The Exchanges

Q The product. Like we kind of, you know, we said it's an all in one product, but like, how do you, how do you take an idea? How do you take this idea and actually flesh it out and make it a real product? Like, how do you think about it?

A So, okay. First off, I think that similar to what I was saying about split testing different Uh, hooks across different niches about why people should download your product. If, for example, with career AI here, if we're embedding multiple different tools into the platform, what we can do is we can also split test different product hooks. So we could test, let's say we have three different tools within the application. Then we could test different tools on social media to see what's going to go the most viral. And we can engineer around virality with you max. For example, this was the, uh, facial analysis ratings. We found that this sort of six factor Madden rating system. That's what people were most drawn to. That's what people were most likely to like comment, engage with, and therefore went the most viral. I want to, I want to, to make that clear from the start, because that is kind of how I begin my ideation process. What are the tools that are going to do well on social media? X, Y, and Z. So, so that will inform design. And then my process for design is usually I do wireframes. I have either a professional designer or someone on Upwork convert that into more fleshed out UI. Uh, and then it becomes time to build with regards to building. I, myself, I use ChatGPT to teach me, uh, how to code to build RizGPT and UMax. Now, if you have capital, this is not a route that I rec…

AI assessment note: “that is kind of how I begin my ideation process. What are the tools”

Q Cool. Well, yeah, let's, let's dive in. What's idea number one. What do you got for us?

A So as you guys have heard the applications that I've built have really been, uh, around sort of AI virality. Uh, the first two specifically. Riz GPT, how to text girls, umax, how to looks max, right? But Cal AI was, that was primarily around functionality. You take an archaic, uh, sort of industry, uh, calorie tracking, where it was not very easy for the end user. A ton of people have grapes with apps like MyFitnessPal, and you make it easier with the use of AI. And so this is what I increasingly think about, not building apps where you can just kind of, uh, You know, leverage the TikTok algorithm to hack your way into a little bit of cash, but like, how do we redefine how the value that people get out of it? So my first idea that I have is, uh, an application for lack of a better word, career AI. As we all know, there are a lot of new, very popular, um, Fragmented career advancement tools. By fragmented, what I mean is you have a website that you can go on that gives you an analysis of your resume, and it'll give you all the bullet points about how to improve it. We also have websites where you can take quizzes in terms of, ah, that will give you recommendations of what your future career should be based on your personality. We have people that sell courses about how to apply to different jobs. But I believe that an all in one integrated platform that kind of takes a bunch of …

AI assessment note: “my first idea that I have is, uh, an application for lack of a better word, career AI”

Q And how do you find the influencers? Like, do you, do you go through, um, do you just like kind of reach out to them? Yeah.

A I was actually looking at this today cause I thought that this is, uh, pretty indicative of what I do, which is kind of different from a lot of people. Number one, I don't use, uh, influencer marketplaces or databases. Number two, I think that there's a lot of messaging on the internet about various tools. So like marketplace and databases or agencies, Um, to, to find influencers for you. That's just like outright wrong. What I don't see people talking about is the development of personal relationships with influencers. So I just recently launched my new company, Apex. I can get into that a little bit later, but in short, it's a very content heavy company. We're creating content in house. And now you'll see, I make this post and like, I guess this is backwards, but I've got a bunch of creators like Sam Zia commented. He was a former co-founder from UMax, 220,000 followers. Dawson Gibbs, 170 or 170,000 followers. Backstate Carter, 280,000 followers. The list goes on and on. Um, and now the reason that they're commenting on this isn't because I'm paying them to, but it's because I've developed the relationships with them. And I think that, or I know that these influencers are getting hundreds of DMs, emails, what have you on a daily basis. It's really hard for them to differentiate what companies are serious and what companies are. But if you can embed yourself, uh, and develop p…

AI assessment note: “What I don't see people talking about is the development of personal relationships with influencers.”

Q So when I hear that, kind of like, maybe because I've been around for a long, a while, like there's so many journaling apps. Is your, your thesis is that the AI angle is enough to kind of to get people excited? Is that, is that the thesis?

A Yeah. So I think one of my theses here is that I've seen people organically use ChatGPT as their journal and get a lot of value out of it. I've essentially done that myself. Um, Now I'm not a daily journaler, but when I provide ChatGPT with, uh, you know, I have like, I've notes on my computer that just have a lot of information about some topic and, uh, maybe too much to be contained within ChatGPT's memory. And when I want to go get a deeper analysis, I'll go paste those in. And now I think that, uh, yeah, sort of like an emotional support assistant framed as a journal. Would be pretty easy to, to get it to go viral as well as I think that there'd be pretty high value add. Um, you know, we have this like one sided relationship with journals where we put in and get nothing out and that's great to some effects. Uh, but I think The ability to get that sort of like intricate objective analysis back out similar to how we, like, I think a lot of people building this are thinking of it as like a therapist AI, but I wouldn't brand it as that. I would brand it as a journal AI, if that makes sense.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. So I think one of my theses here is that I've seen people”

Q What do you say to people who say, but Duolingo just announced two AI features. I think it's called like adventures or something like that. Like, how am I going to, how are you going to compete with Duolingo?

A Yeah, this is exactly what people said to me when we were building Cal AI. People are like, dude, my fitness pal is so big. They're going to build in this space. And my answer was, well, they won't work as hard as us. Their incentives internally are not aligned to the point where they will be able to iterate and, and progress as quickly as us. So here's what I mean by that. The engineers at my fitness pal, like my fitness pal to begin with has been like traded back and forth, sold so many times, um, that the people that are doing the groundwork don't like, probably don't have that much equity, you know? And so the engineers don't care that much. Like they're just kind of doing their job. Similar with the social media managers. And so our Calais, uh, uh, so calorie estimations based on images are just significantly better than my fitness pal. We have a pretty robust system built out at this point. In addition, we're pioneering new ways of marketing on social media. I would wager that the same pretty much applies to Duolingo. Now I wouldn't be surprised if their engineering team was a lot better. Uh, significantly higher valuation. Now that said, uh, Duolingo is the go-to application for language learning right now, but if you can figure out just like a few percent changes to, to, to, for people to learn languages in different ways, and then some novel distribution strategies for…

AI assessment note: “if you can figure out just like a few percent changes to, to, to, for people”

Q interesting to see that a lot of the products have AI with it. I mean, I'm not surprised, but, um, yeah, what's your take on that? Like, is there an opportunity before you get into your ideas and before we like start cooking, basically, is there an opportunity to create apps that are like not AI or do you have to come up with an AI app idea for TikTok?

A Yeah, so I believe that, and I'm really excited to get into some of the ideas that we have to share, uh, later on, but I believe that we're currently just scratching the surface of new, uh, application functionality that can be built and delivered to the end user, um, using these new AI tools. So for example, uh, with UMax, UMax was a facial analysis and recommendation application. In the past, this was possible to build. However, it would have taken significant investment into developing internal proprietary ML facial recognition models in order to build it. However, with the use of AI, uh, specifically GPT vision, I was able to do so with essentially zero upfront development costs with the exception of my own time. Um, I think that what we're seeing right now, as I mentioned, we're like scratching the surface of these new functionalities. But what AI really enables us to do is to deliver personalized and like personalized functionality that can be updated in real time, um, through the use of these AI backends, as well as building up technologies that previously would have cost a lot of money. And so we're seeing the new TikTok AI apps, like this is the start, but as we progress, as AI becomes more advanced and, uh, Increasing functionality as well as people building more complex, uh, applications with it. I think what we're going to see is just a 10 X, um, in the end user exp…

AI assessment note: “I believe that we're currently just scratching the surface of new, uh, application functionality”