#79 | 100 Apps, Disgusting Food, IgNobel and more
My irregular newsletter on work and play. Unsubscribe at the bottom. LinkedIn
It’s events season!
MENU
1. WORK: Events & Travels
2. VIBING WITH TECH: 100 Students, 100 Apps
3. CULTURE: Disgusting Food, Korean Lawyer, Severance
4. THOUGHTS: IgNobel, Friends
1. WORK
Events
I was in NYC, Berlin, Malmo, Singapore and London is next. It’s over soon.
We hosted a dozen events during NY Climate Week, with over 1,000 attendees in total. The mood was both realistic and upbeat despite headwinds in the sector.
The SOSV Climate Tech Summit is next week (free, virtual, Nov 3-7). We have a great line-up of speakers and 5,000+ are registered. I am interviewing the Climate Envoy of Kenya (after Singapore and Iceland) — it’s an interesting story.
SOSV’s 4th VCs/Founders virtual matchmaking of 2025 concluded with over 1,400 registrants and 2,000+ meetings. I will organize a final one focused on #Robotics next month.
I was in Singapore this week and will be in London on Nov 11 (RSVP) to share insights from our annual Climate Tech Summit. Registration is free but requires approval.
Event Reports
I gave a talk about “Vibe Coding for VCs” at VC Platform EU. Slides are here.
I co-hosted a roundtable about AI & automation at The Drop in Sweden. Most VC firms are quite behind on this, with generally some basic GPTs and rarely even a workflow automation. This is frequently a personal interest from a team member, or falls on the laps of a platform person already in charge of comms, marketing and everything non-finance related.
NY Climate Week - It was electric ;) despite the policy changes the mood was upbeat. Nuclear, geothermal, batteries are in. Supply chain resilience as well. Food/Ag and renewables not so much.
2. VIBING WITH TECHNOLOGY
My journey into the world of #AI #coding.
Ideas
“AI Good” or “AI Bad”? Does your job or field of study benefit from, or is hurt by AI? If AI can be a basic doctor, lawyer, designer, copywriter or coder (and improving), what do those jobs look like in the future? My first job was in market research. Today, Gemini Deep Research might do a better and much faster job.
Recent Projects (AI-assisted Python apps)
I have now passed 100 apps and prototypes. Not all end well, but I learn something each time!
Semantic Search App > Input a CSV with 2 columns. Search the data in one column in natural language. It’s using embeddings via the OpenAI API. I turned it into a Mac desktop app, which looks quite neat!
VC/Startup Matching App > Internal tool to match startups in our portfolio with investors focused on their geo/stage/sector. In testing but promising.
SoupTime > A simple baby feeding game. Can you get enough spoonfuls of soup in, despite the baby closing his mouth, turning his head, and trying to grab the spoon? It helped me increase my accuracy in real-life scenarios :)
Karaoke app > Attempt focused on lyrics recognition rather than pitch, for language learning. I found out that most karaoke games don’t actually track lyrics, they only compare your voice to the midi reference frequencies.
Bypass detector > A platform connecting boat owners and renters wanted to detect if the owners were trying to bypass the platform using their boat description. An easy job for chatGPT API - even scales well to 40,000 ads with grouping, batching.
AI Business
I shifted my focus from the Udemy course to the cohort-based course I licensed to a partner in Portugal. Over 100 participants joined, and the NPS is over 60. This 15 hours course is priced 750 euros so it’s starting to generate real revenue.
I’ll be working on a B2B version for enterprise: every company will need to up-skill their staff, and often do not know where to start with AI literacy!
After Portugal, I am now discussing with potential partners in France, and exploring other geographies.
AI Resources
My talk on AI automation at the Lisbon Vibe Coding Club
My slides on “Vibe Coding for VCs” at VC Platform EU.
My Udemy course ($19.99). Already 4,000 students and 4.5 stars.
3. CULTURE
MUSEUMS
Disgusting Food Museum (Malmo, Sweden)****
If you are in Copenhagen or Malmo, I recommend a visit to this quirky museum. While I won’t agree with calling French blue cheese disgusting, marmite surely earned its spot, and many of the other displays are way beyond - for instance kiviak. Visitors can also try to win a prize by tasting over a dozen samples (I tried all but the 8 million Scovilles hot sauce) - bugs, fermented things and more.
Berlin Art Week***
It wasn’t planned but it was fun to go around so many galleries and exhibits. I often scratched my head to find both “the idea” and even more, “the craft”. Everything is art since white on white (1918), black on black (1968), IKB (1961), ready-mades (1913) and the banana with duct tape (2019). Take the money and run (2021) at least didn’t pretend!
TinyTopia (Singapore)**
A cute private pop-up museum focused on ants (and a few more insects).
Vintage Camera Museum (Singapore)**
I don’t know much about photography, but it was interesting to see some very old models and prints of the very first photos taken.
MOVIES
Scent of a Woman****
Rewatched (again) this excellent classic. My latest thought is that it’s a fairy tale. We need those sometimes.
SHOWS
After School Doctor**** (Netflix)
I thought that show was over, but it came back from one long episode featuring my favorite grumpy middle school resident doctor. The kids always do a great job as well in this heartwarming show.
Beyond the Bar (“Esquire”)*** (Netflix)
Another Korean legal show (after the excellent Attorney Woo) focused on a rookie female lawyer with principles and unorthodox ideas. The story and acting is not as outstanding, but still entertaining.
Severance*** (Apple TV)
I gave it a shot while flying back from Singapore and it’s pretty good. If you could forget what happened each time, would it be fair to trap yourself for 8 hours a day doing a meaningless task, with no escape? Is it what many of us already do every day?
4. THOUGHTS
IgNobels
Nobel prizes can impress (aside from recent Economics and Peace), but so can IgNobel prizes. I considered attending the ceremony this year but missed it by a few days. Check out the list here. The physiology one might save some Covid patients.
Friends
This sociologist focuses on crowds, and analyzed some research on how friendships form. The key elements are (1) “homophilia” (we like people with commonalities - often found where we live or go), (2) “triangulation” (friends of friends become our friends) and (3) the more friends, the more friends. Now you know what to do!
Keep vibing!
— Ben