- Ponderer
- Posts
- 1-2-3: Stock and Flow
Happy Sunday!
Welcome to Ponderer's 19th edition.
We know you think we’re like tiny buddhas, meditating all day, every day to bring you the most thoughtful takes on AI every Sunday but…
We also love to build helpful things on the Internet.
We’ve got something new for you this week. 😇
Here are 1 idea to ponder, 2 resources to skill up, and 3 tools to try out.
Let’s do it.
PONDER THIS
The Big Idea
Stock and flow.
Small things, over time, can get big.
What is the stock and flow concept about?
As Robin Sloan wrote years ago:
Flow is the feed (“It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that reminds people you exist.”)
Stock is the durable stuff (“It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people discover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time.”)
As Austin Kleon wrote:
“The idea is to turn flow into stock. Tweets become blog posts that become book chapters that become books.”
The problem is, we often fail to heed Robin’s warning:
“I feel like flow is ascendant these days, for obvious reasons—but we neglect stock at our own peril. I mean that both in terms of the health of an audience and, like, the health of a soul. Flow is a treadmill, and you can’t spend all of your time running on the treadmill. Well, you can. But then one day you’ll get off and look around and go: oh man. I’ve got nothing here.”
Can you relate?
LEARN
“Learn via iteration. Do not wait for clarity to take action. Take action to engineer clarity. Learn, iterate, put skin in the game.” —@rickyshq
2 Resources
Skill up and expand your mind with our top picks of the week:
I. Free Course
[Sign up] A 5-day free email course showing you exactly how to use 5 AI tools to streamline your workflows by You Probably Need a Robot.
II. Free Course
[Read it] A free crash course to start building with AI. Jam-packed with everything you need to code your AI app. FYI: It’s advanced. [Sign up]
TRY IT
“Input, output. We leverage AI and AI leverages us.” —@rickyshq
3 Tools
Leverage our top picks of the week:
I. Bifrost
Bifrost turns your Firgma designs into clean React code—automatically. You’ll never write frontend code from scratch again. [Try it]
II. Brancher
Brancher helps you connect AI models to build AI apps in minutes, with no code. It is the ultimate AI model connector. [Try it]
III. CodeWP
. Behind the Pondering .
Storytime!
Before we started Ponderer, we didn't have AI in mind.
It wasn’t part of our vision back then.
However, we launched it as an AI newsletter for creators.
Why? Keep reading…👇
We embarked on this topic and field we knew nothing about.
It is one of the reasons we did it. We wanted a challenge in a field we knew would become part of our everyday lives in the years to come.
But we wanted to do it differently.
We wanted to zag.
Or, as Marty Neumeier said: “When everybody zigs, zag.”
That is what design unlocked for us.
People want to know how we think about designing Ponderer, and how we create simple yet engaging animations to convey ideas, concepts, or principles.
Because of this, we decided to pull the curtains with an exclusive training that provides concise, thoughtful lessons on designing beautiful, strategic, and highly effective newsletters with zero code and directly on Beehiiv 🐝
Introducing the Beehiiv Design Course. If you are building a newsletter on Beehiiv and want to elevate your newsletter design game, check it out.
CREW PONDERINGS
☝️Solo: Can someone give us the AI playbook for solopreneurs—build a $1M business, zero hires, and work from anywhere? [$1M AI tech stack]
🤔 Well: “Someone should launch a newsletter on AI that links the latest news and product launches.” A ground-breaking idea, Mr. Wilkinson. 😉
🤦🏻♂️ Hmm: Are AI stocks currently in a bubble? Jim Bianco says yes. What about you? What do you think? Tell us here.
. TOGETHER > SOLO .
Here’s how we can help:
⇢ Beehiiv Design Course — tactical video lessons on building and designing beautiful, powerful, and effective newsletters with Beehiiv. [50% Off]
⇢ MeetPixels — world-class newsletter design, built to help you stand out, get results, and never be boring again. [View plans]
Today’s edition was sent with Beehiiv 🐝 the #1 newsletter platform.
Edited and designed by Pixels 🍉
Thanks for reading! Reply whenever you need to.
Until next time 🫡
Ponderer
p.s. Concerning.
