Building in Berlin

Kia ora,

Welcome back, and thanks for your patience while I’ve been swallowed up in other realms; a bit of sickness, a lot of work, and a little bit of Berlin party life.

This week’s email features the following

• Some handy tips for your AI workflows.
• Building websites with Claude Code
• Some useful people to follow in the AI space
• Reflections on the current state of AI
• Funding nature regeneration with technology

Major offerings to note

• Community Call #3 coming up on Tue 30 June. Sign up here.
• AI Automation Masterclass cohort launching soon. 4 weeks. 15 spots. Hit the button below to sign up.

Express Your Interest

Handy tips

• Get better results from AI - you can leverage this /interview skill in Claude to help you to spec projects. It’ll take your original prompt and engage a dynamic interview process to figure out exactly what you want. I built this based on my learnings and is working really nicely for me - maybe it will for you too.
• AI Field Guide - beginners launchpad for getting started. If you’ve been on the journey for a while, this may not be useful to you, but worth a look anyway. New subscribers to this email list will get it when they sign up. Check it out.

Useful thinkers in the AI space

I’m definitely standing on the shoulders of giants with this Build with Billy project. I owe a lot of this to mentors, guides and teachers from the past, as well as people I follow today who are constant inspiration for me. Here’s some people in the AI space you might like to follow too.

• Rui Vas - integrated human exploring AI education. We met in Lisbon recently via a mutual friend and had a lot of resonance.
• Nate B Jones - great YouTuber, big thinker. Some of his stuff is a bit beyond me but very interesting takes on a regular basis.
• Tenfoldmarc - a little bit hype bro, but good up-to-date info and new opportunities with AI
• Ai.shelest - cybersecurity expert now helping with AI, very useful if you’re vibe coding apps and no nothing about security, you must get a least a little understanding.
• Greg Isenberg - great all round AI guy, specifically for business, entrepreneurship and marketing.

Building websites with AI

Due to popular demand, I’m sharing a full download on this process.

Big caveat, this not a silver bullet solution. It’s by no means a foolproof way. I’ve learned a lot about security, SEO, over-building, etc. This is really just the way to get started, and there’s much more to learn beyond the scope of this email.

I find in general I have more bugs to fix. But I spend a lot less time on design, systems, databases etc. The bux are fixed by rigorous testing, voice noting to AI, and feedback from users/collaborators. The iteration cycles get faster and faster each time.

On the positive side, I’ve built ~5 websites (and counting) with AI, listed here. This has been a totally expansive way of working for me. It’s replaced a lot of hours I would spent building with legacy sites like Squarespace, and the outcomes are more efficient.

Here’s a few things I’ve built recently. There’s more in the pipeline, but they aren’t ready to share.

• Lucid Living - Online Breathwork Bookings
• Mangaroa Farms events bookings - an extension of our Shopify events system
• Build with Billy - the website running this project

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I’m yet to make my own video tutorials on these (coming soon), but in the meantime, this is basically it: Walk through the guide below and it’ll give you a personalised journey for how to build your site. Learn how to build websites

PS: it might feel like a lot, but just do one module at a time. Better yet, give your AI the link and ask to be walked through it.

Preparing for disruption

It’s feeling more like we’re in a video game watching AI unfold. The biggest “wow” for me recently was seeing the US govt enter the arena, when they demanded Anthropic turn off it’s new frontier model, Fable 5/Mythos 5, only 2 days after use. I got 48hrs out of it, which was epic, and waiting for the re-release. It feels like a bit of a marketing push/pull tactic as well… Like “Hey here’s this amazing model! Enjoy it while you can” then they pull the access and crank up the desire. Also the note that “Fable 5 is not currently available” that persists on Claude sessions makes me feel like they’ll bring it back.

It also looks like KYC (identity verification) is coming to AI, which will be interesting. As of July 8, Anthropic may ask some users (probably all of us eventually) to verify with a govt issued ID, a live selfie, and a scan of your face in order to use their services. This info is then handed on to Persona, an identity firm backed by Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s VC firm. He’s also the founder of Palantir, the surveillance company….

Batman isn’t sure about Pete

The solution? Start with some local AI. Tools like Ollama and LM studio let you keep a capable model on your own machine. Diversifying where your AI runs so is the most practical insurance you can give yourself. The strongest setup pairs cloud models (e.g. Claude Code/Codex) with local models. The primary distinction is that your memory, system, projects and files live on your computer, not in the cloud (although cloud models can still access them when you need them.

This is also my reasoning for setting yourself up with a local brain, so you can easily switch models without being locked in by one company’s compliance requirements.

This is one of the most important conversations at the frontier of AI. Interested in discussing this more? Reply to this email with your thoughts.

Funding Nature Restoration with Technology

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This project deserves a special shout out. I’ve just been in Berlin to collaborate with the Ma Earth crew, discussing projects at the intersection of nature, finance and technology. I owe it to this crew (and the amazing legends at Biome Trust and Mangaroa Farms) to my growth in AI.

Starting on 1 July, Ma Earth is running a fundraising campaign for nature projects starting 1 July, with a $600k USD matching pool being allocated to 150+ regeneration projects globally through some very smart grant matching technology, called quadratic funding. This matches funds based on the volume of donors, not the total fundraising count, so 10 people giving $1 each goes further than 1 person giving $10, rewarding community participation. I’ve been wonderfully impressed by the calibre of work pulled off by these people, and they’re awesome humans as well.

If you’re interested in the conversation about using technology to align economic incentives with planetary health, you can watch their podcast series The Regeneration Will Be Funded, which has 150+ episodes of long form discussions on this topic. I had the pleasure of working alongside the team to support in the production of this series through 2023-2025.

In my day job at Mangaroa Farms, we’re participating in this round to turn our walking trail into a edible loop track, with heritage fruit trees and medicinal herbs. If you’re interested in the funding round, you can learn more and donate to our cause here.

If any of this sparks a curiosity in you - flick me a reply, would love to hear how this lands. You can also follow my new Instagram here.

If you’re interested in embracing the tools as described above, you can express your interest in the community cohort at this link here.

Don’t forget to breathe some fresh air today. Go get em :)

Billy