Seeing The Future from AI Companions to Personal Software

Right now AI is just an app on your

phone. Uh it should not be that way.

Sometimes you need to sort of go big or

go home. Not having the balls to do

that, especially in this current

environment, you can suffer the

consequences. There's a huge mind trap

that exists among builders in the space

where they somehow think that voice is

the main interface. That's because they

are somehow thinking about the movie her

all the time but not in the right way.

>> So you were a true pioneer in the space

before everyone else was doing it. Um

maybe just talk about your reflections

of how that category has has as you

helped create it and then how how it's

evolved.

>> It definitely evolved

noticed.

It's pretty crazy. We had a very strong

belief that it would happen but we still

were so surprised when it actually

happened. I guess this was just it just

still felt like complete magic.

>> So Jenna excited to get into everything

you're doing with Wabby. First, let's

contextualize this a little bit. When

you look back at sort of the arc of of

your career, perhaps the last decade,

how do you contextualize what is the

through line, you know, through replica,

wabi etc.?

>> Oh, wow. That's a um that's a hard

question, but I guess the

maybe the main theme uh is we're always

early. Sometimes a little bit too early,

sometimes hopefully this time around,

you know, uh the right the right kind of

early, the right type of early, but

generally, yeah, I've started uh working

on AI in 2012, so over a decade ago. um

and was always fascinated by kind of the

idea that you'll be able to talk to um

to a machine to have a good convers

meaningful conversation with a machine

but more importantly with the fact that

that could influence your life um in a

really good way and before that was

really the focus was on these AI

companions AI friends that could really

be there for you and help you live a

better life help you feel better and now

I guess it's just the same idea but

applied to personal software like can we

build many apps or software that will

really help us throughout the day in a

very personal way and we'll be focused

on you on helping you live a better

life.

>> Trace the journey of how you got excited

about this new category and uh what you

hope it becomes. I guess while running

Replica, we always had these

conversations with our users about what

other products they use and how they use

AI. And it always struck me as strange

uh that they were using products like

CHP or Gemini Claude, but really they

were mostly using it for very simple use

cases like they were using Chik to just

you for search or to help them write

something uh help with homework or

something else. And no one was really

mentioning any of these, you know,

exciting capabilities that we just kept

seeing the models, you know, get. Um,

and so we felt like there must be an

interface problem. Uh, when people look

at a command line or a chatbot, they

really just see um, you know, search

writing tool. Maybe I can talk to this.

But if you think about that's the

affordance of a command line like not

really these are the main use cases. I

think even recently tragic open I

published one of those uh research

whatever one of those studies showing

that these are in fact the main use

cases for tragic. I think a third of all

all of the use was around writing um or

writing help. Um and so that gave us an

idea that there should be some next

interface. There should be something

else on top of this. there should be

something more interactive, visual,

simple for um everyone, me included, to

actually discover these amazing use

cases that all these models already

have. And so we started thinking, we got

obsessed with this metaphor that the

current chat bots are really the

Microsoft DOSs era for AI um interfaces

and that there will be some sort of a

Windows Mac OS moment. Um, and I think

the confusing part for for most people

is that there is so much traction with

chatbots anyway. Um, almost a billion

people using these AI tools uh already,

but they only use them for these kind of

simpler use cases. And in order to

unlock something else, you need a more

exciting interface.

>> Paint more of a picture of what the

world will look like when this Windows

or Mac OS moment happened. What will

that look like? Well, I do think right

now we exist um in the paradigm of, you

know, when I was growing up, we had TV

and um you know, here you had maybe a

few dozen TV channels. Back in Russia,

we only had six TV channels. Um and so

then of course now uh TV still exists,

but when now we watch YouTube and reals

and Tik Tok, a lot of UGC stuff. And so

I think the same will happen with um

software. Right now we're kind of stuck

in this world where are these few apps

developed by professional developers. Um

and then eventually of course we're

going to move on to this new world where

apps are built by all of us for all of

us and maybe so and maybe sometimes by

AI for us. So if you think about it the

operating system of the future you open

it up and you see your regular popular

apps you use all the time. Maybe it's a

maybe it's Instagram whatever it is. Um,

and then you see maybe some cool apps

that you discovered uh your friend your

best friend's using or maybe you built

for yourself or you tweaked one of the

apps you found for yourself and then

you'll see AI suggesting some apps for

you. Maybe you're going to New York next

week and there's you're into art so it

made an art show finder app for you uh

which is going to help you find art

shows around the Airbnb you're staying

at. So it's a lot more flexible,

malible, and very deeply personalized.

Think of it as an operating system built

on the platform of you and not on some

random um fixed

>> context. C can you talk about that? Like

how we've always had this idea that

software has to be durable because it's

really expensive to make and it seems

really serious. Like what types of

ephemeral software like the New York Art

Gallery app do you imagine existing?

Well, so right now we're already seeing

tons of, you know, some of their first

users building very specific apps that

would never exist in on the app store.

They're just too small. They're too

personalized, too niche. They don't

have, you know, 20,000 features. Like

someone built um a a motivational quote

app that's only pulling from like one

particular show that I didn't even know

anything about, but he's really obsessed

with that show. And so he just wants

that at 5:30 a.m. when he wakes up. Um

it's really I feel like people are

building very particular things um to

fit their needs like right around for

example I was uh putting my kids to bed

the other day and my daughter wants to

play these puzzle games. When I tell her

something she's trying to guess what it

is and so she we we built a game very

quickly where it's a puzzle and then she

sees four pictures she can click on one

but she also wanted them to be about

Princess Elsa and Princess Jasmine. And

so we had to incorporate that. And so

now she was so happy because now she's

doing these puzzles, learning something

new, and then we change it to Italian

because she goes to an Italian

preschool. And so this is another way to

practice. And she's so excited. We spend

the whole like we couldn't put this

thing away. Um, and it took me 2 minutes

to build it and then, you know, few

seconds to tweak it versus going on the

app store. I don't even know if an app

like that exists, and going through 15

minute onboarding, paying paying again,

then it's not really what she wanted. um

there's no personalization there. So I

think these are the use cases where

something like that um you know should

should happen and I do think in the

future I should just be able to say hey

I'm you know putting my kids to bed or

it should know that context and just in

you know maybe suggest a few apps that

already pre-built for me that I could

use right now.

>> It's funny. I just got a new iPhone and

um on the new phone I got to to delete a

bunch of my old apps cuz I like to start

fresh and there were like probably over

a dozen apps that I downloaded and in

some cases paid for that I just totally

didn't need anymore because I had built

better versions of it on hobby.

Everything from like migraine tracking

to like tracking restaurant

recommendations to like a really

hyperpersonalized notes app to special

things around image transformation in a

particular style. And I can imagine that

will be true for a lot of people, which

is like instead of having to find this

longtail app that's running all these

crazy ads, popups all the time, and is

hard to use and is not personalized to

you, you can just make exactly what you

want on the fly and and tweak it, which

is another really cool part of the

product. I think this is what and I'm so

glad to hear that you're using it. But

um for me that was the the kind of the

product market fit with Wabby for me was

around that where I found there were a

few things I really needed and wanted an

app for to track my weightlifting very

beginner weightlifting workouts. I just

figured out you got to go up in weight.

This is I didn't know I would know a

woman. Anyway, so I got this app and I

was tracking it in app notes and I tried

to find some apps on the app store and

they're just

>> there's just so much in these apps that

I didn't need and so I just wanted a

really simple

>> I'm also trying to follow one particular

book. I wanted the workouts to be based

on that book. So anyway, I built a

simple app to track these workouts. Um

and then now anytime I go to the gym, I

built it on the way to the gym, but now

anytime I go to the gym, I find

something else I want to add to it.

First it was just a tracker. Now it's

generating new workouts based on all of

my inputs where I am mad, you know, the

the the the book I'm I'm trying to

follow whatever the ladder technique of

like progressive overload. And so I put

it all in the prompt and every time I go

to the gym, I add a little bit to that.

I want a little more of this, a little

more of that. So now I'm not just using

the app. I'm kind of the constantly in

the process of tweaking it and

republishing it to Wabby kind of mini

app store. Hopefully someone will find

it find it useful.

>> How how many people do you think or you

know generally as you think your

audience do you think it will be 9010

sort of consumption creation or do you

think that most people I think one of

the things we saw with Sora for example

is that many people the majority of

people are creating. Do you think that

Wabby will be like that?

>> I hope that more people will at least

tweak but I'd say like fully kind of

original creators probably still under

10%. And what we're working on right now

this week we're releasing we're pushing

sort of a big update u the social graph.

So you'll be able to see who is

downloading what mini apps how they're

using them. You're going to be able to

see um comments or like mini apps. And

so in this case for example if I created

that workout app someone in comments can

ask me to tweak it. They can also remix

it and change it. You know obviously

change the app however they want. But

maybe they just want this particular app

to be slightly different. So they could

put in comments and maybe you know as a

creator of course I'm going to be

reading all the comments and changing

the app to also um you know for these

people to be able to use it. So I think

this is cool because it creates all of a

sudden um it's not just about building

apps for yourself. It's really about

discovering apps and finding what your

friends are using using these apps

together um and so on so on and even

asking creators to you know change them

in some particular way.

>> Amazing. Zooming out a bit um or

segueing uh Anish and Justine, how do

the categories or the topics that we've

been discussing as it relates to

personal software relate to themes that

we've been exploring on the investing

side in terms of you know what what got

us excited here? Yeah, I mean look, I I

think that the YouTube metaphor is the

right one that Eugenia outlined, you

know, which is that we would have said

in 2007 that 100 cable channels is

enough or or six in your case.

And you know, now obviously there's this

entire ecosystem, everything from

unboxing videos to all of the like very

YouTube native content that exists. Um,

and I think people are sort of have more

content are more fulfilled by it. And

then there's also the active creation.

Some people create for a business, but

many create and post just because it's

fulfilling to themselves. And software

has just been so restrictive because

there's only 20 million developers in

the world, you know. So, in a sense, all

of the software that we consume is

downstream of the preferences of those

20 million people. And it seems

intuitive that if more people could make

software, they would there would be a

mass market consumer product here. I

think unlike many of the other products

and you should comment on this that

we've seen it feels like this is not

text to app you know it's not a

developer or developer adjacent tool

it's truly a mass market consumer

product for nontechnical people we I

agree with you and we really made this

kind of choice early on that we're never

going to show any code or anything or

say anything in the app that's even

remotely technical no API keys no uh

bring this whatever connect this

integration or anything like that. Uh we

do have integrations. You can add your

apps and services but you can just say

you know use my Apple Health or use this

use that um or use my email. Um and we

call them power apps. So that's sort of

a more probably the most technical

you're going to get here. But we wanted

so yeah we wanted to make it super

simple for anyone to make apps and to

make this process very delightful. Um

and almost to feel like you're just

creating something really quick. you're

not even really building many apps. Um,

what we're adding right now is more I

think the the company or the product

we're looking at most most is Canva and

the ease with which they're they're

letting people create beautiful

presentations. The similar kind of

similar thing needs to needs to happen

here. Right now we're talking about VIP

coding a lot, but I feel like we should

be more about

Vibe kind of taste or VIP designing

these apps. So, we're going to give a

lot more of the just visual controls,

more in the vein of like choose a style,

choose, you know, some colors. You can

go a little bit deeper, but really it's

just one button and things look great

versus um yeah, you need to go deep and

just really um try to understand what to

do and get technical with your mini app.

Um and I do think that unlocks a certain

level of creativity where all you need

to think about is like what's the use

case. Um, one other interesting thing

that one of our uh, investors Soleo

mentioned was that apps, many apps could

become kind of community starters. So,

if today the app store is very much not

social and it probably won't ever be

social because of Apple's mandate for

obviously privacy and how important that

is for them. um which is great but in at

the same time you probably do want to

know who else is into

I don't know toddler activities in Peter

Hill. Um I want to know what other moms

are going to an Italian preschool. Um I

want to you know have their kids go to

that preschool. Uh and maybe I don't

know my designer is really into bird

watching in London um in his particular

neighborhood. So creating that app and

finding some other people who, you know,

could be a little bit of a community

building um around that topic.

>> Yeah, I think there's a bunch of really

interesting choices you guys made in

designing the product that it feels like

really built on the explosion in like

vibe coding or building with AI,

whatever you want to call it, in a super

interesting way. One of which is like,

yeah, for many consumers the existing

tools are a lot more accessible than

like coding something from scratch, but

it's still pretty easy to like break

them or get to something where you don't

know what to do. Whereas I think Wabby,

you've purposely put guard rails around

the experience to make it hard to like

super mess up, which is extremely

helpful for consumers. And then it also

feels like, you know, we needed to move

beyond this paradigm of like great you

vibe code a website and it it exists out

there, but like is that the best

interface for you to be using a product

you want to use daily and storing

personal information on and having your

own records and like all of these sorts

of things? Probably not. And for a lot

of people like their phone is where they

spend most of their time online. It's

kind of their primary interface and

where they want to use things. Um, and

so obviously I know there's like

challenges designing for mobile and that

sort of thing, but it it felt like a

really smart choice for you guys to

start there just to get so much more

deeply ingrained in someone's daily life

or daily workflow.

>> You know, I've only pretty much built

mobile apps.

>> Yeah.

>> If I really like the idea of mobile apps

and a lot of things you're not going to

be doing on, you know, really just

putting in a website or whatever, some

linkact. Um and I do believe a lot in

the concept of an organizational layer

like to a degree

>> um the app store is the organizational

layer for um you know the the mobile and

um the browser the organizational layer

for internet and so something like that

should exist for

coding I guess or for this new era of

software for AI put let's call it AI

software um and I don't believe that

people will be I do believe that we're

all going to be building some sort of

software in using software that everyone

builds some UGC software but I

definitely don't believe in links that

people will share with each other and

with

>> me relying on some random person

somewhere who's not a professional

developer to support the database for

the app where I might store some

sensitive data or at least data that I

don't want to disappear even if it's not

very sensitive

>> uh and we've already seen this with some

apps vipcoded apps reaching the top of

the app store I think the

around women dating that all the super

sensitive information got leaked and

that wasn't because they are bad actors.

It's just they're not professional

developers. So there needs to exist some

some platform where everything will live

and to a degree we're not watching

videos somewhere uh you see videos

somewhere we're watching them on

Instagram on Tik Tok on YouTube it's not

like people are passing around links and

so the current situation I do think is

very similar to the very beginning of

the internet where people were creating

personal pages with geio cities and some

other tools like that which I don't

remember very very well because it was

very little but um yeah before link

LinkedIn people were sending these links

to each other and of course now there's

LinkedIn there are certain guardrails

you can't really do

everything the way you could do in geo

cities but at the same time you have

this get the social graph you get the

platform you get all sorts of cool

things there get the same as Shopify for

e-commerce yeah you can build your own

uh online store but no one's really

doing it anymore everyone's just using

Shopify and then they also get the all

the platform benefits and I feel like

the same will happen with Wabby yes you

cannot download an app from Wabby and

put on the app store, but you can use it

inside Wii and you can get the social

graph and all the integrations and the

potentially the shared context between

all the apps and the memory behind you

know for for that um user and so on so

on so on.

>> Uh our mutual friend Heaton said that

Wabby is not just a collection of apps.

It's a framework for memory, context and

expression. Every time you create or

share, you're teaching it who you are.

Is is that how you see it?

I believe in it 100%. I think with every

um I believe I still remember of course

and you guys obviously remember too but

I do remember how the first iOS apps

were just people trying to squeeze those

websites into an app format or just kind

of toy apps like I beer or there was my

favorite one I am rich that was $999.99

and it didn't it didn't do anything. Um,

and then of course people figure out,

well, you know, there's some something

special about this being a mobile mobile

app and maybe GPS and connectivity and

things like Uber and Tinder came out a

whole new categories of apps and so they

figured out what's so special about

mobile and I feel like for AI the super

special thing is uh personalization but

really deep personalization. So for me,

kind of vibe coding an app, but that

still is sort of like the same old

software that's not really taken any of

your context into consideration where

the data of that app is not exposed to

AI that keeps learning. It's kind of

just old school. I do believe a lot in

Andre's um uh idea of like software 3.0,

some next level of software that's super

deeply personalized. So if you think in

the context of a Wabi mini app, how can

you personalize it? First of all, you

can personalize the features, the looks,

um, you know, where I've skinned the app

in a a certain way. But then on top of

that, you can also change the prompt.

So, for example, for my workout app, um,

I added to the prompt a couple things.

First of all, the book that I'm reading

that that method that I want to work out

using that method. Also, the fact that I

go to as a fitness and it has a certain

I added a photo of that gym. So, kind of

the model is not generating workouts in

a completely different size of the gym.

uh if it's a super side has to be next

to each other. Uh so this is the deep

deep deep level of personalization that

that is following. And of course on the

Wabby platform level the the mini app

also knows that I'm a certain age that I

live in San Francisco that I have kids

these are my fitness goals and so on so

on. And then eventually when I when I

build another mini app maybe around

nutrition those apps should be able to

talk and pass along that context. And

today, of course, all of that exists in

just the, you know, the walled gardens.

You're fully locked in in one app, which

is to me feels absolutely crazy. Um, and

I can't connect, if I connected my email

or my calendar. It can't be connected to

both of these apps. I have to go through

the process with every developer all the

time. They have to build it. I have to

connect it. That seems crazy to me.

Do you imagine people building true

social apps where the inapp experience

involves a community?

>> I'd love that. And we're we're building

multiplayer right now as we speak. We

spend the whole day to try to figure out

like what it's really complex just

because all apps can be can have very

different type of multiplayer

>> and that needs to be explained to users

as well in a very intuitive way. But

yeah, totally believe in first of all

using apps together at least with your

friends, your family, but also

potentially building these more kind of

community apps where everyone can join.

Maybe I can make my app multiplayer and

open for everyone to join.

>> A good example of that is um made some

image gen app around dogs uh where you

can turn any of your dogs into like a

royal um some user built it to like a

royal portrait of different era. And so

that would be cool for all the dog

owners to just join that app and to be

able to post to the universal feed. Um,

and so that's something we've been

talking about today because this would

be really cool instead of if you just

making these photos and then sharing

somewhere, you're just adding them to

the ongoing feed of dog photos.

>> Sorry, that's

>> Yeah, there's I No, no, I think it's a

great example. I well yeah I'm

definitely going to

my dog

>> but I feel like there are so many

examples too of um image and video

prompt sharing that happens in very

unoptimized ways today like I've been

following a lot um as you know very well

like teen girls and college age girls

are often early adopters of stuff and

they have been making all these like

nano banana and Quen image edit prompts

of like them like lying on a couch and

the ghost face killers behind them for

like Halloween and the and they'll like

post the image on Tik Tok or reals or

wherever and it will blow up and then

they'll be like commenting like this

long form prompt like in the comments on

Tik Tok which makes no sense as a way to

do it and then everyone's asking like

where do I go to do this like I have the

Google app why isn't let letting me do

this and you have to explain like no you

need the Gemini app and it just feels

like there's already this consumer

demand and consumer behavior around like

prompt sharing in particular for

creative stuff that could be done I've

already made a bunch of Wabby mini apps

for this and it it could be done so much

better and I think that the creative

community would really thrive with this.

Oh, that was the most and I guess this

is why we started the company. Um,

how is it possible that we have this

god-like technology yet we pass around

these text prompts which is almost like

Microsoft DOS commands but worse because

at least the commands were was like sort

of like you could learn them. They were

a few whatever like they were short.

They weren't that long and now these

crazy unstructured paragraphs of text

sometimes you also need a reference

image or something else. To me that's a

little bit crazy. Um, and I think that

is kind of one of the biggest problems

with discovery with AI. It's hard to

find these prompts. Even if you saw the

output of, you know, you saw this cool

photo with the ghost, whatever. But then

how do I recreate that? I need to find

the prompt. I need to know what app. I

need um I need to know what model to

choose. Oftentimes it's not even very

intuitive. And at that point, I've just

lo lost all my motivation to do that.

Instead of that, if you could just

quickly, you know, click on the link in

comments on Tik Tok and open a mini app

where everything's already set up for

you. Just add a photo. Um, and you can

see examples, you can choose different

styles and this and that. And then you

can see in comments what what other

people are doing. I think this is the

way to go. And I think what's most

interesting that it sort of combines the

vibe coding apps, one of the biggest

kind of trends of the last year at

least, and also just using AI. before

that it was all you know it's either the

are you in the text to prompt to app

market or are you in some other market

and this kind of puts together like this

is really the one place to use um

amazing prompts or and it kind of blends

this difference

>> how much you know it's interesting you

mentioned Justine that it's a mass

market consumer behavior or or maybe

like a future one to be sharing prompts

this way how much do you think for the

average person whose only AI experience

has been with chat GBT that this is

going to a surprising new behavior that

they have to sort of adjust to or

something that feels very intuitive and

obvious and like wow I've been waiting

for this.

I hope it will be easy because in the

end of the day it's just a mini app.

It's just the app graphic user

interface. So it's something that we're

all used to. You don't need to you learn

how to use these new tools.

>> I'd argue it's harder to use a command

line because you need to know well do I

copy paste the text here? Do I edit an

image right here with this prompt or do

I edit later? It becomes a little bit

more it's too loose. There's there are

no guidelines. But everyone knows how to

use apps. And um to a degree a lot of

these kind of thin rappers uh blew up at

some point like Prisma was one of them

or Lensa where it was just like you know

change you change your photo into some

avatar

>> some headshot apps.

>> I do

>> high school yearbook.

>> High school yearbook. Yeah, it's clutch.

>> But a lot of, you know, they're awesome,

but again, like there's a reason why

apps uh like that gain traction and not,

you know, people just passing along this

this prompt cuz again, it's too high.

Whenever there's uh the motivation is

not too high, this amount of friction

just kills all of my mojo. Uh I wake up

in the morning, I'm on Twitter or

Reddit, I find all these cool prompts,

I'm like, I got to try it. And then I'm

like, ah, copy paste. It didn't really

work or whatever. I forgot about it. So

that I think is something that

>> at least we're super excited about. And

it's not about just image on prompts,

but also um some cool text prompts. Like

people come up with all sorts of cool

stuff. There's there are millions of

people in the subreddits like Chudupt

Prompt Genius, which I love those.

Sometimes you can find some crazy stuff

in it,

>> but you would never even know that this

could be a cool way to use uh Chedupt

unless you found it there. Like for

example, someone made a fantastic prompt

to analyze your blood work. Um, but

again, I don't even at this point

remember what it was and how I'm going

to find it,

>> right?

>> Um, versus I could just download a mini

app from Wabby and kind of keep it in my

health folder.

>> On the investment team, you we've said

that there's, you know, the world has 1%

of the software that that it needs and

that the rest is going to be built in

the next 5 years. So, let's give an

example or say more about what that

looks like if we're, you know, 100xing

the amount of, you know, meaningful or

impactful software.

>> Well, I don't know. I I guess I'm always

going back to um how magical uh YouTube

felt in the very beginning and all of

these platforms where it was all

really about just creativity and very

raw um you know sometimes weird things

like putting a home tape whatever home

video on um online for Tik Tok. I still

remember all my you know young whatever

friends younger kids lip syncing to

different music and how weird it was and

felt like a toy and then all of a sudden

became really really huge and I think

the same will happen with um or at least

we hope that the similar a similar trend

will happen to Wabby where in the

beginning maybe a lot of that will look

like toys or something very simple very

kind of funny almost and um in a sense

and then eventually can grow into a much

larger platform but I guess if you think

about it like today we just treat apps

as software but What if apps we could

treat them as content? If I'm an health

influencer or fitness influencer on Tik

Tok, maybe I should put out here's my

here are my five mini apps on why I

build that are kind of showcasing my

fitness protocol. Um, get them and maybe

there's a way to monetize it in some

way. Maybe it's a way for for that

fitness creator to create more content

that's now useful. Um, right now people

sell courses and stuff instead of that.

I think a mini app could be much better

and then people can be talking about

that in the community in the comment

section. Again, this is a start of some

community. People are working out

together, people are doing something

together. Um, I do think we'll see just

a completely different type of software.

Not just apps, not just stale fix apps,

but more content, community build, uh,

community starters, conversation

starters, and and just fun little toys.

Do do you imagine like a creator class a

kind of professional class on wabby? Oh,

a hund, you know. Yes, of course. I do

believe that that ideally this should

happen if if we're really thinking about

as YouTube, that's sort of the last

frontier at this point. Creators can

make their own professional content,

they can make videos, they can make

shows, they can write, but they still

cannot create software. It's still

really not happening. But any anyone and

especially small niche creators should

be able to afford to create for free any

software for the their fans. And that's

what I'm really really looking forward

to. I I've been struck that by the idea

that uh you know Mr. Beast the biggest

creator in the world has such a close

connection with his fans. They do

anything for him and the thing that he

makes is chocolate. like that's the

thing the thing that he chooses to that

seems like the best monetization and it

just feels like this is yet another sort

of uh you know type of uh offering that

creators can provide to be you know have

a closer relationship with their fans.

>> Exactly. And if you think about it, just

even the style, like I would love like

certain designers, I want their apps

that they build

>> cuz I'm sure they're going to build very

beautiful apps and I want to look at

them and you even if it's the same

functionality, the same whatever

Pomodoro timer, but I want their take on

it. Um, and so on. I think this there's

so many different groups and niches that

and it it shouldn't all just be about

monetizing. It's really just about

different styles, different um outlook

on life, on the world.

>> Um and that is to me is very very

interesting. I'm a huge user of Reddit

and I find it very exciting because

people just join around certain

interests. Um and that doesn't happen

happen on other platforms really that

much. Um so that's something that I'm

excited about here as well. Yeah, I

think from the creator perspective, one

of the weird things about put and we're

all kind of content creators in various

ways and put out content and one of the

weird things about that I think is you

often you don't really know like you see

how many impressions it gets but you

don't know if those are bots. You don't

know how many people are actually like

using the prompt you posted or watching

the full video or whatever. And I think

that is going to be like even beyond

monetization, that part of WABI where

like you can see what someone else has

done or created or accomplished or

whatever with the prompt you wrote or

the app you made or the thing that you

developed um will be incredibly cool.

Not only for existing creators for whom

it's really obvious they want to do

this, but also for people who are not

creators today, but who have really

interesting ideas and just like no way

to build their own mobile app, get it

approved in the app store, ship it, like

distribute it, that that whole type of

thing.

Yeah, like what other new class of

creators could be?

>> Yeah, that's why in our style like in in

in some of our communications, we're

also trying to um I guess we're a little

bit nostalgic about that early those

early days of the internet and just

being weird and staying weird. Right

now, a lot of the video platforms are

very polished and very commercial. Um

you don't even see your friends anymore.

You don't see that much weird content.

You just see very curated, polished um

stuff. But with mini apps, with

software, I guess we're just entering

this new era of just tons of really

weird and fascinating um new mini apps

that wouldn't even could never exist uh

because they wouldn't be enough of a

business on the app store.

>> Right. Right. Well, speaking of the

early days, should we talk a bit about

Replica and kind of your history in the

community?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Maybe um we'll just so you

were a true pioneer in the space before

before everyone else was doing it. You

know, you mentioned 2012. Um maybe just

talk about your reflections of how that

category has has you helped create it

and then how it's evolved.

>> Um

it definitely evolved.

I've noticed

it's pretty crazy. Well, it's wild

because I we were thinking about it uh

recently just talking to um one of the

early employees of Replica that we had a

very strong belief that it would happen,

but we still were so surprised when it

actually happened. I guess this was just

it just still felt like complete magic.

Um for me I got into it because I uh my

friend worked at um Google DeepMind in

2012 and so he came to me to tell me

about wordtovec and kind of the first

technology to translate words into

vectors and to be able to actually do

something with words. Before that

language was just this whole separate

almost like thing that computers could

not interact with but now all of a

sudden they could. Um and to me I grew

up reading Wiggenstein. So for me it was

like well the limits of the uh language

are the limits of my world. So I felt

like oh well that's insane. If the

computers learn language then they'll

learn about the world that will be

they'll be truly smart that is the

future of artificial intelligence. And

so that's also imageet just came out. So

we saw all these new models around image

recognition and we felt like well we got

to start a company focused on language

models focused on dialect generation. Uh

but of course there were no papers

around it at all and no no known

algorithms or anything built models um

really back then there was nothing. So

we're just focused on building some

technology to build chat bots using

whatever the trying to build some

language models around that. And then of

course 2015 the first paper came out of

Google by Quad that would actually

showed off the first deep learning um

model applied to dialect generation and

they didn't publish any models back

then. So it was all about just kind of

reading the paper and seeing some of the

obviously cherrypicked results and

trying to replicate that. And when we

saw that in August 2015, we just

basically put all of our um bet

everything we had at the company on

building those models. We said, "Okay,

well, this is it. This is right around

the corner. We need to really focus on

building these language models, getting

the first generative AI product out

chatbot out there, which we did with

Replica, but it wasn't around the

corner. It was like seven years away."

And then we just had to survive for long

enough to actually get to the first

transformer models. Um and then of

course I think the next magical moment

was the um Mina paper also out of Google

with the first transformer model. And

then I remember in 2020 we got invited

by OpenAI to go see um GP3 before you

know API to to partner up with them to

be one of the first partners uh for GP3

API to launch. So we came to the office

and Meera who back then was actually

leading partnerships. Um and Sam showed

us GP3 and I remember that was just

I was floored. It was insane just to

before that if you think about it we had

to train every model. We had to create

the specific data set. If you wanted to

train a dialogue model you have to have

tons of chat data and you would train

the model and the model could only do

dialogue. But with GT3, it was the first

kind of zeroot few shot model where it

could do anything. It didn't just have

to um respond in a dialog format. You

can tell it well write a tweet like Sam

Alman or write a tweet this or translate

and it would do that. And so that felt

absolutely magical and we were the first

uh one of the first partners of OpenAI

GPT3 API. Um they it was still crazy

because we still have a Slack channel

where Greg Brockman is training a model

for us which now feels just such a

>> amazing weird reversal.

>> You still have the model.

Um it it was it just I think it was a

fine-tuned da Vinci for um replica but

we were the biggest customer in terms of

API calls because we we were the only

chatbot available in the market that

actually used generative AI and now it's

weird to think about it but uh back then

all the big companies were scared to put

out generative AI uh products because

there were Microsoft tie happened

>> and it turned into some Nazi chatbot in

literally an hour an hour and so

everyone else was too scared to put them

out there. So we were sort of the only

ones for so so long until open eye had

um you know put out their chip and kind

of change change history with that of

course. Uh but it was crazy because for

before that we literally owned all the

keywords like AI chatbot artificial

intelligence on every single platform

and um and then we also owned like

hundreds of AI domains which I just let

expire because I felt like no one wants

them. They're not even on any of the big

domain platforms.

>> And then recently I went to see what.ai

uh domains still are still available

that are just regular words and the only

words that are available like vomit.ai

and Iraq.ai.

I was telling my god this is so

upsetting. Um naming Wabby because of

that was pretty hard.

>> Yeah. So that's kind of the evolution

from my

>> You told us a story at dinner about the

time that you'd spent in the OpenAI

office. Maybe talk a little bit about

that when you guys were working out of

there. What it was like, what the energy

was like, what were the expectations of

the team?

>> I think that Yeah. So when um when openi

started was kind of out of YC um it was

YC research. So they were doing a few I

guess you remember they were doing a few

different research groups. one on uh

UBI, one on AI, some other ones. And so

because we were YC company and um they

let us come, they were very uh uh

generous with their time and they would

let us come to back then Greg's

apartment where they were uh

headquartered I would say and they would

let us come with a couple other

companies uh that were doing AI at YC to

um ask questions, learn from them and

just talk maybe exchange experience on

what we're building. So we would come to

that apartment and ask all the

questions. Um usually it was um Ilia and

Andre and some other people and that was

absolutely incredible. We were of course

absolutely starruck um and super happy

to be there. just so, you know, grateful

for the opportunity. And then they moved

to the um to their office and we would

go there as well. And um very quickly

they stopped working on language models.

And we were very upset because we really

wanted to continue going there, but they

didn't want to talk about any language

models because no one was really working

on them. Um, and that may have made us

feel very um, strange because we were so

set on continuing and believing in

language models, but they completely

moved away to shifted to playing video

games and all of these kind of agents

kind of rebuilding the worlds and agents

in those worlds reinforcement learning

for that and all and and all these other

interesting things. Um and I guess the

only person for um if in the beginning

it was kind of Alec Ratford for

continued to work on language models. So

we had an opportunity to ask him some

questions but yeah of course that was

it's just wild to think to think that

because when we were going to open of

course they were uh superstars even back

then but still it felt like such a small

uh kind of research group um that is

trying to do something interesting. Of

course, now to see it become one of the

biggest companies in the world is

absolutely wild.

>> Well, it's interesting because Andre

said on the recent pod that the entire

video games direction was an incorrect

direction. It was incorrect research

direction and they probably should have

stuck with language.

>> So you guys were right.

>> Um it's a well being right is not always

>> you got to be right but also execute. I

think to a degree we we were really

invested with replica in building

language models but at some point we

just required a lot more capital to do

that and after being after working on

that for so long at that point we just

got really into just revenue maxim

maximization at some point because we a

little bit got maybe scared we're like

well

>> we didn't have the balls to say okay

well we need 20 million and we'll build

that model even though that was our

discussion internally right after Mina

uh paper and so on. We just need to get

a lot more money. If you think about it

with um Replica, we only raised $1

million and I guess it's still all in

the bank and you know we we went for

many many years and um built a big

business. But of course, this is in

hindsight a very interesting lesson that

sometimes being very nimble and very

kind of scrappy and very profit oriented

is great, but you can miss out on almost

like a generational chance. And I'm not

saying we, you know, even if we bet on

it, maybe we would have not built it.

Um, I would never compare myself to the

geniuses that actually did it. we

probably were not the right people

anyway, but still the the lesson I think

still stands. Sometimes you need to sort

of go big or go home

>> and not having the balls to do that,

especially in this current environment,

I think

you can suffer the consequences.

>> One of the things we say on the consumer

team is consumer behavior, especially

new behavior, cannot be predicted. It

can only be observed. I think you are

actually one of the few people that is

not true for because you seem to be able

to predict consumer behavior. Like

you've been so early to a number of

these things and I think just every time

we talk to you, you seem to have an eye

on not only like what's going on today,

but like what the next thing should be.

Is that like how did you develop that

sense? I guess I'm sure a lot of people

would be curious to know.

>> I don't know if I have that sense. I

only have like a couple ideas, but I

really believe in them deeply and then I

go really deep down the rabbit hole. I

start thinking about it and um but I do

think that I do have a lot of um I do

have a background in journalism and I

pretty much the whole I grew up dreaming

of being a journalist. I my first job

was 12 years old working at newspaper.

Um I was an investigative journal

reporter for a while and the one thing I

loved about is being able to go and talk

to people and to really really try to

get to know them and live their lives.

Um and so for that you sort of have to

have a lot of empathy and just trying to

really and curiosity about people. And I

think today what I'm seeing with AI

especially it's being built by a very

specific type of person uh personality.

It's often times these savants, these

like brilliant geniuses, um, physicists,

mathematicians, and they're insane in

building algorithms and math and kind

of, uh, scientific breakthroughs, but

they usually lack on the human empathy

side. That's just kind of how it is.

Meanwhile, I'm the opposite. I'm a uh,

dumb dumb when it comes to science.

Coming from a family of physicists, they

were always like, "Oh my god, like why

can't you be smart and also go study

physics?" But I couldn't. But at the

same time, I'm just really interested in

human condition, what people are doing.

And just seeing my mom trying to

understand how to copy paste a prompt

from Reddit. It was such a foreign idea

for her to her. And I realized like my

mom is very savvy with computers. She's

always on her phone. She's always on her

laptop. But somehow she can't crack

that. this is just too this is just not

user friendly enough and kind of

understanding those concepts and um I

think was really what let us see kind of

come up with the idea for Wabby and the

same goes for replica just traveling

around um uh and talking to people and

seeing how much loneliness there is and

how much people just want to be able to

tell someone what they're going through

and how few people are able to listen

and I think that realization that maybe

an AI is not can't talk well today, but

it could listen. Uh that that could be a

groundbreaking thing for millions in the

world. Um so I think this is kind of

what just allows me to have a slightly

different angle at the same problem.

>> If you wanted to speculate on the future

of like hardware um like what is sort of

the that

>> hardware

just like like you know 5 10 years what

is going to be the interaction like how

are we going to be interacting with

these applications?

Um, I do have a few ideas around

hardware and I'm not a hardware person

at all, but I'm a hardware user like all

of us. So, I get to have opinions. I

think I think where there's a huge mind

trap that exists among uh builders in

the space where they somehow think that

voice is the main interface. It's like

the best ultimate interface. And I think

that's because they are somehow thinking

about the movie her all the time but not

in the right way and kind of missing the

whole point of the movie her that um yes

voice was amazing in that movie because

it was Samantha Johansson constantly

heavy breathing his ear and that totally

worked. You didn't even need to see

anyone. Um

in my case that's why that worked. But

if you really think about voice

interfaces they're just so imperfect.

Um, you can't use that device if you're

laying in a bed with someone who's

sleeping. You can't use it in a crowded

space. You can't use it at a at the

office. You can't use it even walking

around. It's a little bit weird. And and

so all of a sudden, you're betting

everything. There's a lot of people

trying to build voice only devices. In

my case, completely wrong. like it can

be a fantastic extra way to interact

with uh the computer, but every single

Alexa right now is like 75% of them are

being shipped with a screen. Uh because

even if I'm setting a timer when I'm

cooking, the proverbial um voice use

case even dancer I need to see the

timer. I'm not going to be asking, hey,

how much how long is this left every

every second? Uh this is just strange.

And so I think this is kind of the the

biggest mistake mistake in my in my view

is trying to ship these screenless

devices. Uh I love screens. I think

there's no way with voice to solve for

discovery for proactivity. I would hate

if you know the worst thing with um

voice and the iPhone is is reading out

push not notifications text messages

that are come. I'm like God please shut

off. It's horrible. It's very hard also

to turn it off.

>> That's terrible. if this was just being

you want productivity but you don't want

it to be read out loud in your ear

because this is just this very uh slow

way of getting information in your

brain. Um so anyway so I think this is

kind of the biggest mistake. I would not

ever make a screenless device. In fact I

would make it very much uh screen first

device but I do believe that the AI

device is not about a voiced driven

thing. It's more about um building this

uh AI first operating system. Um having

all the models run locally as well. I

think that there's a lot in that like

building truly an AI first smartphone

and you know not today kind of more

CPUdriven whatever um hardware but more

the hardware of the future where there

are models that can run locally with the

operating system is super different from

what it is today with no fixed apps with

being able to change and create software

on the go for you with a with a level of

personalization that goes a lot deeper

than what it is today. Um, yeah, I think

that there is definitely space for a

device like that right now. You know, AI

is just an app on your phone. Uh, it

should not be that way. Um, I guess

>> I think it's a great note to end on.

Eugene, thanks so much for coming on the

podcast.