#CTO #ChiefTinkeringOfficer #YearEndTinkering #YearOfAI

My partner Amit Somani keeps telling me I enjoy tinkering with tools - and in 2024 I felt like a kid in a candy store. I don't typically do a lot of serious deep dives but I love to play around with tools to get a sense for what might the future hold. Sure stokes my imagination.

Here are some amazing AI sites that I found over the past few months and that I recommend.

1. Generic GenAI tools

- https://Claude.ai - fabulous for data analysis - I'm using it extensively for all kinds of analytics on companies.

- https://ChatGPT.com of course - and the various GPTs. My latest thing is taking anything I receive on my phone and sharing to ChatGPT for a quick analysis. Works great for pitch-decks. I've taken precautions to keep Memory Off and all the most conservative of settings.

- Gemini - I plan to go back to it again - just because of the native integration inside Google Mail which we use - only issue is you need to pay for all users' accounts within the domain and it becomes expensive - I hope Google changes that soon.

Business Writing

I'm now starting to rewrite all important emails to be crisp and professional and bulletized - these tools do a great job of this. Even LinkedIn posts are worth exploring a rewrite with. Ultimately I think this will be natively integrated into all tools (including here in Twitter) and trained on our own styles of writing - but for now we have to live with a few manual processes & steps. For example - this paragraph is rewritten below:

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? I am adopting a crisp, professional, bulletized style for all important emails.

? Rewriting LinkedIn posts in this format is also worth exploring.

? These tools are highly effective for this purpose.

? In the future, this approach will likely be natively integrated into all platforms, including Twitter.

? Such tools could eventually be trained on personal writing styles for seamless integration.

? For now, we manage with manual steps and processes to achieve this outcome.

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I should add that I also tried out https://notion.so and the built in "Rewrite with AI" - again fairly decent results.

2. Notetakers

- https://granola.ai - after much experiments with several of them, including native ones with Zoom, Otter, Fathom etc. my life-changing product of the year vote goes to granola. Its simple, non interfering, works on my macOS laptop, works for regular meetings, zoom calls, WhatsApp calls taken on the laptop etc. etc. Works when I have Airpods on or not. It's instantaneous, creates a great summary and also allows easy sharing with all meeting participants. It does give you a URL later to chat with the transcript too. Definitely a step-up from Otter which I've stopped using.

Thus far we've been using it for all internal meetings and for external meetings with consent. It will become our default note-taker. Plan for 2025 is to standardize on Granola and make it simple for all meeting attendees.

3. Website builders - I've played with https://durable.ai but there are others I'm sure - have not attempted anything production grade yet but it sure helped with design concepts.

4. Application Developers - as I posted yesterday I've never really coded - but I'm playing around with https://lovable.dev - seems really intuitive. I plan to try to build something I can use and of substance in the new year. Have heard good things about it and its a fast growing company for sure.

https://x.com/TheSwamy/status/1870817447537975620…

5. Video Editing

- https://invideo.ai is the best known one and I used it to whip up a quick video for one of our portfolio companies - definitely worth doing a quick and dirty product video with. Not sure if people are using it for production-grade customer-facing videos.

- https://trupeer.ai - was one I enjoyed experimenting with because I know Pritish and Shivali - can definitely see it becoming a valuable tool for showing product demos in the b2b space - all the best to them.

Like all tools these require a bit of investment of time and effort to go from the "Quick and Dirty" to "Production Grade" but they sure are worth it.

6. A few knickknacks

- https://beautiful.ai - I used it about 4 years ago and it was cute then. I'm going to spend some time with it this break as I have a new deck I'm preparing. I hope they have made meaningful progress.

- Image Editing - used a lot of DallE and Grok which I found scarily realistic but very quick to arrive at an end-quality product

7. We used claude.ai to analyse MIS of several of our portfolio companies - then used it to generate the script for a podcast with the founders. It of course had exact information - then used NotebookLLM to turn this into a podcast. How cool is that!

Of course there were several tools by our own portfolio companies - https://Gallabox.com, https://GoKenko.com, https://Quizziz.com, https://Reimaginehome.ai and much more. Loving the transition and the rate at which they are looking more and more like AI first companies. Couple these with new investments we are making PrimeVP - and this is an extraordinary time ahead of us - scary, confusing but exciting!

PS: This post was NOT rewritten by AI! Please share other tools you have been using and how it has changed your perspective on what may be possible in the coming year(s)...