In partnership with

GM! It’s Brett again. Last week, I got randomly airdropped a ton of money from an NFT I bought in 2021. Honestly, it’s more than I’ve personally made from any of my startups.

It reminded me of what a friend once said: "If I wanted to make a lot of money, I wouldn’t do this." Basically, there are much easier ways to make money, but they’re significantly less rewarding.

That’s the startup paradox: you need to want money, but also focus so much on building that the money doesn’t distract you.

🏠 AI

The December Drop

Google finally jumped into the reasoning AI race with their Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental. It's their answer to OpenAI's o1 model, with a twist - it's available through Google AI Studio.

They took their Gemini 2.0 Flash base and added chain-of-thought reasoning. Unlike o1, this thing shows its work - you can literally see how it's thinking through problems.

The specs look solid. 32K token limit on the preview tier, and early benchmarks show it's fast while handling complex reasoning tasks. Early benchmarks are showing promising results against existing models.

This wasn't a solo drop though. Google went all-in with their December releases - Deep Research for hands-off research tasks, Veo 2 for video gen, and announced experimental projects like Mariner for web browsing and Jules for coding (coming in 2025).

The bigger picture: Google's betting that reasoning capabilities, not just bigger models, are the next frontier in AI development. This launch shows they're tackling both technical challenges - making reasoning models run at Flash speeds - and accessibility, with a free preview tier and API access.

After a year of paid AI tools dominating headlines, Google's push to make advanced AI more accessible is a bold move.

An entirely new way to present ideas

Gamma’s AI creates beautiful presentations, websites, and more. No design or coding skills required. Try it free today.

🤝 THE LATEST IN…

TECH

• YouTube teams up with CAA to help celebs protect their AI-gen digital likenesses.

• Microsoft launches free tier for GitHub Copilot.

• Apple developing foldable iPhone and iPad.

• Grammarly acquires Coda, am productivity startup.

AI

• ChatGPT in now on your landline.

• Google has a new video model to rival Sora.

• Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses now let you chat with Meta's AI and translate languages on the go.

• OpenAI announces new o3 models.

SCIENCE

• Russian space programme confirms it will destroy the ISS in 2030.

• Turns out, your heart might have a secret 'repair mode'.

• Egg tech just went chick-friendly.

• Ancient Mars had hidden water reservoirs.

CRYPTO

• Ethereum ETFs surge in December as inflows hit $1.66B.

• Crypto's still sliding after the Fed hinted at 2025 rate cuts.

• Japan’s Metaplanet raises $61M via bonds to buy more bitcoin.

• Aptos Labs co-founder Mo Shaikh steps down as CEO.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

Raise: Oura, a smart ring maker, raised $200M in a Series D funding round to expand product offerings, invest in AI, and explore new acquisitions.

Stat: 25M. That’s how many users Bluesky has as it gets a $1M fund to boost its open-source ecosystem.

Rabbit Hole: How to Build a Truly Useful AI Product (Chris Pedregal)

🤩 MONDAY MOTIVATION

🛠️ FOUNDERS CORNER

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

📢 ProductLogz is your all in one feedback management software.

📊 Heap helps you with cross-platform product analytics.

📈 CapGo makes market research crazy fast.

❓️ AI GENERATED OR NOT

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

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yeah (~99%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Nope (~1%)

It was pretty easy. Here’s the original.

 👋 A Quick Note About Micro

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.

We're launching in 2025, but if you want early access, sign up for the waitlist at micro.so and respond to the confirmation email saying you came from Homescreen.

REACH 40K+ FOUNDERS, INVESTORS & OPERATORS

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