In partnership with

GM! It’s Brett again. YC has this great line: “Trust the no, but not the why.” When an investor says no, their reasoning is almost never the real reason. People don’t always know their own reasons, and even when they do, they rarely say them out loud. Customers do the same thing.

A customer recently told me our product was “too expensive.” That wasn’t true. The real reason? Either it didn’t solve their problem in a big enough way, or they weren’t the right customer to begin with. If I took their words at face value, I’d be fixing the wrong thing - or worse, discounting for the wrong people.

If you don’t learn to read between the lines, you’ll keep believing “the customer is always right” - and keep making the wrong moves.

🏠 AI

Europe Enters The Chat

Mistral dropped their AI assistant "le Chat" last week. Everyone's launching AI assistants these days, but this one's worth paying attention to for different reasons.

Here's what matters: First, they're claiming serious speed - up to 1000 words per second in their inference engine. Plus, they've got a solid feature set: code interpreter for running analyses, document processing capabilities, and image generation powered by Black Forest Labs' Flux Ultra model.

The pricing's pretty standard - free tier, $14.99/month for Pro, and enterprise options. But here's where it gets interesting: they're letting enterprise customers run the entire stack on-premise with custom models - something that ChatGPT Enterprise and Claude Enterprise don't currently offer.

And Mistral's got serious backing -

Speaking of users, they're sitting at "several million subscribers." But numbers aren't really the point here.

The big picture - This isn't just another AI assistant launch. Mistral's playing a different game - they're positioning as Europe's strategic AI player, focusing on speed and deployment flexibility. Smart move.

Solving a Silent Threat to Your Health

Chemical pesticides are being used in our food, homes, and offices. But Med-X has developed a 100% chemical-free pesticide that outperforms traditional solutions. It’s one of the fastest-growing products in professional pest control, with operators using it coast to coast across the USA. E-commerce partnerships with brands like Amazon, Walmart, and Kroger are now helping Med-X reach 41 new global markets in the next five years. For a limited time, you can become a shareholder as they make these moves.

Invest in Med-X Now

🤝 THE LATEST IN…

TECH

• CFPB fines Wise $2.5M for illegal remittance practices.

• Cushion shuts down after 8 years & $20M in funding.

• Apple introduces ‘Apple Invites’ app for event planning.

• Google adds watermarks to AI images, text, audio, video.

AI

• EU is betting $56M on Open Source AI.

• ChatGPT search is now available to use without an account.

• DeepMind claims its AI performs better than International Mathematical Olympiad gold medalists.

• Lyft is working with Anthropic to build AI products.

• Google removes pledge to not use AI for weapons from website.

SCIENCE

• Microplastics in human brains may be rapidly rising.

• Largest study ever done on cannabis finds impact on working memory.

• Vaccine shows promise for patients with stage III and IV kidney cancer.

• Better male birth control is on the horizon.

CRYPTO

• Man wants to buy landfill where he lost Bitcoin fortune.

• Japan asks Apple, Google to block unregistered crypto exchanges.

• Proton rolls out self-custodial Bitcoin wallet to all users.

• BlackRock now owns 5% of Strategy.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

Raise: StackAdapt, an AI-based programmatic advertising platform, raised $235M in equity funding to expand its AI-driven ad placement capabilities across various industries.

Stat: 50%. That’s the percentage of Cruise’s workforce being laid off as GM shuts down its robotaxi operations.

Rabbit Hole: Three Observations (Sam Altman)

🤩 MONDAY MOTIVATION

🛠️ FOUNDERS CORNER

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 alternative to DocuSign.

🕵️‍♂️ TestSprite is your AI agent for software testing.

🕹️ Agentplace helps you build interactive AI websites and apps.

🎯 The 80 / 20

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

The Goldilocks Zone

Here's a weird but effective trick - make your workspace slightly uncomfortable on purpose. I'm talking about using a chair that's a bit too tall, keeping the room a touch too cold, or working with lighting that's not quite right.

It's called the Yerkes-Dodson law - moderate levels of stress actually improve performance. Too comfortable, and you get lazy. Too stressed, and you can't think straight. But that sweet spot of mild discomfort? That's where the magic happens.

You'll build mental resilience, kill procrastination, and tackle tough tasks more easily.

Experiment and calibrate your "discomfort zone" - the goal is subtle motivation, not self-torture. The perfect environmental friction should feel like a gentle prod, not a painful push.

❓️ AI GENERATED OR NOT

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

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yeah (~98%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Nope (~2%)

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”