Build Epic Startups: NotebookLM + Gemini 2.5 Workflow

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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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

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. 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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

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 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 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. 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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

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 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, 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, 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 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

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

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 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 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 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 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.