Alternatives
Products that do what Letters to Marcus does
Introspection, guided by people who actually did things
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- 3IQ
Quick background: I used to code. Studied it in school, wrote some projects, but eventually convinced myself I wasn't cut out for it. Too slow, too many bugs, imposter syndrome — the usual story. So I pivoted, ended up as an investment associate at an early-stage angel fund, and haven't written real code in years. Fast forward to now. I'm a Buffett nerd — big believer in compound interest as a mental model for life. I run compound interest calculations constantly. Not because I need to, but because watching numbers grow over 30-40 years keeps me patient when markets get wild. It's basically…
Jan 2026 · calquio.com
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It started after reading Stephen King's "On Writing" where he likened the art of writing as the unearthing of an archeological site after you stumbled upon a unique bone of a story. His advice was to choose a domain you are deeply intimate with. For me, I've been a struggling startup founder for 15 years—enough material to inspire a novel. A 1,000-word writing exercise turned into a complete 125k-word manuscript over the course of a year. In year 1, I learned the sheer joy of unencumbered creative flow and authentic expression. A similar flow I used to get from coding (and more recently vibe…
Jun 2026 · blockchainednovel.com
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The letters to shareholders as written by Warren Buffett
2015
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This took me 3 years to finish. (It is 100% self-published, not endorsed by Google.) So… I wrote a book. It’s a different book with a unique approach. It’s not a novel or a technical book. It’s a biography, a company’s biography. My hope is that it serves two purposes: to inspire founders and to captivate interior designers. It all started three years ago. My wife and I were discussing interior design for our living room and she brought up what beautiful coffee table books should we have. After looking at her favorites I realized there’s nothing like this for tech startups. Digital products…
2024 · damaia.com
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Hello HN, I am the founder of Agora Cosmica. This started about three years ago. On a walk I asked a chatbot to interpret the cave dream from Cormac McCarthy's book "The Road" as C.G. Jung. It gave me a perspective I had not thought of. But for my own dreams the policies of the big providers felt wrong for so personal conversations, as zero data retention is not available. So I started building. The project evolved to a German nonprofit and we published the code (AGPL-3.0) last month. The content is still copyright, but will be opened to CC-BY 4.0 in the next 6 to 12 months. Agora Cosmica is…
Jun 2026 · github.com
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I'm trying to get the motivation up to actually finish building out a "real" product, and I found myself needing a "win" to keep my momentum up. So, I hacked out a little one sentence journal app last night. I experimented with a few UI things (e.g.., the autosaving of the sentence for today and so on), so it was a good learning experience also. You can check it out at: http://osod.im
2012
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Hello there! I hope you're doing well today! I wanted to share something with you. Recently I was on the hunt for the best way to journal daily. Well, I had this idea - what if I could feed all my daily entries to an AI (ChatGPT), and create a friendly, supportive character like Socrates or Simon Sinek? This way, I could ask any questions about my life and mental health, and get some amazing advice on how to improve myself! The results have been absolutely mind-blowing ! I even made a short GIF to show you how it works - check it out! - https://gifyu.com/image/SdHLH I've…
2023
- 12IC
Most of us founders won’t publicly admit it: We’re very lonely and stressed. I know from 20 years of building 4 companies (1 failure, 3 acquisitions). We can’t be truly transparent with our team, board, investors, twitter, family or friends. We want to, but can’t. No matter what we’re thinking or feeling, we have to project strength. During my entrepreneurial journey I longed for a group of always-available experts that met these criteria: 1. Experienced 2. Trustworthy 3. Kind yet extremely direct 4. Available and affordable Obviously now with LLMs like gpt-4-1106-preview, we’re unlocking…
2024 · ryancarson.com
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I'm a Machine Learning engineer. Struggled with consistency for months on my goals, life etc, so I built something to help myself (zropi.com) but that surprised me or shocked me literally. It’s an AI companion that feels alive: chats like a person. Pauses, emotions, personality. Sends voice notes when it's excited about something or whenever it wants (has its like own mind). Shares photos of itself. But the memory It remembers EVERYTHING. Not just facts context, preferences, random things I mentioned. Last week I asked "how's that thing I told you about going?" and it knew exactly what I…
Jan 2026 · zropi.com
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I built constellational.com two days before November began, hoping it would help me write. It's just a blank canvas. The url updates itself as you type. You can send a different version to different people or bookmark the latest url for yourself.
2013
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Hey there, While searching for my next role as a PM in Blockchain + AI, I started building an AI-powered notetaker called MindNote: https://www.mindnote.online. The idea is simple: you input your thoughts, and AI helps you complete or modify them. If you decide to test it, try using the prompt: Keep this text and…"(add budget, complete list, organize alphabetically, add their translation, etc.). The first big release is all about modifying your notes with AI prompts. The next big step? Capturing thoughts directly from the mind using brain-to-text technology. There is a 3 days free…
2025
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Hi guys, I've been thinking a lot about how advancements in NLP can be standardized; when building a sentiment analysis, you know for sure that other attributes than the actual sentiment can be highly interesting, such as the urgency. Together with my team, I started a new open-source project, aiming to do exactly that. It's called bricks, and it is a composition of more than 50 open-source and modular code snippets, such as computing sentence complexities, emotionality detection and many more. For context, the idea came up after watching the incredible talk "Inventing on Principle" by Bret…
2022 · bricks.kern.ai
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Read classic non-fiction without commiting to a full book.
Mar 2026 · apps.apple.com
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A daily manifestation practice, written for your goal
11d ago · apps.apple.com
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