🤝 Our AI-driven family business
Dear curious mind,
This issue takes a slightly personal turn as I share an exciting new chapter in my life - the launch of a small business venture with my wife. What makes this particularly relevant to this newsletter is that we have integrated AI at the core of the creative process.
In this issue:
💡 Shared Insight
Turning Passion into Business: Our Journey with Personalized Mugs
📰 AI Update
Mistral Small 3.1 Pushes Local AI Capabilities
Claude Finally Gets Internet Access
💡 Shared Insight
Turning Passion into Business: Our Journey with Personalized Mugs
I'm excited to share some personal news with you today! My wife and I have embarked on a new entrepreneurial adventure together by founding our own small business in Germany in the legal form of a UG (Unternehmergesellschaft haftungsbeschränkt), which is essentially a mini-GmbH or limited liability company.
Where Two Passions Meet
While my primary interest in AI has been focused on text models, I've also been experimenting with image models. This led to a fun project where I transformed my son's favorite stuffed animal into a charming cartoon character. Meanwhile, my wife has been exploring sublimation printing, particularly creating custom-designed mugs.
These two interests have now merged into something beautiful—a business under the name Druchs (which is short for "Druckfuchs" which is German for Printfox) where we offer personalized printed objects that bring joy to everyday moments!
Our Initial Offering
We start with printed mugs, which have premium Orca coating for brilliant colors and lasting quality. They are dishwasher-safe and designed for daily use, ensuring your special design remains vibrant for years to come.
Stuffed Animal Art Mugs We don't just print photos on mugs — we transform your child's beloved stuffed animal from photos into a cartoon character! Each creation becomes a unique piece.
Personalized Design Mugs Unlike typical online services where you simply upload an image or add text yourself, we take your written ideas and create custom designs for you. Whether it's your favorite animal, a hobby, an inspirational quote, or a special photo — we'll create multiple design options for you to choose from, turning your vision into a reality.
Small Beginnings
We're starting small with just two mug options, though we plan to expand our offerings in the future. This venture isn't about getting rich — it's about combining our passions, testing the waters of entrepreneurship, and creating something that brings happiness to others.
After navigating with LLM support the process of establishing our business, we're now officially ready to take orders within Germany.
Each mug we create is individually designed with attention to detail. We transform ideas into unique gifts that bring joy day after day, sip after sip.
I will likely share more details about our journey in future issues. Meanwhile, if you are interested in a truly special gift for someone (or yourself!), we would be honored if you check out our offering at druchs.de.
📰 AI Update
Mistral Small 3.1 Pushes Local AI Capabilities [Mistral blog]
My excitement continues! Just after the impressive release of Google's Gemma 3 last week, we now have another powerful model of similar size that can run locally on a high-end desktop GPU or a Mac with M-chip. According to benchmarks, the model performs even a bit better. This is particularly cool as Mistral AI is the only European company releasing foundation models. Their new 24 billion parameter model also delivers state-of-the-art vision understanding and extends context handling up to 128k tokens.
Claude Finally Gets Internet Access [Anthropic blog]
Excited to see that the ChatGPT competitor Claude gets finally native web access! Currently limited to paid US users, but I'm sure the rest of us will get this feature soon. Meanwhile, you might use MCP (if you need to catch up, take a look at this earlier issue) to cover the gap.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is written with the aid of AI. I use AI as an assistant to generate and optimize the text. However, the amount of AI used varies depending on the topic and the content. I always curate and edit the text myself to ensure quality and accuracy. The opinions and views expressed in this newsletter are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the sources or the AI models.