August started slowly, but a lot moved in the second half. I kept working on my projects and began a new collaboration, something I’d set as a goal in July.
A friend and I committed to creating a new content format. We started preparing the first recording for September. I’m excited to make something with someone else and give more time to speaking and sharing what I’m interested in. I’ll share more once we have something to show.
A slower start
I continued building, writing and improving my systems. I believe in these projects and what they could become. They let me explore things I care about. But I’m still working out whether one of them is the company I want to spend the next ten years building. It felt frustrating not to know which projects to give more time, or how much longer it would take to find that focus. People were away on holiday too, so arranging conversations took longer.
For each project, I mapped out what I want from it, which questions I still need to answer and how much time I can give it.
I was invited to Rebuild 2, a gathering for people building European social platforms. I wanted to go, but the trip would have taken three or four days, and I ended up cancelling. I like a good side quest; this time, I needed the time for my own work.
Keeping Just Move to Europe useful
Just Move to Europe is a guide to Europe’s tech ecosystems. The name plays on the founder advice to “just move to SF,” but people sometimes read it as a relocation guide. You don’t have to be moving to find it useful. You might already live in Berlin and be looking for an AI meetup, a workspace or people to build with. I want JMTE to be somewhere people return to as they build, so I’m thinking about how to make that clearer on the site and when I share it.
I improved the city previews and event filters to make it easier to see what’s coming up. Behind the scenes, I worked on preventing duplicate events and making sure one broken source wouldn’t stop the whole import. I also improved how the public listings stay in sync with their sources, for example when an event’s date changes. Straightforward corrections can happen automatically; uncertain cases still need review.
With almost a thousand resources in the catalog, I set up an automation to recheck sources periodically and see whether the information is still current.
I still wanted a clearer picture of whether JMTE was useful to the people finding it. I realised I hadn’t configured PostHog to track everything I wanted, even for visitors who had opted into analytics. I fixed those gaps and enabled session recordings with masking. I want to use them to understand where people get stuck, which resources they open and whether they come back.
Less machinery around the agents
Mini-Me is the private context system I use with AI agents across my projects. I followed advice from Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code, to strip back old instructions as models improve and add them back only where the model repeatedly struggles. For me, that meant keeping my context and safety boundaries, simplifying how the system chooses which instructions to use, and stripping back skills.
By August 28, I’d cut the active skills from 29 to 16. In everyday use, the answers feel better again and closer to how I want the system to respond.
I also worked on my screen companion, a desktop app that helps me draft replies using the conversation on my screen and my own context from Mini-Me. I made it faster and more selective about which context it uses.
Continuing Tech Grails
Tech Grails is a collector’s cabinet for tech merch and the stories behind it. I continued working on the prototype, simplifying the cabinet into a visual list of what you own. Each piece has its own page for photos, notes and the story of how you got it.
I spent time researching the space and mapping out what I want Tech Grails to become. I showed the prototype to friends and family and have more conversations lined up for September. You can join the waitlist in the meantime.
Writing and putting the work out
I was taught to do something first and tell people about it afterwards. Sharing what I’m working on, then following up with how it turns out, is starting to feel more natural.
My July builder update went out on my website and Substack. I’m starting to look forward to writing these. Knowing I’ll share what I’ve been working on gives me extra motivation during the month.
I also submitted “Europa ist offen, aber Mitmachen kostet extra” to the Rising Minds essay competition, run by LibMod and WirtschaftsWoche. It’s about the gap between an opportunity being formally open and people being able to make use of it. I’m waiting for the results before sharing it, but you’ll get to read it either way.
In August, I published 13 posts on X and three on LinkedIn. I gained 98 net followers on X, 136 new followers on LinkedIn and three new subscribers on Substack. By early September, those LinkedIn posts had passed 29,000 impressions, most from my post about tech stickers.
On X, I wrote about Beglaubigt’s company-formation app inside ChatGPT. I liked that the tool is right there when someone asks how to start a company. By early September, that post had reached around 84,000 views and more than 600 bookmarks. It helped me finish fourth on that week’s Yaprank leaderboard. Friends and I compete there on weekly X impressions, which has made trying to get better at posting a lot more fun.
I also followed up on my search for builder rooms without age cutoffs by asking for recommendations on X. That post had far fewer views but brought in suggestions. Most were already listed on JMTE, which was nice to see, and I added a few that were missing. I love that about X. A post doesn’t have to reach a huge audience for people to engage with the actual question and share something useful. I’m now talking with a friend about organizing a recurring builder room ourselves.
What I want to make time for
In the OL Collective, one of my favorite exercises was getting specific about what I felt jealous of in other people. What exactly did I want for myself, and why? Where was it already present in my own life? Someone else might notice completely different things in the same person, or feel no jealousy at all. What I notice helps me understand what matters to me. Once I know what I want, I can make time to work towards it.
A lot of what I wanted involved putting myself out there more. That connected back to the values I’d mapped out earlier, and to things I’m already doing through building, writing and bringing people together. I can return to these questions whenever I want to work out what to focus on next, without having to plan my whole life first.
Those conversations also made me put more weight on “Who do I want to build for?”, alongside “What should I build?” That connected two things that matter to me, creating things and connecting with people. I want to get more specific about whose problems I want to understand and solve.
Also, life
Two friends invited me to Italy for a week to celebrate their 30th birthdays. Most of our friend group met through a university initiative, and we’ve since ended up all over the world. It was great to have so many of us in one place again. Weeks like this make me appreciate how much that initiative has shaped my life beyond university.
One of my favorite memories was trying to watch the eclipse. It was too foggy for us to see much, but we managed to capture it with a drone. We ended up dancing outside in the rain in bathrobes while one of our friends played a DJ set.
My trinity of eating well, sleeping well and exercising is in a good rhythm at the moment. I can feel the difference in my mood and my body. I keep coming back to Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker as a reminder to take sleep seriously, especially when work gets exciting. I’d recommend it if you need that reminder too.
September
Now we need to record and publish the first episode of the new format.
For Tech Grails, I want to have the conversations I’ve lined up before building more features. If you collect tech merch, make it for a company, or run a marketplace where it changes hands, I’d like to hear how you currently find, document and keep track of it.
For JMTE, I want to combine the analytics work with direct feedback about what people actually found useful. Visits to JMTE pick up when I post about it, so I want to share the smaller product updates too.
We received lots of lovely feedback on Women in AI Social. With August quieter over the holidays, we decided to plan the next gathering around Bits & Pretzels. If you’d like to come, keep an eye on our calendar.
I’d love to meet more builders and find people I work well with. If you think we should meet, or know someone I should talk to, please reach out.