Hey Founders,

☕️ Welcome back to the Kernal Newsletter: the Airbnb host that says you can only host 6 people but turns a blind eye when 10 founders roll thru the back door for a 24-hour hackathon. 🏠

📰 Latest news: Meta is copying Elon. Everyone wants a 4-day work week. Starbucks is long on olive oil. YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down. Notion AI is all the buzz. Stripe's trying to raise $4B. Canva passed 15 billion designs. VC fundraising hit a 9-year low. But Kernal's DAU just hit an all-time high. No Joke. L-F-G. 🔥

😏 Kernal Gossip: Ghost wasn’t replying to our emails so we jumped shipped and are testing the waters at BeeHiv. If today’s newsletter looks different, that’s the tea. If you like how this newsletter flows, reply and give us a holla. 👋

Hootsuite loves helping startups with marketing. So we teamed up with them to spread the word about their new writer's block booklet. It's a free 20-page e-book that gives you writing prompts to write better tweets, Tik Toks and Linkedin captions about your startup. Dig in here.

🍽 Today's Menu:

• 🤫 5 Things AI can't do for founders

• 🚀 Fresh startup ideas hot outta the oven

• 🐦 Tweets that'll make you laugh if you’re feeling low

🤫 5 Things AI Can't Do For Founders

💡 #1 Prank, Surprise or be Clever

Soren Iverson is full of wit. So is Trung Phan, Codie Sanchez and Eric Zhu.

There’s a human element that the best creatives write with that will be difficult for AI to imitate. At least for a while.

Remember you can automate a lot of things. But pranking, surprising or appealing to human wit is one of the few things that doesn’t make that list.

💡 #2 Building Community and Hosting Events:

AI can code, draft captions, and even design photos.

But building community happens face to face.

It’ll be interesting to see how startups keep a pulse on community building as AI surges but our spidey senses predict there will still need to be a human behind the execution of that.

Until then, keep at it.

💡 #3 Pounce on Timely Opportunities

Marlina above hustled her way into the front page of an HR trade publication.

She pounced on a timely opportunity that put her startup in the perfect spotlight.

I have yet to see an AI bot that can replicate that initiative and timely execution. Read her last update if you missed it.

*3 other things we’d add to the list (but don’t wanna write on b/c we’re rambling too long and know you wanna see some kick-ass startup ideas):

• #4 Hiring and Firing Key Talent

• #5 Reach Out and Close Critical Meetings

• *Bonus: Spin-Up Memes Around Yesterday’s News

And look. At Team Kernal, we’re pro AI.

But we’re also pro-smart founder.

So with today’s deep dive, we wanted to remind you that AI will outsource a lot of things. But don’t forget some of your best opportunities may still be human-led and executed.

Now, the part we’ve allll been waiting for. Let’s roll up our sleeves and dig into the startup ideas.

✨Fresh Startup Ideas✨ 

Why we like it: Great early stage validation: 9 people would invest ($160K), 9 people would use it, 4 people would pay for it, 3 people would help build it

What it needs: experts and well-connected community builders in the care home environment.

Why we like it: strong buzz on the initial posting of the idea: 8 people would invest ($203K), 9 people would use it, 3 people would pay for it, 1 person’s down to help build it.

What it needs: alumni from Lyft or Uber to serve as advisors or mentors. Strong female leadership team. Diligent UI/UX manager.

One-liner: Swopify is a C2C online marketplace for fashion lovers and creatives. Our goal is to make swopping preowned luxury bags easy and to find a replacement for your old dusty designer bag that is hidden in the back of your closet.

Why it’s unique: already drummed up 8 comments, $100K+ of investor interest and some willing hands to guide the validation process of the business.

One liner: Anthony thinks it’s time to change the way we give feedback on an audio file

Why you should care: The music industry is worth over $25B and this will be a valuable problem to sort out.

🎲 Your Turn

Got a startup idea of your own?

We wanna hear it. Quit sitting on your hands and start shouting it to the stands.

Tap that button below and let's get you building.

📩 In Our Inbox:

• Sonia just interviewed Marie Martens (founder of Tally.so) on things she wishes she’d done differently in her early days of building her startup.

• Nathan Barry drops the exact methods he used to scale to $100k MRR in 12 months.

• Jasmine Star was featured in a podcast on how to stand out on social

• Sahil (founder of Gumroad) launched a new art app and is in NYC if you wanna slide into his Twitter DMs for a coffee

• Marlina Kinnersley got featured in the Human Resources Director blog alongside EVP & GM Jeetu Patel at Cisco

• How to get started with your angel investing journey

🐦 Tweets of the Week

Enough reading and rhyming. Go on and have yourself a fantastic weekend founders.

💚 The Kernal Fam