Building AI Agents to Launch a Million Businesses

Henrik Werdelin wants to launch a million businesses that each make $1M—and he’s doing it with AI. After helping launch Barkbox and Ro Health through his incubator Prehype, Henrik is distilling everything he knows into Audos, a platform that helps you use AI agents to turn your idea into a profitable, lasting company. We had him on AI & I to talk about “portfolio entrepreneurship”—a new breed of entrepreneurship shepherded in by AI, where founders build families of products around the same customer, instead of one moonshot idea. It’s a philosophy we hold close to our hearts at Every. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more? Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free. To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Head to ai.studio/build to create your first app. Ready to build a site that looks hand-coded—without hiring a developer? Launch your site for free at https://www.framer.com/, and use code DAN to get your first month of Pro on the house! Pitch is the AI presentation platform that helps professionals collaborate on, create, and deliver winning slide decks — all while staying on brand: https://pitch.com/use-cases/ai-presentation-maker/?utm_medium=paid-influencer&utm_campaign=every ! Timestamps: 00:01:33 - Introduction 00:02:50 - Dan and Henrik on the new breed of entrepreneurship that AI makes possible 00:11:08 - Why Henrik believes the future belongs to a million $1M companies 00:16:14 - How to build “relationship capital” with your customers 00:21:35 - Why “customer-founder fit” shapes lasting companies 00:23:01 - Everything Henrik learned about himself from a decade of building companies 00:31:44 - How Henrik finds focus and meaning in the daily chaos 00:34:17 - How Henrik is parenting two kids in the age of AI 00:50:33 - The way AI can fix what social media broke 00:56:59 - What happens when AI agents become part of how we tell stories Links to resources mentioned in the episode: Henrik Werdelin: https://hellohenrik.com/ Try Audos: https://www.audos.com/ Henrik’s new book: https://www.amazon.com/Me-My-Customer-AI-Entrepeneurship/dp/B0FCSQ1C7H

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Increasingly, we believe that a founder will serve a customer and then they will have multiple agents that will have to be part of this portfolio of tools that they offer to their customers. You can't start with an idea, you can't start with a technology, you can't start with a market size. You have to start with who do you want to serve for the next 10 years and what is a fundamental problem that they have that you feel that you can solve. Something that is really very important for portfolio entrepreneurship and for companies in the age of AI is durability. And that is, are you allowed to offer more than the initial thing that you offer? And some brands do this very well. You can imagine what a Nike hotel would look like, but it's very difficult to compute what a Hilton shoe would be. So some

• 0:41Speaker 00

  companies and brands just have like very clear permission, authenticity, authority to serve their customers in different ways. Some doesn't.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  This podcast is sponsored by Google. Hey folks, I'm Amar, product and design lead at Google DeepMind. We just launched a revamped vibe coding experience in AI Studio that lets you mix and match AI capabilities to turn your ideas into reality faster than ever. Just describe your app and Gemini will automatically wire up the right models and APIs for you. And if you need a spark, hit I'm feeling lucky and we'll help you get started. Head to ai.studio/ slash build to create your first app.

• 1:32Dan Shipper?

  The episode you're about to watch is with my friend Henrik Werdelin, co-founder of the startup studio Prehype, the co-founder of BarkBox, an author and an investor. Right now, he's one of the co-founders of Otus, which has the goal to help millions of people become entrepreneurs with AI. I've known Henrik for many years. His startup studio Prehype is actually where my company Every came from. I hope you enjoy the episode.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  You know one thing I was thinking about the other day? I was doing keynote for Summit, and so I'm trying to find like theme song. You know what's an interesting theme that I don't think that a lot of people talk about is portfolio entrepreneurship, which is kind of what you're doing now, which I guess we did at Prehype. I think a lot of people are intrigued about, but also it's been like kind of because so much of the conversation about entrepreneurship has been defined by VCs telling people what real entrepreneurship is.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  Portfolio entrepreneurship has always been like, kind of like a bad thing.

• 2:24Dan Shipper?

  I totally agree. VCs have kind of given it a bad name and, and, and there's this thing about,

• 2:33Dan Shipper?

  oh, you have to focus and, and so having a portfolio sucks. And it's like, well, you're the VC. Like you have a portfolio.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  People should work 24/7, except you take eight weeks of holiday in the summer.

• 2:50Dan Shipper?

  And one of the things I admired a lot, or admire a lot about you, and I think people should know, there's a lot of, you know, you created this incubator prehype that there's a lot of spirit of prehype in every, every came out of prehype. And, and I've kind of shamelessly ripped off certain things that I saw you do. And one of those things is, I think you've, you know, I looked at what you did every day, sitting at prehype, and you were, you know, running Bark, which is now a public company. And you also had all this other stuff going on, which you're absolutely not allowed to do. You're not supposed to do that. And I was like, you know, in my heart

• 3:29Dan Shipper?

  of hearts, if I could be Henrik, and, and have this like, this sick venture-backed company, and also have this incubator that I run that's separate and like, writing books and doing whatever it is that you were doing. I was like, I would, that sounds like a pretty good gig. And

• 3:48Dan Shipper?

  it only took me like six years and I'm definitely not, not, not close to your level, but.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  I'm sure you could sing soon.

• 3:56Dan Shipper?

  I have definitely moved more in that direction. It's quite a good life. So, portfolio entrepreneurship, a great idea.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  You know what, there's a lot of things that kind of, I guess, now that I'm looking back over the years, 2010 to 2020, 2021, which were kind of like, a bit of golden age for, I think, for New York entrepreneurship. And I think some of us was kind of lucky to be in the midst of it all. There's a lot of like components of that that I'm not trying to understand what actually happened. And there are these kind of like things that we don't have terms for, right? You know, and some of the things I'm exploring now. So everyday entrepreneurship. So all these people are trying to build businesses that will never become unicorns and never probably will get an adventure. There's these kind of things like the in-between time, which I

• 4:47Speaker 00

  think is this kind of interesting thing that entrepreneurs they have because most people, if they're a lawyer or developer, their next job is as a lawyer or developer. But as an entrepreneur, your next job is definitely not going to be what you used to do, right? Because you probably tired and burned out of it. But so much of your personal narrative is linked up in what you do. So you're kind of like in this weird waistline in the middle where you used to do something and now everybody's like, what's next? And you don't really know. And so there's this beautiful, very vulnerable time, which is this in-between time. I guess the last thing that I've been thinking a lot about is this notion of how do you create an environment where amazing things appear? Specifically, how do you do it now when people

• 5:30Speaker 00

  are increasingly remote? And I visited your studio the other day and kind of got to think about like, sometimes you actually have to create an environment, like a physical place where people go and they jam and they feel inspired and stuff like that. So yeah, I've been very reflective of that time, too.

• 5:46Dan Shipper?

  It was a great time. And obviously, the golden age ended as soon as you moved back to Denmark.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  That I'll take full credit for that.

• 5:57Dan Shipper?

  New York, you know, is just not the same.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 6:00Dan Shipper?

  But, you know, maybe, maybe we'll be back. Maybe it'll come back at some point.

• 6:05Speaker 00

  I'm sure it will. That's actually the cool thing about like, I think, every time I visit New York now, it's like, it is a little bit like a college campus, right? You definitely see, there's a new class of people, like there's a new crew. And they're figuring their thing out, right? And building their kind of places. And that's what's so amazing with that city.

• 6:23Dan Shipper?

  Definitely. I love it here. There's definitely a lot happening. And I hope to be one of the people building that, building that crew. But I want to go back to the portfolio thing for a second. Why did you feel like you were allowed to do that? And how did you, how did you even pull that off?

• 6:40Speaker 00

  I mean, like, I think as many entrepreneurs, it wasn't there, so I kind of just made it. I don't know how I pulled it off, because I think even more so back then, it was considered kind of like a bad thing to do. And I'm also trying to, trying to figure out like what it is that I did. And I think the, one of the kind of insights for me is that I don't really, I don't really think like people who put out a goal and then work towards it. I'm more kind of exploring things. And so I kind of like find stuff that I find interesting. And then I look at the projects that I'm involved in, and I go like, which, where would this fit? And so it's a little bit kind of like a roundabout way of, of

• 7:24Speaker 00

  working. I think honestly, the way you got away with it is that you add a lot, enough value to the projects that you're involved in, so that the people, the other people involved, don't throw you out.

• 7:36Dan Shipper?

  Or you convince them that you do.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Exactly. Like, very, very good jazz hands. I think, I think most of my partners, like on the good days, will kind of like say that they're very happy I'm involved in. On their bad days, we'll go like, how does this work again?

• 7:54Dan Shipper?

  It means you struck a good deal. Um, yeah, I actually think, um, you know, there are, uh, when I, when I think about the overlaps, or why I ended up wanting to copy some of your, you know, how you've built your career, um, the desire to be curious and do a bunch of different things. Like, some people get exhausted by doing a bunch of different things. And I'm just, I just want to be doing lots of stuff. And then some of those things turn into, um, larger things. And I just apportion more time to them as they become larger. But it's a very like bottoms up exploratory process. And I think the, the more standard startup thing is a little bit more like what a Peter Thiel or a Keith

• 8:36Dan Shipper?

  Raboy would, you know, you just like set a big, you call your shot for this like big goal. And that's the only thing you're focusing on. That's certainly another way to do it. But I think the Bottoms up exploratory startups as a as a curious way of life is a legit path to entrepreneurship. And it is actually particularly a thing for media entrepreneurs. I notice a lot of media media people have this because if you want to, if you're writing stuff all the time, it's because you're a curious person. And so I think you I think you may have, well, you have a media background too. So you have a little bit of that media thing about you too.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  Back to the point about having kind of only one way of describing things. I do feel that there's many different flavors, many different pedagogy of entrepreneurship. And it's almost like we have told ourselves there's only kind of one way that there is like the, or maybe there's a few, right? Like there's the, there's the way that they teach you how at business school about finding a big market and go after that. And maybe there's the lean startup and Gary Vaynerchuk had the hustle, you know, there's like different. But I do think that there's many, many different flavors of entrepreneurship. And we probably don't have a very refined vocabulary of how to describe some of these things.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  And I think what you're articulating here is, you know, maybe the media kind of background approach to entrepreneurship, which worked for some people and it doesn't work for others. And that's fine, too.

• 10:07Dan Shipper?

  Hundred percent.

• 10:10Dan Shipper?

  And I think now that's a really logical segue into your thinking about new shapes of entrepreneurs, specifically in AI, which I actually think the media stuff is a particular shape that is now newly possible and we're sort of figuring that. But you have another set of entrepreneurs that in the company that you started, Otos, in the book that you wrote, you're

• 10:41Dan Shipper?

  You're thinking about how they can start companies too and what that looks like. What have you learned?

• 10:46Speaker 00

  It's a moving target, right? So I'll give you, I know you had Nicholas on a bit ago, my co-founder at Autos and things. We're about to release our version two of the platform, which I can go a little bit detail of what we learned. And I think some of it is akin to align with some of the thinking you have. I guess like on a few kind of parameters. First, I think entrepreneurship is increasingly being democratized because the entrepreneurial technology toolbox is increasingly being democratized. And I think it really started back from when the cloud kind of came about. And then SaaS kind of made it even easier. And now with AI, you can write code and.

• 11:29Dan Shipper?

  It's so funny. I thought you said Claude, not cloud.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did say that. And I realized my brain is completely confused. I know I did say cloud. It's like, oh, anyway. So now, you know, most people can do stuff and 60% of Americans say they'd like to start something and only 80% does. And historically, I think there's been a good reason because it required resources and required specific capabilities. And now I think there's increasingly less of an excuse. And so the area that I'm very interested in is basically how do you make not one person make a unicorn, but more how do you make a million people make a million dollar turnover business, what we call donkey coin.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  And so what I've learned is that first that we're pretty early in the in the phase of inventing what agentic businesses are. I'm a little bit reminded of when I did a fair the launch startup back in the 2000s in the video space. This is before YouTube and we raised a bunch of money and everybody kind of knew that video would go online. And then we raised all this money and then we're like, hey, wait a minute. Nobody kind of like know how it will go online, like things that are now very basic was just not invented. What will an electronic programming guide look on the internet? Will the video auto start or will you have to place play? Well, the next video then start or should you stop? You know, and all those different things that now we take for granted are things that we had to invent.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  And I think as we're building autos right now, we're realizing that a lot of the agentic frameworks have just not invented, like take Claude, like for example, what should be the name of a bot? Should that be a, a human name like Claude? Should it be a utilitarian name like OpenAI? Or should it be a, a brand like perplexity? And with each of these small decisions we take, there's a lot of kind of like thinking that has to go into it. And I think we're just kind of chugging along and trying to fix these up. Uh, where we are right now is we're still have the ambition of launching hundreds of thousands of businesses a year. Uh, we've had our first cohort of a few thousand people come through and try to help them make a business.

• 13:35Speaker 00

  And I guess for what is new and interesting for you, I think one that we, thing that we totally have gotten convinced about, which I think you have too, is that there won't be that many one agent businesses. I think increasingly we believe that um, a customer, uh, a founder will serve a customer and then they will have multiple agents that will have to be part of this portfolio of tools that they offer to their customers. And so the portfolio thinking that we talked about earlier, and I think you've been writing about also, I think we are kind of also kind of now subscribing to. So a founder will come up with a customer they have to serve. They'll come up with an initial problem that they can solve for them.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  And then they'll create multiple basically agentic businesses or solutions for that specific space.

• 14:24Dan Shipper?

  That's interesting. And I do think that um,

• 14:29Dan Shipper?

  That's one of my learnings about, um, let's say, portfolio entrepreneurship that,

• 14:37Dan Shipper?

  I had to figure it out by myself. I couldn't just rip this off from you. Well, you obviously have come to this conclusion based on what you just said, but serving the same customer

• 14:45Dan Shipper?

  feels actually like a very important part of portfolio entrepreneurship. Like with every,

• 14:53Dan Shipper?

  the, the thing that makes it work is that the people who come and start companies with us or build products with us are from the same pool of people that we're serving and that are, that are our readers and our subscribers. And the tools that we're building serve those same people. And so the ecosystem builds and becomes this cohesive thing where when we launch a new tool, hopefully, um, everybody in the community likes it because we built it for ourselves. And a lot of the people in the community are kind of like us and we're just sort of building this ecosystem, people who are, who are all on the same page versus, I think the mistake that I see a lot of

• 15:36Dan Shipper?

  people do when they come to me and they're like, I'm going to do an EIR thing is they are, they're running one business and they're like, but this is going to be in a totally different area with a totally different customer that I don't even understand.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  You need to compound.

• 15:49Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, you need to compound. And if you, if you do, it's like every, every nth thing you do just gets, it gets better and better. You know, your customers better, they know you better. Like, um, and so you, you, you, you build something, you're building one thing instead of many things, even though it looks like many things, it's actually just one thing. And I think that's one of the things that people miss about this kind of entrepreneurship and what works.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  I mean, like, the whole book is the premise of what we call relationship capital. And what we argue in the book is that it's going to be one of the few, if not the only mote that's going to be left in a time of AI where everybody can do everything. And so, I mean, like, if you look at everything that came out of pre-hype over 15 years, it's basically these relationship capital companies. It's companies that are not defined by what they do, but who they serve. And you take Bark Box as a good example. We never defined ourselves as a company that puts stuff in boxes because then our next business would have been the cat box. We on the, which many people ask all the time. What we were about is we were about making products for dogs and the people who love them.

• 16:57Speaker 00

  And, and so the problems that we saw were problems for dog lovers and, and their dogs. And, and so our next big business was an airline for dogs, not a, another stuff in a, in a box business. And you take Ro, which obviously also came out of the pre hype world, you know, they basically solve medical problems for men who have something they're a little bit embarrassed about being hair loss, or ED, or, or weight loss. And so I, I am a full subscriber of that. The pedagogy that I very much understand is you can't self start with an idea, you can't start with a technology, you can't start with a market size, you have to start with who do you want to serve for the next 10 years? And what is a fundamental problem that they have that you feel that you can solve?

• 17:42Speaker 00

  And then from that, we basically think that relationship capital had these three areas, and we can go into them in detail, if it's interesting. One is basically depth, which is how much does a customer feel seen by you? And I think you articulate very well. People feel very seen when they know that you're kind of a little bit like them. But it's also like, do you respond to their posts when they comment on you, something on, online, stuff like that? How quickly do we answer their emails? The second thing is density, which is really how much do they feel that you belong in the community that you serve? And I think same point again, people know that people in Patagonia or Peloton, they are part of the community, right? Like sometimes they are even the community.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  And the third part, which I think is going to be very important for a portfolio entrepreneurship and for companies in the age of AI, is basically durability. And that is, are you allowed to offer more than the initial thing that you offer? And some brands do this very well. You can imagine what a Nike hotel would look like, but it's very difficult to compute what a Hilton shoe would be, right? So some companies and brands just have like very clear, very clear permission, authenticity, authority to, to serve their customers in different ways, some doesn't.

• 18:58Dan Shipper?

  I think that's, that's really good. And my, my add to that, my build is the way that that has worked for me, um, you know, because I think where you started here is you have to identify a customer you want to serve for 10 years is.

• 19:16Dan Shipper?

  Instead of knowing who your customer is, know who you are.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 19:21Dan Shipper?

  And, and that's not just a, I'm going to journal about who I am, although that can be part of it, or I'm going to go to therapy, which can be part of it. But it is a dynamic process of building things, putting things out in the world. And that will tell you about who you are and what appeals to you and what you like. And you have to just like iterate through a bunch of things to, to, to make that picture clear. Because a lot of it, you know, sometimes it's not very flattering. It's not actually what you want, or not actually what you think you want to be. So for example, for me, I think when I was at Pre-Hype, I really wanted to be a writer. But it was very hard for me to admit that because I had a whole founder identity.

• 20:05Dan Shipper?

  And I felt like it would interfere with that. And it took me like three years, getting into every like for three years when I, when the whole thing almost fell apart. Where I was like, what am I actually in this for? It's like, I really want to write. How can I like organize my day? So I'm like mostly writing and then, or at least half writing and then operating. And how do I make a business with that? Because I also do really love business and I love technology, all that kind of stuff. And so as I've gotten clearer about who I am, the products I can build and the company I can build becomes a much clearer, solid idea that has staying power.

• 20:48Dan Shipper?

  Because I can be a, like the force or energy behind it in a way that's different from,

• 20:57Dan Shipper?

  I'm just putting on a show so that I can like raise the next round for the next year or so. And I don't really love banking for, you know, I don't know, male, male, former male people or whatever. I'm just making it up. I don't really love whatever I'm doing, but I'm just going to put on a show. And that's, that's actually. It's hard to, at least for me, it was hard to learn how not to put on a show and just do the thing that was most reflective of me. But that's the, I think that's the game.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  I think the other reason why that is so important is because if it's not a natural customer for you to serve, if there's not what we think of as customer founder fit, then you don't have authenticity and an authority to do it. And then I don't think that people will really buy into the solution that you're solving. I think that's going to be even more important, again, when people can do everything. What do you, again, I think sometimes I hear people come and go like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if you built whatever? And I'm like, yeah, that might be cool, but not for you. Like that's, it doesn't seem like a business that you should do at all. In the book, we have this framework, we call the five Ps.

• 22:12Speaker 00

  It's basically powers, passions, possessions, positions, or potentials. And these are five ways that you can basically look at yourself and figure out where do I have something that is innate in me that I can extract from and then build something around that. And so I think different people come to that conclusion different ways. I think you had like your journey and I had mine. But I will echo that every time that I try to build something to make it successful, I end up not building something great. And every time I basically go for, I want to build bullshit with people I like, then I end up doing something that seems to resonate with people.

• 22:53Dan Shipper?

  What have you learned about who you are in the process of building companies over the last decade?

• 23:00Speaker 00

  I have learned that I have a real role where I find people who are very talented. And then I see something in them and then I help them find that. And in many ways, that role is kind of like a weird supporting actor role.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  I kind of have this mental model. Because prehype was called a studio, then I went deep and kind of study like music studios. And if you really study the Motown of the world, or the one in London, I'm just blanking on where Beatles had their stuff. And there's one in Sweden where Max Martin kind of did a lot of like the twenties and pop music. What you see is there's like a few people there that kind of like get these uncut gems in, and then they help them find the bassline, to help them kind of cut the music, and then they create this magical stuff. And so the amount of like, successful musicians that have come out of like Motown's

• 24:06Speaker 00

  or Abbey Road Studios, or the one in Sweden, is just incredible. And so I see myself, I think I'm learning that that is kind of both what I enjoy, but also what I seem to be good at, finding people, and then helping them figure out what should be their thing.

• 24:24Dan Shipper?

  What else? Give me something deeper.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  Ah, something deeper. I guess the thing that comes to mind, which I think was most surprising, was that after we went public, I took a little bit of time where I didn't do much. And I kind of thought that I would, I guess, borderline retire. And suddenly, I felt that I was, I went to this very high-end conference, and my feeling was that I had like, a year where I still would be invited back to that. And so I got really worried of losing relevancy. And I was trying to understand why I was so worried about it. And I actually don't think it was about vanity, although there's probably some of

• 25:09Speaker 00

  that. But what I really, really, really enjoy is to get to talk to people like yourself, and other people who have new, original thought. And if you're not relevant, then you're basically not, you don't get invited. You don't have interesting observation to trade with. And so you just kind of wither. And that, I think, that the urge and need to be part of that club of people who think about new stuff, it was something that I guess I learned.

• 25:37Dan Shipper?

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• 27:03Dan Shipper?

  Entrepreneurship is a weird profession where you expect to, okay, I'm gonna work really hard. I'm gonna work five or 10 years, maybe more, and then I'm gonna get an exit. And then, at the very least, I'm gonna take a lot of time off. But maybe I won't ever work again, and that's maybe part of the point.

• 27:26Dan Shipper?

  And a lot of people who have done that, you included, I've had this at a much smaller scale, we didn't IPO, but you know, where you just get to the finish line and then you're, you get to the, you get to the number that you wanted or the outcome that you wanted. And then you're like, well, I have to live my life the next day, but my whole life is now gone. And that's like really hard. And I, I was thinking about that. And I think there's a, there's two ways of running companies. It's startups as a means to an end and startups as a way of life. And if you run a company as a way of life, ideally, you want to run

• 28:09Dan Shipper?

  it or be doing the things that, that running companies entails for a long time without like a specific end date in mind. And ideally, you're, you know, even if you sell one thing, you're, you're kind of, your life is set up so that it's, it's a way of life. It's not like I'm going to get to this end date and then do something totally different. It's like I'm, I have set up my life such that I don't, maybe I want to take a vacation or maybe I want to like slowly pivot into something else, but I don't need to get away. I don't need to have that like one final, like it's over, I'm out and then I could do something else because that's, those are the periods that are, I think, hurt the

• 28:52Dan Shipper?

  most or suck the most for, for entrepreneurs or feel very unnatural.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's very much resonate with me. And I think, you know, you, you've been better at doing self-work, you know, that the doing self-work for me is a newer thing. You know, I didn't get a, a coach or therapist until a year, a few years ago where I was like, where I had a lot of time. I was like, oh, everybody else seemed to be really enjoying understanding why they are, who they are.

• 29:16Dan Shipper?

  Look, my problems are pretty fucking deep. It was not about enjoyment. Let me tell you.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  Mine was, mine, I, you know, like, I don't think I, I had these big, the same thing. But I definitely, as I then worked with my coach, you know, you obviously realize that these anxieties and these behaviors you have, like something that comes from childhood and from different things. And you try to understand that better. And I found that to be, you know, obviously sometimes very vulnerable, but most of the times is very, very interesting. And, but I think in terms of what I've learned herself about being An entrepreneur, I've done it for so long that I just, I don't really know any other way. I guess, I mean, I'm not sure anybody would ever offer me a job. So I guess I'm entrepreneur for life now.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  Sometimes people ask like, would you ever, you know, would you ever take a job? And you're like, I don't know, it depends what it was, you know, maybe. But people like assume that you just want to be an entrepreneur. Sometimes when I hear like people, VCs have these amazing, I don't know, grass is always greener. And I've never been a VC, but sometimes we hear about them getting this ridiculous kind of management fees and goof around. And then I was like, that seems to be a pretty good job.

• 30:36Dan Shipper?

  I was gonna say like, when was the last, what's the last job where you, maybe it wasn't offered to you, but like you, you had to be, you were really thinking, maybe I should do that instead of this.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  I mean, like this is pre, this is when I did pre-hype. I was, I was, had just finished a company that didn't work out. And I was basically trying to figure out what to do next. And I was keeping all my options open, you know, so I, I got offered a job to run BBC Digital on the international side.

• 31:06Dan Shipper?

  That's cool.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  I got offered, and then what I did do is I got offered a job, there's a kind of design agency called Wolf Owens, who had an incredible CEO called Carl. And, and he offered me a job. And I kind of like pivoted then into be the first project that, that pre-hype had. And so, you know, I kind of chose my path there.

• 31:28Dan Shipper?

  Well, I'm, I'm glad that you, you chose pre-hype instead of had a BBC Digital. Cause I think my, my post, first company life had been a lot harder.

• 31:39Speaker 00

  The reason why I found out was I did this thing where I wrote down all the, what I call micro moments. Basically, micro moments for me are things when I'm in flow and things where I'm happy. And it can't be kind of like big thing like, you know, having a family. It has to be like very concrete things like, I like walking over the Brooklyn Bridge in the morning. You know, it's just, I get profoundly happy about that, right? Or I like being in brainstorm meetings with people like you and stuff like that. And so I ended up having these micro moments, which is these thirty kind of concrete periods where I've done stuff. And then I started to use that as a way to measure options that would be thrown at me. So, you know, the BBC, it sounded like it was a lot of money and it was like a cool job and it would give me kind of like,

• 32:20Speaker 00

  you know, I guess self-esteem for a second, but then when I looked at what it would entail, none of the micro moments would be included. And so I was like, ah, probably enough for me. What are your, what are your top micro moments and how have they changed as you've gotten older? I think it's probably after I got kids.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  Because now I didn't like kids much. Before I had them, I was like, ah, they're annoying. And I think even when my wife was like, we should really look at this kid stuff. I was like, ah, maybe. But now I have a five-year-old and an 11-year-old and it is just really, really incredible. So a lot of the moments now, I just re, kind of re-exploring the world with them or through them.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  And they ask all these interesting questions and, you know, like you don't have the answers to, like, what's a good one recently? Oh, why do some people get very popular at school and some does not? Hmm, that is, I'd like to know the answer to that. Oh, Dad, what's gonna happen if I won't be able to afford a house like the size that we live in?

• 33:30Speaker 00

  Then I won't, I answer just then I won't love you and then that was it, okay. Obviously. And I like your brother, I like your brother better, no. But so, so I think some of the, a lot of the micro moments are around that. I also, through my twenties and thirties, maybe part of my early forties, I was so anxious to succeed that I don't remember a lot of the stuff. And so I have so many micro moments now because I've gotten a little bit more kind of chilled. And so I can actually really enjoy all the stuff that I do every day. And so I think a lot of the, a lot of the early years of even a pre-hive is just a little bit of a blur

• 34:10Speaker 00

  because I just wanted to make it and didn't really have like the energy to kind of stop and enjoy every day. How are you dealing with your kids and AI?

• 34:21Speaker 00

  It's a good question. I mean, like, um, my, I have an 11 year old, which are kind of just when iPads were kind of, and so we took a sabbatical with him and people like, how was that with a six year old at the time? And I was like, this is great. He had an iPad and there was YouTube. So problem solved. And now, you know, reading, uh, what's he called? Uh, Jonathan, um, Jonathan Hyde's book, uh, anxious generation. I'm like, okay, that was probably not a good idea.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  So the, the younger one doesn't have YouTube and doesn't have a lot of the same thing.

• 35:01Dan Shipper?

  Have you noticed a difference in, you know, in their temperament and how they are?

• 35:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I think it might be genetic, like the young one don't want to play on his iPad because there's nothing interesting on it. And the older one is just completely addicted to it. So maybe that's because of Roblox and, and YouTube that the older one had access to and the younger one does not, but uh,

• 35:23Dan Shipper?

  What would be the personality explanation? Like what are, what are they both like otherwise?

• 35:27Speaker 00

  You know, I'm increasingly kind of buying into the thesis that a lot of this stuff is just super generic. Uh, sorry. Uh, uh, it's, it's all the genes, like it's all DNA. I, I think we, I think we as parents would like to think that we have like so many, so much impact on these kids, but I have two boys, they're six years, years apart. They've gone exactly through the same stuff, right? Pretty much. And they are night a day. Like the one is blonde, the one that was, is, you know, brown hair and they're, one is like a little, like a clown that talks all the time. The other one is more introverted. Like they're just like completely different. Um, and I don't think that we necessarily did that much

• 36:11Speaker 00

  different. So, uh, I think on AI specifically, I, I think AI is like electricity. I think it's going to be a transformative technology. And I drank the Kool-Aid and so I think they have to learn about it. And so they have full access to all the different foundational models and they, they use it a lot. Like they will have long conversations with.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  I think my youngest like Pi the most and the oldest use chat GPT the most, but they have full access to it and I teach them how to vibe code and they know how to do stuff like that and I'm kind of all bought into that.

• 36:48Dan Shipper?

  And are you like monitoring their chats and if so, how?

• 36:54Speaker 00

  Yes and no. We talk a lot about first principles and so we have first principles of how we interface with machines and we, you know, that is some of the elements. There's just rules like, some of them are just basic rules like when you talk to somebody on the internet, you can't give your real name, you can't, you know, all these different things. I sometimes do go through the chat history and just kind of get a little bit of understanding on it, mostly with the youngest. The oldest is getting 11. He's a pre kind of puberty teenager getting there and I feel he deserves his privacy and so there are things that that I don't want him to talk about and I have like I put rules on the network level, right? So I have something called a firewall,

• 37:37Speaker 00

  which is a kind of firewall that you can kind of put stuff on.

• 37:41Dan Shipper?

  I'm so glad you were not my parent.

• 37:46Dan Shipper?

  My, my parents, my parents have no idea what a firewall is, thank God.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  And my, my, there's not, it's gonna be difficult to watch porn in this household, I'm telling you that. I mean, like, there is, they will, they will know about VPNs,

• 38:05Speaker 00

  but they, yeah, I mean, like, we do have a little bit of like a, like, for example, the oldest, he doesn't have a smartphone, he has an Android and it's like completely locked down. It has black and white interface only. You can, he can only use useful apps. And so sometimes, and I'll get a notification every time there's a new app that gets installed, even though you can't, I locked it so you can't install new apps, but he will find ways to do it. And so we will have this like, how the hell did you get past that security measurement? He was like, oh, I don't know, man. But he still haven't found a way to disable me knowing about it. And so he still get caught when he does it. But I kind of like that little, that little kind

• 38:48Speaker 00

  of like, like having the competition of if he can circumvent my, my security systems.

• 38:55Dan Shipper?

  Little cat and mouse game. Yeah, I like it. What do you find they're using it for?

• 39:02Speaker 00

  I find them, they increasingly, like me, use it for most things. The six-year-old, five-year-old, he talks a lot, a lot. And so sometimes the family, I just, a little bit, just can't be bothered talking to him more. So I think he just like talks to it as it's like somebody's talking. Somebody asks you questions like, he's, he's a very proactive guy. So he's like, I'd like to come up with things to do this weekend with my family. And what could you suggest? The older one is more philosophical. And so he has like areas of interest. He had the Second World War. He was very interested in, he was very interested in Titanic.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  And so last time I checked, he had spent like hours basically role-playing that he was in the Second World War and that he just landed on the beach of Normandy. And basically was kind of role-playing himself into how that be. And, and he had like what seemed to be a very, very lengthy, kind of just using his imagination to be kind of, yeah, positioned as he was a soldier in the Second World War.

• 40:09Dan Shipper?

  That's really interesting.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  It's super fascinating. I mean, he also used it for like, he'll, he doesn't, it's a schoolwork that much, but they also, our school don't seem to mind it. They kind of embrace it rather than kind of shun it. So, uh, so, uh, yeah, he used it for that too. He is, he is a little bit negative on it. There's definitely a sense of, Dad, can you just stop talking about AI stuff for a second?

• 40:36Dan Shipper?

  Oh.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  So there's a bit of, yeah, there's a bit of that.

• 40:39Dan Shipper?

  Is that because, you know, his classmates in the, the environment is negative on it? Or is it like, is it a personal thing? Like, one of the things I've been feeling about the AI wave is it's the first tech wave that I can remember that 25 to 35-year-olds.

• 40:56Dan Shipper?

  Seem psyched about it because it was created by 25 to 35 or 40 year olds. But usually it's like the Mark Zuckerberg, you know, 18 in his dorm room. And this is the first big one that's not that. And, and I think that that has created a different sentiment among teenagers for it than is normal or is, is sort of the usual way it works. So what is, what, what, where do you think negativity comes from?

• 41:22Speaker 00

  I think for him, I think it's a little bit different from what I sense it is for the rest of the world. I definitely sense also like this, you know, two, two tier world where some people really, some people are really into it and some people just, just think it's really bad and write a comment every time they see something that's generated by AI online. I think for him, I think honestly, it's a little bit more just rebelling against me. I think it's a little bit like, I'm just tired of you talk about it. That's your thing is not my thing. So I think it's more him just being, you know, the anti-parent thing rather than necessarily AI.

• 42:00Dan Shipper?

  Got it. Okay. That makes sense. One of the things that occurs to me is you, you talked about, you know, them asking you all these questions and that being delightful. How has that affected how, you know, they can get an answer to anything immediately? So how has that affected what they ask you and also just being able to get answers and go, go deep and just go why, why, why, why, why, until you get down to like quantum gravity?

• 42:32Dan Shipper?

  How has that affected them and what they know about the world and how they think about the world?

• 42:38Speaker 00

  And my observation is they just know so much. I mean, like my son will often tell me something that I just didn't know about. I will sit at a restaurant and he'll go like, oh, you know, what's happening here is blah, blah, blah, or this specific fruit or, you know, and you'll go like, what? How do you know about that?

• 42:55Speaker 00

  I also think honestly, maybe that's going back to my childhood. I think they just talk much more with us than I talk to my parents. Like we are, we're together a lot and we talk a lot about a lot of things. And so there's that.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  I don't know, I'm just very impressed by, I do tons of talks now, both at universities, but also at high schools. And I'm honestly just very impressed by, you know, young people. Like, they're just very thoughtful and very, seem to be very knowledgeable about the world, and, you know, seem to be very sophisticated about most, a lot of things. And so, I don't know, like, it just seems like, you know, evolution is doing its thing. We were, like, doing dumb shit, because like, we had nothing else to do. And they seem to be doing smarter things, because, I mean, like, I grew up without a computer and the internet, or any of those things, right? And so, when you had, like, a week, and it wasn't that my parents

• 43:50Speaker 00

  was programming my weekend, where these kids, of course, have access to everything. And so, they will want to have a conversations, a conversation about stuff. And they will have good points. And so, I'll engage with them in, in a kind of adult way. But, yeah, I think it's just, it's a little bit, like, it's just two different speeches, almost.

• 44:12Dan Shipper?

  I think that's what it is, too. You're watching humans become different species, and that's always, and that happens in every generation, and that's always uncomfortable for adults.

• 44:23Speaker 00

  One thing that I've been thinking quite a bit about lately, specifically about entrepreneurship, but it kind of goes broader, is how much you should lean into your negative, negative view of the world, and how much you should leave into your positive. And I do think that people like yourself, who have a lot of people who listen to you, have like, this choice, where it's not difficult to see some of the problems in the world. And it's not difficult to see how, for example, AI can make things very complicated by job losses, and all those different things. But it's also not too difficult to think of all these positive things. Like, if we talk about entrepreneurship, for example, like, we have a country in the US, where we're very proud of it being basically born by entrepreneurs,

• 45:07Speaker 00

  and entrepreneurship. And the entrepreneurship that it was born by was not the, was not The unicorns, it was the mom and pop stores, right? Which we don't talk about at all. Now we have this quite a golden opportunity where anybody who can identify customer and come up with a original, interesting way to solve a problem for them, really had the opportunity to do that. That is pretty unique. That is incredible. And so if we believe that the future is, you know, what we make it, then, and we know that we made something wrong when we made the social web, right? There's a lot of us was part of. Then we can try to imagine something that is really good for a lot of people. And then we can just try to go and make that.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  And we can go and articulate that we would like to make it so that everybody gets inspired by and do a little bit more of that. And in general, I think the world is currently pretty cynical. And I think when it comes to my kids and it comes to how I would like to kind of throw energy into the world, I think it's more about trying to find a way of showing where there could be light rather than where there could be darkness.

• 46:12Dan Shipper?

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• 46:56Dan Shipper?

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• 47:41Dan Shipper?

  Are you ready to design, iterate, and publish all in one tool? Start creating for free at framer.com/ design and use the code DAN, D-A-N, for a free month of Framer Pro. Rules and restrictions may apply, of course. And now, back to the show. I totally agree. That's what I try to do. And I think you make a good point about the social web. I actually think the reason, one of the main reasons why the default is negative is because the discourse has been so negative about the social web for the last 10 years. And we're applying a lot of the same feelings onto AI in ways that sometimes are fair. And I think in a lot of cases are unfair because they're very different.

• 48:26Dan Shipper?

  And it was this interesting, there's this interesting swing. Like when, when I was really first starting to get aware of the startup ecosystem and whatever in like 2010, it was so positive. Like, you know, the social, the social network had just come out, the movie. And like, everyone was like, this is amazing. And then in 2016, it totally flipped. And I think we're still seeing some of that, some of that play out and.

• 48:54Speaker 00

  You have this interesting point about why AI is very different to the social web.

• 49:01Dan Shipper?

  Yeah. Thank you for teeing me up.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  Well, that's just because I've been like telling that story like it was mine for a bit. So this is just a little bit, just my guilt kind of like, the guilt was coming over me. It's probably because I almost was about to tell this story like it was me. Then I realized that I did this once I was sitting with Stacy, as you know, who used to be at Free Eye and we're sitting at a, we're sitting in Cannes to some festival and I'm, we're telling stories about airlines and I tell the story about how I had this kind of, you know, battle of the armrest. And then suddenly at one point, like this person said, Hey, do you mind I have a prosthetic arm? And then I was very embarrassed. And I tell the story like it's me. It wasn't

• 49:51Speaker 00

  my story at all. It was Stacy's story. And as I'm telling this story, I realized that Stacy's sitting at the dinner and I'm like, oh no, I had to fess out. So this is what was about to happen.

• 50:05Dan Shipper?

  I'm glad that you caught it because I actually have had that happen to me where people do my own bits back to me. And I'm like, I literally, we did, we talked about this like three weeks ago and like you're, you're doing this back to me.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  You know, seriously, I've given you full credit of that because I thought, but do like, I don't know, can you articulate it well? So you probably have like a more sharp version of it now. So I can use that for the next few weeks.

• 50:25Dan Shipper?

  The very, the very, the very basic and you know, feel free anyone to rip this off is

• 50:33Dan Shipper?

  the social web operated on revealed preference. So what you click on is what you want. And we acted as though revealed preference was all that people are because that's, that's what you really want. And the reality is that you're always going to click on a car crash. And so that's where, that's where things go. They get more extreme. But I think humans are quite a bit more complex than that. And the, one of the beautiful things by AI is it operates based, not just on what you, what you click on, but what you say. And what you say about who you are actually, I think, has a, has a.

• 51:10Dan Shipper?

  Is is real and relevant. And so and I think you can see the difference in the ways that if I asked, you know, ChatGPT to make me a for you page versus my Instagram for you page, ChatGPT is super wholesome and Instagram is like the trashiest slop. And we may see that change over time. And I assume that, you know, AI will get a little bit more racy over time or a little bit more sloppy over time. But I do think that that is a fundamentally, it's a fundamental difference to the, the, the way that these algorithms see us as human beings is their language models are much, much more multi dimensional and complex. And I think that will make them healthier.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  I very much buy into that. I want to buy into that because I want to see something that's positive. But it is incredible. I was just like asking ChatGPT, what is my, my bricks thing? And I, I realized that my bricks has been debunked. It's like not something that you should use, but it is incredible that it just immediately goes like you are yes, whatever. And, and it's right, right? So it does have a pretty good sense. Yeah.

• 52:17Speaker 00

  You know what? I literally just posted on LinkedIn. I'm ESPN, I think.

• 52:22Dan Shipper?

  ESPN is a TV channel.

• 52:30Speaker 00

  So not that. If you could hear, I really use it in a serious way every day. Yeah, let me tell you, as you're asking me.

• 52:38Dan Shipper?

  I mean, that's one of the funniest things I've ever heard you say.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  I know so little about these things. I was at the Goldman conference once. And there's all these like famous people. And I know not a lot about American sport because I grew up in Denmark. And so I'm standing there and I talked to this guy and he's very, very, very kind and nice. And he's just pivoting. He's, he's in his in between time and it's amazing. He used to work in sports and now he's doing like a whatever. And so I talked to him for a while and then, you know, it turns out he's in, he's, he was in baseball. And then I, my co-founder Matt Mieger is somewhere and I see him coming, he goes like, and he's totally into sports. I was like, come on, come on, Matt. And Matt comes over and he gets like all weird. And I introduced him. It turns out to be Jared Dieter and I

• 53:27Speaker 00

  just didn't know who he was. And so maybe a little bit of that. I will tell you on the, what am I? I am ENTP.

• 53:37Dan Shipper?

  ENT P. Okay. I'm INTJ.

• 53:42Speaker 00

  Extroversion, intuition, thinking, perceiving.

• 53:47Dan Shipper?

  So we're, well, actually, I used to be INTJ and now I think I've changed, but I'm like somewhere, I'm somewhere close to you. I'm on the border between I and E. I know that.

• 53:56Speaker 00

  Hmm. But then I wrote the blog post and then this therapist that I know basically sent me this long study from a few years ago that basically said that this whole thing had been debunked and you shouldn't use it at all.

• 54:11Dan Shipper?

  I think it's useful if you like, it's useful if you think about it as a story that you can try on and it can highlight different things in your life that you find to be real. And.

• 54:23Speaker 00

  I've got a thesis on it. Now you mentioned the word story and it's about this idea of serving a customer instead of defining your company as what you do. And the thesis is that we need to become much better. Maybe it's just because I'm a media entrepreneur as we just defined it. I think you need to be much better of defining your narrative and the narrative have to be pretty unique and very specific to you because otherwise the AI models won't be able to help you. If I write in to chat to BT, hey, I, the founder of Bark Box is two treats, two toys and a chew. And I'd like to come up with some new products. I bet you'll, you'll mention the stupid cat box idea. But if I say, you know,

• 55:07Speaker 00

  I'm into making dogs and their people happy and well, you know, it might come up with like other problems that dog lovers have and that. And so I do think that there's this interesting point where the narratives that we create are going to come, you know, it's just going to become very important because that is what we can use as we are putting on this AI Ironman suit and, and thus is going to be something that you need to have done.

• 55:30Dan Shipper?

  The, there's that Steve Jobs quote, which is the most powerful person is the person who, who tells stories. The most powerful person is the storyteller. And I think that's totally right. And I will say, I just asked both Claude and chat GPT, what my Myers-Briggs is, and they both said INTP. So we're pretty close.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  There you go. Then we'll have our agents talk to each other's agents.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  How far do you think that's away from happening? That pure agent to agent?

• 56:07Dan Shipper?

  Agents talking to agents?

• 56:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:10Dan Shipper?

  I mean, it's happening, I think it's happening now to a certain degree. But I don't think we're, I don't think we're too far off. Like, here's an example.

• 56:22Dan Shipper?

  I will.

• 56:26Dan Shipper?

  I will submit a PR on our, on our codebase and then.

• 56:32Dan Shipper?

  Kieran, who runs Cora, which is one of our products, like first, there's an automated Claude that just like runs in GitHub and does a, does a code review. And then he will pull it down and then just like ask, ask his, ask his Claude to like fix a bug or change the implementation or whatever. So it's already like.

• 56:51Dan Shipper?

  There's like three, there's an agent sandwich. There's like three layers of agents between the two people.

• 56:57Dan Shipper?

  So I think, I think it's really, it's happening.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  What's going to happen to storytelling then when I'm, my agent is going to read my every newsletter and then rewrite it?

• 57:11Dan Shipper?

  I think there's a lot of much more, there's a lot of commoditized information that will be subsumed under AI.

• 57:24Dan Shipper?

  You know, like textbooks are a good example, like most textbooks are just not that useful. Or not that individual, I'll say that. But I do think there's always a, people want information from a particular type of, from a particular person or a particular source because it carries a particular perspective. And.

• 57:47Dan Shipper?

  We have always consumed summaries of works of art or pieces of writing, whether that's a book flap or a title or any of those things. And so this is just an extension of that. And I think it is better for artists or writers to.

• 58:09Dan Shipper?

  Have different forms of their work available for people who are at different levels of commitment and have little different levels of attention. And it's always a funnel into the like thing that you're you hope to. You hope people experience, but you can't necessarily expect that to be the first thing that they engage with. And so I think good writers or good artists will find ways to make compelling, make their, you know, whatever the AI summarizes of their work compelling and make it compelling enough that people want to consume the deeper real thing.

• 58:45Speaker 00

  You know what? As you're saying this, one thing that we haven't announced yet through autos, but it might be out when this gets out, otherwise breaking news is the the business model that we're looking to do with our entrepreneurs is so autos is obviously this platform where you can build your own AI startup. And we help you with everything from coming up with the idea to financing it to making the ads to talk to your customers and all those different things. And we've been thinking a lot about the what the business model is on many level, right? What is the business model for founders serving customers like? It's probably not just SaaS anymore, like SaaS might be a part of it, but there's probably going to be all these other models emerging and we can see that on platform already.

• 59:27Speaker 00

  But for us to the founder, what we are increasingly inspired by is basically old labels, like music labels. And so the first first kind of cohort of founders that we're going to have coming out are basically people that we have signed like we are a label. And they are basically an artist, an entrepreneur in residence on our label. And then we give them money and resources and marketing and all this stuff that a label will do. And then we take a royalty. So we don't take equity in their business. We just take a royalty on the top line. But in many ways, and maybe inspired by what you say about media entrepreneurship, like maybe a lot of this vibe coded solo entrepreneurship increasingly look like artists, because what they'll need to do is to have.

• 1:00:12Speaker 00

  And interestingness, they will have to have a story, something that resonate with a group of customers and they'll need to be able to articulate that in a way where they get authenticity and authority to do that. And then in return, they're going to offer not just writing, which is traditional, obviously, media entrepreneurship, but also products, which you guys are also doing, but that we are now hoping to scale. So that if the media landscape got disrupted by YouTube, where everybody could make a channel, however niche it was, I think increasingly, we're trying to see it as like the same thing where people get on our platform, they'll get signed and then they'll serve customers and we'll take care of all the boring stuff so they can take care of their relationship capital.

• 1:00:57Dan Shipper?

  Hmm, that's really interesting. And are they all serving a similar type of customer?

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  Well, they're all serving very different customers, right? I think in many ways, we don't have a good way of articulating, but we basically have this thesis that the Dumba rule is going to work in an AI world too, but it's going to be exponential. So we call it Dunbar Square, so that the TAM of a good customer group is 150 lifted in seconds, so 220,500, and that's the TAM. And that is a group where you can do something new. So the people that are on the platform are people who, the one we had, we just had a piece come out in The Economist about a woman called Sarah, she unfortunately lost

• 1:01:46Speaker 00

  her dad, and then she realized that the whole world about loss is very non-innovative, anything from grief counseling and support to like body logistics, like how do you literally get your dad's body from A to B? And so she's building all these different agents to help you with that. So very niche here, we have like a woman from Texas, she helps people, a woman who have just given birth to get in shape after a pregnancy. And so that of course start with making kind of a fitness protocol, but it also is about calorie counting and sleep and all those different things. And so what you see on the platform is a little bit like YouTube, that you just have like people who have this very specific knowledge

• 1:02:30Speaker 00

  about tree cutting in Florida or survival trips in Washington.

• 1:02:39Dan Shipper?

  That's really interesting. And when's that launching?

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  I mean, like, what's fascinating this week, maybe next week, like, you know, what was fascinating is, and I think a conversation that my, my business partner Nicholas and I have a lot is, we increasingly writing all the features, right? So we are vibe coding the features. And then we have a few engineers working with us and they are then basically enterprising it. So, but we have rewritten the platform. We launched in June with V1, which was very text heavy and was very kind of adentic. And now we're kind of asked vibe coding and vibe app creation is becoming easier.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  We wanted to implement that. And so we have in this next version of feature, you basically come in and you riff with our agents on what business you want to make. And then we build the landing page. We built the first initial agents. We built this thing, which I think is very important, which is basically an agentic communication layer between you and your customers. So you can have high relationship capital, like a strong omnidirectional relationship with your customers.

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  But done with an agentic layer, and then we do the ads and these kinds of things. And all this stuff, we have the core components. And so we have the backend system, but we rebuilt the whole frontend in a few months. And so, and of course, like when you're sitting and writing, as you know, when you can write code as fast as you can write blog post, then you constantly come up with these new things that you want to add to the system. And so give it, give us a few weeks and the V2 will be ready.

• 1:04:21Dan Shipper?

  That's great. And for people who are listening to this and want to find you or find Otos, where can they find you?

• 1:04:27Speaker 00

  Otos.com is where you can go and make a company with us. And so we'll help people do that. The, I'm, I'm active on LinkedIn. So connect on LinkedIn and here are my, my random incels and my, my bad copies of whatever ad shit I've said.

• 1:04:44Speaker 00

  And so, yeah, that's probably, I wrote this book called Me, My Customer and I. And I have a podcast called Beyond the Prompt with Stanford professor Jeremy Otley. So plenty of places where you can hear me baffling.

• 1:04:55Dan Shipper?

  Awesome. Henrik, always a pleasure.

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  Thank you so much.

• 1:05:06Speaker 03

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