Kostas Palierakis

Building The Circuit, a London art community and web app for curated openings/routes. Marketing/growth background. Art x AI x cities.

[Kostas Palierakis @hrational]

@Andy_AJT @paw_lean @OpenAIDevs Thanks Andy, DMs aren’t open for me unless I upgrade to Premium. Can you DM me first so I can send the Luma email, or should I send it another way?

[Kostas Palierakis @hrational]

@paw_lean @OpenAIDevs @Andy_AJT Appreciate you replying, Pauline. @Andy_AJT one last try in case there are cancellations: I’m launching subscriptions this week for The Circuit, a Codex-built web app based on my 1k-member London art community. Feels very relevant to the meetup.

[Fabrizio Rinaldi @linuz90]

My girlfriend couldn’t cancel a hotel reservation today.

No cancel button. They weren’t replying on WhatsApp.

Since I really didn’t want to call the hotel, I told her to try and just use Codex.

2 minutes later, she came back to me saying that Codex quickly realized there was a basically hidden cancel button on the reservation page (nasty dark pattern), and it just went ahead and canceled for her.

It’s a little thing, but there’s so much daily stuff now I’m doing with Codex.

Paired with Computer Use and the Chrome integration, it’s really great at a huge range of tasks, so I’m starting to default to it.

(this is probably true for Claude as well)

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

The best country in human history was the UK. They invented industrial technology, vaccines, antibiotics, science, physics, computer science, and modern sanitation. They gave us Monty Python, the Beatles, and Lord of the Rings. Then something happened

[Adam Shuaib @adamshuaib]

You can grind your way to the top 10% of most fields, but the top 0.1% works differently; these people have found their work so absorbing they've stopped noticing the grind at all.

Edisons assistants said he couldn't understand why his employees got tired. He'd hammer at a problem for 30hrs, then look up confused that everyone had gone home and assumed they were sick. Tesla often forgot to eat. Buffett, in his nineties, reads 500 pages of annual reports a day for fun.

People assume they had super-human willpower, but they actually had a completely different relationship with effort; the effort in itself was the reward. Forcing yourself to work hard is exhausting, but not being able to stop is something totally different. The biggest rewards in life come to the people who don't experience hard work as work at all.

[Kostas Palierakis @hrational]

@reach_vb Hey Vaibhav, still pending approval on Luma for Wednesday. I’m using Codex daily to build The Circuit, a web app for my art community. Would appreciate it if you could take a look.

[Kostas Palierakis @hrational]

@Andy_AJT @OpenAIDevs Hey Andy, still pending approval on Luma for Wednesday. I’m using Codex daily to build The Circuit, a web app for my art community. Would appreciate it if you could take a look.

[Kostas Palierakis @hrational]

@Andy_AJT @e1daru @alixwiessser @eliarohrbach @oscarfalll Hey Andy, still pending approval on Luma for Wednesday. I’m using Codex daily to build The Circuit, a web app for my art community. Would appreciate it if you could take a look.

[Deedy @deedydas]

WhatsApp may be the statistically best app we've ever made.

It's a product manager's dream with its unparalleled addictiveness (DAU / MAU) of 87% and stickiness (M1 retention) of 86%, both #1 in the world while having the #1 most monthly active users for any non preinstalled app of 2.7B users.

Here are the top 25 most used apps in the world by MAU on both these metrics. Some surprising observations:
— There are now 15 1B+ user apps in the world, 8 by Google, 4 by Meta.
— The 3 that aren't are TikTok, Telegram (!) and ChatGPT
— Telegram has more users than Spotify, Pinterest, Netflix, Amazon, Snap!
— ChatGPT's one month retention is #5 after WA, Instagram, Chrome and Youtube. 2yrs ago, it was been #20 by M1 retention
— Shopee, a shopping app in southeast Asia, is huge and retains users better than Amazon!

Useful way to break down consumer businesses especially within certain categories (X vs Reddit vs Threads is a good one). It's shocking how few new apps have been able to break through in the past 10yrs.

[Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 @RuxandraTeslo]

Article in @WSJ about Europeans marveling at the wealth of America.

Some data on houses: "The data sheds some light: The average American home is about 1,800 square feet [...]. Europeans’ homes are about 1,100 square feet on average"

[Yinzer G @yinzer_g]

What I've learned from World Cup travelers this week.

- Apparently the US is the only country with A/C
- Other countries don't use seasoning on their food
- You can only buy a gallon of milk in the USA
- You have to pay for a 2nd or 3rd pop at a restaurant outside of America. No free refills
- They love to party just like us and boy are they fun!
- Only we do flyovers before games
- America's spring is hotter than Europe's summer
-We have a lot to learn when it comes to soccer chants
- Ranch Dressing is a delicacy to be treasured
- Their media lies to them just like ours does to us

Can we keep em?

[Adam Grant @AdamMGrant]

What really drives leaders to resist remote work isn't productivity. It’s ego.

Our new data: Ordering people in full-time is a power & status move. Bosses want to be worshiped at the office altar.

Policies shouldn’t be vanity projects. Hybrid is better for people & performance.

https://t.co/kOywHTFLoG

[Cindy Yu @CindyXiaodanYu]

I've noticed one conversation has come up repeatedly among my young, educated and mid-career friends in the UK, especially London.

"Should we move to a different country?"

Rent costs over half of our salary.

Houses are more than ten times the average salary and so are impossible to buy without a partner and/or generous parents.

Inflation is going up while real wages have barely grown since 2008.

The tax system punishes those who earn between £100k and £125k with a 62% (!) marginal tax rate

Things outside of London are better, but not necessarily (e.g. average house still seven times average salary)

As one lawyer friend who's moved to the continent put it, the country/London has become a 'high cost, low income' place

By comparison, salaries are much higher in the US, or taxes lower in Dubai, or work-life balance better in Australia

The net loss of 25-34 year old British nationals has increased five-fold since 2022.

Of course we all still love London, and Britain: for many cultural reasons it is still a wonderful place to live. Many of those who've moved may also ultimately move back.

But something is wrong when so many economically productive workers and taxpayers feel priced out of and punished by the system they pay into

[Nan Ransohoff @nanransohoff]

Today we're launching Intercept: a $500M philanthropic initiative to make respiratory infections, like the common cold and flu, a thing of the past.

We treat respiratory infections as a minor nuisance, but that’s really not the case. Most of us will spend 5% of our lives (!) sick from these viruses, they kill 1M people a year, cost $600B annually in productivity, and periodically threaten civilization through pandemics.

So, if they’re such a big problem, why haven’t we dealt with them yet? Last year we convened ~40 leading scientists, pharma R&D leaders, biotech investors, and regulatory experts to better understand that.

We heard two main reasons:
(1) First, it’s just technically very challenging: respiratory viruses represent hundreds of distinct, mutating strains across several families. Fortunately, recent breakthroughs make this newly possible.
(2) Second is a lack of funding: broad-spectrum solutions have historically been underfunded, in part because they’re not a great fit for most philanthropic or commercial funding (and while COVID generated a burst of activity around preventing and understanding respiratory infections through an influx of new funding, that hasn't been sustained).

We think that with enough focus and funding, this might be solvable. Intercept is a $500 million philanthropic initiative that will take advantage of new tools to catalyze the development and deployment of two types of products: broad-spectrum preventatives and air cleaning technologies.

This problem is undoubtedly difficult. But it’s more tractable now than it’s ever been. We think we should give it our best shot.

We’re enormously grateful to our anchor funders: @stripe, @AnthropicAI, @TheFluLab, @FoundationOAI and individuals from Jane Street.

And, I’m very excited to be building this with @incredutility and the rest of the team.

[Sylvain Catherine @sc_cath]

The miracle is real and great -- it's called free markets -- but Poland is a young Japan. Its GDP per capita is inflated by the lack of children and, for the moment, an elderly population that remains manageable.

But it will struggle when the missing kids become missing adults.

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

European football fans visiting America are discovering the mass affluence of the country’s suburbs. The wealth enticing holidaymakers troubles European elites. America, once a peer, seems to be racing ahead https://t.co/L3lw48WEwo

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

The most valuable skill sets on the planet right now:

1. people who can set up agents properly, manage them, and run local AI models
2. marketers who know how to build distribution
3. robotics engineers who can do all three: build the hardware, wire in the AI, and source manufacturing etc
4. curators who are good at yapping and can do short form video in their sleep
5. the builder-distributor. The one person who can both ship the product AND get it in front of people
6. IRL community builders

[Noam Shazeer @NoamShazeer]

I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there.

It was a difficult decision to move on. I’m incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we’ve built together. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with all of you.

[Rem Koning @orgRem]

🤖Excited to share a new working paper.🤖

The phrase "AI-Native firms" it everywhere, but are they any different? Is it just hype?

In our new paper we show AI ventures are organized differently, but not for the reasons you think.