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Before we get into today's show, a quick note.
Search this video
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This is the final episode of Access.
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You can keep following me at sources.
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news and Ellis at meaning. co company. But don't go anywhere.
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The show's feed is going to live on, and you're going to be hearing a lot more from me here very soon.
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We'll talk more after the show about why we're winding everything down, what we're proud of, and what's next for the both of us.
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>> There are some interesting nuances to evaluating models.
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[music] A model that you don't like on day one can be a trash model.
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If you use it on low or medium thinking and you get rid of your skills, it's way better.
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>> Today we have a guest who has been living at the edge of how AI is changing work, media, and the internet.
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Dan Shipper, CEO of Ever.
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[music] >> You have to be willing to waste tokens. I was testing 5. 6.
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So I woke up the next day to a message from Ariel saying, "Did you spend 2 billion tokens overnight?" I was like, "Fuck."
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>> [laughter] >> Dan breaks down why he thinks we'll all spend more time inside AI coding agents.
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How Ever is building agents to scale human taste and why the real opportunity is not automating everything.
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It's figuring out what humans do next.
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Plus his two phone system billion token experiments and why Siri may become a much bigger threat to Chat GPT than people realize. Welcome to Access.
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[music] I love your little every mic cube thing.
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Is there like an industry term for that that I'm not aware of? >> I have no idea.
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>> I have no idea. This is like I actually I was thinking about this because this is the first time I've seen this [music] and I thought you guys would like this cuz it's sort of it's one of those things where you spend like 6 and 1/2 years like pushing a boulder up a hill
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and you're like um every single thing that happens you did and then and then eventually it starts rolling down the hill and you show up to your like recording studio and one of these is there and you're and you're like I had nothing to do with this but I love it, you know? And like that's a really nice
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And like that's a really nice feeling.
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>> That's when you know you've made it.
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That's when you know you've made it is you got the little cube and you didn't do the cube.
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[laughter] >> But was it an actual member of the team that did it or was it a gun for hire hired by one of your agents who just swooped into the office, added that to your mic and >> it was obviously Codeex.
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Um [laughter] here >> I mean Poke did this the other day. Did you guys see this?
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They had Poke Humans launch on July 4th and you could have them go do task gravity things, but I was too afraid to use >> Poke bought by Cognition.
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Shout out Marvin uh former guest.
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Uh a sentence that uh only a certain cohort of people will understand.
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Uh Cognition buying Poke, but [laughter] those are two companies.
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I think of you and every as the most AI pilled human and organization out there that isn't a frontier AI lab.
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Uh and people know you guys for the work you do on model testing.
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Uh you are putting out a lot of writing uh as well.
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Uh I think you're working on a codeex history of codecs uh opus although I shouldn't use that word in this context but story a sonnet. Yeah.
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>> Um about the history of codecs and you've got this interesting hybrid media consulting tech software company that you're building and we want to dive into all of that.
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But first, I thought it'd be interesting actually cuz I haven't heard you talk about this super recently.
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Can you just take us through a normal day for you and how you use AI?
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I assume it's changing like on an almost daily basis cuz you're testing everything.
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But yeah, what's your what's your day like?
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Are we getting out of bed and having an extended voice conversation with chat?
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Like what what are we doing these days? >> It is changing a lot.
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And I'll say it has changed radically in the last day or two because OpenAI's new [laughter] new uh >> we've gone from years to months now.
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It doesn't happen it doesn't change radically every day but uh some some some days more happens than in weeks or years combined you know like whatever that quote is.
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Um so I'm definitely I'm definitely in one of those phase changes right now.
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Uh because chat GBT work and codeex's voice integration that they just released, it's so freaking good.
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>> Um >> so you're working from the toilet now is what you're saying.
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>> Toilet is the least of it.
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Um [laughter] >> Um Well, I I can talk about today and today is like a little bit of a different kind of day because I explicitly took the week off to do to write this piece.
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I'm writing a history of Codex.
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I think Codex is like one of the most interesting product and just business stories of the last like 10 or 15 years.
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um specifically OpenAI synonymous with AI launched LGBT and then found themselves for the last year kind of behind anthropic and I think they used codeex to come back um as a product which kind of disrupted themselves um and then they merged back in and that like almost never happens and I think there's a lot of really interesting questions to be explored about how they did that and why it actually worked this time.
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Um, but I I'm I took the week off to write that.
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And normally, basically, I structure my day with I spend half my day writing and half my day operating.
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And as the company has gotten bigger, we're about 30 people now.
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That has become more and more intense.
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And um and I'm still shooting for that, but you know, it's a little bit uh harder to hit.
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So, uh now I'm also trying adding in every once in a while do like a little station where I write and that's it's been great.
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So, I got to get up today.
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Uh, I What did I do when I got up?
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Well, one of the Okay, this is all This is just all gonna be me talking about Chad voice.
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So, sorry, but uh there's a lot to say here.
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So, one thing that's been really >> You turned your dreams into [laughter] action [gasps] >> um >> 5 minutes after waking up.
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>> One thing that's been really interesting about voice is it now has time awareness.
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So, I use it for doing meditations.
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So, I'm just like, I'm going to do a 30-minute meditation.
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and let's do a guided set a timer.
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Here's the kind of style of meditation I like.
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And it's actually pretty good.
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I think that there's some room for improvement.
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I've been doing it on my phone and I think if I did it in the chat for work app where it have it would have access to like my whole computer and stuff like that, I could have it grab transcripts from meditation teachers I like and add to that.
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Um, but it'll get there eventually.
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It's just not all hooked up to everything right now.
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But anyway, I did I did one of those. It was great.
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very very helpful especially to do a guided meditation that is personalized for me and what I'm feeling and I can talk to it as I'm meditating and it can sort of like interact with me a little bit which is kind of kind of interesting
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and so I did that and then I uh got up I did a bunch of reading I'm reading uh Being in Time uh by Haidiger and a couple other like random things but in particular I don't know how much Haidiger sure you guys have read, but he's [ __ ] impossible to understand. I've done several things to help me with
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I've done several things to help me with this.
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The first thing, which is has been my main method of reading Haidiger, is I vibe coded with Fable a an app called Verso that has all the text because it's out of copyright and then um I read >> not that would matter, but yeah.
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[laughter] >> Matter to who is the question. >> Yeah. Copyright joke. >> Yeah.
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Um, so it has it's autocopyright. I have all the text.
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Uh, I read it in paperback, but basically it's sort of like a oneshot Kindle app.
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And I go to whatever page I'm on and I can turn the page over and it has a plain English explanation of whatever I'm reading.
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And then any of the words I can I can highlight them.
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It it it saves all my highlights.
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It also I can just press explain. It'll explain it.
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I can say what is the German?
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It'll talk about the German and how the translation like misses things.
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It also there's a uh professor I love his name is Hubert Drifus who wrote famously wrote this book about why the first generation of AI wouldn't work called uh what what computers can't do and it was all based on Haidiger's philosophy and really good I love that guy and he has a lecture course on being in time that is on archive.
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org And as part of this, the um Fable went and like grabbed the lecture, all the lectures, restored it, put it into a player experience, transcribed it, and then also linked every page of the book to the parts of the lectures where he talks about that page.
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And so [snorts] basically, as I'm reading, I just like go to the part of my of my app and then I, you know, flip it over and then I see what Drifus says.
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And and that that really helps.
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But what I've been doing recently over the last and recently is like literally like last two days.
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I can just throw in chat voice and say here's where I am in the book and I just read the book to it and then I'm like what what the [ __ ] does this mean?
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And it's very good at helping me understand it and just like waiting for me.
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I can read for 10 or 15 minutes and then be like I'm stuck here. I I wouldn't do that.
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I'm [clears throat] literally having it explain every single sentence because I'm in a very dense part of the book.
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But I could, if I if I was smarter, let it just like hang out with me and then uh talk to me as I as I read.
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And I think there's so many places to go here with using it as a companion to do intellectual exploration that doesn't require a screen.
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But that's the first like hour after I get up. I'll stop there.
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But >> well, that's interesting because I mean they haven't confirmed it.
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But I do think that is the thesis of the first device that OpenAI is working on with Johnny IV.
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It's going to be, to my understanding, this kind of puck-like device that mostly sits on your desk or you take with you around the house for exactly that kind of use case.
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So, it's interesting to hear you say like you're already doing that with the phone app.
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>> I would guess that, too. I mean, it's so funny.
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I feel so bad for Alexa and Siri right now. Like, they suck so hard.
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And um >> even the new Siri, have you tried it?
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>> I have not tried the new Siri and I've heard it's good.
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So, so >> the new Siri is really good.
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I've got the public beta on my phone. >> Okay.
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Yeah, I've not tried the beta.
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So I but I've heard good things and that would be great if it was good.
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But I do think this is a it's a big opportunity for them because yeah, I don't really want to look at a screen and it's good enough that I don't have to anymore for a lot of things.
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>> Ellis, are you using new Siri? >> I am.
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Um my 2-year-old phone is crumpling a little bit under the weight of the public beta, but I had to know how the new Siri is working.
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And I've been really pleasantly surprised.
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I mean, whether it's pulling from local data from my notes, I mean, I've been switching back to Apple stuff as one does in productivity worlds every year or two to see what's going on with the normies, whether it's Apple Mail, reminders, notes, obviously.
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And I feel like this is the realest reason we've had in years to use those products.
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And I mean the other day I was doing like a live shoot with uh an email app called AC and I guess that's one of your core competitors.
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Um and we were talking about the whole idea they have with their recent campaign about the cold emails or the emails that you might have missed.
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And I said find my first email with Ryland and it found it in like 10 seconds >> and it took a few days to index everything.
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And I'm not sure exactly how their, you know, rag implementation works, but it having access to that material, especially for most people who aren't writing MD files of everything, I feel like is going to be pretty groundbreaking.
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>> The indexing takes roughly a week has been my experience and people I've talked to because they're indexing everything on the phone.
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But that is the power of Apple is they have this context that no one else has.
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>> No integrations required, no connections required.
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Poke forgets about my notion integration every week.
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>> I think it's a huge deal and it would be so fun and funny if Apple did the most apply thing in the world, which is just skip all the two or threeyear like knife fight and then just release that everyone wants to use.
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It would be really funny.
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>> And I've been thinking about what the second order implications of this are.
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If Siri's really good now and people are even using the Siri app like they would use chat, what happens to chat and claude, right?
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That's an interesting question.
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I think the jury's out obviously.
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I don't know, but it really depends on how good those things are.
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And I think generally Apple is going to have to be super consumerry.
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And I think that we're we're starting to see a bifurcation of AI into extremely consumerry and then uh power knowledge worker use cases that are reminiscent of coder use cases but like for people who are nontechnical and those are two different customer use cases.
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And I think right now OpenAI for example is trying to put that all into one app into chatb for work which now has chat work and codecs and it seems to be working but it's also a really tall order to make something that >> anyone can use like if you're just you know a mom in the Midwest and you have a question versus you're an AI pill builder orchestrating like 15 sub aents.
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It's not necessarily clear to me that those should be the same app, but that's where that's what they're trying to do.
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And I think Apple doesn't really have to do the we're for power users thing. >> No.
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>> Well, this is so silly, but like this occurred to me yesterday is that as far as we know, Siri AI is going to be free. >> Yeah. >> Right.
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>> Yeah, it's totally free.
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>> Which is kind of crazy.
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You know, I've been paying $20 a month for Poke for, you know, a lot of other services and that's quite an advantage.
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I think it could be like when uh >> even Apple Music is paid >> Ellis.
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I think it could be a lot an analogy you'll appreciate like when um Instagram introduced stories and it didn't kill Snapchat, but it >> trigger warning please.
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>> Ellis worked at Snap at the time.
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Dan um uh and it didn't kill Snapchat, but it severely curbed future growth.
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And a lot of people who would have maybe signed up for Snapchat for stories never did.
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And I think that could happen with uh the assistant market and Siri.
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>> Well, I think Dan's potentially a good person to talk about this with is that the bifurcation isn't just kind of the the productivity stuff for the personal stuff, but even within the personal stuff, I feel like there's quite a big difference between which AI is my muscle memory for asking quick questions and many many other use cases.
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And I think all my quick questions have immediately started going to Siri AI for whatever that's worth. Uh oh.
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>> You know, I always think we are have to be a little bit of a leading edge.
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So if you're using I'm not beta testing s series.
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So I have to ask you what has happened then to your chbet anthropic poke use then what are you still using them and for what?
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Yeah, I think the poke usage has gone down for all the quick questions.
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And what's funny about it, this sounds so stupid, but you know, the the user interface does matter in terms of how upstream you are of whatever someone wants to know.
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And when I was in the car, I was like hacking it like literally sending Poke a voice note [laughter] because it doesn't have voice mode.
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And I need to try the new chat GBT voice and and whatnot.
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But it's just so easy now to just hold down that button in my car for for Siri or for, you know, CarPlay and just ask a question now.
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Or when I drive by a restaurant, I say, "Add that to my restaurants to try list >> on Sunset Boulevard."
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And I used to have to ask Poke to edit a notion note to do that.
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And sometimes it would not work.
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>> Wait, so Siri knows that you're next to a restaurant.
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You just say, "Add that to my list or do you say the name?"
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>> Oh, well that's a whole other story.
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No, I say the name, but also what it does know is what song's on. So now I'm in the car.
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I say, "What's this song about?" And it knows.
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>> Even if you're using, >> or is it just Apple Music?
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>> Uh, I'm an Apple Music guy, so I don't know.
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But uh I mean it's got to be the same what now playing API or whatever it is that they offer. I bet it works.
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Or certainly if I'm like looking at something on my screen, I say add this to my notes or add this list of places and it it does it. It's quite quite useful. >> That's so amazing.
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I got I gota I guess I got to get this.
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I I uh I do have an older oldish iPhone.
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I think I have an iPhone 15 or something like that.
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So >> Dan, you can expensive.
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>> Dan, I thought you lived at the frontier.
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>> I do except [laughter] except the iPhone.
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All the iPhone generations are the same.
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Well, I now I have I have my iPhone 15 and then I have an iPhone 13 which is my house phone.
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And uh basically when I get home I put the put the iPhone 15 which has all my work stuff on it and I take the iPhone 13 off the charger that has it doesn't even have a cell plan.
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It's just connected to Wi-Fi and it just has you know chatb and claude or whatever so that no one can get in touch with me.
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I can't do any you know I can't be browsing stuff.
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I can't be doom scrolling and that's been it's a it's a big life hack. Highly recommend. >> Wow.
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You sound like a brick phone person.
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Like you do you do one of those at one point.
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>> I have I have a brick.
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This is a this is my latest attempt at at a brick-like lifestyle.
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>> Isn't this so interesting?
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So like we started this like you're one of the most AI pill and yet at the same time you just got a brick.
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Like this is this interesting dichotomy of where we're at with tech is like it's very exciting.
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We're all trying it and yet we all also crave more disconnection from it than maybe we did in years past. Do you feel that?
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I've definitely always thought about this.
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Or not always, like when I was in high school, I probably wasn't thinking about this.
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Um, but I've definitely been thinking about this for a while, but I do think it's true.
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I do think as as we get deeper into the this new technology paradigm, it has become clearer that at least to me that the way that my brain operates when I'm using agents or anything on my computer is just different than the way that my brain operates otherwise.
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And it has become important for me to protect time that my brain is sort of operating differently.
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Honestly, a it feels better, but b I do better work.
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I'm more focused uh when it's to some degree limited and I'm not flipping back and forth.
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That it makes a lot of sense to me um that people would do that.
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I mean, setting aside the phone though, I feel like you're really on the cutting edge of a lot of these new use cases with AI and I was trying to picture you reading and I feel like there's got to be a million thoughts that come to you the whole time and I was curious how you file those, how you even take notes on your reading.
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I feel like it's really hard to focus as every potential thing now, every experience now, even going through the redwoods, which some guy was posting about the other day, has become fodder fodder for potential productivity.
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That's a good question, >> which I think can be cool, but also quite worrisome.
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>> I've always read paperback books and like the office which I'm in is like filled with books and it's all just books that I have that don't don't fit in my apartment.
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Um, and I don't really like reading digital books because they all have the same feeling like a paperback or something that can hold just like has a certain vibe that it's unique which I love.
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Each one is unique and that helps me remember it and make make it its own experience.
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And I've always been one of these people that every every like true nerd is obsessed with organizing their book notes and like taking notes and remembering what they read and whatever.
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So, I've always like had that thing.
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>> And I was into Rome when it came out.
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And I've had all these different systems that I've written about like one thing I used to do is I used to take a blank sheet of paper and as I was reading I I always underline. I always have a pen.
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I always have a red pen on me.
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Um and that's what I used to like underline um my books.
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And then what I used to do is I used to take a blank sheet of paper and I would handw write an index as I was reading.
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So anything that was interesting to me I would like write it on index and then I'd have the blank sheet of paper in the book.
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And a lot of my old books even in the office have those indexes.
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And then I started doing Rome.
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And then I think probably when I hit 30 I was like this is useless.
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Like why am I doing [laughter] this?
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>> I exhausted myself on that as well.
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>> And I have this I have I have a couple of things like I have this note that I started keeping because of Robin Sloan.
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I did an interview with Robin Sloan and he started he was doing this and so I started doing it which is I called it it's my ineffable list and it's anything that just has that little like flavor of just I just like this sentence for whatever reason.
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It's not necessarily facts.
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It's just like interesting sentences.
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It's a writer's notebook.
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Um, it's a commonplace book.
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And so I have that and that's an Apple note and I just add to that all the time.
20:31
But I I do think that one of the reasons I love AI is this is like this is any note taker's dream.
20:40
It's any book lover's dream.
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Any anytime I'm reading, I can just say now I can just say, you know, chatb for work.
20:46
Hey, like save this passage and it just will save it and then it'll bring it up.
20:51
I don't think it's good at bringing it up in the right time yet.
20:54
It's I think it's discernment for which things would be interesting to me is actually pretty poor.
20:58
But I I do think that will happen.
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And so it's just the best thing in the world.
21:03
And you're right, if you do that all the time, you're not really it's not the same kind of reading experience.
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And so for me, it >> I mean every sentence you look something up, every sentence you make a highlight, every other sentence you send it to a friend, you know.
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>> So I think it's I think it's both.
21:18
>> So I think it's I think it's both. It's a you realize when you have this available how many questions you actually have and how much more deeply you can understand something and then you also have to balance that with it takes you out of it takes you out of the experience and it makes the experience quite different and which experience do
21:38
you really want and which one is better for your purposes or where you are right now and for something like Haidiger would not be able to read it without this and sometimes I like intentionally read it in a um I want to read this first, see see what I can get out of it and then you know then do the lookups like but normally I'm just like going back and forth because it's just impossible. Something like someone like James
22:02
Something like someone like James Baldwin like it's just nice to read James Baldwin.
22:07
>> I'm fascinated by every's media strategy, your strategy.
22:11
strategy, your strategy. you just did the um the Opus 5 uh review early test and you were kind of negative on it which was interesting and people were noticing that and I think giving you props for saying how you felt and like being honest about I cuz cuz what I
22:30
observe and this is maybe like my old journalist hat is like this kind of cottage industry that sprung up of people who test models early are very close with the labs they get pre-release access to things in exchange for like publishing their thoughts like it kind
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of breeds this like very um I don't know like soft kind of media environment and uh you all I think are like very enthusiastic about the technology and the promises of it and that's true in everything that I see from you guys but I think you got a lot of props for saying like oh like actually there's
23:02
things about Opus uh 5 that I don't like and I'm I'm curious like how you think about that being the CEO of a company that also makes software does consulting all these things but has this media apparatess, you literally have, I think, a person with a title like editor-inchief, right? Like, so you're
23:15
Like, so you're you're making journalistic work.
23:17
You're writing this codeex thing like you were saying earlier.
23:21
Um, how do you think about that and approach that?
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And and maybe specifically on the the reviewing models piece.
23:28
>> Well, I think any kind of writing and any approach has its pitfalls. I think you're right.
23:32
If you're in the early access community and you're one of these early people and you you know people in the labs, it it can feel hard to be negative and it can feel who wants to who wants to just generally talk about something that they're not psyched about.
23:48
It's just kind of like it it's better if the model is better, you know, for your for your views and clicks, right?
23:53
That's a little bit of the way the the incentive structures are set up.
23:56
I think on the other hand, like if you're a more disinterested, objective journalist, um the incentives can sometimes be to just be super critical.
24:05
Um and and so it's it's sort of both have their both have their downfalls.
24:11
I think for us the pra the the the perspective that we come from is really we're trying to do this.
24:16
We're trying to use this stuff to do our work and to lead our lives and we just try to talk about what we like and if we don't like something um that is a important feedback mechanism for the labs to make more stuff that we like and it is a it is challenging to think about how do we express this because I I'm you know I'm generally not pleased to be like this model sucks.
24:42
I don't really want to say that, but it's I sort of think of it in the same way as if you're if you have a friend and they're making decisions in in their life that you think are, you know, bad.
24:54
Some somehow your relationship is like sort of frayed.
24:57
It's better for you to have an honest conversation with your friend.
24:59
And we just happen to have that conversation in public because that that makes your relationship better.
25:04
It doesn't it doesn't do anyone any long-term good to uh not be honest about how you feel.
25:08
And so, for example, with with Opus, it was pretty clear very early that we were not not liking it.
25:15
And we gave like real feedback to them in the in the process of testing it to be like here are the things that are not working.
25:20
And in their review, yeah, we were we were critical.
25:25
And what we tried to do is explain there are a lot of there are some interesting nuances to evaluating models.
25:32
A model that you don't like on day one can can be a trash model or it can ma it can mean that it's a model whose powers are only unlocked in specific circumstances that mean that you have to break your workflow.
25:45
And if you have to break your workflow that is itself a big ding but it also means that there's an opportunity there's usually or sometimes there's an opportunity to learn how to use the model and get good results.
25:56
So, one of the things that we we found or really Kieran Class, who's the GM of Kora found is if you use it on low or medium thinking and you get rid of your skills, it's way better.
26:05
And so, we put that in the review because it's it's a thing that people should know.
26:11
It's like you may not like this model, but if you use it in a completely alien way, you might get good results.
26:19
And I think that that's started to bear out a little bit like just from the vibe over the last couple days.
26:23
And so I think we have a commitment to just being honest and and if we're critical, do it in a way that's constructive because what we really just want is AI that works for us.
26:36
And I think that is a good strategy. >> It's so interesting.
26:40
I think um writing about products that you use and love, you're a lot more informed on them, but you also may not represent the audience that the company wants to be targeting in the future, which I've always found to be a fascinating dynamic.
26:55
For example, decades of reporters, myself included, writing about Twitter, uh which I still call Twitter, when they were trying to push to work for normies, whether it was with the algorithm or otherwise.
27:09
is you now see the dynamic just in general between the ways creators or early adopters use platforms and the masses and uh yeah you wonder you know how they felt after that and they say well it's not maybe it's not for you anymore or something like that.
27:26
Um how how are the reactions in in your DMs and emails?
27:29
>> It's a good it's a good question.
27:29
I think that, you know, Apple, for example, is the first company where I'm like, what they do with Siri, I may not be the best person to really pull that out and and think about it.
27:43
Like, I would trust MKBHD with that. He's just so good at it.
27:47
The comparison of Twitter and journalists is real is a really interesting one to to pull out for me.
27:53
And I I do think and this is maybe self- serving that we have a we'll have a pretty lasting connection to the direction of a certain segment of of AI products in particular.
28:07
There's been this historical thing in AI where the stuff that developers do with it today are the stuff that knowledge workers are going to do with it in 6 to 12 months once the models get better.
28:19
And so I think there's going to be continue to be a lot of relevance for power users who discover new workflows, especially as the models change that then get get commercialized or productized for people who are not going to spend the time dinking around with OpenClaw on the weekend.
28:35
And so I think we'll we will sit there, but there's going to there are going to be more lanes that open up as more and more of the economy and society piles in here.
28:47
and it it'll change that landscape of who gets to cover it and what kind of coverage is best for sure.
28:53
>> How do you imagine that evolving even the next couple of years?
28:55
Can you pull that out a little bit more?
28:57
You have to give secrets away.
28:59
Yeah, the landscapes and the landscape and kind of how you see the media around all this evolving >> that's a I don't to be honest I don't know that I don't know about the media side of it.
29:09
I think the landscape is there's there's three or fourish main constituencies.
29:17
There are um power users who are technical.
29:20
There are knowledge workers who need to use it for their jobs and and therefore like businesses and teams and stuff like that.
29:29
And then there's just regular consumers.
29:31
Those are three three big places that need to be served.
29:36
There are a ton of obvious economic incentives to to serve big enterprises and teams and do the things that those people want.
29:44
What those people want is generally um a function of what builders wanted like 12 months ago.
29:52
And so if you if you go direct for enterprise people, I think you end up being behind.
29:58
Um, but you have to suffer the like short-term pain of following people, you know, in the every crowd or around the every crowd of people who are people who are power users building at the edge in a way that feels like it's maybe not legible to big enterprise customers, but I think will be.
30:21
So, a really simple example is right now it's like it's pretty obvious if you're programming, you should be using cloud code or codeex and you probably shouldn't be looking at every line of code.
30:28
line of code. that was extremely not obvious a year ago even to people inside of the labs and to us it was like of course this is how we work and I think that will keep that will sort of keep happening so I think that the knowledge worker and enterprise market you can see a preview of where that's going to be in 12 months by looking at what the builder market is at some point
30:54
it may be that model progress stops happening as quickly in this generation and in that case I don't think that the builders will be necessarily as informative as like KO needs sock 2 compliance for their for their teams that are already deep into codeex and therefore that like those needs are actually more important but right now that's not the dynamic. It's really easy
31:14
It's really easy to let the tail wag the dog and think about what big enterprises want and then sort of miss like what they will want which is sort of right now being defined and then resolving both of those different constituencies with consumers is inside of a single vision is really it's really hard and I I see some some interesting movements. to like serious one.
31:42
But you know another company a company I invested in is called uh Portola and they have this AI alien friend >> and we just had Quinton on last episode.
31:53
>> Uh you guys know him great and like used mostly by like you know millennial Gen X or Gen Z women u which is a very different like my audience is 80% of it.
32:03
>> He said moms are fully on board now. >> There you go.
32:05
And it's a very different take on AI that >> seems like and I don't maybe it's sort of a but it's like that's not the primary purpose of it.
32:13
I I think that category for example super underdis discussed will obviously be very very important and is not it's not obvious how it gets merged in with people who are using codecs.
32:25
One of the other things to me that makes it a bit fuzzier is uh knowing when you're actually being more productive or when you are doing work about the work.
32:34
And I wonder like how your team, you know, reconciles that like, oh, are we spending our day building products?
32:41
Are we spending our day building better systems for building products?
32:44
And this was the whole Rome research dilemma really >> is like, oh, I spend all my day setting up note infrastructure instead of actually doing the work.
32:54
And that's like one of my favorite memes online is that all the dudes on YouTube who talk about notes and journaling are taking notes about taking notes. >> Totally.
33:02
Uh and this is I mean it's it's it's that exact thing just on steroids because it's so much easier and more fun to spend your whole day vibe coding your system for vibe coding than it was making your own research.
33:16
My favorite thing to cook is anything with lemons because after you cook something with lemons, you your hands smell better, you feel cleaner, you feel [laughter] good.
33:28
And I think and we can contrast that with like garlic or, you know, raw fish or chicken or whatever.
33:35
And and with chicken, you're like washing your hands every like 15 seconds.
33:38
You're like, "This feels horrible."
33:39
At least for me, I have OCD, so like uh I'm I'm convinced I'm going to put myself in the emergency room every time I make chicken.
33:45
But anyway, uh proper use of proper system building and proper use of this to to like to set up a system to help you do your work happens in the context of your work.
33:59
It does not happen in theory.
33:59
So, usually you're doing something, you run into a problem, and you're like, I'm running to this problem all the time.
34:07
Let me let me just do something real quick to to build a system to like help me face this more efficiently in the future.
34:14
It is not like building castles in sky in theory that you might use eventually.
34:19
So it happens in the loop in in the context of your work.
34:20
And usually like lemons, it like leaves you feeling better after.
34:24
And if you are instead feeling like you're just like an empty shell of a human, like pulling the dopamine lever one more time to see if it finally solves your problem, that you can't even really define the problem.
34:38
That's when you have a sense that hey, this isn't quite this isn't quite something's not working here.
34:42
And luckily, I don't really have like I think probably everyone on the team struggles with this to some degree, but I have not really we've not really had real conversations about this because everyone is shipping stuff all the time.
34:53
So I think that in itself is a good enough bar is like are you shipping all the time? If so, great.
34:57
Whatever you're doing to do that, that's fine.
34:58
The the conversations we have been having and I don't have a solution for that I think is really important is just token spend.
35:05
I I like you know I was testing what model was it? It was I think it was 5. 6. I was testing to 5.
35:10
6 And usually we get tokens for free to do the testing, but in this case, for whatever reason, the tokens were not free.
35:18
And I woke up the next day to a message from my my sister is our head of operations.
35:24
So I woke up the next day to a message from Ariel saying, "Did you spend two billion tokens overnight?" I was like, "Fuck."
35:31
[laughter] >> You're like, "Oops, >> we need to go raise another round." >> Yeah.
35:38
skipping [laughter] lunch today, boys.
35:41
>> Um, and there's a really it's there's a really interesting tension there because you have to be willing to waste tokens.
35:49
If you're if you're not willing to waste tokens, you're not willing to discover new things.
35:53
Obviously, if you're spending I I mean, our to our token spend is absolutely in the 50 to 100k a month range, if not more. That's a lot of money. That's a lot.
36:03
>> That's per employee though, Dan. Come on. Right.
36:04
That's [laughter] >> obviously. Yeah.
36:05
My personal token spend [snorts] uh 100k a month. Uh and >> is it really? It's 50k a month. >> No, no, no, no.
36:15
Uh oh, I mean for the company. Yeah.
36:17
Well, like what is my actual token?
36:19
I had to switch to my to chatbt.
36:21
I had to switch catchupt workspaces.
36:23
I'm I'm pulling up my >> my codeex.
36:25
Uh my >> you also probably get a lot of free tokens.
36:28
So you're maybe not the best. >> I'm I'm at 9.
36:30
4 billion lifetime tokens, but this is on on just this workspace.
36:36
Um, and like yesterday, uh, let's see, you know, it looks like I'm around 250 million tokens a day-ish would be my average.
36:46
I don't know what that is in pricing terms, but it's a lot. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
36:52
>> Um, and this is just personal like we also run apps that consume tokens. So, >> Sure.
36:56
Um, so trying to trying to let people experiment and trying to also then reflect afterwards was this a good use of our tokens like would you do that again is a really difficult problem that is very valuable to solve.
37:11
I assume we will solve it eventually.
37:13
I don't have an answer other than [snorts] um my my current my current thought is if you have any run that spends a billion or more tok to tokens, we send you a quiz that asks you questions about like how like what you were building and how it was built.
37:30
And if you can't answer the questions, you go on a wall of shame and if you can answer the questions, then you become a token billionaire for the day.
37:38
Um and >> what if I just have Codex answer the questions?
37:41
We'll have to we'll have to make that not a thing.
37:44
Um, [laughter] good luck. No cheating. No cheating.
37:46
Um, and I think that's like a sort of like light light-hearted way to make sure that people It's not that we're banning you from doing this.
37:56
It's just like really think about it.
37:57
And if you think about it and it's worth it, great. If not, don't do it.
38:02
>> Well, you consult a lot of companies on their AI strategy and individuals.
38:04
What are you hearing from them about token spend right now?
38:08
Does it kind of map to what you're going through? I think it maps.
38:12
I think again it's one of those when you are really I think far away from the ground level of how things work and what's going on.
38:21
It's really easy to swing from one extreme to another.
38:23
And the first extreme was just spend as many tokens as you can and the second extreme then went like really quickly to like token maxing is bad and blah blah blah.
38:33
And it's like and there's no ROI from AI and all that kind of stuff.
38:36
I'm not saying our clients are like that.
38:37
Our clients are very smart.
38:38
But like the general narrative is that forcing your organization to use a tool they don't understand as much as possible is obviously going to be a waste.
38:47
Um, and now that AI is powerful and can run for long periods of time, that the waste is a lot higher than it used to be because it used to just be a chat and then a response and that's not that many tokens.
38:59
But now I can spend two billion tokens without even thinking about it.
39:03
And CFOs are looking at that bill being like, "Fuck, this is just this is really terrible."
39:07
And so it's swinging to the other extreme of uh you can't use tokens anymore.
39:11
We're limiting it severely, blah blah, which is also the wrong move.
39:15
My I think the general thing that we talk about with clients and the things I see be successful are technical people, you should have a $200 a month plan.
39:24
Nontechnical people, you should have a $20 a month plan.
39:25
Um, generally you should uh be able to stay within those limits.
39:31
And you should identify a few of the people in your organization who you consider to be like true AI early adopters and give them a high token budget because what they will do is experiment and find the workflows that the rest of your organization is going to use within the limits of their plan and have some sort of escalation process if someone's running into limits that that need need to be changed.
39:53
But something like that feels like a reasonable policy.
39:56
It sounds like you have a lot on your plate and among them is a handful of different pieces of software.
40:05
Uh, Kora, Spiral, Sparkle, Monologue, Proof.
40:08
I know some of them have just one person on them, but I'm curious how that's going.
40:13
I mean, there's so many jobs, you know, within building a successful product from the engineering to the product marketing to the road map.
40:22
Uh, how is that how is that going?
40:25
I think it's going well and we're in the middle of a sort of change in that strategy.
40:31
One of the key early insights that we had is it is absolutely possible now to have a single person running uh running an app end to end and doing really well at it.
40:40
I think Naveen who runs Monologue is an extremely good example. It's just him.
40:44
He's got some contractors but it's mostly just him and that product is growing really quickly and is a actually competitive with companies that have raised like $70 million or more.
40:54
Um, and yeah, there's like some support from us, but really he's like mostly doing it by himself. It's it's kind of crazy.
41:00
If you take a talented full stack person and just let them rip, they can get a lot further further than you think.
41:06
And if you as a company spin up a lot of a lot of those, you can sometimes end up tending to and you have one person on each thing and each thing is going sort of well, but none of them are necessarily breaking out.
41:21
And and I think that what we need to do is develop a different move to be like we've identified we've we've explored the territory of a bunch of different apps.
41:29
We've identified one or two that we're like really focusing behind and maybe some of them can continue with with one person, but if we think it's going to it's really something that we want to like win the market with, we should put more resources behind it.
41:42
And so I think we've started to add a subsequent move which is we generally start with one person and then to the extent it looks like something that we're going to really put the org behind.
41:50
Um we built out we built out a team.
41:52
So we did that with um we have an agent product called plus one which is originally really built mostly by Willie who's our head of platform and maybe one other person that has turned into we haven't released this yet but it's it's it's now in beta.
42:05
We use it all the time internally just in every agent.
42:08
It's like an instantiation of every inside of your company um that knows all the things that we know that works in the way that we work that anyone can use in Slack.
42:16
>> And um that has this externally.
42:20
>> We will sell this externally. Right now it's in beta.
42:22
Um but it I mean to the to your question about media companies, I think this is a really interesting extension of like a media company.
42:31
>> So that's going really well and that has a team like it's a real engineering team. They're all using AI.
42:34
Um, and it's structured differently than our initial bets.
42:39
I think this this particular product, it's very obviously core to every and like what we do and it's very complicated, much more so much more complicated than take your pick of um, you know, I mean, monologue is a very complicated product, but it's to some degree there's there there's more under your control. I don't know.
42:58
Naveen would probably argue with me about that.
43:00
So uh but it it it seemed to require a bigger investment than a single person if we wanted to you know anthropic has a has a version of this called tag.
43:11
If we want to keep it with tag it's hard to do with one person.
43:14
>> So you use the word agent for the every agent.
43:16
Is this taking actions using the every kind of corpus or is it just like a fancy MCP that has all the data of every that I can >> full coworker full co-orker status can do everything.
43:28
Um, it's natively built in with compound engineering and all the other ways that we work. >> Wow.
43:34
So, what are the early use cases for that that you're having?
43:36
I mean, internally that got that has to be kind of weird because it's literally an AI instantiation of your company, but I assume you're testing with some outside partners like what are they using that for?
43:47
>> We are starting to test with outside partners, but that's very early and just as a rule, we only really release things that we use ourselves and like ourselves.
43:54
So, we build for ourselves first and then move out.
43:55
And I think we were one of the first people about a year and a half ago to start using cloud code.
44:01
And um Kieran who I I mentioned earlier really invented this way of working called compound engineering.
44:08
Um and in compound engineering and this is something I worked with him a lot on.
44:15
It's it's different from from regular engineering in that when you in regular engineering, every time you do a piece of work, it makes the next work harder to do because all the systems depend on each other and the code base is bigger and all that kind of stuff.
44:28
And in compound engineering, you're trying to make the next unit of work easier that to do than the last.
44:32
Because what you do is after you do a feature, you look at all the things you learned and then you compound that back into your prompts, into your agent harness, into all these different places so that the next one you don't make similar mistakes and things are more clear and all that kind of stuff.
44:45
And that has grown into a really thriving plug-in that lots and lots and lots of people use.
44:51
It's actually probably like weirdly our biggest our most scaled software product even though it's just open source.
44:56
Um, and I think that that way of working, this is another example of things going from developers to knowledge workers.
45:04
I think that way of working is going to come to knowledge workers and that a slack agent is actually an ideal surface for it.
45:13
Specifically, the idea of compounding.
45:16
So like I do a unit of work and I compound it back into the agent.
45:20
So the agent gets better over time and is better at helping me do the kind of work that I do.
45:24
And the reason I think it's really interesting in an organ in an organizational context, it means that everybody else in the organization can do the kind of work that I do, which might sound threatening, but is actually like the most important thing for expert knowledge workers.
45:37
And I'll give you an example.
45:38
Um, you mentioned our our editor-inchief earlier, Kate.
45:41
Kate is a tremendously good editor and also has, I don't know, probably a team of probably eight to 10 people now and looks at everything that goes out.
45:51
So all the all the pieces, but also now landing pages, emails, like all that stuff she looks at and has a particular taste for how it all how it all should look and fit together.
46:02
As you can imagine, that's a very um stressful thing to have to do while you're also managing a whole team.
46:11
>> You're well, you're talking to someone on this chat.
46:12
Ellis used to oversee all words at Snapchat.
46:14
So he sympathize with you know Ellis.
46:17
Um, and for literally like 3 years I've been trying to help automate this and the models weren't good enough and they just got good enough.
46:25
And so what we have is basically I took a corpus of 30,000 of her historical edits.
46:30
I turned it into a style guide all automatically and then we have a skill in the every agent that I can just say hey like throw a Google doc in the slack at every just like copy edit this and it will go and make suggested changes that she has made previously based on her previous work in the style guide we've built in the Google doc.
46:49
So instead of Kate having to like go in and do every document from scratch, she goes in and there's already a bunch of suggested changes that are like, "We think this is what you would do."
46:59
And then she says yes, no, yes, no, and makes her own edits.
47:01
Um, a that sort of gets her closer to a pass that she's comfortable with.
47:07
And sometimes she doesn't have to even review it for like lower priority things.
47:09
It's like it's just a test landing page.
47:11
We'll just just run the K copy edit and we're done.
47:15
So she doesn't even have to see it.
47:15
Um, but what what happens then is we just compound that back into after every pass we see what what she accepted, what she rejected, and what we missed.
47:24
And then it compounds back into the agent, and it just gets better.
47:28
And um that will help her scale her taste to the rest of the organization without taking more of her time.
47:36
And I think that's actually really really critical for anybody inside of any organization that has um any sort of expert knowledge.
47:42
there's always going to be things that you're turned to by people who need that um that help from you, but also probably shouldn't take your time because you're repeating yourself all the time.
47:52
And I think that um this agent is going to be really good for the for those kinds of use cases.
47:58
>> So, it learns from the context um that it's in, even if that's outside of every it's the every agent, but it could really be like the Alex agent at the end of the day. >> Yes.
48:08
Well, I think hopefully it will have a bunch of different skills in it that you know each skill is something like something that Alex knows or something that Ellis knows that you can use or anyone in your org can use.
48:21
>> Alex, you can't send your agent to do a paid Yahoo dinner.
48:23
You have to do that personally.
48:26
>> Well, I want to do that. >> Not yet. [laughter] >> Not yet.
48:28
>> I want to do that stuff.
48:28
I mean, I think ultimately that hopefully uplevels everyone to do more of what they want to do.
48:33
I mean, that's the promise of all of this, right?
48:34
We got to get through the busy work first, but u of setting it all up.
48:38
Um and it's really interesting that you're doing that.
48:41
I mean, I'd be curious to get your thoughts on this, Dan.
48:43
A conversation I've had with some founders uh recently that I've been meeting with and it's come up a couple times is they're like, "Just make an MCP of your brain, all the conversations you're having that you are comfortable sharing publicly, and my agent will deliver it to me in a better, more personalized way than you will through one pass of your newsletter."
49:01
So, I'd actually charge more to just have kind of raw token access to your granola, whatever it is, right?
49:09
And I'm thinking about doing this.
49:11
Uh, actually Austin on your team is helps me um come up with some like, you know, early mocks of it.
49:17
Um, but it kind of is analogous to the it's more simple but to the every agent and I and I have thought about this a lot with the future of media is a big part of the future of media hyperpersonalized agentically delivered media.
49:32
>> I think it's a I think it's a really important place to explore.
49:34
We are very far away from that in the sense that you know I talked earlier about language models discernment.
49:42
Can it discern what would be interesting to me of what you think?
49:47
And if I have it go if I say here's my situation, if I have it go through all of your granola notes, it's going to come back with some [ __ ] that's like I can sort of see why you would say this, but like it's not that interesting. Um, so, so A, yes.
49:59
B, doing that well is a really hard problem and it's sort of open whether or not we're progressing particularly quickly toward that.
50:14
But I I absolutely think it's like part of the future and it's a big part of the opportunity for people like us.
50:21
It's like um obviously once you read someone's stories and you're into them, you kind of want more access to them.
50:27
And obviously you only have so many hours in the day, embodying that in something that you can query is and talk to is like really cool and very important.
50:38
>> Ellis, you could have a meaning MCP that scales your work with founders where you can have 10x more clients. >> There you go.
50:46
That's my ultimate goal, [laughter] Alex.
50:49
It is interesting though and I mean I know we're running out of time but I was thinking a lot about your piece you did Dan called after automation about how a lot of this automation raises the bar integrates best practices at scale but what that inevitably creates is room for what's different and what's new and that
51:10
inherently kind of only comes from people and I think that's part of it is that whether it's kind of like Kate's copy editor guide or or my own MCP P is that it has to change and it has to change as a result of the stuff that you learn, the experiences you have in your life and whether it's art or marketing or or otherwise. If any part of the goal
51:29
If any part of the goal is to be new, then it's something that almost ostensibly can't be replaced by AI.
51:38
And I would certainly like more research time in my day, even to play a video game, uh, which I do consider research.
51:45
[laughter] >> I'm with you. I'm with you.
51:47
Yeah, I think um AI makes yesterday, this is something I wrote about in automation.
51:53
It it just makes yesterday's competence available to everybody.
51:55
It's based on training data.
51:57
So, anything that was done yesterday is available to everyone.
52:02
But today is a diff it's different. It's slightly different.
52:06
>> And if you have non-experts using yesterday's competence to like solve today's problems, it's going to be close.
52:11
You're going to be able to oneshot an app, but it's not going to be actually good.
52:14
Especially because everyone else is the same thing now.
52:16
And uh the job the role of experts is to take that what is now commoditized which is the ability to apply yesterday's competence to any problem and uh use that to actually make solutions that are a good fit for that problem that particular problem in person uh which is the actual valuable thing and uh and so I think that is the opportunity for experts in this era.
52:45
Yeah, not just knowing the whole corpus of information about a specific topic, but being on the edge of moving it forward, which is always going to be different.
52:55
And I mean, you know, marketing has like never been this objective exercise where there is one right answer.
53:01
The right answer is always moving forward.
53:04
And that's how you end up with like 30 sites during the vibe code era whose headline is all what can you build?
53:11
And a lot of times when I talk to clients, it's like there is no one right answer about your best hook.
53:18
It could be your benefit.
53:18
It could be talking about your audience.
53:20
It could be talking about your history.
53:21
And it's almost like cyclical like fashion, like a wheel that just keeps moving based on what's new or fresh at the very minimum.
53:31
And uh yeah, I don't know, maybe you could program that into an AI say, "Hey, uh if this is today's latest and greatest, um cycle back to another possible answer in an area that's always subjective."
53:43
But uh at least for now, I I feel somewhat insulated.
53:47
>> You would you you probably can will be able to do that, but even then, you still have the well now I have to choose which of those is good and so do other people.
53:55
um you're you're sort of moving you're moving the capability, but there's still this um I make a distinction in that piece between agency and autonomy.
54:04
Um so we think of agents as being agentic, but they're actually just we're actually just talking about autonomy, the ability to like take something that we give it to do and just do it until it's done.
54:13
Um and that's very different from agency, which is internally located desires and beliefs and goals and values, which agents don't really have.
54:24
And uh until that changes, you can add any capability that you want and it's still going to end up being something that we direct and control at the end of the day, which I think is probably a good thing.
54:38
And I think is often missed in in all of these discussions about capabilities.
54:44
>> Dan, we have to end it, but I do want to end it uh on a prediction from you.
54:45
Six months out from now, what do you think uh about the way we use AI tools and how that will shift?
54:56
Is there going to be a new way or a new way we're thinking about these tools and these models and their capabilities?
55:05
>> I think Claude Anthropic currently has the mandate of heaven.
55:07
I think OpenAI and and Codeex and CHTP for work will have the mandate of heaven.
55:11
I don't think it's permanent like everything goes back and forth, but they're doing something really good over there.
55:15
Um, I think that we will probably be spending a lot more time in our coding agent orchestration surface of choice, whether that's chat for work or the cloud desktop app.
55:28
And in particular, >> you use the whole internet inside of your code. >> I do.
55:32
That's my That's my big thing. That's so crazy.
55:34
Using the inapp browser of those tools, I think is going to be a big deal.
55:39
>> Are we inside the inapp browser right now? >> You are. I never browser.
55:40
[laughter] >> That's a first.
55:44
Uh, >> how does that possibly work?
55:46
[laughter] >> Dan, we really appreciate your time. Good chatting with you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me. >> All right, Dan. >> Take care.
55:55
>> Before Ellis and I get into why we're winding down Access and our reflections on the last year of the show, a reminder that you'll be hearing and seeing more of me and the Sourc's universe here very soon.
56:06
So, don't unfollow, don't unsubscribe, and in the meantime, visit sources.
56:11
news for the very latest. >> [music] >> All right.
56:17
Thank you to Dan Shipper for being duh duh duh the last episode of Access >> Access.
56:24
>> Our last guest access closed.
56:24
You've been waiting to say that. >> Yes.
56:28
>> How are you feeling, man? >> Uh feeling good. >> Yeah.
56:32
>> We're the one-year wonder. It was a lot of fun. We made hats. We had amazing guests. Yes.
56:38
>> We had a party in the notion vestibule. >> Yes.
56:41
Uh, we learned a lot about making content #I in the modern era.
56:44
And I'm just happy we got to hang out once. >> Me too, man. Me, too. It's been great.
56:52
Um, there's really not like a dramatic reason for this.
56:54
I think we both have been talking a lot about where we're at in our careers and personal lives and, you know, shows take time to put together and all sorts of reasons, but really it just came down to uh we both feel like for where we're at, it made the most sense to to wind the show down and do our own things.
57:14
And I'm going to have a lot more coming uh with Sources.
57:19
Uh so stay tuned for that. Sources. news.
57:22
And you're going to keep crushing with meaning.
57:24
>> From the sound of it, you're actually going to let people subscribe to your brain at some point in the future.
57:29
[laughter] >> That may be in the cards.
57:31
>> Maybe maybe I will as well.
57:33
>> I agree with Dan that uh it's probably too early.
57:35
The tools don't feel quite ready.
57:38
And also, I just don't think enough people are experiencing AI this way for that to really be a product.
57:42
But I do think it probably will be eventually if I were a uh investor.
57:46
Uh that would be something I'd be looking at. But uh yeah, man.
57:51
No, this has been this has been awesome.
57:54
I remember sitting down with you at a coffee shop uh in East LA year and a half ago and just like should we just do a podcast together?
58:04
And you were you thought about it for like a day and you were a quick yes and then we were off to the races.
58:10
And man, I would hold up, you know, our guest list against any tech podcast guest list, especially a firstear show.
58:18
the the kind of guests we've had on and conversations we've gotten to have are just really incredible.
58:22
I feel really proud of it and it's a catalog that I'm always going to look back on fondly.
58:28
>> Selfishly, you get to meet some of your idols, right?
58:30
That's one of the fun parts about being uh in content again.
58:34
The not so fun part is I go to happy hours and people treat me differently again.
58:37
Forgot I forgot about that.
58:40
[laughter] >> Go to the Figma conference and they're like, "Oh yeah, you're back in media now, so I can't tell you this that."
58:44
I'm like, >> forgot about this. >> That is a thing.
58:48
I'm so used to that, but that was probably new for you.
58:50
I mean, yeah, that was the interesting part of this is I never left media.
58:53
You did for a while and getting you back into it. Uh, yeah.
58:58
I mean, I feel like you've liked it.
59:00
I feel like you you like the limelight.
59:02
You like to ham it up a little bit. I mean, be honest. >> Yeah. It's been a lot of fun.
59:05
Get some press passes that would have cost me and my business some money. >> Yeah.
59:12
But uh I think you know if anything is becoming clear and I think this relates to the conversation with Dan is that we all owe it to ourselves to find the best format for sharing, monetizing, making use of our strengths. You know what I mean?
59:30
And content is just one of the ways to potentially do that.
59:33
And no matter what it is, you want it to feel aligned with what you love doing every day.
59:39
And uh yeah, certainly getting back into content, being reminded of the landscape uh that we now face and just how hard it is whether you have a story as a company or an app or something that something else you're trying to share all getting squeezed into the same algorithms and the same expectations with content these days.
1:00:02
It was really a whirlwind to to be thrown back into that and uh >> a lot a lot.
1:00:09
>> a lot a lot. You know, the thing that I will take with me the most are the personal reachouts we would get from people who listen uh and we had a couple people even who came to the party in SF who just reached out cold and were fans
1:00:26
and wanted to come and getting those notes and you were better about sending them than I was, but getting those notes, you know, every week really uh felt validating and it felt like, oh, this is like even though, you know, we weren't making a show for millions of people. We were making it for a very
1:00:41
We were making it for a very specific cohort of tech AI insider nerds.
1:00:47
Um, getting that feedback was super cool to me.
1:00:50
I'm sure it was for you as well.
1:00:52
>> I think uh my only regret is we weren't able to get Johnny.
1:00:54
That was my uh bucket list item.
1:00:56
So, if and when you get Johnny uh I'm going to be stowing away and then I will pop out. >> Yep.
1:01:06
and I will co-inter him with you.
1:01:08
[laughter] And uh >> Sounds good, man.
1:01:10
Yeah, I'm I'm planning to, you know, these kind of interviews have been um part of my thing and what I've always done and I'm planning to continue them uh under the sources umbrella.
1:01:22
Uh so, more to come on that. Um and yeah, man.
1:01:24
I mean, it's been cool to see you connect with like guests we've had on the show that then, you know, become people you're working with at Meeting.
1:01:33
I mean, there's just been a beautiful kind of serendipity to that and uh seeing kind of how your business has grown uh over the last year as we've been doing this has been really cool to see. >> Darn. Yeah, that reminds me.
1:01:45
I can't use my favorite my favorite line anymore when I'm talking.
1:01:50
Obviously, any advice I give to clients about what's most interesting is my opinion, right?
1:01:55
It's like what's most interesting is not objective.
1:01:58
But if they really push you back and they say, "Oh, that's not interesting."
1:02:02
and say, "Well, just as one example, if you were on my podcast, this is what I'd want to talk about."
1:02:09
[laughter] That was always like a super uh secret superpower I could pull out whenever whenever was needed.
1:02:16
So, yeah, I'm going to have to come up with I'm going to have to come up with something else.
1:02:19
>> Yeah, you could still do it.
1:02:19
Just like a theoretical podcast or maybe you do a meeting podcast one day. Who knows?
1:02:25
Maybe the Ellis AI does it. >> Yep.
1:02:28
>> Um >> yeah, I was considering it.
1:02:28
There's definitely a lot of feedback from friends and fans about wanting something more in the storytelling world.
1:02:38
>> Um, definitely seems like there's a white space for that.
1:02:42
Uh but yeah, I mean it's also just learning about 3 years into my company what I want my life to look like and uh yeah, certainly adding one more dimension of founders with tough schedules to work around to my life.
1:02:57
Uh definitely gave me a few more gray gray hairs than than otherwise.
1:03:03
>> The scheduling behind this stuff is harder than it than it appears. Yes.
1:03:04
Um, >> what was it like for you kind of being off the news cycle, you know, with these interviews, getting more into like more lifestyle? >> Yeah.
1:03:15
Um, you know, we always talked about that being a core thing we wanted to do, and I'm glad we did.
1:03:19
And, you know, it's it's been very good.
1:03:21
It's been a good experience.
1:03:24
It's helped me lean into parts of myself and my intuition and my curiosity that felt a little just kind of inherently closed off by the nature of being a journalist in the in a newsroom before doing sources and going independent.
1:03:38
Um, and really like challenging my assumptions of what journalism can be.
1:03:43
Um, this wild west of of content creation that we're in that we talked about with Dan.
1:03:49
It's kind of fitting, I think, that we ended with him talking about new media cuz this has felt like this whole show has felt like an experiment in that.
1:03:56
Um, and yeah, realizing that I can bring kind of my journalistic sensibilities to an environment that is um also about a good hang and and getting to know the person.
1:04:10
And >> um you've been great at that, helping pull that out.
1:04:13
And um even even though I've like tolerated your your Tyler Dank jokes, um you [laughter] have you have brought a sense of brevity to the podcast. So I I appreciate that.
1:04:23
[gasps] Not as much brevity as uh as Daniel showing up in a hot tub.
1:04:30
Um that was definitely a podcast highlight was having a guest videoing in from a hot tub, but uh we've we've had some good funny moments.
1:04:38
For those who don't know, we literally pulled together the brand and the whole concept of the show to align with Alex's Zuck exclusive. >> That's right. >> On day one.
1:04:49
And we pulled this thing together top to bottom in what, like three weeks or something like that. >> Crazy. >> Yeah.
1:04:56
I mean, shout out to the homies in Lithuania. >> Yeah. Practica with a K.
1:05:00
Very, very cool dudes who I saw. It's funny.
1:05:03
I think they did a recent Poke uh branding exercise. Of course they did. It's a small world.
1:05:10
>> They uh they found they found found found the way to the the startup clients that we talk about all the time, which is cool. >> Yeah.
1:05:16
Any other highlights for you before we wrap this?
1:05:20
>> Just getting to selfishly ask for product changes with the founders who make things that I like.
1:05:24
That was the main thing I missed from being a reporter. >> That's the best.
1:05:29
>> Say, "Hey, >> hey, you want to talk to me now, right?
1:05:32
But now you have to hear my feedback and my feature requests."
1:05:35
>> That's the [laughter] best. Yeah.
1:05:35
I love doing that with Sam from Granola, Ivan from Notion, um, Steve from Reddit.
1:05:42
Yeah, it is a it is a special perk of this job.
1:05:46
>> Well, where can our viewers find you going forward? >> Sources.
1:05:50
news is going to be the home for everything going forward.
1:05:52
Uh, big things coming, so stay tuned. But yeah, sources. news. What about you? >> Yeah.
1:05:59
Um, hate to say, I feel like Twitter is just [laughter] been my entire career. I Let it go. >> I've got it. Hamburger.
1:06:08
You could find me on Twitter.
1:06:10
I especially can be found now that the new algorithmic update, um, which hopefully sticks around, actually allows my followers to see what I'm posting, whether it is smashing or busted.
1:06:23
I feel like when you follow somebody online, you want to see the sharpest stuff and the not so sharp stuff.
1:06:29
You know, even like the new Strokes album, which I'm obsessed with.
1:06:33
It's not their best album ever, but it's always interesting because you know who's behind it and what they're trying to do, and I've been really liking seeing a lot more conversations with people's followers as opposed to just like what's most viral online these days.
1:06:48
That was always such a strength of X uh in being kind of the water cooler for people who want to talk and think about technology all day.
1:06:55
So yeah, you could still find me there and at meaning. com.
1:06:59
I'm currently doing a I'm switching from Universe, which it's not clear if it still exists and is being maintained, to framer.
1:07:08
And I was screwing around with framer and I'm like, "Oh, I could actually make my own app here.
1:07:14
I added a navbar to my website for the first time that looks like exactly like a like a liquid glass thing you might find in >> in a cool app these days."
1:07:21
And so, yeah, uh look forward to a meaning. com refresh.
1:07:26
>> All right, >> a full brand experience.
1:07:27
Well, uh, I guess I'll read us out here one last time.
1:07:31
Um, that is it for this week's show.
1:07:34
Thanks to Dan Shipper for being our final access guest.
1:07:36
You can find him at every. co.
1:07:42
Uh, and we really appreciate him coming on.
1:07:43
And you can find me, as I was saying, at sources. news online.
1:07:47
Uh, stay tuned for much more.
1:07:50
Access is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
1:07:53
Special thanks to our friends at Hooked Creators >> for being such wonderful >> producers, production partners, thought partners, and thanks most of all to you all for listening. >> Yes. Thank you guys. Really appreciate it.
1:08:07
All right, >> we'll see you on the internet. Bye-bye. >> Bye. [music] >> [music]