GM! It’s Brett again. We’re throwing a party.

Startup Soirée is happening Thursday, June 5 at 6:30pm for #NYTechWeek, a night to celebrate startups & NYC Tech.

We’re kicking things off at Creatures Rooftop, followed by a mix of DJs playing downstairs inside a boutique listening room & venue.

We’ll be sharing a preview of Micro’s Summer Launch and giving everyone who shows up early access. And yeah, it’s my birthday too, so there’ll be cake and cookies :)

We’re co-hosting with friends from Hypercard, SWSH, CrowdPass, and Cleo Pay.

Spots are tight - get on the list fast.

Last year, Apple announced Swift Assist, an AI coding assistant for Xcode. But internally, engineers flagged major hallucination issues. Despite plans for a 2024 launch, Apple never actually shipped Swift Assist to developers.

Now, Apple’s teaming up with Anthropic to build a new "vibe-coding" platform called Xcode.

Basically, it’s Xcode supercharged with Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet model to write, edit, and debug code using generative AI.

Apple’s been a bit behind in the whole scene - with GitHub Copilot eating their lunch - so partnering with Anthropic is a solid step toward catching up.

Oh, and speaking of Copilot, OpenAI itself is eyeing a big buy too. They’ve been in talks to grab Windsurf, the popular AI coding assistant, for around $3B. If it goes through, it’ll be OpenAI's biggest acquisition yet, cementing their lead in generative AI for developers.

The big picture - Big Tech is racing to own the platforms and models that devs depend on and they want to double down to dominate developer-focused AI. Apple is betting big on external partnerships, while OpenAI continues its aggressive push to dominate AI coding. Expect even more power moves soon.

This is the easiest way for a busy person wanting to learn AI in as little time as possible:

Sign up to start learning.

Raise: Cast AI, a cloud workload optimization platform, raised $108M in a Series C funding round to improve efficiency in AI, Kubernetes, & compute-intensive tasks through automation.

Stat: 30%. That’s the App Store fee US developers can now bypass on crypto and NFT sales after Apple’s legal loss to Epic Games.

Rabbit Hole: Superlinear Returns (Paul Graham)

The best resources we recently came across that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.

✍️ SignWith is your simple pay per doc e-signature tool.

🕰️ Rize is an AI time tracker that improves your focus.

📍 Teamble improves employee feedback on Slack and Teams.

Simple tricks to get a ton of value with minimal effort for work and life.

This week, let’s go personal.

Set recurring reminders to check in with the key people in your life. Not just friends and family - but old coworkers, mentors, early customers, ex-colleagues you liked but lost touch with.

Just drop a short message. “Hey, was thinking of you - how’ve you been?”
Or “Saw something that reminded me of you. Hope life’s good.” That’s it.

You don’t need a deep reason to reach out. The message is the reason. Over time, this tiny habit keeps relationships warm - personally and professionally.

People drift because no one reaches out. A ping every 3–6 months is enough to prevent that. You stay top of mind. You show you care. That goodwill stacks.

Last week’s answer: If you guessed AI-generated… you were wrong.

🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜️⬜️ Yeah (~60%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Nope (~40%)

Here’s the original.

Micro is a CRM that doesn't feel like homework and an email client that knows what matters. Simply put, it's an all-in-one productivity tool that organizes itself so you don't have to.

I built Micro with some friends because I was tired of getting guilt tripped for not hitting inbox 0 and having to bounce around between so many tools to do my job.

That said, Homescreen subscribers can cut the line - go to micro.so/waitlist, join the waitlist, and write in “Homescreen” for Other in the “How did you hear about us” question to get early access.

If you’re interested in advertising with us, send an email over to [email protected] with the subject “Homescreen Ads”