speaker 1 [00:00:00-00:00:05]: EnINTERES THAT SOFTARE eat THE WORLD, I FE LIKE COING W eatAT ALL knowledge WORK, RIGHT? AND WE'RE KIND OF GOING TO THAT directionTION ALREAD.
speaker 2 [00:00:06-00:00:16]: THE WHOLE AGENT STACK IS EMERING. YEAH, ID, PAYMENTS, MARKET, EVEN CLI VERSUS MCP LIKE YEAH, ALL OF THESE ARE really NEW THINGS. AND I THINK A LOT OF THE OLD PLAYbookOOK goesES AWAY.
speaker 1 [00:00:17-00:00:39]: YEAH, IT' A WHO whole NEW WORLD. I HOPE MORE COMPIES WILL stayAY SMALL. AND I THINK THE foundersUNDERS OF THISERATION RE realizeZE THAT, LIKE THEY W to STAY AS SMALL AS POS possibleBLE. YEAH. And instead of having like a ten percent product product team, you have like a two or three person product team, and just have a bunch of agents help help you. Yeah, someone tweeted that like the the job market is so bad that I can only pursue my dreams now or something like. So like it it like, you know, it's like, yeah, so maybe you lost your job, but like now you have to do your own thing.
speaker 2 [00:00:39-00:01:37]: Yeah 100 percent and have a shot at actually achieving it. yeah know yeah yeah. All right, welcome everyone. I've got my friend peter yang here. Peter welcome. Yeah, could it be here? It's good to see you again. Yeah, it's great to see you peter and i worked together at credit karma for a brief stint and then we went our separate ways and you know, i rediscovered peter from his prolific posts on x and your youtube and yeah, you know, you've got a little bit of a clark kent superman thing going because you still got a day job, right? That's right. So with a job. Yes. Yeah. Can you show where? Yeah, what a roblox as a pm? Amazing Roblox and Jason Portfolio Company, yes, one of my favorites. Well, incredible man! Let's get right into it. Maybe I'll start with a softball fun question, and then you know we're going to talk about everything in the Claw ecosystem. We're going to talk about coding agents. We're talking about a little bit about maybe what students should study, advice, and some of the things that you've talked about online. Yeah, sure. Maybe to start, what is the name of your... Oh, how many claws do you have?
speaker 1 [00:01:38-00:01:43]: And tell me their names. I only have one. I call her Zoe. Zoe, but I have like multiple conversations going with.
speaker 2 [00:01:43-00:01:45]: Okay, yeah, and why Zoe.
speaker 1 [00:01:46-00:01:53]: I... I have two girls, and I was going to call my younger one Zoe, and I did not, So I'm gonna call I call my open call Zoe instead.
speaker 2 [00:01:53-00:02:04]: I see, I see. yes yeah, this is your fallback plan. Yeah, Peter, tell me a little bit about you know, open claw, how you discovered it, how you're using it today, and what you think the implications are.
speaker 1 [00:02:04-00:03:03]: Yeah, I was lucky to interview Peter Steinbergerger before you became super famous, and the whole thing blew up. And then rather i knew him, i like set up the thing, it took forever to set up a super janky. And yeah, it does a lot of things for me. It like pulls analytics for me across youtube and like member create banking account. It can update google documents for me. It can be a little websites for me, but if i was honest with you, dude, like i mostly just talked to it through voice and get voice replies. And like every other day i asked you can like a pep talk or like, you know, give me like, like look through all your memory and like, give me some like deep insights that i don't know about. Okay. And like it gave me like, like i remember i was on a walk and gave me like a three-minute pep talk. That was like really amazing, really amazing. Like it's something about like like oh you're like pointing me about your creator business and blah blah and like your job. But like just remember that your kids. You know, S four are going to grow up very soon, and they' going to want to spend time with you. WOW, so like you should really optimizeMIE for, you know them instead.
speaker 2 [00:03:03-00:03:11]: YEAH, yeah, that'sS really cool, and I mean very cool, but also something that all theANG language models could have done prior. YEAH, SO what's the difference between this and in a use case like that?
speaker 1 [00:03:11-00:03:31]: Yeah, itS very good question. So I don''t know, because I think installALL on TED Telegram, it just feels like more personal than using like CL or chat GPPT, and just feels like somethingOM that can like text IN bed. It's probably not very healthy, but like i text to it in bed, i talk to it during my commute and it feels like it feels more like a personal like actual human. Yeah.
speaker 2 [00:03:31-00:03:49]: yeah. So so how much for you is open claw about the kind of interface like pushing it to messaging and you know, maybe helping to trick our brain into feeling like, hey, this is a person or a person-esque thing versus all the other components of the stack, the self-modification, the skills directory. Yeah, every all the all the rest.
speaker 1 [00:03:49-00:04:21]: I think it's probably like 70, 80 percent just like the personable part of it part of it because i mostly just talk to it and like, you know, through voice. But i also think like is something for first of all, it is pretty janky. It has to forget things a lot. Yeah, to keep reminding it. But like any kind of zany idea that i have, i just have to talk to it and it can probably just do like like it's kind of like like the other day, i was doing voice replies with it. I was like, hey, can we just have a live phone call instead? And then it's like, okay, you gotta connect twitter video. I gotta do all the stuff and okay fine. I went off and did it. Yeah, and then we had a phone call.
speaker 2 [00:04:22-00:04:24]: called my phone. really, you have that set up, I dying to set that up.
speaker 1 [00:04:24-00:04:32]: Okay. It's not very good, though. like the latency is bad but like the fact that I was able to get it going is like pretty impressive. So it's kind of like any kind of crazy idea I have.
speaker 2 [00:04:32-00:04:41]: it can kind of kind of do. And then in practice, how are you doing that? Are you asking it to write a skill on the fly? Are you discovering a skill? How much of the code G are you actually using?
speaker 1 [00:04:42-00:05:03]: I mean, I talked to in like a super casual way with like just like a friend. So like, hey, hey, you know, hey Zoee K K, like you have a phone call. It like, okay, you got do that. I said okay, fine, I'll open my computer, I'll do all this stuff, and then it's like give me a call and it will troubleshoot a little bit, and then it works. So like with cloud, I have like very fancy prompts, like very long prompts, but with open cloud, I just kind of text it. Yeah.
speaker 2 [00:05:03-00:05:24]: it is really interesting. So we sort of touched on a couple things actually. So one, there's mobile messaging, there's the memory system, there's the sort of code generation component. How much do you think the memory system like is it innovative because it's file-based? You said that it forgets things but so do language models. Like do you think the memory system is well done? Does it hold it back or does it enable it?
speaker 1 [00:05:25-00:06:10]: I think the default memory system is actually not that great. Okay. Like the way i understand it works is like just like a memory to md text file. Yes. And every day per day, right? And there they updates and it tends to forget things a lot. Yeah. So i actually installed this like. Three layer memories. Some that i don't fully understand, but it has like fancy. It has like toby's qmd search tool. Okay, so i saw that and then install like a two gigabyte thing and then i got a little bit better. Okay, but i said the reminder like i have this i put it into the agents that md like hey like before you answer any question for me, like go through all your memory and like check everything. Yeah. And they also tends to forget that it can do stuff. Like, you know, right, like, can you update my Google talk. It's like, oh, I can't do that. Yeah, yes, you can. it it'sS in your, it's in your file. Yes, so you have to remind it. Yeah.
speaker 2 [00:06:10-00:06:21]: yeah, really interesting. Well, well, maybe let's get into a little bit of the controversy. Um, you know, you'd said that appsel die claw's going to be everything and everywhere. I mean, talk us through that that point of view.
speaker 1 [00:06:21-00:07:00]: Yeah, well, first of all, I I tweet all all kinds of random crap like not super well thought out. We take it all as fact. Yeah, yes, Um, but I do think like um. Like ever since i set up all these apps like mercury mcp and all this kind of crap on my open call. Like i don't actually open those apps much anymore, you know, but i do agree with you. Like i i think the ones that are gonna die first or like maybe get less usage first is like apps that you're just opening to try to complete a task. Like you actually try to do something, you know, like apps that you only need to like get entertainment. Can probably survive a little bit longer, but like apps not only should complete a task, like it's just way easier to text my agent to do it for me. Yeah, it's like you have a really good admin to do stuff for it for you.
speaker 2 [00:07:01-00:07:06]: Yeah, yeah. And so how much are you finding? Has this like reduced your smartphone usage outside of modulo open call?
speaker 1 [00:07:06-00:07:14]: Yeah, no, because like I'm like a Twitter addict, so I use my smartphone way, way too much. But yeah, in terms of using those apps, has definitely reduced it. Yeah.
speaker 2 [00:07:15-00:07:19]: yeah, because you're not gonna ask Zoe like, hey, read my apps for me and tell me.
speaker 1 [00:07:19-00:07:27]: I mean it it sounds like a morning briefing like the top two tweets and stuff that like trends but yeah i i still open x. I look through it. Yeah.
speaker 2 [00:07:27-00:07:59]: Yeah. You know it's interesting because i've always had this theory that people open apps on their phone because they want to feel a feeling. Yeah. You know and i think of course there's some like functional set of needs which is why you open calendar or something. But also think that you know what's up is you want to feel connected and slack as you want to feel productive and of course you know tiktok is you want to feel entertained. So i do wonder with just one agent, how do you sort of do the context switching of like, when are you flirting? When are you getting shit done? I mean, there, you know, in a sense app gives you a nice, it sort of gives you a nice division of the intense. Yeah, that's you don't get with zoe.
speaker 1 [00:07:59-00:08:14]: That's the plan, but i do have multiple channels set up a zoe in telegram. Like one is just to random voice replies and otherwise we're actually working on our project together and then i want to have like a public channel where like i'm giving that demos. I don't want to review a private information. Yes. So i like multiple channels.
speaker 2 [00:08:14-00:08:18]: And is that implemented as sub agents or no?
speaker 1 [00:08:18-00:08:29]: Is this some janky setup I found online, like you can set up multiple Telegram channels, and then I'm not sure if it actually remembers across contexts across the channels, but like you can have separate conversations at least. Got it. Yeah.
speaker 2 [00:08:29-00:08:34]: And how, how, you know, transparent are you with your agent? Like does it, does it see your personal email?
speaker 1 [00:08:35-00:08:51]: Or I'm like super transparent. Well, I did buy the Mac Mini and set up its own email. Okay. And but I gave it like read access to my email and like calendar. And I also gave it like write access to some docs, yeah, but it can like screw my entire drive or something, you know?
speaker 2 [00:08:51-00:08:59]: So how do you imagine OpenCL, which it's sort of an architecture and a primitive, yeah, how does it get productized packaged for the world?
speaker 1 [00:08:59-00:09:13]: I mean, I think that's what Peter Simeonberg is working out at OpenAI, right? It's probably going to build something to ChatGPT, which everyone uses, so that ChatGPT can actually get stuff done for you and like maybe feels more human. Yeah, dude, like let me rant about ChatGPT.
speaker 2 [00:09:13-00:09:14]: Please, yeah.
speaker 1 [00:09:15-00:09:32]: for some reason, for some reason they trained the model so that like at the end of every conversation is always like if you want, I can also do X and Y. Yeah, and dude, I got so annoyed by it that that kind of churn from ChatGPT really. Yeah, so, so it probably increases their metrics, but like it's just like super annoying. It's like, why not just do it in the first place?
speaker 2 [00:09:32-00:09:33]: Are you a cloud guy now?
speaker 1 [00:09:33-00:09:38]: Yeah, I'm a cloud guy now, but but I do use Codex to code.
speaker 2 [00:09:38-00:09:41]: Yeah, you like codex, you prefer to call code or use.
speaker 1 [00:09:41-00:09:45]: both codex. When I want to try to do something real and cloud code, one's just like vibing.
speaker 2 [00:09:47-00:10:09]: you know? Well, it's interesting. I think they live at different points, and you know there's a sort of space of trade-offs. Whereas I find cloud code in Opus 46, it's a little more chatty, it makes more assumptions, but it can be more pleasant for a synchronous experience. Whereas codex, it really thinks hard and it's more often accurate. But sometimes it's sort of like being in a conversation where the other person pauses for like three minutes to think.
speaker 1 [00:10:09-00:10:21]: Yeah, you don't have to flow flow state, right? It's hard to get flow like clockwork, dude. I tell you the other day, clockwork almost like a like a slot machine because it's like it's like has different things each time. It's like oh one hundred percent like slot machine.
speaker 2 [00:10:21-00:10:45]: Look, I do think that if you think remember what we were talking about in the old social networking era, it was variable scheduled rewards, right? That was the whole magic of it. you know once in a while it's like boring boring oh my god this is so exciting and yeah the coding agents have the exact same property also the time is variable so sometimes you get something in a second sometimes it takes five minutes so yeah up to a certain point actually think that both of those things give it that casino like feeling.
speaker 1 [00:10:45-00:11:05]: yeah and and the other thing that's very different about the product strategy or maybe it's just the way it works is like coding is kind of like self explanatory yeah and clock hole you have all this crazy shit you have like hooks and like skills and like you have to you have to plugins like if you if you're not following yeah if you're not following x you have no idea how to customize this thing. Yeah, but once you customize it, you kind of feel like it's part of you. So it's kind of hard to turn.
speaker 2 [00:11:05-00:11:52]: It's interesting with. So i've customized mine because also i read the long thing that was put up. Yeah. But i will say that i think that, you know, cloud code, a lot of the reasons that i enjoy it are just harness features, you know, like, for example, if you cut an image, you have to paste it into a file before and then paste that file into codex. Okay, you can't just take a subset of the screen screenshot it and then paste it directly into codex the same way you can with cloud code already. Okay, okay. So just like little things like that, you know, cloud code added voice. It's a little bit janky right now, but it's going in the right direction. So they've just got a bunch of quality of life things. Yeah. You know, CLude codes speaks to CL in Chrome, okay, and CodeDEx doesn't speak to ATlas. got it. So I think these are all things that Open AI will fix. Yeah, I think CodeDEx is actually a much better model, UM, but they don't exist today.
speaker 1 [00:11:52-00:11:56]: Yeah, yeah, they need to fix it. I mean, they're're going to go ALL ALL on cod CodeDEx, I'm sure. yeah.
speaker 2 [00:11:57-00:12:02]: Talk to me about coding agents, like what's your general view? you know, do you think it's the endND of SAS? Do you think these are just a toy.
speaker 1 [00:12:03-00:12:29]: Uh,Well, first of all, I'm'm I'm like not an engineersINE, I'mM like a nov, but I do hear that, um, like I was talking some folks the other day, and like like an AI native star startup, and they're basically trying to they have a bunchCH of vibe coders. and all of vibe COers are just trying to build internal tools that REP their SaaS that they're paying for really? so it'sS an actualU company it doing this. it's actualU company.. It an AI native company. it's like one of the vibe coding companies like one the more popular.
speaker 2 [00:12:29-00:12:33]: Interesting. Yeah, it's interesting. Oh, i see. So they're actually an appgen company.
speaker 1 [00:12:33-00:12:39]: their appgen company and they're paying for a bunch of sas like and they want to get rid of the payment. They want to just buy coding tools by using.
speaker 2 [00:12:40-00:12:53]: Okay, so in that case that they might be the most extreme form of adobe because their own product is appgen. So they should use appgen for everything. Yeah, i guess is your prediction though that the average company will turn off of slack or deal or you know.
speaker 1 [00:12:54-00:13:13]: Um, i don't think i i feel like slack has a lot of legs because slack can also be the place where you talk to the agents themselves. But some of the other ones, they are pretty complicated, you know? So like it's kind of be hard to buy code like that stuff. But i feel like if you have like an app like maybe calendly or like something more simple. Yeah. Then why why should you? Why should i pay for it?
speaker 2 [00:13:13-00:13:29]: Like i just why should i pay for it though? The camera point is that it's not that expensive and do you really want to maintain your own? Calendly thing, yeah, you know, versus pay 20 bucks a month. It always gets updated, it's always up, yeah, because there's just like a fixed amount of capacity that anyone in the organization is going to have for all this stuff.
speaker 1 [00:13:29-00:13:34]: Yeah, that's true. Unless you hire like dedicated VPCs like the startup does, yeah, VPC stuff.
speaker 2 [00:13:34-00:13:38]: But then it's like, you know, the cost benefit versus just paying for.
speaker 1 [00:13:39-00:14:04]: It's interesting thing about like for example, like a lot of people are tweeting about Figma recently. Yeah, like like the stock is down, like you know, are you gonna survive? Yeah. And I feel like the jury is out there. Like it's kind of hard to say. Yeah. I feel like all designers are still on Figma, but like as a designer, you kind of need to learn how to vibe code, otherwise you're gonna like if you want to know how to do Figma, yeah, like you're probably gonna be like out of date. In a couple of years.
speaker 2 [00:14:05-00:14:47]: my counterpoint to that is that I think that I've thought a lot about the sort of thinking tools versus making tools, right? The IDE was historically a making tool. It's a place for execution. I think it's migrating away from that. And now with execution going to zero, I think these sort of like multi-agent next-gen IDEs, a lot of them are about trying things. And using the trial and error as a way to inform your thinking. Yeah, like a lot of times i'll just build a feature in a really naive way and i'll hammer the coding agent until it works. Then i'll say, hey, write all the things that you would have done differently and i'll go back to the initial point and redo it. So i wonder if and i think figma actually does both. I think it's a place for design execution, but it's also an important place for design thinking. Yeah, i think that's their opportunity to be highly relevant in the new stack.
speaker 1 [00:14:48-00:15:06]: Yeah, i totally agree. I totally agree. Um, but i i think a16z has like you guys investing pencil or something pencil. Dot death feed run dead. Yeah. Yes, we run it and like, um, yeah, think money is to like level up this ai tooling because, you know, like watching this agents clary with you and like do stuff. It's like very.
speaker 2 [00:15:07-00:15:16]: very interesting. I know it's top of mind for them. Yeah. What do you think are the most under discussed capabilities of coding agents? You know, what's underhyped and maybe what's overhyped as well.
speaker 1 [00:15:16-00:16:10]: This is probably not underhyped, but you know, like you know, I feel like and interesting that software will eat the world. I feel like coding will eat all knowledge work right? And we're kind of going that direction already. Like I think Loveable recently launched like today, yeah, but they can support everything and replicate can make decks. Yeah, so so yeah, so I and I feel like everyone's chasing this like Anthropic is probably in the lead. Yeah, but like you know, like I don't want to use PowerPoint anymore. I don't want to like write a like I hate writing Google Docs, dude. Like that was my entire life. Yeah, yeah, so so like but but but the other day I was writing my blog post and instead of just like typing out, I was like hey, let's let me just use clock code and like you know, let me give you a bunch of feedback and you you write it for. Um, it did the first 80%, the last 20% I said was Malay, like going there like tweak, tweak, tweak stuff. Yeah, but like that, that's the way I work now. I never start from zero, like I always get the first 80% from AI, right?
speaker 2 [00:16:11-00:16:47]: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. You know, if you look at there, there are also like historical analogs of this. I think Satya said this, which is that Excel is the most powerful or most popular programming language in the world. Yeah. and that it's sort of a programming language that millions and millions, i mean, a hundred billion plus people must know, maybe even more. um, and yet we don't think of it that way. it's a way to sort of describe and solve problems. yeah. and i think coding agents are going to be that, of course, times a thousand. yeah. or even things that feel subjective, like writing google docs, can be represented in the coding domain in such a way that it's more satisfying, more productive, more high leverage to use agents to do it.
speaker 1 [00:16:47-00:16:59]: yeah, because excel was like popular because it's super approachable, right? yes. and like coding is just, the code is just so ghastly. it's like, ah, shut away, just talking to some. Some agent again to do stuff. So yeah, yeah, exactly. It's gonna be huge.
speaker 2 [00:16:59-00:17:08]: Yeah, what do you think the future company looks like? Is just a bunch of agents with a ceo is the ceo an agent. I mean, what is the role for people in a company in the future?
speaker 1 [00:17:08-00:17:22]: Okay, well, i have some hot takes. So we both worked at some companies together and let me give you a hot take, man. Maybe cut this out. But like, i feel like as a company gets bigger, it tends to get shit. It tends to become like a shitty studio place to work, dude. Yeah, like because there's like a lot of people you have to align.
speaker 2 [00:17:23-00:17:23]: That's axiomatic.
speaker 1 [00:17:24-00:17:54]: Yeah, right. And i remember, you know, maybe should mention this company. I remember our company. obviously to have what is like OK OK meetings, and like I recently a room for like three hours, talking about OKR. I'm just like, dude, there is like wasting my life. Yeah. So what what I'm going with this is I hope more companies will stay small. and I think the founders of this generation realize that, like they wantANT to stay as small as possible. Yeah. And instead of having like a 10 person PRO product team, you have like a two or three person product team, and you just have a bunch of agents help help you. Yeah, you know? because I think it's way easier to cross launch your line of the agents than with humans.
speaker 2 [00:17:54-00:18:48]: Yeah, well actually in a fun in a sense, the agents actually because it takes the emotion out of it too. Like you can imagine if i sent my agent, you sent your agent to go negotiate something. Yeah. And they came out with some conclusion. It's not emotional. It's not for either of us, you know, it's very objective. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's funny. You know, one of the things that we've been talking a bunch about is like. What is the pro case for AI at work in terms of employee experience? And I think it's what you're describing, right? Like how do you increase the NPS of work? Yeah, so if we like go all the way back or even broadly the NPS of the human experience, right? Like think of the NPS of the day-to-day human in 10000 BC when it's like just don't get eaten by the lion, and that's like a good day, right? Or you know maybe 100 years ago, it's like okay, don't get killed at the factory, crushed by the steam press or whatever else. And now a lot of it is like. Just don't get sucked into some high emotion, you know, sort of negotiation with another vps subordinate.
speaker 1 [00:18:49-00:18:51]: Yeah, like a 50 message slack thread going back and forth.
speaker 2 [00:18:51-00:19:07]: Yeah, which exactly. And then eventually everyone's like, i don't want to tell the ceo and eventually it goes there and it's just terrible. So maybe the future of this is that a lot of that emotional subjective work gets handled. Yeah. And we're sort of guiding the process but not in the middle of it in a way that just doesn't suit us as humans.
speaker 1 [00:19:07-00:19:15]: Yeah. Like, you know, i i leave that double life as a pm creator and like i feel like all the pms actually just want to create. Products. This is my career pros and well.
speaker 2 [00:19:15-00:19:47]: that's why we all got into it, you know, it's so interesting. I mean, nicole talks about all the time but like every pm's sort of view of the ideal pm is the innovator, you know, like i came up with the new thing and it's like that sort of like had the big insight and unlock the product. Yeah, i think the black pill is i don't think most pms know how to do that. In fact, many companies have zero people that know how to do that at all in any function. Yeah. So nonetheless, I think PMs aspire to be able to do that, and they should either do it and either be successful or maybe not successful and move to a different function.
speaker 1 [00:19:47-00:20:02]: I also feel like my hot take is like basically all the PMs I know are trying to vibe code at nights and weekends. And I feel like my hot take is that like I feel like if you're actually unemployed, like you probably have more time to be a builder and like to be innovative. You can actually like play all this stuff and like learn all this stuff.
speaker 2 [00:20:02-00:20:22]: A of PMms are try, or maybe be an engineer in the team, you know? yeah, I used to be an engineer, and I got sort of, I't know if I got forced to be a PM, maybe I also perceived PM as like being a little more high status yeah, yeah, when I joined Google, but then eventually you come around on the other side, you're like, this is terrible, you know, like, you don't never really get the satisfaction yeah, of actually shipping other than like, you know, once a quarter when you ship.
speaker 1 [00:20:22-00:20:35]: I mean, the PM skills of like talking to users and like trying to figure out what to be like with a problem to solve, like those are very I important still. yeah, and like, but yeah, you got to wear multiple H do. You got you got to likePU thing yourself type it and get some FE, and then maybe. Brand engineer law.
speaker 2 [00:20:36-00:20:51]: how much do you think that everyone has to go as fast as you know？ I mean like Gary was talking about stimies and skipping sleep，and Gary ten like you know G stack。 I mean is hey，I mean is that like the default way that we all need to work？ Or do you think there's a trade off for thoughtfulness？
speaker 1 [00:20:52-00:21:07]: I think it's very easy now with all these AI tools just going like 10 different directions at once。 Yeah，so sometimes you do have to slow down and try to figure out。 Where you want to go? Yeah, but i also believe that like the traditional process where like you annual planning and like doing this bullshit. Like i just feel like that doesn't really work anymore.
speaker 2 [00:21:08-00:21:58]: you know? Yeah, yeah. And for the record, i love the area and i like think the world of him. Yeah. So here's my view on that because i thought a bunch about the, you know, who asked me this the other day, hit him, who's really impressed. Yeah. So you're talking about this like sort of productivity porn, and everybody's got 20 agents running and 20 monitors and blah blah blah, and like I do think when it comes to. Um, fully realizing a local, a sort of local maxima, you should go very fast, right? So let's say you kind of hill climb, you get to the bottom of the new local maxima. I think with agents, you should be able to get to the top of that hill extremely fast, right? You have a new insight, build everything around the insight so it's fully expressed. But then I think to get to the next, you know, the next sort of hill, you've got to probably slow down and almost stop and go touch grass and do whatever. Yeah. So i think there's this combination of like fast and slow, that's probably the future way.
speaker 1 [00:21:58-00:22:03]: Yeah, i think so. And like you gotta go that random walk, trying to find her mark if it which takes a while, right?
speaker 2 [00:22:03-00:22:11]: So this is not like, yeah. So we were talking before we started recording about some of the business in a box platforms. Have you looked at them? Do you have a view?
speaker 1 [00:22:12-00:22:18]: I've looked at post yet that we talked about like i don't know the guy like intentionally made it the opposite of ai slop or is it?
speaker 2 [00:22:19-00:22:22]: Yes, i think so. Yes, yes, yes. That's funny.
speaker 1 [00:22:22-00:22:37]: Well, i mean, i have a pretty big public presence, right? So i connect all my shit to it and then i mean, it's it's definitely gives a good peek into what's possible. But like right now, it's probably still pretty like early stage. Like it's time to run like facebook ads. Yeah, why am i running facebook ads?
speaker 2 [00:22:37-00:23:15]: Yeah, you know, so yeah, i mean, i'm very excited about it because it does feel like it's a path for more people to build companies. Yeah, even if they're single one person companies, you know, like if you think about how competitive it is to build a billion dollar business, like the markets that supported the number of people trying versus 100 million versus 10 million versus. one hundred thousand dollars tam. yeah, like maybe there are these pockets all over the country, all over the world, where there are opportunities for hundred thousand dollars tam products. Yeah, And that would change somebody's life. Now that's not an enterprise ventureback company, but that's okay. Yeah. So I hope that whole thesis works, because I do think it's a way to get more people to participate.
speaker 1 [00:23:15-00:23:25]: you know. Yeah, that that that's my plan for my kids dude. Like I want them to just build like push out businesses in high high school. Yeah, and they can skip the whole college and like corporate life. Yeah.
speaker 2 [00:23:25-00:23:51]: Well, dude, i think this is like, you know, for 10 years, there's this moral panic about the kids want to be youtubers. Yeah, you know, you're a youtuber. Yeah, you know, you know, in the vein of mr. Beast and and i think like pro case for that actually is that the kids wanted to be entrepreneurs or have agency and the only channel for people if they weren't programmers was creating youtube videos at least online. Yeah. So if you're like an online native generation, you want to create something, you're not a programmer, you make a youtube show and now you can make a lot more than that.
speaker 1 [00:23:52-00:23:55]: Yeah, you can be wherever you want. Exactly. So exactly. It'd be very exciting.
speaker 2 [00:23:55-00:23:57]: Yeah, any other hot takes for us.
speaker 1 [00:23:57-00:24:27]: I'm curious about your thoughts about this actually like so i feel like a lot of people are saying like agents will interact with your product first, right? And then you see all those great companies like building like apis and mcp's. But like how do you think about like, you know, you being consumer for a while. So like consumer is like you gotta get the user to come back and use your product, right? Yeah. But now like the users like, hey, go send the agent to use it. So how do you think about retention and all this like basic stuff? Like how do you, you know, or even like brand equity because the agents just like points on api like yeah.
speaker 2 [00:24:28-00:25:29]: yeah, i don't. Okay. So i think one of i don't know is the is the truth but there's i have a few thoughts. So one i think that a lot of the. SOPHISTICATION SOPHISTICATION THAT HAPPENED IN CONSUMER HAPPENED BECAUSE WE HAD TO HAVE INDIRECT MONETIZATION. OKAY, LIKE WE JUST WERE NEVER CHARGING CONSUMERS DIRECTLY FOR THESE PRODUCTS, WHICH IS WHY YOU GOT ADS AND STUFF, ADS AND JUST LARGE SCALE NETWORKS, AND WE ALL OBSESSED WITH RETENTION AND ENGAGEMENT AND WHALES AND ALL OF THESE THINGS REALLY, REALLY MATTERED BECAUSE WE DIDN'T SIMPLY CHARGE PEOPLE FOR PRODUCTS. SO I THINK ONE BIG THING THAT'S ACTUALLY REALLY HELPED IN THE AI ERA WITH THAT IS THAT CONSUMERS ARE NOW EXCITED TO TRY NEW THINGS, THEY'RE WILLING TO PAY, THEY'RE WILLING TO PAY A REALLY HIGH PRICE POINT. There's also consumption revenue and consumer for the first time like tokens. Yeah, if you like tokens, if you're subscription plus your token. So and then the actual like the sort of blessing in disguise is that there are real costs as well. You have these inference costs. So you're like, wow, we have to charge our customer on day one. So I think one thing is that like the business model simplification, I think will really help with a lot of what you're describing.
speaker 2 [00:25:30-00:25:53]: Two, I think that a lot of the products will have a sort of, you know, it'll have an API interface for your agents to interact with or for, you know, for transactional sort of rote things. Yeah. And then it'll have like a consumption based interface as well. So you can also imagine like a mobile app, or there's like the feed, but then you can kind of turn it over to where the wires are, and you can just ask for things to get done, or you can just see the log of the things that got done.
speaker 1 [00:25:53-00:25:54]: Yeah, maybe people will do both right?
speaker 2 [00:25:54-00:26:01]: I mean, you can imagine credit karma where we worked, you know, like once in while, you want to just take a look at your score history and a few other maybe credit card offers. I don't know.
speaker 1 [00:26:01-00:26:03]: I mean, yeah, yeah, if I get my score with all the kind of credit card offers.
speaker 2 [00:26:03-00:26:13]: I'll definitely do that. Yeah 100 100 percent, exactly. Yeah, On the other hand, like sometimes you want to just be like, yo, like, can you just fix all my stuff or like what stuff did you fix this week? How much money did I save. you know? Got it, Got it.
speaker 1 [00:26:13-00:26:15]: Yeah, it's definitely interesting. Yeah.
speaker 2 [00:26:15-00:26:28]: but look, I also just think the whole agent stack is emerging. Yeah, identity, payments, marketing, we don't even even see Li versus MCP like all of these are really new things. And I think a lot of the old playbook goes away.
speaker 1 [00:26:28-00:26:34]: Yeah, it's a whole new world. And like in 2025, I thought agents was overhyped, but now I think it's really kind of coming.
speaker 2 [00:26:34-00:26:38]: Me too. I know it's just the word is frustrating because it gets so overloaded.
speaker 1 [00:26:38-00:26:39]: Yeah, there's like workflows.
speaker 2 [00:26:39-00:26:43]: like all this kind of shit. Totally. I've been trying to just say like can we just say like model in a loop?
speaker 1 [00:26:43-00:26:46]: Yeah, exactly. More than i use tools.
speaker 2 [00:26:46-00:26:49]: Yeah, yeah. But nobody likes to hear that. It's a agents as much flashier. Yeah.
speaker 1 [00:26:49-00:27:03]: that's better. Yeah, my hope is that all the stuffs like a lot of people are thinking like we're gonna lose our jobs was probably what happened at some point. But like i hope all this stuff makes just makes like human work more fun like other jobs more fun. You know.
speaker 2 [00:27:03-00:27:57]: dude, i don't think we're all going to jobs. Like i really think the and we see this a lot of companies, you know. So we look at a ton of companies and we've seen two different buckets. So. One bucket is hey we dramatically increase productivity for a person or a team. We see this in like recruiting but we couldn't do 100% of the job so we could do the phone screen but we couldn't obviously you know show the candidate around the office or we could do the phone screen and we could like answer all the questions about the company and we could even do the like comp negotiation but we couldn't do the onboarding. Yeah. The other style of company which we see, which is maybe a decagon right or a happy robot, is hey we did 百 分 之 1 0 0 of a job like customer support. You know the customer called in, they had a question, we hopefully resolved their query and then that is it. And that is 百 分 之 1 0 0 automated. I would say that that 2 nd group where you have 百 分 之 1 0 0 automation of a job function is really rare. Almost every ai product ai native x or y we see is able to provide dramatic lift, but it.
speaker 1 [00:27:58-00:27:59]: And the last 10% is still these humans.
speaker 2 [00:27:59-00:28:27]: Yeah, it's still it's today anyway. It's still humans that do that stuff. And it's interesting too, because the buyer looks at that as software, as expensive software. Whereas in the case of something like a happy robot, ducking on Sierra, they look at it as like cheap labor. So I do think there's a different buyer mindset, but because there's been this difficulty of getting to 100% automation, I think a lot of the efficiency gain shows up in just a different way. Probably not less jobs. Maybe we get like the European style four-day work week. Maybe companies got like twice as productive. I have no idea.
speaker 1 [00:28:28-00:28:39]: Yeah. But but you don't think that like a, I I feel like there's gonna be a. Transition from like these like ten thousand plus people companies laying a lot of people off to hopefully like more smaller companies like solopreneurs and stuff like that.
speaker 2 [00:28:40-00:29:06]: I think yes, I think that the the sort of shape of the economy is gonna change, yeah, like the amount of concentration, but I just don't think there's gonna be less jobs. I think human ambition has no ceiling, that's true, and human desire has no ceiling. And just read any mildly interesting science fiction book, like there's no way this is the peak expression of all the stuff that we want and we need and we're gonna convince ourselves and you know all the new things that you read about every day is these luxuries peptides and. you know everybody is going to have all of that stuff and want even more.
speaker 1 [00:29:07-00:29:19]: You know, dude, I saw Rico tweeted about this. like someone tweeted that like um the the job market is so bad that I can only pursue my dreams now or something like. So like it it's like you know, it's like, yeah, so maybe you lost your job, but like now you have to do your own thing.
speaker 2 [00:29:19-00:29:22]: yeah one 100 percent and have a shot at actually achieving it. You know yeah yeah.
speaker 1 [00:29:23-00:29:23]: yeah. cool.
speaker 2 [00:29:23-00:29:26]: well, awesome man maybe that's a good positive note to end on.
speaker 1 [00:29:26-00:29:29]: yeah, it's good note. yeah. cool, good thing you do. Thankseter, thanks having.