An investor, entrepreneur, and author of The 2-Hour Cocktail Party. I started and sold two successful companies: Flight Display Systems and Museum Hack. Join 20,000 CEOs, investors, and founders and receive business tips, productivity tools, and other resources from me.
Friends News: Travel tips, Austin, VAs
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Hello Reader, from your friend Nick, author of The 2-Hour Cocktail Party and Founder of Museum Hack. In this issue: 50 years worth of travel tips, my favorite things in Austin, why I'm making free websites for my friends (and how you can get one), where to get cheap Broadway tickets in NYC, the best robotic lawn mower, the deathbed fallacy, and more. NICK GRAY FRIENDS NEWSLETTER Why you’re getting this: I'm Nick Gray (about me) and this is my Friends Newsletter. I send this every month to interesting people I’ve connected with and friends I want to keep in touch with. You can un-subscríbe any time and I won't be mad. I won't even be notified! Random LinksHere are a few things I've been reading lately online: 🛏️ The Deathbed Fallacy by hjorthjort (2018) People on their deathbeds regret not spending more time of their life with their family, traveling more, worrying less, etc. The fallacy is to assume that whoever you are on your deathbed knows how you should live your life right now. 🏡 Husqvarna Residential Robotic Lawn Mower This is a $6k robot lawn mower (!!!) that I saw someone share online. Dude said "Got a robot mower. I was skeptical, but it's amazing. Husqvarna 450XH EPOS. Mowing 1.5 acres of quite complex lawn. Unexpected benefit is the lawn looks perfect 100% of the time. Still have to trim some, but minor. Cost is only one year of what I was paying a service. Recommend." 💼 Scale Army: Hire a Virtual Assistant I recently interviewed a bunch of virtual assistant staffing agencies to hire someone new for my team. Scale Army was my favorite. I hired someone with their help. I've been meaning to write a longer post about this, like how I use VAs with all the AI tools. But if you need to hire a full-time VA to join your team, I'd recommend a chat to Scale Army. 📝 Granola: the AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings Very good app. Nat Friedman says this is “One of a very small set of AI products I use multiple times every day.” I get annoyed by the random "Meeting Bots" in Meet and Zooms but this one is invisible and works great. 🎁 104 Gift Ideas From Amy Sedaris OK I know that the holidays but I'm always looking for fun gift ideas. Plus I love Amy Sedaris. This list has a bunch of quirky, interesting stuff. Remind me to tell you my Amy Sedaris story sometime from my NYC lore. I tried to invite her to a house party and enlisted half of the city to help me. ✈️ The Technium: 50 Years of Travel Tips from Kevin Kelly Kevin is a world-class traveler. I was lucky to go on a trip to Bali with him last year. This post is filled with great advice. I learned some new tricks, too, like the taxi mother hack. I got to hang out with the guy who made the game Exploding Kittens recently. He’s awesome. It made me think a bit more about games. Here’s one by Jane Street, a global equities trading firm, that they use to hire candidates and teach new traders about negotiation. 👟 The Swiss Sneaker Brand Outrunning Nike and Adidas I don’t know a lot about running shoes, but I have seen On shoes a lot. I enjoyed this profile of the company in Bloomberg. Backup link with no login required. 🔭 Seestar S30 Smart Telescope I heard that this $399 telescope is amazing. Someone on a newsletter got their pre-order and loves it; adding to my list to check out some day. ☕️ How to Build Community in a Small Town I wrote a profile of how Ying transformed her social circle by hosting "Coffee and Conversations"—a monthly meetup that brings locals together for meaningful interaction using the concepts from my book. I will make you a free personal websiteWhat do people find when they search for your name online? I'm working on a new project. I will make you a free personal website on your own domain name, plus give you free web hosting for a few months. In return you give me feedback on the process. Here's why you might need this: I can help you show up better on the Internet when people are searching for you. I'll write some short articles for your site. Plus I'll re-post some of your best social content. All in your own words with no AI slop. You'll have full access to the site to edit anything you want. In return you would give me feedback on the process and how I can make it better. I've made 60 sites for friends so far like these:
Poke around on the sites. I made them all with my team. We've written hundreds of articles for people's websites now, and it seems to be working well. Their sites each get a few dozen organic human visitors every month and also thousands of bots that are scraping the content for LLMs and search engines. My friends look better online with a site like this that shows up when people research them. Parents, teachers, employers, employees, business partners, etc. If you want a free site for yourself, reply back and I'll see if you're a good fit. My Favorite Things to Do in Austin (2025)I’ll tell you the best things to do in Austin, Texas. You can use this as a guide for visiting the city. If you live in Austin, maybe you’ll get some new ideas. My list includes specific tips and tricks for:
How to Get Cheap Tickets for Broadway ShowsNot a sponsored post; just advice from a local. New York City is the best in the world at theater, especially musical theater. But some Broadway shows are awful. And many are expensive. In this article, I’ll tell you how to get cheap tickets. I’ll also tell you my favorite shows to see.
Reader Links: Classifieds & Fun StuffHere’s a list of links submitted by readers. Have a link you want to share? Just reply to this message now and tell me why you love the thing. Lathan Turner– Building The Plane: I've been working on my home education project for a few months now. I'm homeschooling my son, and building an airplane as part of it with him. You can read more about it here, in the first post on Substack. Mark Busacca – Art on Instagram: The Newest and Rarest Discoveries: Woven, Researched, and Recorded into a Fascinating Story. @markbusaccaartcollections on Instagram Jakob Flingelli – ‘From Europe with Love’: Every weekend I send out 5 beautiful, quirky, under-the-radar products and brands from across Europe. Think slow mornings, chic design, and a sprinkle of “where has this been all my life?” vibes. Liam – Why Life is Easier as an Outcast: After years of making shitty YouTube videos, I finally made one that took off! I hate to plug my own work, but this is the first time I’ve been noticed by a lot of people (250k!) and I’m really really really proud of it. Here’s the link. Roger Ma – Jury Duty: It's been a while since it was released, but the show Jury Duty is absolutely hilarious. Watch it on Amazon Prime here. My Product and Gift GuidesI'm due to release some new product guides- like all the stuff I bought for my new house- but here are my most popular ones that my friends and I wrote. Most of the recs still stand up.
The EndThat's all for now. Sometimes I want to send this newsletter more often, but I never know what the threshold is. My email software has polls, so see if this works -- click to vote on how often I should send cool stuff out. Maybe I should send shorter newsletters more often. I dunno.
I'm speaking at Draper University in SF next Wednesday, then down to Santa Cruz, Carmel, and Big Sur for a little vacation. Have a great weekend. 🤠 Nick Gray p.s. Here's the About Me on my website if you forgot who I am. We met [HOWWEMET GOES HERE]. Add me elsewhere@NickGrayNews on all the social media The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings |
Friends Newsletter
An investor, entrepreneur, and author of The 2-Hour Cocktail Party. I started and sold two successful companies: Flight Display Systems and Museum Hack. Join 20,000 CEOs, investors, and founders and receive business tips, productivity tools, and other resources from me.