mAIn Street #65: MiniMax Turns Your Ideas Into Software with a Single Prompt; Empathy Hacks, Prompt Layering, and a Hiring Prompt for Startup Founders
JULY 23, 2025
Empathy Hacks, Prompt Layering, and a Hiring Prompt for Startup Founders
4 Things You Need to Do to Keep from Losing Your Soul to AIToday, my daughter asked me not to die. Ever. Lately, she's had a couple of bad dreams where I was stabbed and shot. In both cases, I survived. So this seemed like a bit of an escalation. I assured her that I’d give it “the ol’ college try,” but better sense soon prevailed, and she said, thoughtfully, “But that’s not really possible. Everyone dies.” Agreed, I said, but, being the eternal optimist, I couldn’t leave it at that. “You never know, though. With the way things are with robots and computers, Daddy might just upload his personality to the cloud one day so you can download him onto a robot.” She thought about that for a bit, then decided, “It wouldn’t be the same. Your hugs wouldn’t feel the same.” “What about synthetic skin and grip control and my robot wearing the same clothes and cologne?” “Nah,” she said. “Wouldn’t be the same.” While the request and the recent dreams are a little jarring to me, I'm not that bothered by them. I understand this is part of normal human development. I vaguely remember having the same thoughts when I was younger than her. Living in a world where I had to figure it all out on my own. Trying to determine how the heck I was gonna do that. I mean, I remember thinking back then that I couldn't follow directions from the IGA to our house. How was I ever going to make it in the world without some adult there to show me how? I was probably six or seven at the time. I'm 45 now. I don’t live in the same house or town as I did, nor the same ones, plural, as the rest of my family. But I know where to go to get to their houses and my own, and I can make it to the grocery store just fine. I admit life hasn’t always been fun. But I'm still standing and figuring out how to do it better with each passing day. Some of my decisions have sucked, and I'm sure I still have a few more mistakes to go. But despite all that, I'm alive, I'm loved, and I'm safe. All things, I'm sure, she still will be, whether every happenstance breaks her way or not. Human beings who refuse to give up tend to have that quality. Resilience. We stumble and fail often, but we also make good come from bad and create our own luck along the way. I think there’s something relevant in there with AI. It can leave us feeling professionally homeless. It can make us fear change as we come to terms with the death of the Familiar.
All valid concerns if a machine is taking our place. But if I could go back and talk to little me, I would say: Look, you’ll take some wrong turns. Stuff will happen beyond your control. Your understanding, sense of justice, and maybe even your very beliefs will be rocked to the core at times. You won’t become a star professional athlete or write a bestselling novel that’s turned into a billion-grossing movie. You won’t have the perfect marriage, the perfect career, the perfect community. But don't give up. Adapt. Survive. You’ll end up in the right places. Everything is figure-out-able. Even our place in a world where AI is doing 70%, 80%, 90% of the work. I don’t have all the solutions for it, but I do have some solutions that I’ll share with you now. CHECK OUT THE REST ON SUBSTACKInside Trump's AI Strategy, AIs That Target Cancer and Alzheimer's, and Altman Warns of Voice-Fraud Crisis in Banking. That, and dozens more of the day's top headlines.
MiniMax Turns Your Ideas Into Software with a Single PromptMiniMax turns wild ideas into working software with a single prompt. Spin up its “Agent” mode, ask for anything—from a Netflix-style streaming site to a full CRM—and watch it scrape the web for data, write the code, generate on-brand copy, and even create original voice-over videos, all in under a minute. Early users have churned out Pokédexes, maze games, support dashboards, and restaurant-management suites without writing a line; one tester built five sellable SaaS products before lunch. MiniMax starts free with 1,000 credits (that Netflix clone cost under 400), and its MCP marketplace plugs into GitHub, Slack, Notion, Figma, and more so your new creations slide right into existing workflows. In short, it’s a research assistant, developer, designer, and product manager rolled into one lightning-fast AI agent—perfect for entrepreneurs who’d rather validate and iterate than wait months for a dev sprint. Read All mAIn Street Back Issues HereYour input fuels the content. Let me know how I did today! |
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