The Exchanges

Q All right. Let's, let's start. What's your, what's your first one?

A Um, so I got really into learning about this community. I'm going to butcher this name and then people are going to get so mad, but it's called Lomography. L-O-M-O, Lomography. And the, so, okay, you have to get into the history of Lomography. First of all, it's a product community, but you would never know it when you first stumble in. You would, you would, you wouldn't even understand that that's what you just fell into because it looks like For this community of artisans, very user-generated content based, but lamography is really based on a specific type of photography where the camera dictates the quality versus the subject. And so, okay. 1982. This is how it started. There was this general, I'm gonna butcher his name, General Igor Petrovitz-Kornitsky. Uh, he was the right-hand man to the USSR's Minister of Defense, and he brought in this, like, little compact Japanese camera and handed it over, and they were very impressed by it and decided that they were gonna improve it and then move it into mass production. So it started with just this, like, one product that they thought was sharp. And then a decade later, so 92, this entire society is built around it and it becomes a global society. So what's interesting about them today is that when you go to their website, it's pretty low-fi. It's not the fanciest thing you've ever seen, but if you go to slash forward slash photos,…

AI assessment note: “it's called Lomography. L-O-M-O, Lomography.”

Q So you have this idea for this tracker, you register the Twitter account, like what next? Cause like you say like, okay, and then, you know, you just make a couple of TikToks and all of a sudden two million views. And before you know it, you're a top five finance app. Take us through the messy middle.

A It's funny, because once you understand and realize that, like, 80% of the internet is just content that's either rejuvenated, packaged a different way, or sort of pseudo-manipulated, you get a little bit of a better sense of how these things grow so quickly. So when we started out with Xero with Pelosi, we just had one account, Nancy Pelosi Tracker, we had a lot of these friends, Liquidity is an investor in us, Trust on Terry, a lot of these other meme accounts, and we said, okay, we know this content will go viral if it's picked up in the right channel. We know how to write the content that can go viral through the messaging. How do we just get it into that ecosystem? And that's how we just worked with partners. So when we went from zero to around a 100,000 followers on Twitter, we worked with different meme accounts to kind of pump in that content into those channels. One shout out is Parikh Patel. So Parikh Patel, he's like a pseudo advisor investor for us. We worked with him early on to say, Hey, Parikh, we're going to write up these tweets. We're going to kind of make them built for virality. We're going to tweet it. Can you go retweet it and kind of get it in out, out there into the public? And that's exactly what we did. It was that simple. Write the tweets, make sure they go viral and use Parikh.

AI assessment note: “we worked with different meme accounts to kind of pump in that content”

Q Um, couple more questions. You and Sam Parr, on the surface, like, you would think you wouldn't be friends, but you're friends. Or he ran The Hustle, which was, you know, direct competitor to Morning Brew. Could you talk a little bit about how you're able to have a, you know, a good friendship with, with someone like that?

A Yeah, so we weren't friends until we sold our businesses, right? And by the way, I'm going on My First Million this week, and I think that's why I want to talk to him about it, and I want to do it in a public manner. I don't want to speak for Sam, but I will speak for Sam anyways, and I'll see if he agrees on Wednesday, but I don't know if either of us had the, the humility or the, or mature enough to be friends with each other at that time. I think we both had so much Personal effort and, and, and so much of our self-worth was tied up in our businesses, and I think we very much view them as our babies, and they were so competitive, at least they seem so competitive, that there's no way we could have been friends. Now, after the fact, all of a sudden, We have so many similarities, so many stories we can share with each other. Oh, he was doing this. I was doing that. And, and that's how I think we bonded. And now I have so much respect for, for him and how he's different than me and how he's the same, same as I am. And I think one interesting thing is I viewed him as he started the hustle when he, when he ran the hustle, I had heard stories and I heard him on podcasts and I viewed him as very, very rude. And I was like, oh, this guy is like an asshole. I, he seems like a complete asshole. And now, you know, I've been working with him on a couple of projects and I've been on call…

AI assessment note: “we weren't friends until we sold our businesses... that's how I think we bonded.”

Q Okay, so you've built this ecosystem, and you didn't talk about daily manifest, which really, in my opinion, is the entry to You know, the entry portal. Can you actually talk a little bit about that?

A So we skipped over that. That was actually the first product. So before the David Perel thing that we talked about, um, when I was making this transition from like agency burned out crazy, like everyone else has control over your day, right? You're just like reacting to meetings and deadlines that are being set externally. Once I decided to stop doing that, I had to, like, consciously make an effort to plan out my days, and the Daily Manifest was like this little tool that I used to scribble out on a piece of A-Fort paper, and, uh, when I was putting content out on Instagram, sharing all these ideas that I was really latching onto or that were really helping me, like, Think about how to build, uh, visualize value or transition it into a proper brand and business from this like chaotic service world I was living in. A lot of the feedback I got from people was time management. You know, I'm procrastinating. I can't manage my days. I don't know how to like Consistently work on something. And the daily manifest was just like a test product. I was like, okay, I'll take this thing that I write down every day, formalize it, basically put it into a template in Figma and, uh, package it up and give people access to the PDF and a community on the side. So you buy the plan with the plan comes or the, by the template, sorry. And with the template comes access to what was at the time of Wha…

AI assessment note: “That was actually the first product... Daily Manifest was like this little tool”

Q So what, uh, what businesses do you guys buy? And like, how do you think, like, what's your framework for, for buying businesses?

A We're, we're really looking for, um, what we call boring cashflow businesses. Um, and I, I don't think, you know, they're not boring to everyone. They're really boring because nobody's writing about them in the news. They're not on the front page of tech crunch. You usually won't hear about them in the wall street journal. Um, we really want to buy the businesses that, uh, power America is how I think about it. You know, really the small mom and pop shops of blue, oftentimes blue collar industries that Um, you know, that generate good revenue, incredible cashflow have been going for 2030 years. Um, and now, you know, maybe they don't, their employees don't want to take over or they don't have a son or daughter that wants to take over the business. And Enduring Ventures is just a perfect buyer for that type of company. Um, examples might be, you know, we, we love plumbing service businesses, HVAC service companies. Um, we own a series of businesses that provide broadband to people's homes and offices. Um, so all of these companies that are largely recession resistant have been around for a really long time that we can buy at a very reasonable multiple, multiple of cashflow that is, uh, which is sometimes different than SAS, which we can talk about, but that's really our sweet spot. And it's follow that playbook and do that over and over again, over a long period of time. Xavier,…

AI assessment note: “We're, we're really looking for, um, what we call boring cashflow businesses.”

Q What's your, what's your optimistic take, you know, five, 10 years from now for web three? I think you've, you've spoken a lot about, you know, the faults of web three and there's tons, but I'm curious, you know, what, what does web three look like in five to 10 years?

A All right. So web three is a collection of assets, right? People include blockchain in there. They include smart contracts in there. Distributed computing is in there. Permissionless, you know, trustless, serverless, peer-to-peer. All that is part of this, um, you know, technology stack. So you're really asking like, what are, where are these 17, what's the future of these 17 technologies? I'll tell you like, there are two things I think that are super promising, uh, or maybe three, uh, that I think could have legs. Uh, I think NFTs, uh, are a very interesting technology when certain rights are attached to them. So if I were to buy my Soho House membership or the battery or my golf club membership, and it was an NFT, and then I could take my golf club membership or whatever it was. And under some sort of smart contract rules, I, if I paid 25,000 dollars to become part of my local golf club or 5000 dollars to be part of Soho House, I would have the right to sell it to somebody else. Um, and I could get back up to a hundred percent of my original investment, then 50% of any gain. And then the solo house or the golf club got the other 50% and the golf club had to approve the person and I had to approve the person. So both things had to be true, or I didn't need their approval. If it was over this amount, whatever it is. And so you could see that being like a very interesting way t…

AI assessment note: “there are two things I think that are super promising”

Q What is learn to earn? So play to earn, we're going to dive into it, like, we'll talk about all the definitions and get into it. Learn to earn, I've never heard of. So what is that?

A Learn to earn, well, I'll explain it by the example, like rabbithole. So the way rabbithole works is you earn tokens from Uh, from decentralized applications by learning about them. So for example, Uniswap is one of the biggest protocols that exists, um, in decentralized finance, and they'll basically give, let's say, you know, 10 uni tokens if you go on a rabbit hole quest. And the rabbit hole quest is all about learning about how Uniswap works and how to actually You know, use some of their protocol. Um, so Uniswap is happy because they've just acquired this new customer, uh, who is vetted, right? They've actually learned how to use the protocol and they've actually, they've got, you know, quote unquote on chain reputation. So meaning you've learned, uh, How to use Uniswap, and it's almost minted to the blockchain. So it's like this, you know, Greg Eisenberg learned this. Um, and that's, that's really the concept of learn to earn.

AI assessment note: “you earn tokens from decentralized applications by learning about them”

Q Totally. Well, what do you got? What do you want to talk about today?

A Oh man. Well, we have an awesome guest coming on, Ryan Wyatt, who is sort of a microcosm of this whole, like web two to web three shift and transition. I mean, he's a web two senior, senior executive, um, at Google, YouTube. He was the head of gaming and now has like fully red pilled and joined a polygon studios as CEO. So we have him on and given that In fact, I feel like a good lead in is we have to talk about some cool web three shit that's been happening. Um, and one of the latest, which I wanted to just pick your brain on was around this whole Yugo Labs acquisition of, uh, the Larva Labs IP. So Yugo Labs being the board API club's creators, um, acquired the IP of CryptoPunks and MiBits, which are under the Larva Labs umbrella. And, um, I want to talk about that. And then I also want to talk about Stripe, um, Stripe crypto, cause that's a big deal. So which one do you want to, uh, which one do you want to start on?

AI assessment note: “I want to talk about that. And then I also want to talk about Stripe”

Q Totally. Well, what do you got? What do you want to talk about today?

A Oh man. Well, we have an awesome guest coming on, Ryan Wyatt, who is sort of a microcosm of this whole, like web two to web three shift and transition. I mean, he's a web two senior, senior executive, um, at Google, YouTube. He was the head of gaming and now has like fully red pilled and joined a polygon studios as CEO. So we have him on and given that In fact, I feel like a good lead in is we have to talk about some cool web three shit that's been happening. Um, and one of the latest, which I wanted to just pick your brain on was around this whole Yugo Labs acquisition of, uh, the Larva Labs IP. So Yugo Labs being the board API club's creators, um, acquired the IP of CryptoPunks and MiBits, which are under the Larva Labs umbrella. And, um, I want to talk about that. And then I also want to talk about Stripe, um, Stripe crypto, cause that's a big deal. So which one do you want to, uh, which one do you want to start on?

AI assessment note: “one of the latest, which I wanted to just pick your brain on”

Q Matt, did you ever have a, did you ever have a stint in San Francisco? Was there ever a point where you moved the company in San Francisco? Cause I do remember. A, um, presence, a big automatic presence, uh, like on the bay somewhere.

A Yeah. So my story, I, I had, um, gone to University of Houston for two years, and then, uh, a company called CNET paid me to drop out, move to San Francisco in 2004. So this is about year, year and a half after WordPress started, but about a year before I found the company and definitely, you know, part of founding the company was going out there. It was amazing for me to meet people and be influenced and like, San Francisco is definitely where my tribe was. You know, people who are passionate about building the web, passionate about technology. So I still love San Francisco. Like I think I'm the last one. Like I spend time there. My mom's out there right now. Like I, I actually really love San Francisco. So, and we, uh, at first had like a desk in our investor's office. So true ventures had a spot on peer 38. Um, You know, Instagram was upstairs. There was, it was a fun spot. And, um, and then later that expanded, that office next door came available. So we, we had it, but it was always like a lounge. Like we've never actually ever done permanent desk or places, but we did want a place for people to get together and to host community events and to do WordPress meetups. And so, like, I'm a big believer in in-person and physical space. A big part of automatic culture is actually meetups where we would bring either the whole company or teams together a few times a year. But it ju…

AI assessment note: “CNET paid me to drop out, move to San Francisco in 2004”

Q Yeah. Could you, I mean, so your base assumption and just help me understand this. Your base assumption is that we can come up with the technology to consume more sustainably and better. Well, I, I w I want to believe that's true because I love consuming like, you know, and, but can you explain what makes you so sure in that?

A Um, so on a first principles basis, we can look at, for example, all of these systems and assess the energy and resource needs to, to produce the things coming out of these systems. So take animal protein as an example, right? So, so cows, beef, there's about 30 times, actually, let me just speak to the whole animal system. The whole animal system to make all the, the animal proteins that we as a species consume requires roughly 30 times the energy going into that system as the energy coming out of that system. Okay, what is it? What are we making? Well, we're making these proteins. These proteins are definable, right? So first principles assessment, we can look at what these proteins are. We know how to make them. We know how DNA makes them, right? We can code for those proteins using DNA. And then we just have to find a better way to make those proteins using that same DNA sequence. And so today, there are incredible technologies that are emerging In being able to produce those proteins using what are called recombinant DNA systems. So you take the DNA of the chicken, or the cow, or the fish, and you can put it in the yeast cell. And the yeast cell you put in a fermenter tank, like you make beer or wine, you put sugar stock in the fermenter tank, and the yeast cell eats the sugar, and it spits out the animal protein. Take that animal protein, you can turn it into ground beef,…

AI assessment note: “on a first principles basis, we can look at, for example, all of these systems”

Q Yeah. Could you, I mean, so your base assumption and just help me understand this. Your base assumption is that we can come up with the technology to consume more sustainably and better. Well, I, I w I want to believe that's true because I love consuming like, you know, and, but can you explain what makes you so sure in that?

A Um, so on a first principles basis, we can look at, for example, all of these systems and assess the energy and resource needs to, to produce the things coming out of these systems. So take animal protein as an example, right? So, so cows, beef, there's about 30 times, actually, let me just speak to the whole animal system. The whole animal system to make all the, the animal proteins that we as a species consume requires roughly 30 times the energy going into that system as the energy coming out of that system. Okay, what is it? What are we making? Well, we're making these proteins. These proteins are definable, right? So first principles assessment, we can look at what these proteins are. We know how to make them. We know how DNA makes them, right? We can code for those proteins using DNA. And then we just have to find a better way to make those proteins using that same DNA sequence. And so today, there are incredible technologies that are emerging In being able to produce those proteins using what are called recombinant DNA systems. So you take the DNA of the chicken, or the cow, or the fish, and you can put it in the yeast cell. And the yeast cell you put in a fermenter tank, like you make beer or wine, you put sugar stock in the fermenter tank, and the yeast cell eats the sugar, and it spits out the animal protein. Take that animal protein, you can turn it into ground beef,…

AI assessment note: “on a first principles basis, we can look at, for example, all of these systems”

Q And I just checked Nas Academy. Is it, is it cohort based or is it like recorded? And could you talk a little bit more about, you know, the best way for creators like us to educate people?

A Yeah. So it's actually cohort based recorded. So that's the beauty of it. It's like hybrid. So the problem with just cohort based is that you need to be teaching all the time. Every single cohort, you need to do the work. It doesn't scale with NASA Academy. It's like it's recorded, but the recordings are only available at a certain time. They unlock at a certain time, finish at a certain time. So every hundred students are put in one group. And they learn together. There's a coach assigned to them to make sure they all meet each other and communicate with each other. And then they watch your video files when they unlock every day. That's kind of the idea behind it. So it's a scalable way for creators to teach in cohorts.

AI assessment note: “So it's actually cohort based recorded. So that's the beauty of it. It's like hybrid.”

Q And I just checked Nas Academy. Is it, is it cohort based or is it like recorded? And could you talk a little bit more about, you know, the best way for creators like us to educate people?

A Yeah. So it's actually cohort based recorded. So that's the beauty of it. It's like hybrid. So the problem with just cohort based is that you need to be teaching all the time. Every single cohort, you need to do the work. It doesn't scale with NASA Academy. It's like it's recorded, but the recordings are only available at a certain time. They unlock at a certain time, finish at a certain time. So every hundred students are put in one group. And they learn together. There's a coach assigned to them to make sure they all meet each other and communicate with each other. And then they watch your video files when they unlock every day. That's kind of the idea behind it. So it's a scalable way for creators to teach in cohorts.

AI assessment note: “So it's actually cohort based recorded. So that's the beauty of it. It's like hybrid.”

Q So, When I met you, it must have been 2017 or something. I don't remember you saying crypto. I don't remember you. You might've been like doing it on the side, but correct. I don't remember you having a big Twitter following. Is this something that's new ish for you?

A Relatively new. So I, I mean, I joined Twitter before Bitcoin was invented, right? I've been there since basically the video, I think, 2008 or 2009. I joined Twitter whenever it started and it was because of music, right? I was a music account. I, Got my blue check that everyone thinks is from crypto because of my DJing and music production. So, uh, I rode that. Maybe I had 40,000 followers come 2016, 17. Had a kid. Decided I didn't want to, you know, be on the road anymore. Didn't want to tour. As I said, I got older. It's always the joke like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused. You know, I felt like, uh, I get older, they stay the same age. That's how I felt with DJing. Like, no matter how old I get, everyone I'm DJing for is 21. And wants to party, right? It just didn't really work. Um, and so, you know, I've been trading already. I love trading. I love markets. Um, and crypto is this sort of world of unicorn hundred X pumps in late 2016 and early 2017, and I just timed it well, right? A huge part of, I think, anyone's story in this industry is certainly luck and timing, right? If I had had the exact same story at the very beginning of 2018, it would be very different, right? Um, so I did well fast. Uh, became very passionate about it, and I immediately alienated everyone who followed me on Twitter. Like, one day it was like, ah, I've got this show, come to South by S…

AI assessment note: “Relatively new. So I, I mean, I joined Twitter before Bitcoin was invented”

Q graduated college or in college starting companies. Versus what it used to be like. I hate to sound like the old guy, you know, we're like, I don't think you're allowed to sound like the old guy. You know, remember, remember the good old days, but I think, you know, I'm curious, like from your perspective, what, what do you think has changed for the better or for the worse?

A I think it's all, almost all for the better. The, 2005, so the initial users of Reddit were mostly us with pseudonyms, but the initial real humans were a few hundred people that I'd recruited from a forum, a PHP BB forum that I ran in college called Eyes Wide, and it was a place to discuss politics and news and technology, and, and I ran this forum for fun because I just liked the idea, and There's actually an old, there's an old clip that I dug up of me talking about it, and it, you can very much hear the sort of ethos of Reddit in that discussion, or in that video, in that little monologue, uh, welcoming users to the forum. But like, those were the initial users. Just an email blast to say, hey, come join, please. And like, maybe 10 of them signed up. Um, but that was enough to sort of get things started, and then a Paul Graham essay helped launch us a month later. You know, today, Getting those first hundred, those first thousand should be table stakes. Like that, if, if you can't figure out a way to muscle in that many users, there's a deeper problem with what you're trying to solve or how you're communicating it. And, and I think that's a great thing, right? Product hunt exists. Twitter exists. Social media infrastructure that did not exist in 2005 is now so robust. People are so comfortable testing out an app, even test flight and, and, and early Access is becoming so muc…

AI assessment note: “I think it's all, almost all for the better.”

Q know if this CTO is gonna be, you know, the person for it. Um, if he's product oriented, and he's got that energy, then, like, I may be a little bit bullish to neutral, But if he is not product oriented, um, No, I don't think so. I mean, I'm kind of, I'm kind of, I'm kind of in the neutral to bearish on Twitter right now. Stock is what?

A Well, let's, let's close out with that on this. So make your prediction of the future. One year from today. So today is November 30th. One year from today, the stock is currently trading at 43 dollars and 55 cents as we sit here. Um, basically over the life of the stock, it's where it was when it went public. Like I think it went public at like 40 and it's at 43. It's, it kind of had the huge trough. Donald Trump breathed some life back into it. It spiked, hit 60 plus in, ah, you know, earlier part of 2021. Now it's down at 43. One year from today and five years from today, where do you have the stock and why?

AI assessment note: “the stock is currently trading at 43 dollars and 55 cents”

Q kind of more like an optimizing for state thing. So yeah, I don't have a mission statement, but I, I kind of break it down into like the three things I want to focus on for the year. Um, but the mission statement thing is pretty interesting. Do you have any, is there any like thing I can watch or read about how to create a mission statement for myself?

A Yeah, there's like, uh, there's like a few frameworks for it. I think it's, there's one called the three question framework. So it's, what is more, what is most important to you? What are your goals? And what values guide your actions? So for example, the integral piece that you talked about, the, the value that you have is Integrity. So then, so you have pieces of it. That's one framework. There's also the purpose, values, goals framework. So it's, uh, purpose, what is your life about? Values, what do you stand for? And goals, what do you want to achieve? So I kind of like that one, because I do think that you need to have some number, you know, associated, like from a goal perspective. Because otherwise, it just becomes, like, so lofty. And then the last one, uh, that I've seen is the five-step plan. So it's, uh, what are your past successes? Identify themes from your past achievements. What are your core values? List, list and prioritize your most important values. Identify contributions, how you want to impact different areas of your life. Identify goals, short and long term goals. And then it's right mission and vision statements. So you're basically synthesizing all the above stuff in concise statements.

AI assessment note: “there's like a few frameworks for it. I think it's, there's one called”

Q Could you just using Blockworks as an example? Can you just share like the scale of where you are at? How many people are, are visiting the properties? How big is the audience? How much revenue did you drive from maybe an average user? Just so people get a sense of like similar, what they could expect for building a B to B niche business.

A So Blockworks launched May, 2018. We just started kind of side hustle, ideating on it, December, 2017 officially. Quit our jobs and launched May, 2018. First year of business, 250 K of revenue. Second year of business, two million of revenue. Third year of business, three and a half million. Fourth year, 12 and a half million. Fifth year, 25 and a half million. So, and we, and we didn't raise any venture that whole time. So that was, we had no, so we had no product at the bottom of the funnel. It was all advertising and sponsorship dollars, conferences, podcasts, newsletters, And news. And so that was basically, that was the scale of the media business. Once we hit that scale, we said, and we were spitting off enough cashflow. We said, boom, let's go build a product and raise our first round. So now, so then in May or April, 20, 23, about a year ago, we raised twelve million at a one 35 post money valuation. And that was to basically say, look, we've got this product at the bottom of the funnel. It's growing. Tremendously. We've never spent a dollar on marketing because we already own the relationship with the audience. Let's go put some fuel on the fire and go hire more engineers and, you know, analysts and things like that. So that's basically our business model. And that's some of the, like, I guess the behind the scenes of some of the numbers.

AI assessment note: “First year of business, 250 K of revenue. Second year of business, two million”

Q Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of people like on X who are sort of like local maxis who look at people who spin up virtual machines and cloud agents as sort of like Amateurish. What do you say to people like that?

A They, they are not, they are not doing real work. Um, here's the deal, right? So as soon as we hit PMF with Untangle and we, and we started acquiring real customers and having to ship real fixes, real features, like I had to probably 50 X my output, right? Um, and you just can't do it if you're working locally. So I think It's, it's nice to work locally, and sometimes you have to if you're doing heavy front end stuff. So say, say you're shipping a brand new feature with a lot of UI, like a lot of new UI, right? Then, yes, of course, you're probably going to spin up a local agent, and you're going to do some light front end, you know, probably wireframing. Um, but as quickly as you can, you want to move that into the cloud, and then let a cloud agent take over. Um, so I think this is happening to a lot of people. I think A lot of the traditional Knowledge of how to work is, is, is out of date. Um, that's where we're at.

AI assessment note: “They, they are not, they are not doing real work.”

Q Okay, so if you do start using cloud agents and you do 50 x output, you know, in some ways that is a little stressful because you have so much stuff going on, right? And now all of a sudden you have to manage more. So how do you, how do you structure a system so you don't go absolutely crazy?

A It's interesting. I think, first of all, you have to shift Your expectation of what your work is and what your work is now is making high stakes decisions almost all day. So in the past, like we all had the luxury of making probably, you know, at most maybe two to three high stakes decisions per day, right? You'd have an important meeting with your key team or with a customer and you'd make a couple important decisions and you would communicate those decisions and then they would get done over, you know, two weeks. Um, you know, I think you have to sort of mentally pace yourself to say, probably by lunch, you're going to have made, you know, 10 to 20 high stakes decisions. Um, and so you have to learn how to do that. So, which is your question, how do you do that? Um, and I think there's a couple simple things, right? Um, so when I'm working with my agents, I actually have to organize my threads by, and I pin the ones that are the most important work we're getting done today, right? Because there's a lot of quick bug fixes or, you know, small things you're shipping. And you kind of learn to separate into two buckets. What are the big, big important things I'm getting done today? Pin those. And, and then the other things, just let them rip and get back to them when you can. Um, and then set yourself this kind of, uh, almost timer, right? Where you're like, okay, I'm gonna go cra…

AI assessment note: “I actually have to organize my threads by, and I pin the ones that are”

Q The last objection that, that is going to happen is they're, they're going to say, Corey, like, are you mother Teresa? Why, why are you being so nice? What would you say to that?

A I mean, this is literally so, and people say that all the time. They're like, oh, if you're actually making money with this model, why would you be giving away all the sauce? And it's like, dude, think about how many businesses exist in the United States of America. There are millions, right? Every single one of them without fail needs to use AI in some capacity. And think about how many of them are actually using AI at all, aside from just prompting ChatGPT. Maybe five percent of companies are using any AI tool other than ChatGPT. So when we are giving away the playbook, it's because there is so much opportunity. If everybody watching this podcast or listening to this podcast went and implemented this model, there would still be opportunity left over. That's just how much of a blue ocean it is right now for this type of stuff.

AI assessment note: “when we are giving away the playbook, it's because there is so much opportunity.”

Q you can clearly explain how to actually do this thing, and then show some examples so that people can actually just copy some of these workflows, and then by the end of the episode, they're going to understand loops for, for, you know, how do, how do you use loops to run your business, um, but also, Uh, how they can get started today. Can you make that commitment, Ellie?

A Yeah. Yeah, sure. I'm going to show you how to use loops to run your business. We're going to talk about it at a high level, like sort of what the concept is. Where you can potentially use it, but then I'm also going to show you how it actually runs in practice. So it's not just theoretical. I'll show you how you can actually improve your SEO massively using loops. It's the sort of thing a lot of you might be doing today. If you have anything running on a schedule, that's a form of loop, but we're going to sort of really push it far. And I think the state of AI today, you can really do quite a lot with a loop over a long period of time. Most of the time we're talking about loops. Maybe, you know, they run in half an hour, an hour here. We're talking about loops that might last for months or even years.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Yeah, sure. I'm going to show you how to use loops”

Q Right. I mean, so I guess, do you think that agents are good enough today such that they can actually impact Google ranking and, and get you more traffic?

A So having run it myself, it's definitely having positive results. It's going to take a few months to sort of really have the impact that I want. But yeah, for sure, like I, I, before we did this recording, I took a look at the numbers and I can see a whole bunch of numbers are going in the right direction. Some of them, you know, I might be moving from page three on Google to page two for a certain term. So it's, I guess it's valuable. It's getting there, but obviously the ultimate goal is to get to a first page ranking. Um, I do think it depends on lots of different factors, like, you know, inbox zero, domain rating might be like, 63 or so. Last I checked, 64, something like that. For a new business that sort of has a super low domain rating, maybe, you know, it would work out differently. But yeah, to me, I'd, I'd happily run this, whether it's like an established business or, you know, a new business that you're starting to, to set up, basically.

AI assessment note: “having run it myself, it's definitely having positive results.”

Q Cool. All right. So we looked at SEO loops. What are other loops that people could be thinking about?

A Yeah, so another really good one would be a Facebook ad loop. So you're running, you're running ads on Facebook, maybe even the AI is generating its own ads, and it's just, it's looking at the data, it's put out like an experiment with three different variants. It sees, you know, variant A is doing super well, and so it pushes more in that direction. And so this is exactly what you'd be doing if you're hiring an ads agency as well. They're going to be experimenting with lots of different copy, lots of different, You know, graphics and, you know, images or videos and so on, and so you could run the same thing basically with an AI. Where this might get a little bit challenging is that the content that gets created Buy the AI. It's not always going to be amazing. Um, if you're doing video content generation with AI or graphics being generated with AI, it won't necessarily, you know, be as good as what a human can put together. Um, I'm sure there are some very good AI generated ads running by right now, but I, I, I, if I had to guess the human generated ads are running better, but things like changing a line of copy, for example, that it's very easy for an AI to go and change. And then, um, yeah, see how it's performed and then improve on it. Or if we're talking about Google ads where, you know, you don't have images necessarily. You're just trying to rank on Google search ads. Um,…

AI assessment note: “another really good one would be a Facebook ad loop”

Q All right. Well, I'm, I'm intrigued. I, I'd love to see some, you know, what you got. You want to start sharing your screen?

A Let's, let's go. So this is how I do my email. Um, so this is a little app that I, I built. Uh, by the time this comes out, you'll probably be able to get, get this app. Um, it's called tend, but you'll probably be able to get it as an open source library I'll release. But honestly, you can literally just feed this video into codex and just be like, make something like this and it will do that. So, you know, do whatever you want. Um, but basically what this does is it goes through my inbox every day, and it just finds every single unread email, and then for each email it makes a card, and the card summarizes what was in the email, and then it has a little draft reply that it, that it drafts for me, and then, uh, what I can do is, um, I can say, can you, um, Well, I, I didn't deal with this yet. Can you find some more times like later this week and, um, show them to me in a draft? Um, and then it'll go do that. And now we're onto the next email. Um, and, uh, I just go through my emails like this. Uh, let's see. Uh, we want to keep writing.new. Um, it's on, it's on Namecheap currently. Uh, I can get you the Cloudflare credentials. Uh, and now we're on to the next one. I'm going to just, uh.

AI assessment note: “Let's, let's go. So this is how I do my email.”

Q AI. You can take a picture of your, you know, your, your spaghetti, and it'll tell you how many calories it has. And then the second thing is, um, Well, obviously it, well, that's the main, that's actually the main piece. It's just like you're creating more value, you know, for the customer, right? So it's like, um, how, how important do you think that is, uh, to the idea?

A I think, I think that's huge. Like, I think AI has created so many creative ways to make engaging features. And another thing I think it is, is the fact that to create an app in the past, You used to need like, I don't know, like tons of developers. You either needed a lot of capital or stuff like this. But now that AI has kind of democratized creation, you can also get super niche in your apps. Like when I was telling people my idea, they were like, okay, but how many wrestlers are there actually? And it turns out there was a decent bit, but most people would have kind of scoffed at the idea of like a wrestling app kind of Having like any sort of success. You know what I mean? So it allows like people who are more niche down into things to create good products for these like more niche communities without needing a ton of capital investment.

AI assessment note: “I think, I think that's huge. Like, I think AI has created so many creative”

Q So slash goal is also trending at the moment. You know, is slash goal a loop? Like, how should people think about slash goal and a loop?

A They're all the same thing. They have different names, like slash goal. I know on cursor, I think it's slash loop, and then on another tool, it's slash whatever. They're all the same thing, and basically how All of them work on a high level is you, you, you know, you type in slash goal and then you give it some prompt, right? Like you give it Some prompt, and then you can also, like, attach some, you know, markdown file, and you tell it, like, yeah, build this entire thing out. Don't stop until you're done. Don't make any mistakes. Again, these are cool, but the two issues are, number one, uh, they burn a lot of tokens, right? Um, and if you are not, like, this shouldn't even be a thought if you're not on the 200 dollar a month plan. Like, not a thought. Like, if you're on the 20 dollar, or I think there's a hundred dollar a month plan, You shouldn't even think about this, right? Because it's just going to burn your token usage. Um, number two, you think your plan is good, but it's not. Because it's impossible for you as a human to contextualize every single detail about the product that you want, um, in one document, right? Things evolve, trends change, um, you know, one day liquid glass is cool, the next day we're changing how liquid we want it. Like, it's very impossible for you to fill, like, Uh, your thoughts and exactly how you want the product to be one in one, in one do…

AI assessment note: “They're all the same thing. They have different names, like slash goal.”

Q back at the pod. And, you know, you could have You know, you, you, you own an agency called metal lab. You could have called that metal lab to go and build this for you, but you decided I'm going to do this all myself. I'm going to actually productize this myself. I'm going to design it myself. I'm going to build it myself. Why did you make that decision?

A Well, I think, um, I love people like I'm very extroverted, but the worst part about business is people. Um, you know, if you think about using a, let's use a screenwriting analogy. So in Hollywood, there's all these brilliant screenwriters and they write these incredible scripts. And so they have this idea and they know where they want it to go. Right? So let's say they start here and they want it to go here. They want to make an incredible feature film in between All in between the script and the feature film are a hundred people that they have to convince. Fifty million dollars they have to raise. A million middlemen and all that. And I think that creativity is just, um, compromised based on how the number of people between your vision, uh, and execution. And so, um, I think like writing for me has been a very like pure pursuit where I can think about it. And I can write it and I can work with AI to make it better if I need to. Um, but it feels, it feels like so, such a clear, um, execution of your vision. And I feel like vibe coding is that, um, like finally I can do absolutely every part of it and I can do it at my own pace. You know, if I was using employees, um, they're unreliable. They don't see my vision. They don't understand every aspect of, um, design. So you can have a great designer who sucks at front end, or you can have, um, or doesn't know how to design saying …

AI assessment note: “creativity is just, um, compromised based on how the number of people between your vision”

Q Howie, some people are like, they're, they're, you know, um, they're, what they love doing is, like, obsessing over tuning every single detail and stuff like that, and those people, you know, That, an open claw might be for them, right? But if you're, if you want more.

A Like, yeah. That, but I believe that, like, you don't have to sacrifice the tunability, right? Or the, like, the power. And so, you know, one of our strong design philosophies here is that, like, hyperagent still does give you a lot of control. Like, you can go and tweak, you know, kind of, like, agent configuration if you want to. If you want to, like, choose the exact model and system prompt and tools and, like, give it a lot of refinement, you can. And, Like, you can go quite far in terms of curating memories. Uh, we actually just shipped yesterday a kind of, like, a defrag tool for your memory, so that as you accumulate more and more memories across all these different agents, you have this, like, really elegant way of, like, defragging them, right? Where, like, we can auto-suggest here related memories clustered by both, like, you know, keyword as well as, like, embeddings similarity, so that we're actually understanding the content of the memories, and you can consolidate them, but They're like, you know, we want to really serve both people who are like power users who want control over how the agent is set up so they can get maximum bleeding edge performance, but then also, you know, like you shouldn't have to do all that to get value out of the product. So it really is about the range. I think it's more just that like if you are truly, you know, happy just like doing it…

AI assessment note: “I believe that, like, you don't have to sacrifice the tunability”