#062: Roadmap to Making Real Friendships, Build Your Dream App in 2025, Story About a Contractor

Happy Holidays and Hello to All!

We are pleased to welcome you to this week's cheerful edition of Undiscovered, a newsletter with exclusive resources and insights expanding from the material found on our main site - becketu.com.

This week, we will take a look at practical roadmaps for building your dream app in 2025, a guide to making authentic friendships, a book written by one of the recent lead engineers behind Spotify Wrapped, and more.

Let's dive in:

Build Your Dream App in 2025

Thought I'd share some resources that I've found to have useful insights for those building and interested in the consumer app space:
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1. CJ Z Tweet, "I'm convinced. You can build anything with AI now" - This tweet is a short, punchy list of all the tools needed to build the Minimum Viable Product for your app. This includes tools for 1) landing pages 2) web applications 3) mobile applications 4) documentation 5) micro apps 6) code autopilots 7) vision apps.
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2. We're Gonna Make It Podcast, Zach Yadegari Interview - Zach is the 17-year-old Cofounder of $1.12 M/Month app Cal AI. Maybe you've seen one of their videos on social media, but essentially Cal AI allows you to take a picture of your food and it would tell you the macros on it. Way easier than MyFitnessPal, and an inherently viral idea. Zach breaks down their marketing strategy, which is great from the distribution side of things - something just as important as building the product.
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3. We're Gonna Make It Podcast, Blake Anderson Interview - The same podcast as above, Blake is one of the other cofounders of Cal AI and built a couple additional apps that went viral. He started with no knowledge on how to build apps, and talks about how he learned using Chat GPT to troubleshoot everything. He isn't afraid to talk about the 'rookie mistakes' he made like having public API keys and how he'd build an app from the ground up now.
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Use CJ's tweet as a reference for tools, learn to build with Blake's interview, learn to sell with Zach's interview, and you'll be unstoppable.

Your Own Local Tour Guide

What if there was a map that let you discover Wikipedia pages of all the surroundings in your neighborhood? And what if it could also show you the pages from maps all around the world? Thankfully for us, Matthew Siu recently built this project. His inspiration was perfectly phrased as follows:

For those of you that are susceptible to falling down Wikipedia rabbit holes, this may be a dangerous site. It's fascinating to explore your local neighborhood, and you'll surely discover things around you that you may have never known. I love the user experience and am sure you will too.

Roadmap to Making Real Friendships

Making new friends is hard. In fact, this chart shows by the time we are in our early 20's, time spent with friends usually peaks. But I believe having friends and surrounding yourself with like-minded people can improve your life in orders of magnitude, no matter what age you are at. That's why I love this actionable chart from Adele Bloch.

It lays out the four main principles of making real friendships, along with tips on how to go about following through on it:
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​1. Meeting people - Go to things: events, sports, clubs, classes. Get comfortable getting out of your comfort zone - meeting strangers, showing up, making conversations.
​2. Finding your people - Be intentional about where you spend time. Think about what you love doing, and find groups who love those things too.
​3. Consistent interactions - Turn acquaintances into friends through regular contact. ideally, join recurring events. Otherwise, keep the momentum going after an initial hangout.
​4. Creating depth - Go beyond small talk. Be authentic. Share real wins & struggles. Be the type of friend that you'd want to have.

For those with analytical minds who appreciate roadmaps, this is a great way to think about your social life that has practical steps for deepening connections with others.

How Streaming Changed the Music Industry

One of the big complaints that's come out of this year's music-social scene, is how bad Spotify Wrapped felt in comparison to years past. People are saying one of the main reasons is because they parted ways with many key team members - including Glenn McDonald, who built their Data Alchemy tool.

Glenn happened to write a book recently, titled You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favorite Song. In the book, he talks about how streaming changed the music industry, along with how the platforms interact with artists.
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I've already seen a few glowing reviews for the book on Twitter, along with people shouting out his other cool projects like everynoise.com, which shows an interactive map of hundreds of different types of music.

A Story About a Contractor

In the spirit of the holidays, I wanted to share a beautiful story I came across recently. Patrick McKenzie, advisor to Stripe, had this to say about a recent experience with a contractor performing work for his aging mother.
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It's a prime example of how we can see the humanity in others while performing business. Here's a link to the thread, but the story goes as follows:

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Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season!

Wishing you and your loved ones the absolute best,

J.B.