#18

Thoughts and life updates

I write this newsletter to share some of the things I’m working on and thinking about. A little about me:

I own and manage a digital agency in Toronto called August, where we design and build websites and apps. We spend about 80% of our time on client work and the balance on internal projects. Most recently, we’ve been working on a directory of real estate development vendors called Buildstack (think: Builtwith for buildings). I also invest in and develop real estate with my two brothers.

some thoughts

Are you excited about the future? I am.

I get the sense that today, more than, say, 10 years ago, there are a large number of technologies that are getting really good and for which we can see a clear path to further short term improvement. Here are a few.

• Artifical Intelligence - This isn’t a term that I don’t love but I’m referring to the GPT and DALL-E type progress being made, as well as progress being made in autonomous driving technology. GPT-3 was a massive improvement over GPT-2, and the GPT-3 to GPT-4 leap is rumoured to be greater still. Can you imagine how good it will be by 2030—just eight short years away? Can you imagine how good autonomous driving will be by 2030? I think that we all have highly-competent AI virtual assistants (and friends) and Level 5 (that is, full) autonomy by then.

• Virtual Reality - I bought the Meta Quest Pro and, frankly, wasn’t as blown away with it as I had hoped I would be. The hardware is pretty great but the experience as a whole still leaves a lot to be desired. That said, unlike laptops or smartphones, it’s one of those hardware technologies (or bundles of technologies) that should see exponential improvements over the next few years. I’m really excited to see what VR looks and feels like in 2030. I don’t spend any time at all thinking about 2030 laptops or smartphones. I’m sure the batteries and cameras will be better.

• Humanoid robots - As with AI and VR, we’ve been talking about humanoid robots for a long time. And as with AI and VR, it feels like we’re actually starting to get somewhere. The Boston Dynamics stuff continues to impress and, much more importantly, Tesla has entered the arena. So: imagine the 2030-version of a Boston Dynamics humanoid robot, but with a brain (courtesy of Tesla’s worldclass AI team) and mass producible (courtesy of Tesla’s worldclass manufacturing team). Pretty cool!

• Ebikes and electric scooters - These feel like they wouldn’t normally be bundled with the above, but they’re still pretty exciting to me. As regular readers of this newsletter will know, I love big cities. I’m also concerned about worsening mobility within big cities. I think that ebikes and electric scooters can help reverse that trend. They make it easier and faster for people to get to and from work, even across long distances, without sweating, and should help to increase political support for more bike lanes—and maybe, MAYBE, reduce political opposition to congestion pricing by providing a mainstream alternative to driving. We’ve all heard the story of the Segway founders predicting that their quirky little transporter would prompt a full reimagining of urban mobility networks. I think that ebikes and electric scooters actually might.

The item I would have most loved to add to that list is nuclear fission—or, hell, fusion. Though fission tech has continued to improve, from gen i to gen iv reactor designs, regulatory obstacles still prevent its large-scale deployment—and further research, and further improvement. And I don’t see that getting much better anytime soon. As with housing, this has become more of a political than an engineering problem.

So I’m excited about the future, but think that it could use some more housing and a lot more energy.

business stuff

• August: We have a new website. It’s simpler than our last website but, I think, still really cool. There’s this saying that the cobbler’s son walks barefoot, or something like that. Well, that’s kind of true of digital agencies too. Their websites are always the slowest to be updated. Unless they have no clients, in which case their websites are really great and regularly updated.
  
  You’ll note that our new website has very simple navigation, with tabs in lieu of pages, and minimal content per tab. It also features cards and tags to highlight past work as opposed to full case studies. Our thinking is that most people don’t really care to read full case studies. They mostly just want to know who the client was, what we did for them (eg, design and development of a mobile app), and how it looks. Cards and tags deliver all of that while being very easy to update.
  
  You’ll also note that we have a tab highlighting our support and maintenance plans, with full transparency on plan details and pricing. This is part of our continued effort to productize our services. There’s much more to be done on this front but this is a good start.

• Buildstack: We now have over 3,000 projects and 2,600 companies in our Buildstack directory, the vast majority of which are located in the GTA. Not bad! At some point, we’re going to have to shift our research focus to new cities and I’ve been debating whether we should do one new city at a time, or jump to another three or four at once. I’m not sure what the right answer is. I like the idea of focus but also see the greenfield opportunity here, and don’t want to waste it.
  
  Driving traffic to the site continues to be a challenge, but we’re toying with a few ideas. Hopefully I’ll have some more to share on that by next month.
  
  More broadly, as we wrap the year up, I’m thinking a lot about what I’d like our goals for Buildstack to be for 2023. I think that they should be centered on a revenue target, as all things feed into that. $20k mrr by end of year would make this a breakeven project, which would be nice—though not including my time. $100k mrr would allow us to hire a few more researchers and salespeople, and fund a bit of a marketing budget. Can we get there? I think so.

investment stuff

• FH1*: Our working drawings have been submitted to the City’s Buildings department for review and permit issuance. We’ve also begun the process of shopping for construction financing. Man, has debt become expensive! We’re probably looking at something like an 10-12% rate and 1-3% issuance fee. I’ll let you know how that goes.

• MR1**: Our Official Plan Amendment and Zoning Bylaw Amendment applications have been submitted, and importantly, confirmed by City staff as having been received. Getting to this point has taken much longer than anticipated. Remote and hybrid work has certainly not increased the City’s productivity. And while we’re happy that we’ve achieved this important milestone, we’re keenly aware that time is not on our side on a debt-financed project in a rising interest rate environment. Our next step is to wait for the City to deem the applications as being complete and to then provide comments on the submitted supporting material, including all designs, studies, and reports. I’ll be pleased if we receive comments within four months—how crazy is that?

*Forever Hold 1. A proposed four-storey multiunit rental building in Toronto’s west end that we plan on holding forever.

**Midrise 1. A proposed nine-to-twelve-storey multiunit residential building (tenure to be determined) in Toronto’s west end. We’re starting with a rezoning and will see where we take it from there.

stuff I’ve enjoyed

This is some of the content I’ve come across over the past month that’s worth sharing.

• Article: There are so many good Substack newsletters that it’s hard to pick a favourite. I’d definitely put Mike Solana’s Pirate Wires in my top five though, at least. Mike works for Peter Thiel—who I think might be the most interesting thinker alive—and provides excellent (and hilarious) coverage of the media and technology landscapes. He also occasionally lets guest writers contribute pieces in their areas of expertise. Last week, he had Trae Stephens and Markie Wagner, the cofounders of Anduril and Delphi Labs respectively, write about choosing a good mission (or quest) for life. Check it out.

• Book: As mentioned above, there’s been a lot of rapid progress being made in the field of AI recently. This chatbot released yesterday by OpenAI is still blowing my mind. It makes you think… are we creating the early iterations of what will eventually become our new overlords? Hm. In any case, this month I read Avogardo Corp, a book that contemplates how an advanced version of Gmail’s autocomplete might take over the world. Reading it felt a bit like taking a peak at a possible future.

• Podcast: Can I just keep plugging My First Million (MFM) here? I know that I’ve done it a few times already, but it remains, easily, my favourite podcast. I don’t have any particular episode to recommend. That’s not the point. Listening to MFM is like taking a long walk on a brisk day—energizing. It doesn’t matter so much where you walk to.

• Video: Over the past month, Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter and reduced its employee headcount by about 80%—either by firing people or having them quit—with no noticeable impact on service. It’s been fun to watch. He also somehow got George Hotz to join as an intern. To prepare for the role, George recorded himself digging into Twitter’s architecture. Also fun to watch.

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And that’s all for now. Here’s to a good and productive December.

Feel free to reply to this email with any comments or questions. I love chatting about everything mentioned above.