One of my must-read newsletters for the past several years has been Lenny’s Newsletter, probably best known for its writing on growth and product management, which really means it covered everything you need to create a great company. It expanded into a really well-done podcast; Lenny has always had a knack for finding the best … Continue reading On Lenny’s Podcast →

Another day, another opportunity to rate my 2025 Apple predictions! iPad Here’s what I predicted would happen with the base iPad this year: I fully expect to see the 11th gen iPad in 2025, and I think it will come with a jump to the A17 Pro or

Home file servers can be very useful for people who work across multiple devices and want easy access to their documents. And there are a lot of DIY build guides out there. But most of them are full-fledged NAS (network-attached storage) devices and they tend to rely on single-board computers. Those take a long time […] The post A lightweight file server running entirely on an Arduino Nano ESP32 appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Just days after I got my iPhone 16e, Apple’s (less) budget (than ever before) iPhone, Nothing is out here with new their new budget phones, the Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro. These models start at $379 and $459 respectively, so they certainly undercut the new iPhone, so let&

This weekend, a small team in Latvia won an Oscar for a film they made using free software. That’s not just cool — it’s a sign of what’s coming. Sunday night was family movie night in my home. We picked a recent movie, FLOW. I’d heard good things about it and thought we’d enjoy it. What we didn’t know was that as we watched, the film won this year’s Academy Award as best animated feature. Afterwards, I saw this post from the movie’s director, Gints Zilbalodis: We established Dream Well Studio in Latvia for Flow. This room is the whole studio. Usually about 4-5 people were working at the same time including me. I was quite anxious about being in charge of a team, never having worked in any other studios before, but it worked out. pic.twitter.com/g39D6YxVWa — Gints Zilbalodis (@gintszilbalodis) January 26, 2025 Let that sink in: 4-5 people in a small room in Latvia led by a relatively inexperienced director used free software to make a movie that as of February 2025 had earned $20m and won an Oscar. I know it’s a bit more involved than that, but still – quite an accomplishment! But not unique. Billie Eilish and her brother Phineas produced her Grammy-winning debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? in their home studio. And it’s not just cultural works such as movies and albums: small teams have built hugely successful products such as WhatsApp and Instagram. As computers and software get cheaper and more powerful, people can do more with less. And “more” here doesn’t mean just a bit better (pardon the pun) – it means among the world’s best. And as services and products continue migrating from the world of atoms to the world of bits, creators’ scope of action grows. This trend isn’t new. But with AI in the mix, things are about to go into overdrive. Zilbalodis and his collaborators could produce their film because someone else built Blender; they worked within its capabilities and constraints. But what if their vision exceeded what the software can do? Just a few years ago, the question likely wouldn’t even come up. Developing software calls for different abilities. Until recently, a small team had to choose: either make the movie or build the tools. AI changes that, since it enables small teams to “hire” virtual software developers. Of course, this principle extends beyond movies: anything that can be represented symbolically is in scope. And it’s not just creative abilities, such as writing, playing music, or drawing, but also more other business functions such as scheduling, legal consultations, financial transactions, etc. We’re not there yet. But if trends hold, we’ll soon see agent-driven systems do for other kinds of businesses what Blender did for Dream Well Studio. Have you dreamed of making a niche digital product to scratch an itch? That’s possible now. Soon, you’ll be able to build a business around it quickly, easily, and without needing lots of other humans in the mix. Many people have lost their jobs over the last three years. Those jobs likely won’t be replaced with AIs soon. But job markets aren’t on track to stability. If anything, they’re getting weirder. While it’s early days, AI promises some degree of resiliency. For people with entrepreneurial drive, it’s an exciting time: we can take ideas from vision to execution faster, cheaper, and at greater scale than ever. For others, it’ll be unsettling – or outright scary. We’re about to see a major shift in who can create, innovate, and compete in the market. The next big thing might not come from a giant company, but from a small team – or even an individual – using AI-powered tools. I expect an entrepreneurial surge driven by necessity and opportunity. How will you adapt?