Build Epic Startups: NotebookLM + Gemini 2.5 Workflow

Summary

In the latest Blazing Zebra video, viewers learn how to utilize Notebook LM and Gemini 2.5 to effectively conduct the work of an entire startup team. This video illustrates using Google's extensive tool updates to research, build, and market ideas quickly. By exploring pain points, industry trends, and competitors, and leveraging tools like Firebase, this guide highlights creating a minimum viable product (MVP), and ultimately advancing to a full-scale app. From market research to app deployment and marketing strategies, the workflow demonstrates a full-cycle approach to launching a successful startup using AI capabilities.

Highlights

• Understand how Notebook LM and Gemini 2.5 can handle the workload of a startup team. 📚
• Discover the power of Google's updated AI tools for building apps from scratch. 🤖
• Learn how to research consumer pain points and market trends effectively. 🔍
• Get insights on utilizing Firebase for app development and deployment. 💻
• Gain strategies for creating a powerful content marketing plan for your startup. 📈

Key Takeaways

• Anyone can leverage Google's Notebook LM and Gemini 2.5 to mimic the work of an entire startup team. 💡
• Understanding consumer pain points is crucial to the success of your app. 🔍
• Using trends and competitor analysis, you can strategically position your product. 📊
• A step-by-step guide is provided to help build and market your startup efficiently. 🚀
• With AI, transitioning from an app prototype to a full-fledged product is seamless. ⚙️

Overview

In this exciting journey with Blazing Zebra, entrepreneurs are introduced to new age tools like Notebook LM and Gemini 2.5 that enable them to do the work of entire startup teams by themselves. Emphasizing the importance of understanding consumer pain points, the video tutorial shows step-by-step methods to research and collect data, ultimately resulting in a robust application design using AI. Extensive use of these tools can lead to a groundbreaking development process.

By utilizing the 'discover sources' feature in Notebook LM, the video guides you in gathering valuable insights from customers, discerning industry trends, and assessing competitors. With a strong focus on developing minimum viable products (MVP), this guide ensures you have a structured approach to app creation and iteration.

Finally, the power of AI is demonstrated in marketing strategy execution. The video discusses crafting engaging content, infographics, and interactive visuals that align with your startup branding. Promoting your product effectively on platforms like Replet reinforces the impact of a thorough AI-driven strategy in accelerating startup success.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The chapter 'Introduction' discusses the transformative potential of using Notebook LM alongside Gemini 2.5, emphasizing that these tools empower individuals to perform the work of an entire startup team. The author intends to demonstrate the utilization of Google's significant updates to these tools for researching, building, and promoting ideas effectively. Having experimented extensively with Gemini's enhanced coding capabilities and vast context window, the author presents a detailed, step-by-step process designed to expedite bringing ideas to market. The narrative draws on the author's experience while running a marketing agency, underscoring the practical applications of these tools in real-world scenarios.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Overview of Using Notebook LM and Gemini 2.5 In this chapter, the author discusses the powerful combination of using Notebook LM and Gemini 2.5 together. Having worked with a range of software companies, from unicorn startups to the largest SAS company globally, they express surprise at how these tools can match or surpass top-tier teams' output. The chapter also mentions a bet among tech leaders, including Sam Alman, on who will create the first single-person $1 billion company, suggesting that this reality might be nearer than many expect.
• 01:00 - 03:30: Research with Notebook LM's Discover Feature In this chapter, the focus is on utilizing Notebook LM's new discover feature to gain insights into various aspects of a business. The chapter starts by exploring the pain points faced by specific customers using the discover feature. It then progresses to analyzing trends within the specific industry of the user's interest. Furthermore, an examination of the competitors in the same space is conducted. All gathered information is then used for a comprehensive analysis. Following this analysis, the data is passed to Gemini 2.5 to develop software, create a marketing website, and generate marketing content based on the insights gained from the analysis.
• 03:30 - 06:00: Analyzing User Pain Points and Industry Trends The chapter focuses on using Firebase to transition from a minimum viable product (MVP) or prototype, developed with Gemini, to a full-featured web application ready for the market. It emphasizes the importance of starting the process with a fresh notebook using Notebook LM, highlighting the excitement and utility of leveraging this tool for development.
• 06:00 - 13:00: Creating the Software Prototype with Gemini 2.5 The chapter revolves around the utilization of the 'discover sources' feature in the Gemini 2.5 software. This feature is highlighted as a game-changer, significantly enhancing the way sources are fetched, as it eliminates the previously necessary step of sourcing through Perplexity and transferring them to Notebook LM. The chapter emphasizes the power and importance of effectively prompting the search feature to maximize its potential. Additionally, the author describes the habitual creation of cheat sheets for every video, signifying the importance of structured preparation and research.
• 13:00 - 16:00: Publishing and Hosting the App with Replit and Firebase The chapter emphasizes the importance of addressing user pain points to ensure the success of a software idea, rather than just pursuing ideas thought to be great by founders without valid backing data. It suggests exploring the Notebook LM's 'discover' feature for researching prompts related to these user needs.
• 16:00 - 20:30: Designing a Homepage and Marketing Website This chapter focuses on capturing the genuine voice of the customer rather than interpretations of others' opinions. The specific project discussed is a healthcare app, driven by personal experiences with managing and understanding blood lab work across different platforms. The aim is to centralize and simplify access to this information.
• 20:30 - 25:30: Developing a Content Strategy This chapter focuses on the development of a content strategy for a software product that compiles blood work data in one place. The discussion includes integrating AI capabilities to interpret test results, provide understanding, and suggest potential next steps. The chapter also suggests finding user pain points through platforms like Reddit, Quora, and niche forums as part of the strategy.
• 25:30 - 30:00: Conclusion and Additional Resources The chapter discusses the importance of understanding, accessing, and sharing blood work labs and similar healthcare data. It emphasizes the significance of effectively prompting and organizing the information to maximize its utility. The transcript illustrates a process of importing data from various sources and appropriately labeling them, highlighting a focus on user customization and data management.

Build Epic Startups: NotebookLM + Gemini 2.5 Workflow Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 do you realize that anybody who knows how to use Notebook LM along with Gemini 2.5 can now do the work of an entire startup team today I want to show you how to use Google's massive updates to these free tools in order to research build and promote your ideas I've spent many hours experimenting with Gemini's new superior coding capabilities and 1 million token context window to come up with this step-by-step process for getting your ideas into the world as fast as possible You see while I was running my marketing agency we worked
• 00:30 - 01:00 exclusively with software companies from unicorn startups all the way to the largest SAS company in the world And I've been shocked at how well you can combine these two tools to rival or even exceed the work of some of these top tier teams Did you know that Sam Alman and his cronies are betting on who's going to create the first single person $1 billion company after watching this I think you'll agree that that moment is a lot closer than most people think So here's the gist of what we're going to
• 01:00 - 01:30 get into today We're going to use Notebook LM especially its new discover feature to look into the pain points of your particular customer Then we're going to use it to look into trends in your specific industry Then we're going to use it to look into competitors in your space We're going to take all that information and do a smart analysis on it Then we're going to pass it to Gemini 2.5 to actually build out the software to build out the marketing website and to build out the marketing content And
• 01:30 - 02:00 we're also going to look into Firebase as a way that you can really move from an MVP or a prototype that Gemini builds directly into a full-fledged web app that you can sell to you know a bunch of people So it all starts here with our trusty friend Notebook LM We're going to fire up a fresh new notebook I always get excited when uh I fire up a fresh new notebook And I get even more excited now that this feature is here This
• 02:00 - 02:30 discover sources feature is truly a gamecher I know that word gets thrown around quite a lot but many of my videos relied on going to Perplexity to find sources and then dumping those into Notebook LM You no longer have to do that This is a very very powerful search feature here And you got to know how to prompt it though because like anything the prompt matters And for that prompt I'm jumping right into the cheat sheet I make a cheat sheet for every single video that I create These are all
• 02:30 - 03:00 immediately accessible to anybody who joins my Patreon Um so yeah check that out There's a link in the description Starting with the user's painoint is one way to ensure that your idea is successful I've seen a lot of software projects go off the rails when it's just something that a founder thought was a great idea but didn't have any valid data to back it up So we're going to grab this prompt and we're going to dump this right into the discover feature of Notebook LM asking it to go out and look
• 03:00 - 03:30 at where these people are actually voicing their opinions We're not looking for editorials of what some person thinks about what some other person thinks about We're looking for the voice of the customer here And the project I'm working on today is a uh healthc care app that I've been uh thinking about I've recently struggled with some health issues and I've had a lot of trouble understanding my blood lab work sharing that blood lab work out I've gotten it in it exists in multiple places You know
• 03:30 - 04:00 there's a a portal here and a portal there I want to build a software product that compiles all of the data for my blood work in one place I think there's a lot of people that could benefit from this especially if you tack on some AI capabilities of interpreting that and and letting you know you know what these tests mean and potentially uh you know next steps there So I'm just saying find sources on sites such as Reddit Kora and niche forums to find user pain points
• 04:00 - 04:30 regarding understanding accessing and sharing blood work labs and similar healthcare data Let's just submit that And the better you prompt this the more you can just select all of what is in here Cool Some of these are really awesome I'm going to leave that first one out I don't know that that's exactly what we need but we're going to import all of those different sources Now that all those are in there I want to label these So I'm going to rename the source And for all of these I'm just going to put user in all caps Copy and paste that
• 04:30 - 05:00 Save This will allow us to easily find our user data from our industry data from our competitor data All right So there is all of our user painpoint data We're going to go back to this discover and back into the cheat sheet here And I'm going to say gather studies from leading consulting firms and other credible sources on you know exactly what you're looking to do In this case it's consumer healthcare apps looking for trends It exclude anything that was
• 05:00 - 05:30 published before 2024 So we're just going to drop this in to find credible resources on industry trends Going to import those And these ones I'm going to rename just put this label all caps trends in front of them so we can easily see at a glance our trends from our user info Trust me this is going to come in helpful later on when we have a bunch of sources in there Cool So we've got all of our trends We got all of our user
• 05:30 - 06:00 This one didn't come through so we just remove that No big deal And now finally we want to look for some competitors And importantly we don't want to find uh reviews of these competitors We're really just looking for their homepages because that's what we really want most from them So I'm grabbing this prompt here dropping that right into this discover Again looking for the most successful Again you can put in whatever you want here For me it's consumer healthcare apps and tracking software
• 06:00 - 06:30 Please return only the homepage or the app page of fast growing startups or established market leaders Ideally we want a mix of those of the new uh hot products as well as the ones that are you know really dominating the market here And we're looking for their main links to their main homepages Does an awesome job of this So really think about how you steer that prompt We got My Fitness Pal Headspace an ovulation
• 06:30 - 07:00 tracker Perfect That's an interesting one Not exactly what I was looking for but that could be helpful as well That Y Combinator Let's import these And I'm going to rename these I'm going to add the competitor label to these All right And just like that we have a powerful asset here for our startup idea We've got a bunch of information about our user pain points trends in the industry and our competitors So let's get into how we're going to use this next First I want to retitle this Blood Works which
• 07:00 - 07:30 is sort of the placeholder name for this app that I'm working on Okay so now we're moving on to this step two analysis and strategy And this first part of it we're getting back to those pain points A very simple prompt that just says please analyze the pain points listed in these sources We're going to copy and paste that in But the key here is make sure only these user sources are selected So we're going to select all of our user sources Going to leave
• 07:30 - 08:00 everything else unselected and ask for a painpoint summary And this is exactly what we're looking for These health care systems electronic records are very frustrating experience miscommunications between medical professionals and patients So now we're going to save this note here Then you got to click into the note and convert this to a source So now we've added that as a source down here and we're going to rename this to keep everything straight We're going to rename this source user painpoints So
• 08:00 - 08:30 that one jumps right out to us there So the next step here now that we have those pain points analyzed is to cross reference those against the industry trends using this prompt So we're going to just grab this and in that same exact chat string we're going to copy and paste this in right here into the chat string We're going to turn all of the user sources off and these trend sources on So now we are cross-referencing these trends with the pain points using this
• 08:30 - 09:00 prompt that basically says please return an aggregate of the user trends based on you know XYZ what we're looking into as it relates to the conversation above Let that run and here is where those pain points align with the trends here beautiful analysis that we can just save as a note And then once that note is saved we want to open up that note and convert this to a source so that we can reference it here in the sources And
• 09:00 - 09:30 we'll save that and rename that as our trends summary So we have the painoint summary we have the trends as it relates to our pain points summary in here And now is when things get exciting We can start mapping the features of our prototype of this software So now I'm going to refresh the chat string I'm going to select our user pain points and our trend summary And I'm going to grab this prompt Copy that right in This just says using the selected sources please outline the key features of an app that addresses the identified concerns here
• 09:30 - 10:00 Awesome And this does a really detailed job So what we want to do is focus it on something that is more of an MVP or a minimum viable product or a prototype that we can start with and build upon So that's where I use this prompt That'll simplify this down a little bit to something we can wrap our heads around initially Awesome This has now simplified that down into some key features for that MVP And now I'm just going to follow up with this prompt which is sort of a meta prompt It's a
• 10:00 - 10:30 prompt asking for a prompt that we can then put into Gemini to start building this app out I'm asking it to use JavaScript specifically because that's the language that I'm trying to focus on And I have a whole another video on my path of learning how to code with AI I'm going to link to that video now because I think there's some helpful things in there if you really want to build production ready software But let's see what this comes up with All right we've got a pretty robust prompt here that we
• 10:30 - 11:00 can now go over to Gemini with So I'm going to copy this out of notebookm We're hopping over to gemini.google.com We're going to drop this right in Got to clean up some of this beginning here And I'm going to title this blood works We got to turn this canvas feature on We're going to let that run And there it goes Building our JavaScript app And there we have it This is a working app here This is the prompt that we entered in It ran for a while And I want to show you a trick if
• 11:00 - 11:30 you want to get even more serious about this Go to this code We're going to select all And moving out of this MVP prototype into a real legit piece of software we go to Firebase another Google product Get started Log in here And I'm dropping in everything that we created from that working prototype Right in here I'm going to click run And then I'm going to follow it up with this prompt which just says here's some code from an app I created We can use this code as is because otherwise it kind of
• 11:30 - 12:00 assumes that you're grabbing it from somebody else and it wants to reinvent the wheel So got to tell it know hey I built this so we can take it from here and then progress it just like that ask it say feel free to make any enhancements you want to improve on it and I like to say use this shad CN which is a anytime you add that in it's going to make it look even better I think that is a tailwind CSS thing that that makes these web apps look really good So we'll copy and paste that in and we'll follow
• 12:00 - 12:30 that up changes I want to make and it's going to go through and start actually improving this and enhancing it in various ways and actually building it from basically one file into a whole set of files So it's kind of hard to see here I'll zoom in but it's now taking really just that what was a onepage app and building out all these different Typescript files really turning that into a true code base that then you can
• 12:30 - 13:00 edit and start to improve upon just like any other you know software tool out there And this Firebase Studio is really awesome from moving from a prototype into a legit production ready piece of software This rivals Cursor and others Um so something to check out as it all stays within that Google ecosystem Okay so we've built the app and now we're going to design this homepage for this app and our notebook LM notebook is
• 13:00 - 13:30 going to come super handy in there Remember all that competitor uh information that we pulled We're going to use that now We're going to grab this prompt We're going to copy and paste that in We're going to make sure all the different competitors are turned on here We want to give it access to these competitor resources Now we're also going to give it access to this MVP prompt so it knows the tool that we're building and it can cross reference that with all these different competitors homepages and just saying "Hey craft a
• 13:30 - 14:00 prompt for a large language model to generate a visually compelling and effective landing page or homepage for this product." So again that is a meta prompt a prompt that we're using to create a prompt that we're going to put into Gemini to create the marketing web page because you know when you go to uh a new piece of software you don't go right into the software You go into a homepage that you can then click get started and you know access the app that way So that's what we're going to use to build out next All right so that has run and created this landing page prompt
• 14:00 - 14:30 Remember to save it as a note and then save that note as a source And this is the prompt that we're going to use that summarizes the tool and all of the language from these other uh competitors into a prompt that will build our homepage for this thing Grabbing that copying and pasting that back into Gemini here again We want to turn canvas on and let's start building the marketing website for this product And
• 14:30 - 15:00 we're running here All right And there we have our little app here I want to change the name here to make sure it says Blood Works There we go And it rocked those icons I've had trouble with those icons before but this time it did it So now to publish this app and website to the web I'm going to use Replet It's what I'm most familiar with You can again also use that Firebase option but I'm just going to grab this prompt here that uh will allow us to take what we've
• 15:00 - 15:30 already created and drop it into Replet and get it online So when you open Replet you're going to be met with its agent here And we're we're just asking it hey take the document attached and use this exact code No need to change anything I'm simply looking to create a new replet with this uh and host it on Replet So we're adding that prompt in and then we're grabbing the code from Gemini So here is the what we created in Gemini So grab this code select all copy
• 15:30 - 16:00 paste that in start building and it builds it So it's going to ask you to look through a plan This is all there And I I think you can just approve the plan and start And ideally it won't try to reinvent the wheel but it'll just take that file and help you host it right here And again this is a place just like Firebase where you can then start to improve it and add features and build it more into a full working codebase There we go Looks awesome Now
• 16:00 - 16:30 all we got to do is click deploy Uh and there's a few different ways to deal with this Autoscale usually works well Click click click Keep clicking forward And there you go Now we have both the homepage here This is live Anybody can visit it And we have it connected When you you got to work through this in replet and just fix the link When you click get started it opens the fully hosted app here So we've got the homepage We got the app all online All just a few hours of work maximum Now we
• 16:30 - 17:00 got to promote it All right So now step five we're going to move into creating a content strategy for our new startup idea And this is really what my background is in I ran a content marketing agency for over 10 years Worked with all sorts of software companies before I really decided to pivot into this new world of AI And I started this Blazing Zebra channel Blazing We got to move fast and zebra We've got to you know identify our own strengths our own passions and bring
• 17:00 - 17:30 them to this new world of AI So I hope you subscribe and follow along with these videos as you begin to pivot and transition into your new AI career with some intentionality and ideally it's a more fulfilling career than any that you've had in the past So for the content strategy we're going to use this prompt here that just says "Develop a content marketing strategy outlining four hub pieces of content each supported by four blog posts that link to those different traffic sources
• 17:30 - 18:00 there." And we're going to copy and paste this right back into our notebook LM notebook For this one you can pretty much have all of the sources on and see what it comes up with Awesome So it's returned already a pretty killer content marketing campaign And if you've done anything with AI you probably know how to create a blog post or even a long form piece of content But I bet you don't know how to create infographics and interactive pieces of content So that's what I want to show you how to do next So I'm grabbing this prompt This is
• 18:00 - 18:30 another meta prompt A prompt that creates a prompt for designing a visually compelling infographic related to one of the hub page ideas that it came up with Very cool That is pretty big We're going to save that as a note as we always do And save that convert that to a source So we have that Going to copy and paste all this right into Gemini Turn on that canvas I'm also going to supply the code from our main landing page here so that it can follow the brand um you know look and feel that we've already been working on I'm adding
• 18:30 - 19:00 that there You can also upload it here as a separate file though So let's let that go and see if we can create that So here's the result of that infographic here You can see it follows all of the styles of our previous creations We can get that online using Replet the same way we got the app and the homepage online And we can start to build out our content portal that way But there is so much you can do from here Not only infographics but you can create cluster visualizations Here's just a peek at
• 19:00 - 19:30 what this can do when it comes to creating interactive content I used it to just create an interactive mind map from about all the notebook LM features limitations etc So you can create content like this and get it online copying the code in using that same process I showed you on Replet or inside of Firebase This cheat sheet is absolutely packed with a ton of good information It goes through everything that we went through here today but then dives even deeper into each step of this process So if building
• 19:30 - 20:00 out software and businesses like these is something that you're interested in definitely check out my Patreon There's a link in the description You can support this channel Grab this cheat sheet and over 125 others instantly There's some coaching options in there as well I've got a video that dives a lot deeper into the strategy portion of what we went over today So if you're serious about this check that video out next