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How I built a $3B AI Startup + 7 AI Business Ideas

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myself. I've been an engineer for like,

you know, a couple decades now, and I no

longer write code. I only

[Music]

prompt. All right. So, you founded this

company, but your story is crazy. So,

you're high school dropout, grew up in

Argentina, have been building things and

hacking on things since, you know, a

very young age. Sold a company kind of

early on. I don't know if it was big

sale or small sale. And then you

built this product that has just taken

off. Every front end developer I know

loves it. It's valued, I don't know, $3

billion or so, you know, whatever, give

or take. And you've just done this

incredible thing. And now, and now you

have this AI tool that's also like super

on trend and is something that is doing

really really well. It's a really cool

uh agent that that builds sites for you.

That's my version of the of the the

summary of your story. It's a great

summary. Maybe the only thing I'll add

the the crazy way that I've been able to

go from like a teenager in Argentina to

today was has been a lot of open source.

So I've been involved in creating a lot

of technologies that have become

foundational in the tech ecosystem. And

I felt like that and the web has sort of

been my ticket to success of course over

decades of hard work. Well, explain

that. So why did you drop out of high

school? I I I've never been a fan of

like the high school dropout moniker

because I actually really loved the high

school that I went to. So, it was a high

school in Argentina that was a free

public school that had an entry exam.

You had to study really hard to get in.

And I worked so hard to get in. Uh

entered in position number 10 out of

like thousands of students. But I had

two competing interests. I was becoming

popular in this open source ecosystem

because I was creating libraries for

JavaScript and front-end development.

You're like becoming popular at in open

source but you're only 15 16 years old.

So when did you start? Started coding

very early like uh you know seriously I

would say when I was 10 years old I was

creating websites shipping I started

doing work online helping my parents

with our uh like home finances. Was it

just a lucky break or what got you

started? lucky break in some ways, but

um open source. So, I was contributing a

lot to like online forums uh helping

people out. And the lucky part was I

remember this guy who whose name I guess

I'll never know. It was like Dark Shadow

123. He's like, "Hey, you seem to really

enjoy helping people out by writing

tutorials and guides and things like

that. There's this website is a

freelancing website. You could just sell

your services here because you know so

many things about Linux and PHP and

programming." So there was a bit of a

lucky break in that I figured out a

business model for myself really early

on. I got my first check when when I was

in like 11 years old then started I had

a client in the Netherlands when I was

like 12 or 13. Are you pretending to be

a adult or are you openly like it never

I wanted really badly for it to never

come up. And I'm really I guess lucky

that at the time like even Skype was not

a thing. So it was like actually kind of

rare that you have to get on the phone.

So I really took advantage of that. But

so when I got into this high school, my

reputation for doing all of this work

and then my reputation in the open

source world were both growing

simultaneously. So as my grades were

decaying, my sort of online net worth

and contribution and notability in the

world was growing. So I would write

articles, I would get to the front page

of dick.com. I would write open source

software that would get a lot of

traction. I would get written out. Give

give me a sense. Are you I'm gonna say

it in a dumb way. Like are you a genius

or you were just being extremely

helpful? Like was it just like nobody

was writing the tutorial on how to host

your WordPress site or whatever? Was it

like you were figuring things out really

cutting edge stuff? Where were you?

Yeah. When I advise young people on like

how to bootstrap their careers, I say

start by teaching anything. So I started

with like how to compile. There was a

project called

RPPO to get internet connectivity in

Linux. It's like it's just like writing

down tutorial today will do 100 times

better job, right? Or like at best it

becomes training data for an AI to then

explain it back to people. But then over

time I started coming up with my own

breakthroughs. And so I I my quote

unquote big break was I started

contributing to a library called Mood

tools when I was 15 16 years old. And

this library got picked up by Facebook

to become sort of the

inspiration/foundation for their

JavaScript infrastructure. And I got a

job offer from Facebook when I was like

17 years old. And so my contributions to

that project was starting to become more

important. And so you got a job offer

from Facebook when you were 15. Yeah. So

I was I was probably 17 16. So super

early days of of Facebook. So in many

ways, you know, you could have play out

another timeline in which I was in

America already and like I was an early

engineer at Facebook, things like that.

Did you turn it down? Well, when they

discovered I was in

Argentina and other age, I was like,

"Oh, yeah, maybe we should look for

someone else." But that same project

kept opening up up doors for me because

other startups started using the same

foundation and they were like, "Hm, who

should we hire?" And the first thing you

think of is I'm going to hire the people

that contributed to the project. We do

that ourselves today with our open

source projects like Nex.js. We go and

like, "Okay, who's contributing?" Like,

hm, that person seems really

interesting. So when I was about 18,

that's when this startup from

Switzerland reached out and saying,

"Hey, like we want to hire a mood tools

developer." And that's when I basically

just dropped out of high school. Like I

I I had my first real job offer from a

company in Losan, Switzerland. And for

my parents, for myself, it was kind of

surreal, right? Like I'd never left the

country. And I was like leaving

Argentina for the first time with a job

offer in hand at a like an amazing

country, you know? So, it's kind of

surreal. Yeah. I I we hired a kid and

when I was doing a startup in San

Francisco, we had a guy who was in

eighth grade and he emailed me, Johnny

Dallas, and he said, "Hey, I love to

code. I my dad met somebody I met Pete

at a dog park, this our sis CIS admin

guy, and he was like, um, I don't know

anyone else who codes. Can I just come

hang out for the summer? I just want to

be around other programmers." And I was

like, "Oh, man. Amazing. Yes, for sure.

He comes in first day. We just actually

give him a test. We're like, "Hey, we

want you to make this little onboarding

quiz, HTML, just make a quiz, like

multiple choice, take them down to flow

and land them in one of these four

buckets." And he just sits there and he

sits there till like 7 or 8 at night. I

feel bad. But he's like not asking for

help. I just want to see how it plays

out. And he actually ships the quiz at

the end of the the evening. I was like,

"All right, this kid's legit." By the

time he's in 10th grade, we're like,

"This guy's, you know, he's working

basically full-time for us. He's after

school. He's coming in." And so we had

this um I had a conversation with his

mom. I remember at the like downtown and

she's like I can't imagine my son being

like a high school dropout and I said,

"Do you know LeBron James and Kobe

Bryant?" I was like, "Your son is going

pro." And so I think that should be a

little bit of a Yeah, totally. If any

kid is listening to this, it worked like

a charm on on that mom. Try this on your

mom or try this on on anybody where you

can really go pro early. Yeah, totally.

I I always give people very caveed

advice, right? Like I tell them, look, I

went to a high school that was giving us

college level content. So I actually

developed a good foundation, a good

quote unquote world model. I was I

became quite competent in a lot of

sciences and we had really good

chemistry classes, physics, math, etc.

So I'm actually really thankful that I

had a good foundation. And then by the

time I decided not to continue down like

the normal quote unquote educational

career, I had a really good alternative,

right? Like by that time it was really

clear that my my skills were going to

take me somewhere. I didn't know

specifically I was going to get in I was

eventually going to end up in San

Francisco building companies, but um you

know it was it was a bit of a leap of

faith. I was well substantiated in

existing evidence of success.

Hey, let's take a quick break for a

message from our sponsor HubSpot who's

making this episode possible. Listen, if

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and I'm talking about hundred million

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description below. All right, back to

the show. You talking about moo tools

and you're talking about JavaScript. I

read something great that you said. you

you go I kind of bet on JavaScript

because I realized that for the back end

there's you know 100 different languages

you could choose but the the browsers

only know JavaScript right it's like an

unfair advantage looking back I think

you you always arrive to success by

finding asymmetries or finding alpha or

finding unfair advantages and JavaScript

has this unfair advantage that and and I

can explain how it won as well but right

now Every single device on the planet on

the client inside a web browser can run

one language and that language is

JavaScript. It can't run Python. It

can't run C++. It can't run Java. Right?

And the way that JavaScript got there

was actually by beating a lot of

alternatives. So way back in the day, we

had Macromedia Flash as a proprietary

plugin that Steve Jobs put to rest

eventually with the iPhone. Was he right

on that by the way? Was his absolutely

taste correct? Absolutely. we had Java

applets, right? So there was an idea

that the JVM Java was going to be that

universal language and the fact that

when I started going deep into

JavaScript, it was there was still a

little bit of a perception of like it's

like a toy. Why was that? Why was

because okay, I'm a mostly non-technical

person, but I I love you. I love

situations like this where like there

was a hundred contenders and one wins,

but it doesn't win because it had the

obvious traits of what you would think

would win, but there's this other thing

that actually proved to be a big

advantage. So, you know, we were just

talking about like midjourney before

this uh and we're like midjourney like

it's not like the product design. It's

not like somebody some designer sat down

then you'll open up Discord and there'll

be a hundred random channels and in it

there'll be strangers making images but

actually bad was better. Bad was good.

Yeah. Because you learned how to use it.

I've heard say worse is better. Yeah. Uh

not worse. I haven't seen worse better.

I've seen the Paul Lucite one where he's

like uh if you're great, you don't have

to be good. I think it's maybe similar,

but can you explain worse? Yeah. Worse

is better was a paradigm in the early

days of the internet of um specifically

that essay spoke about worse in the

sense of less powerful because sometimes

when you constrain a technology, you

make it a lot more predictable. And so

there were some advantages to like

markup languages that made them worse

but better and became the the successful

foundation of the internet. But there's

a broader point that Brendan Ike the

creator of JavaScript has pointed out

which is that sometimes the success of

technologies or startups can be best

understood through the lens of evolution

in natural selection and Darwinism

rather than like the obvious quote

unquote intelligent design. So there was

an article that he shared at one point

called what would Charles Darwin think

about clean slate architectures. Okay.

And so JavaScript was almost like a

piece of DNA that evolved and became

more sophisticated over time but started

out looking very simple small. It was a

piece of code that you would inline into

the markup. So we when you think about

markup in the sense of like my space

codes or like HTML it was like can we

bring HTML slightly more alive okay so

we need something that's very

minimalistic that we can put right there

inside the markup code and from there it

became more powerful more sophisticated

but most people when they looked at it

in the beginning they were like well it

can't be fast it can't be typed it can't

be correct it can't scale it can't have

a module system but all of these

observations that people were making

were not actually Paradoxically they

were not quite technical. They were like

well at that point as it exists at that

time it cannot do those things. So a lot

of the alpha that I created in my career

was by actually taking it seriously and

saying like well we can add this thing.

So very simple example it's a little

technical but JavaScript lacked classes.

It couldn't do object-oriented

programming in the conception that

people had with things like action

script or C++ or Java. But in the mood

tools team, we did figure out a way of

quote unquote faking it. We created a

function called class with an uppercase

C and when we presented it to developers

like well like so you added classes to

JavaScript. Well, yeah, we kind of added

them. And that actually was one of the

salient features that that stood out to

the Facebook team and and many other

teams in the Bay Area. And so by

evolving that thing and actually betting

on it, that became the asymmetry of of

my early career. And and again like the

experts at the time and this is why I

think there has been a shadow of doubt

cast on experts for many years now. The

experts I think we're familiar with this

because angel investments that are

successful had the same characteristics

of like gh look at how rough that

entrepreneur looks or like look at how

shitty the homepage looks and like you

have to be able to project out what it's

going to be in the future and now

JavaScript has eaten the world. Yeah.

One of the best blog posts I ever did

was I just went back to the way back

machine. I just said here's what the

first website of Airbnb looked like.

Here's what the first website of Uber

looked like, which actually is like very

important for entrepreneurs to look at.

You kind of know intellect. Like if I

asked you, you'd be like, "Yeah, I

probably started off rubbish." But

literally go look at it. Read it. Look

at the thing. Look at the pixels. Look

at the actual pixels because it does a

couple things. First, it you're

overthinking it. Whatever you're doing,

you're probably overthinking to start to

launch. Second, it shows how far you

really have to go to like iterate to get

make things better. And also like how

narrow of a wedge you take like the

Airbnb initial one is like there's a

design conference the hotels are booked

and expensive stay on sleep on another

designer's couch or or air bed and you

just take so much from those like

initial initial web pages and you're

right like once you hang around in

Silicon Valley it humbles you so that

the things that look like toys or the

things that start narrow or the things

that seem limited on six dimensions but

are really good at this one thing they

can't be underestimated and it does

raise the question of genius versus

accident and there's just so many good

stories about the creation of

JavaScript. One was the extreme time

constraint that Mark Andre put Brendan

Ike into the reason it's called

JavaScript is they needed to market it

as Java. They just added script. There's

no relation whatsoever between the two

things. And so the other one was I think

Brandon always says that it took him 10

days to conceive the language. And

that's primarily because of deadlines.

So we're like, okay, we have to ship

something that makes pages come alive.

For those that are not technical, the

way that I sometimes explain what we do

with running JavaScript on the server

and running it on the client is there's

this newspaper in Harry Potter, uh,

which is like a regular newspaper, but

when you open it, it comes alive.

Pictures move. Yeah. So think of getting

the newspaper as the server is giving

you the server rendered pre-rendered

artifact. So it comes with all the

letters, all the static images etc. But

then it's really cool that you can open

it and what we call it technically is it

becomes hydrated. It becomes alive and

more code can run on your side of the

equation and that can be a very enriched

experience. So that's the power of

JavaScript. That's a great analogy. It

can run at the production line. It could

be manufactured. It could be printed but

then it can be shipped to you and then

it can become alive again. And so in

those 10 days, Mark Andre wanted to

basically pitch that like one of the

initial names I think life script. It's

like and then they re JavaScript to

market it more to like the enterprise

traction that it' be akin to today like

we want to call things agents and

perhaps they're not agents or whatever

like so to use the evolution example

it's like the skin color blended in with

the trees. It's like JavaScript just

blend it in with the Java and that gave

it a revolutionary advantage versus

getting eaten because it stands out. But

the other interesting observation is

okay so you have 10 12 days you have to

ship something whatever and what is the

minimum surface that you can ship on top

of which evolution can be bootstrapped.

I think that's much better than trying

to aim for completeness of that initial

version. And what I ask myself when I

study the success of others is were they

really clever to think hm I have to

delete delete delete like I think you

were referencing Rick Rubin's reducing

thing I'm a reducer not a producer so I

think if you're truly brilliant I think

you'll find that you have to delete and

delete and delete and that's one path to

success and because you know what the

more complete picture would look like

but you can exercise that restraint or

you can just stumble upon it through

deadlines, right? Like you have the

classic YC, let's make you ship a

startup in 3 months. And so that is acts

as a forcing function for the reduction

of the surface. And I think there's

something about human nature or perhaps

the pressure that people put themselves

under, which is that I have to add more.

I have to make that homepage. I have to

add more images. I have to add more

gradients, whatever. But then through

the exercise that you talked about, you

can go back and see well actually things

looked pretty simple and they focus a

lot on the content and the on the

essentials. So you you're doing mood

tools, you you go out there to

Switzerland. How do you get to Verscell

and what's the like insight you have to

start this company that has become this

juggernaut, right? Like I think I've

DM'd you like every year for three years

being like, "Hey, can I invest in this

thing?" Cuz it's such a juggernaut that

like so obvious to me that when you have

this sort of developer love Yeah. Yeah,

you really can't help but win and you

were like on the you were on the right

waves that uh to be on for the last few

years. The pattern throughout my career

has been iteration velocity is the most

important thing to optimize for. So my

previous startup which I sold to

WordPress anytime I would start a

project before starting the project I

would start on the mechanism to ensure I

was CTO of that startup. I start on the

mechanism to ensure that my colleagues,

my engineers, my everyone in the company

could ship really fast. My obsession

became how quickly can you go from idea

to sharable artifact from idea to

URL. And today it's seems obvious that

Vero is so successful and that you can

prompt and get a link and you can go

from prompt to

application. But I didn't have AI at the

time. What I had was what I can do is I

can streamline the deployment pipeline

of ideas. Sorry, just so I can summarize

what you said. You said most important

principle for me when I work on a

project is that we're going to be able

to ship fast and iterate fast. In order

to ship fast and iterate fast, we need

like our our pit crew, you know, if

we're a Formula 1 car, we need our pit

crew to not take 6 hours to change the

tires or to get us refuelled to get back

on the road to go for the next lap. So

what you were saying is you would focus

more than the average bear on that that

pit stop between idea and actually

because exist. So I had to like I had

the insight that instead of just

assuming that the world that maybe it

takes hours to ship or you can ship once

a week. I was like no let's look at the

web. The web is so fluid because of all

of the reasons that we just outlined.

It's just is so alive. Why can't we be

shipping a 100 times a day? Why can't we

try lots of different things? I I

actually just interviewed recently for

off-site the the founder of Door Dash

and he was talking about how Door Dash

started out with one HTML page and six

PDFs of the restaurants that they were

going to deliver for and they just

brought the idea online as soon as

possible. So to some people it becomes

obvious that the most important thing is

to get the idea out into the world as a

URL and see if it sticks. So I wanted to

create a platform where that was the

norm and that was sort of the inception

the idea for Verscell and because before

Versel I was at WordPress I noticed

WordPress as a company had become quite

good at deploying one app WordPress.com

but if you were work working for the

company and you had a new idea you were

kind of getting stuck you had to go to

the IT team and be like hey please can

you set up a server for me can you give

me an area here where I can come up with

a new application or a new idea idea and

so Verscell started out as can we reduce

that friction from idea to live to

seconds. In fact, it became such an

obsession it started measuring each

millisecond of like you have an idea,

you write it down in JavaScript or HTML

or whatever, you press deploy, how

quickly can we get it online. It was

that it was literally I love the Formula

1 metaphor because it was it's about

shaving down the seconds that were

stopping the scar. And this car is not

just one app or one idea or one person.

It's literally how the entire business

works. This is why Versa has been so

successful with the largest companies in

the world like investment banks and also

it powers most of the YC startups that

are creating new ideas in the manner

that I just described which is like hey

I need to try something out and I need

to hit demo day what is the quickest way

to deploy it's so it sounds like this

might be one of those startups where you

didn't need to pivot a ton. It sounds

like you maybe had the correct idea like

you knew the pain, you knew the problem

correctly and it sounds like you had a

right idea of the solution then you

obviously made it better but is that

true? Yes and no. So when you achieve

some level of success people start

studying your success a lot and people

ask me a lot like did you pivot did you

not pivot what what can be for the

chicken or the egg and the reason that

they ask me this is we have an

extraordinarily successful open source

project that Verscell created called

Nex.js JS NexJS powers a lot of the

modern internet like you talked about

Midjourney. Midjourney is built with

Nex.js. And by the way, you make money

off of that. I didn't understand. It's

just you open source that widely

adopted. Does Verscell benefit in it in

any way? Really? Yes. Because it's in

the service of okay, how can we get that

Formula 1 car going? Okay. Start with

XJS. You're going to cut down on the

whole assembly of the car. Okay. The

alternative to next is that you have to

procure the the chassis and the wheel

and the engine. Like this was actually

what was happening to engineers when I

started the company. I was like, "Okay,

so how do you start a new idea?" Oh,

well, I go to Home Depot and I shop for

like 200 different kinds of wheels and I

grab the wheel and I go to this thing

and and then I assemble the Formula 1

car and then maybe I get started running

it and then maybe I see if I have

product market fit. So you created

Nex.js and I I believe the story is you

were trying to build something and to

use React you're like, "Oh [ __ ] I got

to like go get the engine and the test.

I got to go get all these pieces. All

right, I'm just going to build this kind

of template for myself building the

website for the company. Kind of like

the experience of Door Dash. Like I had

to build zite.co, our domain name at the

time. It was like, okay, to get started

with React, I have to do like get a PhD.

So to your point about was the idea

correct? This idea is so powerful that

you cut down the time for humanity to go

from some hypothesis to a production

grade deployment and going down from

weeks of setup to seconds. It seems

obvious. What was not obvious and felt

like endless pivots was narrowing down

the scope. The reduction that you just

talked about. We started out with like,

oh, you can deploy anything. You can

deploy Java. It's so contradictory even

to my Genesis story, right? Like you can

deploy Haskell, you can deploy PHP, you

can and then we realize, wait, why are

we doing all this? Clearly, we we

believe that the modern web will be

we believe that there's an there's alpha

in the market and the world of

democratizing this idea of using both

JavaScript as your sort of like backend

and front end language which massively

simplifies software development. So I

will say we didn't pivot in the sense of

going into a different space but we

simplified the offering way way way

significantly.

you have this interesting seat where you

get to see what a bunch of people are

building on your platform or using Vzero

or whatever and then you also just like

you're on the edge I would say of like

tinker hacker technical person who kind

of sees what's possible but you only

have so many hours in the day. So you

tweeted out this thing that said free AI

ideas. Yeah. And it's like if Gordon

Ramsay opened up a lemonade stand. It's

like wow. Like, you know, if Steve Jobs

was like, "Hey, free product lessons for

toddlers." I'd be like, like, "Get my

daughter in that class." Right? So, when

you say, "Free AI ideas, I want to show

up." So, can we run through some of your

AI ideas? Yeah. And I'll give you a

little bit of background, right? So,

I've always been obsessed with

democratizing the web for everyone. So,

any anyone with an idea has to be able

to create. And that's why we created

VZero because VZ is like chat but for

creating web applications. Instead of

giving you text, it gives you a fully

working web application. You say, "I

want to make a make me an app or a site.

Maybe the next Door Dash." You can

literally type that in. It'll it'll make

one. Yeah. And the difference I would

say there's many players that are trying

to build this. But one of the things

that I'm really excited about is that

it's banking on the lessons of the last

10 years of building the world's most

popular framework for

JavaScript and building the production

grade infrastructure to support it.

Right? Like I'll name a cool brand that

uses Verscell, Ramp, Supreme.com,

uh, Brex. In fact, we we have so many

successful companies in every market

segment that you could imagine. But all

of those companies needed expert

engineers, right? Like in order to build

like a really cool website like uh drink

ag.com, you need to learn Next.js. Now

the magic of our cell is that we cut

down the learning from like I needed to

know all of the foundations of computer

science and all of the foundations of

AWS and how to deploy software. We

brought it down to like take a react

course and use XJS. But with AI, we can

cut that down even further. It just

doesn't speak English and we will steer

the model towards what we think are

going to be the world's most successful

outcomes. We care deeply about

performance. When e-commerce websites

deploy on Versell, they vastly out

compete everything else. So, we recently

heard about a public company that sells

billions of dollars worth of consumer

electronics a year that improved their

conversion rate by 30% on some markets

to 90% on some other markets. Why?

Because the website is faster. So

imagine if you could go to an agent and

say, "I want to create the next big

competitor, apple.com. We're going to

make it faster, more accessible,

beautifully designed, and deployed on

this enterprise grade infrastructure."

You get those out of the box. You get

those for free. Out of the box. So, and

it's true to the spirit of the company

of like how can we get that Formula 1

car running as soon as possible. So,

it's opening up creation and deployment

to basically every human on the planet.

Okay. But you were saying that's context

for the AI ideas because what because of

two things. One is that with V0ero any

idea that I have I can bring it to

reality. But then there is a meta. So

we're being very successful with Vzero

because we created AI for web engineers

or AI for people that are interested in

shipping to the web. There's going to be

so many other verticals that are going

to be similarly disrupted. And it seems

really obvious to me because I'm on the,

you know, to your point, I'm behind the

scenes of building things like VZero,

but I think there's going to be, for

example, why don't we have a Vzero for

creating video games, a studio that

combines the best of both worlds of

software 1.0 techniques and software 2.0

techniques. And I don't know if you're

familiar with that framework, but

explain. So Andrew Karpathy, who's the

lead of AI at Tesla and later OpenAI,

came up with this incredible essay that

I think is canon now. Like everybody

must read this because it's so ahead of

its time of he called it software

2.0. And he says, look, software 1.0 was

what I grew up with programming

languages, data structures,

u algorithms. You learn how to make

things more efficient by writing better

for loops and recursion and you're in

control of everything and everything is

very deterministic and

predictable. Software 2.0 we're still

using foundations of computer science

but we're making the process a lot more

stochastic probabilistic. Instead of

writing every circuitry of the

programming language, we're relying on

training models with data. And the

output of what those models do might

resemble what a program might do on its

own. Like a 1.0 program might do on its

own. So the best example would be you

can use Chad GPT40 with image generation

to produce like incredible diagrams and

there's ways of generating those

diagrams with traditional software

engineering. But this AI is almost like

this miracle general purpose program

that can do anything based on what it's

been trained on. So let's call training

and neuronet networks and AI software

2.0. And it has all of these magical

emergent properties that were not

thought through by the engineers. The

engineers didn't have to go and write

every if else branch that is under the

hood and think about every corner case.

And that's why it's so exciting to

people because every time a new model

comes out, we're all like we call it

discovering the latent space. We're all

trying to figure out what is even

possible because even the creators of

the models don't know what's possible,

which is in stark contrast to software

1.0. Software 1.0 is like there's a PM

giving you tickets. I know exactly what

this can do. I know exactly what it

can't do. I know if you push this

button, you're going to get this exact

result. I know if you push that button,

you're going to get that exact result.

The new model, you're saying even the

makers of it are like, I'm not sure

exactly what it could do, how well it

could do. You push this button, you're

going to get something. Yes, it could be

phenomenal. It could be, you know, a

little bit unpredictable in some ways.

But my what I offer is that the

successful AI products of the future are

going to be an intersection of these two

worlds. You're the software 1.0 parts of

the product are still going to be highly

valuable. If not, Vzero would just be

purely an autonomous AI, but think about

it. It's still writing NexJS code. Is it

still using UIs that make it friendly

for people? It's it still has a

community of te of of templates that you

can click with one click deploy and it's

still banking on the 10 years of

investment of versell infrastructure and

our partner infrastructure like

superbase and neon and the databases

that we bring in. So I think people are

going to be able to do this in many

other verticals. So video games is an

obvious one to me because you will want

parts of the game engine to be just like

Unreal Engine is, right? Like you'll

want something like a Nex.js but for

video games that is under the hood. But

then you'll want to open up video game

creation to as many people as possible.

like start with a prompt and you're

going to be like, I want to create

something that is like Pokémon Red uh

but the art should resemble this and it

should be in threedimensional space and

it has 10 missions. So you start

describing with English what you

actually want. So is this possible

today? Like where does the tech the tech

could do this today? Oh yes. In fact,

I'm like why has someone done this

please? Like where are you all at? Uh

and so I'll tell you some of the things

that we've done to help facilitate this

world.

So using the game engine metaphor, you

can think of V 0ero as one video game

that Verscell built and you can think of

Verscell as a game engine. And so

there's going to be way many many other

video games that people are going to

create. So if you have an idea for an AI

agent, you can deploy it on the Verscell

platform. So you can you can do Vzero

for doctors, you can do Vzero for video

games, you can do V 0ero for lawyers. So

any vertical that you can imagine we

even templatized. So we've open sourced

a lot of what makes Vzero so great so

that entrepreneurs can come in and say

like look I see an opportunity for AI to

disrupt this space. Let's take the video

game example real quick. I think you

made did you make a Doom thing or did

you do you support Doom or was that an

AI generated Doom? No. So that was uh

the one you're talking about is my Doom

capture thing.

So, for context, I'm a u I hate capture

first of all. Like capture is a thing

where you go to a website and it tells

you, "Please tell me how many feel

stupid cuz you're like a bike." That's

right. It's the bike or select the

staircases. Yeah. Right. So, I created

one which was instead of you select

staircases or stop lights, you have to

kill three enemies in Doom.

And funny enough, the idea came over the

uh Christmas break and what I did is I

went to Vzero and I said, I want to

create a capture that looks exactly like

Google capture cuz it needs to look

familiar for people for the joke to it

pops up. Yeah. Yes. And then I basically

took advantage of the fact that Doom has

been open sourced. So what I did is, and

this is kind of like a maybe a little

bit more of advanced engineering here,

but like I took a web assembly version

of Doom that can run inside the browser,

and I prompted my way to basically spawn

the user in a very specific level. And

then this actually involved hacking the

C codebase of of the of the game. And

then basically set it up so that it was

a constrained version of the video game.

So you kill three players and you pass

the capture. So it's almost like

creative engineering you can call it. Uh

and this is something I think is also

going to be big in in in in the world.

You could argue that someone could

create an entire platform for just

creative coding. AI for creative coding

where like the next generation of

artists are going to be playing in this

dynamic medium. They're going to be

offering up things that are highly

interactive. So you could create the V 0

for interactive art. Um, so it's kind of

meta, right? But like I started with

Vzero and I created this thing and it

went viral and like there's like three

or four like news articles written about

it, but it literally took a couple hours

of prompting. Like myself, I've been an

engineer for like, you know, a couple

decades now and I no longer write code.

I only prompt. The last one on this

video game thing, cuz it kind of blows

my mind that that's possible. I I would

have assumed it's not possible yet. is

can it only make very simple Flappy Bird

style games or can it make like can you

build a Fortnite? Can it make Fortnite?

You know, where are we at today of like

what's actually possible? Yeah. So,

there's two levels to this. If you go to

Vzero today, you could prompt and create

a one-off video game. But the next level

is that I think there's going to be

entrepreneurs who are going to create

the next big AI platforms and deploy

them to Versell. And so, it depends on

where you want to play. If you just want

to create something that looks like

Fortnite, you could do that today. You

could just prompt like it's possible.

Really? Yeah. I mean, I think you'll

probably go down a journey similar to

what JavaScript went through where you

you're going to be able to get something

basic going and it might take you the

next 10 years to perfect it to the level

of what Fortnite is today. But this is

the beauty of things like Vzero like

anybody can cook. You can start, you can

get it out there kind of like Door Dash

was six PDFs and a website. You can get

the

V0ero of Fortnite out there into the

world. But I think there's also going to

be ambitious people that maybe have

skills that are more on the game engine

side kind of like I created Nex.js and

can say look there's an opportunity to

create a framework that works really

well with LLMs that enables broad

massive scale game creation. And the

things that you can facilitate in that

world are for example for a game to be

successful it needs really high quality

textures. and it's really cool art. So

you can start creating kind of like a

platform that facilitates bringing the

art in. So that's why I mentioned with

you will need software 1.0 skills just

to create kind of like the platform and

and create the connective tissue that

facilitates this highly opinionated

workflow because creating video games,

you know, obviously there's a lot that

is like art and like emergent. the the

game creator has to come in with an

idea. But there's a lot of things that

are highly predictable like there is

there's kinds of games. There is like

the 2D platformer. What does a 2D

platformer need? Well, all of the

runtime infrastructure, all of the

things that make a game work already

exist on the internet. Uh and the AI is

perfectly capable of sort of

orchestrating it. So what a game a

wouldbe game creator would need is a

very easy way of like generating the the

game assets. And so what I would do if I

was an entrepreneur doing this is like I

would connect it to other image

generation

models so that when you come to this

game creation studio I'm kind of like

guiding you into like here's all the

things that you're going to need. Here's

all the integrations. Sound creation is

another good example. 11 Labs allows you

to create sounds with LLMs. In fact,

I've vi coded a few things that required

sound and instead of like googling for

like open source sound effects or

whatever, I just went to 11 Labs and I

prompted for that. So, and I can do that

because I know everything that kind of

exists in the AI world. I know that 11

Labs creative engineering. Exactly. But

imagine a wouldbe game creator that

doesn't know that. So, they just want to

go to a platform that has already

builtin sound creation with AI. And so

behind the scenes, you can sort of like

plug this in. So maybe to summarize, I

think there's all of these permutations

of technologies that already exist that

are making new platforms possible. And I

think entrepreneurs don't need to like

go and train foundation models. They

just need to go in and put the pieces

together into opinionated workflows. The

things that are becoming obvious to

people

today are, you know, AI for legal, AI

for developers, and I think those are

kind of like the zero to one is what

feels very immediate, what feels very

emergent. I sometimes call it unbundling

Chad Gubd. When Chad GBD came out,

people were like, hm, I can ask it for a

a draft of a NDA. And so people said you

know you I can take that slice of an

idea and I can turn it into a legal

platform. What we realized was like hm

you can go and ask it for web UI. Chip

was quite good at outputting you know

react HTML next.js and so we went and

said oh this can be vzero this can be a

whole platform for web development. And

so I what I challenge people to think

about is that what are those like

clusters of queries that people are

going to chat GBT4 that can become

entire platforms. And I'm sure there are

a lot of people that are going to these

things and saying like I want to create

a video game. But this is just one of

the many ideas that I shared on that

thread. Right. So let's go back to this

type form idea. So this seems like a

super simple one which I like cuz like

you don't need to build like world

changing blah blah blah just to be able

just to be able to do this. Yeah. Yeah.

So that one arose from the fact that if

you look at why Typeform has been so

successful, it's an interface

innovation. It gives you one question at

a time. It feels friendly for the I mean

I hate respond to surveys, but the most

paddable that you can make it for me is

if you give me one multiple choice

versus like boom, oh, I'm going to have

to answer this whole long page. Yeah,

here's an IRS form. Please fill it out.

In fact, IRS would probably have way

higher completion rates and people

paying taxes on time if like they they

create a better UI essentially. Have you

ever used Turboax? By the way, Turboax

is actually a phenomenal experience.

Mhm. It's type form. It's one question

at a time. They don't ask you things

that you don't know the answers to,

which is the problem with taxes. So

smart. They don't like what do you owe?

No, they just And this is one of the

golden rules of on boarding, right?

Forget about forms on boarding. Like

give me one thing to do. Remove all the

distractions. Remove all the links that

might take me out of the flow. I I give

people this little hack sometimes like

if you're in a flow where you want

people to complete a task, why are you

making the logo clickable and why are

there like six footer links taking me to

like the [ __ ] founding story of the

company, right? Why distract the person?

So I type form kudos like they they

nailed that. But I think there might be

an opportunity on two levels. One is I I

keep using this formula of if I need to

create a form and very quickly send it

to you, I could have the be zero for

form creation where I prompt my way to

tune the form. Yeah, because it could

even come up with the questions for you.

Exactly. Like, hey, I'm coming up with a

uh I'm trying to get uh I'm asking my

friends what dates work for the bachelor

party. Send a quick survey out to my

friends. Make it fun. I'm sure someone

will go to Vzero, listen to this, and

start creating the AI form creator,

right? I think it's a really good idea.

And by the way, I think there's a add-on

to this. So, I had a similar idea once,

but uh I was thinking we own this

business called somewhere.com. Great

domain name. Yeah, we paid a great price

for this domain name. I jury's out on

that one, but you know, you find talent

in LAM or South Africa or you like your

story, right? There's talent is

everywhere. Opportunity is not always

everywhere. And so when the website, the

way it works today is you land and you

click like, okay, I want to start

hiring. And then there's a long form and

it's all there. It's a bad experience.

It's like your name, what you're hiring

for, your budget, you know, do you need

a full-time, parttime, whatever. And

then it says, great, now book a call.

And then you're going to talk to the

sales guy. And I'm like, you know, with

AI, what this should really do is it

should you should land and be like, hey,

what are you hiring for? What do you

need? And you say, what you what I need

a designer. Cool. So, you know, cool. We

got plenty of designers. We actually

just hired designers for X company, XYZ

company. Tell me, do are you looking for

a graphic designer or blah blah? Yeah.

What are they going to do? And you kind

of just quickly tell it. It says, you

know, we recently placed somebody like

this res candidate profile pulled from

our system. Yeah. And just say, you

know, would this be the type of person

that, you know, would fit the type of

thing you're looking for? They cost this

much. That's, you know, pretty

affordable to be able to hire somebody

of this level of talent. And you're

like, yeah, yeah, that would be great.

More like that. It's like, awesome.

What's your email? I'll send it to you.

Like, it's a salesperson. It's not a

form. And it's a salesperson that does

what all sales people do. They ask

questions. They follow. They they note

what you say. They respond

intelligently. They follow up where they

need. They disqualify you if you're not

a good fit. And if you are a fit,

they're basically giving you bits of

proof and promise along the way to get

you to say, "Yes, I can't believe this

doesn't exist." It's a more dynamic

interface. Right. So, you said something

really interesting, which is I think

when people have ideas, it's like

they're looking, they're staring into

like a vector space. They know that

there's something there that they want

to do. And this is for everything. Like

you may have an idea for like a survey

that you want to send to your customers.

And you're like, "Yeah, I know that it's

mostly about getting product feedback

and how happy they are and what they do

for work." But you might be forgetting

that there's a very important question

that people that do these surveys

typically ask and you just don't know

about it. This is why an AI first type

form would make so much sense because

when you prompt it, I want this form for

this thing, it'll know things that you

don't, right? And and this even goes

back to and it'll, by the way, summarize

all the results for you at the end

because it'll be like, you know, that's

otherwise a full manual step I have to

do. Great, we got 300 responses. All

right, I got to go through those. And

this is why AI is going to disrupt

everything because what you just talked

about like okay I can also bring AI to

the results process. And my other point

was you can even bring AI to the

submission process because instead of

being rigid and making you select

between 20 things and then you press

other and whatever there might be

innovations also in the maybe it's like

purely conversational maybe it's hybrid

conversational and what we call

generative UI which is that on the fly.

Exactly. On the fly, it chooses what is

the right format to answer this question

and it might learn another thing that

humans do poorly is where did you hear

from us and we write down [ __ ] like

AOL and Google and you're like wait does

anyone use this anymore that should also

you should also give it to the AI to

choose okay this customer is coming from

Argentina so in Argentina no one uses

you know they use them on their link

that's Yeah, you know from GI headers,

but this is an A++++ idea. There were a

lot of people nitpicking my idea in the

in the thread which is like this is a

freaking tweet storm like I'm not like

like describing the freaking entire

company, right? And they were saying no

but UI is still better because so it's

like sure but again it doesn't mean that

the UI is as rigid as it is today and

that the eight choices of check boxes

are rigid as well. And in um I remember

there was this company called Wufu in YC

batch at one point. They had created a

beautiful form builder and the form

builder was all drag and drop and you

had to select the type of response all

that stuff is going to go away. In fact,

I would give you as a rule of thumb that

if drag and drop is involved as a

primary

uh interaction mechanism is probably

ripe for disruption because no one wants

to actually drag and drop stuff. You

just want to say like this is my idea

just build it. Right. Right. That yeah

that's like a tell. It's like a poker

tell. Drag and drop is like the maybe to

use the software 1.0 and 2.0 metaphor.

Drag and drop was was making 1.0 more

paddleable and accessible to more

people. Visual coding, visual

programming was that as well. How can we

make 1.0 more accessible? Well, we

invented dragging stuff and showing it

in two dimensional space. Um, let's do

some more. So, you had one that was

called AI camera. What's the AI camera

idea? This was back to like embrace the

rapper. Embrace the fact that models are

[ __ ] phenomenal and there's a few

hyper online people like me that know

all of them or try to know all of them

of like deep grand V3 just landed on

high pays and whatever. Like you're

paying attention to that level of of

depth. Yes. But the average consumer

just wants to take awesome photos. Yeah.

And so I've been, this one came up

because we were at a very big meeting

for a bank that wanted to use Verscell

in New York and the champion on the bank

side was like, "Let's take a photo with

a beautiful like New York backdrop,

whatever." And it was so awkward that we

tried it we tried to take the photo 20

times because it's hard to take a photo

with like where is the sun and the

backlight? We want New York to be

visible, but we want our faces to be

visible and like someone blinks during

the photo. And so, I mean, if there's

men involved in a photo, it's a terrible

photo. Yes, this is just a general rule.

Taking it, standing in it, posing in it,

we don't know how to do any of it. So,

think of the input from the shutter.

Think of the click of the camera, and

this is a software camera, like an

camera app, as the input into the prompt

rather than the output. If you're

extremely good at taking photos, it

could just be the output. Or maybe it's

lightly tuned and filtered and whatever

and it becomes the output. But maybe

just embrace the fact that it's an idea

to give the AI, right? And the AI will

know that if that photo was taken in

that place, the goal is to obviously

show people smiling. No one should be

blinking. The backdrop needs to look

amazing. And you know maybe actually

gives you five permutations

of we know what good looks like. We know

the shades, the lighting, the maybe it

removes objects for you. And so I also

mentioned that there is software 1.0

techniques and software 2.0 techniques

to embed into everything. You shouldn't

believe that you need the perfect model

that'll make the photo perfect either.

You can give people a workflow. So, what

I had imagined at the time was like it's

going to look like Instagram because I

love how Instagram you took the photo

and then filter picker and then it's

called like San Ramon filter and

whatever like Oakland and like hipster

whatever. So imagine it's giving you

permutations but also maybe it gives you

the tool to like select something. Maybe

already I'm just purely brainstorming

now by the way like you had me like full

on restoring like there's a model that

is really good for like that Apple uses

for like removing objects on the scene.

So maybe by the time it gives you the

produce photos all of the objects are

already movable. So you get cuz what

happens a lot of the time is someone

blinks but also there's an object that

you don't want on the scene like your

your baby was like crawling in there or

your dog pooped and like you want to

take the best one. Argentina what's

what's the name of that beautiful

waterfall like the craziest the

waterfall Iazu falls Iguazu Falls. Take

out the tourist. I go there with my my

fiance and we we take this photo under

the waterfall. we're kissing is somebody

takes a photo and there's this dude in

the like kind of the ang you know in the

background there and he's got his shirt

off and he's taking like a photo for the

boys and it's like ruined this photo and

my wife is like I want to frame it cuz I

think it's so funny and she's like been

trying to find a photo shopper to like

get rid of this thing and you're right

like that would be like her dream would

be the magic magic camera that says let

me guess you want this guy out of here

and we have the model that is good at

taking you know detection and then good

at removal.

automatically. Yeah. And uh this is all

possible today. You know, your job will

mostly be to combine models, create

pipelines of models, prompting even,

right? Do you think that Apple will just

make this kind of default in the camera?

I mean, Apple could have shipped

Instagram, Apple could have shipped so

many things like Apple could also ship

that the zoom annoying pop over of

facial effects, whatever goes away and

they haven't is still broken like when

the balloons come up. So, I know I'm I'm

in a post worrying about what Apple does

world. I'm actually more worried about

their constraints on developer freedom

on how they tax you and only let you run

one browser engine. That's kind of my

mental model. Like Apple is like in the

IBM phase of like let's preserve what we

have at all cost and litigate. Like

they're almost becoming like Oracle of

our generation purely. It's all about

this. is like hopefully, you know, I'm

saying this so that the company becomes

better in the interest of like open

public feedback. Tim Sweeney from um

Unreal from Epic Games just had a

similar comment on the Lexman podcast. I

think there needs to be a world where

developers can just ship. That's the

main idea of Versel and like Apple has

sort of been constraining that. So I'll

tell you like there's so many cameras

that you can ship to the phone that

people love, right? So there is holiday

camera I think it's called and it's

pronounced. Um there is obviously

Instagram is a camera, right? So Savage

is a camera. So yeah and and also but

it's also time like you know these

things come in these waves about every

seven 8 10 years the window reopens on

you know the these kind of like uh

things. If you just look at Instagram

and Snapchat when they came out, it was

sort of like this 8-year period after

Facebook came out and like there was

enough new stuff, new either new social

norms like people taking pictures

everywhere, new technology like

smartphones that all of a sudden there

was like an opportunity for those. It's

now been another 10 years post Snapchat

and Instagram for somebody to build a

better camera. And there's a wedge

through utility. Like you can build a

better camera, you can build a better

like oh just import your photos, start

editing like the the exact approach like

I mean who knows how this is going to

happen but it has to happen. It has to

happen that like I can take great photos

even if I don't if I didn't capture

everything perfectly like the AI is

already there like just make it happen

people. Yeah, you could even actually

just do the camera roll part, right?

Because you know Google photos and all

these they try to do this like hey we

made a memory and like you know like my

my mom loves these. It's like oh I

forgot about that. It's stitched

together and it put corny music on top.

There's no cool factor to them. Those

are all pretty totally bad, but it's

your photos and your memory, so it's

still good enough. Imagine if you had

taste and you did it. Like imagine if

Kevin and you you realize, oh, there's a

gold mine on people's camera rolls that

I could just be generating. I could just

be mining that and creating like

actually good content. Yeah, there's so

many thoughts that come to mind. One is

look, brilliant things happen when

people focus and obsess over a problem

domain. So the operating system makers

have so many iris in the fire and there

has to be someone that just loves to

take great photos and who wants to

democratize that with everybody else,

right? So that's kind of how I think

about it and there's so many angles.

There is the memory video creation,

there is the photo, there is some

aspects of sharability of the photos. So

who knows? I mean like I think my

prediction is more so around like

something amazing is going to happen in

this space more than like what is the

specific thing. All right, I want to do

a couple of your other ideas. Oh, this

one was clever. Absurdly smart

autocomplete. Like I didn't know when

you said that I was like autocomplete,

who cares? And then I saw your kind of

like brief description. I was like,

that's actually brilliant. Can you

explain what this idea is? Yeah, I think

when it started to become obvious that

LLMs were going to transform software

engineering, it was when we started

typing code into a code editor and it

just suggested stuff based on the whole

project, the whole sort of corpus of

code that has existed in in humanity.

The next wrinkle was that things get

better the richer the context.

So, if you only give the LLM one line of

code and nothing else, it'll still

produce something useful and it'll blow

people's minds. And I think we're in the

time of humanity when like things blow

our minds for like a week and then we

get immediately bored and used to it.

Um, but the next wrinkle was what if you

put the content of your clipboard into

the into the prompt because developers

typically are like what they just saw

they put into their clipboard because

they intend to search for it or make a

mutation. So what's in the clipboard is

likely to be kind of what's in your

mind. Could help. Yeah. Right. And so

auto completions get better and then

they get better with more context and I

get smarter models and and with search

because

now when I am in a different file, I'm

likely to be writing code that is

related to the dependency of this other

file. So long story short, things get

better with better context. And autocomp

completion is sort of the first

manifestation of how LLMs and AIS can

enhance your cognitive ability. Yeah. I

mean it's just in time expertise. Yes.

Right. Like in line right while I'm

writing it. Yes. Give me the perfect

thing right there without me having to

leave go ask think think of a question.

Just give me a suggestion right there.

So now what's the that worked in code

you're saying what about the rest? Yeah.

Exactly. And and I get frustrated with

like how bad spellch checking is. So if

you look at, you know, Mac OS spell

checker has gotten better over the

years, but it just doesn't know the

things that you literally saw 10 seconds

ago. Like someone tells you, "Hey, can

you can you send me the B 0?"

Someone says in Slack and then you go to

an email and you start writing Vzero and

and Apple goes I think you meant via

like it comes up with a new word. It's

like no no I literally just was talking

about this. How could I possibly want to

not write that down? And so that's kind

of where the inspiration came for it and

I think there's a lot of ways to go

about this. like one is like you enhance

the operating system is not a is a

non-trivial task but I think this

general idea applies to so many things

where we forget that the LLMs are here

the context is not evenly distributed

meaning if you just put the right things

into the prompt magic will happen

without changing the actual sort of

engine of intelligence and so that

example you gave of like the V01 sounds

minor like oh who cares you it's you

just push bat space twice and just fix

it but what you're saying is if the AI

knows what I'm talking about what I'm

thinking about what I'm working on what

we're doing then in the same way that in

code it auto suggests the right code

because it knows about my whole all the

multiple files and the projects it'll do

the same when I write that email it

won't just give me the generic thing it

knows how I talk and it knows what we

were talking about and it knows what the

plan was that I'm trying to relate to

this guy yeah it's like the Black mirror

the entire history of you. Is that the

one where the camera is like it's like

your external memory basically? Yeah.

The other thing that's really

interesting is that this systems are all

about next token prediction, right? And

right now we're not fully exploiting

that because we're not putting in the

sequence of everything we're doing and

everything we're thinking about. Every

time you go from app to app that context

is getting lost and we typically

actually tend to work sequentially. What

happens is I read an email that is about

a problem and then I go to another app

and I'm likely going to discuss that

problem or I'm going to try to look for

the person that is an expert in that

problem. So the other way to go about

this is like you know how can you ingest

this series of apps and integrations and

systems that people use to do their work

and you connect the dots. There's one

more that you have here. You said uh

more granular v0ero. So this is almost

like hey come disrupt us. Yeah it's is

what I talked about with the game engine

right like just like chat GPD got broken

down into like individual things. We

have a big effort at Verscell to sort of

like we want to be the platform of

platforms. We want the next Shopify to

be born on Versell. And what I

anticipate will happen is that if an

entrepreneur says, I want to make it

easy for people to sell online, they're

probably just like we did with the type

form exercise, they're probably going to

start with AI. They're going to they're

not going to build the same Shopify that

exists today. They're going to create

something that starts with intelligence.

It starts with maybe importing a photo

of the product that you want to sell.

Maybe it starts with a prompt of what

you want your store to be. Maybe it's so

smart that like if it's a physical store

that already exists, it knows everything

about it. Just like one button, create

the store and it ingests all the

products and sues and categories and

whatever. So similar to the game engine

thought experiment that we went through

like that would be a more granular

vzero. It's like okay biz can create

anything but and the reason that this

would work out is that it's the same

reason that Shopify worked out like

there's things that are very general

like AWS like Verscell you know Verscell

is sort of like a AWS on steroids in a

way like we're making it so easy for

people but it's still a broad platform

on top of which any idea can be deployed

and so I really believe that AI will

transform everything it'll transform

website building it will transform

e-commerce it will transform form

building So, a lot of the exercises that

I do is that look, there's going to be

Vzero for legal. Uh, our our general

counsel uses a tool called

GC.AI. GC.AI is essentially Vzero for

lawyers and it was built on the Versell

platform and and the other wrinkle and

it's used to what build their website

only or this is for drafting contracts.

So like you can prompt your way to you

know saying like I need this contract

between these two parties or I need to

review a contract and I need to import

documents. And so that's kind of what I

mean by the more granular visitor is

more like a theme that a specific idea.

One of the other things I wanted to ask

you about something I brought for you. I

thought this was incredible. This is a

piece of uh you know internet internet

history here. So explain what I just

handed you and the the backstory of

this. Thanks for printing this out

because I use this example. so much as

like the magic of Silicon Valley. I was

I ended up at this party, you know, the

classic like could have been an office

warming party, something along these

lines or like meetup and people were,

you know, having conversations, passing

out drinks and he met this gentleman

named Brian

Armstrong and he did something that I

find myself doing a lot is I walk up to

people not with networking agendas or

random ideas. I walk up to people with

content. I want to show them something.

Okay. I want to show them an app. I walk

up to people. Strangers, you mean or

what are you talking about? Well, people

in the concept of like networking, I

might have been whatever, but I could do

it with an Uber driver. Like I I have no

limits. Uh I I take no prisoners. So, he

walked up to me and he's like, "Here's a

I'm working on

Coinbase. It's uh it's like a bank for

digital currency and I'm building an

app." and he shows me the app and then

he goes, "If you install the app, I'll

send you a Bitcoin." Just think about

how crazy that is. Like, if you install

an app, like f first of all, twist my

arm. I love trying out new things,

right? And I loved Bitcoin at that time.

I'll give you $100,000 or whatever. The

date the date is on this email. What

year was this uh that we're talking

about? So, November 9th, 2012.

So, it's the magic of the Bay Area

because you can just walk up on both

sides. You can just walk up to people

and show them things. You can see their

reactions. You can get their feedback,

etc., etc. And on my side, and there's

some people on the street that will show

you some things you didn't ask for, too.

That's another part of San Francisco.

Okay. Yeah, for sure. Uh, it comes with

a lot of diversity. And uh but on my

side, you know, it's like well, you can

be the on the receiving end of new

ideas, new opportunities, new like you

can invest like if I had been an

investor at the time, I was like, hey,

this Brian guys is pretty smart and he's

hustling hard and digital currency.

Might as well give it a shot, right? So

yeah, thanks for So he sent you this

email. He sent you the Bitcoin. The

thing is that it says worth

$1081 for the app installed. Now that's

$103,000 as of this morning. Yeah. And

then I actually ended up following

Coinbase for many years. At the time I

think I was poor or I had just began I I

can't remember exactly when I sold my

company, but I couldn't angel invest

most likely at this time. But that was

the other thing that I started doing

when I sold my my first company, right?

Like I put it all back into the game,

which is kind of crazy. In fact, I

talked to this guy who I really

respected in the JavaScript community

and and he was like he was also starting

to do angel investments and he goes,

"Well, the way that I treat bit Bitcoin

is like an angel investment. I put in a

$20,000 check into Bitcoin." And I

remember when I sold my company, I did

that. uh and and it was probably also

because of the serendipity of like

having Coinbase and you know this

infrastructure that that was nent but I

was I had been exposed to the magic of

Silicon Valley is that you can still do

the things you can just like make things

happen. Did it also help that you were

you know born and raised in Argentina

and you had seemed kind of like maybe

you questioned currency more than the

average bear did right like oh 100%

100%. So the concrete memory, I was a

young child, but it had everyone in

Argentina stressed the f out was, and

people can fact check us and look this

up, but it was like I think we had like

three presidents in three

days. One president had almost like uh I

think he he ra quit

uh because it was an economic and

financial meltdown. I think it was this

was about like 2000 2001.

The next guy comes in and he's like,

"Oh, cool." And the vice president

becomes president. Something along the

lines is like, "Cool. I'll try to fix

it." Two weeks in, he's out, too. And

then someone comes in who I I'm not even

sure if he was like literally like next

in line. Another guy comes in and I

think this is the guy that I'm pretty

sure is the third

guy that goes to national TV. They did

they do the whole thing where like they

interrupt all of the ongoing channels

and they like president comes in. is

like he's addressing the financial

turmoil and he's

saying look there's a lot of noise about

how your dollar savings will get lost

uh and they might get converted into

pesos and they might get converted at a

nonbeneficial rate and he said do not

worry Argentinians and this is on

national TV fully synchronized across

every screen in the country do not worry

your dollars are safe. If you deposited

dollars, this is the exact quote. If you

deposited dollars, you will receive

dollars. If you deposited Argentinian

pesos, you will receive Argentinian

pesos. Literally a week later, it didn't

happen. The dollars got converted into

pesos and then the currency lost its

value. So, basically, your money was

stolen from you.

uh the banks were in uh cahoots with the

government to make this transactions

happen. Your money is effectively just

like when when people joke I I take it

personally to see Michael Jordan. People

joke, oh, Bitcoin is just a database. We

could replace it with Postgress and we

would get a lot more throughput. say,

"Well, not really. What we had in

Argentina was Postgress or maybe worse,

maybe it was Excel or something and like

and the government literally did go in

and in the currency column said select

all convert, you know, I mean like that

is a database that is not immutable."

And so I became extremely pilled with

Bitcoin because I have that like I have

the concrete memory and I have my dad

screaming at the screen and saying like

these people are so corrupt. They're

like screaming. And then the other thing

that happened was all these protests of

people that had large dollar savings

that uh it was so terrible because RC

has been guilty of this before MLE many

times of like if you're rich that's

frowned upon that's terrible. you

probably got rich by screwing someone

up. That is like how the culture was

largely configured. So it was very hard

to empathize with this protest that

would happen because people would

literally be outside of the banks

protesting that their savings got

stolen. But the way that it would get

sort of um um you know manipulated by

the media was are you going to empathize

with that rich guy? Oh, poor him. He's

complaining about his huge dollar

savings. So that added even more insult

to the injury that there was no empathy

to people that were losing their money.

And so you know the Bitcoin seems so

obvious in the context of like we need a

globally distributed database that is

immutable that has extreme security

guarantees because this is your life.

This is your the things that you might

leave for your kids. This is everything

you've worked your entire life for. You

you cannot trust any given actor. You

cannot trust the government. You cannot

trust the banks. You cannot trust, you

know, your friends. You cannot trust

anyone. Like, you need to be able to

have cryptographic certainty. You can

only trust math and the universe, which

is kind of like the two emerging

properties of it. You trust the universe

in terms of like the energetic

uh demands on top of which Bitcoin banks

that it's so hard to mint a block,

right? Right. And it's so hard to

manipulate and do this cyber attacks and

whatnot. And you're also banking on the

cryptographic verification. Like you you

if you want you can be a node and verify

the blockchain yourself with software

that you run as opposed to trusting the

world of like is this legit? Is this the

chain that I should be looking at? Which

is why I mean we can go into a whole

different tangent but like I've always

been uh somewhat unsympathetic to non-p

proofof work systems because they create

an uncertainty about what is the right

chain to be looking at and um uh in in

that category falls like Ethereum and a

few others. Two questions for you.

One uh given that you went through that

do you like kind of denominate yourself

in Bitcoin? Do you like put a huge

percentage of your own net worth in

Bitcoin or like how have you decided to

do that? I put my entire net worth into

Verscell. I've I've I so having said all

of this, I always think about the mental

model that Warren Buffett has offered of

like if I have if I could have a cube of

all gold on the planet and like I would

look at it, it's like, oh, it's this

shiny block of gold or I could have a

cube of all of the productive farmland

in the US and all of its companies. What

cube would I rather own? But it is a

false dichotomy. I want to own both. I

want Bitcoin and I want assets in

product productive assets that are going

to grow over time that I also want to

support. And so I like the idea of by

far first and foremost placing a bet on

myself and Verscell. So that's kind of

my primary net worth. But if Bitcoin is

not some percentage of my net worth, I

would be really worried because I would

not have

that rock solid foundation that I missed

when I was in Argentina. like it it

didn't feel like I had access to

something that could be so reliable and

trustworthy. So I am a fan of a

potential future in which everything is

denominated under the hood. Everything

is rebased on top of this system. That

would be really cool. I uh so when I do

these podcasts like the way I people

think that this is the oh how did it go

and I'm like it's good or bad. Actually,

for me, I get the win far before we sit

down because I when I know you're coming

on, I go down a rabbit hole of Gearmo

and I go and I read your old stuff and I

learn from you. That's where I get and

I'm in I'm in this for the wisdom. So,

I'm like I'm looking for the golden

nuggets, the insights, the wisdom, the

frameworks that he uses, the stories

that inspire me or I can remember or I

can tie to my own life. So, by the time

I sit down here, this is all gravy. Now,

I'm here just having chicken nuggets.

I'm eating lunch. But one of the things

I saw on your old blog, I think it was

like 2016 or something. It was um a

newspaper clipping. I forget who it was,

if it was Edison or who it was, but they

had this idea of the energy dollar. It's

wild. It's wild. I've never heard of

this, but like I guess back in the day,

like the Was it Edison or I don't

remember who it was. It might have been

Ford. I can't remember. Yeah. It was

like two of like kind of the luminaries

of the time. It was like Ford and

somebody else. And they were talking

about this concept of an energy dollar.

They're like, "Hey, we need a currency

that's based off of like the production

of jewels, you know, jewels of energy,

jewels of electricity or work and then

that'll be a more sort of like rock

solid." Like it tracks reality. It

tracks the universe perfectly, right?

It's it's also related to the cardv

scale and like our ability to capture

energy from our nearby star and the

types of civilizations that we are. And

the other one that the the reason I've

been actually also thinking about this

more recently is we're clearly entering

a world in which energy can be

transmuted into intelligence. I mean

it's already the case that I can do so

much test time compute that any any

problem seems tractable with enough

cycles of GPUs and the only limiting

factor does seem to be our ability to

harness energy. And

so the the unit of wealth or or the

store of wealth has to be something that

is rare, right? And it has to be

something that's provable. And so the

idea of tracking our Yeah. our

fundamental store of wealth through

energy. I mean, I'm very intrigued by

that. So Well, dude, thanks for coming

on. I think what you've built is

amazing. Your story is great. Your big

ball of energy and some of these ideas

are really, really good.

I'll share more. So, there's a one more

there's a free ideas 2 thread coming on

X. So, okay. The sequel is it going to

be like a shitty movie sequel where, you

know, just doesn't. But I did set a high

bar. I don't want to I don't want to

brag. Obviously, when that comes out,

can we do Brainstorm 2 on here where we

riff on them because uh that's what we

do here. So, all right, man. Thank you

so much.

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How I built a $3B AI Startup + 7 AI Business Ideas