Filmmaking, AI tools, and Business Ideation

Author

Justin Cheung
December 10, 2024

Happy Friday!

I’ve just returned to Hong Kong, and I’m so happy to be home.

It’s going to be a crazy 2 weeks because I’m shooting a short film. It’s the first time in 5 years that I’m working on a film.

Like the best projects, this film has pulled me in with full force. Do I feel fear? Yes. It’s been a long time. I’m rusty, maybe.

But a huge lesson I learned from my entrepreneurial experiments is working with great people is one of the keys to making something great.

The best part of this film working with a combination of great people, who happen to be some of my best friends.

Taking Advice vs Intuition

It’s a challenging journey to write this script, with 15+ rewrites, and lots of feedback from a lot of people I respect.

My father particularly, is someone I deeply admire as a storyteller. The guy has 50+ films under his belt. He gave me a lot of great, harsh feedback. But what do you do when you don’t agree with someone you respect?

This is one of the greatest challenges in life - balancing advice, with your own intuition.

At the end of the day, I believe that if you don’t make something you love, there is no point. When you try to satisfy everyone, your work becomes watered down (exceptions are probably the Mission Impossible series, I love that stuff so much).

But balancing an openness to feedback, with your own stubborn vision is really damn hard. Everyone would be making great stuff if it was easy.

My business validation framework

While I look for my next idea (ICYMI, I’m winding down Imeldá, will explain another time), I’ve been trying to get more scientific with how I choose, and validate my next idea.

I created this framework (it’s a bit of overkill), but I think anyone who is trying to find their next idea might find this helpful

Btw, that’s the doc I’m literally using right now. If you like an idea, please steal it, or ask me about it. Ideas are cheap and I’m happy to share my thoughts.

BONUS READ: The Art of Ideation. Wonderfully written by the founder of Udemy.

Fun Things I’ve Found

I’ve been learning a lot about AI tools, and vertical agents the last few weeks.

The hottest tools right now are definitely. I anticipate a ton of non-technical folks being more open to buildling tech products, because the barrier to entry has become lower.

You still need some foundational developer skills to set up a dev environment, but the winning formula right now is definitely:

Also, some other fun, neat tools:

I also went to an AI demo day in San Francisco, and the buzz was electric. The AI boom is finally making SF feel like a city again lol. I’ve gone to some of these in the past and feel extremely out of place. But once in a while, I force myself to, just to learn, and meet some interesting people.

Also, check this “vault” out of info by one of my favorite business podcasts, My First Million. It’s filled with ideas, and frameworks. https://frontend-production-f8b7.up.railway.app/framework

I hope you have a great December!

Life is beautiful,

Justin