Who am I? I’m Michael Karnjanaprakorn. I run Choop, my holding company for weird ideas. Before that, I founded Skillshare and Otis. Now exploring what's next and sharing my journey. Every month, I write this newsletter about life, business, and random tings. If someone forwarded this to you, join 5K+ other readers by subscribing here.
So what’s new? I got a tooth extracted (note to self: don’t eat peanut M&Ms from your kid’s halloween candy). I’m also overhauling my YouTube and Podcast (more on that soon) and wrote a blog post on Advice. I’m hiring for a few PT different roles. Right now, I’m looking for my “Ben.”
Been thinking about cycles. Some seasons are for building, others for investing (crypto 2017) or buying businesses. Right now, it’s building time. A solo founder vibe coded his company and sold it for $80M in six months. AI companies are hitting $10M and $100M revenue in lightning speed.
Greg Isenberg’s tweets are giving me massive FOMO. It’s time to build! If you’re looking for business ideas, check out Idea Browser.
Totally agree with this take: work on fun projects that make money.
Education’s back on my radar. Alpha School is doing some cool stuff with AI tutors. Synthesis built an AI math tutor that adapts in real-time to how your kid thinks, gamifies the whole experience, and is outperforming 99.99% of their peers. Micro-schools are popping up everywhere. And AI just enabled the fastest growing education company ever?
I like listening to Scott Galloway’s takes. His latest? The U.S. is heading for a 15-year recession, so he’s moving 75% of his money out U.S. markets and into European markets. He thinks valuations are too high in the U.S., Europe’s about to spend big on infrastructure and defense, and now’s the time for a major global capital rotation. TLDR: Sell America. Buy Europe.
Andrej Karpathy just gave the clearest vision of where software is headed in the age of AI. We’ve gone from writing code by hand to talking to computers in plain English. LLMs are the new operating system and everyone who speaks English is now a developer.
Some ex-Skillshare folks just launched Mixy, which is already going viral. A few Otis alums are also building Chord in the AI group chat space. Fun to see the old crew shipping cool stuff.
Multiplier is a new company that applies AI to professional services. Think law firms, accounting, etc. They’re acquiring high-quality firms, building internal tools, and scaling from there. I like how they’ve structured the teams. Definitely borrowing a few ideas for my HoldCo.
Perplexity for Notetaking? Imagine a tool that turns your notes (and links) into an AI-usable second brain. You paste a YouTube link, it auto-summarizes, connects to related ideas, and get stored in a dynamic, queryable knowledge base. Basically, a modern day Memex.
Moats in the age of AI: speed and distribution. Brian Balfour just dropped a must-read on how every platform shift follows the same cycle: open the gates, grow with third-party help, close it (and screw over the developers who helped grow it), and monetize. ChatGPT is showing signs of becoming that platform. The moat won’t be content or users. It’ll be context and memory. The new winners will be the ones who figure out how to distribute in this new paradigm before the platform walls go up.
Yancey Strickler (Kickstarter co-founder) gave a TED Talk on a new model for creatives to work together: the Artist Corporation (A Corp). Artists own their work, pool resources, and split profits. He and 10 writers self-published a book, split $70K, and built something bigger as a result. As he puts it: what if the next Disney wasn’t a corporation, but an artist-owned collective?
Notes on Managing ADHD. I feel seen! I’ll often forget I even started a project, which means it never gets finished. This is a solid guide on staying productive with an ADHD brain.
A single-dose gene therapy and the ancient enzyme nattokinase have the potential to transform heart health.
I’ve been down a 90s rock / nu metal YouTube rabbit hole lately — RATM, Korn (this riff still goes hard AF!), Deftones, Nirvana, 311, Sublime. Random thought: Is Nirvana our generation’s version of the Beatles? I’m not saying it’s a perfect comparison but feels kinda true?
I know I’m late to this but I’ve been getting into random coffee shop DJ mixes lately. Perfect morning GSD background vibes.
Finished 100 Foot Wave and went looking for another surf show. Stumbled across Apple’s Make or Break and got hooked.
Just tried Laurel A2 lattes for the first time. Delicious. Milk-based. Highly recommended.
Some good fiction I just finished: Dead Money (4/5) and The Oligarch’s Daughter (4.5/5). Just started The Ministry of Time and King of Ashes. Both solid so far.
What if cats were olympic divers? And what if your father was a swimming coach?
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Building fun things that make money is what I’m focused on
Hey, if you like Sublime you should check out Badfish, a cover band from Rhode Island. They've been at this for ~15+ years. Their drummer was a real estate customer of mine in Charlotte. Oh, and if you haven't seen the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", Stanley Kubrick's 1968 SiFi thriller. It'll make you think twice (and then some) about turning things over to a computer. Love you guys! Anne