Buying a Building with ChatGPT - Ep. 1 with Sahil Lavingia

About the show

I believe that ChatGPT is the most important creative tool of the decade. I think it can help us write better, create art, efficiently ship products, build great businesses, make smart decisions, and even learn something about ourselves,.

But it’s still so early. Most of us don’t even really know how to use ChatGPT. We have a feeling that it’s powerful, interesting, and important—but we haven’t figured out how to incorporate it into our lives.

There are a few people, though, who are living in the future. They have the time and curiousity to use ChatGPT in their everyday lives, taking the opportunity to make the technology work for them. In this way, they light the way for everyone else. 

That’s what this interview series, How I Use ChatGPT, is all about. We go in-depth with the most interesting people in the world to learn concrete ways they are already using ChatGPT. It won’t be theoretical—or limited to audio: we’ll screen-share and see their actual prompts and responses, so you can see how ChatGPT helps them perform better at work and improve their lives—one conversation at a time. 

About this episode

My first guest is Sahil Lavingia, the co-founder and CEO of Gumroad, one of the largest platforms for creators to sell their work online. He shared how he uses ChatGPT for:

Buying a building. He wants to buy a New York City hangout for Gumroad employees and customers, so he asked ChatGPT to research the history of real estate in NYC, suggest which neighborhoods might be best to target, generate questions for brokers, and even detail what the design of a particular property might look like.

Writing tweets. Sahil is a prolific Twitter/X user. He often uses ChatGPT to help him flesh out an idea. He says, “I [start] with a tweet, which is like a thesis, and then I just say, ‘Add three to four paragraphs to make the point compelling—also suggest more examples.’” We explore his precise process for using ChatGPT to help him brainstorm short tweets and longer essays in this episode.

Pressure-testing ideas. For Sahil, ChatGPT is like upgrading his peripheral vision. It lets him see around the corners, ask better questions of himself and other people, and avoid poor decisions. He told me, “I think a lot of people sort of delude themselves into thinking they have [good ideas]… I think that one of the most useful things about [ChatGPT] is it focuses your research on what actually matters.” It’s the ultimate tool to help him think better.

Also in this episode: how ChatGPT could have helped Sahil save $70 million, how he thinks it will improve the most-talented creatives, and why he thinks—in the age of AI—people have no excuse for not knowing the answer to something anymore.

Timestamps:

1. Intro 0:33
2. There’s no more excuse for not knowing anymore 2:00
3. He doesn’t spend as much time on bad ideas 2:50
4. How ChatGPT will make the top 1% of creative output better 6:15
5. How it turbocharges research 8:20
6. How he’s using ChatGPT to buy a building 11:00
7. How he uses ChatGPT to pressure-test ideas 17:43
8. How he uses DALL-E to help with interior design 20:50
9. How ChatGPT could have saved him $70 million 26:00
10. How he uses ChatGPT in his decision-making 29:50
11. How he uses ChatGPT for writing 38:00
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