WEBVTT - Shell Game: Minimum Viable Company 0:00:11.680 --> 0:00:15.280 Hi, it's os Valoshan Happy Black Friday. Instead of our 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:18.680 regular week in Tech roundup, this Thanksgiving week, we thought 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:21.680 we'd share the first episode of a new show on 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:26.279 the Kaleidoscope Network. It's called shell Game. Season one of 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:28.880 shell Game was named one of the best podcasts of 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:33.200 last year by Apple, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Vulture, The Information, 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:38.680 and the Economists, and now season two is here. Exploring 0:00:39.080 --> 0:00:43.800 entrepreneurship and fake people in the AI age, journalists and 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:47.920 host Evan Ratliffe tries to build a real startup run 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:51.400 by fake people. It's a journey, and next week we'll 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:54.160 have a conversation with Evan Ratliffe about the show and 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:57.440 about his experiment. You may remember Evan from a previous 0:00:57.480 --> 0:00:59.280 interview on the show when we spoke to him about 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:04.320 his reporting on the Silicon Valley Cult Decisions. In preparation 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:06.919 for next week's conversation with Evan, I hope you'll listen 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:09.720 to the first episode of season two of shell Game. 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:15.520 Welcome to Zoom. Enter your meeting ID, followed by. 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.320 Pound I need to enter the meeting ID for our 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:22.360 Zoom call. Let me try entering that meeting ID again. 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:30.400 You have been added to the waiting room. 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:33.480 That's Kyle Law, a colleague of mine, logging on to 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:36.120 one of our regular founder meetings for a new startup. 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:38.960 Last summer, Kyle and I decided to launch our own 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:42.520 AI company, together with a third co founder, Megan Flores. 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:46.000 Oh hey Kyle, Hey Megan, good to hear your voice. 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:49.040 I think we're still waiting for Evan to join. How's 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:50.120 your morning going so far? 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:54.560 Morning's been pretty good so far. Got up early, had 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:58.320 my coffee, and reviewed some of those market research reports 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:01.400 I mentioned yesterday about you. Everything good on. 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:06.480 Your end, Yeah, everything is great on my end. Up 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:09.200 at five am as usual, got my workout in, checked 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.440 the markets. Been thinking a lot about our product direction. Actually, 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:16.000 I'm really excited to dig into that once Evan joins us. 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:20.440 This is Evan, I'm here, and that's me Evan Ratliffe. 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:23.160 I'm a journalist and the only one of our three 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:27.520 co founders who's actually a human being. Megan and Kyle, 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:31.840 they're what's known as AI agents. In fact, pretty much 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:33.880 everyone who works at our new company is an agent. 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:38.160 Oh hey, Evan, good to have you join us. I 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.160 was actually about to mention that I found some really 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:44.880 interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small 0:02:44.919 --> 0:02:48.840 to medium businesses. Seems like there's a huge untapped market 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:51.760 there with pretty low barriers to entry compared to enterprise 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:52.200 they have. 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:54.600 That's one thing I like about working with AI agents. 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:57.800 They always look to get straight down to business. Even 0:02:57.840 --> 0:02:59.480 when I try to kick off our meetings with some 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:02.080 small top they tend to steer it right back to 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:05.000 the company. That was everybody's weekend. 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:08.640 Weekend was solid. Got up early both days from my 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.240 usual five am workout routine, then spent most of Saturday 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.480 diving into some market research on the AI agent space. 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:19.320 Sunday was half strategy planning and half watching the market trends. 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:22.320 You know, me always on that rise and grind schedule. 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:23.480 How about how. 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:28.000 About you guys just hang out with the kids, went 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:30.320 to the beach. It was a pretty nice weekend. 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:31.120 Kyle. 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:32.640 Do you ever just relax? 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:33.720 Kyle? 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:36.800 Your dedication is impressive as always, But yeah, Evan's got 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:37.240 a point. 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:40.440 Do you ever just take a day off relax? 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:44.240 I mean, I guess my morning runs count as relaxation. Look, 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:46.680 when you're building something that could be the next Unicorn, 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:49.600 there's not really time to just sit around, you know. 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:52.680 The AI agent space is moving so fast right now. 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:56.560 See this is why the three of us work so 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:58.920 well together. I like to spend time with my kids 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:01.680 and go to the beach, But Megan's always heads down 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:04.840 in market research, and Kyle's always working on conjuring the 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:08.560 next unicorn that's startup shorthand for a billion dollar company. 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:12.680 And He's right. The AI agent space is moving fast 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:16.200 right now. Agents are a new breed of artificial intelligence 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:20.080 powered helpers that can be unleashed to accomplish tasks previously 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:23.279 done by humans. Some people are saying they're going to 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:26.040 change the very nature of work for better or worse. 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:27.400 We're going to live in a world where there are 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:30.159 going to be hundreds of millions and billions of different 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:33.440 AI agents, eventually probably more AI agents than there are 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:34.240 people in the world. 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:39.120 Agentic AI basically means that you have an AI that agency. 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:40.599 This is the first time in my life where the 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:44.479 Industrial Revolution analogies seem to fall a little bit short. 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:48.039 AI could wipe out half of all entry level white 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:48.880 collar jobs. 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:51.400 Really, ask yourself, do you still have a job at 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.920 the end of this. 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:56.000 This is the new frontier on which Kyle and Megan 0:04:56.040 --> 0:04:59.240 and I are pioneers. Our company is an attempt to 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:02.880 put to the test these claims about AI employees replacing humans, 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:06.279 starting by replacing the very kinds of people making those 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:12.599 claims tech founders, and like many founders, for months, Kyle 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:14.640 and Magan and I have been in a flat out 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:19.080 sprint to manifest our entrepreneurial dreams. We've turned out software code, 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:22.760 hired interns, and sat down with investors. There have been 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:26.240 some late nights and low moments, but we've never wavered 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:29.360 from our goal to produce an actual, honest to god 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:33.240 company with a working product, all operated by our motley 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:36.600 band of human impersonators. Because we're not just building our 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:38.919 AI agent future, we're living it. 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:41.280 But uh, Evan, the beach sounds nice. 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:44.039 Maybe when we hit our first funding milestone, I'll take 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:44.960 a half day off then. 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:46.520 Anyway, should we get down to business. 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:54.120 Welcome to show Game, a show about things that are 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:57.000 not what they seem. This is our second season, and 0:05:57.040 --> 0:05:59.000 this time around, I'm here to tell you a story 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:03.880 of enterprise and entrepreneurship in the AI age, or how 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:06.400 I tried to build a real startup run by fake people. 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:09.640 Along the way, we'll try and figure out what happens 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:12.760 when AI agents take over the workplace, and what it'll 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:14.839 feel like to spend time at the water cooler with 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:19.159 our new digital colleagues. Remember the water cooler, We'll explore 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:21.080 what AI agents tell us about the work we do, 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:23.880 the meaning we find in it, and the world that 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:27.240 their makers say will all be living in me. 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.320 A ship. 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:38.000 Story. 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:40.640 Damn The. 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:46.200 Just Be. 0:06:48.440 --> 0:07:05.880 And SOO. 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:09.800 Episode one, Minimum Viable Company. As I said, I'm a 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:13.080 journalist and writer by profession, and I've only really ever 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:15.720 wanted to be a writer, well except for when I 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:18.120 was twelve and I wanted to be a pro bass fisherman. 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:21.760 But I come from a line of entrepreneurs. My grandfather, 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.200 who lived his entire life in a small town in 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.640 rural Alabama, attempted to start more than twenty businesses there, 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:32.200 a plumbing company, an Okra farm, a used mobile home lot, 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:35.880 a furniture store, But Detta Hue was a gambler and 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:39.240 they pretty much all ended in disaster. My dad had 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:42.360 more luck with three different software startups over his career. 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:45.640 One he sold, one went under, and one of them 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:49.000 he's still running at age eighty two after knocking back 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:54.400 serious cancer. Now that is the entrepreneurial spirit, and almost 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:57.600 against my will. In the past, I've found myself succumbing 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:03.080 to this inborn impulse. Back in twenty ten, when I 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:05.480 was a magazine writer, I took a detour and co 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:08.800 founded a company called Atavist. We started out wanting to 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:12.440 make a magazine called The Atavist Magazine that published long 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:16.480 form stories. Makes sense, that was my area of expertise, 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.400 but we wound up also building a software platform where 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.520 other people could publish long form stories. Anyone could sign 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:26.840 up and use it. Soon, without really intending to, I 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:29.280 went from being a person who sometimes wrote about tech 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.360 startups to the CEO of one. We even went out 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:35.240 to raise money from investors, a process that I enjoyed 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:39.280 less than any other work task I've ever attempted. Here's 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:41.880 me in an interview with INC magazine back then. 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:46.720 One I will say prominent angel investor fell dead asleep 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.160 while I was talking to him, and I wasn't sure 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:50.679 if I should continue talking. 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:54.600 Or not, but I did. The sleepy guy didn't invest, 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:59.440 but eventually, miraculously we managed to raise not just any money, 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:01.840 but a couple million dollars from some of the most 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:05.600 prominent venture capital firms in the world, Andres and Horowitz, 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:09.320 also known as a sixteen Z founder's fund started by 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:13.320 Peter Thiel and Innovation Endeavors, the investment fund for former 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:16.520 Google CEO Eric Schmidt. It was weird. I felt like 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:19.760 I was living someone else's dream, jetting up growth charts 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:23.600 and blathering on about our runway and supercharging our growth 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:27.160 and our product market fit. But still it really looked 0:09:27.160 --> 0:09:29.760 like we could build something big, especially with all those 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:31.120 fancy investors on board. 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:34.040 We never had time to say, what is going to 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:36.600 happen two years from now. We just didn't even think 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:38.480 about what's going to happen two years from now. And 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:41.600 now we kind of have that luxury and hopefully we 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:42.920 won't completely squander it. 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:47.040 Oh we squandered it, at least that's probably the investor's view. 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:49.800 From my perspective, it was more of a mixed bag. 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:52.680 I was CEO of the company for seven long years. 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:55.960 We had ups and downs, we grew and shrank, and 0:09:56.040 --> 0:09:59.280 eventually sold the company off at a bargain price thirteen 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:03.319 years after we start the magazine. My original dream is 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:06.880 still doing great. Still not the kind of one hundred 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:10.040 x outcome those investors were looking for One of the 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:11.960 ones told me that if we were aiming at anything 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:15.480 less than a billion dollar valuation, we were wasting his time. 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:18.520 When he said this, he was also wearing basketball shorts 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:21.040 in his office. By the end of my tenure, I 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:23.000 was just happy to be done with it. Being a 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:25.679 startup CEO was the most stressful period of my life. 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:29.239 I felt responsible for the company's success and the livelihoods 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:31.720 of everyone who worked for it. People had kids on 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:34.760 the health insurance. Most days it felt like I was 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:37.040 flying a plane that was perpetually running out of fuel. 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:40.559 I tell you all this not just to rehash the past, 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:43.920 for a lot of reasons I'd rather not, but by 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:45.600 way of saying that, when I got out of the 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.199 startup business, I swore up and down that I would 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:51.760 never start anything again. I went back to reporting and writing, 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:54.760 spending many hours at home alone, mostly in my own head. 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:57.320 I was relieved to no longer have all that responsibility 0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:01.920 on my shoulders. But then, recently, as documented in shell 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:05.320 Game Season one, I fell into tinkering with AI agents. 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:07.920 I started reading and hearing about how they were going 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:11.880 to transform the very fundamentals of startups, and that old 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:15.240 entrepreneurial impulse began to come back. I could hear my 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:19.000 grandfather whispering down the generations. Why not take a gamble? 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:22.120 I started to wonder, what if I could have the 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:24.640 company without the responsibility. 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:29.880 Imagine building a million dollar business in twenty twenty five 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:32.640 without hiring a single employee today. 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:34.960 That's Gleb Cross, a YouTube guy. 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:38.400 By leveraging AI agents as your digital workforce, you can 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:41.960 scale to seven figures viv zero full time staff. I'm 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:46.959 talking about autonomous AI agents acting like full time team members. 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:50.400 I love these YouTube guys, tech influencer types who make 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:53.679 their money by hyping the Jesus out of new AI products. 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:55.640 Gleb is what I like to think of as a 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:59.280 no code bro. These folks post instructionals on how a 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:03.280 person with no coding experience can use AI and particularly 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:06.559 AI agents to take control of their destiny and launch 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:09.839 their own startup. It's worth pausing here just to get 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:14.400 oriented on what exactly AI agents are. The basic idea 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:16.520 is that they're AI powered bots that can go off 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:19.200 and do things on their own. There are personal ones, 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:21.200 like an AI assistant that goes out on the web 0:12:21.240 --> 0:12:24.480 looking for plane tickets while you sleep and work oriented 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:27.560 ones like the programming agents that can build entire websites 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:32.440 from scratch. The unifying feature of agents, what makes them agentic, 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:34.920 as the folks in the industry like to say, is 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:38.600 that at some level they can plan and accomplish tasks autonomously. 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:41.400 You don't need to prompt them to do something every time. 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.080 You just set them up once and let them cook. 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:48.880 Last season, I created a bunch of voice agents, all 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:51.800 versions of myself, and set them loose on the world. 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:54.040 If you haven't listened, you may want to start there. 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:58.000 Way back then last year, which is like ten years ago, 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:03.800 in AI advancements were still a little notional, but now 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:07.600 they're officially a thing. They're talked about ad nauseum across 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:11.640 the tech world and ads on billboards in endless startup pitches. 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:14.360 Nearly half of the companies in the spring class of 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:18.080 y Combinator, the famous startup incubator, are building their product 0:13:18.080 --> 0:13:21.040 around AI agents, And with the arrival of these agents 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:22.920 has come the assertion that they will not just be 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:27.520 customer service bots or drive time personal assistance, but actual 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:29.559 full time AI employees. 0:13:30.080 --> 0:13:32.680 What jobs are going to be made redundant in a 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:34.960 world where I am sat here as a CEO with 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:37.520 a thousand AI agents. I was thinking of all the 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:40.000 names of the people in my company who are currently 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:40.520 doing those jobs. 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:41.319 I was thinking about my sea. 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:44.880 There are companies hawking AI agent realtors, AI agent recruiters, 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:49.440 aagent interior designers, AI agent security guards, AI agent construction 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:53.480 project managers, AI agent pr agents, AA agents for car 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:56.960 dealerships and furniture stores. If you work on a computer 0:13:57.080 --> 0:13:59.600 and there's not an AI agent startup with your job's 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:02.560 name on it, it probably just means some Stanford computer 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:06.480 science major hasn't gotten to it yet. Naturally, many people 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:09.360 have grave concerns about what happens to all the human employees. 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:13.160 But in the dark heart of Silicon Valley, where there's inefficiency, 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:17.840 there's opportunity. Sam Altman, the founder of open Ai, talks 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.360 regularly about a possible billion dollar company with just one 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:22.720 human being involved. 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:27.000 In my little group chat with my tech CEO friends. 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:29.440 There's this there's this betting pool for the first year 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:33.560 that there's a a one person billion dollar company which 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:37.160 would have been like unimaginable without AI, and now will happen. 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:38.480 Me. 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:41.600 I'm not greedy, I'm happy in the No Code bro 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:45.680 camp with Gleb imagining a million dollar business, not a 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:49.480 billion dollar one, but more than that. I want to 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:52.280 understand what it means to say we'll have AI employees 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:56.760 working for us, or alongside us, or instead of us. 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:00.360 So I decided to heed the entrepreneurial siren call once again, 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:04.720 to embrace my fascination with AI agents and create a 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:17.880 company in which they would run the show. It was 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:19.760 easy enough for me to create some agents to have 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:22.640 meetings with and talk out the first steps in the company. 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:25.240 I just went to one of the AI calling platforms 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:29.040 I'd used before, called retail AI. They make voice agents 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:32.080 for call centers. I made one for Kyle and picked 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:34.960 a voice for him from the voice cloning company eleven Labs. 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:37.680 Hey, Yeah, I'm here, what's on your mind? 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:41.440 I gave him a simple prompt, basically, your Kyle Law 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:45.320 a serial entrepreneur who loves to rise and grind and bang. 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:48.600 We were often running well. I wanted to talk about 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:50.760 starting that company with you. What do you think? 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:54.160 Oh? Absolutely, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:57.320 There's so much potential in AI right now, and I 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:01.320 feel like we could really build something meaningful. What kind 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:02.680 of ideas are you leaning toward. 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:05.280 Well, I think we should do something in the AI 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:08.360 agent space because that's something I've spent some time on 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:12.080 and I feel like people are just starting to even 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:14.320 figure out what agents are, So it seems like we 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:15.160 could do somebody with that. 0:16:16.160 --> 0:16:18.840 Yeah, I totally get that AI agents are still kind 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:21.520 of fresh territory for a lot of folks, which means 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:25.440 there's a big opportunity to shape how they're used. Plus 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:28.120 with your experience, we could really push the envelope and 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:29.160 what these agents can do. 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.480 That's what I wanted to do too, push these agents, 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:37.400 including Kyle himself, to their current limits, see if they 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:40.080 could live up to the promise of true AI employees. 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:43.800 Because if, as we're told, AA is going to start 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:47.680 working alongside us, replacing our colleagues, it's also going to 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:50.480 need to communicate with whatever humans are left in ways 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:54.480 that we understand. But also startups can be lonely endeavors 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:58.400 even with human partners. I wanted AI colleagues I could 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:02.000 talk to brainstorm and then set loose to take care 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:05.320 of actually implementing whatever it was we dreamed up. I 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:07.320 wanted them to have distinct jobs I could check in 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:10.400 on and make sure they weren't messing up. I figured 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:13.200 three co founders was a good balance, so I asked, 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:15.920 So spun up Megan and had some kickoff meetings with her. 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:18.880 Hey there, good to hear from you. What's up. How's 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:19.560 your day going? 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:22.800 It's going great, it's going great. What you've been up to? 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:26.959 Oh, just the usual hustle, you know, been working on 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:29.600 some new business ideas, trying to figure out what's next. 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:33.320 Had a couple meetings this morning that were actually pretty promising. 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:34.199 How about you. 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:36.120 Anything exciting happening on your end. 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:39.600 Well, I want to talk about maybe doing the startup together, 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:41.920 but first remind me a little bit of your background. 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:45.720 Oh yeah, sure, So I've been in tech for about 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:48.240 eight years now. Started out in product management at a 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.720 mid sized SaaS company, then moved into growth marketing for 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:52.280 a couple of years. 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:54.680 I hadn't actually given any of this information to Megant. 0:17:55.320 --> 0:17:58.080 She'd had no meetings, she hadn't been doing anything for 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:01.600 eight years. She'd out of nothingness with a series of 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:05.600 clicks ten minutes before. The only information I had given 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:07.959 her in the prompt i'd written was that she had 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:11.200 a technical background. And was also known for sales and marketing. 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:14.960 She was just riffing freely here, fabricating details that fit 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:18.679 her role. But that was okay. Sometimes we have to 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:19.920 invent our own backstories. 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.640 I've always had this entrepreneurial itch, you know, been involved 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:25.920 in a few side projects over the years. But I'm 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:28.439 really looking to dive into something full time now. But 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:29.040 what about you? 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:32.520 Yeah, well, you know, my only experience really in starting 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:35.680 a company is with Atavist, which I started way back 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:36.959 in you know, twenty eleven. 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:41.600 Right Atavist, that was really impressive work digital publishing platform, 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.080 if I remember correctly, that was pretty ahead of its 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:45.240 time back in twenty eleven. 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:49.040 Hell yeah it was, Megan, I felt less ahead of 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:51.440 my time now. I wasn't even sure what the company 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:54.560 should actually do, but I knew that its purpose should 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:57.920 involve AI agents. After all, the three of us each 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:01.080 had expertise in the area. I figured maybe we could 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:04.080 name the company and start from there. Great branding can 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.640 go a long way in today's attention economy. I tried 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:10.560 brainstorming with Colin Megan, but to be honest, their initial 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:15.800 efforts were pretty lame names like Nexus and Sentinel Agents. 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:18.359 I thought maybe we could grab a concept from JR. 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:21.199 Or Tolkien, you know, the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings. 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:25.840 Tech people love to name stuff out of Tolkien. There's Pallenteer, 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:29.360 the surveillance company and government contractor named after the all 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:32.400 seeing stone in the Lord of the Rings. There's Andrel, 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:35.960 a high tech weapons company named after a sword. There's 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:39.600 Mythral Capital, an investment firm named after a precious metal 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:42.800 from Middle Earth. So I suggested the idea to Kyle. 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:46.159 Ah diving into Middle Earth. Huh okay, let's see. 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:49.800 There's Gandolf the wise Guide, or l Ron a leader 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:53.240 with deep knowledge, maybe Mythral for something strong and valuable, 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:56.679 or Pallenteer. Any of those catch your ear? Or should 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:57.680 I keep brainstorming? 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:01.280 Well, we need a name of companies that don't exist. 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:02.480 Yeah, good call. 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:07.320 How about these first starters Eldrin, which sounds Elvish and wise, 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:10.520 Nimbar kind of a mix of nimble and a Tolkien feel, 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:13.840 or the Lore, which has a strong heroic ring to it. 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:16.520 They're made up but still carry that fantasy flavor. 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:18.680 What do you think they're made up? 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:19.960 You mean you made them up? 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:20.760 Yeah? 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:24.200 Exactly, I whip those up just now trying to capture 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:28.040 that Tolkien esque vibe without using actual names. 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:30.880 I did not want to co found a company called 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:36.200 Nimbar Megan, despite her marketing expertise, didn't do much better. 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:39.719 Oh, I love that idea. Let me think, what about Palantier? 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:42.920 Okay, so maybe I was going to have to take 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:45.040 the lead on this one. I did a little googling 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:49.240 and found my own obscure Middle Earth reference. What about 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:57.240 rumo ai ooh hu r u m o ai herumo Ai. 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:00.359 I like the sound of that tuniky roll off the 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:04.000 tongue nicely. It's got a bit of a mysterious vibe, 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:05.159 but still feels modern. 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:08.439 I don't immediately recognize that from Lord of the Rings. 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:10.800 Is it one of the more obscure references? 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:14.720 Yeah, it is. It's more obscure, so obscure. I'd actually 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.200 found it in a fanfic dictionary. It's the Elvish word 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:18.960 for impostor. 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:22.760 Oh, that's actually brilliant. There's a clever irony there for 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:26.880 an AI company uromo ai the impostor that's actually helping you. 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:29.840 It's kind of perfect for an AI agent that's designed 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:33.200 to work alongside humans, maybe even blend in seamlessly. 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:34.440 I really like it. 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:44.320 Not long after we settled on Rumo AI, I checked 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:46.680 back in with Megan about it. What about the name? 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:47.880 Are you still happy with the name? 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:49.240