The Exchanges

Q thing I kind of spoke to many of your investors about was also your background. You're not being in Silicon Valley and you mentioned kind of artistry being at the center of both your education and also how you think today. They called you an outsider. I'm sure in the loveliest way. Do you feel like an outsider? And how do you think being an outsider helps you be better?

A Yeah. Um, I, I've, I've always felt a little bit like an outsider, to be honest, but very proud of it. Um, I have a background in econ and business, but what I was studying that I was doing film on the side. So that was strange. And I felt like an outsider in both of those worlds. And then I was doing art, but also learning programming. So also felt a bit of outsider in both of those. Um, and then I came to the US and started our company while being in art school. That also felt like a bit of an outsider. I think it's, um, it's been a common thread of my professional life, I would say, um, to really approach, uh, domains that perhaps you might not have experienced with a beginner's mindset and trying to learn and observe as much as possible. I think being a, an outsider is both a blessing and a curse in the sense that Um, it allows you to really reason from first principles. You discover everything and ask yourself why a lot. Um, at the same time, you take longer than other people because you're just experiencing for the first time. But I think the key aspect of being an outsider is that creativity really sparks from being able to merge different domains and different languages and different, um, professions in, in a coherent thing. And so runway, I think it's the manifestation of that. It's a company that merges art and science in a, in a beautiful way by being able to be in b…

AI assessment note: “I've always felt a little bit like an outsider, to be honest, but very proud”

Q I love that answer. Uh, most people go for, like, LeBron James, so that's a lot more fulfilling. Uh, tell me, what role does AI play in society in 10 years? You said we can't comprehend it. We don't even know. How do you project Forward Plan AI's role in society?

A We're going to stop referring to it as AI. We're just going to think about it as tools. I think I'm really looking forward to the moment in time where there's no discussion around AI in the same way that today we don't discuss the Internet as a thing. It's just so ingrained in everything we do. When you go to the bank and you do a wire transfer, you're not saying, I'm going to log into the Internet to do a wire transfer. You just do it. You know that's the way you do it. And I think we're heading to a world where everything we do is going to be built and powered by models You just don't, you, you forget about it, and you just continue your life.

AI assessment note: “everything we do is going to be built and powered by models”

Q Yeah. In terms of creating your own world, you do that when you kind of grow up in the world as an adult. I always think that we're all running from something and that our past shape us in many ways. When you think about what you're running from, what would you say you're running from, Chris?

A Oh, um, that's, that's a good question. I've, I grew up in Chile. I spent my whole, uh, life mostly in Chile, uh, and, and Chile is, uh, I don't know if you've been or not. Um, it's a very, uh, it's, it's a bit of a place. I'm a huge fan of the south of Chile, Patagonia, but culturally and, and, and, and, um, as a country, it's a very traditional structure, strict, Um, tradition-based country, so things are very rigid, and it's very hard to do anything that goes beyond the norm. Uh, and really I felt that, um, I don't, I don't feel particularly passionate about people telling me what to do and how should I, like, follow or what are the norms. I think I'm, I'm running away a little bit from, from that tradition and trying to figure out more of, of the things I'm passionate about, the things I'm curious about. Um, and that was for me, like, uh, really going to art school. It was, it was a curiosity driven approach of just, I want to understand how much of, um, AI I can take and put in the art world. And, and that's what I did. And I think that's, that's what I'm really passionate about.

AI assessment note: “I'm running away a little bit from, from that tradition”

Q thing I kind of spoke to many of your investors about was also your background. You're not being in Silicon Valley and you mentioned kind of artistry being at the center of both your education and also how you think today. They called you an outsider. I'm sure in the loveliest way. Do you feel like an outsider? And how do you think being an outsider helps you be better?

A Yeah. Um, I, I've, I've always felt a little bit like an outsider, to be honest, but very proud of it. Um, I have a background in econ and business, but what I was studying that I was doing film on the side. So that was strange. And I felt like an outsider in both of those worlds. And then I was doing art, but also learning programming. So also felt a bit of outsider in both of those. Um, and then I came to the US and started our company while being in art school. That also felt like a bit of an outsider. I think it's, um, it's been a common thread of my professional life, I would say, um, to really approach, uh, domains that perhaps you might not have experienced with a beginner's mindset and trying to learn and observe as much as possible. I think being a, an outsider is both a blessing and a curse in the sense that Um, it allows you to really reason from first principles. You discover everything and ask yourself why a lot. Um, at the same time, you take longer than other people because you're just experiencing for the first time. But I think the key aspect of being an outsider is that creativity really sparks from being able to merge different domains and different languages and different, um, professions in, in a coherent thing. And so runway, I think it's the manifestation of that. It's a company that merges art and science in a, in a beautiful way by being able to be in b…

AI assessment note: “I've always felt a little bit like an outsider, to be honest”

Q If you learn how to learn, there's nothing that you can't do. I love that. Can you help me understand? How do you approach learning? Do you have a process? Do you have a preference for the types of ways to learn? How do you approach it?

A Um, very hands on. There's something I want to do. Um, for example, when I was, uh, I was diving into Uh, neural networks and, and really understanding the field. I was coming in from, um, a place, um, of, of a beginner's mindset. And so really what I did before trying anything was I built, uh, from the ground up a neural network, um, every single, uh, layer, every single, um, uh, function, activation function in between, um, I curate the dataset, I train the model, and I built everything that I, Could get me a sense of how the inner parts of a system work, in this case, you know, networks. And so, um, for a long time, I didn't know what I was doing. You just try things, you try, you try, you hit walls, but you keep pushing yourself over and over and over and over. Um, I don't feel, uh, I like breath, so just go and read as many things as you can, and then find a project that you like, and then go as deep as you can on that. Um, I think being hands-on and being active on learning by doing something really helps Make sense of the world, and that's something I've been trying to do in everything I'm trying to learn since then.

AI assessment note: “very hands on. There's something I want to do.”

Q you chose to kind of build in public where bluntly, you know, four seconds is short, but it's better to be out in the wild and have people use it. Dylan Almost took the other side, which is really didn't release for two to three years until it was much more perfect. Why did you decide to release knowing that maybe it was challenging for people to use in full?

A Because I think every company is different and every product iteration needs to be tuned to the audience that you're targeting. In our case, this is something new. This says the idea that you can generate video, create video with nothing more than words, for example, It's never been tested out before. So you can, for years, build assumptions on how people are going to use it and the value and opportunities on the market, but the truth is that you might be wrong and really wrong, and if you build with that assumption for too long, you're going to miss really getting feedback and really understanding and learning from use cases and from people who are going to be using it. In other cases where domains and perhaps the value is a bit more defined, you can spend a bit more time And building in private and then release. I think for us, it was pretty much the realization that the only way to move forward the field and the intersection of creativity and artificial intelligence was, was we build by really closely as close as we can with the community that we're building towards, which is artists and filmmakers. And we're going to gain a lot more from being there than being too silent or too private about what we're doing.

AI assessment note: “Because I think every company is different and every product iteration needs to be tuned”

Q Do you think it's your job To master time to value. And what I mean by that is, do you need to show people greatness within the first few seconds? Or is it a longer journey?

A Oh, absolutely. I think being able to use a model, uh, like Gen Two in just a few seconds is critical. We've, we've released, uh, only a couple of days ago, this idea you can preview frames. And so when you generate videos, sometimes you're in the dark because you don't know exactly what might come out of it. It would be great if you can preview what's going on while the model is generating, and so we offer now customers a way of previewing specific frames and then generate, and that made a huge difference because the time to see the result was so much faster than ever before that usage went up to the roof because people understood that how the model was working and it was, it was showing you a bit more of, of the inner workings of the model itself. Um, and so it's really important to Now, I think a couple of years ago it was more challenging because both infrastructure and inference and speed wouldn't allow you to do it at the speed of what we need. I think now we're able to do that.

AI assessment note: “Oh, absolutely. I think being able to use a model... in just a few seconds is critical.”

Q I, I totally get you. Can I ask, on the artistry and the artisan element, I had Jan Lacoon on the show, and he spoke about how unwaveringly this will be an open ecosystem, and the benefits that will come from that. With, with artisan, uh, developers, creators, do you agree with him on the open bead and close model, and how do you think about that?

A I think open is always better in the sense that allows you to get to a broader audience faster, and you also get different perspectives because people can build on top of models, and we've seen this with with some of the models we've released that have created some sort of, like, creative explosion of sorts where people are building things that we never thought of building, and that's great. I think, again, it's more nuanced once you start defining Where you want to build products for people, and so open source versus closed source is only one part of that stack. You're not going to build an entire company just by being open source or closed source. There's way more than that, and so it really depends. Some companies, I think, are going to go into open source more and more because it helps their value prop. Some others are going to go closer if you want to build other types of products. I think we're always striving to be in between. We've already open sourced some of the Most, uh, I would, uh, a lot of relevant models in this space that have been game changers. And at the same time, we have more proprietary models as well, then we might never open source.

AI assessment note: “I think open is always better in the sense that allows you to get”

Q Yeah. In terms of creating your own world, you do that when you kind of grow up in the world as an adult. I always think that we're all running from something and that our past shape us in many ways. When you think about what you're running from, what would you say you're running from, Chris?

A Oh, um, that's, that's a good question. I've, I grew up in Chile. I spent my whole, uh, life mostly in Chile, uh, and, and Chile is, uh, I don't know if you've been or not. Um, it's a very, uh, it's, it's a bit of a place. I'm a huge fan of the south of Chile, Patagonia, but culturally and, and, and, and, um, as a country, it's a very traditional structure, strict, Um, tradition-based country, so things are very rigid, and it's very hard to do anything that goes beyond the norm. Uh, and really I felt that, um, I don't, I don't feel particularly passionate about people telling me what to do and how should I, like, follow or what are the norms. I think I'm, I'm running away a little bit from, from that tradition and trying to figure out more of, of the things I'm passionate about, the things I'm curious about. Um, and that was for me, like, uh, really going to art school. It was, it was a curiosity driven approach of just, I want to understand how much of, um, AI I can take and put in the art world. And, and that's what I did. And I think that's, that's what I'm really passionate about.

AI assessment note: “I think I'm, I'm running away a little bit from, from that tradition”

Q If you learn how to learn, there's nothing that you can't do. I love that. Can you help me understand? How do you approach learning? Do you have a process? Do you have a preference for the types of ways to learn? How do you approach it?

A Um, very hands on. There's something I want to do. Um, for example, when I was, uh, I was diving into Uh, neural networks and, and really understanding the field. I was coming in from, um, a place, um, of, of a beginner's mindset. And so really what I did before trying anything was I built, uh, from the ground up a neural network, um, every single, uh, layer, every single, um, uh, function, activation function in between, um, I curate the dataset, I train the model, and I built everything that I, Could get me a sense of how the inner parts of a system work, in this case, you know, networks. And so, um, for a long time, I didn't know what I was doing. You just try things, you try, you try, you hit walls, but you keep pushing yourself over and over and over and over. Um, I don't feel, uh, I like breath, so just go and read as many things as you can, and then find a project that you like, and then go as deep as you can on that. Um, I think being hands-on and being active on learning by doing something really helps Make sense of the world, and that's something I've been trying to do in everything I'm trying to learn since then.

AI assessment note: “very hands on... find a project that you like, and then go as deep as you can”

Q you chose to kind of build in public where bluntly, you know, four seconds is short, but it's better to be out in the wild and have people use it. Dylan Almost took the other side, which is really didn't release for two to three years until it was much more perfect. Why did you decide to release knowing that maybe it was challenging for people to use in full?

A Because I think every company is different and every product iteration needs to be tuned to the audience that you're targeting. In our case, this is something new. This says the idea that you can generate video, create video with nothing more than words, for example, It's never been tested out before. So you can, for years, build assumptions on how people are going to use it and the value and opportunities on the market, but the truth is that you might be wrong and really wrong, and if you build with that assumption for too long, you're going to miss really getting feedback and really understanding and learning from use cases and from people who are going to be using it. In other cases where domains and perhaps the value is a bit more defined, you can spend a bit more time And building in private and then release. I think for us, it was pretty much the realization that the only way to move forward the field and the intersection of creativity and artificial intelligence was, was we build by really closely as close as we can with the community that we're building towards, which is artists and filmmakers. And we're going to gain a lot more from being there than being too silent or too private about what we're doing.

AI assessment note: “if you build with that assumption for too long, you're going to miss really getting feedback”

Q I, I totally get you. Can I ask, on the artistry and the artisan element, I had Jan Lacoon on the show, and he spoke about how unwaveringly this will be an open ecosystem, and the benefits that will come from that. With, with artisan, uh, developers, creators, do you agree with him on the open bead and close model, and how do you think about that?

A I think open is always better in the sense that allows you to get to a broader audience faster, and you also get different perspectives because people can build on top of models, and we've seen this with with some of the models we've released that have created some sort of, like, creative explosion of sorts where people are building things that we never thought of building, and that's great. I think, again, it's more nuanced once you start defining Where you want to build products for people, and so open source versus closed source is only one part of that stack. You're not going to build an entire company just by being open source or closed source. There's way more than that, and so it really depends. Some companies, I think, are going to go into open source more and more because it helps their value prop. Some others are going to go closer if you want to build other types of products. I think we're always striving to be in between. We've already open sourced some of the Most, uh, I would, uh, a lot of relevant models in this space that have been game changers. And at the same time, we have more proprietary models as well, then we might never open source.

AI assessment note: “I think open is always better in the sense that allows you to get”

Q So what, what questions do you ask for founders listening? Cause I totally agree with you. No founders ever ask questions, bluntly, not none, but like 99% don't. What questions should they ask?

A I think what do you, for us, something I've been always trying to strive and find in my investors, It's really making sure that we're both on the same, on the same direction. Because an investor might come to understand your company from a completely different vantage point from the one you have, and that's not going to work. Long term, it's not going to work. You're going to be with this people, with this team, with that investor for years, so you really need to be aligned. So have them pitch to you, the company, and see if you're figuring out and saying the same things. Um, and that's what I've realized sometimes that, like, I had an investor that, um, gave us a term sheet, um, and we have them describe what Runway was, and we're like, that's not what we're doing. Just, I love your term sheet, beautiful valuation, everything else, but, but I don't wanna, that's not gonna work. Uh, I don't think we're lying. And so I realized that just by having that conversation and asking them questions.

AI assessment note: “have them pitch to you, the company, and see if you're figuring out”

Q Many would say, I don't mind. It's the best deal. My question to you is, do you think investors really add value and like, no offense, isn't it all just you anyway? I'm being honest.

A I, um, I think it's, um, I think no one is going to care about your company, about what you do more than you. And so if you try to think that an investor is going to change everything you do or it's going to bring something that you never thought of doing, I think you're wrong. I think the investor, the role in the investor is not to build a company. It's to trust that you will build a company and that you will build a generational product, and so I think they help sometimes. They, they might help you with intros and with other things, but it's not gonna make a big difference in the sense that the success of what you're building comes from grinding and the tenacity of waking up every day and doing it for multiple days in a row, even when things are very hard. And so don't rely on, like, some magical solution or helpfulness of just one person, because that's not gonna, that's not how things actually work.

AI assessment note: “They, they might help you with intros and with other things, but it's not gonna make a big difference”

Q No, I, I do agree with you in terms of also the humility to doubt. When you look back over the rounds, you mentioned kind of raising every year from the seed in 28 or late 20 18. What would you have done differently looking back on the rounds, knowing all that you do now?

A Something I've learned a little more over time, um, has been always emphasizing the vision of the company. Um, I think products and models don't really matter in the sense that what really matters in a company is the people that you have and the collective tissue of what brings them together. And sometimes for me, that was an obvious thing. It was like, hey, we're artists and researchers and engineers building a completely new set of tools. But I sometimes, like, didn't have to mention that because I thought everyone knew that, but of course they didn't. And reminded myself, like, hey, the product that you have today is going to change. It's going to change because these people are changing it all the time. So here's the vision, and here's what we're building it. Four years ago, we were like, hey, media and entertainment, every company will be using these models to create everything from movies to short films. It's going to happen. And I didn't spend enough time emphasizing that because I thought it was obvious. I didn't realize, of course, of course, it's not, not that obvious. So, always emphasizing and reminding yourself of, like, the vision for me has been a good, a good learning.

AI assessment note: “Something I've learned a little more over time, um, has been always emphasizing the vision”

Q thing I kind of spoke to many of your investors about was also your background. You're not being in Silicon Valley and you mentioned kind of artistry being at the center of both your education and also how you think today. They called you an outsider. I'm sure in the loveliest way. Do you feel like an outsider? And how do you think being an outsider helps you be better?

A Yeah. Um, I, I've, I've always felt a little bit like an outsider, to be honest, but very proud of it. Um, I have a background in econ and business, but what I was studying that I was doing film on the side. So that was strange. And I felt like an outsider in both of those worlds. And then I was doing art, but also learning programming. So also felt a bit of outsider in both of those. Um, and then I came to the US and started our company while being in art school. That also felt like a bit of an outsider. I think it's, um, it's been a common thread of my professional life, I would say, um, to really approach, uh, domains that perhaps you might not have experienced with a beginner's mindset and trying to learn and observe as much as possible. I think being a, an outsider is both a blessing and a curse in the sense that Um, it allows you to really reason from first principles. You discover everything and ask yourself why a lot. Um, at the same time, you take longer than other people because you're just experiencing for the first time. But I think the key aspect of being an outsider is that creativity really sparks from being able to merge different domains and different languages and different, um, professions in, in a coherent thing. And so runway, I think it's the manifestation of that. It's a company that merges art and science in a, in a beautiful way by being able to be in b…

AI assessment note: “I've always felt a little bit like an outsider, to be honest, but very proud”

Q If you learn how to learn, there's nothing that you can't do. I love that. Can you help me understand? How do you approach learning? Do you have a process? Do you have a preference for the types of ways to learn? How do you approach it?

A Um, very hands on. There's something I want to do. Um, for example, when I was, uh, I was diving into Uh, neural networks and, and really understanding the field. I was coming in from, um, a place, um, of, of a beginner's mindset. And so really what I did before trying anything was I built, uh, from the ground up a neural network, um, every single, uh, layer, every single, um, uh, function, activation function in between, um, I curate the dataset, I train the model, and I built everything that I, Could get me a sense of how the inner parts of a system work, in this case, you know, networks. And so, um, for a long time, I didn't know what I was doing. You just try things, you try, you try, you hit walls, but you keep pushing yourself over and over and over and over. Um, I don't feel, uh, I like breath, so just go and read as many things as you can, and then find a project that you like, and then go as deep as you can on that. Um, I think being hands-on and being active on learning by doing something really helps Make sense of the world, and that's something I've been trying to do in everything I'm trying to learn since then.

AI assessment note: “Um, very hands on. There's something I want to do.”

Q you chose to kind of build in public where bluntly, you know, four seconds is short, but it's better to be out in the wild and have people use it. Dylan Almost took the other side, which is really didn't release for two to three years until it was much more perfect. Why did you decide to release knowing that maybe it was challenging for people to use in full?

A Because I think every company is different and every product iteration needs to be tuned to the audience that you're targeting. In our case, this is something new. This says the idea that you can generate video, create video with nothing more than words, for example, It's never been tested out before. So you can, for years, build assumptions on how people are going to use it and the value and opportunities on the market, but the truth is that you might be wrong and really wrong, and if you build with that assumption for too long, you're going to miss really getting feedback and really understanding and learning from use cases and from people who are going to be using it. In other cases where domains and perhaps the value is a bit more defined, you can spend a bit more time And building in private and then release. I think for us, it was pretty much the realization that the only way to move forward the field and the intersection of creativity and artificial intelligence was, was we build by really closely as close as we can with the community that we're building towards, which is artists and filmmakers. And we're going to gain a lot more from being there than being too silent or too private about what we're doing.

AI assessment note: “if you build with that assumption for too long, you're going to miss really getting feedback”

Q I totally agree. I think, yeah, David Goggins, uh, says something brilliant, which is, there's nothing more dangerous than a civilized person. Um, but I do want to, on that, you know, it takes me to performance a little bit. As a leader today, how do you define high performance then?

A Yeah, um, I don't think there's one singular thing that I look when I think about high performance, specifically in a, in a fast moving field like we are right now. But I do think there are a few things that constantly surface when you think about high performance. I think the first of all, the first one for me has been a, a vision and a motto and a, and a value that we've embedded in the company since the very beginning, this idea of getting things done. Just figure it out. Um, it's become so much of a thing at Runway that I make a t-shirt that says just figure it out. If you learn how to learn, you can figure out anything, and that's like a superpower. Unlocking the ability to just do things without complaining, without understanding, or without necessarily, um, contextualizing things in the sense that you haven't done it before is really a superpower. And for us, at Runway it was. I've never started a company. Um, I had to figure out how to stay in the, in the U.S. to start the company. There's so many hurdles and challenges at the very beginning that we just have to figure out stuff.

AI assessment note: “this idea of getting things done. Just figure it out.”

Q I, I totally get you. Can I ask, on the artistry and the artisan element, I had Jan Lacoon on the show, and he spoke about how unwaveringly this will be an open ecosystem, and the benefits that will come from that. With, with artisan, uh, developers, creators, do you agree with him on the open bead and close model, and how do you think about that?

A I think open is always better in the sense that allows you to get to a broader audience faster, and you also get different perspectives because people can build on top of models, and we've seen this with with some of the models we've released that have created some sort of, like, creative explosion of sorts where people are building things that we never thought of building, and that's great. I think, again, it's more nuanced once you start defining Where you want to build products for people, and so open source versus closed source is only one part of that stack. You're not going to build an entire company just by being open source or closed source. There's way more than that, and so it really depends. Some companies, I think, are going to go into open source more and more because it helps their value prop. Some others are going to go closer if you want to build other types of products. I think we're always striving to be in between. We've already open sourced some of the Most, uh, I would, uh, a lot of relevant models in this space that have been game changers. And at the same time, we have more proprietary models as well, then we might never open source.

AI assessment note: “I think open is always better in the sense that allows you to get”

Q So what, what questions do you ask for founders listening? Cause I totally agree with you. No founders ever ask questions, bluntly, not none, but like 99% don't. What questions should they ask?

A I think what do you, for us, something I've been always trying to strive and find in my investors, It's really making sure that we're both on the same, on the same direction. Because an investor might come to understand your company from a completely different vantage point from the one you have, and that's not going to work. Long term, it's not going to work. You're going to be with this people, with this team, with that investor for years, so you really need to be aligned. So have them pitch to you, the company, and see if you're figuring out and saying the same things. Um, and that's what I've realized sometimes that, like, I had an investor that, um, gave us a term sheet, um, and we have them describe what Runway was, and we're like, that's not what we're doing. Just, I love your term sheet, beautiful valuation, everything else, but, but I don't wanna, that's not gonna work. Uh, I don't think we're lying. And so I realized that just by having that conversation and asking them questions.

AI assessment note: “have them pitch to you, the company, and see if you're figuring out”

Q Many would say, I don't mind. It's the best deal. My question to you is, do you think investors really add value and like, no offense, isn't it all just you anyway? I'm being honest.

A I, um, I think it's, um, I think no one is going to care about your company, about what you do more than you. And so if you try to think that an investor is going to change everything you do or it's going to bring something that you never thought of doing, I think you're wrong. I think the investor, the role in the investor is not to build a company. It's to trust that you will build a company and that you will build a generational product, and so I think they help sometimes. They, they might help you with intros and with other things, but it's not gonna make a big difference in the sense that the success of what you're building comes from grinding and the tenacity of waking up every day and doing it for multiple days in a row, even when things are very hard. And so don't rely on, like, some magical solution or helpfulness of just one person, because that's not gonna, that's not how things actually work.

AI assessment note: “the role in the investor is not to build a company”

Q That is very, very kind of you. Now, listen, I spoke to Sunil at Amplify before we started, and he said to me that you and Runway is the perfect embodiment of founder product fit. So just take me to the founding moment of the company and that aha moment for you. Why does he say that?

A Yeah, uh, Sunil is too kind. Runway's journey dates back to 1520 16, where I met my co-founders Alejandro and Anastasis in actually art school. Um, we went to, to a school, um, that's a very unique school that combines art and technology. It's been running for 40 years here in New York. Um, ITP from, from NYU. And, um, the best way to think about it is art school for engineers and engineering school for artists. And while we were there, we were all coming from all sorts of different backgrounds and experiences from, uh, programming, engineering, business. And we started just tinkering and playing around with state-of-the-art AI at the time. I know, I know a lot of things that happen now, but try to imagine where models were and where research was, um, 10 years ago or eight years ago. Um, and we just build a lot of different things. We build, I remember, um, Anastasis built this, this beautiful, uh, video semantic search tool that you could just type a word and it will, like, create a trailer for you. Um, combining all sorts of different, uh, input videos, uh, analyzing, uh, sequences and scenes. Um, and so we started tinkering with this idea of taking AI models or research at the time and building creative tools. We built, there was three transformers, uh, we, we built using, um, LSTMs, this co-pilot for writing. And so you could, uh, that runs entirely on the browser using web…

AI assessment note: “realizing that there was something here, something special”

Q Dude, what do you think are other, like complete startup BS's? You're outside of the ecosystem. What do you think is some other like crap advice that you see given about building companies now?

A Um, I'm very cautious about recipes and, and, and rules and, and algorithms in, in the sense of company building. I think there's no rules. There's no algorithm. You just have to do it. You just have to do it. I think it's, if you've never been to a city, you can read everything about that city, and you can read everything everyone else wrote about that city. If you've never been to Paris, you can read everything about Paris. Every writer that has ever been to Paris, you can learn how to cook French food. You can do everything you know And, and find and understand about Paris, but nothing, nothing will be like being in Paris for 10 minutes. You're gonna learn so much by being there than by reading anything else. And so, for me, this is similar. If you want to know about something, uh, don't read recipes. Don't, uh, read blog posts. Don't absorb. Don't, like, try to build on the, on the ideas of someone else. Just do it yourself. Um, and you will figure, you will build a much more coherent process and idea of how things work. And so I'm very skeptical about people who are like, or are writing or suggesting or advising. It's like, here's how you do things. It's like, no, no, no. That's good. That's a good sign. But just, if you want to figure out stuff, just do it yourself.

AI assessment note: “I'm very cautious about recipes and, and, and rules and, and algorithms”

Q Did you ever doubt it? You know, Marc Andreessen says there's no such thing as a bad idea, only a bad time. You know, when, when a hundred people tell you, no, it's not the right time. No, it's too early. Do you doubt it?

A I think, of course, you doubt it at some point. You're like, well, am I seeing something perhaps not clear enough, or am I mistaken? At the same time, I think a lot of Really good investors are the ones that are not looking for patterns. They're not looking for the norm, the average, the middle of the curve. You need to be able to, to be able to understand that there's risk, and things are going to not play out in the way that you thought every company will, will work. And so, when it comes to doubting, doubting is actually good. Like, you need to be able to be aware. Is everyone, so everyone is thinking one way, and I'm thinking in another way. That's really interesting because that's different. That's not patterns. Everyone's finding the same patterns. I'm thinking about something else. If it works, it's gonna be huge. If it doesn't, I'll learn something. Um, so I think actually doubting is sometimes, sometimes good.

AI assessment note: “I think, of course, you doubt it at some point.”

Q Why do screenwriters, like, strike if it's an enabler? What do they not see?

A Um, I think a lot of the discourse around our replacements comes from, um, this rather unsophistic view of the world that you're gonna type in, um, something, just write me a script or write me a movie, click enter, and you get entirely the exact same script that you did a month, a year ago. And for me, that's come from a place of maybe, maybe you've never used these tools. Maybe you've never tried to actually experiment with it. Um, I see a lot of articles these days which are, like, I've, I've written this first paragraph with ChatGPT, and therefore I predict the whole set of, like, consequences X, Y, or Z, and it's like, I mean, sure, you wrote a paragraph, but, like, writing a book and writing a script is way more than just pressing enter. It's a process. I go back to experimentation. It's about feedback, and it's about people, and it's about using these tools in the context of more a macro project. And so, um, I think I would invite more of those, more people who are very skeptical over these tools to use them, and to experiment with them, and see where they are, and see how they provide value to your creative process, and understand that this is not a zero-sum game, which I think a lot of people think about it in that way, which is you're gonna type in, get me a movie, click enter, and you're gonna get a movie out of it, a perfect movie, exactly the way we've been making …

AI assessment note: “comes from, um, this rather unsophistic view of the world”

Q No, I, I do agree with you in terms of also the humility to doubt. When you look back over the rounds, you mentioned kind of raising every year from the seed in 28 or late 20 18. What would you have done differently looking back on the rounds, knowing all that you do now?

A Something I've learned a little more over time, um, has been always emphasizing the vision of the company. Um, I think products and models don't really matter in the sense that what really matters in a company is the people that you have and the collective tissue of what brings them together. And sometimes for me, that was an obvious thing. It was like, hey, we're artists and researchers and engineers building a completely new set of tools. But I sometimes, like, didn't have to mention that because I thought everyone knew that, but of course they didn't. And reminded myself, like, hey, the product that you have today is going to change. It's going to change because these people are changing it all the time. So here's the vision, and here's what we're building it. Four years ago, we were like, hey, media and entertainment, every company will be using these models to create everything from movies to short films. It's going to happen. And I didn't spend enough time emphasizing that because I thought it was obvious. I didn't realize, of course, of course, it's not, not that obvious. So, always emphasizing and reminding yourself of, like, the vision for me has been a good, a good learning.

AI assessment note: “I didn't spend enough time emphasizing that because I thought it was obvious.”

Q What was the hardest round to raise, Chris? You've had multiple rounds down, quite quick succession, and the company's actually, you know, close to five years old, which is kind of an interesting data point. What was the hardest round to raise?

A I think the hardest round for us was our Series A. That was, uh, so the company was started on late 2020 1820 19, um, and then we raised a seed, and then we've collected, since then, every 12 months or so, we've raised a different round. We're now, we've, we've, we just raised a, a Series C. Um, our Series A was, was definitely, I would say, the most challenging, in the sense that We were pitching, again, this is 2019, 20 20. We were pitching building a generative AI company. We wanted to build and we still are obsessed with this idea that generative models are going to change how you think about media, entertainment, how you think about content, how you think about creativity. So we went to investors and we showed them the state of the art research that we had at the time for image generation and told them, hey, That thing that you see here is going to be the future of media. And if you search for an image, um, that you could generate using a model in twenty-twenty, you'll be like, Chris, come on. That's like, of course not. We're so far away. I mean, I have so many investor emails of people telling me, love your team, et cetera, but Journal of AI is not a thing. Stop saying it's a thing. It's not a thing. Um, and so realizing that after so many rejections, because Hundreds of rejections. You're like still mad or like still, still, sorry, still, um, obsessed with making it wor…

AI assessment note: “I think the hardest round for us was our Series A.”

Q How do you do that? And what I mean by that is if you don't project out what they can get, it's kind of like a free for all. It's almost like product marketing to a horizontal audience. So if you don't guide the user, how do you give a great UX?

A You, you test a lot. Um, like if you think about it, the first way, the best, the first The thing people do when they come across this idea of video generation is they, they assume that everything they know about film and cinema and film will replicate itself to this new medium. And the thing is, this is a new medium. It's a new tool. It's a new set of narrative possibilities. And so it's very different from everything they used in the past. The most challenging thing is uncovering those things, because we haven't had the chance of doing it in the past. And so it's, it's like you have your, you find yourself in front of a camera, the first camera ever. And everything you've been using in the past are paintbrushes and paint tubes. A camera doesn't work in the same way as a paintbrush, and the things that you can do with it are only gonna be uncovered and tapped the moment where people get their hands on it. That's how Cinema was born. You have so many people trying this device and coming up with new forms that are beyond your comprehension or beyond what the creators even imagined. I think that empowers a lot of what we do. We need to build this camera. We need to put this device into the hands of more people so we can collectively, as an artistic community, figure out all the primitives and UIs and narratives that will emerge from it.

AI assessment note: “You, you test a lot.”

Q So what, what questions do you ask for founders listening? Cause I totally agree with you. No founders ever ask questions, bluntly, not none, but like 99% don't. What questions should they ask?

A I think what do you, for us, something I've been always trying to strive and find in my investors, It's really making sure that we're both on the same, on the same direction. Because an investor might come to understand your company from a completely different vantage point from the one you have, and that's not going to work. Long term, it's not going to work. You're going to be with this people, with this team, with that investor for years, so you really need to be aligned. So have them pitch to you, the company, and see if you're figuring out and saying the same things. Um, and that's what I've realized sometimes that, like, I had an investor that, um, gave us a term sheet, um, and we have them describe what Runway was, and we're like, that's not what we're doing. Just, I love your term sheet, beautiful valuation, everything else, but, but I don't wanna, that's not gonna work. Uh, I don't think we're lying. And so I realized that just by having that conversation and asking them questions.

AI assessment note: “have them pitch to you, the company, and see if you're figuring out”