How Packy McCormick Finds His Next Big Idea

TL;DR: Today we’re releasing a new episode of our podcast AI & I. I go in depth with Packy McCormick, writer of Not Boring, a newsletter about technology and startups, and founder of Not Boring Capital, an early-stage fund that backs ambitious startups. Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Packy McCormick’s job is to find, articulate, and invest in the next big idea. I spent an hour with him to understand how he’s baked AI into his process. 

Packy writes Not Boring, a newsletter that analyzes technology and startups for 200,000 subscribers every week. He also invests through his fund, Not Boring Capital, which backs early-stage companies that combine sci-fi ideas with viable business models. And he’s an advisor at a16z crypto.

We talked about why Packy thinks vertically integrated businesses are the future of technology, how he uses Claude’s Projects feature to edit his newsletter, and the process behind making interactive graphics to illustrate complex concepts from his essays. We also discussed the tools he uses to research, write, and edit essays—plus, we got his hot takes on the crypto market. To cap it off, we used Projects to build a custom AI tool that grades and reviews Packy’s essays live on the show. Here’s a link to the transcript of this episode.

This is a must-watch for writers, investors, and anyone trying to understand the cutting edge of technology.

Watch on X or YouTube. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. 

If you want a quick summary, here's a taste for paying subscribers:

Packy’s thesis about the future of technology

When Packy started writing on the internet, one of the first pieces he published was about natively integrated companies, which he defines as businesses that use tech to integrate customer-facing parts of their operations, focus on building customer relationships, and invest in creating products that customers truly want. He thinks the next big idea he’s mulling over comes “full circle” with this concept. Here’s what it is and why he thinks it’s having a moment now:

• Focus on companies that have an impact. Packy is drawn to “Techno-industrials” or businesses that use emerging technology to create products that customers want at lower costs than existing companies. He enjoys “writing about complex things that if they work, turn into really good business models and businesses that make an impact” and now “orients” his writing and investment efforts around these kinds of companies.
• Pay attention to viable trends. Diving deeper into what makes a techno-industrial, Packy explains that he means using new technologies that are commercially viable to reduce costs for products with established demand. He cites defense-tech company Anduril as an example of the trend of “infusing software and hardware” to deliver a “better product” at “better prices and cheaper margins.” 
• Learn how to spot the right opportunities. Packy’s “why now” for techno-industrials stems from his belief that there’s “sclerosis among the incumbents,” and a “fundable” opportunity for new companies to “innovate” and “get to the next level of something that used to be more expensive that now you can make economical.”

How Packy uses AI to write, research, and edit

Here are the ways Packy suggests using LLMs while writing essays that express complex topics:

• Optimize research workflows with AI. Packy has recently started using Claude Projects, uploading his research notes to the model, and querying it to surface information like interesting data points and quotes from interviews. “Giving it that context and then asking it to analyze the work given that context, I think has been really valuable,” he says.
• Generate personalized explanations. While learning a new concept, Packy prompts AI models to explain the idea to him using the writing style of Not Boring. Reflecting on a technical document he was reading recently, he notes, “Describing the thing that I’m reading back to me in my own voice, in the way that I would write about it… it does make it sink in more than just looking at a regular white paper would.”
• Don’t reinvent the wheel. When developing a new argument, Packy tests it by using large language models to research existing information in the field. “There's been plenty of times where I'll be like, ‘Oh my god, I have this novel idea,’ and [the model will] be like, ‘Philosophers have been talking about this for 17,000 years,’” he explains, adding that this saves him “a lot of time and embarrassment.” 
• Validate your understanding with AI. Packy uses AI to fact-check himself when he’s writing essays about complex topics that he isn’t familiar with. He does this by asking LLMs questions such as, “Explain what I'm getting wrong here,” “Is there a simpler way to say what I'm trying to say here?” and “Do I understand this right?”
• Use AI to find new ways to express your ideas. While writing, Packy experiments with ChatGPT and Claude to generate interactive demos and graphs that illustrate concepts in his essay. Although he acknowledges that these visual assets might not “hold up to peer review,” he believes that AI has opened up an engaging, new way to connect with his audience.
• Converse with AI to refine your thought process. After completing a draft, Packy employs Claude 3.5 Sonnet as an editor to explore counterarguments to his perspective. He considers it a “valuable exercise” to engage with the model as he’s writing because it can “poke a hole” in his reasoning, compelling him to think more deeply about his point of view.

The tools that help Packy create Not Boring

Packy says that LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude are “the first new addition[s]” to his “creative toolbox” in a long while. Here are the other tools he uses:

• The internet, which he could “access through a dark browser”
• Notion “to kind of dump everything” as he researches a topic
• Readwise “to save articles and highlight things that [he] then feeds into Notion”
• Google Docs “to write” the essays
• Figma “to make graphics” that accompany his writing
• Substack “to send” the newsletter

Packy’s quick takes on your crypto portfolio

I picked Packy’s brain on my crypto investments. Packy told me that he hasn’t sold his crypto holdings, and even bought more in the bear market. This is not financial advice, just his thoughts on the market:

• The next bull market. “I was certainly excited when I got to see the prices of the things in my portfolio going up in that last mini little bull, but I think so much of that was exogenously driven…I think a lot of people smarter than me have said 2025 is when it happens.”
• Useful applications of crypto. “One of our portfolio companies makes it easy to build 3-D worlds in a web browser…and they have crypto payments baked into the site so you can turn on stable coin payments, you can turn on NFT minting, a bunch of easy stuff—so I think hopefully we see a bunch of things where crypto is infused, but it's not the whole product.”
• How he predicts crypto will evolve. “Crypto gives you these things that you can't otherwise do…you've had to make some real performance trade-offs in order to use those things…but over time, the performance trade-offs drop and the capabilities you have either remain or get stronger and so at some point you almost get a free option on all of those other things that crypto enables.”
• Whether crypto solves AI’s copycat problem. “The thing that I'm still trying to figure out is…if no one is signing their transactions cryptographically, then there's no expectation that other people will…I just think there's a lot of stitching work that needs to happen in the middle to get to a point where it's the default that if you're sending something as yourself, you're signing that thing.”

You can check out the episode on X, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. Links and timestamps are below:

• Watch on X
• Watch on YouTube
• Listen on Spotify (make sure to follow to help us rank!)
• Listen on Apple Podcasts

Timestamps:

1. Introduction: 00:01:24
2. Packy’s thesis about the future of technology: 00:02:40
3. What Packy quick takes on your crypto portfolio: 00:07:42
4. Use LLMs to validate your understanding of complex concepts: 00:14:31
5. How Packy used Claude Projects to write an essay he published recently: 00:18:26 
6. Packy’s process to make interactive visual graphics for his essays: 00:24:00
7. How to use AI to be thorough in your research: 00:31:10
8. How Packy uses Claude to edit his writing: 00:35:04
9. The tools Packy uses to create his newsletter: 00:36:44
10. Using Claude Projects to make a tool that grades Packy’s essays: 00:44:12

What do you use AI for? Have you found any interesting or surprising use cases? We want to hear from you—and we might even interview you. Reply here to talk to me!

Miss an episode? Catch up on my recent conversations with LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, a16z Podcast host Steph Smith, economist Tyler Cowen, writer and entrepreneur David Perell, founder and newsletter operator Ben Tossell, and others, and learn how they use AI to think, create, and relate.

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Dan Shipper is the cofounder and CEO of Every, where he writes the Chain of Thought column and hosts the podcast AI & I. You can follow him on X at @danshipper and on LinkedIn, and Every on X at @every and on LinkedIn.