goal this Christmas is around writing. I’ll create a blog post series (five or six posts) about a book I’ve read, which means I’ll need to create a digest too. I’d ultimately like to create a backlog of blog post series and podcasts I can publish on a schedule. I’m not sure how I’ll do that, but creating this blog post series and parking it for future use seems like a good place to start.

That’s it. That’s my Christmas writing goal. Wish me luck.

I was chatting with a friend about how many books the “book library” MVP would need to include to be useful to entrepreneurs. He was thinking thousands or tens of thousands. However, I think it’s much less than that if you consider the number of books a person can read on their own. I’d imagine the average entrepreneur would get value from the MVP if a few hundred or even as few as one hundred books were included.

Let’s look at some numbers to demonstrate this, using my experience with this project as an example. Since February of this year, I’ve read 50 books, mostly biographies. By the end of the year, I aim to read 52 books, 1 per week on average.

Assuming I keep up that pace indefinitely, here’s how many books I’ll have read over various periods:

• Year 1: 52
• Year 2: 104
• Year 3: 156
• Year 4: 208
• Year 5: 260
• Year 10: 520
• Year 15: 780
• Year 20: 1,040
• Year 30: 1,560
• Year 40: 2,080
• Year 50: 2,600

I could read about 2,600 books at the absolute most, and that’s over 50 years. Even cracking 1,000 books would take me 20 years. And that’s reading a book a week, which my friends and family think is aggressive.

So, let’s say a founder reads half as fast: 2 books a month, or 26 books a year. Take all those numbers and cut them in half: 4 years to reach 100, 19 years to reach 500, and 38 years to reach 1,000.

Considering these figures, I think the “book library” could be hugely valuable to myself and other entrepreneurs. If I could use this tool to access the wisdom in a few hundred biographies to help me overcome hurdles, that would be the equivalent of several years of reading a book a week to acquire the same wisdom (assuming I remembered all of it). If the library included 1,000 books, it would be like accessing 20 years of reading.  

I love reading. It’s my favorite way to learn. But it’s not a time-efficient way of learning. Reading is powerful for entrepreneurs perpetually short on time and always looking for solutions to pressing problems, but it’s not a time-efficient problem-solving tool.

I’m excited about the value this tool can offer to entrepreneurs. It could be a great learning and problem-solving tool for entrepreneurs—and one that’s time efficient. It doesn’t need thousands of books to be valuable when it launches. A few hundred or even a hundred could give entrepreneurs access to the wisdom they would otherwise have to spend several years reading books to acquire.

Reading is valuable and something I plan to do as long as possible. I don’t want this tool to replace reading, I want it to complement it by pointing entrepreneurs to the right information in the right book at the exact time they need it.

I’ve been playing with NoteBookLM for six months or so. I’ve been really impressed with the product since its launch. Using your own documents as AI’s only source to pull from to answer your questions is powerful. Citations to AI’s pinpoint sources are provided in the responses, so you can fact-check. It’s like having a second, more powerful brain, which I love.

The product took off like wildfire when Google rolled out the audio overview feature, with which you can create a podcast featuring a conversation between two people based on the notes you upload. Last week, the company released a paid version, NoteBookLM Plus, for $20 per month and NoteBookLM Plus enterprise for large companies. Many other updates were also made.

One of my action items on this week’s accountability update is to evaluate the updated product and paid features. I’ve been playing around with it this week, and overall, I’m impressed with the updates. I think Google has a smash hit on its hands with this product. It’s going to bring personalized AI to the masses.

One thing I’ve been looking at hard is the UI update. The screen is divided into three sections: sources, chat, and studio. Sources and chat are straightforward—just what they sound like. Studio allows you to access the functions you can use to generate content (such as audio overview).

I wasn’t sure what to make of the UI at first glance. But after playing with it, I like its functionality. Because it shows the three-pane window on one screen, the product is much easier to use. I don’t have to switch between screens. I can minimize or expand each section as needed. And I can choose to expand information from all three sections if that’s helpful to my workflow.

The UI might not win style awards, but it wins on function. I think the NoteBookLM team is on to something with this new UI, and I bet we’ll see more AI applications borrow from it.

In case you’re interested in learning more about this UI change and seeing the UI in action, here’s a tweet from one of the founding NoteBookLM team members.

This weekend, I shared with a friend what I learned about psychology from rereading The Warren Buffett Way by Robert Hagstrom. One of the things he found interesting was the concept of impetuosity and how it negatively impacts investors.

Impetuosity is the tendency to act quickly, without thinking about the consequences. It can be considered a casino mentality—an itch to go into action. You get caught up in what other people are doing and place a bet or make an investment without taking time to think it through.

Impetuosity can result in investors making bets when the probabilities are against them, upsides are low, and downside risks are high.

This section of the book reminded me of 2020 and 2021. ZIRP made investors comfortable paying high valuations for a growth company. Early-stage venture capital deals were getting done in a few days with limited diligence. In 2022 and 2023, companies that raised at these high valuations and didn’t grow into them struggled to raise capital. Some raised down rounds with brutal terms. Some didn’t make it.

Looking back, it was a period of impetuosity. Investors were doing deals they otherwise wouldn’t have because of what other investors were doing. Founders were raising at sky-high valuations because other founders were. Many didn’t think about the long-term consequences. They were caught up in the hype, doing what seemed normal.

Some founders and investors were aware of impetuosity and recognized what was happening. They took note and acted differently. The shrewd investors were selling assets at peak prices, not buying. And the shrewd founders were raising reasonable sums at valuations that wouldn’t hinder future fundraising, or they were selling their companies outright at peak multiples.

Hagstrom details how Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger avoided impetuosity. The most important thing they did before making an investment was calculate the probability that it would be favorable for them. If it wasn’t favorable, they continually took in more information and monitored the situation. They had the patience to wait until the odds were in their favor, which reduced their risk of losing money. And if the odds tilted in their favor, their research and calculated probability gave them the confidence to bet big even when others were doing the opposite.

Their use of facts and probabilities helped them act counter to the crowd and overcome impetuosity.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 41
• Total book digests created: 15
• Total blog posts published: 252
• Total audio recordings published: 103

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Book digests created: 0
• Blog posts published: 7
• Audio recordings published: 0

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Finished rereading Robert Hagstrom’s The Warren Buffett Way, a biography about Warren Buffett’s investing framework and psychology  
• Linked popular blog posts written about the same book using related lists
• Updated descriptions of popular blog posts
• Identified a method to compile a founder’s journey from multiple sources and communicate it digestibly
• Received feedback on my draft taxonomy
• Received input and ideas from a developer who built a project like the “book library” MVP
• Identified technologies that can help with building challenging features
• Completed code to parse data according to a schema and populate database fields (my developer friend led this effort)

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Create a list of potential metrics for weekly updates that better reflect this project
• Review data set in Looker Studio
• Experiment with ways to visualize data in Looker Studio
• Identify root cause and fixes for data set quality issues
• Evaluate NoteBookLM Plus
• Update UI sketches based on learnings
• Share taxonomy draft with one person
• Continue linking blog posts about the same book
• Continue updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book
• Generate ideas for a methodology for creating blog post titles using data from Google on top-performing posts

Asks:

• None

Week two hundred forty-six was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No struggles this week.

What I learned:

• Matching to existing data sets that have unique identifiers is a good way to start building a database about people and companies from scratch. It reduces the number of duplicate records.
• This summer I published 100 podcast episodes about autobiographies and biographies I was reading. To learn, I wanted to get reps quickly. To prepare for those episodes, I distilled the books into a series of blog posts. Analytics show that my series on Ted Turner, Henry Singleton, Ed Thorp, and Jim Simons are the most popular. I have 1700+ blog posts, but most visitors are for the blog post series I did this summer. I need to do more of this kind of post.
• Looker Studio is a good business intelligence tool to easily display data, especially from a database.
• Many of the AI thinkers are open to chatting about new projects. I cold emailed one of them, and we chatted this week. He was open to sharing how he built his latest project and even showed me his database. Builders like connecting with other builders and sharing their projects. Cold outreach works. I’ll do more of this going forward.
• Some AI models trained on books without permission by using the infamous Books3 data set (article).
• NoteBookLM released a paid tier and an enterprise version this week via NoteBookLM Plus (article). This could be game changing and get people more comfortable using their own source documents with AI, especially for learning.
• NoteBookLM also released the audio interactivity feature. You can listen to a podcast generated using the source documents you uploaded and interrupt the podcast mid-play to ask it questions (article).

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!