Laura Holmes

there are secrets in the hills of Oakland

If Google cared about this market, they would have thought about these problems *before* the launch, like I do at @wanderlystories. Wanderly is a one-woman business, so this was not a resource problem. They clearly don't care. Examples and more: runningtowards.xyz/p/why-im-offen…

#5 - Storybook is in an uncontrolled environment: Gemini assumes that all users of Storybook are parents, but if a child were to use it independently, it could go sideways quickly.

I'm offended by Google Gemini's Storybook feature... and you should be too. IMHO, it never should have launched. Here are the 5 most irresponsible things about Gemini’s Storybook: 🧵

@gladstein Thanks for sharing! 🙏 reading right now

Must-read essay on stablecoins Educate yourself

@levelsio Here’s a thoughtful essay about home ownership if anyone wants to go deep: open.substack.com/pub/knifefight…

I own a home now Home ownership is a cult A mortgage is massive long term loan that holds considerable risk when a local market crashes (see Detroit) It's a bad investment and a moneypit After real estate fees, taxes and maintenance it heavily underperforms most other investments The only arguments to be made for home ownership is leverage by borrowing money (most people can't borrow $1M to put in S&P500, but they can to buy a house) And being able to highly customize your own living experience (like me, I installed a home gym, sauna, jacuzzi, etc) Don't let anybody tell you it's a great investment, generally it's not and it usually does not or at times only barely outperforms inflation You should buy a home for the reasons above not any financial reasons

My youngest just found a new quiet time attack vector: taking her water bottle to rehydrate her tempura paint art to "redecorate" 😆😱🎨

So um… chatGPT just told me to found a cult? 😅

@nickbaum Yes! It’s been too long :) I’ll ping you next week to find a time. Hope you have a great weekend!

@fearofpoets Sounds like we should catch up soon!

I spent the last 3 months building for passion; my own and my daughters'. The results are paying off! My daughters love this new version of Wanderly - my youngest requests it every night! Latest newsletter is all about what I built, why, and what it enables me to do next :)

@wmginsberg @saranormous @mvernal Thanks for the @! I have so many thoughts here, so @saranormous let me know if you want to hop on a call sometime. I’m not raising or anything, just bootstrapping and having fun talking about it 😊

@saranormous @mvernal @fearofpoets is working on custom children’s storytelling with Wanderly!

5/ perhaps you could even make it configurable from entertaining <> efficient? yes, edutainment can masquerade as education, but Percy Jackson got my daughter interested in Greek history and mythology…

I didn't find the magical recipe for PMF this season, but I learned a LOT and I'm returning to product development armed with a lot of new tactics and information. I'm excited about what I'm going to build. Wishing you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2025! ❤️

Google also relies a lot on PR; top-tier PR. Thankfully, I was able to leverage influencers and @socialcathq to find awesome influencers for just a free @wanderlystories book! The ROI on these assets was amazing! 🤩

Google taught me a lot of things, but it did NOT teach me how to be an entrepreneur. In fact, it taught me a lot of entrepreneurial anti-patterns. 🧵