Jan 4, 2024 · 56m · how-i-built-this
Sharing the 2023 HIBT Lab Highlight Reel
Guy Raz · 17m spoken Whitney Wolfe Herd · 12m spoken Pinky Cole · 10m spoken Nuseir Yassin · 9m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this 2023 retrospective of How I Built This Lab, host Guy Raz revisits standout conversations with entrepreneurs Pinky Cole, Nuseir Yassin, and Whitney Wolfe Herd to explore resilience, innovative business models, and the future of human connection.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 35.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.9 Guest teaching 3.2 Guest disagreement 1.5 Guy pushing back 1.8
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 28:12 Debunking the American public-private separation myth
Nuseir bluntly rejects Guy's suggestion to separate state and corporate work, dismissing it as an American fantasy that does not apply to global economies like Singapore and the UAE.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 41:08 Guy challenging AI matchmaking algorithms with Minority ReportGuy directly challenges Whitney's optimistic AI matchmaking vision, invoking Minority Report and arguing that algorithms cannot capture unpredictable human evolution and love.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 26:45 Nas educating on non-Western geopolitical perspectivesNuseir corrects Guy's Western-centric lens by illustrating how taboos around Russia or other nations are completely inverted across the Middle East and Global South.
Guy holds their own ▶ 12:15 Guy Raz introducing Seth Godin's Purple Cow frameworkGuy demonstrates his deep business expertise by mapping Pinky's unorthodox marketing strategy directly onto Seth Godin's classic marketing theory.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pinky Cole on the Harlem Restaurant Fire and Hard Humility | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz establishes an empathetic interview environment, validating the brutality of restaurant margins while Pinky Cole recounts losing everything in the Harlem restaurant fire. The dynamic is fully reflective and collaborative. | |
| Healing Through Television on Oprah Winfrey Network's Fix My Life | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy and Pinky share an easy rapport, with Guy drawing parallels between Pinky's rigorous daily discipline and his own mother's philosophy. Pinky explains how working on Fix My Life gave her space to heal and reset. | |
| The Provocative Epiphany and Conceptualization of Slutty Vegan | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Pinky shares the epiphany behind Slutty Vegan and how she set up a cloud kitchen before the concept became mainstream. Guy actively tracks and affirms her early adoption of shared commercial kitchens. | |
| The Purple Cow Marketing Strategy and Reimagining Veganism | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Guy introduces Seth Godin's Purple Cow framework to contextualize Pinky's marketing genius, which Pinky immediately embraces while detailing how artificial scarcity drove massive organic demand. | |
| Scaling via Food Truck to a Four-Million-Dollar Cultural Sensation | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy marvels at Pinky generating four million dollars in six months with just a food truck and basic menu items. Pinky explains that customers were paying for cultural capital and a shared brand experience. | |
| Transition to Nas Daily Excerpt | 4 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Guy transitions to Nuseir Yassin, pressing him on the commercial mechanics and concrete products behind the Nas Daily brand. Nuseir outlines the distinction between brand storytelling and software infrastructure via Nas.io. | |
| Nas Academy, Venture Funding, and Diversified Corporate Revenues | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy drills into funding structures and revenue splits across Nas Academy and Nas.io. Nuseir transparently breaks down his eleven-million-dollar revenue and venture capital backing. | |
| Navigating Geopolitical Complexities and Non-Western Moral Compasses | 6 | 7 | 5 | 6 | Guy presses hard on ethical boundaries regarding working with authoritarian regimes like Russia or China. Nuseir directly reframes the premise, arguing that Western moral taboos are relative and that the world does not revolve around American foreign policy. | |
| The Reality of State and Corporate Intertwining in Global Markets | 5 | 7 | 6 | 5 | When Guy suggests separating private commerce from state entities, Nuseir calls this an idealized American dream that fails in places like the Middle East and Singapore where state and business are intertwined. Nuseir also strongly rejects Guy's doubt that everyone can be a creator. | |
| The Shift from Flawed Advertising to Paid Community Subscriptions | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | Guy challenges the feasibility of millions of creators sustaining themselves on ad revenue and subscription overload. Nuseir agrees advertising is broken and introduces paid micro-communities as the true sustainable alternative. | |
| The 30-Year Conglomerate Vision Inspired by Virgin and Asian Ecosystems | 3 | 5 | 3 | 0 | Nuseir contrasts the American single-product corporate philosophy with the Asian diversified ecosystem model, detailing his 30-year goal to build a conglomerate akin to Virgin Group. Guy listens attentively. | |
| Going Online to Get Offline: The Future of Serendipitous Dating | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Whitney Wolfe Herd outlines her vision of going online to get offline and using generative AI to detect deeper compatibility signals like kindness and loyalty. | |
| Human Evolution vs. Algorithmic Matching and Ethical AI Guardrails | 6 | 4 | 2 | 6 | Guy pushes back with philosophical skepticism, citing Minority Report, arranged marriages, and human growth that algorithms might fail to capture. Whitney accepts the premise and articulates Bumble's commitment to ethical AI that enhances rather than replaces human connection. | |
| AI Dating Coaches, User Empowerment, and Decreasing Toxicity | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Whitney explains how AI wing-coaches can bolster user self-esteem and confidence prior to dating, arguing that healthier self-esteem systematically reduces harassment and ghosting. | |
| Addressing the Loneliness Epidemic and Building Offline Connection | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Guy asks why loneliness is surging despite universal connectivity. Whitney differentiates ad-funded social media designed for screen time from Bumble's subscription model aimed at getting users off their phones quickly. | |
| The Word-of-Mouth Flywheel of Long-Term Dating Success | 6 | 5 | 3 | 6 | Guy challenges Bumble's business incentives, questioning if perfect AI matching eliminates repeat paying customers, and asks about AI virtual companions like the movie Her. Whitney vigorously defends the word-of-mouth flywheel of success stories and firmly rejects virtual romances. | |
| Whitney Wolfe Herd's Long-Term Calling and Ethical Tech Leadership | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Whitney summarizes her life calling to improve human relationships and champion ethical technology leadership that avoids past tech industry pitfalls. Guy delivers a respectful closing. |
Statements from this episode (27)
Cole: Harlem restaurant lacked fire insurance when it burned down
“So I called my insurance agent, and they were like, no, you don't have fire insurance. And I'm like, what? Like, you just have regular basic business insurance, and if you want to be able to, you know, get the things that you got back, like, we aren't responsi…”
Cole: Slutty Vegan's Branding Stripped Elitist Politics from Veganism
“Listen, because slutty and vegan ain't supposed to go together, right? Like, right? When you think, that's like how peanut butter and jelly goes together, like, slutty and vegan don't go together. But what it did is, It really was the biggest oxymoron. So I'm …”
Pinky Cole: Slutty Vegan started as a ghost kitchen
“Slutty Vegan was a ghost kitchen before it was anything else.”
Cole: Early Slutty Vegan pop-ups drew 300 to 500 people per post
“And every time I post on Instagram, I literally had between three to 500 people that would stand outside.”
Yassin: Nas.io takes a 10% cut on community transactions
“So we've built monetization features to help you monetize your community, and we take a 10% cut from anything you do in the community.”
Yassin: Nas Company raised $23M total in funding
“So one year in, we went and raised Twenty three million dollars total to achieve this vision.”
Yassin: Nas Company generated $11M in annual revenue
“So last year's revenue for all of Nas company is eleven million dollars. Seven million dollars was for the production, the Nas Daily. Then the four million the majority of it comes from Nas Academy.”
Yassin: CCTV approached Nas Daily to promote tourism in Xinjiang
“To be clear, we've had people from China, CCTV, tell us to go to Xinjiang and talk about the culture and the food.”
Yassin: US State Department asked Nas Daily to make anti-China videos
“But we also had people from the State Department tell us, hey, why don't you make videos about China and how bad it is?”
Yassin: Nas Daily has never worked with the Israeli government
“So, and I, we've never worked with Israeli government to be clear, but one thing I've realized is that this whole what's taboo and what's not is very relative.”
Yassin: Global media ethics cannot center purely on American interests
“My compass is very different from an American perspective compass. And that's what many Americans need to realize is that the world does not center around America and American interests.”
Yassin: Private and public sectors cannot be separated in many foreign markets
“But that doesn't exist in Singapore, in the UAE. They're so intertwined. Like you, I have a business in Singapore. We all love Singapore, right? But the government knows everything about every business and works with every business, right? And so like, yes, yo…”
Yassin: Creator economy is only at 1% of needed creator capacity
“We are at one percent of the way there with how many content creators we need, similar to how many software engineers we need. We are at one percent of the way there because monetizing videos has been very, very new. So we're just at the beginning.”
Yassin: Room exists globally for 195 localized 'Hollywoods' to emerge
“In the future, there is a room for a 195 more Hollywoods to be created. The days in which the whole world is watching Will Smith on TV and Tom Cruise for the 55th movie are done.”
Yassin: Ad-Supported Creator Business Model Is Flawed and Won't Work
“No, there isn't enough advertising, and advertising-based content creation is a flawed model, and I would dare say it's a fraudulent model. This is the model that has been working, but it will not work in the future.”
Yassin: Future Creator Economy Jobs Will Come From Paid Micro-Communities
“I'm a runner. I start a community for a hundred people. I create content for a hundred people, and each one of them gives me 10 bucks. I'm already making a thousand bucks a month, so you can create new jobs, and that's where the future is heading, in my opinio…”
Nuseir Yassin is phasing himself out of appearing in Nas Daily videos
“So now I have different hosts that get on the videos. I'm taking myself out of the video slowly, but surely”
Yassin: Asian tech focuses on ecosystems rather than single-product IPOs
“I found out that the American way of building companies is very different than the Asian way of building companies. The American way of building companies tells you, build one product, make that product really big, go on IPO, and just like continue working on …”
Yassin: Nas Company has a 30-year conglomerate vision inspired by Virgin
“My ambition is to build similar to Virgin, but I'm gonna build products that bring people together in technology, media, travel, So the way I envision the next 10 years is NAS Daily, NAS Hotel, NAS I.O., NAS Summits, you know, NAS Foods, NAS Venture, NAS whate…”
Wolfe Herd: Dating apps will shift toward swiping on events to meet offline
“I think the next horizon is going online to get offline. So in the near future, it will not be unimaginable to get on Bumble, and instead of, you know, swiping yes and no on a bunch of people, you might be swiping yes or no on things that sound compelling to y…”
Wolfe Herd: Tech could prevent breakups within 10 years
“And my dream, Guy, is 10 years from now, We will be able to prevent breakups before they ever happen. We will be able to prevent bad relationships from ever having a potential of happening.”
Wolfe Herd: Bumble will never replace human dynamic emotion with AI
“My big focus is to never, ever, ever replace a real human dynamic emotion, want, or need with a computer, with a system, with a model, with a bot, right? And so what I would like to do is help humans connect better.”
Wolfe Herd: Bumble is exploring AI dating coaches to prepare users for chats
“So we have been hard at work exploring ways to have coaches or matchmakers or friends in your pocket, whatever you want to call it. You know, basically be that wing woman, wing man, wing person in your pocket to really show you that you've got this and to have…”
Wolfe Herd: Raising user self-esteem will reduce harassment and ghosting in dating
“If you have a user base and a supply of people Feeling better about themselves with higher levels of self-esteem, what do you get less of? Abuse? Harassment? Toxicity? Ghosting? All the icky stuff that comes with dating will subsequently decline.”
Whitney Wolfe Herd: Interacting on TikTok and Instagram Kills Real Friendship
“Friendship has moved online, and it has actually killed friendship. Chatting with your buddies on TikTok and Instagram does not count as relationship. That is not a soulful, real relationship, and candidly, It creates more of a voyeuristic fear of missing out …”
Wolfe Herd: Bumble Prioritizes Shortening Session Length to Foster Offline Connection
“Everything we are working on from a product prioritization standpoint right now is to shorten the duration that you're using our product on any given time because we want you to go online and get offline.”
Wolfe Herd: Successful relationships create more business value than failed dates
“50 success stories is worth more than thousands of failed dates, because those failed dates turn into the reverse flywheel of negative feedback, and so we're actually absolutely aligned with the customer finding success, because their success is our success”