Why Creativity Will Matter More Than Code | Kevin Rose and Anish Acharya

1. 0:00 – 0:43

   Intro

   1. KRKevin Rose0:00

      So how did the like button come into existence? What was it like back during that time? I, I think in the early days when we first had something called asynchronous JavaScript, to get a little bit geeky, it was the first time, even though this sounds super archaic, that you could actually click a button, send out for a server response, and get something back into your browser. There was no way to just say like, "I think this is cool. Let me just like tap on it and like show my vote of interest on something." And I was like, well, wouldn't it be cool if you clicked something and you saw the number go up and that number was the number of humans that actually had clicked on something? The way I see it is that this is social signal that will feed back into an algorithm that'll eventually give you more stuff that you would like to consume.

   2. AAAnish Acharya0:40

      All right, man, so ketones. Am I gonna go on a

2. 0:43 – 2:10

   Ketones

   1. AAAnish Acharya0:43

      trip?

   2. KRKevin Rose0:43

      Uh, this is gonna be, um, a surprise for you.

   3. AAAnish Acharya0:48

      Okay.

   4. KRKevin Rose0:48

      So these are ketones that Tim Ferriss turned me onto.

   5. AAAnish Acharya0:51

      Okay.

   6. KRKevin Rose0:51

      We don't have to make it a plug in the podcast or anything-

   7. AAAnish Acharya0:53

      [laughs] All right

   8. KRKevin Rose0:53

      ... 'cause this, this isn't a show about ketones. [laughs]

   9. AAAnish Acharya0:55

      Okay.

   10. KRKevin Rose0:55

       But I will tell you that when you hit this, so these are specifically made for... They're supposed to go in your coffee.

   11. AAAnish Acharya1:01

       Okay.

   12. KRKevin Rose1:01

       Now, you have to be careful here because you have to bend this like this, and then it kinda shoots into your mouth, and then you just chug it. Have you ever had ketones before?

   13. AAAnish Acharya1:09

       No. [laughs]

   14. KRKevin Rose1:10

       Okay.

   15. AAAnish Acharya1:10

       No.

   16. KRKevin Rose1:10

       All right, let's do this.

   17. AAAnish Acharya1:11

       All right, let's do this.

   18. KRKevin Rose1:11

       Okay, so let me show you how to do it. I'll do it first.

   19. AAAnish Acharya1:13

       Okay.

   20. KRKevin Rose1:13

       So you bend like this. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   21. AAAnish Acharya1:19

       What am I doing here?

   22. KRKevin Rose1:24

       Okay. There you go.

   23. AAAnish Acharya1:25

       Like this?

   24. KRKevin Rose1:26

       Let's do it, Anish. Yep. Th- wait, wait. No, no, wait. That's backwards. Let me see. Yeah, there you go. So I had a friend do that, and he shot it all over his, like, chest. You don't want that before-

   25. AAAnish Acharya1:33

       No

   26. KRKevin Rose1:33

       ... the podcast. Okay. Take it back. Take it like a champion. Squeeze, suck. You're gonna notice a little bit of bitterness. Do you taste it?

   27. AAAnish Acharya1:40

       Mm-hmm.

   28. KRKevin Rose1:41

       Yeah, it's not good.

   29. AAAnish Acharya1:41

       Oh my God.

   30. KRKevin Rose1:42

       Yeah, it's the worst. Now, this is gonna give you brain power for the podcast, so this is how we start the show.
3. 2:10 – 4:35

   Kevin and Anish: From Google to GV

   1. KRKevin Rose2:10

      so-

   2. AAAnish Acharya2:10

      Yeah

   3. KRKevin Rose2:10

      ... I was telling people who we are. We've known each other for a long time. We worked together at Google.

   4. AAAnish Acharya2:14

      Long time.

   5. KRKevin Rose2:14

      We worked together at Google Ventures and Google Corporate, and, uh... Yeah, man, it's been... We've been good homies for many, many, many years. No one's ever seen us on a pod together I don't think, right?

   6. AAAnish Acharya2:23

      I don't think so.

   7. KRKevin Rose2:23

      Like, we've never done anything.

   8. AAAnish Acharya2:24

      No, no, no.

   9. KRKevin Rose2:24

      Yeah.

   10. AAAnish Acharya2:24

       Yeah.

   11. KRKevin Rose2:24

       So do you wanna give a little of your background?

   12. AAAnish Acharya2:26

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me, man. This is awesome.

   13. KRKevin Rose2:29

       Yeah.

   14. AAAnish Acharya2:29

       I'm Anish. I'm a GP at Andreessen. I've been friends with Kevin forever. I'm a product person. I'm an engineer. I'm a technologist. I started two companies. Um, probably having the most fun I've ever had, both personally and professionally and all of that, and I'm excited to talk to everyone about it today.

   15. KRKevin Rose2:43

       Yeah. It's... It was really cool when we first met, um, we both were, uh... I don't know how we ended up there and got on Google Plus. [laughs]

   16. AAAnish Acharya2:51

       Yeah.

   17. KRKevin Rose2:51

       But we were both on Google Plus.

   18. AAAnish Acharya2:53

       [laughs]

   19. KRKevin Rose2:53

       And I remember working with you, like, in the very early days, and I was like, "Oh..." Like, when you landed at Google for the first time, you didn't know what to expect, you know?

   20. AAAnish Acharya2:59

       Yeah.

   21. KRKevin Rose2:59

       Like, 'cause you're getting in there, and you don't know, like, what is this, what is this whole thing gonna be about? Like, who am I gonna work with? And very quickly you realize there's fantastic engineering talent there.

   22. AAAnish Acharya3:12

       Mm-hmm.

   23. KRKevin Rose3:12

       And then there's also, product-wise, I was like, "Mm, I don't know that these people actually live and breathe product." It was very much you're kinda in the Google bubble.

   24. AAAnish Acharya3:20

       Mm-hmm.

   25. KRKevin Rose3:20

       But you were one of the first people where I was like, "Oh my God, this is like an amazing product mind, and I gotta work with this guy."

   26. AAAnish Acharya3:27

       [laughs]

   27. KRKevin Rose3:27

       And so we figured out a way to, like, stay connected and work together, you know, when we bounced over to Google Ventures then, and yeah.

   28. AAAnish Acharya3:33

       Well, dude, figured out a way is generous, so you saved my life. I remember I worked with you for three, four weeks, and what's cool actually is you joined and you're like, "Nah, this is not it. I'm not doing it." I'm like, "What do you mean? What about vesting? What about Google Plus? What about this and that?"

   29. KRKevin Rose3:46

       Yeah.

   30. AAAnish Acharya3:46

       And you were just so sure, and you were right. You moved over to Ventures. And I remember at the time talking to you outside of that building, the Google Plus building, and saying, "Kevin, don't leave me behind, man. Please. Bring me with you."
4. 4:35 – 5:58

   How One Call Changed a Career

   1. AAAnish Acharya4:35

      I met my wife there.

   2. KRKevin Rose4:36

      Yeah.

   3. AAAnish Acharya4:37

      I mean, everybody there was very good people.

   4. KRKevin Rose4:39

      Yeah, and then Crane's running it now, which is awesome to see. Like, he was such a, a great, uh, just a great person to be around. I really enjoyed my time with, with David, and great to see him just, like, turning that firm into an awesome f- Like, I look at the portfolio now since we've left, and he's built out a great-

   5. AAAnish Acharya4:55

      Yeah

   6. KRKevin Rose4:55

      ... uh, suite of companies that are just top tier.

   7. AAAnish Acharya4:58

      It's legit, man.

   8. KRKevin Rose4:58

      Yeah.

   9. AAAnish Acharya4:59

      It's legit. Well, it's actually fun to see you in action as a consumer investor. I think a- so much consumer investing and building is willingness to be embarrassed.

   10. KRKevin Rose5:07

       Yeah.

   11. AAAnish Acharya5:07

       You know, and you did deals like Blue Bottle.

   12. KRKevin Rose5:10

       Yeah.

   13. AAAnish Acharya5:10

       And I'm like, Kevin, what is this? A coffee shop with a stand in Hayes?

   14. KRKevin Rose5:15

       Yeah. [laughs] Totally.

   15. AAAnish Acharya5:15

       How is this gonna be a venture investment? And it was, and you, you know, you were willing to be embarrassed by it, and you were so right.

   16. KRKevin Rose5:22

       Well, uh, y- you're w- wrong a lot, as you know.

   17. AAAnish Acharya5:25

       [laughs]

   18. KRKevin Rose5:25

       Like, we're wrong most of the time.

   19. AAAnish Acharya5:26

       Yeah.

   20. KRKevin Rose5:27

       Um, s- consumer stuff for you, so what, what do you, what does your day-to-day look like at Andreessen? Like, it's a massive firm. How many in total employees are at a16?

   21. AAAnish Acharya5:36

       God, 600 probably.

   22. KRKevin Rose5:37

       Wow.

   23. AAAnish Acharya5:37

       Yeah. Yeah.

   24. KRKevin Rose5:38

       Holy crap.

   25. AAAnish Acharya5:38

       It's big. It's big.

   26. KRKevin Rose5:39

       And how many GPs?

   27. AAAnish Acharya5:41

       That's a good question. Maybe 30.

   28. KRKevin Rose5:42

       Okay.

   29. AAAnish Acharya5:43

       Um, the investing team's relatively small. It's probably 70. But it's actually nice the way the firm works, 'cause it's a collection of specialists, so everybody who's there is the best in the world at what they do, both knowledge-wise and network-wise. So even though it's a large group, that's because we're all

5. 5:58 – 7:50

   Life at Google Ventures and Early Consumer Bets

   1. AAAnish Acharya5:58

      specialists pointing in different directions. So my consumer world every day is spending time with consumer founders. I spend some time with enterprise founders as well. Everything AI apps, so it's a mix of-Seeing companies, supporting founders on boards, and also playing with products

   2. KRKevin Rose6:12

      Yeah

   3. AAAnish Acharya6:13

      Like, to me, this is the craziest thing. It's something that I learned from you, which is so many people just don't use the products

   4. KRKevin Rose6:18

      Yeah

   5. AAAnish Acharya6:18

      And how can you have intuition if you're not making videos on Sora or Vibe Coding or-

   6. KRKevin Rose6:23

      Right

   7. AAAnish Acharya6:23

      ... you know, there's just so much alpha hiding in plain sight. All you gotta do is use the products.

   8. KRKevin Rose6:27

      Yeah. I, I feel like the last, call it, five years has been, on the consumer side, has been relatively boring for me as an investor.

   9. AAAnish Acharya6:35

      Yeah.

   10. KRKevin Rose6:35

       Because I've looked at stuff and I said, "Gosh, you know, we got the bigs in the room. You got the TikToks, you got the Instagram still dominating." And then you see some of the folks, like, you know, Threads are just, like, copying and somehow, you know-

   11. AAAnish Acharya6:47

       [laughs]

   12. KRKevin Rose6:47

       ... strapping on, you know, integrations with decentralized social, and that's supposed to be a thing.

   13. AAAnish Acharya6:53

       Yes.

   14. KRKevin Rose6:53

       But I hadn't seen anything that, in my mind, was that interesting. Like, it felt like consumer had this kind of like down period of several years-

   15. AAAnish Acharya7:03

       Yeah

   16. KRKevin Rose7:03

       ... where there wasn't really anything new. And now that AI has come into the mix, I feel like there's a chance to kinda almost reinvent every piece of that-

   17. AAAnish Acharya7:12

       Yes

   18. KRKevin Rose7:12

       ... framework. And do you feel that way as well, like AI is-

   19. AAAnish Acharya7:15

       100%

   20. KRKevin Rose7:15

       ... a shot in the arm, um, for consumer?

   21. AAAnish Acharya7:17

       100... I mean, I'll, I'll give you the investor perspective and then the builder perspective.

   22. KRKevin Rose7:20

       Yeah.

   23. AAAnish Acharya7:20

       I wanna hear is yours. So from an investor perspective, this is like a renaissance for consumer investing. We haven't seen an opportunity like this, I think, in... since 2010, 2011, 2012.

   24. KRKevin Rose7:30

       Yeah

   25. AAAnish Acharya7:31

       Because consumers are downloading products organically. That hasn't happened in a long time.

   26. KRKevin Rose7:36

       Mm-hmm.

   27. AAAnish Acharya7:36

       Consumers are willing to pay. Like, you look at the price points of the top products, right? The top ChatGPT SKU is 200 a month. The top Gemini SKU, Google Ultra, is 250, and then Grok is 300 a month, and consumers are actually

6. 7:50 – 9:56

   AI’s Renaissance for Consumer Products

   1. AAAnish Acharya7:50

      paying that amount. I mean, how much do you think you've paid to Cursor?

   2. KRKevin Rose7:53

      A lot.

   3. AAAnish Acharya7:54

      A lot.

   4. KRKevin Rose7:54

      Yeah.

   5. AAAnish Acharya7:55

      You know? And some of that is professional behavior, but a lot of that is just consumer and hobbyist behavior. So I think that consumer is, like, back in a big way, and, like, the tech enthusiast consumer is excited in a way that they haven't been for 10 years.

   6. KRKevin Rose8:07

      And when you, when you... The companies you just mentioned, though, they're largely the bigs. Like, one of the things that has happened in consumer that I never thought would be the case, that I was shocked by, is that bigs, like, you know, top-tier, you know, Fortune 100 companies, can put out consumer tech for the first time and actually see it get scale.

   7. AAAnish Acharya8:24

      Mm-hmm.

   8. KRKevin Rose8:25

      It was always the bigs that, that couldn't figure it out, you know?

   9. AAAnish Acharya8:28

      Right.

   10. KRKevin Rose8:28

       They, they had to acquire Instagram-

   11. AAAnish Acharya8:29

       [laughs]

   12. KRKevin Rose8:29

       ... to be cool.

   13. AAAnish Acharya8:30

       Right.

   14. KRKevin Rose8:30

       They had to buy the, the, the cool. And I think with, with ChatGPT and, and actually with, with Google as well, with, you know, their, their Banana model and whatnot, it's... for the first time, we're seeing the bigs put out consumer apps that are getting some traction. I mean, granted, they do have the scale. They have the install base. They can put that in front of a lot of people.

   15. AAAnish Acharya8:48

       Mm-hmm.

   16. KRKevin Rose8:48

       But like we saw with the Google+ side, just because you have the install base and you have the eyeballs doesn't mean you're gonna see success on the con- consumer side.

   17. AAAnish Acharya8:55

       That's right.

   18. KRKevin Rose8:55

       And I feel like we're starting to see that with the bigs, which was kinda shocking to me. Did that shock you as well?

   19. AAAnish Acharya9:00

       It... So in a sense, the, what the bigs have released are models, not products.

   20. KRKevin Rose9:05

       Right.

   21. AAAnish Acharya9:05

       And I think there's an important distinction there, right?

   22. KRKevin Rose9:06

       Eh, Notebook. Notebook is, I would say, was the first time I was like-

   23. AAAnish Acharya9:09

       That's fair

   24. KRKevin Rose9:09

       ... wow, they... that was a zero to one kind of, like, product that actually I use still frequently. But it's not consumer consumer.

   25. AAAnish Acharya9:16

       [laughs]

   26. KRKevin Rose9:16

       It's a little bit more business-

   27. AAAnish Acharya9:18

       You're-

   28. KRKevin Rose9:18

       ... slant.

   29. AAAnish Acharya9:19

       You're absolutely right, though I think that Notebook was inadvertent, right? It was one of many experiments, and it worked.

   30. KRKevin Rose9:24

       Right.
7. 9:56 – 11:48

   Big Tech, Models, and True Consumer Innovation

   1. AAAnish Acharya9:56

      ... where there's huge demand for companionship products, and a lot of these companionship products, like Janitor AI-

   2. KRKevin Rose10:01

      Mm-hmm

   3. AAAnish Acharya10:01

      ... you know, they, they deal with parts of the human experience that Big Tech is not gonna be comfortable-

   4. KRKevin Rose10:06

      Right

   5. AAAnish Acharya10:06

      ... shipping, right? It's disagreement. It's sexuality. It's persuasion. So, so much of this technology can address parts of the human experience that 1,000 committees at Google and Facebook-

   6. KRKevin Rose10:16

      Right

   7. AAAnish Acharya10:17

      ... don't want addressed, and I think that is one of the interesting opportunities in consumer.

   8. KRKevin Rose10:20

      100%. I think that's well said, and I think it is the space where we need to invest because if you think about w- w- what the pitches that we see on a, on a daily or weekly basis-

   9. AAAnish Acharya10:29

      Mm-hmm

   10. KRKevin Rose10:29

       ... a lot of the stuff that I see is a... You know, it can be a sanding down of the rough edges, and it can also just be something where I s- wholeheartedly believe that one of the bigs is gonna dominate that category, and so I avoid those investments. Like, they will never touch the emotional side-

   11. AAAnish Acharya10:45

       Mm-hmm

   12. KRKevin Rose10:45

       ... as much as they should or could. Uh, not should, but the, they wouldn't feel comfortable doing so, right?

   13. AAAnish Acharya10:51

       Yes. Yes.

   14. KRKevin Rose10:51

       And so those are the categories and the verticals where I think is they're defensible by the pure nature of what they're addressing, right?

   15. AAAnish Acharya10:59

       Yes.

   16. KRKevin Rose10:59

       And so that's kind of what you're saying here, right?

   17. AAAnish Acharya11:01

       100%. I just think they're, they're structurally set up to kind of take the soul out of products. And when you talk about categories like companionship, the whole thing is the soul. There is no product without that. I think the other interesting area where the labs and the bigs are not gonna be successful is products that benefit from being multi-model, right? Not multimodal, but multi-model. So Cursor is good because you can use every model inside of it.

   18. KRKevin Rose11:24

       Right.

   19. AAAnish Acharya11:24

       And Google is never gonna ship with-

   20. KRKevin Rose11:26

       Right

   21. AAAnish Acharya11:26

       ... anthropic models embedded. So that also is a very interesting... They're sort of constrained to the models that they've developed in-house, and products that benefit from being multi-model are actually really unconstrained.

   22. KRKevin Rose11:36

       Very interesting. A lot... We should dive into each of these things. I think we, we have two great topics going. Let's, let's, uh, pin the multi-model, but let's talk about companionship. So on the companionship side,

8. 11:48 – 14:01

   Companionship Apps and the Future of Human Connection

   1. KRKevin Rose11:48

      what do you believe should be built? What have you seen built? And how much of this do you think is fad versus depth? Meaning, it's funny and weird and awkward and strange to have an AI girlfriend, and I-

   2. AAAnish Acharya12:03

      [laughs]

   3. KRKevin Rose12:03

      ... in the early days, call it, like... Well, early days. Let's call it a year ago. [laughs] You know?

   4. AAAnish Acharya12:07

      Yeah. Way back in the day.

   5. KRKevin Rose12:08

      Way back in the day.

   6. AAAnish Acharya12:09

      Prehistoric. Yep. [laughs]

   7. KRKevin Rose12:10

      I... A friend of mine was like, "Hey, go check this out," and it was not something that was-You know, X'd about or tweeted about. It was, it was like this kind of like thing that you went into and, and I'll say that I went there, and it was models unhinged, right?

   8. AAAnish Acharya12:24

      Uh-huh.

   9. KRKevin Rose12:24

      This was before Grok did it.

   10. AAAnish Acharya12:26

       Mm-hmm.

   11. KRKevin Rose12:26

       And you could basically talk to a model and get any type of response that you wanted.

   12. AAAnish Acharya12:31

       Mm-hmm.

   13. KRKevin Rose12:32

       Uh, meaning in terms of sexuality-

   14. AAAnish Acharya12:34

       Mm-hmm

   15. KRKevin Rose12:34

       ... or whatever you were looking for, right? W- how much of that are you concerned about in terms of shaping humanity, replacing real relationships? Like what lends... How do you evaluate something like that? Do you invest in those types of things?

   16. AAAnish Acharya12:49

       Yeah. This is such a great topic. I wish we had Eugenia here, who founded Replica-

   17. KRKevin Rose12:54

       Mm-hmm

   18. AAAnish Acharya12:54

       ... 'cause she'd have a ton of thoughts. I mean, okay, so I'm always gonna give you the optimistic take. It's just how I'm wired.

   19. KRKevin Rose13:00

       Yeah.

   20. AAAnish Acharya13:00

       So let me give you a couple of my most optimistic takes. So one is we all know the importance of human connection and the value of it.

   21. KRKevin Rose13:06

       Mm-hmm.

   22. AAAnish Acharya13:07

       Maybe the human part is overvalued. You know, you are, you live in an embarrassment of social riches. You have friends. You have professional connections. You have interesting people you can meet. They all wanna connect with you, and your biggest challenge is prioritizing. I don't know that that's the experience of the average person in this country. You know, I think that there's a deep loneliness, and any progress we make towards addressing the loneliness is human progress and is very pro-social. And I think that-

   23. KRKevin Rose13:31

       Is that progress, though, to have a conversation with a chatbot? Do you think that starts to fill that emotional bucket up?

   24. AAAnish Acharya13:37

       Yes.

   25. KRKevin Rose13:38

       You, so you-

   26. AAAnish Acharya13:38

       Yes

   27. KRKevin Rose13:38

       ... believe that when-

   28. AAAnish Acharya13:39

       Yes

   29. KRKevin Rose13:39

       ... someone is having a conversation, they are getting a lift?

   30. AAAnish Acharya13:42

       Yes.
9. 14:01 – 17:36

   The Optimistic and Pessimistic Views on AI Relationships

   1. AAAnish Acharya14:01

      still feel the feelings, and I think that's what's necessary to make personal progress as a result of connection.

   2. KRKevin Rose14:07

      Do you believe... So th- this is my concern. I'll let, I'll play the, the, the do- the doomer side-

   3. AAAnish Acharya14:12

      Please

   4. KRKevin Rose14:12

      ... of this.

   5. AAAnish Acharya14:12

      [laughs]

   6. KRKevin Rose14:13

      Um, my concern is that one of the things I noticed with these models early on when I'm playing with them is that they were very agreeable. And-

   7. AAAnish Acharya14:21

      Yeah

   8. KRKevin Rose14:21

      ... emotional wellbeing and kind of the, um, I would say the muscle that needs to be built is actually not when you're laughing and agreeing with friends and kinda going along with the flow. It's when there's disagreement and the discomfort that comes-

   9. AAAnish Acharya14:38

      Yes

   10. KRKevin Rose14:38

       ... from the, "Oh, I don't agree with you that... That doesn't hit me. That doesn't feel right. Let's build a bridge and figure out how to find common ground here."

   11. AAAnish Acharya14:47

       Yeah.

   12. KRKevin Rose14:47

       And if you're dealing with models that are just paid to agree with you all the time-

   13. AAAnish Acharya14:51

       Mm-hmm

   14. KRKevin Rose14:51

       ... th- then you're, you're basically... So I'll give an example. I was talking to, well, I, I can call him out. So I was talking to Tim Ferriss about this, and we were like-

   15. AAAnish Acharya14:57

       [laughs]

   16. KRKevin Rose14:58

       ... we were, we were taking a screenshot, I was taking screenshots [laughs] of what this model was saying to me. And it was basically agreeing to anything that I put in front of it. I was like, "Hey, what do you think about this?" And it was like, "I'll do that with you."

   17. AAAnish Acharya15:07

       Yeah.

   18. KRKevin Rose15:07

       And I was like, "Oh my God." Like, I couldn't believe it, right?

   19. AAAnish Acharya15:09

       [laughs]

   20. KRKevin Rose15:10

       And I'm sending it over to him, and he's like, "We are doomed," in his response because y- you- you're not getting any pushback. And so then, okay, when you j- make the jump to a real relationship-

   21. AAAnish Acharya15:22

       Mm-hmm

   22. KRKevin Rose15:22

       ... okay, I wanna have that relationship with a human, you're used to an agreeable, you know, kind of like this subservient, like, thing, and, and it doesn't, the proxy and the jump doesn't make sense.

   23. AAAnish Acharya15:34

       Mm-hmm.

   24. KRKevin Rose15:35

       And all of a sudden you're like, "Well, that's not as good."

   25. AAAnish Acharya15:37

       Mm-hmm.

   26. KRKevin Rose15:37

       "I wanna go back to my model." Like, are we training people to want and favor agreeable models over real, you know, the real character building that comes with the emotional side of things?

   27. AAAnish Acharya15:48

       I don't know. I, I think we just need to dial it in. Like, everybody knows a human relationship where the other person always agrees with you is not authentic.

   28. KRKevin Rose15:55

       Right.

   29. AAAnish Acharya15:55

       And it doesn't nourish you. You need to have the tension, the disagreement, the exploration. I mean, we've gotta, like, be fair to where we are in the cycle.

   30. KRKevin Rose16:04

       Yeah.
10. 17:36 – 19:18

    Emotional Tech and Extending Human Feelings

    1. KRKevin Rose17:36

       I- I'm certainly looking at those startups.

    2. AAAnish Acharya17:37

       Yeah.

    3. KRKevin Rose17:37

       I, I think, uh, a- along the lines of, um, there being a therapist or a counselor, somebody on the back end that can, you know, give you this partner to bounce ideas off of and kinda push you into best practices. I- that's really interesting to me. I don't know if you've looked at any of those types of startups.

    4. AAAnish Acharya17:54

       Yes.

    5. KRKevin Rose17:55

       But-

    6. AAAnish Acharya17:55

       I've looked at a few. I, I mean, I do think that's interesting. By the way, the ketones are kicking in.

    7. KRKevin Rose17:58

       Yeah.

    8. AAAnish Acharya17:59

       And I'm flying.

    9. KRKevin Rose17:59

       You feel that?

    10. AAAnish Acharya17:59

        [laughs]

    11. KRKevin Rose18:00

        Isn't it amazing?

    12. AAAnish Acharya18:00

        Yeah, yes, yes.

    13. KRKevin Rose18:01

        Yeah.

    14. AAAnish Acharya18:01

        Is it just caffeine?

    15. KRKevin Rose18:02

        No, it's not caffeine. It's, like, full on... I'll, I'll send you the thing about ketones.

    16. AAAnish Acharya18:05

        Wow.

    17. KRKevin Rose18:05

        But they're a natural fuel source that is not caffeinated.

    18. AAAnish Acharya18:08

        I mean, I'm definitely feeling something.

    19. KRKevin Rose18:09

        Yeah. [laughs]

    20. AAAnish Acharya18:10

        [laughs] Okay, so I think, yes, you know, therapy, uh, companionship, all that stuff makes sense. I actually think there's a really interesting emerging category. So you see this with Poke. That's a great example of it.

    21. KRKevin Rose18:20

        Mm-hmm.

    22. AAAnish Acharya18:21

        Hux does some of this as well, as well as, uh, Signal's new company, we both spent time with him, where I call it, like, indirect companionship.So what is Poke? Poke is kind of this, you know, subjective human front end to your email.

    23. KRKevin Rose18:35

        Mm-hmm.

    24. AAAnish Acharya18:35

        You know, and email is... it's like a set of tasks, and it's pretty heavy, and it's functional work that we have to do. And Poke creates this human overlay on top of it.

    25. KRKevin Rose18:45

        Yeah.

    26. AAAnish Acharya18:45

        And in a sense, I don't consider Poke a companionship product, but it's letting me interact with a functional part of my life through an emotional interface. I think that's actually a really interesting area for exploration. We are emotional beings who have been tr- taught for the last 100 years to do functional work.

    27. KRKevin Rose18:59

        Mm-hmm.

    28. AAAnish Acharya19:00

        Like, what does it mean to kind of return to our roots and still do functional work except through an emotional filter?

    29. KRKevin Rose19:04

        Yeah. Can you talk about Poke a little bit? Like, what, what is the onboarding like, and why are people talking about it?

    30. AAAnish Acharya19:09

        Yeah. It's, it's so wild. I encourage everybody to try it out. So you download Poke. One interesting th- thing they've done is actually the interface is iMessage.

11. 19:18 – 21:05

    Poke and the Rise of Emotional Interfaces

    1. AAAnish Acharya19:18

       So you're texting with it. So, you know, of course, iMessage, you're typically only texting with people.

    2. KRKevin Rose19:22

       Yeah.

    3. AAAnish Acharya19:22

       So right away, that's subliminally sort of setting you up to expect to have a human-like interaction.

    4. KRKevin Rose19:27

       Mm-hmm.

    5. AAAnish Acharya19:27

       Then the Poke product is really well done. First, it refuses to allow you to sign up for the product. So you've gotta convince it that you deserve to actually use the product. Then you engage in this negotiation on price-

    6. KRKevin Rose19:39

       Right

    7. AAAnish Acharya19:39

       ... where it starts at 200 a month. It reads all of your email, so of course it can say, "Hey, Kevin, I saw you bought XYZ. You know, you're spending a lot on your ketones." Like-

    8. KRKevin Rose19:48

       Right

    9. AAAnish Acharya19:48

       ... "I think you can spend 200 a month-

    10. KRKevin Rose19:50

        Right

    11. AAAnish Acharya19:50

        ... on this product." And there's a real tortured negotiation to get the price down. So by the time you get in, even though it hasn't done anything for you except sort of tortured you-

    12. KRKevin Rose19:59

        Mm-hmm

    13. AAAnish Acharya19:59

        ... you've already got this perception of value.

    14. KRKevin Rose20:02

        Right.

    15. AAAnish Acharya20:02

        And it's just... it's a very interesting experiment in onboarding. And I think they're gonna... if you extrapolate it, it's an experiment in product design in an era where we have emotional primitives.

    16. KRKevin Rose20:11

        Yeah. It is, it is fascinating. Like, I, I love people, product builders that consider every step of the process from sign-up all the way through onboarding to you name it, and they rethink the entire stack.

    17. AAAnish Acharya20:23

        Right.

    18. KRKevin Rose20:23

        And this is an example of just something that I don't know if that's the long-term best strategy for a product like that, to negotiate kind of SaaS software in real time.

    19. AAAnish Acharya20:32

        Yeah.

    20. KRKevin Rose20:33

        But, you know, that alone, that little tiny feature is a great example of something that went, you know, kind of viral within a small subset of, of... and I'm sure led to tens of thousands of signups-

    21. AAAnish Acharya20:43

        Yes. Yeah

    22. KRKevin Rose20:44

        ... just from people talking about that feature.

    23. AAAnish Acharya20:46

        And when we're talking about it now.

    24. KRKevin Rose20:47

        Right. Exactly.

    25. AAAnish Acharya20:48

        [laughs] That's right.

    26. KRKevin Rose20:48

        But I think that is, like, such a, a, a, a... just for the product builders out there, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a great little way to wedge yourself into the conversation by rethinking part of that step, you know?

    27. AAAnish Acharya20:59

        Yes. Um, I've got actually a related question for you. So you've both designed, you've done a lot of new product thinking,

12. 21:05 – 25:32

    Weird and Working: How to Spot Great Founders

    1. AAAnish Acharya21:05

       and you've spotted a lot of new product thinking. Like, how do you do it? What are the patterns? How did you sort of see it all of these times?

    2. KRKevin Rose21:12

       I, I think that on the, on the product side, what I've always been drawn to is the, for, for better or worse, the novelty of original thought in certain areas. Um, if it's something that is... We've talked about this kind of sand- sanding down of the rough edges, like, that to me is not that interesting.

    3. AAAnish Acharya21:31

       Mm-hmm.

    4. KRKevin Rose21:32

       But I really respect people that are building something like this price negotiation where I just haven't seen it done before.

    5. AAAnish Acharya21:39

       Right.

    6. KRKevin Rose21:39

       It doesn't mean that it's going to, you know, be a top 10 app and, and it's gonna be a multi-billion dollar company, but if you find that signal in someone, in a builder's brain, that means that they're gonna apply that signal to other parts of the product that they're building.

    7. AAAnish Acharya21:54

       Interesting.

    8. KRKevin Rose21:54

       Meaning that they will continue to reinvent and reimagine things through a lens that nobody else has. And that, to me, is enough signal to say, "Okay, we will probably turn over a card at some point that is the magic, you know, card that is gonna get us that, that home run or that massive product," right? So-

    9. AAAnish Acharya22:13

       Interesting

    10. KRKevin Rose22:14

        ... I value that almost above all else. Like, even if the, the, the idea isn't the one where I think is going to hit scale-

    11. AAAnish Acharya22:21

        Yeah

    12. KRKevin Rose22:21

        ... if you have a founder that builds w- through that framework of, "Okay, I'm not gonna just do this just because every else- everyone else has," or, "I'm not just going to take the path of least resistance and kind of, you know, build a better Slack," or whatever it may be.

    13. AAAnish Acharya22:35

        [laughs] That's right.

    14. KRKevin Rose22:35

        Like, to me, that is very rare to find.

    15. AAAnish Acharya22:39

        Mm-hmm.

    16. KRKevin Rose22:39

        And when you find it, that's the type of person that I want to, especially at the seed stage when you don't know what's gonna work, that I'd like to back, you know?

    17. AAAnish Acharya22:46

        That's super interesting 'cause one of our observations is that it's just really hard to predict consumer seed.

    18. KRKevin Rose22:51

        Yes.

    19. AAAnish Acharya22:51

        And we haven't done a ton of it for that reason. In fact, our stated sort of approach is weird and working.

    20. KRKevin Rose22:56

        Mm-hmm.

    21. AAAnish Acharya22:57

        That's how we've tried to invest in consumer, yet you have been consistently right at consumer seed investing. It's interesting that that's what you look for.

    22. KRKevin Rose23:03

        Yeah, I mean, I think that's, like, exactly right. Weird and working. Like, I, I look for weird first.

    23. AAAnish Acharya23:07

        Yeah.

    24. KRKevin Rose23:07

        And then if it starts to have a little bit of smoke, like, that's a very interesting signal. And then oftentimes, I've seen founders do this a handful of times, where weird and working, working ends up failing, and then, but they still have the weird because that's in their DNA.

    25. AAAnish Acharya23:20

        Yeah.

    26. KRKevin Rose23:20

        So they'll build the next weird and working.

    27. AAAnish Acharya23:22

        [laughs]

    28. KRKevin Rose23:22

        Right? And that's what you want because they're gonna need to... several shots on goal. And as long as... You can't manufacture the weird. The weird is internal.

    29. AAAnish Acharya23:30

        Yes.

    30. KRKevin Rose23:31

        The weird is I just see the world in a different way.
13. 25:32 – 27:43

    The Power of “Weird” in Consumer Products

    1. KRKevin Rose25:32

       broadcast to m- to all, right?

    2. AAAnish Acharya25:33

       Mm-hmm.

    3. KRKevin Rose25:34

       And when you see something like that, it, it un- unlocks not only a massive product opportunity and market opportunity because that's the way that, you know, um, you'll, you'll never become friends with the celebrity, but you can sign up for their broadcast, right? And so that was very interesting, but I, I think that is the weird thing. It seemed odd at the time.

    4. AAAnish Acharya25:53

       Was it weird? I was gonna ask, yeah.

    5. KRKevin Rose25:54

       It was weird.

    6. AAAnish Acharya25:55

       Interesting.

    7. KRKevin Rose25:55

       It was like, oh, 'cause I remember signing up for Twitter for the first time and just being like, "Okay, well where... What do we do here?" And they had this thing called following, and I'm like, "What is the f- following thing?" You know?

    8. AAAnish Acharya26:06

       [laughs] Right. Right.

    9. KRKevin Rose26:07

       And it sounds so obvious now.

    10. AAAnish Acharya26:09

        Yes.

    11. KRKevin Rose26:09

        But I- it's weird at the time. And I think that is going to be, um, that's so important for, for a consumer because what does seem weird at the time eventually becomes mainstream, and then everyone just take, assumes that that was always the case, right?

    12. AAAnish Acharya26:24

        Yes.

    13. KRKevin Rose26:25

        And that's what I'm looking for, is that, that weird thing that will eventually become so mainstream that we'll assume that that was always a, a primitive that existed forever-

    14. AAAnish Acharya26:34

        Right

    15. KRKevin Rose26:34

        ... when in reality it was, like, new and novel at that time.

    16. AAAnish Acharya26:36

        I love that.

    17. KRKevin Rose26:37

        Does that make sense at all?

    18. AAAnish Acharya26:38

        It makes perfect sense. It's very, very interesting. You know? It's, it's also that founders have to push themselves to the edge of being embarrassed-

    19. KRKevin Rose26:44

        Yes

    20. AAAnish Acharya26:44

        ... potentially-

    21. KRKevin Rose26:45

        Yes

    22. AAAnish Acharya26:45

        ... to design genuine new things.

    23. KRKevin Rose26:47

        Right.

    24. AAAnish Acharya26:47

        Otherwise, it's very derivative, you know? It just has to be, and that is what all the X for Y companies typically are.

    25. KRKevin Rose26:52

        Right. Exactly. Like, when we, you and I were at GV and we did the Uber investment, how many startups did we say that, that were, "I'm the Uber for this."

    26. AAAnish Acharya27:00

        Yes.

    27. KRKevin Rose27:00

        And you're like, "Oh, God, another one," right?

    28. AAAnish Acharya27:02

        Right.

    29. KRKevin Rose27:02

        And then, yes, there are the, the DoorDashes and some of the others that are built on the same kinda similar primitives, but, uh, it's nothing like... It was so weird to get into the back of somebody's car.

    30. AAAnish Acharya27:13

        [laughs] Strange.
14. 27:43 – 30:05

    Human Behavior Shifts: From Uber to Airbnb

    1. AAAnish Acharya27:43

       things, and they're all true and they're all valid. The most interesting part of both Airbnb and Uber were there were these dramatic changes in human behavior.

    2. KRKevin Rose27:49

       Yes. Yes.

    3. AAAnish Acharya27:50

       We had all been raised being told two things: Never get into a stranger's car.

    4. KRKevin Rose27:53

       Never sleep on a stranger's couch. [laughs] Yes.

    5. AAAnish Acharya27:55

       Yes, yes, exactly, you know? And then all of a sudden you started doing it, and guess what? The strangers were kinda pleasant.

    6. KRKevin Rose28:00

       Yeah.

    7. AAAnish Acharya28:01

       And it was just this incredible unlock for the world, and this sort of like, I don't know, this sort of positive view of human trust in strangers.

    8. KRKevin Rose28:07

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AAAnish Acharya28:08

       That was a big change in consumer behavior.

    10. KRKevin Rose28:10

        Yeah. And, and that, that's, that's so exciting because I, I think we're gonna see more and more of that. One of the things that I've done, I'll just be a little bit vulnerable and transparent 'cause that's what's fun about podcasting.

    11. AAAnish Acharya28:20

        [laughs]

    12. KRKevin Rose28:20

        One of the things that I get in a lot of trouble for is if I get in a disagreement with my wife, I will take some of that shit to ChatGPT and be like, "Am I right here? What's going on?" You know?

    13. AAAnish Acharya28:29

        [laughs]

    14. KRKevin Rose28:29

        And I, I, I, but I call and I say, "Use the framework or, of Ter- Terry Real." I use some of these, like, pro- professional therapists-

    15. AAAnish Acharya28:35

        Cool

    16. KRKevin Rose28:35

        ... and say, "Help me analyze this." The mistake I make is I paste that back into the conversation. [laughs]

    17. AAAnish Acharya28:41

        [laughs]

    18. KRKevin Rose28:41

        But the point being is that's weird, awkward. She d- she didn't like it. She's like-

    19. AAAnish Acharya28:45

        Yeah

    20. KRKevin Rose28:45

        ... "Hey, this isn't cool. You're going to this, like, you're, you're..." She calls it my bot. "You're chatting with your bot about our relationship," blah, blah, blah.

    21. AAAnish Acharya28:50

        Yeah.

    22. KRKevin Rose28:50

        But I've talked to enough people now where I know this is a trend. People are looking to AI as a validation of a, you know, help me through this level of thinking here. Help me figure out am I in the wrong here? What am I doing? Blah, blah. I see a world where the bot is in the room with both of us-

    23. AAAnish Acharya29:07

        Yes

    24. KRKevin Rose29:07

        ... as we're having a chat conversation or as we're on video or as we're debating out something. We're like, "Oh, this is heated. Let's turn it on. Let's let it watch us, and then give us feedback on how we're doing," as a third party kind of like, you know, hopefully unbiased pers- thing that is sitting there and evaluating this in real time. Is that weird and awkward right now? Absolutely.

    25. AAAnish Acharya29:27

        Yes. Yes.

    26. KRKevin Rose29:28

        To your point about how these things evolve over time, 10 years from now, will that tech be good enough to where we'll consider that to be not, like, just, like, a, a healthy thing for our relationship? I think so.

    27. AAAnish Acharya29:36

        100%. I think that's coming. I mean, ideally, the Alexa in your kitchen is passively observing your family, and then perhaps is just letting you know, like, "Hey, you know, your daughter was trying to talk to you about something. You weren't really paying attention."

    28. KRKevin Rose29:48

        Mm.

    29. AAAnish Acharya29:49

        So there's all this stuff that can just be in the oxygen around us-

    30. KRKevin Rose29:52

        Mm
15. 30:05 – 33:38

    Always-On Companions and AI in Relationships

    1. AAAnish Acharya30:05

       thing for every school in America to have. And the way we're gonna get there is not by paying for two teachers in every classroom. It's probably some kind of a vision model that's privacy first, that can observe the social interactions of children-

    2. KRKevin Rose30:16

       Mm-hmm

    3. AAAnish Acharya30:16

       ... and let parents and teachers know what's going on.

    4. KRKevin Rose30:19

       The, this idea of always-on recording, you and I have had a debate about.

    5. AAAnish Acharya30:23

       [laughs] Yes.

    6. KRKevin Rose30:23

       Uh, do we wanna get to the mu- multimodal thing real quick though before we go in there? Let's, let's-

    7. AAAnish Acharya30:27

       We, we should also wanna get, since we were talking about internet history, I wanna-

    8. KRKevin Rose30:30

       Yeah

    9. AAAnish Acharya30:30

       ... get your take, your story that you've told me, I think privately, about the Dig button, the Like button-

    10. KRKevin Rose30:35

        Oh, geez

    11. AAAnish Acharya30:36

        ... and the story there. Yeah.

    12. KRKevin Rose30:37

        Yeah. We can talk... W- where do you wanna begin? You want me to talk about that real quick?

    13. AAAnish Acharya30:39

        Well, let's go internet history, and, like, tell me, you know, the Dig button was a very new and interesting idea, social news. Talked about... I think we're, we're sort of in a safe place 20 years later.

    14. KRKevin Rose30:48

        Yeah.

    15. AAAnish Acharya30:48

        Talk about how it influenced the Like button.

    16. KRKevin Rose30:50

        So how did the Like button come into existence? What was it like back during that time? I, I think in the early days when we first had something called asynchronous JavaScript, to get a little bit geeky, it was the first time, even though this sounds super archaic, that you could actually click a button, send out for a server response, and get something back into your browser. It used to be a world that we'd have to refresh the page to see anything.

    17. AAAnish Acharya31:12

        Mm-hmm.

    18. KRKevin Rose31:12

        And so this idea that content could talk to a server and come back to you and display something new was just completely exciting and novel at the time.

    19. AAAnish Acharya31:22

        Mm-hmm.

    20. KRKevin Rose31:22

        And so I had seen, um, a bunch of sites that were allowing for user submissions, like Slashdot, but they wouldn't show you what content had been submitted. So it was, like, user-generated content in some sense, but there was still a gatekeeper to that. There were social bookmarking sites, like Delicious and others, that would count the number of people that had bookmarked things. But there was no way to just say, like, "I think this is cool. Let me just, like, tap on it, and, like, show my vote of interest on something." And so when Digg launched in late 2004, it was the first time that I had ever seen, just 'cause the Ajax had just been out for a couple months, that anyone had voted on content. And obviously, I didn't invote, i- i- invent voting, but no one had done it on the web.

    21. AAAnish Acharya32:01

        Yeah.

    22. KRKevin Rose32:01

        And I was like, "Well, wouldn't it be cool if you clicked something and you saw the number go up, and that number was the number of humans that actually had clicked on something?" So, uh, wisely, uh, just by luck, I just happened to be, uh, in contact with enough people to where they were like, "Hey, you should go out and file a patent on this."

    23. AAAnish Acharya32:16

        Mm-hmm.

    24. KRKevin Rose32:17

        And so I went and filed a, a patent on it, not because I wanted to enforce or own liking, but I was told and advised to do that because you want it as a defensive practice so that no one can say, like, go out and patent it, one of the bigs go out and patent and say, "No, you can no longer do this," even though I had, you know, first use rights, and so I would've been able to do it. But I went and did it, which was great, and, um, that was started off, and it became really big. And at that time, we were larger than Facebook, and so, traffic-wise.

    25. AAAnish Acharya32:44

        Mm-hmm.

    26. KRKevin Rose32:45

        And Mark and I shared a common investor in Greylock, um, and we just had a lot of overlapping friends. And w- he was like, "Hey," like, y- actually, it was David Sze from Greylock that was like, "Hey, you should meet Mark. You guys should hang." And so we went out and, um, grabbed dinner, and, uh, we hung out a couple times. We had dinner a couple times, and, and he came to my office. He drove up and came to the Digg office. And I'll never forget because he came into the office, and he was so young at the time, and so was I [laughs] no gray hair back then. He was sitting on the ground and just, like, wouldn't sit in his chair. He was, like, sitting on the ground, and he... We was, we were just talking about what it meant to, what, what liking was all about, what digging was all about. And I was like, "Well, the way I see it is that this is social signal that will feed back into an algorithm that'll eventually give you more stuff that you would like to consume," and that was kind of the patent that I had gone and filed. And Mark didn't have this at the time. There was, I think there was a way to poke someone on their profile,

16. 33:38 – 40:08

    Building in the AI Era: Vibe Coding and New Tools

    1. KRKevin Rose33:38

       but that wasn't really a like. It was just to say, "What's up?" And then a few months later, they had rolled out the Like button, and, and that was kind of like a, a big part of what they pushed as a, as a similar thing, like a social signal to feed back into the algorithm to give you better content. Uh, they obviously hit a scale. I mean, we were s- we were at the point serving billions of, of Dig buttons per month, uh, because we had them integrated into... You could actually put a widget into your site back in the day, and there used to be b- Dig buttons all over the internet. But, um, you know, it was cool. I was never offended by that. I was like, "Oh, that's awesome." He made it his own.

    2. AAAnish Acharya34:10

       Mm-hmm.

    3. KRKevin Rose34:10

       Called it Like, and it, it made sense to apply that to what he was doing. I know there were other people at Facebook that worked on that. Actually, it was interesting because somebody, one of the engineers that worked on it, I saw in an interview accredited Digg for, like, being a place where they had seen that first-

    4. AAAnish Acharya34:24

       Hmm

    5. KRKevin Rose34:24

       ... which I thought was really nice, you know? Um, and it's strange because even though Digg, you know, went out of business and failed, uh, for that version of the, the site, um, when all was said and done, the asset of Digg sold for pennies on the dollar. It wasn't really worth a whole lot, but the patents ended up being worth millions of dollars that LinkedIn bought them from us.

    6. AAAnish Acharya34:44

       [laughs] Really?

    7. KRKevin Rose34:44

       So LinkedIn bought the most... The, the thing at the end of the day was the defensibility and patents around the actual social Dig button-

    8. AAAnish Acharya34:51

       Wow

    9. KRKevin Rose34:52

       ... um, which, which LinkedIn ended up buying. But yeah, it was, it was a really wild time to sit there and come up with that idea. N- not that voting was novel, but no, I just hadn't seen it applied, and then we applied that to comments as well. I'll never forget the... Actually, even bigger than the... Well, not bigger than the Dig button, but different than Dig button, but e- equal, was I had created with Daniel Burka, we were sitting there, and we were designing the, the comment system.

    10. AAAnish Acharya35:18

        Mm-hmm.

    11. KRKevin Rose35:18

        And then we were like, "Okay, well, we should a- a- apply digging and burying to comments 'cause that makes sense. Like, people should be able to vote up and down comments." Never been done before.

    12. AAAnish Acharya35:25

        Yeah.

    13. KRKevin Rose35:25

        And that was very strange, so we were like, "Okay, this makes sense." And I was like... Daniel and I were, like, designing. I was like, "What if Daniel, after a certain number of buries, it kinda shrinks down?" He's like, "Oh, that's cool," and then we riffed on that, and we built the design. And then we deployed it and rolled it out, and we had it so that after five buries, it was hard-coded.

    14. AAAnish Acharya35:43

        Mm-hmm.

    15. KRKevin Rose35:43

        After five downvotes-

    16. AAAnish Acharya35:44

        Mm-hmm

    17. KRKevin Rose35:44

        ... it would shrink into a single line, so you'd just see, like, the, like, who submitted, but you would see... We actually color-coded it, and so it kind of looked like it was, like, disabled or, you know, away.

    18. AAAnish Acharya35:52

        Mm-hmm.

    19. KRKevin Rose35:53

        And we rolled it out there, and three hours later, we looked at that, and I noticed one of them had negative, like, 200 and some downvotes or something.

    20. AAAnish Acharya36:02

        Okay.

    21. KRKevin Rose36:03

        And I was like, "The product's broken. Something is not... We have a bug in the code because it is meant to shrink after five."

    22. AAAnish Acharya36:09

        Mm-hmm.

    23. KRKevin Rose36:10

        Why would it be negative several hundred?

    24. AAAnish Acharya36:13

        [laughs]

    25. KRKevin Rose36:13

        We looked at it, couldn't find a bug, couldn't find a bug, and then we realized what had happened. [laughs] We talked to some users. They're like... They wanted to see the train wreck, so they exposed the comment, were like, "Oh, yeah, that guy's an asshole," and then they [laughs] downvoted it another time.

    26. AAAnish Acharya36:25

        Wow.

    27. KRKevin Rose36:26

        Because at that time, they, they were like, "Why are people... That person must have said something crazy."

    28. AAAnish Acharya36:30

        [laughs]

    29. KRKevin Rose36:31

        "Let's take a look. Oh, yeah. Ooh, that was horrible," and they downvoted it. But it just, it immediately showed me that people are attracted to the carnage. You know, they want to see-The destruction and the, the, the kind of bad side of the internet. I was like, "Oh, God." Like, I would have thought as a product builder at that time, people say, "Oh, negative 10 votes, I'm not gonna look at that," you know?

    30. AAAnish Acharya36:53

        Mm-hmm.
17. 40:08 – 47:25

    The Modern AI Dev Stack and Building Apps Solo

    1. AAAnish Acharya40:08

       or you didn't, and if you didn't, everybody knew what the sort of social hierarchy was.

    2. KRKevin Rose40:12

       Mm-hmm.

    3. AAAnish Acharya40:12

       And when I was growing up, they said everybody's cool in college. Why? Because you'd find your, you know, your sense of... y- y- your community of weirdos.

    4. KRKevin Rose40:20

       Yeah.

    5. AAAnish Acharya40:21

       Um, but the beauty of the internet now is that you find those weirdos online-

    6. KRKevin Rose40:26

       Yes

    7. AAAnish Acharya40:26

       ... at any age. So I think that there's acceptance of people's own individuality that didn't exist 20 or 30 years ago.

    8. KRKevin Rose40:32

       Right.

    9. AAAnish Acharya40:33

       And sure, there are some edges on the internet, but I think the sort of benefit to humanity of people finding their, their like-minded people early is really significant.

    10. KRKevin Rose40:40

        And I think the power of micro-communities is only gonna be more important over time. Like, these very small kind of, in some sense, hopefully walled gardens where you can go and have private discussion. Like, if you're in... Your weird isn't so weird. You just need to find the people that are into it, right?

    11. AAAnish Acharya40:56

        That's it, yeah.

    12. KRKevin Rose40:56

        And so if you're into Japanese woodworking, if you can find five oth- 5,000 other people that are also into that-

    13. AAAnish Acharya41:01

        Yeah

    14. KRKevin Rose41:01

        ... that is a very powerful network, right?

    15. AAAnish Acharya41:04

        Yes.

    16. KRKevin Rose41:04

        And so that's, that's, that's the exciting side of all this. You know, you're a product builder. You've been a builder for a long time. You've l- launched and sold companies.

    17. AAAnish Acharya41:11

        Mm-hmm.

    18. KRKevin Rose41:12

        Um, what are you doing these days? What is your... What, what's your outlook for how products are being built? How has that evolved, and, and how does that play into your investments as well? Because in some sense, we're entering into a, a really weird era.

    19. AAAnish Acharya41:26

        Mm-hmm.

    20. KRKevin Rose41:27

        Um, and not weird, but it's just new, where someone, even a designer that has no experience on the engineering side, can go prototype, build, launch. It, it's deputizing a wider base of people to actually roll out products.

    21. AAAnish Acharya41:41

        It's... I think it's incredible. So I, I'm so fired up. I haven't felt this way since, you know, I was on my computer working on my BBS. My mom was yelling at me to, like, "What are you doing down there?"

    22. KRKevin Rose41:51

        Oh, yeah.

    23. AAAnish Acharya41:51

        "Come up for dinner," you know? Like, that's the level of enthusiasm I have right now because it just feels like everybody is unlocked to do what they wanna do. I think there's a set of people or s- a part of us that will be creative, and a part of us that'll wanna be productive and emotional, and all of it is getting meshed together. So it's the best time that I've ever experienced in my career, hands down.

    24. KRKevin Rose42:11

        Does it worry you that entrepreneurs can go and build a startup, launch it, get product market fit, and not have to raise venture?

    25. AAAnish Acharya42:18

        No, it doesn't worry me. I think that there are businesses that will be built by, you know, 100 million revenue, one person. That's awesome.

    26. KRKevin Rose42:24

        Will they ever need venture capital?

    27. AAAnish Acharya42:25

        Maybe not, and that's okay. Like, we have 1%, .1% of the software that we need in the world that we're going to have. You know, we're just getting started. And of course, there are going to be businesses that don't need venture, and that is fantastic. For example, in the '90s, there was this big movement of digital small business owners, right?

    28. KRKevin Rose42:42

        Mm-hmm.

    29. AAAnish Acharya42:43

        You could sell shareware online.

    30. KRKevin Rose42:44

        Mm-hmm.
18. 47:25 – 53:50

    AI Music, Creativity, and the Next Cultural Wave

    1. KRKevin Rose47:25

       with it for the first time yesterday.

    2. AAAnish Acharya47:26

       Mm-hmm.

    3. KRKevin Rose47:27

       That's gonna take an hour of your time if you're really gonna go deep on it.

    4. AAAnish Acharya47:30

       Mm-hmm.

    5. KRKevin Rose47:30

       With something coming out every two to three days or once a week-

    6. AAAnish Acharya47:33

       Yeah

    7. KRKevin Rose47:33

       ... how do you work with your team to stay up to date with what is going on, given the pace in which things are rolling out?

    8. AAAnish Acharya47:40

       Yeah. We just work our asses off. We really do. Like, we commit to trying every product.

    9. KRKevin Rose47:44

       But what does that look like? Do you have an associate that comes to you and says, "Hey, I played with this. Take a look. I'm gonna sit... I'm gonna grab 20 minutes of your time-

    10. AAAnish Acharya47:50

        Yeah

    11. KRKevin Rose47:50

        ... because I wanna bring you up to speed on something"?

    12. AAAnish Acharya47:52

        Well, it's interesting you, you know, the sort of associate GP, like we're pretty egalitarian actually. So people cover different areas. So my partner Justine has a real specialization around creative tools. Like, she's gone to the edge of the internet on creative tools.

    13. KRKevin Rose48:06

        Mm.

    14. AAAnish Acharya48:06

        You know, or my partner Brian, who looks at a lot of things in social. Like, any time there's a weird working new social product, he's there. Olivia does that for us around productivity in areas like voice. I've been spending a lot of time in AI code. Like, I think I've, you know, I've probably got 50 subscriptions for app builders.

    15. KRKevin Rose48:21

        Wow.

    16. AAAnish Acharya48:22

        I've just tried them all. So we all commit ourselves to sort of sub-areas, and we try to cover them very thoroughly.

    17. KRKevin Rose48:29

        Mm.

    18. AAAnish Acharya48:29

        But look, we, we just hold ourselves to a really high bar of trying everything, 'cause our, like, belief is you cannot have an opinion until you've actually tried the product.

    19. KRKevin Rose48:37

        I think that's so wise, because there's just too much for any one person to try and wrap their heads around. So do you have briefings, like, where you share learnings? Like, how does that...

    20. AAAnish Acharya48:47

        Yeah

    21. KRKevin Rose48:47

        ... how do you make sure that knowledge gets transferred broadly within the fund and at, at the GP level?

    22. AAAnish Acharya48:53

        W- we definitely have a lot of active conversations about it, but the truth is, so much of our best thinking we publish. We really do. So if you read the essays, if you follow us on X, like, we're talking very transparently about what we're thinking, what we're learning, what we believe to be true, what we've changed our minds on.You know, it's interesting 'cause as a founder on the outside, I always assume that VCs knew all these secret things that they don't tell us, and maybe that was even true 10 years ago.

    23. KRKevin Rose49:16

        Mm-hmm.

    24. AAAnish Acharya49:16

        But now I think we've, in a very good way, moved to a world where investors are talking very actively about what they're seeing, and I think that's great signal for founders. Now, the signal's always a lagging indicator, so for founders to develop a weird, like definitionally no one's talking about it-

    25. KRKevin Rose49:31

        Right

    26. AAAnish Acharya49:31

        ... but it's great to know that there really aren't that many secrets. It's sort of being published out there.

    27. KRKevin Rose49:36

        Well, on the coding tools side, you said you're seeing a lot, you have so many active subscriptions. What is your preferred stack these days? If someone was getting involved in coding for the first time and they wanna start playing, what, what, what do you go to on the coding side?

    28. AAAnish Acharya49:47

        Oh, man. And it- I'd love to hear your stack as well. I- look, there's so many tools, and they're all pointed in different directions. My view on AI code and software is, like, this is not a market, it's an industry, okay? The whole software supply chain is changing. The s- cost of creating software is collapsing. We have 1% of the software we need in the world. We're gonna build the other 99%.

    29. KRKevin Rose50:05

        Why do you say that?

    30. AAAnish Acharya50:07

        Dude, because there are so many parts of the world where it wasn't... Sort of the ROI didn't make sense to create specialized software.
19. 53:50 – 1:05:10

    Curiosity, Risk, and Finding the Next Big Thing

    1. KRKevin Rose53:50

       five or s- 10 others that are playing in this space.

    2. AAAnish Acharya53:52

       Mm-hmm.

    3. KRKevin Rose53:53

       Um, and that's kinda how you get something off the ground. Now, the thing I've been doing though more recently is that there are still these dead ends that you run into where something isn't working, and it can be insanely frustrating if you're not technical. You don't know how to self-diagnosis, and you're like, "Why isn't, you know, my authentication working for X?" And you, you just keep hitting the same model over and over again.

    4. AAAnish Acharya54:14

       Mm-hmm.

    5. KRKevin Rose54:15

       And the nice thing about what, um, the way that Cursor functions is you can install something, uh... You can have multiple models running, one.

    6. AAAnish Acharya54:23

       Mm-hmm.

    7. KRKevin Rose54:24

       Uh, I will have one model on one side which is the Cursor built-in chat, which I'll, you know, tie to Sonnet 4.5, and then on the left-hand side I can have Codex from ChatGPT.

    8. AAAnish Acharya54:32

       Mm-hmm.

    9. KRKevin Rose54:32

       And if I run into a problem, I then take that problem over to the other side, have them also work on it.

    10. AAAnish Acharya54:38

        Interesting.

    11. KRKevin Rose54:39

        And if I put them against each other, you can typically get to a solution pretty quickly.

    12. AAAnish Acharya54:43

        That's incredible.

    13. KRKevin Rose54:43

        And so I will then kinda break through those walls and march towards something that's actually ready to deploy to production.

    14. AAAnish Acharya54:50

        So I love that point. Talk a bit about how you do the design exploration in v0 of individual components.

    15. KRKevin Rose54:55

        Yeah. So one of the things that I always like is a, a good amount of visual kind of flair and touch on things, and you, you saw a thing that w- last night when you came over to my house and we were, like, showing each other the vibe coding progress.

    16. AAAnish Acharya55:08

        [laughs]

    17. KRKevin Rose55:08

        Uh, one of the things that, that I'm exploring right now is chat around objects of content. So it could be stories, it could be all kinds of things, and I, I want to figure out how to select an object, uh, and, and bring it into chat in a very fluid way.

    18. AAAnish Acharya55:24

        Mm-hmm.

    19. KRKevin Rose55:24

        And I think in, at least in consumer internet, one of my spidey senses that I love is new primitives for how things are, are, kinda flow in and out of conversation.

    20. AAAnish Acharya55:35

        Mm-hmm.

    21. KRKevin Rose55:35

        And you have to-Come up- the- one of the things that you have to figure out is that emotional vibe of does this feel right? Does this feel new and interesting? Does it unlock more productivity, a better way to have a conversation about something? And you have to try a bunch of different things. So what I will do is I'll take one thing where I'll say, "The interaction for something, I wanna figure out a way, the best way to collapse and in- quickly jump in and out of a story."

    22. AAAnish Acharya56:02

        Mm-hmm.

    23. KRKevin Rose56:03

        And I'll take that over to v0, give it the screenshot, and say, "Come up with one way." And it'll create something, and I'll be like, "Okay, I kinda like this." I'll tweak it a little bit, you know, 10 other times so I've gone through a bunch of iterations.

    24. AAAnish Acharya56:13

        Yes.

    25. KRKevin Rose56:13

        And I'll have that one way. And now the big unlock is you say, "That's great. Give me 20 other ways to do it that are completely novel, unique, and don't have anything to do with the first way-

    26. AAAnish Acharya56:25

        Mm

    27. KRKevin Rose56:25

        ... and put them all on a single page." And it's churning, churning, churning, churning. Three, four minutes later, you have 20 different ways. Now I click down. Ooh, that was a weird interaction. Go down to the next one. Ooh, that- I like how that kinda zoomed this way and brought it off to the side. Whoa, that w- no, that's not gonna work. And you just keep going down, and you're like, "Well, I like number three and number eight."

    28. AAAnish Acharya56:42

        Yes.

    29. KRKevin Rose56:43

        "Give me 10 different ways to do number three and 10 different ways to do number eight."

    30. AAAnish Acharya56:46

        Yes.
20. 1:05:10 – 1:15:00

    The Future of Work, Creativity, and Technical Education

    1. KRKevin Rose1:05:11

       you know, at the end of the day, I, I really like, uh, what Ryan Hoover did in creating the Weekend Fund because it, it was actually based on a Chris Dixon quote where he said, like, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but what pe- "What the geeks are playing on the weekends will become mainstream."

    2. AAAnish Acharya1:05:24

       Mm-hmm.

    3. KRKevin Rose1:05:24

       And I thought that was a, a, a brilliant, um, quote from Chris because he also is very prescient. Like, he's so, so good at predicting the future and seeing things before anyone else.

    4. AAAnish Acharya1:05:33

       Mm-hmm.

    5. KRKevin Rose1:05:34

       Uh, the o- the only way to find this stuff is to have this inherent childlike drive that says, "I must play. I must play," and, and it ha- it's not something you can tell someone to do. You just have to be constantly at that edge of what is possible and always be just kicking the tires on things. And if that f- if that feels good to you, that feels like something that doesn't feel like work, like it does for me-

    6. AAAnish Acharya1:06:03

       Mm-hmm

    7. KRKevin Rose1:06:03

       ... then I think you will naturally be led into the next big thing. But it, it can't be a job.

    8. AAAnish Acharya1:06:08

       Mm.

    9. KRKevin Rose1:06:09

       It can't be something that someone tells you you have to do it. It just has to be driven from personal curiosity. When I was a little kid, there was a show, oh, God, I hope I get the name right. I think it was called Beyond 2000 or something like that. Do you know what I'm talking about?

    10. AAAnish Acharya1:06:21

        I don't, but go on.

    11. KRKevin Rose1:06:21

        Okay. There was a TV show, and all it was was it would just tell you for a half hour, and it was probably wrong, like, 99% of the time-

    12. AAAnish Acharya1:06:28

        [laughs]

    13. KRKevin Rose1:06:28

        ... 'cause they'd talk about flying cars and shit.

    14. AAAnish Acharya1:06:30

        Uh-huh.

    15. KRKevin Rose1:06:30

        But they would just tell you what, where they think things are going, and they would try and predict the next 20 years out.

    16. AAAnish Acharya1:06:35

        Yeah.

    17. KRKevin Rose1:06:35

        And I was just enamored by that. I would sit there and be like, "Wow, we're gonna have flying cars. This is crazy."

    18. AAAnish Acharya1:06:41

        [laughs]

    19. KRKevin Rose1:06:41

        But it was always, like, every episode was just a different vertical of what the future could look like.

    20. AAAnish Acharya1:06:46

        Mm-hmm.

    21. KRKevin Rose1:06:47

        And that has never left me. Like, this idea of wanting to see what's about to happen a- and, and live at that edge of things. Even if I wasn't investing, if I had decided to, to call it up and I never turn on another camera, I would be held up in a little room somewhere-

    22. AAAnish Acharya1:07:04

        Mm-hmm

    23. KRKevin Rose1:07:05

        ... constantly, like, playing with the latest stuff. So what does that mean today? What that means today is I splurged on a crazy-ass GPU for my house, and I'm downloading local models, you know?

    24. AAAnish Acharya1:07:15

        Uh-huh.

    25. KRKevin Rose1:07:15

        And you and I were talking even last night, I had this idea where I'm asking all the models out there to give me the 100 best albums of all time, and, meaning music or albums of all time, and not based on downloads, but cultural impact on their, uh, impact on other genres, springing up to your point, from that, and I'm gonna have them duke it out. I'm gonna put it against all the biggest... I'm gonna select the most expensive option to do, and I'll probably burn a half lake worth of water. Whatever the hell it's gonna... [laughs]

    26. AAAnish Acharya1:07:44

        [laughs]

    27. KRKevin Rose1:07:44

        I'm joking, but it's like-

    28. AAAnish Acharya1:07:45

        A thimble. A thimble

    29. KRKevin Rose1:07:45

        ... it's pretty bad. Yeah, it's pretty bad.

    30. AAAnish Acharya1:07:47

        Yeah.
21. 1:15:00 – 1:22:20

    Always-On Recording and Social Norms in Tech

    1. KRKevin Rose1:15:00

       degree. One of the things that I like about some of these, and they're largely kind of more the, on the vocational school side of things. When you hear about these programs and how they've evolved-

    2. AAAnish Acharya1:15:08

       Mm-hmm

    3. KRKevin Rose1:15:08

       ... it is like training you to become an entrepreneur, which is full stack. Building it, designing it-

    4. AAAnish Acharya1:15:15

       Yeah

    5. KRKevin Rose1:15:15

       ... coding it, shipping it. That depth of knowledge across the full stack, which impacts marketing, creativity, you know, hiring, firing, like that full suite-

    6. AAAnish Acharya1:15:25

       Yes

    7. KRKevin Rose1:15:25

       ... essential. Like, it will of course be very important in the future. I think the just singular technical focus around, you know, the code piece of it, that's where I would like to see the degrees, like, loosen up a little bit-

    8. AAAnish Acharya1:15:40

       Yeah

    9. KRKevin Rose1:15:40

       ... and kinda be a little bit more holistic and overarching.

    10. AAAnish Acharya1:15:43

        Yeah.

    11. KRKevin Rose1:15:43

        Because I don't think... And, and don't get me wrong, there will be technical challenges that we have in the future, but I think if you get to scale as an entrepreneur-

    12. AAAnish Acharya1:15:49

        Mm-hmm

    13. KRKevin Rose1:15:50

        ... you will have plenty of everything to go f- solve those challenges, right?

    14. AAAnish Acharya1:15:54

        I think that's right. I mean, I think being a technologist and broadly technology thinking sets you up to be a good founder. I... Actually, Elon's probably run the most ambitious experiment on this that is totally under- under-discussed, which is I think he typically has technical people in every role.

    15. KRKevin Rose1:16:08

        Right.

    16. AAAnish Acharya1:16:08

        Like marketing, comms, you know, you name it, there's a technical person there. So I, I really do think there's something in the training that sets you up to be successful in a lot of vac- vocations, which is totally distinct from programming.

    17. KRKevin Rose1:16:20

        Yeah. It... What I look for in a founder is someone that is kinda multi-disciplined in some way, 'cause if you're too technical, then you don't understand... Like, I met a founder yesterday that, um, is building a device that can kind of listen to everything, another one of these types of devices. And the, the kind of angle of what they were going after missed out on a lot of the, the social side of it, like what it-

    18. AAAnish Acharya1:16:45

        Mm-hmm

    19. KRKevin Rose1:16:45

        ... means to be listened to, the invasion of privacy, and w- how to potentially sidestep that. They, they were all technical-

    20. AAAnish Acharya1:16:53

        Mm-hmm

    21. KRKevin Rose1:16:53

        ... all device-focused, and y- I feel like the future you have to have that kind of full suite, you know?

    22. AAAnish Acharya1:16:59

        Mm-hmm.

    23. KRKevin Rose1:16:59

        It's, it's, it's not just any one discipline. It's probably gonna be a handful. The, the orchestrator role, you know?

    24. AAAnish Acharya1:17:04

        Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'll, it'll be interesting to see. You know, I also think that there's value in ignoring... I don't know why I'm just arguing with you here.

    25. KRKevin Rose1:17:10

        No.

    26. AAAnish Acharya1:17:10

        But there's value in ignoring the social norms. You know, a great example of this is 10 years ago, it's so funny looking at the mobile transition, so I remember it so distinctly. iPhone 2007, App Store in 2008. When the App Store came out, there was 6 million iPhones in distribution, right?

    27. KRKevin Rose1:17:25

        Mm.

    28. AAAnish Acharya1:17:25

        Not a lot. Today, ChatGPT has 800 million actives, right?

    29. KRKevin Rose1:17:29

        It's insane.

    30. AAAnish Acharya1:17:29

        We're not even three years in. So it's crazy the scale at which these things grow. If you look at the predictions from 2009, you can go read the blog posts. Like, no one knew what to do with the technology, and the most consistent prediction was location-based ads.
22. 1:22:20 – 1:24:03

    Closing Thoughts

    1. AAAnish Acharya1:22:20

       Yeah.

    2. KRKevin Rose1:22:20

       But then I know where I stand with you.

    3. AAAnish Acharya1:22:22

       Yeah.

    4. KRKevin Rose1:22:22

       Right? Because... And I think that's so important to know like, oh, what we're having is gonna remain largely confidential. It might pick up some themes, but it's never gonna be damning to me.

    5. AAAnish Acharya1:22:31

       That's so interesting. I mean, a- and that's exactly it, right? A visual cue-

    6. KRKevin Rose1:22:35

       Right, has to be a visual cue

    7. AAAnish Acharya1:22:36

       ... differential model.

    8. KRKevin Rose1:22:36

       Yes.

    9. AAAnish Acharya1:22:36

       You know, and that's not a technology problem. That's a product design problem.

    10. KRKevin Rose1:22:39

        Right.

    11. AAAnish Acharya1:22:40

        I think we're gonna solve it.

    12. KRKevin Rose1:22:41

        Yeah. Well, that's exciting.

    13. AAAnish Acharya1:22:42

        Yeah. Yeah.

    14. KRKevin Rose1:22:43

        Um, 'cause I certainly believe that especially with our brains as we get older, having that additional, you know, being able to jump back in context-

    15. AAAnish Acharya1:22:49

        Yeah

    16. KRKevin Rose1:22:49

        ... and finding some of the information. Although I did use it, did I tell you I used it with Dario one time where she told me she had said something, and I pulled up the transcript?

    17. AAAnish Acharya1:22:55

        [laughs] Oh, no.

    18. KRKevin Rose1:22:56

        Dude, I kinda... I keep shooting myself in the foot.

    19. AAAnish Acharya1:22:58

        That's a no-win, dude. That is a no-win scenario.

    20. KRKevin Rose1:22:59

        It's no-win 'cause you- you can pull it up and you paste it, and it's the last time you wear the device.

    21. AAAnish Acharya1:23:02

        You- you... There is no win.

    22. KRKevin Rose1:23:03

        [laughs]

    23. AAAnish Acharya1:23:03

        That's when you just go limp and take the pain. [laughs]

    24. KRKevin Rose1:23:05

        Well, brother, this has been great. It is so great to have you. Anything else that you wanted to touch on before we wrap things up?

    25. AAAnish Acharya1:23:10

        No, I absolutely had a blast. Let's keep talking.

    26. KRKevin Rose1:23:13

        Yeah, let's keep doing this.

    27. AAAnish Acharya1:23:14

        Do it again. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    28. KRKevin Rose1:23:14

        It's good to get together every so often, hash out these things, talk about the future. Um, what, what's, uh... Where can people find you online socially?

    29. AAAnish Acharya1:23:23

        I'm at, um, on Twitter @illscience. Um, we can talk about that another time, the genesis of that name.

    30. KRKevin Rose1:23:29

        Yeah.

Episode duration: 1:24:14