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Hey Builders 👋 Welcome to this week’s MakerThrive newsletter, we’ve got stories, tools, and frameworks to help you build smarter, ship faster, and stay ahead of what’s next.
In this issue:
Google says AI is bigger than the internet—here’s what comes next 🧠
The teenage coder who built Vercel, Next.js, and a $3B startup 🚀
This AI app builder actually ships tools ⚙️
Built a SaaS on the train, quit his job 30 days later 💼
Claude just made it stupid easy to deploy an AI agent army 🤖
The key to a $1.3T opportunity
A new trend in real estate is making the most expensive properties obtainable. It’s called co-ownership, and it’s revolutionizing the $1.3T vacation home market.
The company leading the trend? Pacaso. Created by the founder of Zillow, Pacaso turns underutilized luxury properties into fully-managed assets and makes them accessible to the broadest possible market.
The result? More than $1b in transactions, 2,000+ happy homeowners, and over $110m in gross profits for Pacaso.
With rapid international growth and 41% gross profit growth last year, Pacaso is ready for what’s next. They even recently reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO.
But the real opportunity is now, before public markets. Until 5/29, you can join leading investors like SoftBank and Maveron for just $2.80/share.
This is a paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving a ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals. Under Regulation A+, a company has the ability to change its share price by up to 20%, without requalifying the offering with the SEC.
Google’s CEO says this is bigger than the internet
TL;DR: Sundar Pichai calls AI a once-in-a-generation platform shift—on par with electricity. In this podcast, he lays out Google’s roadmap for AI agents, AR glasses, coding copilots, and what comes after search.
🧠 AI is the new OS: Natural language and multimodal interfaces will replace buttons and apps. Gemini V3, AI Mode, and NotebookLM are just the start.
🛠️ Build tools for everyone: Google’s goal is to make coding, content creation, and even startup building possible for anyone with an idea.
🕶️ Next platform = AR glasses: Google sees AI-powered wearables as the post-phone future. Mass adoption will take time—but the race is on.
🔍 Search isn’t dying: Despite publisher panic, Google claims search traffic is up. AI is changing how we find info—but not killing the web.
From high school dropout to $3B AI founder
TL;DR: Guillermo Rauch went from teenage coder in Argentina to building Vercel and Next.js—now powering millions of web apps. His philosophy? Ship fast, keep it simple, and let AI open the gates for non-technical founders.
🏗️ AI CoFounder: Rauch sees a future where anyone can build apps, games, or tools—without touching a line of code thanks to AI prompts and intuitive builders.
⚙️ Speed > polish: Vercel exists because iteration wins. Get to market, get feedback, improve fast.
🎮 No-code game dev: AI-generated assets and logic will make game creation accessible to anyone with an idea and a hunch.
🧠 Context-aware agents: Future apps will remember you, your style, needs, quirks and tailor experiences without the constant input.
Featured Startup 👀
Despia helps you turn your Web App into a real Native Mobile App with all major Native SDKs + 1 click AppStore & PlayStore publishing.
Want your project featured? Subscribe here.
Set it and forget it (until it ships)
TL;DR: Gumloop is like if Zapier and GPT had a baby that actually shipped products. Our team shows you how to build a working AI app (like a YouTube summarizer) in minutes, opening a world of automation solutions for your business.
🧠 Agents on rails: Chain Claude, GPT, Google Sheets, and any API in a clean visual interface. Gumloop lets you build workflows smarter than half the SaaS market with nodes for every platform.
📤 Export as a tool: Every Gumloop project becomes a shareable app, API, or embed. That YouTube summarizer you just built? Turn it into a lead magnet, client deliverable, or public-facing AI product.
🧰 Infinite use cases: Build AI assistants for SEO, email triage, TikTok ideas, onboarding flows, internal tooling, you name it. You’re 10 minutes away from launching something useful.
♻️ Prompt, test, tweak, repeat: Instead of babysitting a single GPT chat, Gumloop gives you an actual system. Fix errors, update prompts, and chain steps like a real developer—minus the crying.
Keep more of what you earn
Collective helps members keep more of what they earn — saving an average of $10,000 a year in taxes* — while taking countless hours of administrative work off their plates.
Your membership includes LLC and S Corp formation, payroll, monthly bookkeeping, quarterly tax estimates, annual business tax filing and more.
*Based on the average 2022 tax savings of active Collective users with an S Corp tax election for the 2022 tax year
Built an app on the train. Quit his job 30 days later.
TL;DR: Paulius used Bolt, Cursor, and Framer to build a $30K SaaS during his morning commute. No team. No traditional coding. Just AI prompts, some decent design instincts, and a Twitter post that hit 500K views.
🧠 AI was the CTO: Cursor + Bolt + GPT handled the code. Perplexity guided the whole flow. He just kept prompting until it shipped.
🚂 Side hustle to SaaS: He built it on the train, launched with a couple tweets, and woke up to 30 sales at dinner.
📈 Validation loop: Users wanted it, paid for it, and shared it. That was enough to quit the 9-to-5 and go all-in. AKA, trust users when they talk to you.
📣 Build in public > pitch decks: His posts tapped into current AI debates and went viral because they joined the bigger conversation. Reminder: Building in public is a marketing strategy.
Build an AI Agent army from a single prompt
TL;DR: Claude 4 Opus lets you build an entire network of AI agents—from orchestrators to task-specific subs using one smart JSON prompt. No coding, no hallucinated APIs, just automation that works across real businesses.
🤖 AI agents that actually work: Claude uses real tools and web search to avoid broken or made-up APIs.
📂 Workflows in JSON: Plug everything into the NAN agent system and deploy instantly.
🧠 Smarter prompts, better results: Extended thinking + up-to-date web data = workflows that adapt to real-world use cases.
🎯 Built for business: From TikTok agencies to pet startups, you can spin up tailored automation systems in minutes.
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