#71 | Biomanufacturing Event, Vibe Coding Virtual Workshop

Benjamin Joffe

Mar 26, 2025

My irregular newsletter on work and play. Unsubscribe at the bottom. LinkedIn

The “Vibe Coding” edition - sign up here to the virtual workshop on April 1st!

1. WORK

Travels

Hello Tomorrow in Paris was great. Looking forward to next year!
I’ll be at VC Platform in Miami in April, running a session on “Vibe coding for VC”.

Biomanufacturing Matchup

The next matchup will be announced shortly. The theme is Biomanufacturing - making things with biology. We expect 200+ startups and 200+ investors to join this free virtual event on April 21-25. Pre-register here.

Deep Tech Live

SOSV launched a new series of events focused on deep tech. They take place at our NY office and are broadcasted live + shared on various podcast platforms.
Previous session: “From the IRA to "Drill Baby Drill" with Professor Jesse Jenkins, Princeton University, co-host of the Shift Key podcast Leader of Princeton’s Zero Lab (video)
Next sessions: “The evolution of space tech and the role of startups in shaping the next era of exploration” with Aerospace Corporation CEO Steve Isakowitz (March 27, RSVP), and “Commercializing Deep Tech for Industrial Resilience” with Dr. Vanessa Chan, Vice-Dean Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Penn Engineering + Former Chief Commercialization Officer, U.S. Department of Energy (April 2, RSVP)

2. VIBE CODING

Since it’s a serious hobby now, it will have its own section for a while. My main takeaway is that it’s a new and important skill to acquire: the ability to talk to an AI to create apps, without learning to code!

It enables non-coders to create personal apps to automate things, even “single use” apps. Some build complete websites, automated workflows and more.
Experienced coders can even use that to create apps that can be shared safely and scaled.

My Course

My crash course on Udemy (discount code: MAR2025) has passed 100 students! Each sale and review is a great feeling :) (current rating: 4.8 / 5).
Besides non-coders, I was surprised to see that experienced coders enjoyed it, as a way to learn about what is possible today.

Some apps I made recently…

A telegram bot to send me new reviews of the course (uses the Udemy API).
Another bot to track a crypto asset hourly (scrapes a website).
An app to track baby feeding times and mood.
A scraper to get a list of 2,000+ AI startups from a startup map (download wasn’t enabled so it loads the entire page, then scrapes the rendered HTML).
A tool to create 100+ google alerts to track startups (note: since Google didn’t have an API and blocked browser automation, I used GUI automation + computer vision to click buttons).

Workshop

I thought that meeting users in-person would be interesting so I organized a workshop in Lisbon last week, which ended up fully booked.
I will be running another workshop at the VC Platform Summit in Miami next month.
I will run a virtual workshop on April 1st at 6pm-7pm GMT / 2pm-3pm ET / 11am-12pm PST. You can register here (free). It will be mostly LIVE Vibe Coding, and I highly recommend to take my crash course beforehand to understand what is going on. Here is a discount code: MAR2025 (< $15).

Explorations

I mostly use ChatGPT and VS Code but I’ve started playing with Claude (which seems to code better), Replit (1-click to deploy but every AI edit costs money, and live files are “locked”).
I’m looking into making my first Android app thanks to vibe coding.
I shared some thoughts on why vibe coding is the best on-ramp and up-skilling path to coding in this article.

3. CULTURE

SHOWS

Represent*** (Netflix)
A French community educator decides to run for president. Entertaining comedy that references many recent event in french politics.

The Internship** (Netflix)
An older comedy about two sales dudes landing internships at Google. Good enough if you're tired. I'm using vibe coding to build the mobile app they created during one of the challenges.

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl*** (Netflix)
While the poetry is on Miyazaki’s side and insanity on Satoshi Kon’s, I have to give Nick Park credit for consistent outstanding craftsmanship. And this time, I found the story pretty funny too. Neat and tidy!

Flow** (Prime)
How many ways to skin a cat? This indie animation is a good work considering the budget, but I did not feel much for it after they tried to kill this poor cat in so many ways.

Moana 2** (Disney+)
I’m probably not the right demographic for this, but I tried.

BOOKS

Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama**
The story of Bob Odenkirk, and how he became Breaking Bad’s one and only Saul Goodman. From standup and odd TV shows to a somewhat serious role with complex emotions to portray. Maybe he did it so well because success came late to him!

That’s all for now!
— Ben

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