One guy. No funding. $80M exit. 🤯

Happy Thursday everyone 👋 Today’s issue is packed with hacks to make your content go viral, tips and tricks to be a better “dev”, and the kind of exits we all dream about. Whether you’re vibecoding in Cursor, chasing the content flywheel, or eyeing your big win—this one’s for you. Let’s get into it.

TL;DR: 11.ai is a new voice-first AI assistant from ElevenLabs that doesn’t just talk, it does things. It plugs into tools like Slack, Linear, Notion, and Perplexity to actually get stuff done when you speak to it. Think: AI that updates your tickets, researches your meeting, and summarizes Slack threads without you having to do a thing.

🗣️ Not just “play lo-fi beats” – Most voice assistants are glorified trivia machines. 11.ai is different, it’s built for productivity. You talk, it acts. Literally.

🔗 It’s all about integrations – Thanks to MCP (Model Context Protocol), 11.ai connects to your stack: Slack, Linear, Notion, Perplexity, and even your custom internal tools. It doesn’t just understand you—it understands your context.

🚀 A glimpse at the voice-native future – This isn’t about replacing your mouse. It’s about skipping interfaces altogether. Plan your day, file a bug, research a prospect, send a recap—all by talking. No tabs. No clicks. No drama.

Right now, 11.ai is in alpha and free to try. If you’ve been dreaming about a Jarvis-style assistant that actually helps, this is worth playing with. Just don’t be surprised when it starts organizing your life better than you do.

TL;DR: Veo 3 is blowing up with short-form AI-generated videos that look cinematic but require zero gear or filming. Paired with Virlo’s new “Content Canvas” feature, creators are mass-producing viral shorts by reverse-engineering trends, auto-generating scripts, and chaining 8-second clips together.

🎬 Shorts from thin air – Veo 3 only supports 8-second scenes, so creators are stacking multiple clips generated from short prompts. The trick? Use ChatGPT to write scenes with breaks, or let Virlo do it for you.

🧠 Script smarter with Virlo – Grab 3-5 viral TikToks from your niche, drop them into Virlo’s canvas, and it’ll auto-generate a hook, character, and 8-second scene breakdowns you can plug straight into Veo 3. The output looks human, and we’re scared.

🧵 Thread-style editing for vertical – Once you’ve got your scenes, tools like Descript or CapCut let you stitch everything together and reframe for TikTok/YouTube Shorts. Add captions and transitions to finish.

🚀 Automate the content factory – Once the workflow is set, you can rinse and repeat for any niche. Tech, lifestyle, finance, weird Bigfoot diaries—it all works. The combo of Virlo + Veo 3 is basically a viral engine.

You don’t need a studio or a face to go viral anymore, just a prompt and a few smart tools. Give it a try while the trends still hot.

TL;DR: The funnel’s dead—at least in the way we’ve always thought about it. In this conversation, Cody Schneider and Jordan Mix (partner at Late Checkout) break down how startups are using AI, automation, and creator flywheels to build “digital gravity”, a kind of pull that keeps potential customers orbiting your brand until they convert. It’s not about being everywhere. It’s about being unavoidable.

🌌 Digital gravity > funnels – Customers don’t walk a straight path. They circle your content, ads, social posts, and recommendations until they finally tip into the product. This model explains modern brand-building way better than “awareness > interest > decision.”

🤖 AI agents aren’t magic – Most “AI agents” are just smart automations in disguise. Still, they’re great for scaling workflows like content creation, lead scraping, and cold email testing—as long as you figure out the manual version first.

📊 Fast money vs. future moat – Paid ads and cold DMs work, but they get expensive fast. You need both short-term wins and long-term brand plays (like newsletters, YouTube, and creator collabs) to survive rising CAC.

🎥 Creators create gravity – Supporting creators who talk about your product can spark viral cascades that compound over time. But beware: if they are your brand, and they leave, so does your traction.

🔁 Manual → Repeatable → Automated – Don’t automate everything too early. Start scrappy, learn what works, then plug in AI to scale. That’s how modern marketing machines are built.

Funnels are static. Gravity is dynamic. If you want customers to come to you in 2025, start by giving them something worth orbiting.

TL;DR: Maor Shlomo built Base44: a prompt-based app builder that turns ideas into real software without code. It was a side project. Now Wix is buying it for $80M. No VC. 6-person team. Profitable from day one.

🛠️ From vibe coding to acquisition – Base44 lets users build apps just by describing them. Think: “Make me a CRM with lead stages”—and it handles backend, deployment, and UI automatically. This tool proves that people don’t want to learn how to code, they just want working software. The new workflow = describe it, generate it, ship it.

💰 Bootstrapped to millions – Shlomo hit a multi-million ARR run rate in under 6 months, with $189K in early profit and 100K+ users. Turns out profitability is still a pretty great business model.

🤝 Wix sees the future – The site-builder giant plans to bake Base44’s conversational interface into its tools, helping anyone build full apps with natural language.

🚀 New solo founder blueprint – Start with a sharp pain point. Use AI to build faster than teams ever could. Launch early. Stay lean. Then either scale it, or get acquired by someone who can.

TL;DR: AI coding tools don’t replace developers—they speed up the ones who plan well. In this video, a longtime dev shares 5 tactical Cursor tips that’ll save you hours: from building a clean plan before you ever type a line, to treating Cursor like a junior teammate you guide with context, structure, and check-ins.

🛠️ Plan first, code later – Define your project in markdown, flows, features, stack, before you ask Cursor for a single function. You’ll get 10x better results.

🧩 Build in tiny steps – Don’t prompt Cursor to “build the app.” Ask it to handle small tasks: single components, database schema, or Stripe setup. Stay modular.

🐛 Fix bugs by talking to it – Copy the error into Cursor and walk it through what’s broken. Add a screenshot if needed. It’ll debug better than you at 2am.

🔄 Switch models when stuck – Sometimes GPT-4 sees what Claude doesn’t. Swapping models mid-build is the AI equivalent of phoning a friend.

📚 Give it everything – Docs, UI screenshots, auth logic—feed Cursor your brain. The more it knows, the more useful it becomes.

The vibe? Don’t treat Cursor like a genie. Treat it like an eager junior dev who works fast, asks good questions, and just needs a bit of structure. The more effort you put into guiding it, the more it pays off.