Thomas Holl

@henrythe9ths AI Guide

There's a shocking fact about AI that nobody tells you: You can catch up to the public AI research frontier in just 2 weeks. Yes, really. I've built a $150M annual revenue startup over the last 8 years and If I were to start a company today, I’d drop everything and go all-in on AI. But like many busy software builders, I felt lost—overwhelmed by the noisy, crowded and fast-moving modern AI landscape. And I wasn’t alone. So I spent my entire holiday diving deep into AI research—reading 30+ papers, watching hours of lectures, analyzing trends, and catching up to the research frontier. ✨ Here’s what I learned: - You don’t need months (or years) to catch up. - You don’t need a PhD or decades of ML experience. - You need fewer than 20 papers and 2 weeks to understand the major breakthroughs shaping AI today. It's because the technology is extremely nascent and most techniques that came before are no longer relevant: - ChatGPT is barely 2 years old and Transformers are only 7 years old. - Most game-changing discoveries happened within the last 4 years, driven by a few breakthrough ideas, scaling laws, and efficient matrix multiplication. The biggest secret? Many groundbreaking AI papers with thousands of citations are surprisingly simple and applied, like adding "let's think step by step" to the prompt, or simply asking the LLM over and over again to improve its answer (Self-Refine). I realized there are tons of founders and builders in the same boat—wanting to dive deeper into AI but unsure where to start. I've created an essential AI Guide that helped me catch up, in just 2 weeks, to the frontier of public AI research to figure out where the next opportunities and gaps were: - Curated list of only the most important papers - Simple explanations of key concepts - Clear pathway to understanding the frontier of modern AI It’s perfect for: - Founders expanding into AI - Builders wanting to innovate at the frontier of AI - Investors looking to separate the signal from the noise 👇 Want the full guide? - Like and Share this post - Comment "AI Guide" - I'll send you the complete guide (ps, I’m also teaming up with @VishalVasishth, co-founder of @obviousvc with @ev (focused on large-scale societal impact companies like Twitter, Medium, Beyond Meat), to host a small meetup to discuss what's working and needs to be solved in the AI stack in SF. Message me if you're interested)

I’m gonna give 10 random people that repost this and follow me $25,000 for fun (the $250,000 my X video made) I’ll pick the winners in 72 hours

@GergelyOrosz Another dimension within „team“-fit is the lifecycle the teams product is in: being early in the lifecycle sometimes benefits from different characters than a mature product. The exact same person can perform quite differently in those two product teams.

It's common practice that an employee who is marked as underperforming cannot move teams. This is to avoid shuffling "low performer" people. A downside of the policy is the org most likely loses people who were just in a poor fit of a team/manager. Tough tradeoffs either way...

I spent the past few days talking to 10 billionaires. I asked them what's the most important rule for making your first $100m. All of their answers had one thing in common:

At @babbel I want to shape products and experiences that help people. We are committed to providing a product that is accessible and inclusive. I spoke with @derbrutkasten about how products, devices, environments and systems can be built to reach a ton of people!

@GergelyOrosz Randomized virtual coffee across the org. However the scheduled nature of this makes it feel non-spontaneous

On in-office vs WFH: I still remember all the people outside my org I met at the snack corner or lunch when I worked (in the office) at my previous workspaces just by saying hi or ear-dropping on a conversation. What is the remote version of spontaneously connecting with people?

In case you ever (want to|have to|are asked to) migrate from Angular to React - here's how we did it

Your mind can be your worst enemy. But it's not your fault. Cognitive Distortions are to blame. Here are 10 to be aware of, learn from, and overcome: 🧵

@babbel Tech Insights: How to simplify the control flow in your Lambda function by @awendt - output your monitoring data as JSON, then let AWS take care of transforming this JSON into a metric. bytes.babbel.com/en/articles/20…

Sweet! @Babbel are featured in the US AppStore (Today section), with some tips from me on being a better mobile learner @AppStore buff.ly/2w82jqJ

Somebody is writing KRISTINA over Manhattan #funwithdrones

This week we moved into a brand-spanking new office in the heart of Berlin. Here's to new beginnings! 🙌 🍾 🎉

#ThomasHoll: In Germany privacy trumps excitement #digirev @EventsPOLITICO @babbel

Great panel at #collisionconf with @ZoeLaHenry @timechange @babbel: self improvement and mental fitness for success

Currently, on the streets of New York City. pic.twitter.com/t4u5pCQDVe

Damit ihr euer Gelato diesen Sommer auch standesgemäß bestellen könnt.🍦 goo.gl/fY4uKy

We are among the first #AppleWatch apps apple.co/1A9D9R9. The app allows you to learn languages in context to your location. #babbel

@optivo Now reaching 9.000 mails that are not sent

@optivo : Now we're reaching 7K mails in the queue :(

@optivo : Mittlerweile hängen 5.000 Mails bei euch