Builders Unscripted: Ep. 2 - Ashe Magalhaes, Founder of Hearth AI

0:10 Hey, Ashe.

0:11 So great to see you.

0:12 Thank you for doing this.

0:13 Thank you for having me it’s awesome to be here.

0:15 I actually remember the very first time we met was in this OpenAI office.

0:20 And at the time, you were building Hearth, right?

0:23 Can you tell us a bit more about what it was?

0:25 Yes.

0:25 Hearth AI was founded in 2022, and it was the first agentic CRM.

0:30 So 2023, we're using GPT 3.5, and we were trying to kick off all these agentic

0:35 workflows when the underlying systems were still pretty fragile.

0:38 So I was trying to wrangle you and other people.

0:41 And I remember, you had great feedback for the API at the time.

0:44 And one of the things that you were trying to get

0:47 done was like structured outputs before we even had them.

0:50 You were trying to do like retrieval with JSON schemas.

0:52 You were so early.

0:53 What was it at the time to like build in AI?

0:56 Yeah.

0:56 So, I mean, my history was as an ML engineer.

0:59 So I had been studying and I really rode

1:02 the wave of deep learning and the commercialization of deep learning.

1:05 And then when kind of agentic infrastructure,

1:07 and LLMs came out for the first time, it was totally different, right?

1:10 It was non-deterministic,

1:11 and it was seeing what we could stabilize within a product

1:16 experience because our users didn't care that, like LLMs were new,

1:19 they wanted to see the flexibility of what was just then possible.

1:23 Yeah.

1:23 That's amazing.

1:24 And speaking of your ML background,

1:26 I think what I find fascinating about you is the wide range of like,

1:31 life technical experiences you've had.

1:32 Like you were an ML engineer at Airbnb, you worked on satellites at NASA,

1:37 but you also started by building a solar powered racing car.

1:40 Like, I want to hear that story.

1:43 Yeah.

1:43 So I really try to stay within frontier tech and Stanford has

1:47 a solar car team with strong ties to like Tesla and SpaceX.

1:51 So for two years I was building, heads down, a solar powered car with that team.

1:57 I was on telemetry, CAD modeling, meshing, and then autocross.

2:00 I was one of the drivers,

2:02 so I was training within autocross clinics throughout California.

2:05 That's crazy.

2:06 And so did you actually, like, race in that car that you built?

2:10 So we shipped the car to Australia.

2:12 Every two years Australia has an international solar car competition,

2:16 the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, and we spent three months there prepping.

2:20 We were camping in the Australian Outback,

2:23 and then I would drive for six hours at a time through the outback,

2:27 and then we did the race, which was five days from Darwin to Adelaide.

2:31 Wow, was that scary?

2:32 Yeah, we were going 90 Kph, which is around 60 miles an hour,

2:36 and we built the car end to end, so it wasn't like a company came in and did it.

2:42 And teams were crashing, Cambridge's team had crashed.

2:44 And so I was very aware that I had spent two years building something

2:48 with a team that I would put my body into and that level of rigor,

2:53 like really played into later experiences.

2:55 Right?

2:56 Because like that level of risk and like

2:58 rigor that you need to have is extremely high.

3:00 Yeah, but it was so amazing because I think that was a form of like

3:04 frontier tech to really be in the weeds with a team where you know,

3:07 it is your body on the line, it's your teammates body on the line.

3:10 How do you make safe decisions and also

3:12 really push the bounds of what's technically possible?

3:14 Amazing.

3:15 And so what got you into building in the first place,

3:18 starting on that project all the way to like being a founder?

3:21 Yeah, I think just a lot of curiosity

3:24 and really interested in, bringing things to life.

3:27 So I view the builder archetype as quite close to the artist archetype.

3:31 I think I'm happiest viewing myself as like a conduit for creativity.

3:35 And I think engineering for me has always felt like a tool for creating

3:40 and incarnating and to be able to do it with satellites and cars and code.

3:45 But also like, you know, poetry and videos and other mediums.

3:48 That is such an energizing way to spend every day.

3:52 Incredible.

3:52 And so when you were so early building like an AI product, like three years ago,

3:58 when you look back now, like, how do you think about that experience?

4:02 Like what were the hardest parts or the things you did not expect.

4:05 Yeah, I think there were so many norms that were being disrupted.

4:09 So the fact that our team was tearing

4:12 down our like agentic stack every couple of weeks,

4:15 that was really hard to maybe explain to folks

4:18 around us because the history of tech had been,

4:20 okay an ML you maybe spend a year laying the data pipes,

4:23 and then and only then can you do

4:25 something predictive and interesting with the ML product.

4:28 And for us, it was like,

4:29 no we want to surface an experience to users that is flexible,

4:33 but it was so open world that there

4:35 wasn't consumer behavior yet around querying an agent.

4:37 So for example, like folks didn't know in 2023 that in Slack,

4:42 the Slack bot could respond.

4:44 They just thought that it was an outbound ping so

4:46 there was a lot of new behavior from the eng.

4:49 side, but also from the user side to educate them on.

4:51 And I remember, on my side,

4:53 I was trying to build agents too, before joining OpenAI.

4:56 And, you know, this was the era of NanoGPT, BabyGPT,

5:00 people were like trying to find like

5:02 the early incarnation of what an agent would be.

5:05 But most people outside of the space would not really understand and grasp,

5:08 what an agent could do.

5:10 And I think for me it underlined

5:13 the importance of having relationships with other builders.

5:16 You know, we were really all in the same plane of learning

5:19 this stuff for the first time and to have friends that were like open

5:22 and transparent and we were sharing tricks and also friends within AI labs

5:26 that really made the difference with creating

5:28 products that worked in some capacity.

5:31 And so you've worked on very deep tech and very deep systems, right?

5:36 What got you to think about like this human connections,

5:39 human relationship which is kind of like the core thesis of Hearth right.

5:43 Yeah.

5:43 There is this amazing book,

5:45 “When Breath Becomes Air”, written by Paul Kalanithi.

5:48 And I didn't realize it, but he had sat in on a neuroscience class that I was

5:54 in, and he was presented as this guest that had a terminal illness.

5:58 And he was like, you get to ask this person anything.

6:01 And, you know, he has this terminal illness and how is he viewing life?

6:04 And, what he talks about is all achieving all of these accolades and making it

6:08 to the top of the mountain and essentially

6:10 looking around and being like, and now what?

6:12 And I think from a young age I had

6:15 all of this access to like really interesting frontier tech,

6:18 but I was realizing I kind of missed that like spiritual footing.

6:21 And for me, after some soul searching, I think like for so many people,

6:25 what do I think I'll care about on my deathbed?

6:28 You know, the satellites are amazing,

6:29 the solar cars are amazing, all the ML stuff is cool.

6:31 But I think what I'm going to care about is how

6:35 connected I was to myself and to other people in my life,

6:38 and how much presence and love I exchanged.

6:41 And then it became obvious I want to push the needle on that, on connection.

6:45 And I think, I say this a lot,

6:48 but the arc of human progress bends towards love and connection and innovation.

6:52 And AI I believe, should push the needle on that.

6:55 And do you think now that like what you

6:58 were exploring a few years ago with like this like

7:01 AI agentic CRM was the first kind of manifestation

7:04 of something like broader that you were gonna explore basically now?

7:08 Yeah.

7:09 And, you know, even before that I had been working

7:12 on teams where they had an external network of people,

7:15 and the task was to mine that network

7:18 to match people with other people or opportunities or capital.

7:21 And so it's kind of this age old problem of as modern humans,

7:25 we are connected to so many more people than ever before,

7:29 and maybe feeling lonelier and less able to act on it,

7:33 both individually and as part of any cooperative team.

7:35 And so I've been fixated on this for so many years.

7:39 And the agentic CRM was a multiplayer pass at it.

7:43 But, you know, my thesis is on relational intelligence.

7:46 Its this belief that AI should augment the human experience and allow

7:50 us to feel more connected in the time that we have,

7:53 and that AI should extend our brain's ability

7:55 to reason on who we’re connected to and why.

7:57 And speaking of brain, I see you mentioned a few times like,

8:00 on your post, like the idea of a second brain.

8:03 Can you tell us more about this and how you think about it?

8:05 I love the phrase second brain because it's a little bit less technical.

8:09 So I think anyone in the world can

8:12 maybe visualize what a second brain looks like.

8:14 And it's this idea that we will

8:17 have a symbiotic relationship with our AI products,

8:20 and have a relationship with the product is the key word.

8:23 So it will be this continuous feedback loop,

8:26 on our stream of consciousness in which the AI is

8:29 trusted as maybe this bird's eye intelligence to guide us,

8:32 to see farther than we could with our own cognitive limitations.

8:36 So one thing that I find very interesting, as you're exploring these topics now,

8:39 and maybe compared to what you were building a few years ago,

8:42 is that the tools have changed drastically.

8:44 And I'd love to hear more about, like, what's your workflow today?

8:49 Like the way you approach, like new ideas,

8:53 following your own creativity, like what's Ashe's workflow?

8:57 So a big thing I'm leaning into this year is really building while connected.

9:03 And I think for so many years as a founder I built in more of a silo

9:08 and I'm very excited to be building in public

9:11 to be connecting with folks on these different

9:14 agentic workflows or products and leaning

9:16 into the variance that you get when you build

9:19 in public and you allow all of these folks

9:21 to comment on what you're putting out there.

9:24 And so something I've enjoyed doing is I have my Ashe.ai public facing website,

9:29 which you could go on, but there's a whole

9:32 back-end system that is behind a secrets page.

9:35 Where I will, if I have a product idea, I'll kick it off.

9:40 Now I'm using Codex 5.4 but, you know,

9:42 I'm driving really fast to like test what I should

9:45 be experimenting with, and then I'll have it within ashe.ai.

9:48 I'll put it on on X, and if people are reacting to it,

9:52 I'll have 5.4 extract it into a standalone product quite quickly, which is cool,

9:55 or open source a part of it, because a lot of folks are asking for like

9:58 an open source version to pull into their own personalized software.

10:00 That's super cool.

10:01 So you are exploring different ideas in parallel.

10:04 You're putting them on your own personal website,

10:08 using Codex to build many of these ideas.

10:11 But then as you see them kind of getting traction,

10:14 you're extracting them into complete products.

10:16 Yeah.

10:16 So the name of the game is speed.

10:17 And I think the key thing is you could build so much software nowadays,

10:21 but what will you build that you yourself use every

10:24 day that you find to be a beautiful and elegant experience,

10:27 and that you can surface to users in a way that is sustainable

10:31 and isn't just breaking with the fragility of maybe a vibe coded product.

10:36 And so to be able to drive 5.4 and Codex really fast,

10:41 but still have kind of a reliable,

10:43 foundation, which is new, I think this is new as of the past two months.

10:49 Has let me put out, like aesthetic video

10:52 as a platform where I'm doing a lot of video editing.

10:55 And I'll have guests, but I want them to have access to everything

10:58 they say in case any part is sensitive.

11:00 And I was able to really quickly put out that platform.

11:03 And I use it every day and guests use it

11:05 every time I film something for collaborating for agentic clips.

11:08 And that's just one example.

11:10 That's awesome.

11:11 And is there anything like surprising to you or in your workflow,

11:15 like the way you use Codex, anything that has been like, fascinating to you?

11:20 I think the speed is really important where I want

11:25 to be able to drive the agent very fast in productizing,

11:29 because I need to still validate it with a user base.

11:34 Like just because you can build many things

11:37 nowadays doesn't mean it will be a product

11:39 that users understand or could come on, or that you

11:42 yourself will want to use every day.

11:44 So being able to have that rapid feedback

11:46 loop building in public has been very important.

11:49 And the other layers instrumentation.

11:51 So I have my Ashe.ai system on Slack and then

11:54 I have all my agentic workflows broken up by channels.

11:57 For every product that I put out,

11:59 I have a layer of instrumentation and observability so I can

12:02 validate are people using the tool in the way that I expect,

12:06 let alone like any errors or things that are worth me,

12:09 like quickly trying to patch.

12:11 That's awesome.

12:11 I would love to see it.

12:12 Do you want to show it to me?

12:13 Yeah.

12:17 Okay, so this is my Ashe.ai Slack workspace.

12:19 And you can see with all of my channels,

12:21 these are all agentic workflows that I have here.

12:24 And I'll get alerts and up manage throughout the day.

12:27 And I have all of these errors for aesthetic.video.

12:30 So I should probably kick off something because I do have people on this.

12:34 And I think I know what this is.

12:35 “Kick off a task to fix the infinite load

12:39 on the drafts page.” So I trust 5.4 will figure that out.

12:44 And yeah, so this is Ashe.ai.

12:46 This is public.

12:47 This has kind of my portfolio and products and also goals.

12:51 But then I have a secrets page,

12:53 and this is where I have everything from different templates.

12:56 So I'll reuse the same Stripe template.

12:58 I have these animations, to prototyping potential products.

13:01 So I have my Oura integration here.

13:04 Videos was the start of aesthetic.video.

13:06 And then I got enough validation where I went

13:10 ahead and built this out as a standalone product.

13:13 So here I built it out and then told 5.4 “hey,

13:16 like break off this chunk.” But obviously we have

13:18 so much happening in Ashe.ai and put it on aesthetic.video.

13:22 And then from here, this is how I organize the content that I'm putting out.

13:26 I have an automatic X integration.

13:28 And then when I want to collaborate

13:30 with my interview guests I will have the video here.

13:33 They can add comments and it'll be time stamped.

13:35 I have an auto generated video guide.

13:38 I even have an agentic clipper to get those fun reels.

13:42 Wow, that's really cool.

13:43 I loved, like seeing your video hub on X did you, simply just ask,

13:48 Codex to extract all of the prototype and make

13:51 it a standalone product, like in one shot?

13:53 Yeah.

13:53 So actually it did really well with one shot.

13:56 So I had my template here and I need to use this for myself.

14:00 So I tried it out with Ashe.ai.

14:01 I posted it, I had enough people be like “hey can you

14:04 open source this, can you put this out?” And after getting that validation,

14:07 I told it to to break off a chunk.

14:09 I let it, let it go.

14:11 And then I had a good bit here and then I've added things to it.

14:16 So I have like Google storage for all my videos.

14:20 I pulled in, the Gemini embeddings too,

14:23 to do some smart things with searching on videos.

14:26 So I have like search over here and I could search for people laughing.

14:30 Yeah.

14:30 And then I play with it, like I have my chat here.

14:33 Sometimes I'll use Opus 4.6 for the chat,

14:35 sometimes I'll use 5.4 it's really fun in this moment

14:37 to pull in all of these different agentic tools and model providers.

14:41 Cool.

14:42 I guess, like I need to, ship more video content and use the hub for myself too.

14:46 We can put this video on here.

14:48 Exactly.

14:48 We should.

14:49 Amazing.

14:50 Wow, thank you so much for showing me that.

14:52 That's really, really cool.

14:53 And what I love too is that you were a solo founder before,

14:57 and, like, you were able to build so much by yourself one more time.

15:00 Like, this is incredible.

15:01 Like, how have the tools, like, changed to help you build all of this?

15:06 Yeah.

15:06 So I think what's interesting is, as an engineer,

15:09 kind of one of my defining attributes was speed.

15:12 And I've always really valued running at a problem.

15:15 And then instead of living in my head for so long,

15:19 getting real world feedback loops to kind of coalesce my vision with reality

15:23 and the magic of this moment is being able to drive like 5.4 incredibly fast.

15:28 And obviously I also have that like autocross training.

15:29 I want to go fast and trust that it's going to kind of have

15:33 a foundation that isn't so fragile that I’ll to spend a ton of time redoing it,

15:37 and then having that, building in public kind of feedback loop where I can put

15:41 things out into the world and see

15:43 the variants and creativity that comes back in.

15:46 So, for example, maybe last week I had my Oura ring and I pulled the Oura API,

15:51 and on my Ashe.aI goals page,

15:53 I put up my wakeup times because I really love waking up at 5 a.m.

15:57 and someone commented like, ‘hey,

15:58 you should create a social version of this where we can

16:01 all have a level of accountability for waking up at 5 a.m’.

16:04 and the magic of this is now I can quickly

16:07 sprint at this without it taking up so much time.

16:10 And I think what's been cool about 5.4 specifically

16:13 around productizing is I'll have my whole Ashe.ai system,

16:16 I'll build the prototype,

16:17 I'll see if I actually use it, because that's important.

16:20 And then if it's validated in some way,

16:22 I'll tell 5.4 hey go split this off into an open source repo,

16:26 or go split this off into its own standalone product.

16:29 And I'm seeing it do it quite reliably.

16:31 Like I think that's kind of a huge difference,

16:34 even, going back like six weeks ago.

16:37 That's incredible.

16:38 I have an Oura ring too.

16:40 So I guess I should look at the leaderboard,

16:41 but I'm not sure if I'm if I'm waking up early enough to be up there.

16:45 That's really, really cool.

16:46 And I love the fact that now that, like, we can build so much,

16:49 it's really down to the creativity and the process you

16:52 have around capturing your ideas and bringing them to life.

16:56 And I love how you're describing the fact that you

16:59 have this kind of secret space where you can experiment freely,

17:02 and then you're waiting for a sign or a signal

17:04 that, like things are picking up to then extract them, do well, is that right?

17:07 Yeah.

17:08 And I think, you know, our time is is zero sum.

17:11 And I think especially as the builder archetype moves closer

17:14 and closer to the creative archetype or to the artist archetype,

17:17 You want to channel kind of your full self into what it is that you're building.

17:22 Otherwise maybe why would people resonate with it?

17:24 I think there's a real moment right now in which folks are inundated with AI

17:29 generated content and have like maybe a repulsion

17:32 to, to that video or to that product.

17:36 And so I'm asking myself a lot, hey,

17:38 what does it look like to step into this new world in which I'm building

17:41 with my full self and being vulnerable enough

17:44 to share that with other builders or potential users?

17:47 And one of the things like, speaking of builders,

17:50 that I love about your process is how much you're building in public, right?

17:54 Like you're learning as you go it looks like.

17:56 And you are also talking to a lot of builders making your own videos.

18:00 What have you learned in that process?

18:02 Has that helped you, like, build better products and get better ideas?

18:06 Yeah.

18:06 So a big thing for me is I want to live a very aligned life in day to day.

18:12 And, the thing I'm trying to improve upon is,

18:15 for a while I built feeling quite disconnected.

18:18 And so if I'm building for relational intelligence,

18:21 I want to live relational intelligence.

18:23 And I have found that having these conversations

18:26 where I'm really present and really curious, I mean it feels amazing.

18:31 I think we're wired as humans to be

18:34 connected and to kind of bring that into conversations

18:38 around frontier tech feels like I'm stepping

18:41 into the Renaissance moment that exists right now,

18:44 and I feel very excited and I feel very abundant.

18:47 And I know that there's a lot of fear in the world which is validated,

18:51 which is which is valid.

18:52 But, I think we have so many reasons to feel

18:55 excited with the new wave of creativity being unlocked.

18:58 I agree, I think like there's so much like exciting,

19:01 so many exciting things we can build now.

19:04 So for us engineers and for, like, all the builders watching,

19:08 like you're mentioning these like Renaissance moment,

19:10 how do you think they should grab it?

19:13 Like there is so much potential.

19:16 There's also some grief in some ways about

19:19 like the work changing so much because now

19:22 there's models that like GPT 5.4 are so

19:25 good at writing very high quality production code.

19:29 The role of being an engineer is changing.

19:31 Like, what's your view on all of this?

19:33 Yeah, I think this is the moment to lean into creativity as the North Star.

19:38 I mean, if we go back to the Italian sculptor Bernini,

19:42 he worked very diligently for like four hours and spent the rest of the day

19:47 strolling or going to drinks or dancing or like really being having fun.

19:51 And I know, like Peter talked a lot

19:53 about the competitive edge, being having fun.

19:55 And I think the, the exciting part of this moment is,

19:58 you are incentivized to bring your full self to the table as a builder.

20:03 And I think in part that's because there's

20:05 so much noise with so many people trying to maybe sell you something when you go

20:09 on X or, vibe code their own internal tool,

20:13 or create AI generated content or AI generated movies.

20:17 I think the premium now is on risking something by being vulnerable,

20:22 by sharing and creating kind of a trust layer,

20:26 or more relationships with folks for why they should engage

20:29 with you not only as a builder to use your tool,

20:33 but like as a human that they trust with, their data and whatever else.

20:38 Yeah.

20:38 And attention really because, I think this was in the news,

20:42 but this question of putting out an article that's like AI written,

20:45 I think a lot of users felt a lot of readers felt disrespected.

20:49 And I think the premium is on feeling authentically connected

20:52 to the person on the other end in this moment.

20:55 And that's a call for all of us to share more, I think, about ourselves.

20:59 And when you think about engineers and builders,

21:03 do you think that naturally they should have

21:06 more taste and interest for the customers and like,

21:09 kind of like the role starting to blend when you work on the team, right.

21:13 Because those tools are giving super powers to everyone.

21:16 Like what do you see kind

21:18 of the interplay between different roles and different teammates?

21:21 Yeah, I think this is a moment to really

21:25 attune to yourself individually first and to ask yourself,

21:29 what is beautiful to me, what is impactful to me?

21:32 What am I here to put out into the world?

21:37 And have that individuality and creativity and from that place,

21:42 then cooperate and build.

21:44 I think we had a previous era in which,

21:47 we were building for so many people in the world that we're in ourselves,

21:51 maybe addressing markets first.

21:53 I think the era of personalized software is now

21:55 a mirror back to us to really figure out,

21:58 okay, what is it that I want to bring to life?

22:01 Absolutely.

22:02 And you were mentioning Peter from OpenClaw that we had for this first episode.

22:06 And it sounds like when you're working on your projects,

22:09 you're no longer just working in projects.

22:11 You're also working in systems.

22:12 Right?

22:13 That's something very interesting.

22:14 I'd love to hear more about your workflow.

22:16 Sounds like you're also using OpenClaw

22:18 to build a system around your distribution.

22:21 I would love to hear how you're thinking through that.

22:23 So I'm very quick to pull out whatever state of the art thing comes

22:28 out into my full agentic stack and all of the different workflows that exist.

22:33 So I went deep into OpenClaw.

22:35 And for me, you know, I don't have a marketing background,

22:39 let alone like distribution across all of these different platforms.

22:43 I will say the area that OpenClaw kind of shined for me was

22:47 to figure out distribution for, you know maybe I'm really present on X

22:51 and put out a post there to be able to then lean

22:55 on OpenClaw and agents to re-share that on Reddit and what other platforms.

23:01 Not in a way that feels spammy.

23:03 And this is a really fine line, but in a way that allows me to get that idea

23:07 out there in the language that is specific to that platform,

23:10 because they are all different.

23:11 So it was able to do this pretty impressively on Reddit,

23:17 with seemingly human responses back pretty quickly.

23:21 So I think for anyone that's looking to figure out distribution,

23:24 which I certainly am, it's an interesting moment of like,

23:27 okay, maybe I don't need to spend all this time on Reddit,

23:30 on LinkedIn, on Instagram, whatever else.

23:32 Maybe I can have my agents help me out so that I can be present with the idea.

23:36 That's very cool.

23:36 Any favorite way to talk to your OpenClaw?

23:38 Where do you have it set up?

23:40 So I will say I'm a big Slack person

23:43 and OpenClaw is one piece in my full agentic system.

23:47 So I do love Slack for naturally breaking up my agentic workflows by channel.

23:53 So I have like a news channel,

23:55 a birthdays channel, a goals channel, a money channel,

23:57 basically anything in my life that I'm doing repeatedly

24:01 there's a channel on slack with agents tied to it,

24:04 and the important thing is the agents are up managing me to try to like,

24:08 reduce my screen time and let me be really present with people.

24:11 That's incredible.

24:12 I love that.

24:13 Really, really cool.

24:14 I need to like, upgrade my setup.

24:15 It gives me some ideas now.

24:17 Yeah, I'll show you.

24:18 I showed someone at a bar once and they were like,

24:20 are you the only person on this Slack workspace?

24:22 I was like, yes.

24:23 And they started laughing.

24:24 But it's the future!

24:25 It’s you and your agents.

24:26 Using all my agents.

24:26 I'm not alone.

24:27 You have a whole team with you.

24:29 That's really cool.

24:30 One thing that I love, that we don't,

24:32 I don't think we have talked about yet, is the fact that, like,

24:36 as you think through these systems for yourself and as you're going

24:39 to pursue this thread around connections across humans in this AI era,

24:43 you also thinking about wearables and hardware a lot, right?

24:46 And you're working on one.

24:49 Tell me more about like why that matters.

24:52 Yeah.

24:53 So I am very driven by I think,

24:57 a life that feels present and that feels connected.

25:02 And I want to be across from someone looking at them, fully present with them.

25:07 And I really do want to minimize my screen time,

25:09 my time on my phone and my time on my desktop.

25:12 And so I'm excited.

25:14 First about the social etiquette layer.

25:16 I don't like ambient recording.

25:18 I do think we will need a stream

25:21 of consciousness that is systematized for our second brain.

25:24 When I think a lot about a second brain for my people,

25:27 I think there will be some social

25:29 etiquette around you saying something really interesting.

25:31 You seeing me touch a part of my body

25:33 and agree that that will be put into my second brain,

25:36 or pull me back and say, actually, hey, I'm not comfortable with that.

25:39 So first I want to play with what might the future

25:43 social etiquette be in a way that feels elegant and not gauche?

25:46 And then second, just an analog experience that lets me have that second brain

25:51 for my people so I can focus

25:54 on really listening to what the other person's saying.

25:57 So being fully present, but also thinking through the social norms of what

26:01 that means to have such ambient intelligence almost.

26:04 Yeah.

26:04 And I think when it comes to our relational landscape,

26:08 the human brain is naturally pretty limited.

26:11 So if you think about each person in your life,

26:14 there are so many facts and dimensions to who they are.

26:17 Because a relationship is, who am I?

26:20 Who is this person and who are they to me, over time?

26:23 And relationships are mirrors back to ourselves.

26:25 And so I'm excited for an intelligence layer that guides

26:30 me on the abundance of who I'm connected to.

26:33 That's really great.

26:34 And so in this era of like building being easier

26:38 and you exploring the frontier of the intersection of like software,

26:42 hardware and wearables, very, very exciting.

26:45 How do you foresee like, you own part in this journey and like,

26:50 like in some ways influencing other builders to follow,

26:54 that journey and that same like, that same chain of thought almost like,

26:59 do you think engineers will also have to explore

27:02 a lot more like that software to hardware frontier,

27:05 or do you think they need to bring their own

27:08 taste and their own vantage point to the solutions,

27:10 like how you thinking through that?

27:12 Well, first I want to lean into my own sense of self.

27:16 And I think what's nice about this moment is the way

27:21 it's empowering people to build their own personalized software layers,

27:25 but hopefully present more authentically, with that building in public layer.

27:30 And so I think a lot about aesthetic for example, and visuals and beauty.

27:36 And I think anything I build in the future,

27:39 I want to interact with it in a way that feels beautiful to me,

27:44 even down to managing my agents.

27:46 And we've talked about this, but part of what

27:48 was cool about Codex is it feels like a really

27:51 beautiful experience to start to manage all of these different

27:54 agents and sub agents that are being kicked off.

27:56 And I think what's exciting looking ahead is that you

28:00 can imagine every touchpoint with agents in the future,

28:03 or these systems that you're building or hardware

28:05 or hopefully board design feels like a piece of art,

28:08 feels like something that feels resonant and inspiring to interact with.

28:12 Yeah, and it's amazing how fast we've transitioned from, you know,

28:16 AI systems that were able to, like, write a bit of code all the way to like AI

28:22 systems that can reliably take on, like a huge chunk of work,

28:26 in your case like extracting an entire prototype

28:28 and turning it in one shot into a complete product.

28:32 Is there anything that has like,

28:34 surprised you or delighted you along the way as you've been using like Codex?

28:39 I assume you're using the Codex app now?

28:41 I'm using the app.

28:42 I switch between all of these different systems, all the time.

28:46 So still using Cursor, still using Claude Code,

28:49 using Codex, using all of these different systems.

28:52 And I think what's defining about this moment is no two days are the same,

28:56 like the whole ecosystem is moving too fast,

28:58 that I really feel like a creative operating in bursts.

29:02 So you know like, I'll have a product

29:05 like the aesthetic.video and right away saw 5.4 was

29:08 like the right partner for that because it

29:10 was moving really fast but reliably with understanding okay,

29:13 there was going to be like a user authentication layer,

29:16 like this was going to be a product I put out.

29:17 There was going to be a Stripe layer to this.

29:18 and then having that like sprint for however many hours

29:21 and then pausing and putting it out into the world

29:24 and doing videos and doing something different and having

29:26 a lot of variance in my day and workflows.

29:28 And that feels really new to this moment.

29:31 I think in the past, as an engineer, you know,

29:33 I would be doing really similar things for like

29:35 11 hours or like day in and day out.

29:38 And now I know I keep mentioning the artist archetype,

29:41 but I'm best served by, okay,

29:43 when am I most creative versus like just sprint, just like a marathon?

29:48 Yeah.

29:48 so now builders can truly build anything with these tools, like Codex.

29:53 Do you think like there’s any, quality, like maybe like thinking through taste

29:59 or the curiosity that matters more these days?

30:02 Like what?

30:03 What would be like, top of mind?

30:05 I think the call is for folks to be really present within themselves,

30:09 within their bodies.

30:10 I do think there is a pull in the direction

30:14 of what you want to create and what you want, what is resonant to you,

30:18 whether that's film, whether that's photography,

30:21 whether that's like products, whatever that pull is,

30:24 I think aggressively pursue it and curate things that are similar.

30:29 And, for me, the advice I would give my younger self is to be uncomfortable,

30:34 you know, like there is discomfort in growth or in putting yourself out there.

30:38 You know, anytime I've put something out there

30:41 that has a little piece of me in it,

30:43 it is scary and there is discomfort and I'm risking something by being seen.

30:47 But it's so worth it to build that reflex and that muscle,

30:51 because that's what's meaningful.

30:52 And that's also what lets you pull in the variance of real

30:56 world feedback and get more creative and keep, you know, building.

30:59 Just to talk about Peter and OpenClaw one more time.

31:02 I think that was an amazing example of putting something out

31:05 into the world in which so many people poured energy back into it,

31:10 and it had this emergent quality

31:12 of growing beyond what anyone would have guessed.

31:15 Right?

31:15 And I think that's kind of the magic of what's possible now,

31:19 when you have these relationships and feedback

31:21 loops with all of these other builders.

31:23 Yeah.

31:24 And I think what has like, really,

31:26 amazed me with OpenClaw was not just the unique

31:30 insight that Peter had to put something amazing out there.

31:33 It's also the community around it, like the number of people now,

31:38 like wearing lobster hats and like really

31:40 passionate about making their own personal agents.

31:42 That's quite special.

31:43 Yeah, yeah.

31:44 So back to your question about taste.

31:47 I think that's really a question on self attunement and individuality.

31:52 And if something is resonant to you that's worth passionately pursuing

31:56 and sharing and let it like go out into the world,

32:00 let it breathe and allow there to be a surprise in what could happen.

32:05 Right?

32:05 And maybe as we wrap, you were talking about advice for your younger self.

32:09 Yeah.

32:10 You've had like all these experiences from being an ML engineer,

32:13 like building satellites, those racing cars that we talked about.

32:17 You've been the founder a couple times and you're

32:19 now kind of embracing these tools every day.

32:22 What would be your advice for builders around

32:24 the world like that maybe like earlier in their journey,

32:28 just starting to explore these AI tools like

32:30 how should they approach this brave new world?

32:33 First, curiosity, you know, and having fun, I think is great advice.

32:39 And really honoring that curiosity, you know,

32:41 if we have these desires, I think it's for a reason.

32:46 And to let those pulls guide us and to to take

32:50 that risk because you want to know what happens.

32:53 You know, I think curiosity is such a magical

32:56 part of the history of being an engineer.

32:59 And I think as everything is changing, that is the same pillar.

33:04 It's to be driven by curiosity,

33:06 to bring something to life that is newly possible.

33:09 And I love how it's a very similar advice to what Peter shared.

33:13 Also, trying to have fun along the way

33:15 and trying to follow your passion, your curiosity.

33:17 That's awesome.

33:18 Well, I think it's a great way to end.

33:20 Thank you so, so much for spending time together,

33:23 and I can't wait to see what you build next with all

33:26 of these great ideas that you're putting on X, every day.

33:29 And, can't wait to see the device too, that you're working on.

33:32 Thank you so much.

33:32 This was so fun.