0:00
All right, Andrew Cortina. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. How's it going, man? Pretty good. Cool.
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0:04
Uh so, you are the founder or co-founder of both Venmo and Finn, but you're also a blogger. Yeah.
0:11
And I wanted to talk to you about a couple of your essays, uh specifically around work, human dignity.
0:19
There's one called the beautiful struggle, the beautiful game, and you end it with, "As we give more and more work to software and machines, I think it's worth asking why we've historically regarded work as fundamental to human dignity, and whether or not it's still useful to do so."
0:36
So, I found this interesting because you wrote this after selling Venmo. Mhm.
0:42
And then you went and started another company.
0:46
I assume like you could have taken some time off and not worked.
0:49
Why do you go back to work?
0:52
Yeah, I think it's uh I think it's very difficult to change your own idea of dignity.
1:03
Um and I don't necessarily even think it's something that you come up with yourself.
1:08
Like I've thought a lot about this, and when I was younger, I kind of thought I had an idea of like, okay, well, like what is the good, you know, what does it mean to like be a good person, and just either that was some like objective truth, or it was like something I had like come up with myself.
1:31
And I think the older I've gotten and the more fortunate I've been in life, the more I kind of recognize that a lot of things that I have are not necessarily things like I have um accomplished myself, but things I've received from like teachers or like reading great books from, you know, the past 2,000 years of Western civilization, or um the culture that I grew up in, the country that I grew up in.
2:00
There's like all these things that, you know, you think you can take credit for like a work ethic, right?
2:07
Like that seems like one of the most, you know, free will determine things like a strong work ethic, but you probably learn that from some role model. And I don't know.
2:21
So anyway, to to get back to that question, I think I've sort of come to think more and more about, okay, like where does my own conception of dignity come from? Mhm.
2:33
Why does that Why would that involve like working and like making things or doing things for other people?
2:40
Um and I feel like a little bit less ownership of it.
2:41
Um and I guess where I was going with that essay was like, okay, why would a culture connect dignity with the idea of work?
2:53
And it's I just think it's been a useful thing to do.
2:55
If you live in a very uncertain world where there's things like, you know, a horde of locusts can take out the crops for the year and then there's famine, right? Like you want Yeah.
3:05
to incentivize people to be productive and create a surplus so you can kind of like endure those natural catastrophes.
3:14
Um And for me, I like growing up in the United States, I think there's there's a lot of connection between like work and entrepreneurship and dignity and um kind of like doing service for others in your country kind of gets back to this like Protestant work ethic stuff.
3:32
Um and even though I think I can recognize like all these sort of like cultural influences on my own conception of dignity, it's really hard to, I think, convince yourself of something otherwise cuz you know it's all a ruse and like even I don't know.
3:52
On the one hand you could say it should make it easier to like just change your mind about something. Yeah.
3:57
But it like if it's if it's been inside of you for so long it can just feel like I don't know like like I I I just I don't want to go like sit around and do heroin all day.
4:07
Like I'm sure that would be like really fun and I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I it would be very tough for me to like not feel bad about that even though I don't think it's a bad thing for somebody to do.
4:22
And I I think it's like just as dignified as working on, you know, an important problem. Um But I don't know.
4:30
This This stuff gets ingrained pretty deeply.
4:32
I think it's hard to change for somebody especially once they're older.
4:35
Like maybe it can change across generations, but I think it takes time.
4:40
Well, you did describe I forget I think it was in that maybe it was in that essay before.
4:45
Um these kind of like flow state moments you've had outside of work.
4:47
You know, you were talking about moving this like bench to the roof of a house.
4:51
And I thought that was great by the way.
4:53
That was like a serious contraption. That was so fun. Yeah. And like that's a thing.
4:58
I mean, I think that's actually maybe even more of a default mode in the Bay Area where you see people like entering in this state of like vaguely working and then they just like do projects. Right?
5:09
And but yet did that compel you like maybe working with your hands and like jumping from one of those one to the next?
5:18
Um Cuz I whenever whenever I'm going through these essays I'm like are these just thought experiments or do you just take a month or two and like actually become a Buddhist and see what happens to you? Yeah.
5:33
Um no, I've never like there's I have a love-hate relationship with Buddhism.
5:37
I've never like done it myself, but it's very much like my American point of view where it's like uh I had this thought once like you know, Buddhists are not going to get us off this planet when the sun burns out.
5:49
Like it's a very from my sort of you know, 50,000-ft view of it, it seems like a very like internal focused, life is struggling, how do I cope with this and like pacify my um you know, struggle with the futility of existence and all the pain and suffering that exist in life.
6:16
But I don't see a lot in that sort of philosophy that would motivate a civilization to like do large projects that help lots of people.
6:27
Um and I think that's one of the cool things about um American culture is like I do see that and like that's kind of what I like about the idea of like dignified work is that you know, it it is a motive to inspire the people who have been a little bit more fortunate to do things that might help people that are less fortunate. And I think that's cool.
6:52
But it sort of presupposes this world where that was necessary.
6:58
And as that becomes less necessary and there's more abundance and we're we're less uh sort of resource constrained, that connection between dignity and like doing useful work maybe becomes dangerous and like if you know, maybe not everyone has to be productive, maybe not everyone has the opportunity to be productive.
7:22
And then are those people sort of like locked out of ever having a dignified life just because we had this useful mechanism for motivating people in the past?
7:30
It's just a weird situation.
7:30
Uh and like I don't know.
7:34
Something I think about a lot.
7:34
So then do you do you not buy the argument that humans are very, very good at creating jobs?
7:40
When we when we were talking last week, I was talking to you about people playing truck driving simulator on Twitch and then making money by having fans like donate to their truck driving simulator talents.
7:57
You don't think that's realistic for the future?
8:00
I think humans are very good at creating jobs.
8:02
That is I think that's like an attention economy thing, right?
8:08
Like watching other people drive trucks.
8:10
And my guess is it would follow power law where like a vast majority of people would watch a few people doing it.
8:19
I think most things follow a power law.
8:22
Um and so with respect to like I don't know.
8:27
Like like you the lot of arguments that people make are are when we get to the point where nobody has to work anymore, everyone will just do art. I'm not sure.
8:36
Like there it depends on why you're doing art.
8:38
One of the things I like about like creating things is sharing them with other people. Mhm.
8:44
And it's pretty depressing when you're like putting like months of work into something and you put it out there and then nobody enjoys it. Right.
8:52
Um so I'm not sure that's the answer to like what will people do when they don't have to like do manual labor anymore. Um but I I don't know.
9:02
I think we're probably a long way from the point where nobody has to work anymore. Yeah.
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should be thinking about it.
9:11
We should be thinking about it.
9:11
That was that was how you ended the other essay when you said like what would be the last human job? Gratitude. And you That's a yeah.
9:18
still resonates with you. Yeah.
9:20
Yeah, I like I saw that on the on the prep materials.
9:21
I was like, oh, that yeah.
9:23
That I still like that one.
9:23
It's always good when you look back on something you wrote a long time ago and you still like it. Yeah.
9:28
Cuz it doesn't happen that often. Yeah. Yeah. Hm. All right.
9:33
So, I'm I'm I'm curious about this that this failure mode that you're talking about in the beautiful struggle.
9:42
What I'll I'll read the post and then you can you can describe it.
9:47
You might argue that we've already that we're already in a sort of failure mode where our ability to assign dignity to arbitrary work and motivate people to work [ __ ] jobs is more efficient than our ability to allocate labor towards industry that would have greater social benefit like education, health care, food, etc.
10:03
If we're already in this failure mode, it's kind of the worst of all worlds because not only are we assigning meaning to work that doesn't need to be done, but also we could be redeploying the labor towards efforts that are actually important today.
10:15
Do you think we're there? Yeah.
10:19
Uh I mean I think about this a lot when I go to a supermarket.
10:25
Um And I guess I don't know when you I got into the habit of like going to just like you know like a bodega in New York for a long time. Mhm.
10:40
If I needed toothpaste or something.
10:43
And I remember I had this experience where it was the first time in years I had gone to like a big supermarket to get toothpaste.
10:51
And there was like a whole [ __ ] aisle of toothpaste.
10:53
I I just was like and I remember I was like vividly remember that I was like writing about this and like trying to like make this into a thing and I haven't done yet, but I'll probably still use it.
11:02
It was like I walked into the supermarket and like I had made several attempts to get Oh, I needed a toothbrush. Okay.
11:11
And I made several attempts to like get toothbrushes where like I saw some place on Valencia Street, but then I saw some people like in there.
11:16
I was like I can't be near them right now.
11:19
Like And then I was like brushing my teeth with my finger and toothpaste for like a couple days.
11:26
And then it was like this Saturday.
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I was like, all right, I'm going to do it.
11:28
I'm going to get my toothbrush today.
11:30
And I walked into this Safeway and Bruce Springsteen's Everybody Has a Hungry Heart was on the radio.
11:38
And I went and I asked somebody like, "Where is the tooth- brush aisle?"
11:44
And it's like this massive store and I had to like navigate there.
11:46
And I get to the aisle and it's just like a wall of toothbrushes and I wanted like just a regular, you know, cheap $1 toothbrush.
11:58
And I was standing there for like 5 minutes like trying to find a cheap shitty toothbrush.
12:01
And then I just was like, "How have I Like I'm never going to get this 5 minutes back.
12:07
Like this is the worst possible thing ever."
12:10
And just like look at all the garbage in front of me like and think about all like the time and like the people that thought about, you know, this toothbrush versus that toothbrush and all the effort that went into like that and marketing that stuff and, you know, somebody then went and stocked all this stuff and like made a decision that this is what should be on the shelf in this store and this is how many toothbrushes they have.
12:35
And I was just like, "Oh my god, this is like so wasteful.
12:39
Like how Like they just wasted like 5 minutes of my time, which I'm pissed off about, but like the entire sort of line of production and marketing and distribution that went into like making that moment happen when just a total waste.
12:53
Um And then just like if you if you think about the things that you actually need to survive and the things that you that you value kind of at the end of the day or like when you're reflecting on things, Right.
13:08
it's such a small piece of commerce that's happening right now and there's just so much garbage put out there because it's like easy to sell, um I think. Yeah.
13:21
Well, I think there's what it's both easy to sell and then people like games, right?
13:25
So, you're entering into this company and this market where you're like, "Oh, I can I can do better than that guy."
13:30
Without stepping back and thinking, do we really need this, you know, toothbrush with like a thousand bristles instead of 900? Yeah.
13:40
I mean, this is the kind of my thought about the singularity is that it already happened and money is the algorithm that is already controlling all of the people and telling them what to do.
13:55
Uh the machines have already taken over. I think.
14:00
Uh literally from the beginning of money?
14:03
Or do you think when money was digitized?
14:04
for people and that's when we cede control to the machines. Dang.
14:10
Yeah, I thought Uh that's so interesting.
14:12
I thought it it was go it was coming through our phones and because we're getting used to intermediating between these like pretty bad devices, it's going to be so easy for us to just have the full integration happen.
14:25
As soon as you're interacting with like AI podcast guest AI Did you see the Chinese AI newscaster? No.
14:31
It was on Hacker News the other day. It was great.
14:33
I mean, it's like completely digital newscaster. Oh.
14:38
Um but that's an interesting thought.
14:41
Yeah, is is that like a Venmo thing? Hm?
14:43
Money and dopamine cuz that's the one that your phone has access to.
14:48
Is that like an internal secret Venmo slogan? Money and dopamine? No, no.
14:52
Money is the API for humans. Uh no.
14:57
No, that wasn't uh Actually, we wanted to kind of like humanize the money uh and make it less about the the dollars and cents and more.
15:07
That's why the the note is like such a focal point of Venmo's.
15:09
Like, what is the thing that you're doing?
15:12
What is the moment that you're sharing with somebody else? Yeah.
15:15
Um and get you thinking about that and not about the money.
15:18
And the money is just hopefully in the background. Hm.
15:22
So, if the if this world, like the commercial world is overwhelming to you or just whatever too much, do you practice some kind of stoicism?
15:35
You have You have nothing in your apartment. What does it look like?
15:37
No, I mean I have So my girlfriend has a bed.
15:42
I would have a just a mattress on the floor.
15:43
But then I'll have like um like stuff that I use.
15:48
Like I have a couple of good knives for like cutting vegetables, right?
15:52
And like cutting board or like good pots and pans.
15:58
Um but then I don't have like tons of other [ __ ] And like I'll try to like if I'm if I'm not wearing clothes, I'll try to get rid of them. Um so I don't know.
16:08
In on on the one hand, I don't have tons of stuff, but then like for the stuff that I know I'm going to use a lot, I like it to be something good. Mhm.
16:18
Um but I don't really have a I don't know.
16:23
I I remember this I had this professor in college, this guy John Ricchetti, and he would I was studying uh Shakespeare in London, and he was like the professor from my school that was also like abroad and like I was studying abroad, he was teaching abroad.
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And so he would like do stuff with us.
16:40
And he had us over for Thanksgiving dinner.
16:42
And he would always be taking us to plays and stuff.
16:45
And I remember one time he told me that uh as he was just we're like, you know, drinking a glass of wine or something.
16:52
He was like, "You know, when I when I die, I want them to write on my gravestone, he always lived behind his means."
16:59
And I was like, that's just I just I really respect that sentiment. So like, I don't know.
17:07
Uh I don't love having tons of stuff, but I also have no problem with that kind of like extravagance in like form of expression.
17:15
Yeah, I mean, if if that satisfies you and can keep you going year after year, Yeah. I don't I don't know.
17:20
I don't see it happen very often, but Yeah.
17:24
I don't think it I know, for those people I like it that was more like the kind of like host vibe, you know, I think that he had.
17:30
It wasn't like he was necessarily buying like tons of objects.
17:36
It was like spending money to like entertain or something. Right.
17:41
Well, that that more falls in line with like spend money on experiences. Yeah.
17:47
Uh but which has again become contentious of like these color factory type things where people are like, "Oh my god, spend money on artificial manufactured experience for vanity." Yeah.
18:02
I mean, that's also just depressingly commercial or just like travel. I don't know.
18:07
Like I I was in I went to uh Cambodia, I think, a couple of years ago.
18:16
You think you're in Cambodia?
18:18
I think it was It was some place like But that's the point.
18:19
It was like the market, you know, the street market there looked exactly like the street market in Mexico City and it was just like Yeah.
18:27
This the entire time you're there was like you in this relationship to everyone else there as the tourist.
18:35
And everything was designed to like extract money from you either in the form of like goods or experiences and like tours and stuff.
18:43
I'm just to this point now where I'd like so much rather go like explore YouTube than like be subjected to that kind of like commercial tourism machine.
18:53
Well, average input, average output. Yeah.
18:57
You know, you can I'm sure I've never been to Cambodia, but uh I'm sure if you go off the beaten path, you can have that experience.
19:02
And you can have that experience if you just, you know, talk to someone instead of trying to buy t-shirts, right? Yeah.
19:09
But it's very the thing it's hard to actually talk to someone there and escape that, you know, you as tourist construct.
19:21
My the thing that's changed for me in the past, I don't know, 5 years is I've gotten really into bike touring. Oh, that's cool. Bike touring's cool.
19:29
First of all, cuz anyone can do it. It's not hard.
19:31
Like, you can just start with like 10 miles a day, stay in hotels.
19:37
But, second is that it makes you interesting everyone around the world, which I found to be super cool.
19:44
Yeah, that's really cool.
19:45
And and you're the least interesting in the places where you like in in in basically Europe, right?
19:49
Like, in like the most traditional touristy places.
19:53
So, you're like, "Ah, I don't really."
19:55
Like, the first of all, there's infrastructure to explore all that stuff, but it's also like, "Oh, I don't even need to go there now.
19:59
Instead, I can go to Vietnam and ride bikes around there." That's cool.
20:05
Which point, people people love you.
20:07
Yeah, that I I like that. I love biking. It's really fun. Yeah. Yeah.
20:11
So, I mean, I could see a world, you know, I I spent like 5 months in a row bike touring.
20:15
I didn't want to do it forever. Yeah.
20:18
But, that was that point where I was like, "Oh, I am pulled back to work."
20:23
Whether that's like constant work for this, you know, this company or this like long-term project, I have no idea.
20:28
But, like, I want to do something.
20:31
But, why Yeah, why do something, you know?
20:33
Like, why like is that natural or is that just because, you know, of all the things that you've read? Right?
20:39
Like, why do we want to do something? Yeah, I don't know.
20:43
It's uh I I was able to scratch the itch of like physical exertion day after day while bike touring.
20:54
Um after a while, I stopped doing, you know, a new city every night cuz you spend so much time thinking about logistics, which is really boring and tiring.
21:04
Um but even so, I think I just came to the conclusion that like the person that I wanted to be was not an adventure blogger. Yeah. Yeah.
21:13
But if that's what you want to do, it's super cool. Yeah.
21:16
But yeah, I mean I couldn't come to an answer of why I do something like I guess without infinite money.
21:20
I was like, "Okay, I need to do something." Yeah.
21:24
I mean that's a good but Yeah.
21:26
for now, but maybe it won't be in the future. Yeah.
21:29
Yeah, I mean it's definitely a question mark. Yeah.
21:31
Do you Do you have visions of like, you know, assuming you don't work on Fin forever, your post-Fin life?
21:40
Um probably won't be a corporation.
21:41
Um I mean it's you know, what's cool about what we're working on is it's really hard and interesting.
21:55
Um which means because of the hard problem and there's like financial incentive, you get to work with a bunch of other really smart people, which is cool.
22:03
Um but you know, like having to wake up to an alarm every day and like be There's a huge cost to like coordination with a bunch of other people. Mhm.
22:16
Um like everyone has to be awake at roughly the same time. Um I don't know that.
22:23
It's just like do I want to do that? I don't know.
22:25
I would kind of want to like is real.
22:28
Well, but the thing is it's not like the alarm is like kind of a time thing, but Um it's so hard to get into like a creative mode where you can like you like it I forget it takes like hours to get to the point where you can like Mhm.
22:47
be like productive creatively.
22:51
And so then any sort of like routine and scheduling can just really disrupt that.
22:58
Um like if the muse is speaking, you want to be able to like write down Yeah.
23:05
what the muse is saying and be like available to that.
23:07
Um which when you're like coordinating like huge chunks of your day around other people's time it can be difficult. So.
23:17
Um but then on the other hand like the idea of like just you know, solo you know, writing all the time.
23:24
That seems kind of lonely. So I don't know. It's a tough Yeah.
23:29
I think it cuts both ways.
23:31
But I know so many people that are like, "Oh dude, if I just like quit this job, then I can do my thing."
23:37
And then they quit their job and they don't Yeah, and then it's hard it's hard really hard to like do something.
23:44
Yeah, I mean you got to be super disciplined either way.
23:45
Like that's it I'm sure there's someone who's like just randomly is like, "Well, there's a movie idea."
23:51
And it immediately becomes super successful.
23:54
But most people not so much.
23:57
Um so so this other essay where you talk about uh technological determinism, uh The Emperor Has No Clothes, There Is No Santa Claus, and Nothing Is Rocket Science.
24:07
This was a lecture at Cal. Yeah. Right.
24:10
And uh I found it really interesting cuz it kind of ends up dovetailing with a lot of the ideas that you talk about in the context of like, "Okay, maybe in a future we will not have to work.
24:24
But as it currently stands, I'm working, you're working, you're looking for jobs, whatever."
24:30
This is a lecture to college undergrad college kids. Right?
24:34
In a class where like all the other lectures are by business people. About what?
24:40
Like starting companies and stuff?
24:43
Yeah, the Silicon Valley branch thing. Okay, got you. Yeah.
24:48
Um And I thought you started it out in like in a very honest way where you said I wasn't there, but I just read the these this is a right? Yeah. Yeah.
24:56
Um You say, "I want to preface this talk by warning you that it's quite possible you'll interpret you will interpret much of this talk as cynicism.
25:03
It is not my intention to be cynical.
25:05
My goal is to treat you with respect by speaking to you honestly without any grand illusions."
25:12
And then you go off, right?
25:12
Um Uh paragraph that jumped out to me is you said, "None of the companies trying to convince you to work for them will mention technological determinism.
25:24
They'll confirm what your what your parents and teachers told you that your work and contribution will be totally unique and significant."
25:30
Yeah, that's a that's a I mean that's a It's kind of a shitty thing to hear as a college student, I think.
25:36
I remember like a a similar thing I heard from my college professor like I was having coffee with right after I graduated and she said to me like, "I remember I was like about your age when I realized that I didn't have time in life to do all the things I wanted to do."
25:51
And I was just like, Uh I I like the idea of like, you know, telling somebody something honest like that when they're younger.
25:59
Um But the I I I don't know.
26:05
The The kind of thing I was getting at with a lot of this was I've had a ton of fun working on hard problems with smart people.
26:18
Um But I think I see a lot of companies and like I'll go visit college campuses a lot to do recruiting Mhm.
26:30
and kind of look at like I'll look at other companies like engineering blogs and just like or like I'll hear, you know, advertisements on like a podcast by some engineering company.
26:43
And when I graduated from college and I went to like Penn where, you know, Wharton is a big part of the culture there and so it's like a very it's basically a vocational school and that infects the entire rest of you know, every other program at Penn.
27:00
know, every other program at Penn. It's like everybody's very focused on business class you have to take no, I mean but it's just the vibe of Penn it's like very focused on so like everybody's like you know, what internship am I getting or whatever and when I graduated from school 2005 pretty much everyone that
27:26
did a good job in high school get into a good school the next like step that they were told to do was to go get a job on Wall Street at an investment bank or at a consulting company like a top four consulting company and that was just like the track and then you kind of like get married and have kids and you have a stable life now I think that
27:52
those type of people who follow the track that was put in front of them go to good jobs here in Silicon Valley at technology corporations um but and I think that's fine like it if your goal is like if if what you value is um providing sustenance or like you know, a stable home environment for like kids or for other people that depend on you probably
28:21
a great way to do that um but my problem with the way that Silicon Valley does it is they they've always had this like Wall Street is the bad guys they're all about making money Silicon Valley is about you know, building the future and you know, like achieving like the American dream and like just being doing no evil and it's really like I don't know. Like
28:49
Like maybe some people get that out of it, but I have a problem with you like selling that to other people and telling them that you're going to be their source of meaning and you're going to enable them to like be impactful in the world.
29:06
Um I kind of like like like there's a certain honesty to like the Wall Street.
29:10
Like come here work hard, make a lot of money. Yeah. Like okay. Yeah.
29:17
Like that's the deal and these technology companies don't really frame it like that and they just like there's a lot of great companies there and they're building things that like are making the world better in a lot of ways, but I just think they oversell this uh the feel good about yourself thing. Right.
29:35
When they probably don't even have to. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.
29:38
I like on one hand I do think that technology usually is a good thing and like many of these companies are working on great stuff and they're also giving jobs to people that are you know, great solid income. Yeah.
29:53
Uh and I have I have no beef with someone who's like, "Hey, I'm just going to go work at whatever X company, make this money, you know, I'm like providing for a family or parents or or or just you know, myself." Which is fine.
30:04
And then like the thing that's been kind of irking me lately is like financial independence being used as this like meta game that gets uh like kind of thrown into the mix with young people many of whom don't really have to earn $300,000 a year.
30:25
Like they come maybe they come from a family whatever that's like they can support them and it just makes me sad because I'm like, "Oh, you're kind of getting played with this game and because you're getting like by default this game is like a multi-year game that will encompass like your 20s you might not ever do anything. Yeah. And that makes me sad. But Yeah.
30:48
I I There you know, there's a lot of time after your 20s to do stuff.
30:53
Uh Yeah, I totally, but I I just like speaking Obviously, people do things over the course of their entire lives, but I look around at my friends and like Yeah.
31:02
You have kids, and it's it's very easy, and I don't have kids, so it's hard for me to say, but like it's very easy, it seems, to make that your whole thing. Yeah.
31:11
Which is I guess also fine.
31:13
Yeah, I mean, that's a I I I I just I I think it's a fine decision if people kind of go into it with open eyes and like fully understand it.
31:23
I feel that I just feel like there's like a little bit too much marketing of it in a certain direction that makes me uncomfortable. Yeah. Hm.
31:31
You You said at a point I mean, you were quoting some of the uh the advertisements, so like the words were craft, built for everyone, do the I'm just laughing.
31:41
Do the most meaningful work of your career. I was like, maybe.
31:44
Um But the the line that jumped out afterwards that I really liked uh is when you said, "I recognize that the meditative aspect of craft is an excellent way to cope with meaninglessness." Yeah. Uh which yeah.
31:59
Yeah, I mean, that's a It is a It's very meditative to like like One of the things that's awesome about writing software is you can just like go into this, you know, state where you're just you you spend 10 hours, and you're like, "Whoa, that was so fun."
32:16
It's like playing a video game, right?
32:18
Or I mean, I think I'm not like a great drawer, but like I've done some drawing.
32:25
Like when you're like just, you know, drawing that cup of water right there, and like looking at all the different like shadows and contours and just focused on that, you kind of throw out all this uh verbal, analytical Mhm.
32:42
parts of your brain and that is probably the type of stuff that leads you to existential despair.
32:51
It can be nice to escape that for a while and I think like craft has that sort of, you know, like cooking is like that or, you know, writing software is like that, working with your hands I think is like that.
33:01
Um doing Excel I think is like that.
33:04
Like there's a lot of things that are like that where you can kind of like just focus in, go into that, you know, all this all the everything else dims and you're just like in the zone. Yeah.
33:19
Um and it's a good escape from a lot of other things, I think.
33:24
It's also a helpful way to well, it's an easy way to critique other people without getting to the core of the thing. It's a I used to do it. I mean, I still do it.
33:34
Uh so, one of my buddies like I'm a craftsman Well, that's and then you critique everyone who's not a craftsman.
33:41
Well, that's one that I've definitely heard.
33:42
Another one is just critiquing someone else's style without getting to the core of the thing.
33:47
Uh another one is saying like, "Oh, you didn't do this well and I would have done it really well."
33:52
without recognizing that you didn't you didn't do it at all and this person is accomplishing stuff. Yeah.
34:00
And I think that is not it's not healthy.
34:02
But then on the other hand, some people clearly like all these things are dichotomies, right? Yeah.
34:07
Yeah, it is it is I don't know. It's tough.
34:11
There's a lot of garbage out there, but there's a lot of people trying their best. I don't know.
34:17
Yeah, I mean, at some point in one of the essays you mentioned like it's possible that like VR would be a suitable life for a for people.
34:22
Maybe not for you right now, but at some point who knows?
34:28
Yeah, I mean, my R is pretty good right now as what to say. So. Yeah, yeah. But, wait.
34:32
Why is the R better than the VR? I don't know.
34:35
That seems kind of random.
34:37
It's all just by the time you're conscious of it, it's all information anyway.
34:40
So, um theoretically, you could have a VR that Yeah.
34:47
is just as good as reality. Oh, yeah.
34:49
I mean, VR plus some kind of like chemical combination, I could absolutely see being better than real life. Yeah. For for almost everyone. Yeah. If not everyone.
35:02
I could like be a professional basketball player in VR.
35:03
Never going to happen Oh, no, totally. Yeah. Uh You can be good.
35:09
Yeah, I mean, it's so if you could somehow slip into the like really feel like you're LeBron James.
35:15
I've never dunked a basketball in my entire life. probably be pretty sick. It would be awesome.
35:19
Like, I love being in a stadium with 50,000 people like cheering you on.
35:22
I I could be down with that. That sounds awesome. Yeah.
35:26
But, again, you're left with the same as like, "Okay, like after I've consumed every level of the VR game." Yeah. Maybe. Maybe it's just life.
35:35
There's this good um Alan Watts thing I heard where he was talking about being omnipotent and living forever.
35:50
And he was like, "You know, you would and omniscient."
35:52
And he was like, "Yeah, you would you know, you would That'd be cool for a while, but then you'd probably get bored and you start doing these simulations where you're like, "Okay, like I'm going to make this game where I like limit my omnipotence in some way and you know, just it'll make it a little bit more fun."
36:15
And then, you kind of get bored of that game and you realize like, "Well, like I always know that at the like after the game is over, I'm omnipotent and omniscient and I live forever.
36:26
And so, it like lowers the stakes a little bit.
36:28
And so, you like then you start taking away uh the fact that you know it's a game.
36:37
You like return to this state of uh the struggle of uh limited finite uh life.
36:48
And it was just like he he kind of like got there from of course that's what you would do if you live forever and we're omnipotent. Right. Exactly this.
36:56
It traps it I mean, do you ever uh do you ever lucid dream? Mm, not really.
37:02
I have the thing where I become conscious but can't move when right before you wake up. Which I don't like. Yeah, no.
37:09
I would I wish I lucid dreamed instead.
37:13
I haven't had your experience, but I've definitely lucid dreamed quite a bit.
37:16
And my problem is exactly what you're describing.
37:18
Usually what happens is something's happening and then I predict what will happen in the dream and then it happens.
37:25
And then it just happens over and over and over again until you realize you're in complete control of the dream and then you wake up. Yeah. And that's it. Yeah.
37:34
Just like you I rapidly ruin the entire thing. Yeah.
37:38
Um and you could you uh just so people understand, we did a podcast with um with Tim Urban at Wait But Why? Mm. Uh cool. He's cool, yeah.
37:46
And he talks about uh this technological determinism as the uh the human colossus.
37:52
It's basically the same concept. Yeah.
37:56
He's like, this ball is rolling, this product will be made. Yeah.
37:59
You even say if Venmo if not Venmo, something else Yeah. For sure. in that same space.
38:06
Um how do you define technological determinism?
38:10
Yeah, I mean, the way I talked about it in that talk was like a little bit I was talking more about a corollary.
38:16
Like technological determinism I think is just a society is a product of technology or something.
38:21
But the kind of thing that I think about a lot um as a corollary of that is that um kind of I think like evolution is like this and like technology is like this where things that are efficient and productive will eventually be created out of necessity because you know, they make life more successful.
38:50
Um but if you kind of like follow that to its end, you get into this place where it's like, "Okay, well, like if everything useful will necessarily be invented by somebody out of out of need, like like why should I work on anything, right?
39:06
Like if any any possible useful thing I could come up with somebody else is going to come up with because it's useful.
39:12
So, like Why do I it's not that unique or interesting.
39:17
Like, so maybe I should just do like all the crazy useless stuff in order to try to rescue my free will, basically.
39:25
Um now, the problem with that is if everybody thought that nothing useful would ever get done.
39:31
Um so, it kind of like presupposes that it's a like you know only a few people realize that, I guess. But, I don't know.
39:41
That's kind of how I think about technological determinism.
39:45
It's this idea that you have that like yeah, useful stuff will be built.
39:48
Technology is moving forward at this pace.
39:49
It's kind of like an unstoppable force. Yeah.
39:52
And as much as like people you know, yearn for the good old days or the you know, Portland life of you know, making your own cottage cheese or whatever.
40:05
Um you're not going to somebody's going to keep technology moving forward.
40:08
So, it's it's a tough to Yeah. fight against it.
40:12
And you you use a JFK's like moral argument.
40:16
Yeah, that that JFK speech from it was a um he gave that this talk at Rice talking about the space program.
40:28
And he was talking about like why like why are we going to space? Costs a ton of money. Yeah.
40:33
Um he says some awesome stuff in there.
40:34
One he's like, "Why does Rice play Texas?"
40:38
And he's like comparing the space race to a football game, which I think is Right. hilarious.
40:43
Uh like But I I had to step back cuz I was the one that I was like, "I don't know the college football rankings well enough."
40:50
And I was like, "Oh, it's because Texas is amazing and Rice is like okay." Right? That's the argument?
40:55
Well, I I just think it it's Why do anything?
40:58
Why does it one college play another college at all?
40:59
Like why does that even like why is there a football game? Right? Yeah.
41:04
Because it's fun and like competition is interesting. Yeah.
41:07
Um and so like that's kind of like one angle of it.
41:09
Um which is like I think really probably the better argument um or like maybe the more sorry that may be like the more truthful argument.
41:21
He then gives this other argument, which is um if we don't do this uh space exploration thing, somebody else will.
41:31
And right now that somebody else is Russia. Mhm.
41:34
And we don't know their motives.
41:34
And you know, space technology like all other technology it has no morals of its own.
41:40
And so it's sort of like up to the good people the more moral people who like if you're in the US, that's you presumably.
41:52
Uh if you're JFK's audience.
41:55
Um it's up to the good people to like build the powerful technology first so that they can fight back against the bad people who also will eventually build that technology.
42:07
I think that was like a just a really interesting argument.
42:11
Um Um you can justify like a lot of things with that argument and like who's to say that once you build the technology what you'll use it for, but that was a pretty compelling argument, I thought.
42:26
I mean, it's the same one that Open AI is using right now. Yeah. And most AI researchers. Yeah. So.
42:33
Which is I mean, at some point we should talk about what you're currently working on. Yeah. Uh right. So. Yeah. Let's do it.
42:40
So, what's um Finn is within the AI sphere?
42:43
Yeah, we're at so we like to call it AAI, which is artificial artificial intelligence.
42:47
Um when we started the company there was like all this So, Finn it it's a personal assistant service.
42:53
Um and so you can like email us, text us, call us, whatever, send us work like you would send any like you have an assistant.
42:59
Um and when we started there was like all this excitement about like Alexa and Google Home and all these pure software AI natural language processing things, which have very good um uh speech-to-text kind of natural language processing um and are pretty good at understanding like most sentences that you would say to them.
43:24
But they're not really capable of being your full-time assistant. Mhm.
43:28
Um and so our thought was, well, you know, these people are saying like this is going to be, you know, like the AI from 2001 Space Odyssey or like Jarvis from Iron Man.
43:38
We're like, it's nowhere even close to that.
43:42
But we want those things, so why don't we like try to build that today and hack it by having a system where you you interact with it just like that. Mhm.
43:50
But instead of trying to build it with pure software, which if Google can't do, obviously like it's not possible.
43:56
Um uh we'll just have a team of people on the back end.
43:59
Um but do it a little bit more like um Uber, where it's a network of people providing the service they're enabled by technology like Uber not going to be possible without GPS.
44:11
So, there are certain like technological improvements that you can take advantage of to like enable this distributed workforce to provide a new kind of service that wasn't really possible in the past.
44:24
Um and we thought it'd be cool to do that for personal assistance type stuff.
44:28
And just take all these sort of mundane digital chores that you don't want to do yourself, but that you're probably doing right now because there's like okay tools to do them and because there's like okay tools to do them, not many people have assistants anymore and so they're doing them themselves.
44:44
But it's really like not an efficient use of your time if you're some executive or whatever to be like scheduling 5 hours of meetings every week, right?
44:54
Like And like you know, I guess like venture capitalist they, you know, would typically have somebody scheduling their meetings.
45:01
But there's a lot of other um people where they don't have an assistant and they're they're doing stuff like that at work or maybe they're just doing stuff at home like, you know, dealing with service providers and Comcast and like a plumber.
45:17
And if you're spending 3 hours of doing that a week, which is like for a lot of people that they probably are, and you have kids, that's like 3 hours that you're not spending with your kids.
45:27
And if you ask somebody like which one would you rather do, go help your kid with their homework or like play with them for 3 hours or be figuring out something with your health insurance.
45:37
Like clearly people are going to choose spend time with their kids.
45:42
The sort of historical problem is you can't really get an assistant for 3 hours per week.
45:48
It's it's pretty tricky to figure out how to do it.
45:49
I mean, there are there people that tell you you can do that.
45:53
It is pretty hard to do that.
45:53
Um to get somebody good, you typically have to buy in chunks of 40 hours per week.
46:00
Um or just do like tons of work to figure out like vet somebody, find people on Upwork or whatever it is like some remote VA and then if that person disappears you have to do the whole thing again.
46:10
There's just like huge amount of cost involved in like trying to piece me all together.
46:15
Um, so we thought like well okay like why don't we kind of like do all of that work to like find good people, train them, build it so it's like a kind of like consistent and reliable experience, remember all the sort of like nuances and preferences about you so that when turnover and attrition does happen you're shielded from that and like the entity like remembers your preferences around dentist appointments or whatever, right?
46:44
Um, you don't want to have to tell you know if you if you're hiring a new assistant every year because they're turning over it's not really useful to have a that person do your dentist thing cuz you only do that once a year and you have to like retrain them on the entire thing every time.
47:00
Um, so we've kind of taken some uh a a group of people that we have, train them, give them tools for collaboration, knowledge sharing, workflow management, process management and built this system where like everything that any one of them learns about you or about the world like how to book Hamilton tickets or like how to do one medical, right?
47:21
And like encode that in our system um, and we can actually be a lot more efficient at than a single person on their own could be and we can give it to you in a much more incremental way where you don't have to buy in blocks of 40 hours. Got it.
47:36
And so there are many questions around when Finn So Ryan Hoover from Product Hunt asks when if ever will Finn task completion be 100% AI driven?
47:49
Yeah, I mean what if the day that happens nobody has to work anymore, right?
47:54
Cuz if if Finn is a a box open-ended system, right?
47:56
Like we will do any work that you send us, right?
47:58
So, the day that Fin can do all work, no human has to work again.
48:03
And then we're all going to the beach and drink piña coladas, and we're at the beach.
48:08
beginning of the podcast. Yeah. Um that'll be great.
48:11
Uh So, our sort of bet is while there is any human work to be done, let's build the system that is the best at doing human work.
48:25
And we'll use software to give our humans leverage and hopefully make them far more productive than somebody who's not part of our network or doesn't have access to like our tools and knowledge base.
48:38
Um and, you know, for for the decades to come while humans still have to work, we want to be the best place to do all that work.
48:48
Are all these people in the Bay, or are they all over the world? No, no.
48:50
Uh they're Most of our people over here now are in Phoenix. Oh, okay. Yeah. Hm.
48:56
What What's been the the hardest part in the biggest difference between starting Fin and first Venmo?
49:02
Um I mean, with Venmo, it was always really difficult to raise money.
49:11
Cuz it was a very expensive business to run, and it had to be like a huge like Venmo's just now starting to like start to monetize. Yeah.
49:20
Um with and and then the method for that is to let enable all these consumers to pay businesses, cuz Venmo doesn't make money when you pay your friends back.
49:27
Um and so that was like a very very like long-term bet on a certain way to make money.
49:37
And because we were never making any money and had to deal with all these like SEC laws and things like that, it was always like very difficult to raise money, and we had to like use money for all these things that were not really like making the product better.
49:53
So, that was like a kind of thing that made Vemo hard.
49:54
And also it was like the first kind of like company of any size that I worked on.
49:58
So, like first time managing people.
50:00
So, there were lots of challenges like that.
50:04
Um with Fin on the other hand, um I like have a little bit more experience managing people.
50:11
So, that part like is somewhat easier or you know, at least I have like some experience and knowledge of doing it in the past.
50:19
Um and we have a business model.
50:23
Um We're both like kind of like previous entrepreneurs and had like social capital.
50:28
So, that made it a little bit easier to raise money.
50:31
And then the hard the hardest thing about Fin is just complexity.
50:33
It's like the exact opposite of any of like the perfect YC company.
50:40
Whereas like the YC company you pick one thing and or like any you know, like a Silicon Valley company.
50:46
You pick like one small thing.
50:47
You get really good at doing that thing.
50:50
You get by doing tons and tons of reps on it.
50:51
And then if you get a bunch of people using that, then maybe you kind of like expand outward and like add on like another little thing and then get really good at that.
51:02
With Fin, we're competing with a full-time human assistant.
51:05
And a full-time human assistant will just do whatever you ask them.
51:06
It's not like you hire a human assistant and you say like, "Hey, can you um help me find the time to meet with Sam next week and book me flights to Phoenix." Yeah.
51:19
And then the person says like, "Well, I don't book flights.
51:21
So, you're going to have to do that yourself, but I'll I'll schedule the meeting."
51:24
Like that if we built that, we just wouldn't be competitive with a human assistant.
51:30
So, we kind of took into this, we have to be able to do anything, um which is really hard.
51:36
Um one is just hard to like kind of market and like explain to people what we do cuz it's like it's not like we do one thing. We just do whatever.
51:43
Um the other thing is it's really hard to unders Well, second thing, it's really hard to just build tools that do anything that are like both very general and also like pretty productive and like easy for people to learn.
51:59
So, this it's hard to build the tools for our team that's doing all this work.
52:02
And then probably one of the most challenging things is measurement.
52:03
And we spend a huge amount of time on measurement uh trying to understand things like, okay, who who's doing a good job on our team and who's not? Who needs help? Where do they need help?
52:23
Um, who's good at which specific type of task?
52:26
Where is all the time going?
52:26
Why is this thing, you know, this one type of task greater variance than another type of task in terms of like how long it typically takes someone in our team to do it.
52:38
Um, how do we categorize like different groups of customers and understand like what they would want, like what they would demand.
52:48
We have to also predict for any given uh week of the year, for any given day of the week, for any given hour of the day, how much customer demand is there going to be because we're like stocking labor, basically.
53:00
And if we're under supplied, then people have to wait too long for work to get done.
53:05
If we're over supplied, then we're just like burning money. Yep.
53:10
Um, and then another thing that's really hard to it it it the measurement is just hard because it's a black box system.
53:15
And so, we have a heterogeneous set of uh people doing the work who have very different tenures, uh which is another big thing that like affects how well they do their work.
53:28
Um, different different innate skill sets.
53:30
And then a very heterogeneous set of customers and a very heterogeneous set of types of tasks that we do.
53:38
And so, it can be really hard to like say we released a new thing last week.
53:47
Is it making the system better or worse?
53:49
To try to find an apples-to-apples trend line where you can say like, "Okay, like here is the impact of that thing."
53:54
You have to slice on so many dimensions to try to get to a data set that can tell you if any of the work that you did was actually good or bad.
54:06
Um so it's just really complicated.
54:06
It feels like I don't know, like trying, you know, to do measurement in like macroeconomics where there's like a billion different dimensions and you're like constantly like, "Oh, well, we have to like normalize for this and normalize for that."
54:21
Um How how much is usage correlated with what you market that Finn can do?
54:29
Uh um I think today your demand for Finn is much more a function of you than of our marketing.
54:40
So, to get you to realize that, I it's more a matter of just kind of making sure you know the the basics of the system.
54:49
It's helpful like talk to you about it because it's like very difficult to put in front of you and like it's really helpful like ask questions about like what your needs are and then basically just tell you like we can do all those things.
54:59
But we can't like know a priori what your needs are and then like put those on the page for you. Right.
55:05
Um So, there's a certain sense where like talking to you for a little bit helps us like realize your full potential as a customer.
55:15
But say you're the type of person that needs 5 hours of help per week, we're not going to invent another like 5 hours of work that we can do for you.
55:27
Um like so it's a little bit different than like a media business in that sense where we could probably come up with another 5 hours of like TV that you would be entertained by even if you were only currently spending 5 hours already per week.
55:42
But it's not like as soon as you say Finn will book flights for you, everyone uses Finn to book flights.
55:49
Well, the people that need a flight book, but we're not going to convince somebody that doesn't need a flight to book a flight. Right, of course.
55:55
So, it it's it's very much a function of like each individual customer, like what they'll find interesting or not.
56:03
So, do you do you ever have a moment when you you talked about your Lucas Venmo ads?
56:06
Do you ever have a moment where you're like, I want to do this again.
56:09
I want to do the same thing.
56:09
I want to do it for Finn and like get these ads everywhere.
56:14
I don't like to do like the you know, do a redo like that.
56:17
I mean, the Lucas ads were really these were these Subway ads that we did for Venmo in New York. That was really fun.
56:25
The I don't think we would do something like that.
56:33
Um because that was a the the market for that was a little bit different where it was like every person could use Venmo, you know, when that when those ads went up in New York.
56:43
With Finn, it's like it's not a product for every person right now.
56:46
The thing I liked about Lucas was that it was not really it was like in the place where you would see an ad, but it wasn't actually really an ad.
56:52
It was more of like a non sequitur. Yeah.
56:58
It's like confusing stickers all over the subway.
57:01
Yeah, and so I like the idea and I've done this like with stuff on my website where like, you know, like my about me is like not really an about me.
57:09
It's like partly fictional and like really long and like just not it's you look in like a place where you're expecting to see one thing Yeah.
57:19
and then you see something that doesn't really belong there.
57:21
But your conversion rates, bro. Yeah. Well, yeah. That was yeah.
57:25
Um but I like that and so like there's something about that and thinking about, okay, what would that be for a Finn?
57:29
Um you know, it could be like, you know, be showing up at some conference and like doing some crazy [ __ ] that was like not what we were supposed to be there to do.
57:43
I think that would be fun.
57:45
Um, but it would I'm sure it would be different than like what we what worked for Venmo than what we would do for Finn. Mhm.
57:52
So, uh, Spencer Clark asks, "How did you and your co-founder decide to sell Venmo or why?"
57:59
Uh, well, one it was the options were shut down Venmo forever or sell it.
58:05
Um, so that was like a pretty easy decision.
58:10
Um, the reasons why I mean, what's probably more interesting is to talk about like why was Braintree a good match for Venmo?
58:20
Um, so one, obviously like Bill Ready, who was the CEO of Braintree, only person that kind of like got it and was willing to like fund the vision of Venmo and like build up this consumer base um, for the sake of having a bunch of people who were wired up and comfortable using payments on their phone so that they could eventually pay businesses.
58:42
He was particularly, um, I think amenable to Venmo because Braintree had it was Braintree is another company similar to Stripe where they have they do credit card processing for all these different businesses.
58:56
Um, and the margins on credit card processing are really thin Mhm.
59:02
for somebody like Braintree or like Stripe.
59:04
Um, but for PayPal they're actually awesome because PayPal is basically doing a ton of transactions uh, that come from bank accounts and then charging a credit card uh, processing fee.
59:15
So, instead of making like five basis points, PayPal is making like 2% or something.
59:20
So, it really like gives you many, many more multiples on your margins if you're in that payment processing business.
59:27
And so um, what Bill saw was like, okay, like Venmo could help Braintree go from this like very very very thin margin business to like what's still pretty thin margins by like any standard, but like still many multiples on what they had.
59:39
So that was kind of why he thought it was a good fit and the teams kind of mesh well.
59:46
Um and they were well capitalized and had like a source of revenue and could kind of like balance out all this Venmo that was basically just dumping into users acquisition, wiring up people's bank accounts with the hopes that one day we could somehow convince merchants to accept Venmo as a form of payment.
1:00:03
Uh so it just made a lot of sense one for Venmo to be part of Braintree cuz it was like the sort of like matching halves.
1:00:12
And then the same thing when PayPal acquired Braintree, I think PayPal is one of the few people that could like understand the value of Venmo cuz it's like basically the same exact playbook as PayPal.
1:00:27
Um understand like the long-term investment it takes.
1:00:30
I mean, I'm sure it's it's probably been over like a billion-dollar investment now to like wire up all these bank accounts and subsidize all the peer-to-peer transactions um with the hopes of someday turning on payments to the merchant network.
1:00:45
Which is now finally happening and my guess is we'll probably work out pretty well for PayPal, but like it it you it would be very difficult, I think, for a private financier to kind of accept the billion-dollar dream {question mark}.
1:01:02
Um yeah, so it it just made made sense. Uh Cool. sellout, yeah.
1:01:07
Cuz how how long ago was that? I think 2013.
1:01:12
Yeah, it was a while ago. Yeah. Yeah.
1:01:13
Uh the last thing I want to talk about was that Charlie Kaufman speech. Oh man, it's so good.
1:01:17
Everyone Anyone who's like listening to this should go You should link to that speech.
1:01:23
Charlie Kaufman's incredible.
1:01:25
I'd never heard him speak before.
1:01:27
I think that's like one of the only times he did that. Oh, okay. Yeah. Um Yeah, that was great.
1:01:31
Did you transcribe that on your own?
1:01:33
Just like No, I I think I found either the YouTube transcription and cleaned it up or it might have been on BAFTA's website somewhere. Okay.
1:01:43
But I kind of pasted the transcription on my site cuz I wanted to like add emphasis in certain areas.
1:01:50
Cuz it's long and I thought it might be helpful to have like some highlights in there.
1:01:55
Um but Yeah, I don't know I don't know if you want to like say something about what this speech is or like give people some context but it's really amazing.
1:02:03
Well, so Charlie Kaufman's a screenwriter.
1:02:05
Being John Malkovich and many other movies. Yep.
1:02:09
And um that basically the setup is talking about I mean, I can just I can pull it out right here.
1:02:18
So, he talks for a while and then he goes into this moment of self-reflection on the talk to the audience about his own talk where he says, "What I'm trying to express, what I'd like to express is the notion that by being honest, thoughtful, and aware of the existence of other living beings, a change can begin to happen in how we think of ourselves in the world and and ourselves in the world." So, that was awesome.
1:02:44
Yeah, I mean, there's so much in there that's so good.
1:02:46
It's It's really one of the best things I've come across in many years.
1:02:53
Um It's really inspiring.
1:02:55
He talks a lot about sort of his motives, what he's trying to do in film uh and just making things.
1:03:05
Um And I think he kind of in that it gives context for a lot of stuff you've seen in his films where he's reacting to this uh I'm uh mechanization of human relations um they kind of alienate us from each other and prevent authentic communication and he points to that in a lot of problems that he sees in film with people just like mechanizing and putting out more of the same [ __ ] that's just copying something else and not doing anything new.
1:03:47
Um but I think in a lot of the work that he does you can see he sees that also in our like daily interactions with other people or like in our relationships with even like family and friends and stuff.
1:04:02
It's very easy to just fall into a routine and like just saying the thing that is automatic.
1:04:11
And he gives this part There's this part in that speech where he talks about he's running in his neighborhood and he passes this guy running and the guy and and he's he's running down the hill and this guy is running up a hill and the guy's like, "Oh, sure, it's all it's all downhill that way."
1:04:31
And he laughs and he's like, "Oh, that was a good That was a good one. I like that."
1:04:35
And then he passes the guy again same spot and the guy same exact thing says it.
1:04:40
He's like, "Oh, that's kind of interesting.
1:04:41
I guess maybe like he forgot he said to me another It happens another time same spot He's like, "I guess he just says that every time he sees somebody here and like wasn't really even paying attention to me."
1:04:55
And then he passes him like and he like Charlie Kaufman's going uphill and the other guy's going downhill but he still says, "Oh, sure, it's all downhill that way."
1:05:02
And it's like it has no context or like recognition or acknowledgement of like the state of the actual world.
1:05:09
It's just this automatic thing to say.
1:05:15
Um and I think I don't know, he points it out in it can happen to our work and it can happen to our relationships with other people and um I don't know, I I I found that really poignant.
1:05:28
It was so great and it especially in the context of a type of work that I think most people regard as very creative. Yeah.
1:05:37
He's like he goes into craft in the same way that you talk about it.
1:05:39
He's like, "Oh, I I don't think he says the name of the movie."
1:05:42
But he's like, "I saw this trailer for this movie that's going to come out. It's beautiful.
1:05:44
I'm sure it's going to be perfectly done. Yeah.
1:05:48
But it's just going to be totally mediocre and not really accomplish anything." Yeah.
1:05:53
And so yeah, I I think like the First of all, thanks for posting it.
1:05:55
I had I had not seen it before.
1:05:56
But also, I was just curious about like how you're you're trying to personally apply this idea.
1:06:03
Cuz it's obvious based on all your highlights that you cared about it a lot.
1:06:06
Yeah, I feel I mean I really feel deeply about like there's a lot of important stuff in there.
1:06:10
Um But I I don't I just I don't like the idea uh this is a little bit against the thing I was saying at Berkeley was there's a track that, you know, has been laid out for everybody and just like the certain way of doing things that like you can it's very easy to just like do the automatic next thing without thinking about it and then wake up 50 years later and realize you haven't thought for yourself at all.
1:06:44
Uh not to say that it's necessarily bad to I'm probably like a little bit more generous on this than Charlie Kaufman would be.
1:06:51
I don't think it's necessarily bad to like do something that other people are doing or like that has been done before.
1:06:58
If you decide that that is like the thing that you want to spend time doing or that's going to like facilitate some other thing that you want to do.
1:07:08
What's tragic to me is that there's a lot of people who don't even like understand that they're in this automatic mode and just like following the next thing and like copying the thing that somebody else did or somebody doing the thing that somebody told them to do.
1:07:25
And the idea of like somebody like that you know, waking up 50 years later and being like wow, I didn't want to do any of that or just never realizing and having that thought at all is just sad um So I don't know, I try to spend a lot of time thinking about like, okay, like how do I be intentional?
1:07:43
Like am I doing the thing that I want to do?
1:07:48
Um Am I Is it going to be like different in some way than something else cuz I I do like the idea of trying to do something differently than the way other people would do it.
1:07:56
Um so I think about that a lot but it's kind of a rabbit hole and like you can you can spend a lifetime thinking about that and um realize that it's pretty hard to do and maybe not possible. Yeah.
1:08:11
Yeah, and and you can fall into a new kind of trap which is competitive mindfulness. Yeah. Which I find so funny. Yes.
1:08:19
Uh so I can meditate longer than you can. Yeah. Um all right, dude.
1:08:22
So if someone wants to talk to you online or try out Finn, what should they do?
1:08:27
Uh so try out Finn, we have a code for you know, somebody asked like, when's Finn going to be free?
1:08:31
It's not going to be free but you get a $100 credit if you sign up at finn. com/yc.
1:08:38
So you could just try it out there.
1:08:41
Um and then if you want to find me online, Cortina with a K on Twitter or cortina.
1:08:46
nyc is where I post all my writing. Awesome. Thanks, man. Thank you. Mhm.