It was December 28th. I woke up at 6am and Cursor had been running all night. I had Claude working while I slept, writing code, pushing commits, doing things that would have taken me a full day. Just sitting there staring at the screen, coffee getting cold, and realizing life wasn't going to be the same.

I got a taste of the agentic workflow and couldn't go back.

Turns out I wasn't the only one. When the Christmas break ended, Charlie and Yitong, my co-founders at Agora, had similar epiphanies. We all felt the same thing: AI had crossed a line. Not the "wow this is cool" line. The "I can't work the old way anymore" line. So we started building. Nights and weekends at first, then all the time. Before we knew it, we had a prototype. We showed it to a few friends. They showed it to their friends. And here we are.

Today we're launching Runner.

Here's the problem we couldn't stop thinking about. Life is busy. You have emails, Slack, WhatsApp, Notion, CRMs, Google Drive, calendars, iMessage. All of these apps, all of these conversations, and a growing list of things that need to get done. AI was the promise to fix it all.

But it didn't fix it.

You still copy and paste. You still bounce back and forth, moving context from one place to another. You still connect and re-connect the same apps over and over. You still deal with AI that is more chatty and less do-y. You ask it to help and it gives you a nice paragraph explaining what you should do, as if you hadn't already thought of that.

We were tired of it.

Runner is different because we built it to be different. Not different as in "here's another AI wrapper with a new coat of paint." Different as in, we use this thing every single day and we're not being polite about it.

Every morning I open Runner and it organizes our day. It scans email, calendar, WhatsApp, Slack, and iMessage for open commitments and tells me what I owe people. It plans my week. It runs the marketing campaigns and tracks performance across platforms. Last week I used it to incorporate a new business in Ontario through browser automation. It filled out every form while I was on another call.

If our friends at OpenAI or Anthropic check my weekly retention on their products, it's gone down.

Because of Runner.

What makes it special?

Runner is action oriented. We spent a ton of time on how your task gets interpreted, delegated, and passed between your apps. We benchmark it every week. It gets better each session.

Runner remembers. We built first class memory into the product. Not the "oh I forgot everything from yesterday" kind. Real memory. Team memory. The kind where it learns how you work and gets smarter the more you use it.

Runner runs on your computer. It accesses the cloud but lives locally. This means it can work across Word, Excel, text messages, Apple Reminders, and files sitting on your desktop. It's like an AI superapp with access to your machine and the cloud.

Runner drives your browser. We have a built-in system that automates browser tasks for you. Most people haven't tried this before. When you do, it changes everything.

Runner stays connected. We invested a ton of time into making sure your apps connect and stay connected. No more re-authenticating every other day. It just works.

Runner automates. Stitch together complex workflows between apps and files, put them on a schedule, and Runner makes sure they run. You get notified when the work is done.

Privacy first of course, in final SOC2 audits. We're CASA audited. Privacy and security aren't afterthoughts. We built your checks and balances into the product from day one.

Now, some of you are going to ask: what about Agora? Agora is alive and well. The crypto market is tough right now, no one is pretending otherwise, but the business is profitable, growing, and very much open. We have an amazing GM driving things forward day to day and we're proud of what that team continues to build. Runner doesn't replace Agora. It came from the same team, the same instincts, and the same obsession with building tools that actually work. We're not leaving one thing to chase another. We're doing both.

It's one of those rare times where we're using something we built, all the time, and now have no excuse not to make it the best thing we've ever worked on. That's the feeling you want as a founder. When the thing you're building is the thing you can't live without.

If you've tried ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and you still feel like you're doing the heavy lifting, give Runner a try. Compare the output. We promise you won't be disappointed.

Expect more from us over the next few weeks about what this thing can do. We're just getting started.

There's more work tomorrow. Enjoy tonight.

I treat AI as a tool and like any tool, people can use the same tools in different ways to acheive different results. I recently realized that I use AI differently than some of my colleagues so I was encouraged to share how I code.

Before I talk about the tools and tactics, it's important to remember that I have a golden rule when using AI to code: Don't get AI to build something you don't understand or haven't built at least 3 times before.

CRUD application? ✅

Simple Tab View Mobile App? ✅

Dashboards of all kinds? ✅

Video Game? 🔴

Vector Search RAG System? 🔴

AI is a tool and for professional software engineers such as myself, I see them as enhancers not replacers... yet. I am sure that one day, and one day soon, everything I am describing here could be done in 1 prompt, automatically, but until then, I think we owe it ourselves and civilization to engage our brain MORE when we are building with AI as it's incredible opportunity to learn and accelerate our leaning vs. getting someone to do something for us.

I am assuming that you are inspecting the results that are being produced, correcting the AI when it builds in a style or way you don't like or want etc. This is an active co-creative process vs. a one shot prompt style workflow. I am also assuming that you are not a first time developer, there are lot of tools that can help you get up to speed and started, Loveable being the most accessible but this is for the next level (for now).

Coding Environment

I use Cursor as my daily driver.

I love the mix of Agent Mode and Editor mode, and I really love the ability to change models per task.

Planning mode is now table stakes for now I build as you will see.

Designing

When designing an application or a feature, I use GPT-5 Pro. I dictate ideas into Apple Voice Notes, copy the transcripion and then put that with a system level prompt into GPT-5 Pro that explains what I am looking for.

I then take the output of that conversation with GPT-5.1 Pro and have a conversation with it using GPT-5.1 (Auto). I will ask it to push me, to test me to make sure I really understand what I am building.

I am not doing this for every task, I am doing it if I have never built that thing before, or don't have a good solid intuitive around how to build it. My most recent project using this loop was building a RAG for an AI system that I hacking on. I have heard of RAGs, I have read about RAGs, but I had never built one myself. So doing the

Audio note -> GPT 5.1 Pro -> GPT 5.1 -> Conversation to make sure I understand -> Test to make sure I understand

Was super useful for me to understand the why and what of what I was doing.

Planning

Cursor has a built in planning mode that is one of my favourite features of the application. It takes a prompt / problem and builds you a plan with discrete todos around how it's going to tackle the problem. I review the plan, occasionally bring it back to to GPT-5 if I don't understand something, and then go back and forth until the plan is good.

If you are serious about building good software and don't have a planning agent (like Claude Code does) or use something like Cursor's Plan mode, you aren't getting the full value of AI tools. This really lets you see and understand what is about to get built, which increases your learning loop and allows you build faster with less tokens.

I use Gemini 3 Pro for planning. I find that it does a better job and is faster at rationalizing about a larger code base. If Claude is the builder, I think that Gemini is a fantastic architect. I used to use GPT-5 for this task, but since Gemini's release a few weeks ago, I have found a noticeable difference here.

Building

I break down building into a few smaller categories:

Building from a plan

I will use Opus 4.5 for this. It's high context window and better coding output makers it the natural choice.

Building a net new feature

I will use Opus 4.5 if it involves touch multiple parts of the application.

I will use Sonnet 4.5 if it's a small change within a few files.

Why the difference? Simply cost.

Refactoring

Opus 4.5 or Gemini 3 Pro or Codex 5.1

Writing Tests

Sonnet 4.5 is great at writting tests and cheaper than Opus 4.5

Fixing small bugs

I will use Cursor's built in Composer model. It's fast and free.

Verification

I also get another AI to review the work of the AI that built a feature or a refactor. I don't use code review PR tools, as I tend to be building a lot of this as side projects where I am the primary developer.

I find that Codex 5.1 and Gemini 3 are both great for reviewing Claude's work.

They will each find different edge cases that Claude missed, or will be able to provide a refactor or a DRY pattern that I missed.

Always review complex code with another agent.

Shipping

I like to have a variety of shell scripts and other tools that are part of my build process that interact with my .env files or local docker configs.

For those, I will use Cursor's built in Composer model. It's so fast and free and quite frankely it can just do a bunch of trial and error until it gets it as that is typically what I do when I am getting things to run locally on my machine.

Once I have a working idea of the production infra needed, I would put this back into my Design -> Plan and Build loop using better models.

I never ship AI code to production the first time, using AI. I still find it super important to understand the inputs and outputs of my infra. Once I have done it a few times, I will let AI deploy and build etc.

How are you building in 2025?

My family is moving into a new house and we wanted to do a little bit of remodelling upstairs. Nothing big, just closing off a wall, making a closet a little bigger and swapping out a sink in the bathroom. My wife's family owns a construction business, so we are lucky to have an inside track with contractors and knowledge.

My father in law is a genius, he runs his own construction business but still made time to come and measure, sketch and draw up the plans himself. My wife and I his customers, and he our project manager, and architect. Truly spoiled. He called in the contractors, did the estimates, told everyone what to do and we are off to races. Until one morning, we realized that we forgot to move a switch and now we have a light upstairs that can only be controlled downstairs. This is annoying. The contractors had already drywalled, mudded and sanded, now they have to cut holes in the drywall, add a new plug, fill up the holes, mud them again and sand. This puts us behind a few days. Not the end of the world, but annoying. This is a detail that we absolutely could have caught beforehand, and worse, it should have been caught by the on site manager, the dry wallers, the carpenters and surely the electricians who did the work.

This morning, I am sipping my espresso and catching up with my father in law. I need to set the stage here as he is a titan of industry in the Canadian construction business. A 4th generation builder, who took a small bricklaying business and turned it into a large construction and development business that builds across North America and has survived and thrived through 3 real estate recessions. He is someone that I go to a lot for advice on building and growing a business. He is a good, honest man, and loves his team and does his best to treat everyone from the labourer to the VP of Construction with the same respect and care. I look up to him, because he has been in the arena and thrived there for many decades. 

So, back to the conversation.

Father-in-law: "Man, I am so pissed that I missed that Kent. I am so sorry."

Me: "I am sorry, I was there and didn't catch it."

Father-in-law: "Not your job to catch it, it was my job. I made the plans."

Me: "Ya, but aren't you a little upset that one of the 5 smart and well paid people who were actually working on the project didn't catch it either? Like shouldn't they have caught it?" 

Father-in-law: "No, actually. It's not their fault. It's not the project managers fault either, it's my fault. I built the plan, I told everyone what to do, I told them we needed it done fast so you and your family could get it before Christmas... it's my fault. What I could have done and should have done is just asked the project manager to build a plan, review it with the electrician and then I could have given my 2cents and then it would have been done better, but I took shortcuts and now, I only have myself to blame".

Damn. Hits hard when you are having the same problems at your onchain governance software company.

Startups are founder driven and typically one of the inflection points at a startup is when the founders start to hire other people to do jobs that they were doing. It’s the messy middle. Founders know that they need to bring on amazing people to scale the business and take care of details and day to day better than they can, because as parts of the business start to grow, other parts need more attention and so the cycle repeats until, if you are lucky and rain or shine show up each day to press that luck button you build a successful company that will outlive you and your co-founders.

So my challenge to you, and to myself is to look at the things going "wrong" in your company. Look at the bugs and the features that aren’t complete or have rough edges or just aren’t working and 9 times of out of 10 the problem lies with you, the founder. You have either half delegated a task, are still holding onto too many tasks or worse, you have delegated it in name only but are still sticking your nose in to make sure that it’s going the exact way you think it should go. All of these are common failure patterns and a recipe for an unmotivated team, that let’s be honest, is waiting for you to pop in and say: “The light switch should go there not there!”

What can you do?

Delegate it and walk away and send veiled threats if they do it wrong? No, this is delegation by abdication.

Delegate but watch really closely? That’s closer to the truth but it’s still not quite there.

Delegate and let your team design, and yes, make mistakes: Bingo.

Empower your team to own the problem, own the design, own the outcome, and yes, make some mistakes.

Those electricians, those dry wallers, those painters and project managers if you hold them accountable to design it in such a way that it won’t break, if you then hold them accountable to a high bar and outcome you want… they might still fail. That’s part of life, part of learning and part of building an anti-fragile team. As long as you aren’t making the same mistakes twice, you are learning and you are growing and you will win, whatever winning means for you and your team. If your team is making the same mistakes over and over then there might be a different problem, we can cover that one later.

Make a list of the things that aren’t working. If you are in the middle of it, and you likely are. Identify it, and get out of it.

You aren’t the smartest person, you aren’t the best at everything. You have a vision, you have an unhealthy sense of drive and purpose that this crazy idea, this idea that one day the government of Singapore will be voting onchain, and that one day IPO’s will happen on your software, that you will bring about transparency and accountability to company and government spending that you and your amazing team will usher in the future of collective creation… your job is to make sure that you are pushing closer to that. Your team, is better, more capable and can tell you what needs to get done, as long as you remain diligent on the vision and bar. 

Unless...

Unless it's game point

If your team is down by 2, and you have 6 seconds on the clock and the coach calls a time out... who are they giving the ball to? They are giving the ball to the person that wants to win the most.

In a startup, that's typically a founder. For a long time that's the founder.

Your job, as a founder is to know and identify which problems are game point problems and which are not. The ones that are not, are always best left to the team to handle and execute. If it's a game point... hopefully you have built up a strong enough bench that it isn't you taking the shot but depending on your size and maturity, it's OK if that's you for a while.

Just know, that each time you take the shot, you are robbing the victory and the sour taste of defeat from a super talented person that you hired.

The messy middle is messy. For you and for your team. Push through, nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. There is more work tomorrow. Enjoy tonight.

So, you want to write something but you are feeling like you can’t finish and post it for a really simple reason: there are 6 people in the world smarter than you on this topic, surely they should write it not you.

During an interview today for Agora’s product manager, a warrior of art reminded me of this mental block and it rung so true. How many great pieces of advice, lessons, ideas and inspiration are left unsaid due to someone feeling as though they aren’t qualified enough to talk about it. Someone smarter than me, they will write it, not me.

I have something to tell you… that person isn’t coming.

The world is relying on you and your voice. No one is reading anyway.

Someone out there needs to hear what you have to say, everyone is at a different spot in their journey and you never know who will read, share or come across what you are producing.

We need you. We need your voice.

What say you?

You know that feeling when you start a new job. You are sitting there at your computer, a new one, reading something or typing something, basically trying to look busy. You have this realization that you have no idea who these people are beside you. I mean you know them, but you don't really know them. You are reading these words and the feeling turns into panic, you don't know what the words mean. I mean you know them, but you don't really know them.

The feeling turns from uneasy to downright dread.

You were at your last company for nearly 5 years. You knew everyone and you knew everything. You were top dawg, you were the man. Now... you are nobody and you don't know crap about nothing.

You start getting scared, and the voice kicks in.

What have I done?

What am I doing here?

What if I don't like these people?

What if I don't ever learn these words or what they mean?

What if they find out that I don't really know anything?

What if I find out that they don't really know anything?

I miss my kids.

I miss my wife.

I miss my cat.

Why did I leave that safe, easy paycheck?

This is never going to work.

We have so many problems.

We have to hire.

Oh god we are so screwed.

Why did they build the app this way?

Is crypto even real?

I want to go home.

How much is my mortgage again?

What the hell is a zk circut and why is it going to help scale the EVM?

Maybe I should start working on that screenplay I've been thinking about...

Then, all of a sudden you recognize that voice for what it is... Resistance.

You have picked the thing that scares you the most, you have planted a big tree and it casts an equally big shadow. All you need to do is walk out of the shadow, stare at the tree and the beautiful yellow gold light glowing through the leaves and remember, that these words you don't understand.. you will.

In a few months when you are on calls, you will hear yourself saying them and it will sound almost like you know what you are talking about. Fast forward a year, and you will leave your body during a pitch and realize that you have integrated these words and ideas and concepts into your conscious and subconccious mind. You will know the deep truth that all experts know, no one really knows what they mean, but you, yes you, the person that spends more time thinking about them than anyone else, you know more about these words than 99.99% of other people on the planet.

Then you think of your wife and how amazing she is for holding down the fort while you make frequent trips to Tecca. She even has a more demanding job than you and she does all the things that Moms do that sorry Dads, we just don't do as well. What clothes do your kids need for next season? What time is the party next Saturday? Is the French assignment due this Tuesday or next? Need to phone a friend? Your wife maybe... exactly. While you are listening to advice, here's a great life hack: marry up.

Then you think of your kids, and the life and example you are trying to build for them.

• Do hard things
• Do things where you can't beleive you are getting paid to do them, but still, get paid to do them.
• Build towards an optimistic future vs. accepting the one you will get by default
• Create something

You are starting to feel better now, maybe it's just the brain.fm kicking in, but you look around, still in total bewilderment of some of the words on the screen and then the deeper, more peaceful realization sinks in.

These strangers... they are your brothers.

You will learn their greatest strengths and their biggest weaknesses. You will get mad at them, and they will get mad at you. You will laugh. You will fight. You will agree and disagree. You will go to their weddings. You will be there in good times and bad. You will watch their kids grow up and they will watch yours. You will ask them to buy you a bedframe for the matress that you sleep on when you come in to visit. You will drop whatever you are doing to help them. You will love them, and together you will write a new chapter of your life together and with a little luck make the world a better, more open and decentralized place one block at a time.

Thank you Charlie and Yitong. I can't wait to see what year two has in store.

Thank you to Martin, WINTΞR who helped pave the way for me and my technical contributions to Agora, I am standing on your shoulders.

I've got a busy summer. Agora is growing, we just hired our 6th developer and we have some exciting new protocols that we are building decentralized governance for. I shouldn't take a vacation, I am too busy.

But I will, and I am.

I still see echos of the hustle culture and productivity porn that I came of age professionally in but thanks to Cal Newport's Slow Productivity movement and Tim Ferriss' new outlook on life, I feel the tide is changing.

So how do you spell love?

T-I-M-E

There is no such thing as quality time. Quality time is something that old men invented to make themselves feel better for the hours, days and years they wasted away building their empire of dirt. You can't have it all, but if you focus your priorities you can have a lot, like a lot a lot.

You can have a great relationship with your kids, with your wife, with your business partners, with your body. (Almost in that order, you find the one that doesn't fit). You can find success and drive towards a meaningful goal. You will be tired and you will have hard days and wish it was easier, but the only way you really show people you love and care for them is through time. Your body is the same.

You might be far away, you might be close, it doesn't matter. Time spent can be a phone call, a letter, a visit, a text, a dank meme whatever it is, it's the transfer of attention from one person to another and in this wild, busy world, attention and how we spend it is our most important decision each day.

Show the people you love, you love them by giving them your time.

Someone on Meta's PR team deserves a big bonus with the announcement of Meta Horizon OS today.

Why does PR get the win?

Simple... this is definition press release driven development. If I had to guess, when Apple was ready to launch the Vision Pro back in February and word got out that YouTube and Netflix were absent, some VP sent another VP a message and it finally got back to the VP of PR and they said:

Now is our f*&^#&@ chance to crush Apple, how fast can you get commitments from some big names like Netflix, YouTube, Sony, Valve saying that they are development partners for our new OS?

PR person: "Give me a few days."

PR person, a few days later:

Alright, I got ASUS, Lenovo and Xbox... is that good enough?

VP (thinking)

Those will do.

Then, it's all a mad scramble to actually sign some deals and get money changing hands ie: my guess is that Meta is paying Asus, Lenovo and Microsoft to build / prototype or at very least say they are building for this new platform.

All of this, I wager, to say F-You to Apple.

This is the key section in the article

Along with a more open app store, Meta Horizon OS will continue to give people more choice in how to access apps. Because we don’t restrict users to titles from our own app store, there are multiple ways to access great content on Meta Horizon OS, including popular gaming services like Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, or through Steam Link or our Air Link system for wirelessly streaming PC software to headsets.

Apple is being dragged through the mud for exactly the opposite stance that Meta is taking here. This is spatial war, and Meta is likely going to win if Apple doesn't correct it's course.

Don't get me wrong, I love this announcement. I use my Quest 2 several times a week and am a big beleiver that the future of work and meetings is in VR. I am really just applauding how very little was actually said in this announcement and in order to put this together it's actually quite simple from a PR / DB side. What's more, now every developer, including myself who read this today is questioning downloading that 10.5GB version of XCode that doesn't have AI built into it, that will require Apple's approval or... I could buy the Quest 3 and know that Meta is moving to a more open future.

Honestly, kudos to Mark Zuckerberg. These are high IQ moves and it could really hurt Apple if Meta wins the hearts and minds of developers.

What Apple needs to do... tomorrow

Hopefully someone at Apple has thought of this, but if not, here goes.

They need to drive to Netflix HQ, get down on their knees and beg them to build the best movie experience on the Vision Pro.

They then need to drive to YouTube HQ, get down on their knees and beg them to build the best video experience on the Vision Pro.

They then need to drive to Steven Spielberg's office and beg him to make a movie using the Vision Pro's unique camera system.

They then need to drive to Capcom / Hideo Kojima's house and beg for them to make exclusive AAA games, not game for the Vision Pro.

Basically, Apple needs to remember that without the other people making amazing shit for their devices, their devices aren't as cool, and no matter how rich Apple is, they can't beat the free market and creativity that individuals can come up with in a decentralized way.

Apple needs to remember that devs are what drives their business, and partnerships like the one with Google in the early days of the iPhone made the product what it is today.

Apple needs to make more deals and less software.

Today marks the beginning of the AI race.

Wait, wasn't that a year ago when ChatGPT burst on the scene? ChatGPT created a new paradigm for how we would be interacting with AI models. ChatGPT popularized conversational workflows. These tools works best when you imagine you have a very smart friend sitting beside you. Simply turn to it and ask it anything you want, and well, you get pretty good stuff back. My family is taking a vacation over March break, and we were looking for a place to stay in Santa Monica. Last night, I used the Kayak's GPT and got good information about where my family should stay, couldn't book the hotel but you can see where it's going. One day, I won't have to leave ChatGPT to get things in the real world. We are close.

Today marks a big change and I feel it's being under reported. Google has renamed its Bard product to Gemini and is going after OpenAI directly. In case you don't know or remember, Gemini is the name of the AI model Google has been developing for the past year, and it has been behind the application called Bard. Let's quickly recap some terms:

Model | LLM | Large Language Model: These are the mathematical weights that power the magic of the AI trained on all the world's data, more on that later.

AI application | ChatGPT | Bard | Gemini | Anthropic: These are applications that are powered by LLMs. They allow users to talk to the models and get useful, or not, info back.

OpenAI -> ChatGPT -> GPT-3 | GPT-3.5 | GPT-4 | GPT-4 Turbo: These are brand names of LLMs made by OpenAI, GPT-4 Turbo being the newest and most powerful.

Google -> Bard -> Gemini -> Gemini | Gemini Advanced: These are brand names of LLMs (models) made by Google, Gemini Advanced being the newest and most powerful.

Today, Google combined the branding of the Gemini model and Bard into one. Google Gemini now represents both the model and the application. If you go to https://gemini.google.com, you'll find a very similar interface to ChatGPT. Steal from the best and have a conversation with the Gemini model. Gemini has made rapid progress in just the past few weeks. Independent researchers give these models a standard testing score for their performance across different domains and disciplines. They also check them using standardized tests. They benchmark different models and updates to models against this score. A few months ago, Google was upper middle of the pack, now, its neck and neck with OpenAI.

The race is on... as of today, Google now has a multimodal, compelling competitor to ChatGPT. It also has a beautiful, fast, easy to use interface. Make no mistake, it's a clone of ChatGPT. And the race is on. So why is this interesting? It's all about the training data.

Training day and vacuum cleaners

OpenAI's most impressive feat was how fast and completely it vacuumed up the text of the internet. This text became the training data that it used to build GPT-3, 4 and so on. This took the world by surprise. We're talking almost unimaginable quantities of data. Every piece of text based data possible, everything written on the internet, transcripts of movies, and audio transcriptions of books. They vacuumed up the internet in a short amount of time without too many people noticing. Hmm... if only there was another tech company that built a really big, and fast and big text vacuum.

Google is the OG text vacuum company. They not only have the most powerful, most robust, most advanced infrastructure in the world for vacuuming up web information, they also invented the transformer, which powers these large language models. So for those in the know, it's been clear that Google should win this race. And everybody was pretty taken aback by how long it took them to get into the race. And now they've jumped in. So today, February 8th 2024, you can say that Google has jumped in number one. They've thrown away the strange Bard branding and have gone deep on Gemini. I am here for it.

I love OpenAI's scrappiness. I can feel the brand differences between Gemini and ChatGPT. I see OpenAI more as the scrappy startup; it's funny, but that's how I see it. Google is the big incumbent, which is so funny given where they were in my mind when they started (I started Googling back in 2001). But back to this whole vacuuming up the internet. Google has the most redily available access to real-time information.

Remember that OpenAI partnered with Microsoft? Well they did and a big reason is Bing. Bing? The search engine no one uses? Yes, that Bing. Although we kind of laugh at the Bing search engine, Microsoft still has a massive team and knowledge around how to vacuum the internet to power the Bing search engine. OpenAI is now getting its fresh data from that Bing partnership. But you can't match Google with how fast they are able to keep the vacuum at the tip of the internet. There are hundreds of millions of new pages being added each day and Google vacuums them all. So now you put the power of Gemini on top of that, and you can imagine how powerful Gemini is and will become. I would bet that Google can train Gemini faster with fresher information. OpenAI can train GPT-4 with Bing's help but not as good as Google can.

I am excited to dive deeper into Gemini. You can go to Google One and sign up for One AI Premium with access to Gemini Advanced. Gemini Advanced would be like using GPT-4 Turbo, OpenAI's best most expensive model. I still lean to ChatGPT first, but I will be running a lot of tests with Gemini over the next few weeks.

If you already have a Google One subscription, definitely try Gemini. If you are deciding which to buy, buy both. Don't cancel your OpenAI membership yet but that day could be coming.

The race is on, more than a year after it started.

If you work at startup and you haven’t wanted to scream at the top of your lungs that everyone is crazy except you, then you likely having been working at the right startups. Building a business is hard, and there is no rule book. You might the first person ever to do the job you have to do, think about that for a second, it’s paradox, exciting and terrifying.

The time will come when your boss, your leaders, your board, your product team, your engineering team, your growth team will do something that you deem just bad. You will want to call an all hands meeting, enlighten the rest of these mere mortals on your perspective and course correct this dangerous trajectory and maybe you should do just that, but, before you do, ask yourself these questions.

Who is driving?

Are you driving or is it your ego? How will you know? Imagine if someone else were to enlighten the tribe and get all the credit. How would that make you feel?

If you would feel worse, then your ego is driving.

If you would feel better, then you are driving.

If your ego is driving, be very careful what you say and who you say it to. You might be onto something, and you might have identified a true opportunity to make your company better, but chances are you haven’t. You are fixated on a local maximum that you can find because you have been there before. So you start driving and you are feeling pretty good but what you didn’t know is that your ego was hiding in the back seat of your car and put one of those chloraform things over your mouth when you got in and now you are snluked over in the passenger seat of the car and it’s now going 85 in a 40 (we are in Canada people) and your well-intentioned course correction turns into a high-speed chase away from the very goals you sought to achieve.

The key here isn’t to avoid taking the wheel; it's about knowing when to drive and when to navigate. The ecosystem of a startup is complex, with every team member playing a critical role in its journey towards success. Understanding this dynamic can be the difference between a collaborative effort and a solo crusade.

Before you rush to judgment or action, consider the following:

• Alignment: Are your concerns aligned with the company's core values and long-term vision? If not, it's worth reassessing the urgency and nature of your intervention.
• Impact: Evaluate the potential impact of your actions. Will this move the needle in the right direction, or could it possibly derail existing progress?
• Communication: How you communicate your concerns is as important as the concerns themselves. Aim for dialogue, not monologue. Encourage an environment where feedback is constructive and solutions are collaborative.

In moments of frustration, remember why you joined this startup in the first place. Was it to make a difference? To innovate? To be part of something groundbreaking? Hold onto that. Your passion is a testament to your belief in the company’s mission. Use it as a compass to guide your actions, not as a blinder to the contributions and perspectives of your colleagues.

Innovative solutions arise from diverse viewpoints. Embrace the chaos, the disagreements, and the challenges. They are not signs of failure but indicators of a team passionately striving for excellence. Your perspective is invaluable, but so are those of your peers. Together, you form a collective intelligence far greater than the sum of its parts.

Finally, remember that leadership is not about being right; it's about guiding your team towards the right outcomes. Sometimes, that means leading from the front. Other times, it means supporting from the back. Know when to push forward and when to step back. This balance is what sustains a startup's momentum, fueling its growth from a fledgling idea into a thriving enterprise.

Before you decide to take action, pause for a moment. Assess your motives and the bigger picture. Talk with your team. Success in a startup isn't linear—it's a series of lessons and growth opportunities. Embrace these moments. Sometimes leading, sometimes following, but always moving forward together.