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Founders Feast 007: instant search, 95x people tools & templates coming soon

On The Infinity Flow State to maintain momentum, rifts in startup land and how Apple reverse engineers feelings into products.

Author

Julian Paul
February 18, 2024

Servus & happy Sunday. ☼

Read time this week → 4.8 minutes.

A warm welcome to 2x new subscribers who got a BOOTSTRAP OS/IDEAPAD product or signed up directly for the founders.menu newsletter. ☻

So a subscriber of this newsletter gave me the nicest testimonial so far: “You hit that 3x newsletter mark and I am still here. I look forward to Founders Feast hitting my inbox every week.” 👀 I have a tiny ask: who might you know that would have an equally excited reaction to receiving this newsletter every week? I’d be eternally grateful if you forwarded this issue. ↱

But without further ado, let’s get into this week’s Founders Feast.

Starter » a mental model

The Infinity Flow State ↓

Have you ever thought about your flow state? How you get into it? And even more importantly — why you get thrown out of it?

The above model combines both internal (left side) & external (right side) influences of your daily life. But how does it all work you ask? Simple:

1. Always start from the centre: with DOING.
2. Proceed towards the right in order: by assessing the external influences through DETACH (reduce importance of the thing) & COLLIDE (with other people’s for perspective).
3. Complete the first (right) half by flowing back into the DO/REST switch and proceed by choosing either.
4. Next, assess the internal influences in order: REFLECT (what can you learn?) & RELY (where is your confidence lacking?)
5. Return to the DO/REST switch with a conscious choice to cater to what you need between the two to remain in flow.

The Infinity Flow State is a benchmarking tool to keep up your momentum. When you are stuck and struggling, pause and revisit the model, go through the steps and you will quickly regain your flow state.

by Julian Paul

Ponder this →  what is currently throwing me off balance and what part of the Infinity Flow State needs more of my attention?

I came up with the Infinity Flow State years ago and it’s been a great aid ever since. If you want to dive into the details, feel free to visit my blog. ↓

The Infinity Flow State - Julian Paul

How to maintain a consistent flow state through inspiration and execution. Balance your internal and external life for heightened awareness.

julianpaul.me/blog/the-infinity-flow-state

Main course » founders.menu update

[1] Introducing instant search (all items)

You can now filter the entire database by search input, discovering for example Notion or Slack extensions easier (title & description are considered).

[2] 95x tools added in the people category

Including the likes of Miro, Mural, Milanote, Notion, Current, Frame, & more. These will give your team collaboration superpowers… Most tools are in the [2] MVP → Business stage since they are most relevant for later-stage founders.

Today, the curation reached 44% (514/1157 tools only - that doesn’t even include streams, listens, and reads)! More value is added week by week. ↓

What’s next? Introduce templates (downloadables members get either free or discounted access to) and a structured landing page to communicate the value of founders.menu clearly – there is so much to come!

Desert » past week’s startup highlights

  • OpenAI launched Sora, an advanced text-to-video model on February 15th. Sora is an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions. And it’s mindblowing how real the footage feels. Now the question I am asking myself: what will happen to all of the stock footage businesses? Wdyt?

  • AirBnB acquired GamePlanner.ai, which is a stealth startup launched by Siri co-founder Adam Cheyer and Siamak Hodjat. It’s rumored their 12-person team will join the booking platform to offer AI-designed experiences to their users similar to what might be a very personal “travel concierge” for power users, but time will tell.

  • no normal coffee was launched on Crowdify by two dudes in the Swiss Alps. The idea is simple. Coffee out of a tube by mixing two teaspoons with hot or cold water. Made for caffeine intake on the go. A crazy idea that might just have an audience? You can learn more about it all via nonormal.com (they are 32% funded).

  • SpaceX launched IM-1 Odysseus a lunar lander to be the first to touch the surface of the moon on its south pole since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. It’s expected to touch down on February 22nd. Are you bullish or bearish for a multi-planetary future of humanity?

  • Ariftact decided to shutdown. The news discovery and consumption app was created by Instagram's Founder Kevin Systrom. The reason? Despite early traction, they found that the market opportunity was not big enough to warrant even more investment, meaning the service will cease to operate end of February. This is a reminder that even the great founders start things that don’t always work out. It’s up to brutal self-honesty to stick to a project or quit to move on to better things.

Sides » this week on early.tools

If you are also ready to get the first version of your landing up and running, why not try our sponsor LaunchList using code: EARLYTOOLS for -20% off? 👀

Closing thoughts

Yoko is the co-founder of Steve&Steve, an Apple Vision Pro studio that focuses on helping brands be visible in the store from launch day. Having worked at Apple previously, this insight doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s the Steve Jobs "start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology" DNA that still lives at the core of Apple products today…

What I want to leave you today with: What should users feel the second they interact with your product from day one? Build that.

DM & reply-to-email is open.

See you around. ☻

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