Before You Network, Build the Magnet

Most founders confuse motion with momentum. Fancy booths and endless handshakes won’t get you traction—real value will. This week’s AI Simplified is a reminder: your product is the signal, everything else is noise until it resonates.

Inside, we break down why conferences can’t fix a weak value prop and how building something undeniably useful attracts the right people organically. You’ll get the latest on OpenAI’s game-changing Connectors and Google’s new Gemini 2.5 Pro, both reshaping how AI fits into real business workflows. We also unpack the legal clash between Reddit and Anthropic

If you’re chasing traction, start with product. Then let the pull begin.

In Today’s AI Simplified: 

• Founder’s Insight: Conferences don’t create traction—products do. Early founders often chase exposure before proving value. Solve a real problem, win real users, and let results draw the right people in.
• AI News: ChatGPT now supports Connectors, integrating with Google Drive, GitHub, Outlook & more—turning it into a powerful knowledge assistant. Google just dropped Gemini 2.5 Pro, boasting better math, reasoning, and coding—its biggest business-ready move yet. Plus, NotebookLM now allows public sharing, making AI-powered collaboration smoother than ever.
• AI Spotlights: Reddit is suing Anthropic claiming Claude was trained on scraped content. If successful, it could reshape how public data is used in AI. Mootion is an AI platform that turns text, audio, or video into animations.

Most first-time founders treat conferences like cheat codes for traction. They’re not. Until you’ve built something undeniably valuable, networking is just busy-work in a nicer venue.

The Higher-Leverage Playbook

1. Build the Magnet

Obsess over a problem you feel viscerally.

Ship a V1 that delivers a step-change, not a rounding-error.

Win a dozen users who’d be angry if you shut it down tomorrow.

Inbound Beats Outbound

2. Once real value exists, gravity takes over:

Top talent starts DM’ing, “Are you hiring?”

Investors ask for intros instead of the other way around.

Partners and advisors show up pre-sold on your mission.

3. Network After Product-Market Fit

Spend 90 % of early hours in build-measure-learn.

Use the other 10 % to selectively share wins and lessons.

When the magnet is strong, a single event can unlock 10× surface area.

Great products compound; handshakes don’t. Nail value creation first, and the best network will find you—eager to amplify what you’ve already proven.

1. ChatGPT Connectors: AI That Actually Knows Your Workspace

OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Connectors, a major upgrade that links your AI assistant directly to your favorite tools—think Google Drive, GitHub, Dropbox, SharePoint, Outlook, and more. This transforms ChatGPT from a smart chatbot into your organization’s knowledge brain, capable of searching, referencing, and synthesizing internal data on command.

Now in beta, Connectors are available across Pro, Team, Enterprise, and Edu plans, with advanced capabilities like synced knowledge bases and custom integrations via MCP (Model Context Protocol) for enterprise environments.

Key Highlights:

• Smarter Search: Ask ChatGPT to find and summarize documents, emails, or events across connected platforms—no more digging manually.
• Deep Research Mode: Run advanced queries across multiple sources and receive fully cited, cross-platform answers.
• Custom Connectors: Enterprises can build their own secure integrations to internal apps or databases using MCP.
• Context-Aware Memory: With memory enabled, ChatGPT can tailor queries and responses using what it knows about your workspace or projects.

📽️ For a full demo and walkthrough, watch this video.

2. Gemini 2.5 Pro: Smarter, faster, and ready for business

Google just dropped an upgraded preview of Gemini 2.5 Pro — their sharpest AI model yet — and it’s about to go full throttle for enterprise use in a few weeks.

What’s in it for you? This isn’t just geek talk: Gemini 2.5 Pro is crushing coding challenges, acing tough tests in math, science, and reasoning — basically, it’s the AI version of a brainiac that never sleeps. It’s smarter, more creative, and now serves up clearer, better-structured answers.

For small businesses and startups, this means powerful AI tools you can trust to handle complex tasks — from coding custom solutions to tackling tricky data problems — without breaking the bank or slowing you down. Plus, Google’s added “thinking budgets” to the API, so you control how much time and money your AI spends on each task. More efficiency, less surprise bills.

Developers can already get their hands on the preview through Google AI Studio and Vertex AI, with the update also rolling out in the Gemini app. If you want AI that works as hard as you do, keep an eye on this one.

3. Google’s NotebookLM goes public — and podcasts too

Google’s AI note-taking app, NotebookLM, just leveled up. Now you can share your notebooks publicly via a simple link—think Google Docs, but way smarter. Viewers can’t mess with your notes, but they can ask questions, listen to AI-generated podcast-style audio overviews, and dive into FAQs crafted by the AI.

Launched experimentally in 2023, NotebookLM quickly became Google’s sleeper hit for learning and collaboration. It ingests everything from documents to YouTube videos, then churns out summaries and interactive chats. Mobile app dropped last month, making on-the-go brain dumps even easier.

Sharing is a breeze: hit the Share button, switch access to “Anyone with the link,” and boom—your notebook’s out there for the world (or your class, team, or followers) to explore. Want to share editing rights? You can do that too, by inviting people via email.

Tool of the week

Mootion is an AI-powered platform that simplifies video creation for individuals and teams. It allows users to turn ideas into animated videos using a straightforward 4-step workflow. No prior editing experience is needed—Mootion manages everything from syncing to effects. The platform accepts various input types, including text, scripts, audio, and video. Animation styles range from photorealistic to 3D cartoon, with built-in effects, transitions, and AI-generated music to enhance the storytelling process.

Key Features:

• Streamlined video creation with a guided 4-step process
• Flexible input formats: text, script, video, audio
• AI-generated music and transitions
• Support for 10+ languages
• Multiple animation styles, including photorealistic and 3D

Social Buzz

Reddit Sues Anthropic, Demands Claude Be Taken Offline

Reddit has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing it of illegally scraping Reddit content to train its Claude AI without permission or payment. The platform says Anthropic violated its user agreement and continued scraping even after claiming it had stopped in July 2024.

Reddit also highlights privacy concerns, alleging that deleted posts remain in Claude’s training data—unlike with OpenAI or Google, which have licensing deals that honor content removal.

Reddit isn’t just asking for damages—it wants Claude pulled from the market and a ban on any products built using its data. The case could set a major precedent on whether publicly accessible online content is truly fair game for AI training.

AI Event Pick

AI + SEO Webinar: How to Win in the Age of Agentic AI & GEO

📅 Date: June 18

One-hour online masterclass to dive into Agentic AI, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and the future of SEO in 2025.

Discover how AI Overviews are changing search results, why optimizing for AI-generated answers is crucial, and how Micro SEO strategies can boost your rankings across both traditional search engines and new AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

This session is perfect for marketers, SEO professionals, and business owners ready to adapt to rising zero-click searches and the shift from search engines to answer engines. Register here.