Curious About OpenClaw? Let Me Show You How It Works
“When you're going through hell, keep going." This podcast is about failure and how it breeds success. Every week, we talk to remarkable people who have accomplished great things but have also faced failure along the way. By exploring their experiences, we can learn how to build, succeed, and stay humble. The podcast is hosted by author and former TechCrunch and New York Times journalist John Biggs. He also hosts The Innovators, a podcast focused on brand new startups and C-Level Executives and Creators. If you’d like to appear on either show, email john@biggs.cc. Our theme music is by Policy, AKA Mark Buchwald. (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/policy/)
Ahoy! I’m hosting a short Zoom session for the Keep Going community on March 16, 2026 at 1:00 PM EST where we’ll walk through installing and trying out OpenClaw. OpenClaw is an open source tool that lets you run and manage AI agents locally. A lot of readers have asked how it works and whether it’s difficult to set up. The answer is that it’s not impossible, but it can be confusing the first time you try it. So this session is meant to make that first step easier. This will be a beginner friendly session. We are not going to dive deep into the internals or spend time on complicated configuration. Instead we will focus on the basics. We will install OpenClaw, get it running, and take a look at what it can actually do once it’s set up. The goal is simply to get people comfortable with the tool and show how it works in practice. If you have been curious about running agents locally, or you’ve tried installing OpenClaw and got stuck somewhere along the way, this is a good chance to follow along and ask questions. This is an experiment for the Keep Going community. If it goes well, I’ll run more sessions like this covering tools, workflows, and things that are actually useful to founders and builders. Hope to see you there. You’re currently a free subscriber to Keep Going - A Guide to Unlocking Success. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. If you’ve been reading or listening to Keep Going for free, you’ve already seen the value of having independent work that isn’t shaped by corporate sponsors or the news cycle’s noise. But independence has a cost. If you find something useful here, if these words make you pause or think, I’m asking you to step up. A few dollars each month means I can keep doing this work without compromise. Without your support, this project stays fragile, balanced on the backs of a few.
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Great Reads for March
Some news about my latest book and a project I built last week.
Great Reads for March
Check out my new book!
First, I’m pleased to say that my book, Shroomies, is now available for pre-order. This was a big surprise
Pre-Order Now
I’ve been writing this book for the past year, and it’s taken a lot out of me. I spoke to people who went through absolute hell, who lost jobs and found peace, and who were all changed by psychedelics. While I agree that psychedelics are not for everyone, they are definitely something we should all be exploring as we enter whatever dystopian age we’re living in right now, and I hope this book will be helpful.
Meet ParrotPod
My friend Mike Butcher was musing in a chat room about a service that automatically made a news podcast that gave you a digest of interesting stories on a daily basis. I thought about his request and told him I’d build it. Over the course of about two days I was able to cobble together a working MVP that essentially automatically generates an audio podcast every morning at 10am Eastern. It’s called ParrotPod and you can try it right now.
Try ParrotPod
It’s definitely not perfect and there are still things I’d like to fix but I’d love it if you could give it a try and let me know what you think. It’s a fun project and I’m curious to see what people think. If you try it, please send me feedback at john@biggs.cc.
And now, on to the books.
All Tomorrow’s Parties
William Gibson
I reread William Gibson every few years and mostly focus on the first two trilogies, the Sprawl and the Bridge. If you’ve never read Gibson, you need to start with Neuromancer, but I love this one, the last in the Bridge trilogy, for its mix of reality and sci-fi. The Bridge trilogy is all about how the digital becomes real, and this particular book focuses on what would happen if we could create digital life through nanobots. It’s way better than I’ve made it sound, and Gibson is a master of his craft.
The Year of Eating Dangerously: A Global Adventure in Search of Culinary Extremes
Tom Parker Bowles
In this travel memoir, food writer Tom Parker Bowles sets out to understand why some foods are feared in one culture yet prized in another. Prompted by the food anxieties of friends, he spends a year traveling through Asia, Europe, and the United States seeking out meals that many people consider dangerous, strange, or extreme, including venomous animals, toxic fish, insects, organ meats, and hot peppers. It’s a cute, light book in the vein of Truffle Hound from January.
Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion
Chris DeVille
This is a complete history of the “indie rock explosion” that covers the early years of NYC rock like The National and Interpol along with the oddballs like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Postal Service. If you had an iPod and an eMusic account in 2002, chances are you listened to these folks on repeat, and DeVille does a solid job of going down the list and talking about each band in plenty of detail. Well worth a read if you love this music.
A digest of great reads and other cool stuff by John Biggs.
© 2026 John Biggs
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