0:00
We had a billionaire negotiate the price and like Coke said, "Yeah, 136k a month."
Search this video
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>> [laughter] >> And the payment went through, yeah. He paid 136k a month? What?
0:12
This week on the show, we've got Marvin von Hagen, the CEO of Poe, an AI that lives in your texts and can connect to pretty much everything.
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It's basically Open Claw for normies.
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And as Marvin tells us, he thinks there's potential for this to be something that billions of people use.
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We chatted about how he saw the AI agent trend early, charging a billionaire 136,000 a month for Poe, and suing Meta.
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But first, Ellis and I chat about Open AI buying TBPN, a new TV show about the tech industry, and why people in AI are working so damn hard. Welcome to Access.
0:49
>> [music] >> It's Access time. I'm bringing that back.
0:52
Ellis, uh now that you're back from vacation, I have some news to share with you.
0:57
I hope it's okay that this happened while you were out.
1:00
>> the podcast to Anthropic. You're joking. >> [music] >> Yeah.
1:03
Uh >> [laughter] >> Access brought to you by the Anthropic Public Benefit Corporation. I'm so gullible.
1:12
It's like genuinely a problem.
1:12
This is why I wasn't a very good reporter.
1:16
You obviously that's a joke.
1:16
I'm I'm joking about Open AI buying TBPN.
1:18
The amount of people who text me >> I literally like 35% believed you. Well, great.
1:26
>> I mean, these days you got to turn everything into content, right?
1:27
It's like, well, I got to tell my co-host, but when better than on the actual show? I think the Mr.
1:34
Beast uh content code of ethics would tell you to do so. Yeah.
1:39
And look, uh I love our advertisers.
1:39
Um we have great advertisers, but uh I think we found a new path, a new business path with the podcast is is flip it to a lab.
1:50
So, we should just do a short list of labs we'd want to sell to, and then uh we can jam that up. >> Okay. On my to-do list.
1:57
>> [laughter] >> But you're you're back.
1:59
You were uh oh oh you spent a week in Mexico.
2:03
Uh hopefully with some mai tais, some Miami Vices.
2:06
I saw your photos with the kids. Looked great. Looked like a good time.
2:10
That first day back, which is when we're recording, Monday, is always a tough one I find from these vacations.
2:17
What's What was the vacation like and what's it been like coming back?
2:19
Yeah, I mean, coming back is is often like the depths of hell, like punishment, especially coming back to a startup where everybody is {quote} in the trenches and is just constantly annoyed that you were not up to date on everything and you have like 500 slacks to check.
2:38
It it can be absolutely brutal, and I mean, it can take a few days to even get back in the swing, and then you're already behind again, and before you know it, it takes uh longer than your vacation to even catch up on where you were, and it's just kind of a a sad state of feeling like you're being punished for your off time.
2:54
But uh Yeah, fortunately with most of my clients now, I'm on like five-week sprints um around there, you know, mission, vision, manifesto, website, that type of stuff.
3:05
And it was really just as simple as skipping a week.
3:09
>> [laughter] >> Assuming that that none of them had imminent launches, so Yeah, I had uh Notion AI triage some stuff for me, triaged a few things myself.
3:18
Sorry if I haven't gotten back to you yet, but um I actually I feel okay. Feel okay.
3:21
Lost a few brain cells, but uh Well, that's good.
3:24
That's what a vacation's for.
3:25
I really held back on not texting you stuff because the Open AI TBPN thing was lighting up my texts.
3:33
And I could tell you weren't fully disconnected because you were actually texting me a couple times about things.
3:39
I mean, you can text me some things that are juicy and fun.
3:41
What I wouldn't want is like, "Can you do the advertising upfront slate check-in at 8:16 a. m.?" Yeah.
3:52
Which would be a privilege to have, honestly.
3:54
Well, I would >> [laughter] >> I should have texted you about TBPN then.
3:58
But uh yeah, I don't think there's anything we can add to that at this point, except that uh you know, I think those guys are are geniuses, John and Jordy, and they're going to really help Open AI with its marketing and its comms strategy.
4:11
I think that's as much a part of the deal as TBPN itself.
4:17
And you know, now the question is, can TBPN live on and continue to thrive as the Open AI show?
4:23
And I think that's a that's a TBD thing.
4:25
Yeah, I mean, I guess I have something to add.
4:27
I mean, I've been witness to many first-party content efforts through my years at Snapchat with the early days of Discover.
4:36
And yeah, and you know, even like someone like our friend You're friends with Peter Hamby, right? >> Yeah. You know Hamby?
4:42
Yeah, I mean, he's still going strong.
4:44
Uh I think with his show and his content on Snap.
4:46
And as far as I know, there's there's not really been any interference from from the head honchos.
4:52
There was always very much a wall between the content side of Snapchat and uh everything else, I think, which was good.
5:01
But almost always it it it it never really bears out.
5:04
And so, Godspeed to those guys, but it's just kind of an impossible situation.
5:09
Because so much of content is about opinions, and you will never have 100% aligned opinions as the people who own the company.
5:17
I mean, I even saw some op-eds the other day uh in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post that were about the, you know, Meta and and YouTube lawsuit.
5:27
And they to me felt like very bought and sold, you know, like things that were very much fed by investors or owners, whether it's Jeff Bezos or otherwise.
5:37
And it's just very very very very hard to stand up to your owner or boss, uh for lack of a better term, over the long term.
5:45
Though it of course feels like everything's aligned right now.
5:49
like everything's aligned right now. Uh so yeah, hopefully there is a long and fruitful honeymoon period of this of this acquisition where things are going great, but it's just hard for me to imagine in any content Not not just with
6:02
acquisitions, but with first-party content, whether it's the Robinhood site or Casper's newsletter or Casper's website, where where content, which is about being pointy and spiky and entertaining and interesting, is ever going to be perfectly aligned with with corporate values, you know? The day the
6:19
The day the deal was announced, Open AI people were calling me and trying to compare this to Microsoft spinning up MSNBC, which is a thing most people probably don't remember, but Microsoft actually stood up that news channel.
6:31
Holy moly, I didn't know that.
6:35
>> Yeah, it's like 30 years old at this point.
6:36
And like, as an example of this happening before, it's like, if you just do a quick search, that was an utter disaster.
6:44
>> [laughter] >> And Microsoft fully dissolved its ownership in that after many tortured years.
6:48
And it was a PR disaster.
6:48
And yeah, there's no example of this working well, of like >> Well, there there could even be a moment that is crucial moment today, you know, with the big New Yorker piece on Sam Altman. Ronan Farrow, yeah.
7:04
That will be a good test is how do they cover that? Yeah.
7:09
Regardless of how they covered it on the show today, it it would have been different. Right.
7:14
And I think that is the slippery slope.
7:19
>> Yes, but TBPN has always been very differential to the guests.
7:21
I can say this also as a guest, right?
7:23
I did like a 15-minute segment on there about building the newsletter a couple weeks ago.
7:28
And those guys are awesome, but they're not they're not journalists. They don't claim to be.
7:32
They and they don't say they are.
7:33
And they are cheerleaders of the industry, you know, they're VCs, they're investors.
7:37
Uh you know, John, one of the co-hosts, was co-founded Soylent.
7:41
Like, these guys are have startup experience.
7:43
They worked inside Founders Fund.
7:45
They're just It's not the same as like buying Hard Fork or buying the Access podcast, right?
7:50
And um I think that's fine, and I don't think they're pretending to be anything different.
7:57
But, you know, I can tell you all of the rival uh labs to Open AI were calling me going like, "We're not putting our execs on this show anymore."
8:06
At least at the very least, they're all taking a wait-and-see approach and seeing who who will stick their neck out first and see how it goes.
8:13
And you know, that's uh selfishly more booking opportunity for for the Access podcast, Ellis.
8:17
That's kind of how I view it.
8:18
Yeah, I think um I'm hoping to frame this more, you know, objective than like opinion, but I think my advice would be to try and iron out how the incentives will continue to work and the decision rights on certain things, so that nothing is at all fuzzy to keep that magic going as long as they can.
8:37
Cuz I mean, it's one thing that, you know, come out like every time they say whoever is acquired says we're going to retain editorial independence.
8:45
How can we go a lot farther than that and cement this stuff while the vibes are good? Mhm.
8:50
Well, this will be the test.
8:52
Next time I drop a Open AI scoop, I'm going to text John and Jordy to come on the show.
8:57
And if they don't want me on the show, then we know what's happened. There we go.
9:02
>> [laughter] >> Uh otherwise, while you were gone, I had a very LA week.
9:05
I went to a screening >> While I was gone, you came and went to San Francisco uh 11 times.
9:12
>> stayed in LA, but I'm going to San Francisco this week, of course.
9:13
Uh but I stayed in LA, and I went to a screening of The Audacity, which is a new AMC show about Silicon Valley.
9:19
I would say it's this it's a more serious adult spiritual successor to Silicon Valley, the show, the old HBO show that has a fond spot in my heart, and I know a lot of people have been yearning for a sequel to that.
9:33
And I do think this fits that mold, although it's different, and it is more of the moment.
9:37
Really dials in on like the money and the corruption and the power of this moment in a way that feels fresh and could not have existed, I think, in the more campy years when the original Silicon Valley show came out. But that was super fun.
9:50
We're actually going to have the showrunner uh Jonathan Glatzer on the show, hopefully in the next few weeks here.
9:56
So, that'll be fun, our first Hollywood uh guest.
10:00
But uh yeah, it was fun to fun to do an LA thing and you know, the fact that there's a screening in LA, too, was was fun.
10:06
You know, LA The rumors of LA's demise have been greatly exaggerated. >> I know.
10:10
Well, what I'm wondering, I know um the tech consultant for Silicon Valley was like famously, I think his name is Dan something or other.
10:20
He was the like fake Steve Jobs account in early Twitter. I forgot about that.
10:26
>> kind of like skewering the industry and always had a really interesting, but you know, veteran take on on Apple as someone who'd covered it for a long time.
10:34
Is there some consultant this time around, the Swish, sitting in on writers' room?
10:39
What are what are we looking at?
10:41
>> Casey yeah, Swisher gave it her thumbs up.
10:43
I think they kind of they they satirized the code conference in the in the show, I think. So, that makes sense.
10:50
Kara gave it a thumbs up. I don't know.
10:51
We're going to have to ask Jonathan.
10:53
>> everyday knowledge to know like the funny nuances of this world.
10:54
No, no, no, and you could tell he really did some research and really got under the hood of some things.
11:02
So, we're going to have to save that for when we have him on the show cuz I'm curious about that.
11:06
Um but yeah, otherwise uh I've got a crazy travel week again this week characteristically.
11:11
I'll be at Human X uh by the time this episode drops, it'll have already happened, but interviewing Dave Baszucki, friend of the show, uh former Access guest.
11:22
>> Human X, is that a supplement? It could be.
11:24
I'm going to need a supplement to get through it.
11:26
Uh it is a massive uh enterprise AI conference that uh is at Moscone Center in SF this week with like 6,000 people and I'm I'm interviewing Bret Taylor and and Dave Baszucki, the Roblox founder, uh there on the main stage.
11:40
And then I'll be doing another thing in New York with Human Ventures.
11:43
So, again, keeping the human thing going, but separate.
11:47
I mean, that's not going to be so hard to satirize in whatever version of Audacity or Silicon Valley comes next in 10 years.
11:54
We literally had conferences called Human X and Human Ventures as we automated all the humans away. In the same week. Yeah.
12:00
Uh but yeah, and then only other uh little news item, I guess, is um because I feel like whenever something big happens with a former guest, we should we should note it if we can.
12:11
Uh Fiji Simo, um recent guest, uh this is a a little Sources thing, uh while you were out, is is going on leave uh due to her health condition, which she talked about a little bit on the pod with us.
12:24
But um you know, she's running basically most of OpenAI or has been, the especially the product stuff, and has a very rare uh neuroimmune condition called POTS and uh has been struggling with that and is is going to take some time.
12:40
And obviously, her case is is different.
12:42
It's it's unique and it's um you know, obviously, you know, our thoughts are with her and we hope she recovers uh swiftly.
12:46
But you know, I've had a few people ping me since she announced that and go, "Man, is there a trend of like working in these AI companies uh just destroying people's health?"
12:57
Because uh there was stuff about XAI, one of the XAI co-founders had like Lyme's disease resurface because of he attributed it to the intense culture of working in AI.
13:07
You do hear these stories anecdotally of like, you know, Fiji said it in her note like, "I I've not taken a day off since I started this job."
13:17
And she started like in the summer of last year.
13:18
And you know, these are people that have all the options in the in the world, right?
13:22
Many of them are already independently wealthy.
13:25
And um there's something about this moment, the gravitational pull of it, where people are just working their asses off.
13:31
And it is something that I I do feel like the industry will start talking about more. I I at least I hope so.
13:37
Well, I think what's different with this style of startup work is that there's a very heavy responsibility and maybe even a feeling of impending doom >> Yeah.
13:51
that you may have some agency to uh affect.
13:53
You know, I mean, having been early at a couple startups now, lucky enough to work on fun products.
13:57
I mean, spending day and night working on that stuff can be fun because you're hanging out with your friends making features better that turn someone into a puppy dog.
14:08
But when you're in the trenches on these frontier AI labs, not only where there's just an unbelievable horse race going on, but where you're reading every day that you may be the best thing or the worst thing to ever hit planet Earth, uh you could absolutely see how the executive's health could be affected. Yeah.
14:26
Well, uh thoughts and prayers with Fiji. Get better. >> Fiji.
14:29
Um I guess last thing, very last thing here that I have, is uh Devin, friend of the show, sent me this thing called the Rock Camera. Have you heard of this?
14:40
I was looking at your film photos and I think I might get you this for, you know, your birthday. Oh my goodness.
14:46
Capture verifiably real moments in the age of generative AI.
14:49
We were talking about film photos and how they kind of are counterpositioned to AI slop last week and you're obviously a film photo nerd.
14:59
And I think I need to get you this.
15:01
It uses zero-proof cryptography and an integrated Raspberry Pi in the camera to verify beyond a shadow of a doubt that the photos you take are real.
15:12
That's all daddy ever wanted, an integrated Raspberry Pi. Thank you, Alex.
15:16
>> It seems like your [ __ ] I mean, I haven't gotten it yet, but I think I may have my poke get it for you. Pretty interesting.
15:21
Yeah, I do believe that cryptography is going to come in handy for for stuff just like this.
15:25
Um maybe less so the fun version, but someday the the serious version, whether it's for documents, photographs, videos from governments, etc.
15:35
Uh finally, crypto's going to have its day. Yeah.
15:40
Well, otherwise, we've got uh Marvin von Hagen, CEO of the Interplanetary Company of California and Poke on the show.
15:45
And uh I really enjoyed this convo.
15:47
Should we kick it to him? Let's do it.
15:53
>> [music] >> Marvin, welcome. Good to meet you. How are you? Great, great. How about you?
16:00
Did your Poke send that email that you were going to be 10 minutes late? Or was that you? Was that a human email?
16:03
It was actually because I was on my laptop.
16:05
It was, to be honest, a human email.
16:07
But um yeah, I could have also I should have probably asked Poke.
16:11
Usually, I ask Poke for these things, yeah.
16:13
Marvin, that wasted approximately 11 seconds of your time and over the course of your life, you know, it does add up.
16:19
Yeah, yeah, it does add up. Yeah.
16:23
Poke cannot yet do your podcasts for you.
16:25
That's going to be still a human thing for a while, I think, right? We we actually had that.
16:29
We had um an article I can show you afterwards um of a journalist that just did the whole interview with Poke.
16:35
Um I think it's like Israel's largest newspaper, like Israel Daily or something.
16:41
And um the journalist never reached out to us.
16:46
He just did interview with Poke and he actually published the interview in like Israel's largest newspaper.
16:51
>> And do you condone this?
16:51
I think it's actually pretty funny because the answers were surprisingly good.
16:56
Like it was it was actually like um yeah, like I think there were like basically zero factual errors and like it could talk about where the company is from, where the product is going, and like it was actually like very, very solid.
17:10
And like the nicest part was that usually journalists would ask you what um what do you Poke for, but Poke just explained what that journalist is using it for.
17:22
Okay, so he wasn't interviewing Poke thinking it was you.
17:24
It was very clear that this was Poke talking. Okay. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was very funny, yeah. Wow.
17:30
Was there some type of repository of company knowledge that it could reference or was it all public information that it was referencing about itself?
17:38
>> There's there's some stuff Poke knows.
17:40
There's some stuff Poke knows that might not be like that we haven't actively published anywhere.
17:45
Like I don't think we actively published anywhere that like Patrick Collison angel invested but like Poke knows about it.
17:53
I guess this is like a public mention now, but like yeah. How?
17:58
>> [laughter] >> Like it's just like in in in like the information Poke has or what.
18:03
You you put the cap table in to Poke? Some of it.
18:07
>> [laughter] >> I can ask about how much equity you own and all of that and it'll tell me. Some of it.
18:13
>> [laughter] >> Also, first we want to uh poke the bear.
18:27
I think you're the first Forbes 30 under 30 we're having on the show.
18:28
How are you going to avoid the Forbes 30 under 30 I hope you have good lawyers. Yeah.
18:30
Yeah, how's it how are you going to avoid the curse? I don't know.
18:32
Like there's there's a lot of just be very, very careful.
18:33
Um especially in the last uh in last week or two, I I think we kind of regretted that we didn't block them from putting >> [laughter] >> us there because I think like the bad part about it is that I think at this point, the meme of like 30 under 30 is so strong that people actively I think like actually like the whole dev thing would have been less big if they wouldn't be 30 under 30.
18:55
Because like so many of the memes are just about them being 30 under 30 and frauds.
18:59
And I think like yeah, you might want to avoid being on that list at all costs. Oh, yeah.
19:04
I mean, it means you're going to jail at some point.
19:07
Did it drive any meaningful traffic of any kind? Just bots? Yeah.
19:13
Yeah, it's like nothing nothing too interesting from that.
19:15
I mean, we are in a lot of lawsuits, right?
19:17
Like in a lot of different jurisdictions.
19:21
Fortunately, almost all of them we are on the right side.
19:24
We are on the side um suing Meta in the European Union and Brazil in like different jurisdictions, but I don't want to hear about the ones that you're on the right side of.
19:34
What are what are you on the wrong side of?
19:35
Um there's one person who owns like a like I don't know if like any of that should be said publicly, but like some dude owns like a trademark in like for like a fake product.
19:48
I don't know if I should say that or not, but like it's it's like you know patent trolls? Yeah.
19:53
Um you have like a similar situation like that, but with like a trademark. You have the domain.
19:57
I was going to that was going to be one of the questions, but how in the world did you get poke.
20:02
com and how much of your seed round did that cost?
20:04
It was like around half a million. Yeah.
20:07
Okay, so the top URL on the show remains friend.
20:10
com for close to $2 million. >> icon. com was even more, yeah.
20:16
I like how you're talking about these lawsuits as kind of like a side project.
20:21
Oh yeah, on the side we have some suits against meta, you know how it goes.
20:24
I mean it's interesting though.
20:27
I mean how proactively did you want to undertake these?
20:34
Because it's just resources, you know, as a startup with so few resources you're kind of usually trying to stay out of trouble as much as possible.
20:40
Unless poke's doing the litigation. Yeah.
20:42
Yeah, I mean I mean some of it sometimes like when there's any updates about stuff poke decks us and us are like celebrating it too and that's like pretty that's like pretty funny that you have someone on your side there, but um yeah, I think I think you just got to you got to do it.
20:58
Like we if we want to get to billions of people using poke every day, right?
21:03
And there are only so many people on I am a search on SMS on Telegram.
21:09
Like WhatsApp is just globally incredibly big with like billions of of daily actives.
21:14
And so yeah, so when when we saw those news in October like we did like meta didn't even tell us.
21:22
And we just like we just got tagged on Twitter that like there was like a news article um about yeah, poke is getting kicked off of WhatsApp and like some others.
21:33
And we were just like tagged there and we're like what?
21:36
This seems pretty anti-competitive, so we decided let's do something against it.
21:39
For people who don't know, you can text meta AI through WhatsApp and they had it with open AI for a little bit where you could text chat GPT too.
21:46
I think that went away, but you you had poke in there and you were you're suing or you have already Have you successfully won this? Where is this at?
21:55
Yeah, yeah, so in European Union we won it like first in Italy, then the whole European Union, then Brazil now and like now we're looking at California, America, other markets.
22:06
And the annoying part right now is that in the European Union we won it and meta said, "Hey, we're going to 100x the price basically."
22:12
Like it's a bit more complicated, but like like the exact number, but like it's basically 100x.
22:18
And in Brazil um they said, "No, hey, also like this 100x in the price is malicious compliance.
22:24
It's basically kicking them off."
22:27
And so we're now >> This is the API price for you to work through WhatsApp? Yes, exactly. Exactly.
22:34
And um uh because they are not allowed to ban us anymore, they just increase the price as high enough that you cannot operate it anymore.
22:40
Um but Brazil also um forbid that and we're hoping for the same to happen in Europe very soon, yeah.
22:48
I'm just waiting for the day where we have the first AI agent versus AI agent legal showdown.
22:53
I mean it would be pretty interesting to pit poke against the biggest meta AI Tom Brady, also known as bro fake Tom Brady, if he still exists.
23:04
That would be a really interesting legal battle to watch. >> that was a good one.
23:07
They already deleted digital Tom Brady?
23:10
>> think digital Tom Brady's already gone, but that would have been great. Uh too bad.
23:15
I mean especially when it's not clear that like anyone uses that product on purpose.
23:20
Or is that just my impression?
23:22
There's a lot of uh a lot of bad UI patterns like dark UI patterns to like make you accidentally use it.
23:28
Like put it at the top of >> In the search box. >> Yeah, exactly. In the search box.
23:31
You don't you just want to search for for something for like a chat and suddenly you're talking to AI, but now like it's it's out like same happens with Google, right?
23:40
Like people just want to Google for something and like suddenly they're in an AI chat and now they can say, "Hey, Gemini has billion daily like like weekly actives."
23:48
You you brought up the API cost thing.
23:50
I'm I'm so fascinated by the plumbing of this because, you know, I signed up over the weekend and it's iMessage.
23:55
And I've done enough reporting on Apple and iMessage over the years to know that Apple doesn't take too kindly to uh companies using iMessage this way.
24:07
Uh so how are you doing this?
24:07
Are you running like massive phone farms where you've got like phones hooked up and you're routing through them for iMessage?
24:15
Like how how are you actually doing this?
24:17
We're using link and they've been a great partner now and I think um that like it is good for WhatsApp for us to be on that.
24:25
This is why WhatsApp was having like was happy having us as customers, right?
24:29
Um like WhatsApp is becoming a better product if people can not only use like the shitty meta AI, but if they can only use better products.
24:36
If they can choose what they want to use.
24:38
That's WhatsApp as platform. Yeah, exactly.
24:40
And and I think the problem with WhatsApp is just that it's part of meta and while it's good for WhatsApp to like have us on our platform and like the experience of WhatsApp and like the usage of WhatsApp is going up.
24:51
Um it's just not good for meta because they also have meta AI.
24:55
They're putting billions into that.
24:57
And like for Apple that's different, right?
24:59
Um I think we are actively making the experience of an iPhone better and like people want to stay on a platform if they can have the best assistance, if they can have the best experience.
25:08
And [snorts] Apple is making money with hardware, not with some data data AI things, so I don't see a reason for Apple to do anything against us.
25:21
>> There are many tombstones of founders that have salt told me similar things about Apple and why Apple should allow them to do what they're doing.
25:26
I'm just curious like uh from an iMessage perspective, like do you think this is going to continue?
25:31
Do you think you can are you doing this in a way that like Apple can't shut down?
25:35
I would be very very surprised if Apple will have like a problem with it in the long run because it is just a much better experience.
25:44
Um like the only case where that would be the case of like if Apple suddenly decides, "Hey, we want to make more money with this than with like the hardware."
25:51
Or if we do anything shady and like we don't, so like um yeah, I think I I think it's we we are really working in the in like in line with Apple brand values, yeah.
26:03
I was even just wondering from a philosophical point of view if Apple would ever announce Siri as someone you could text. Oh, I think they will. You think they will?
26:13
I think they will this summer.
26:15
No, I mean literally in the messages app because I was thinking like oh that would be strange, you know, Siri's already its own experience, but I mean Snap has 400 million daily users seeing the my friend AI in their feed.
26:29
And I'm not sure how many others have adopted that that paradigm for thinking about this stuff.
26:33
The reporting is there's going to there's going to be a Siri chatbot this uh WWDC this year.
26:38
Well right, but like as its own app or whatever, but I think I feel like what Marvin part of the whole insight and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Marvin, is that it's where you already are communicating.
26:47
Thinking of it as like, "All right, this is the space where I chat with things."
26:51
And having it be a separate app is like maybe kind of a big problem.
26:55
I mean I feel like that's what you've been implying with your design.
26:58
Yeah, I think AI is just much more human than people think.
26:59
Like when we started out, a lot of people were saying, "Yeah, chat is that.
27:04
No, AI needs to go into UI, whatever."
27:07
But I don't actually think so.
27:08
I think AI will just be on the same mediums, like communication forms that humans are.
27:14
Like people always thought, "Hey, you have to ask a question to chat GPT and then you get a long response.
27:20
One question, long response.
27:22
One question, long response."
27:24
And that's not how humans communicate.
27:27
Um like maybe sometimes email chains are more robotic, but like normal humans, like we just like to text.
27:32
And if I notice more, I'm going to text another message.
27:36
And the other human can also text me first, right?
27:39
And so I think that was kind of the thesis that we noticed that just works for AI on the go, how people like to use it.
27:47
And I don't know how you guys have managed your beta program, but it's been very successful at me just consistently seeing people saying, "Here's what poke is doing for me.
27:57
Here's this awesome automation or connector that I've built or whatever."
28:02
Uh and that's been pretty steady in my X feed for the last few months and it keeps reminding me that I want to have you on the show, so I was really happy when you responded to my cold email.
28:09
But I've been very interested in what you guys are building for a while, especially since that big video the launch video you guys did last year.
28:15
Um and also just the fact that you got to this idea so early.
28:21
I mean I I was checking and open claw didn't come out till around November and you would already raised the first round in September, done the launch video, which meant you'd been working on it for months before that.
28:32
How did you see this kind of more proactive uh agentic AI, you know, chat paradigm coming then?
28:40
Cuz it wasn't obvious then.
28:43
Yeah, so we started noticing how much um data there is in your email.
28:49
Like every product you've ever used, every work you've ever done, every deadline you have.
28:54
Um like there's just like so much, every travel you've ever done.
28:56
Like it's just all in your email and like there's stuff constantly popping up um every day, right?
29:03
And we basically thought like no one is really using that.
29:06
And um then we started out and talked to a lot of people how they use their email.
29:10
And they say if you can actually afford it, you don't want to use an UI, like the client doesn't get better, but what happens is people get an executive assistant.
29:20
So how does that interaction look like?
29:24
And we then spent like a lot of time on making like an executive assistant for your email, for your calendar as human as possible that like it can text you multiple times. It can text you first.
29:34
And it can only text you, but it can only also take actions and all of that.
29:37
And um when we gave the first people beta access around a year ago, what we noticed was people want to use it for everything.
29:45
We spent so much time on making it more human that people just preferred this interface so much, not only over Gmail, but also over ChatGPT, also over Google.
29:57
People asked about sports results.
29:59
People asked Poke to remind him to take the medication every day.
30:02
And like we didn't have any of these things.
30:04
We didn't have cron jobs.
30:05
We didn't have any other integrations.
30:08
People wanted Uh they they were like, "Hey, the Whoop app has a chatbot, but the Whoop app doesn't know why I haven't slept well.
30:19
The Whoop app doesn't know about my calendar.
30:21
The Whoop app doesn't know what I ate.
30:23
The Whoop app doesn't know about any deadlines."
30:25
And like it just makes a lot of sense to consolidate all of that.
30:30
And build something that's actually much more akin to Jarvis.
30:31
And so yeah, like so we basically decided against the conventional wisdom of build the best bookstore and then expand to become Amazon, but before we even finished like the email experience, we we haven't fully replaced Gmail yet.
30:48
I use Gmail as I said at the beginning like even sometimes I send emails manually.
30:53
But you already still want to use it for everything.
30:56
Like I think there is just like such a pull for people to integrate everything, to have everything in one place that's more human.
31:03
Yeah, and I know the tone has also been something that has resonated with people, which probably doesn't give off too much of conventional EA, right?
31:12
And even the storytelling of the product has not to my knowledge talked about executive assistant like so many other startups have over the last couple of years.
31:21
How did you think about what the right what the right tone was for that omnipresent being that literally does your heart rate to your flirtatious emails with your ex?
31:32
This is also kind of where we want to go with like this concept of recipes now that in consumer you only one have you have like these smaller things like hey, nutrition tracking, hey, Bible apps have like millions of users every month, right?
31:50
And like We got to get a Bible app on here, Alex.
31:51
Can we get one of those in the pipeline?
31:53
I know they're popping off right now. Yeah, good note.
31:56
I'll get my poke on that.
31:58
Yeah, at at the same time you have you have like these big vision things.
32:02
You have like hey, an AI browser, an AI Google, an AI assistant.
32:06
And on the one hand these create a lot of value, while these are like rather narrow, but like they just seem very heavyweight.
32:13
And getting people to actually use it it's much harder than people getting people to notice it.
32:19
Everyone has heard of all these AI Google competitors, but people don't actually want to use them so much.
32:26
Like every month there's more people in like these narrow small things that like get signed up than like for the like there's like 10 billion dollar companies that build like AI Googles or whatever have ever signed up for because it just seems like hey, if I want to try this out, how do I get back?
32:40
How do I switch back my default browser?
32:42
How do I switch back my default search engine, right?
32:47
Um whereas like these narrow more narrow things like nutrition tracking, it just seems so lightweight. Like I can try this out.
32:53
If I don't like it, I just stop using it, right?
32:56
And um I think the same is true for assistants.
32:59
Like it's not necessarily immediately clear what an assistant would be useful for you personally, right?
33:03
It's like hey, it would be cool, but like what if it's annoying?
33:08
What if like I don't have something immediate, right?
33:12
And I think with these recipes now we found a way where people can immediately like build something.
33:16
Like hey, um you can just natural language say, um create a Poke recipe that adds the user's Strava runs to the Notion every night.
33:26
And you can share this link to other people.
33:29
And these people that don't need to know what big product Poke is, they can just use that.
33:34
They just get asked hey, connect your Strava account, connect your Notion account, and then every night their Strava runs get added to their Notion.
33:41
And they just have this narrow use case.
33:42
And over time it shows more and more hey, if you connect other stuff, I can give you feedback on that.
33:49
Hey, like for nutrition tracking, hey, if you connect your calendar, I will know that why you had to like drink so much coffee because there was this deadline.
33:59
I think it just makes a lot of sense to consolidate a lot of these things and get people with like a more narrow use case and like show them more and more over time.
34:07
I almost over the weekend pulled the trigger on Athena. Have you heard of this?
34:11
It's like a virtual assistant company.
34:13
The All-In guys talk about it constantly and I was listening to the last episode and they were talking about it and it's like 3,000 a month.
34:21
And I'm like, well, if like the other option is I hire an employee, it's going to cost more than that.
34:25
And I just need kind of a narrow set of functions.
34:29
I need like the EA function.
34:32
And there are so many startups to Ellis's point that are trying to do like AI to replace EAs.
34:37
And this seems like Poke is in that vein, but like I guess uh I may still do Athena.
34:44
I'm like I feel like I'm on the edge.
34:45
I feel like I'm trying everything and nothing is like as good as a human who is proactive with context and that special touch with access to everything.
34:54
So I may pull the trigger on it.
34:56
Like when do you think what you're building actually gets to that level of quality?
34:59
Cuz I think that is the bar, right?
35:02
Yeah, that is the bar, which is why I think you should get it right now.
35:07
And two things about it, you should tell us what things Athena can do that Poke cannot do.
35:12
And second of all, get a monthly subscription, not an annual one. Yeah, okay.
35:17
[laughter] Cuz you're you're just betting it's going to keep getting that much better.
35:22
Well, so I mean, I don't know if you know this, Alex, I actually worked with Athena a couple years ago. >> you did.
35:26
And I loved the >> is a joke of the show is I constantly find out that Ellis like worked on something cool that I'm like looking at and he's like, "Oh yeah."
35:35
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, and I think like one of the things that that they had mentioned was just how hard the onboarding is.
35:40
And they've gone to very far lengths to not only prepare the assistants, but even prepare you to make the assistant as successful as possible and make that whole experience as seamless as possible.
35:54
But that's still not the same as just saying plug in your Gmail, right?
35:59
All that said, I'm not a believer yet given the current state of search and context windows that having access to your Gmail means that you get me.
36:09
You still need to like run very specific searches with very specific prompts on a regular basis to try and understand what is salient about me that you might want to pull in.
36:21
How are you approaching that part? >> Ellis is special.
36:22
He has a lot of context you're not going to get is what he's trying to say.
36:26
>> I mean, we run real-time inference on everything.
36:30
Like every email that gets in, we don't only search for email when there is a question about it, but like every email that comes in, we read and then see okay, is this something important?
36:39
Is this something where we can take an action?
36:40
So you have like a rubric against every email. Yeah, yeah.
36:45
So for example, last last week we we added like a Devin recipe, right?
36:51
And now for every email that comes in, it checks like is there something that like might have like an implication.
36:57
So for example, I got an email by Anthropic um that like one model was out of beta and we should release like we should remove like the beta tag, the beta header.
37:07
And I got that email from Anthropic with deadline and then Poke immediately put the deadline on my calendar and texted me hey, we should do that.
37:15
And I just gave a thumbs up and then it actually created the PR.
37:19
Um it just told Devin then from reading it in my email, it told Devin hey, do it.
37:24
And then within 14 minutes of receiving the email with just a thumbs up, it created the whole PR and took like a couple minutes to review and approve and then was done.
37:36
I do like the form factor being so agnostic with Poke.
37:39
I mean, that's been one of my favorite AI things lately is just Notion's AI filters.
37:46
And I just say put all my bank statements, access episode pitches, all the things that like aren't urgent into this one folder.
37:54
And that goes from the world where most people if you have, you know, know how to use Gmail, create filters, but then it's just terrible.
38:03
Like they haven't changed in 15 years to becoming something that's more natural language.
38:10
Um the question is though to what extent are the companies going to allow you to play with their services?
38:13
I mean, I know there's been this question of like are you stealing the Aura app usage?
38:22
You're asking for insights from MCP Aura instead of their app that they've worked very very hard on.
38:28
>> [laughter] >> So that they can't just get cloned by some, you know, Chinese commodity exercise ring.
38:32
Um what's the current state with companies and MCP?
38:34
But you can clone the sound of this app to be clear and I think everyone would appreciate that considering how horrible it is.
38:41
But otherwise, yeah, there are other apps that I'm sure we should be concerned about.
38:45
>> Yeah, I think on the one hand it might reduce usage of an Aura ring app, right?
38:51
On the other hand, people might buy Aura rings because now they become more useful and they see their friends use them more.
38:57
And I think like I use Aura, right? And it just is more fun.
39:04
It is more useful if it is integrated with everything.
39:06
And uh yeah, like I think that's with every technological advancement.
39:10
Like there's always like short-term losses.
39:12
Like some people will stop, some people like maybe the app gets useless, but it's also becoming more useful and more [snorts] people might even use this product category, right?
39:22
How do you not leak our [ __ ] Cuz that's that's the thing that I was a little freaked out about um with the interface initially and then I saw I know you have like an external auditor and your investors are legit and all that stuff, but like it is pretty crazy to just give something like this that is just over text like access to everything.
39:40
Uh and I when I did onboarding over the weekend, I did Sonos first cuz I was like, well, if my Sonos login gets leaked, like that's not that bad.
39:49
I'm going to wait on everything else.
39:50
And then And then I was like, well, I don't actually want to control my Sonos via text. That doesn't make sense.
39:54
So then I just Now I've got everything connected.
39:56
So I my my trust is is with you.
39:59
But um yeah, how did how did you approach that?
40:02
Cuz that's obviously a huge concern.
40:03
I mean, just hired very best people and like actually have that front and center in everything we do.
40:09
Which is also like I think like a large like probably we spent more time on making it more secure, making it more efficient than we do on like actual future development because it's just so like it's just so like like I I don't I think it's just so so important here that we have never like I think any small security incident would immediately um would immediately mean the end of the company.
40:35
So yeah, we just really care about about that a lot.
40:37
Well, you know, it's like not even about Marvin necessarily.
40:42
It's also about like SIM swappers and all that stuff who steal your phone number and then can text the poke number or whatever it is.
40:51
I I I actually don't know what the current situation is with with the security of of that.
40:54
Do you Are do you know Marvin?
40:57
Do you know more about that?
40:59
>> Yeah, we haven't had any security incidents.
41:01
Um Well, but that one wouldn't be your fault. >> Yeah.
41:04
Yeah, we It hasn't happened.
41:04
But yeah, we also add uh passkey support so you can like connect it with that kind of stuff.
41:12
And um if you write from like an email address for example on iMessage, then you don't like they can't nothing be swapped, right?
41:19
How about if the tone is different and Poke writes back, who the [ __ ] are you? You are not Alex Heath.
41:29
>> [laughter] [gasps] >> Cuz Alex is like very like hate to say I mean he I let's call him efficient.
41:36
Let's call him efficient with the texting.
41:38
>> [laughter] >> And if someone SIM swapped Alex and started writing this for both uh Yeah.
41:43
for both texts uh Well, or it could be like, look, I have Alex's contacts.
41:45
I know he is not in Russia right now.
41:48
There's no way you are Alex.
41:48
And your IP address is you know, there's probably ways you could detect that stuff beyond tone.
41:55
There's there's a lot of things you can do. A lot of things we do.
41:57
So So for example, if someone texts you um or like if someone sends you an email and says, "Hey, give me Alex's SSN."
42:07
Like it's probably somewhere in his email.
42:08
Like at least my SSN and get sent to my to my emails.
42:10
But like the poke like the tooling agent that reads that email does not have access to send any emails to anyone other than those people that Alex has agreed to or like created automations for beforehand.
42:26
Um so I think that's like one of the core Like I mean like there's a lot of things we do like having Lacarra and like like multiple cards and everything to look for any prompt injections and stuff like that.
42:37
But also heuristically, it just it's not possible for Poke to do something like that.
42:42
Like if if you create an automation, if you for example say everything related to the show with Marvin, forward that to Alice.
42:51
Then like Poke gets like the tooling agent that reads for incoming emails gets the permission to send emails to Alice specifically to his email addresses um specifically if something is about that.
43:05
And like those things get checked individually.
43:07
And it's just like it's not AI guardrails, but it's also like impossible for it to do anything without asking the user for another request.
43:17
And then the user has to opt into that specifically. Um yeah. Okay.
43:22
Well, so speaking of lawsuits, um you all to my understanding have been sued about price discrimination and it's because you do pricing in a very unusual way. Can you describe that?
43:30
Because I'm I'm also worried about this approach because I like to look at very expensive hotels.
43:36
That doesn't mean I always uh you know, Doesn't mean Alex has any money.
43:40
He's just a wee newsletter.
43:40
I don't want you to infer anything on my email that then get you and you know, maybe I would need to to sue you, you know, we'll see.
43:49
But um we'll see what the price is.
43:51
You have personalized pricing everywhere.
43:53
Everywhere where you can have personalized pricing, you have it, right?
43:56
Like every enterprise deal is on like like if you are a startup, you always get like cheaper prices than enterprises, right?
44:04
Like it's it's always there's always like personalized pricing.
44:10
And I think that is also that is also just to like a large extent something good because otherwise startups just couldn't use a lot of things.
44:18
Or the providers of of like SaaS for example couldn't like not offer things to startups.
44:25
Like it it just is more efficient to have different prices for different uh like for different people and like have personalized packages and all of that.
44:35
And um I think so far this wasn't a thing in consumer because you couldn't do this at scale.
44:41
If you wanted to do personalized pricing and talk to people about what they use the product for and how much value they get out of it.
44:47
It's not only about what you can afford, but also how you use the product, right?
44:50
And um what the product means to you and all of that.
44:54
And it's just one scalable on the consumer side because you couldn't have a sales rep that talks to every consumer customer individually.
45:02
Um but I think now with AI, it becomes feasible, yeah.
45:06
Alex, what is what is the biggest market market move your scoop has been responsible for?
45:10
Oh, I mean, billions and billions of dollars. That's not a joke.
45:15
>> [laughter] >> That's That's literally not a joke.
45:18
But um you should not price me based on that.
45:23
>> [laughter] >> No, I was going to say that's the cost of the work.
45:25
That's the value of the work that's uh transparent through uh through Poke if you're doing doing your work on Poke.
45:31
If If Poke infers that a user is a billionaire, how much is it going to charge the billionaire? It's it's personalized. But like what's the max?
45:39
Do you have like a ceiling? There's no ceiling, no. There's no ceiling.
45:41
We had a billionaire um from another country uh s- like uh negotiate the price and like Poke said, "Yeah, 136k a month."
45:55
And he he he was like And then Poke said, "This is US dollar."
45:58
He was like, "There's no way."
46:00
>> [laughter] >> Then he actually did subscribe because he thought like probably it just didn't like there's no way it actually is that expensive.
46:07
And the payment went through. Yeah. >> Wait.
46:09
>> [laughter] >> He paid 136k a month?
46:10
So yeah, we then uh like yeah, we then reached out and we were like, "Like do you do you like was this actually on purpose?"
46:17
Like >> [laughter] >> What?
46:20
Here's Here's how you get to the next big round, Marvin.
46:22
You say, "Well, we are the we are the new intent capture layer and our user net worth is so high that when you're doing all of your grocery shopping through Poke, we will then charge all the VCs $50 per gallon of milk, the ones who have kids because it's an inelastic demand.
46:38
They need to give their kids cereal every day.
46:39
And we're going to get just a sliver of that and then you're the next trillion-dollar company." Okay, so hold on.
46:44
136k a month is the most that Poke has charged someone. Is that right? >> Yeah.
46:50
We we refunded him and told him, "Hey, it's chill."
46:52
And then like we gave him like uh a cheaper price, but uh Oh my god. Okay, well, that's wild.
46:59
Um But his credit card payment went through, so that's pretty solid, yeah.
47:04
You're You're based in Palo Alto, right?
47:06
Is that where the headquarters are?
47:06
My understanding of of startups especially these days that decide to base in Palo Alto is that you do it for really one reason and it's because you want people to work 24/7 because Palo Alto is a desert of culture and anything else to do.
47:20
Uh and like X AI is down there, right?
47:23
And it's infamous like how much they work there. It is pretty nice. Yeah, it's nice.
47:27
It's beautiful, believe me.
47:29
Like it's it's beautiful, but you know, it's you're not like hitting the club, you know, in Palo Alto. There's not a ton to do.
47:35
What was the decision to base a company of young AI-pilled uh people in Palo Alto?
47:41
I think this just pretty nice.
47:44
Like if you walk around within 5-minute walking distance, uh like the sushi place we go to like have was the first Facebook headquarters, right?
47:52
Like within 5 minutes, you have um the first Palantir headquarters, the uh boba shop was the first Google headquarters.
47:59
You have like you have not only X AI, but also X, the original X, and the original PayPal, and like you just have all of these um things. Like we we just moved.
48:09
And um after signing uh the new house, our landlord told us, "Oh yeah, Patrick Collison and John Collison lived here together with Greg Brockman actually when they founded Stripe."
48:22
Because the wine room was the first Stripe headquarters.
48:23
That's also like a block away.
48:25
Like it's just it's just all very close.
48:29
And I think the history has s- s- spoken for itself like how many great things happened within like a couple blocks.
48:36
And I think SF doesn't have anything like that, right? It has restaurants.
48:39
It has culture, you could argue. But yeah.
48:44
>> Yeah, but I mean like there's no density of that sort.
48:47
And even now there's like uh there's like half a dozen pre-training labs within walking distance, right?
48:54
Like there's no Axiom for math.
48:56
That's also on university ave.
48:58
There's like all of these Mistral is uh neighbors.
49:01
Like there's just like all of these things.
49:04
And I think I I think SF definitely has a larger share of like hundreds of YC startups and whatever.
49:11
And like everyone is flocking there.
49:13
If you want to start something, you go there.
49:15
But um I mean like there's like it is just more beautiful and more dense down here.
49:22
Well, so you're officially in the arena of tech as it has been for a long time.
49:26
And you want to be taken seriously. And your name is Poke. How does that work out? >> No, no, Ellis.
49:32
It's the Interaction Company of California. Yeah.
49:34
This is kind of the idea that we don't want to like I think poke sounds like very fun and like not that smart.
49:44
So, we kind of wanted to separate the the company branding a bit from product branding. Yeah.
49:51
Well, where does poke come from? I assume the domain.
49:53
I was like you need a four letter domain and you got one, right?
49:56
No, we like we didn't know if the domain was free.
49:58
Like we just we were just talking like what should we do and I was like what is poke and like I think like probably the most core thing other than being like very human is that it's proactive and then Felix was poking me and I was like yeah, what if like it's just like you poke someone like poke or poke you.
50:18
And then I found it funny like we didn't realize realize when we talked about it but later we noticed that we were actually eating a poke bowl when he had that idea.
50:27
He was actually eating a poke [laughter] bowl.
50:30
But I thought it was poke given like the palm tree logo and everything.
50:32
Yeah, we also noticed like it's actually like a pretty good fit from all of these things.
50:39
It is I don't know if it's unfortunate or fortunate that like Facebook also had this poke feature back in the days and now we are suing them but yeah, it's >> [laughter] >> Yeah, I think you and I are the only ones who remember Facebook poke.
50:50
I was I think I Well, I mean in today's world it's not doesn't come up all the time. Exactly. They brought it back.
51:00
Poke is back in Facebook.
51:02
I'll fact check that right now but I'm pretty sure.
51:04
>> [laughter] >> Something for you to sue trademark over here at Marvin.
51:08
I'll say I mean I work I work on a lot of namings of various shapes and sizes and it is a thousand percent better to be funny and a little provocative and even a little stupid than forgettable. Right?
51:20
And so you are very much on the correct end of the spectrum with that.
51:25
And yeah, I mean even just coming back to kind of the stuff that y'all were doing earlier than others.
51:29
I mean the proactivity piece I feel like you were I mean it's so crazy I feel like the old days it's like oh you were years ahead.
51:36
Now it's like you were months ahead.
51:38
Like everything is moving so fast.
51:40
Like everything is becoming so much more like poke like the whole industry.
51:45
Everything is becoming more and more personalized more proactive.
51:48
What you're building is I mean I just spent a bunch of time with the open AI and codex team and I wrote about it in the newsletter last week.
51:53
What you're building is exactly what chat GPT is going to be in like six months. Scoop drop. Sources.
51:59
news heard it here first.
52:01
I mean I mean Anthropic's going to do it with co-work.
52:03
They're going to make co-work the front end of Claude and chain together all this stuff in the coding in the background.
52:08
I don't know how much coding you're doing if you're doing like multiple coding agents in parallel like co-work or or codex but yeah, this direction you're going this proactive assistant connected to everything in a chat interface is the future of all this stuff.
52:23
If we now joined one of the labs it would just be worse.
52:27
Like same day the product would just get immediately like immediately worse because you cannot use like you need so many different things.
52:34
You need the best embedding models.
52:35
You need the best models for behavior.
52:36
You need the best QA models and that changes all the time.
52:40
Like every other month we change like who has the best QA model and if we just join one of the labs immediately it would get worse on like most aspects, right?
52:53
Like Anthropic doesn't even have an image gen model and like other labs are better at image understanding.
52:59
Like it's just there's so many different things and I think you just need the big application layer company to build the best product in the space.
53:09
There will just never be one lab that's best at everything. Yeah.
53:10
At the same time I'm sure some of the offers have been tempting now, right?
53:13
Yeah, but there is there's a lot of value in that.
53:17
I just wanted to see your face right now, You look like [laughter] a you look like an evil Monopoly man as you nod and smile waiting for his answer about the tempting offers.
53:26
I mean I just know how it goes.
53:29
I know how it goes, right?
53:31
And hey, that's what VCs are for though, right? You know?
53:34
Yeah, I think VCs really want us to stay independent and become really big because there needs to be a big application layer player here and there's not that many players actually.
53:46
Like most competitors are just really like big tech and labs that are all tied to models from like one provider. Even Meta now is MSL.
53:54
I think that was maybe not that smart like to be dependent on that model because Meta AI sucks.
54:00
Well, yeah, the the closest I would say is Perplexity to what you're saying the multiple model orchestration focus on consumer is how Arvind talks.
54:08
That's the closest thing I could see.
54:10
But I mean to that point of the VC thing we got a shoutout offer rock for people who don't know.
54:16
This is an anonymous VC account who regularly scoops deal flow very early and said you guys had raised an undisclosed round and I think you just confirmed it on X this morning, right?
54:27
You want to you want to share the scoop here with us?
54:29
Yeah, I I don't know how he gets gets the stuff but VCs like to gossip, Marvin. I'll tell you that. More than anything.
54:40
>> [laughter] >> And they're still getting more and more info.
54:42
Yeah, so you raised you raised more and I imagine there's a lot of interest now that you're So the product was in private beta and very recently you opened it up so anyone can sign up.
54:53
Yeah, so we we raised like when we raised a couple of months ago since then we've like more than 10x basically all our numbers.
55:01
So yeah, it's it's just like very good space to be in.
55:07
Like it's just like everyone is looking at this.
55:09
Everyone wants wants this.
55:11
It's just I think everything is going up and up. Yeah.
55:16
Everyone wants to be poked.
55:16
Everyone wants to be poked.
55:18
In the crisis of loneliness we all just want to be poked.
55:23
Speaking of that I was looking at one of your job descriptions and it said that to be a member of your technical staff you need to talk more to GPT or Claude than your parents and I just wanted to know what that's been like screening those people and the kind of stories you hear.
55:36
I I think I wrote that not I think but I wrote that before poke was a thing.
55:41
Like I I wrote that before before you could talk to poke.
55:45
I should probably update that.
55:47
Okay, so that's no longer a screening requirement for the interaction company. Not anymore. Now it's poke. Now it's poke. Yeah. Now it's poke. Okay.
55:52
Also going back to to the raise and the metrics I know you said 10x.
55:56
I know at one point you had said you have quote near perfect retention.
56:02
What does that actually look like?
56:04
That's like more than half the people that try out poke just use it forever and like like it flattens out above 50% which is just very cool.
56:15
Like people just really like it.
56:16
Like they like it for different reasons.
56:17
Like I think like the most surprising thing about poke is that there is no ICP.
56:21
People always ask you who is your customer and it's like everyone.
56:24
Like our like retention is the exact same across age cohorts.
56:29
Like 18 to 24, 25 to 34, people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 65 plus.
56:37
There's virtually no difference in retention.
56:39
Like people like young people might just talk to it all day.
56:41
Like whereas people in their 20s, 30s use it for productivity stuff.
56:44
People at 65 plus just get medication reminders every morning.
56:49
They need to take their medications and like people just find different things to use. Yeah.
56:54
There is still no way to like set up a recurring thing like that simply on your freaking phone.
56:59
I mean is this not you know would one think a big part of the OS of the future whenever it arrives?
57:08
I mean however the form factor is.
57:11
This is the super app that open AI is building is this idea. Yeah.
57:16
Well, they're going to try.
57:19
How do you look at the like user's success though?
57:21
I mean is it a time spent thing?
57:23
Is it the number of different use cases they do?
57:24
Is it the number of chats per day? Yeah.
57:27
I think a lot of it is just also how much people like it.
57:32
I think one neat part is building in consumers at the hiring season because people join because they want to make it better and another neat part is you don't need to motivate them by saying hey, our enterprise customer this big bank they just requested this feature. They just have that bug.
57:47
Fix it and then you need to like top down put pressure on people but like people get pressured by their friends.
57:54
Like a friend of an engineer says hey, I want this.
57:56
A friend of an engineer says hey, I have this now.
57:58
Hey, a friend of an engineer says I would love this and then we just build it, right?
58:04
We just build to have the best experience ourselves to have build the best experience for people around us and I think I think we would never want to go by how much time you spend on poke because there's no point in wanting people to spend more time on something but like it's rather you want people to spend less on something but achieve more.
58:21
I think it's very good that we have not said hey, we just care about user sentiment.
58:27
We just care about time spent.
58:29
We just care about numbers of messages sent or something like that.
58:33
But we just like much more care about like the holistic picture because as soon as you like you know this law as soon as like something becomes like the primary goal as soon as like one measure becomes a primary goal it ceases to be a good goal because you just optimize for something
58:49
and I think there's like also another besides being able to use all models and being agnostic and being able to integrate with all services another part good part of being independent is we are small and we can just actually build the best thing and we don't need OKRs. We can just
59:04
We can just build what we think is good for the world.
59:09
What is the craziest like most complex thing someone has built with poke though? Do you know?
59:14
I guess like crazy things all the time.
59:16
Like before we really built stuff someone like built automation where poke would just water his plants and like had like a camera to look at the plants and then like water them and like also look at the weather and like stuff like that. That was pretty cool.
59:31
But yeah, that's just there's just a lot of a lot of bottom-up stuff.
59:38
Yeah, it's surprising how much people like to build stuff and um in the hindsight, we should have probably released like an open-source self-host version um last last fall um because then somebody else built an open-source version and released that and that went pretty big.
59:56
So, I think I think that would have been a good idea. Yeah.
1:00:00
Well, yeah, you're talking about Open Claw, right?
1:00:01
I mean, that's the thing like this is Open Claw for normies and I haven't done Open Claw cuz I'm kind of terrified of setting it up, even though I've like talked to Peter about it.
1:00:09
He's tried to assure me it'll be fine, but like yeah, I mean, when you see what he's done in Open Claw um what is yeah, are you doing Open Claw for normies?
1:00:20
Is that the that the idea?
1:00:22
>> he he he like I think around the time when he started like the Open Claw repository, he tweeted that he's like doing the Get Things Done company of Vienna.
1:00:32
So, >> [laughter] >> I don't know if we had the Open Claw for normies or he's like the Vienna version >> [laughter] >> But when you see the success of Open Claw, right?
1:00:40
And it's like the thing Jensen's talking about on stage at GTC and all that stuff, like what do you think?
1:00:46
Like what is going to happen to Open Claw and what you're building? Can they coexist?
1:00:49
Yeah, I think it is pretty cool that there is an open-source self-host version, right?
1:00:54
Um it is just like it's especially because like there's no real profit motive behind it.
1:00:59
It's not like someone is like doing anything bad.
1:01:00
It's just like I think it's generally very good for the world that it exists.
1:01:05
Like the one thing that might be bad is just that people became more um like more afraid of the security implications because there have been a bunch of incidents with Open Claw because it was just vibe-coded by like a dude or two, you know?
1:01:23
Like it's just uh there has just been like much much much much much less work on that stuff and um me also saw because of that uh users have asked asking more of that.
1:01:34
Like I feel like if Open Claw hasn't hadn't been a thing, Alice would have asked fewer questions about security, you know?
1:01:40
Um and I think that might be probably like the worst the worst aspect of it.
1:01:44
Well, it's nice that I mean, yeah, Open Claw, you know, there's no profit motive and I mean, yeah, they're not charging a VC or a billionaire 136,000 a month for access.
1:01:56
Uh and you know, that'll that's an incredible story just because it speaks to like what you've built and that someone was I mean, it's a billionaire, but was willing to fork over that much money.
1:02:04
I'll be very curious to get my poke bill after this cuz I haven't gotten it yet.
1:02:07
So, Open Claw's key performance metric is how many users have self-immolated using the tool, destroyed all their emails, destroyed all their documents, destroyed all their photos.
1:02:18
Uh Marvin, with the limited time we have left, um your your background is fascinating.
1:02:22
You have a background in tunneling, is that correct?
1:02:26
>> Yeah, like the biggest thing we did before I was building a tunnel boring machine. Yes.
1:02:29
So, this was not part of Elon Musk's Boring Company, but it was part of like a a hackathon or something that he judged?
1:02:37
>> It was a competition that The Boring Company and SpaceX hosted um where people around the world built their own organizations.
1:02:43
So, we saw I saw like a tweet from Elon, "Hey, he's challenging people around the world to build their own tunnel boring machine."
1:02:50
So, they're not commercial, but without profit motive, um just build something for the sake of it.
1:02:57
The fastest tunnel boring machine with like exact specifications just for the fun.
1:03:01
And um then I called Felix and we said, "Hey, let's let's do it."
1:03:03
And uh hired within the first 10 weeks of seeing the tweet, we hired and onboarded 65 people full-time.
1:03:12
Um so, that was like a much faster moving thing than than anything in startup world because we just said, "Hey, let's do it nonprofit."
1:03:19
And um because of COVID, politicians wanted to reduce like the unemployment rates.
1:03:25
So, there was basically UBI for students and recent grads if you don't do anything um that pays you.
1:03:32
So, we had 65 people that like worked for free for a year building a 22-ton, 40-ft long tunnel boring machine um which was like a crazy experience. Yeah.
1:03:43
Well, my camera has overheated, so I guess that means this interview's over.
1:03:48
>> [laughter] >> I'm not even kidding. >> way to say bye. Yeah.
1:03:52
Yeah, um these color bars are yeah, not planned, but uh this is our cue, I guess. Uh Alice, anything else?
1:04:01
For those who can't see and are just listening, Alex Heath [laughter] is currently symbolized by a no signal.
1:04:09
We're going to keep this in the show. You know what? I've just decided. Um Yeah.
1:04:13
But yeah, Marvin, we appreciate your time.
1:04:15
Uh I I will keep playing with Poke.
1:04:16
Again, I'm looking forward to that bill.
1:04:18
Please do not read too much into my hotel emails.
1:04:22
We cannot see any of that, so don't Thank you.
1:04:25
Thank you for coming on the show.
1:04:27
>> Also famous last words.
1:04:29
>> [laughter] >> Thank you, Marvin. Thank you, Marvin. Thanks a lot. See you. Bye.
1:04:36
>> [music] >> That's it for this week's show.
1:04:38
Thanks to Marvin for coming on.
1:04:40
I've got some things to poke at.
1:04:44
>> [laughter] >> All right.
1:04:45
If you like this show, don't forget to like and subscribe everywhere you get podcasts. [music] We are access.
1:04:50
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1:04:53
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1:05:03
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1:05:07
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1:05:09
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1:05:11
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1:05:20
>> [music] [music] [music]