SPEAKER_01
The cold harsh truth is that nine out of 10 startups go to zero. Like they just completely fail. But the thing that always turns me off from an entrepreneur when they come to pitch is if they lead first with the market size, the opportunity from a revenue standpoint, and it's clear that they think I'm doing this because it's a chance for me to make a lot of money.
The harsh reality is times are tough. And if you don't love the idea, if it's not something that you wake up and jump out of bed in the morning thinking about, then you're just going to get burnt out.
SPEAKER_00
Kevin, Kevin Rose, stoked to have you here.
SPEAKER_01
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. This can be fun.
SPEAKER_00
You're, you're an idea machine. And how I know you're an idea machine is I texted you not too long ago and I was like, do you want to come on the show, bring a couple startup ideas you're thinking about and bam, you had, you had pure, pure fire.
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I have ideas at the ready. Uh, most of them half quarter baked. Um, and a lot of them are horrible.
So I'll just put that big caveat out there out front to let you know that like, you know, I think it's, it's, it's kind of been in my DNA for a long time just to say what if, you know, and just keep dreaming and, and see if there's anything there.
SPEAKER_00
And do you, do you have like a, a notes file where you keep your ideas or how, how do you, how do you think about it?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I mean, I used to have just like a little journal next to my bed and I find that ideas for me are oftentimes, I mean, there's a reason they call them like shower ideas. It's, it's not necessarily when you're putting concerted effort on trying to come up with an idea.
I find that if you're under stress or in a high stressful situation, actually is probably the worst time to be kind of ideating on something. Um, so for me, it's more like, you know, I can't fall asleep. I'm thinking about one thing or another.
And then all of a sudden I'm like, huh, that would be really interesting to prototype. Like what if that existed in the world? And so that's kind of led to a bunch of my experiments, um, you know, that I've launched over the years. That's when I launched dig.
It was, I remember the night I was laying in bed and I was like, no one is like voting online. And if you could have a way that you could vote in the best stuff would rise to the top, and this is 2004, you know, I'm dating myself, but it's like, that's what led to like the whole, you know, thing that became eventually the like button and everything else, which was this idea that you could use asynchronous JavaScript to update a number dynamically on the screen. And so that was, uh, that was crazy.
But, uh, yeah, it's been nights like that.
SPEAKER_00
I actually want to go into that a little bit, you know, because for me, I'm a bit of a historian when it comes to internet products that have worked. Like to me, all that's new is old. And I think there's a bunch of products, dig included that never really saw its maturity.
Do you find yourself? Well, my question to you is what, and I'm putting you on the spot, like what product, what product that got a little bit of validation 10, 15, 20 years ago, that you think that if it had a resurgence today has some, yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's funny, just to go back for a second on the whole dig thing, not to defend my idea, but the idea that, um, you know, social voting became a thing and dig did not win. We failed, but you know, we grew to 38 million monthly uniques and then, you know, Facebook introduced the like button about a year later.
I'd had multiple dinners with Zuckerberg talking about social voting and things like that. And so, you know, I, I like to just surrender to it and say, Hey, that idea lived on. And I'm, I'm glad that, you know, continued to make its way and propagate throughout the internet.
So I think that oftentimes, you know, we see this with startups. I was just thinking about this the other day because I was going back to visit my mom, um, who lives in Las Vegas. And, um, I was my childhood there and I was driving around in none of the places that I knew about, like I hung out at business wise or we're still around.
Like it was like very few. And I was like, gosh, like every business churns and, and, and become something new and they just drop off no matter how amazing they were a decade or two decades ago, right? And so I feel like the internet is the same way. I mean, there's very few players.
I don't know how the hell eBay is still in business given their horrible user interface, but like it's like there's certain incumbents that are really hard to, to dethrone. But, um, yeah, I mean, I think that there's certain ideas that, uh, you know, either were before their time, you know, there was, um, multiple photo sharing apps before Instagram. And then, you know, there was like the addition of filters and the ease of use of Instagram and it just had that right mixture of features and functionality that just hit when mobile was really taking off.
I, I'm bummed about force, uh, four square. I think four square was a really cool idea. This idea of being able to dynamically share with your friends where you are to facilitate hanging out and spending more time with the ones that you care about.
Um, it's, it's too bad. I mean, that had a good run. It had a good, you know, seven or eight year run and then kind of people fell out of fashion and something else took over.
I think probably more on the snapshot, uh, chat side of sharing. But, um, yeah, I mean, it's there's, there's just a bunch that either, you know, they have their moment, they have their 15 minutes of fame or five or seven years of fame and then we're on to the next thing just because we've evolved as, uh, as a society.
SPEAKER_00
Totally. And I think, uh, so I don't know if you know this about me, but I was actually at stumble upon, which was, yeah, with Garrett, exactly. With a cut, we were like cousins with dig, you know, basically it was like, yes, stumble upon Reddit.
Um, and back then like Reddit was actually not that big. Uh, it's weird. You know, now it's a publicly traded company and, and, and doing really well.
But, um, I remember when they had its redesign and a lot of the users came to stumble upon and then. Yeah. I remember we did a redesign and we messed up. And then a lot of those users went to Reddit.
It's interesting cause it's not like the product didn't, it's kind of like, we messed up the time was wrong. We kind of messed up, you know, speak on behalf of the stumble upon side. Um, there were some like mistakes that were made, but a lot, a lot of like the fundamental theses around people want serendipity, like that exists today on places like Tik Tok.
SPEAKER_00
So I think it's like, that's why I love going back in time, looking at things like dig, looking at things like four square, four square. I think you're completely right. Like the whole idea around, um, I feel like just the gamification of local, it's no one's done yet.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. It's, it's, it's four square for me was one of those things that was really fun and we used it itself by self-guest a lot when that conference was really starting to take off. And when you were living in the Bay area, it was kind of a signal to say, Hey, I'm going out to this place.
And I don't think we really fully, it was a much smaller group of users back then, and it wasn't like, um, is toxic as I feel it can be now. And so there wasn't concerns over privacy. There wasn't concerns over, you know, is somebody going to, if I check in at a bar or restaurant, is somebody weird going to like stalk me here? You know, which I think we get a lot more of that these days with just various groups trying to, you know, either docks individuals or take them down.
And so I don't know, I can speak for me personally. Like I certainly have a lot more privacy concerns than I did back then. Maybe it was the youth and how I was just young and carefree at that time.
But, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's a bummer that one way, because it was actually, it was more than just saying, this is where I'm at. It was also saying, I approve this location. I like it.
And, you know, Foursquare was used as a, as a, uh, kind of fun discovery app of what were the cool places to go to, you know, like what was the best cocktail or best burger in town or you name it. And I feel like it's, it's a shame we lost that.
SPEAKER_00
And I think Dennis is working on something similar again. Did you see this?
SPEAKER_01
I haven't seen his latest. I mean, obviously I saw swarm back in the day, but I haven't seen what he's, he's building now.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. So I think he, it's interesting because he did dodgeball, right? Which was, that's right. Yeah. Which was basically Foursquare and sold it to Google. And then he did Foursquare, which was awesome.
And then, but pivoted to B2B. And I think is like an actual real business doing really well as a B2B play. And I think he's doing something again, similar to dodgeball and Foursquare again.
So it's like, that's again, just speaking to the same, like you can just reinvent the same old idea and just sort of bring it back at the times.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. It's, it's, it's funny. It's like, when I think about, you know, the social voting and news and that whole side of things, one, I think AI is going to, it does, we don't really need humans as much as we did back then for this type of stuff.
And two, I just, I can't bring myself to ever want to build in that space again because, you know, controlling the masses are trying to create an environment where there's like just a real good civil debate and not hate and spam and everything else. It's just, it is an absolute nightmare. So I would never want to enter that arena again.
SPEAKER_00
Totally too many. I'm, I feel the same way. It's, it's, it's tough, but you know, social in general is almost like being an artist, like you love it and hate it at the same time.
And that's, that's why we're addicted. A lot of people like me and you are addicted to it because we, we love just the, I mean, it's just fun to build. And I think the interesting thing Nikita Beert once said something that always resonated with me.
He said that building socials, like you're building a rocket ship, but if you're one millimeter off, you don't land on the moon. Yes.
SPEAKER_01
That's so true. Yeah. And it's, it's brutal when it's just an open taxonomy where people can define any type of group that they want, right? Because then you get clicks of, you know, you may have had the, you may have been quite well intentioned when starting something like this, but then you all of a sudden wake up and you're like, why am I taking down like, you know, nonstop hundreds of posts around hate speech or whatever it may be. And it just turns into something that is, I don't know, I've got a couple of little kids now I have better, I got my podcast that I'm, I'm doing every week.
And it's like, I have better ways to spend my time, you know, let the, let the younger generation that's coming up to tackle those problems.
SPEAKER_00
So what is on your mind these days? I mean, let's, let's walk through some of your, some of your startup ideas.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I spend, it's, it's interesting. My time these days is split between doing some investing at True Ventures.
So I've been there for around seven years or so. You know, so I'm always looking at kind of the latest early stage startups. So back in napkin ideas.
I love that. I love the very early stage. It's, it's a ton of fun.
And then, you know, I also spend a lot of my time interviewing experts on my podcast and so that can be, you know, AI, health and wellness, technology. It just, all these types of conversations that I'm having anyway, that I just want to record and put online. So it gets me in front of a lot of thinkers and that gets my own brain going around ideas.
So there's a lot of stuff that I wish existed, but I've just never built and I don't ever plan on building. So yeah, I'd love to talk about some of them. But I would say first and foremost kind of AI is captured, obviously all of our attention over the last, you know, six to eight months to year.
In that it's become a daily tool that I use for a whole variety of different things. One of the things I have two AI related startups. One is around a next generation podcast app.
And the second one is around really, well, they're both around kind of one is around interacting with dead people. Which one do you want to tackle first?
SPEAKER_00
Let's start with, let's actually start with the podcast idea. And before, before we get into it, when you text me that idea, I was like, podcast app, so many people have tried it. I'm thinking like Leah Culver, her app, you know, it's a breaker, breaker was like the closest I saw to like a really interesting.
Product that was going to hit escape velocity, but got acquired. Like why hasn't a podcast app been able to hit mainstream? That's not spot. Yeah, I mean, it's an apple.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, when you're, when you're spot on Apple, you have built-in distribution, right? Like you've got people coming for the music on the Spotify side and Apple, you have default installs on device. So it is, that's hard to compete against. In my mind, whenever I'm thinking about a startup, you know, a new idea, I'm thinking about what is the, the defensibility, what is the moat that they can build? And then truly what is the order of magnitude improvement that is going to make people switch? People don't switch because you have trim silence.
People don't switch because you have, you know, a couple little features that they sound good on paper, but then the bigs catch on, meaning like, I'll give you an example, like, uh, I can't remember who it was first that did trim silence and saved us a bunch of time on podcasts where it takes someone in that they pause for four to five seconds. It just cuts that out completely. I want to say it was pocket cast, but it could have been someone else.
And what happened then is, you know, you basically have that feature start to gain momentum, product managers inside of Apple say, huh, that's a pretty cool feature. And then they added inside of the Apple podcast app, you know, six or eight months later. And so you really are not going to, to win that way.
It has to be something where the, the actual idea itself is so hard for the competition to pivot into. And it's so radically different that the consumer says, wow, this is a huge change and a huge new direction. That's why I want to make the move and abandon where I've been spending all of my time because, you know, it's like redefining a social graph.
It's like redefining your podcast graph takes time. Um, and so it has to be a pretty great product to get you to convince you to do so. So in my mind, you know, the application of AI to podcasting could make podcasting a completely different beast, meaning that there's no, there's no doubt in my mind that we go out and we train, um, you know, all of all of AI on people's previous podcasts.
So let's say I'm listening to the Tim Ferriss show, you could go in and say, I'm going to take that back catalog of 200 and some episodes, train on that data, you know, convert it into transcripts and then train on it. And then basically you will be able to ask questions of the podcast and have conversations, even with the host of the podcast. So, you know, um, let's just say on my show, if you're watching the Kevin Roshio and I had an episode on, uh, some topic around, you know, index investing, you could pause the podcast and say, Hey, Kevin, before you go on, can you explain to me the difference between direct, uh, investing on Wealthfront and an index investing and say, uh, something like spy, like the S&P 500.
And I, I, my AI version of myself would then pull from that corpus of data and be able to branch off, answer that question in real time and then return back to the main podcast feed. So the idea of being able to interact with our podcasts is just, it's untapped and it needs to happen. So in my mind, that's going to be something that's just going to be a big unlock for a lot of people of being able to not just have a one-way listening experience, but actually being able to, uh, converse with their favorite gap or their favorite hosts.
SPEAKER_00
It kind of reminds me, I saw this tweet the other day, Sam Altman tweeted it, movies are going to become video games and video games are going to become something unimaginably better. It's kind of like a similar idea where movies, you know, you watch a movie, there's no real way to interact with it. It's almost like podcasts are going to become like almost like an interactive video game type experience.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I mean, it's going to be, it's just going to be so cool that the depth and richness of the information in the shows will just be 10 fold. It'll just be something where, um, you'll be able to go down any avenue you want at any point in time.
I can't tell you the number of podcasts, you know, Peter or Tia or Ronda Patrick or, you know, well-known scientists where you're listening to them and you're like, okay, I don't know what LP little a is when it comes to cholesterol numbers. Like what the hell is that? But you let them continue on and then you're, okay, should I open up another window and Google that or whatever, you know, but in reality, you should just be able to pause and ask that question directly of the host, which is, it's going to be a lot of, a lot of fun. Someone needs to build this product.
SPEAKER_00
And if you were, if you were building it, what would the business model be?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I mean, probably what I would do is I would go out and acquire a podcast app that has some market share. There's a few of them out there that have, you know, one, two percent call it the, you know, pocket cask up acquired by Matt Molenweg over at automatic.
Um, overcast is still out there as an independent. There's a few of them that you could just go and, and pick up. Uh, then I'd rewrite it and in starting, justing all the information.
I'd work on some type of, um, potential partnerships with other podcasts. So I'm not sure how they would react to that type of functionality. Um, I have to imagine it would be a good thing for them and that their audience will be more engaged and stick around longer in episodes.
Um, but you know, there's a lot of legality around how and when you, you, you, you know, crawl peoples and use people's data in AI, um, especially if you're going to use their voice, right? Um, so I'd probably go to go to some of the big hosts out there and create some partnerships and, and, and give them a little bit of the company as well to kind of be like brand promoters. Um, so that they can go in and really help, you know, get this on people's radar. And hopefully people will be like, damn, this is so much of a better experience.
I'm willing to make that switch. And that would probably be the experiment just to get started.
SPEAKER_00
I think, I mean, I can only talk for myself. Like if someone came to me and was, was like, I've got this app, you know, do you want Greg Eisenberg where people can ask you like Greg Eisenberg AI, where people could ask, is this a good startup idea? Or has Greg any, has he covered any B2B fintech stuff? I think I would do it. And I think the reason I would do it is because it's so hard.
Well, first of all, it's more interactive, but I think the selfish reason is, as you know, it's really hard to grow a podcast. The only way people, 90% of the reason why people listen to this podcast is I send an email to remind them that, Hey, new episode with Kevin's out. And they send out to Greg Eisenberg.
com. I send it. They remember they go to Spotify and Apple.
If this new interactive app allowed me to own a piece in my audience. Because with Spotify and Apple, you don't have that much data would totally do it.
SPEAKER_01
Right. Yeah, I think it, I think it could be pretty amazing to have something like that embedded. I've started to see some startups do this on websites as well.
So imagine Greg, if someone came to your website and was like, Oh gosh, I was listening to one of his podcasts, maybe like a couple months ago. I can't remember what it was, but it was this great guest and she was talking about, you know, this particular startup and then just being able to type in that kind of high level and then automatically pull off the clip for you. Like that's starting to happen now with some people's podcasts.
That is just so powerful in terms of just reengaging and then cross promotion wise could be really cool too. Right. You can imagine listening to a Tim Ferriss show and just being like, Hey, pause it real quick. Who else has talked about, you know, this type of strength resistance training to failure and then all of a sudden, you know, have four other potential related podcasts that I can jump off and journey through.
Could be really awesome.
SPEAKER_00
You know, it'd be really cool if you can license some of these creators or podcasters and put them on other websites, like building off your point. I'm thinking of this guy in Miami. His name is Bobby.
I don't know. Flav city. I think his, I think his username is Flav city.
And what he does is he goes to Costco and he says, you know, here's why this olive oil is bad. It's not in a glass bottle, microplastics. Um, and he explains it, but for, you know, $2 more, you can get this one.
He explains it and he's got this cult following. He's got millions of followers and he created an e-commerce website where it's like basically, uh, Bobby approved stuff. And that's cool, but I have to like go to his website and it's not really in my flow.
Like I order stuff on Instacart. Right. So if Instacart had like a little Bobby there.
SPEAKER_01
Oh, a hundred percent. And I can, oh my God, this is, you're, this is where it's going, right? It has to, right? Cause we all have these people that we look up to, right? There's these people like I, for me, it's Dr. Peter Atea, it's, it's, it's Rhonda Patrick.
It's like, you know, some of these people where I'm like, or even like Tim, I'm like, Hey, what, what protein powder is Tim using right now? Or, you know, you can just imagine a world where you have a bot that goes and pulls the real time information and puts it right into your cart. I mean, wow, talk about conversion. That'd just be nuts.
SPEAKER_00
I think, uh, the name for this, if I was naming this, it would be, it would be like what the WWTD or what WWTD. Yeah. You know, what would Tim do? What would Peter Atea do?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. What would Greg do?
SPEAKER_00
And that would be like the bot that, you know, that you sell and then, yeah. And then you, you, you give Tim upside, right? Like if he's helping sell more stuff, great.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. You can just say what would they do and just have it be generic and it could be
SPEAKER_00
applied to anyone. Yeah. Um, cool.
SPEAKER_01
That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00
And, and just curious, like why wouldn't you, why wouldn't you build this? Oh man.
SPEAKER_01
I think that there's one of those things where if, if you're a builder and you go off and you spread yourself too thin and, and you're trying to do too many things, you just, you go an inch deep on everything and you just really don't do it. The product justice, right? Like you don't, you don't spend the time and I'd have to really put together a team to go build this and, and, and be heavily involved in the early days. And, you know, I just recently sold my last startup and, and kind of, and kind of exited out of web three, which was, which is, oh madness.
And honestly, I really enjoy, um, just talking through and working with some of like, you know, leading experts in different fields and, and, and doing that on a podcast format. It's like, it's really a lot of fun for me to have these great guests on my show. So I think podcasting is kind of my, my next chapter for, for at least for a while.
I need to take a break from startup world.
SPEAKER_00
I, uh, I heard that from someone, someone who you know, I, I, I, someone I'm pretty sure you know yesterday and he, you know, I spoke to him a few years ago and he was like, I'm done with startups. I'm doing investing. Like it was a good run.
And then yesterday had a couple of drinks with him and he's like, by the way, uh, just signed my, I'm going back in just to sign my term sheet. I was like, I knew you'd be. I mean, that's the problem with entrepreneurs.
Right.
SPEAKER_01
It's like you're, I'm sure you're in this camp too. It's like, we're all just kind of, we can't help ourselves, but wonder if something doesn't exist, what would happen if it did. And if you're that type of person that's listening to this and you're always like, you're the one that always has an idea and you're like, okay, I'm the one on my friends group where I'm like, Hey, wouldn't it be cool if this, if we built this, you know, you've got to go pursue that because the, the, the those are the ones, those are the people that, you know, when I meet and I, and I watch these people grow into, you know, massive companies and massive, you know, outcomes for themselves and, and, and become household names.
It's all the same DNA. It's all the curious. It's all, it's all the people that want to tinker on the weekends on stuff that they just want to like learn and figure out more about.
And yeah, that's, that's those are the entrepreneurs. I love the back. Yeah. And I think the people that I've been talking to, you know, I've been talking
SPEAKER_00
to, yeah. And I think the people that, you know, do the best when I think about like this particular person, like, or, or your, your podcast, like you, whatever lane you're going to pick, it has to be true to like your talents and your curiosity.
SPEAKER_00
Because otherwise you're kind of like, you're, you're, you're forcing it and it doesn't, it doesn't really work.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. And part of that reason is that there's just so, well, here's the cold harsh truth is that, you know, nine out of 10 startups go to zero. Like they can just completely fail.
Right. And we see this at the, at the VC level. It's like, we expect almost all of our startups that we invest in to go completely to zero and that's okay.
That's baked into the thesis around, you know, the fund. Um, but the, the thing that always turns me off from an entrepreneur when they come to pitch is if they start first and they lead first with, you know, the market size, the opportunity from a revenue standpoint, and it's clearly that they think that I'm doing this because it is a big, it's a chance for me to make a lot of money. And the harsh reality is like, it truly is like one, they'll fail in two times are tough.
Like there's no such thing as a straight up into the right, you know, curve on, on the success bar. It's like, it's, it's going to be challenging. It's going to be more like a roller coaster with loop, deloops and everything else in the middle.
And if you don't love the idea, if it's not something that you wake up and jump out of bed in the morning thinking about and are completely super passionate about in the sense that this must succeed and you put it kind of above all else, um, then you're just going to get burnt out. You're going to say, ah, it's not really worth it. I changed my mind.
I need to pivot, you know, and I find that those are the ones that when their heart's not in the right place and they're not doing it because it is, you know, their life's work, they, they end up bailing in. And I found myself in that position too, where I've created stuff where I just thought it was going to be, you know, um, big from a usage standpoint, but it really wasn't just something I absolutely loved. And, and it's hard to stay committed to those businesses.
SPEAKER_00
And I think a lot of people listening to us will be like, well, I don't know what I love. It's easy for you guys to say, you know, you've been working in, in this, you know, in this space for 20 years. So it's easy for you to say.
And I think my answer to them is, well, don't go raise venture capital, right? Like go do a little experiment, start a Twitter account, you know, start an email newsletter. You don't have to like go big in a space. You can do these little experiments to learn about what you like.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I recently had Mark Manson on my podcast, the author of the subtle art of not giving a fuck. Have you read that book? It's fantastic.
Yeah. It's a really good book. And one of the things that he said is that stuck with me was find something that you're naturally good at that is difficult for others.
And like that was just like such an aha moment for me, because it is true. You will be able to eventually stumble into something where you're like, this is just effortless for me. Not to say you don't have to still put in work, but it doesn't feel like work, right? Cause it's just so much, there's so much joy that comes out of that type of work.
And, and then others will say, how do you do it? You know, and if you can find that combination, like that's, that's kind of probably a good, good path to go down and explore more.
SPEAKER_00
I love it. What's your second idea?
SPEAKER_01
Let's pivot into something completely different. Then we'll go back to AI. Um, the second idea I've been sitting on for a while, this one is, I have probably had for the last three or four years and I haven't convinced anyone to do it yet.
Maybe it's a bad idea then, but you know, you told me no bad ideas. Like there was a spirit in the spirit of brainstorming. So I am a product of the late, uh, 80s and 90s.
And so that was kind of my generation. And, you know, that meant, um, you know, the A team, MacGyver, um, you know, Scooby-Doo, uh, Voltron, uh, Transformers. Uh, I'm talking about the original ones, you know, way back in the day, the original Nintendo, like that's kind of my generation.
And one of the things that I realized is obviously nostalgia is a huge driver for people as they age, like you just really crave and enjoy going back and seeing those moments from childhood, right? And one of the things though that, that is, is true is like, it's, you can find some of that content on a variety of different, um, outlets now. Like if you go to Amazon prime, they might have, you know, old episodes of golden girls or whatever, like you can go to these different channels. But what was so amazing about that period of time is if you are old enough to remember it, we basically had a TV, the TV would sit in the corner and you had a clicker in your hand that you would flip through the channels.
And there was no guide. You would just be like, well, what is on channel five? Let me see what is on channel six? Let me see. Like there was no guide, right? If anything, there was, they had something called the TV guide, which was a mailed magazine that would show up at your house that you could open up and it would show you when things are playing on TV.
And so one of the things I thought of, well, that would be a lot of fun. Um, and, and also, uh, just to add onto that real quick, one of the things I miss as well is the old commercials because the old commercials were just so much fun. They were just like so weird and wacky and sometimes they weren't PC and you could never make them today.
And like there was just like part of the fun was seeing like what was being advertised to me back during those times, right? And so people have this old, people have archived and started to save like old commercials. So that exists out there. And, but, but, but no one wants to take the time and say, okay, it's, it's nine o'clock at night, uh, or eight o'clock.
I'm, I'm hanging out with my partner. Hey, let's put on the old A team episode. Like you just don't do that.
You're just kind of like, what's the latest show? Right. So I came up with this idea called normie TV and normie, meaning like just like a normal person, I don't know. It was just that idea that I had called normie TV.
I own the domain for it. And I wanted to create a little tiny set top box. So imagine a box that is probably, you know, a little nine inch display.
It looks super retro. So it's like enclosed in like a little wooden old school box. It looks like an old TV.
It comes with a universal remote. You plug it into the internet and you, it sits in the corner of your office or wherever you want. And we mail you each month, a little TV guide.
And so you turn it on with a little button and you literally flip through the channels and you see the static between. So we do some effects. So it kind of looks like you're going between channels.
We play old MTV episodes of like nineties, grunge bands and stuff. We play classic like basketball games on certain channels. You get like all of your old favorite shows from way back in the day.
And you get all of the old commercials as well. And so I imagine this is being like, you know, a really fun holiday gift that you can just give someone. And then the subscription is like, you know, call it five, six bucks a month and you get access to all this great content.
Now here's the cool thing. It all plays at the same time for everyone. So it's not on demand content.
If you tune into an episode, you know, of MacGyver and it's halfway through the episode, it's halfway through the episode, just like it used to be an old school TV. But you could call your friends up on the phone and be like, Hey, turn on. There's a great episode of, you know, the A team on right now on channel eight and your friends could tune in as well, which would be just a ton of fun.
And if you want to get fancy, you could probably put like little floating icons that wish your friends are watching the TV at the same time. Just a way to really dial back into the older times, that nostalgia, just simpler times and have fun with it in a way that is just something you throw on every once in a while when you're not watching your favorite kind of modern show, you know, streaming on Netflix. Um, just that's, that's like my fun idea of, of this session.
SPEAKER_00
I also think that there's just, there's just bigger trend around people are in content overload. So they're looking for these types of things. Like everyone is borderline anxious right now with like the tick talk of vacation of everything.
So you're writing that trend too, which I like.
SPEAKER_01
And I also like the idea that you could put in old commercials that brands eventually, if you got to a big enough user base would actually pay to have you place their commercials, their old commercials back into the feed. So like if you're Folgers crystals, right, the old school instant coffee, like if you went back and look at 80s Folgers crystals, it's like, you know, it's horribly incredible PC. It's not PC because it's like, it's got like, I've watched a couple of them.
It's got like the woman in the kitchen, like making her man, like coffee or whatever, you know, but like you can imagine they would say, okay, let's remake this ad, make it super grainy, make it super retro. And like place it into the feed as an ad that is like, you know, or, you know, an old Nike commercial, whatever it may be, like an old Air Jordan, just as a branding exercise to put that back into the feed and pay you money to display those ads. So I think there's a subscription model here.
There's an ad, you know, the ads would have to be old school ads and there's an ad model there as well. I don't know. I would love to back someone that would be serious about creating this.
Like I would, I would write the check to make it happen. So if there's any electrical engineers out there that have a passion for nostalgic eighties and nineties content that also happened to someone that could work the BD deals to license the content, let me know.
SPEAKER_00
So I had this best friend growing up and we don't talk very much, maybe once every few years. And he followed me on Instagram somewhat recently and he just said, Greg, we haven't spoken in a long time, but every other day, I'm going to send you a a story from this mean page that is like nineties nostalgia. Yes. He's like, I don't care. You're, I'm just going to send them to you and you don't have to respond, but I'm sending them to you.
And it's like all the commercials and just all the like core memory, core, core memories that we have had as kids.
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God. And so I think, can I be, can I be friend this person? By the way, will you, will you have put at me to that distribution list?
SPEAKER_00
That does take a lot. You do the list. And so I think the way to get distribution for this, and I think this is a way that a lot of people don't is a channel.
A lot of people don't use, but I use a lot is using Instagram mean pages as distribution. So often times, oftentimes you have these kids and I say the word kids because they're literally kids, like sometimes they're 14, 15, 16, 17 years old. We're just great at curating stuff.
And who have these pages with hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of followers.
SPEAKER_00
And you'd be surprised how cheap it is to access this inventory.
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it's a great point. I hadn't even thought about that because there is a massive, now that you mentioned it, I do actually have a couple of the eighties nostalgia pages as well. And they're massive.
And I don't have the meaning. I, I, I, I subscribed to them on, on Instagram. And you could just work with them directly, right? And, and, and just get distribution via their channels.
That's, that's huge.
SPEAKER_00
It's huge. Have you seen an LA based company trying to reinvent TVs right now called tele? Have you seen this?
SPEAKER_01
No, I haven't. Let me look that up.
SPEAKER_00
So TEL, E T E T E L L Y.com.
SPEAKER_00
So do you know Pluto TV?
SPEAKER_00
Pluto TV is, was a really smart idea. It basically, what they did is they, they got a bunch of free content that they licensed and they did deals with all the TV manufacturers, Samsung, Sony, so that when you, you know, when you put on your TV and it's just like, it's, it's, it's like a fake TV guy, right? With all these channels.
SPEAKER_00
That's Pluto TV. And then they make money on ads. So it's, it's value add because some people don't have cable or whatever.
And they're happy because they're making money on ads. It was sold for hundreds of millions of dollars.
SPEAKER_01
The guy from, I have seen, I have seen telly by the way, now that I'm looking at, I totally know what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00
The guy from Ilya, one of the guys from Pluto TV started telly. They raised like a $21 million seed round, I think. And so if you're on the webpage, tell, tell folks what, what telly is.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. So essentially it looks like if I'm getting this right, cause I saw this back in the day is it was where they break up a and create a second little micro display under the main display. So if you're looking at it, you have a primary TV, a little bit of a speaker buffer and then a secondary display underneath it, which can be turned into pretty much anything you want.
So it can be, you know, show your playlist from Spotify. It can be your home feed, which shows you, you know, your stock prices, your current temperature outside. You can do video calling on the bottom.
They can have voice assistant or just different like extensions to the primary content. So the primary content, they have one example where it shows somebody working on fitness and there's other exercises kind of tiled beneath it. So it looks like it's essentially extending the TV with another piece of smart functionality, another micro display underneath it.
So it's aware of the content above it. So it can display additional. This would be great for sports, right? Cause like you always want analytics and they pop them up for a hot second.
Like, you know, you're watching Steph Curry and you're like, okay, wow, he hit that through. That's amazing. And then you're like, wouldn't it be cool if underneath that and a secondary display you could see in real time what all of his, his stats are for this year.
Right. And you just like watch those numbers go up. Like this is, this is, this would be a lot of fun,
SPEAKER_00
especially since the, like all the sports leads are becoming, it's like gambling now, like in the NBA app now, you can like bet, you know, so imagine if you're betting on an NBA game, you want those analytics there. You want the odds there, but there's one key part that you're missing from this idea and why it's so awesome is the best part about telly is it's free. They give it a.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I saw that at the bottom, like how do they give it away? What's the deal with that?
SPEAKER_00
So what they do is they have ads on the lower screen. And I'm sure they, you know, they have a model that shows that they make money.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Be really curious to know what their, their bomb is on that, that lower display, that lower screen, because it's got to be a few hundred bucks to make that thing. So to recoup that is a multi year effort stuff.
SPEAKER_00
Super tough, but I'm, I'm thinking like if anyone could figure it out, it's the Pluto TV team. Yeah. And I also think what's really cool is the second screen. No one really owns that second, that second screen, like, cause.
You can do things like zoom on it. You can play music on it. Of course there's like, you know, Amazon fires and, and iPads and stuff like that.
But I feel like that's discretionary for a lot of people. And I think that if some, you know, if people saw that this was free, I think a lot of people would go and grab this.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it's really cool. I mean, I have to imagine there's some type of subscription model on top of this to offset some of that, you know, where it's like, if you want to go hardcore and get the additional analytics and some of the, you know, there'll probably be a sports package or something, you know, for $5 a month. And so, but it's a really cool idea.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. And I think from a framework, from a startup idea's framework perspective is how do you look at something that costs money and can you make it free? So just going back to your idea, I wonder if you can give it away and charge some subscription. Like you were talking like five, $10, but maybe charge $29 a month.
But the actual product is free.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. You have to imagine even with displays and, and, you know, you put a little small inexpensive Raspberry Pi in there to do. It had to depends on the video Kodak, but it can't, it can't be that intensive or that, that expensive to manufacture something like that.
Probably, you know, $150 or less to pull that off at scale. You know, so I'd be curious to know you can break even pretty quickly if you get the right subscription model and the content isn't costing you a lot. The licensing deals are going to be the big question mark here.
SPEAKER_00
Exactly. Yeah. And it's one of those got to raise a lot of money to go and do that. And that's why yeah, one million dollar seed round is like.
They're probably raising right now, if I had to guess, you know, like they, they're going to need a lot of capital for this. But if they, if they pull it off, I could see it working.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. That's it's a fun one to track for sure. I mean, why not even like sign up for one and get one for free just to try it out? Totally.
SPEAKER_00
It's great. Why not? So you have another idea, which I think is, is a wild one. Give it to us.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I mean, four or five years ago, maybe a little bit longer now. Gosh, it was probably as long or now.
There was a Coachella where Tupac was on stage as a hologram. Yeah. Wrapping alongside alongside Snoop Dogg and some other folks. And that was a huge unlock slash wow moment for a lot of people.
They're like, they brought someone back from the dead for a performance. It's kind of crazy, right? A lot has happened since then. And now we have, you know, AI voice models that can be trained on like five words and create like pretty accurate, you know, voice voices that are that are basically you could take just the five words that I say and then train on my voice and and spit out full paragraphs of copy that sound exactly like me.
And it even gets better if you just train for a few minutes of with data, right? So there is very much a world where if I'm in my studio here, I can put up a green screen for my guest. I can, you know, create my guest and I've seen it even working now where you can actually take and you can lip sync. Or so you can lip.
I guess it is lip sync. You're syncing their lips to what they're saying. They do this for different languages.
So right now I could be speaking Spanish to you or Japanese and my lips would look like I'm speaking Japanese. If you just run it through this post processing production that's out there. What I would do is I would say, okay, let's just take a great floss for like Alan Watts.
If you go to Alan Watts.org his website, you can download 500 hours of his talks, right? Like that in MP3 format. Again, with the training, you could go and take all that data and say, okay, I'm taking that entire corpus.
I want to understand who Alan Watts is, his philosophies feed in some of his books as well. And all of a sudden you have a pretty interesting, you know, compelling AI model that will speak and act and talk and think like Alan Watts. Now I can sit down and in real time have a conversation and interview people that have passed away.
I could do this with Einstein. You can do this with a whole slew of different people and actually, you know, have full on conversations. And yes, the AI is kind of filling in some of the gaps and trying to come up with his best assumption of how they would answer certain things.
But if you have enough data, I'd imagine you get pretty close. I think it would be a fun experiment. I don't know that there's, this is not a business.
This is just more like a thought experiment. Like what if we went and tried this to see what would happen? I mean, you could do this with all different types of leaders, both good and bad, that have passed away. You know, you can imagine some pretty extreme examples of previous leaders that were pretty evil that you could bring in, you know, their data and thinking.
And it just, um, yeah, it would just be fascinating to see how this unfolds. And I have to imagine it's coming soon.
SPEAKER_00
What about taking it to the next level with speaking to people in our lives that have passed away?
SPEAKER_01
Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, that, that would be the problem there is like, just, do you have enough data? Like I have my, my dad's passed away, you know, uh, the 13th. 15 years ago now, something like that.
And I think about what I have of him and I have a few recordings of him saying a few things, a bunch of emails, but they were, you know, just little two, three sentence things here and there. So I don't know that I have the data required for that, but we certainly will like my kids will be able to do that with me.
SPEAKER_00
That's for sure. That's for sure. And I was thinking about this the other day because my dad, my dad was, like cleaning out a closet and he had found a bunch of DVDs, um, like old family videos and he sent me, he sent me a bunch and I hadn't seen these people.
Like, you know, as you know, my like, my like grandfather, my other like grandfather, I haven't seen them videos, moving pictures of them in such a long time. Um, and there's just something about watching someone in video that like you really, it hits different than a photo.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I just, it's funny you say that I just got done sending my entire box of old videos, uh, mostly VHS honestly, and getting them converted by company and they sent them to me and I hadn't seen my grandma and, you know, since she was alive, like, like almost 30 years ago or something. I was a little kid, you know, I saw our last and just to see her there was in talking with such a trip.
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, the MVP of this, like even if you don't have enough video footage of your grandmother, but you knew a few things that she used to say, and you have maybe some of her voice, like, you know, just like, good morning, Kevin, like hope you have a great day. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
It's really, it's funny that we were just talking about Alan Watts and I saw somebody hacked at Raspberry Pi to be their voice assistant and they used Alan Watts train data and it was like totally Alan Watts saying good morning. Like, you know, enjoy your day today. You have three meetings or whatever.
And I was like, what the hell? It's so such a trip. Such a trip.
SPEAKER_00
And I just think that I know I personally would pay tons of money for something like that. Yeah. So I think there's a huge business around that. Before we head out, I wanted to tell you something that's, that's on my chest a little bit, just it's fresh from last night and I want to get your take on it.
Yeah, please.
SPEAKER_00
So I'm at a bar and I meet this guy at the bar who's a friend of a friend and he's visiting Miami and he noticed my watch. It's a Seiko watch from Japan. I picked up recently.
SPEAKER_01
And love that you do. You want to say go by the way, that's a wise choice. That's such a great brand.
SPEAKER_00
That's what he said. He goes, he goes Seiko. That's like the, uh, Toyota of, of watches.
I, he, and then he shows me his. So we start talking about Seiko. I tell him like, yeah, like have a lot of friends who collect very nice watches, but I'm actually more into like grand Seiko Seiko type watches.
And here's why we nerd out about that. And he says, I'm the same thing. And he started asking me, so where do you spend your money? So I tell him, and then I ask him, where do you spend your money? And he's like, you know, I haven't really admitted this to anyone, but I spent about $10,000 a month on AI girlfriends.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. So he is.
SPEAKER_01
What does he use? What service?
SPEAKER_00
He, he told me that his words were that's, that was my first question he said. And his response to me was like, AI girlfriends are exactly like dating apps. You're never just on one.
That's, that's what he said.
SPEAKER_01
You got to get that list. Yeah. I was like, because I've, I've been desperately trying to invest in this space because I believe companionship and obviously we have an epidemic of kind of this, this loneliness culture that's going on. And that, and this is going to be, you know, whether we like it or not, a solved problem with AI to some extent.
I mean, it'll never truly replicate obviously a human interaction, obviously, but it will hopefully it'll help. But yeah, go on though. This is fascinating.
SPEAKER_00
So I asked him why, why he's doing it, you know, first, you know, he lives in the, he actually lives in New York. So he was visiting Miami, New York. There's plenty of suitable partners in New York.
Um, why, why an AI girlfriend? Um, and by the way, I should add this guy's 24. He just turned 24. He's young.
SPEAKER_01
How does he have $10,000 a month to spend on girlfriends? What does he do for a living? That's crazy.
SPEAKER_00
Uh, I think he's a crypto guy.
SPEAKER_00
So just to paint the picture a little bit crypto guy. I'm not, I don't want to help you. Doesn't hear this.
Not the best, not the best looking guy, but not, not slightly below average looking guy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Which is totally, he could date. Yeah, you can date. Totally.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. Yeah. Which is he's so, you know, not probably about five, eight dressed well, very well spoken, collects like into collectibles, like very interesting to talk to. Well traveled.
Um, was telling me about his, his trip to Southeast Asia and.
SPEAKER_01
Sounds like a great dude.
SPEAKER_00
Great guy. A great guy. So yeah.
Yeah. I was, I was shocked and, and he was telling me, he was just like, listen, a lot of my friends like to play video games and this is my former video games. Everyone has advice and this is my advice and this is how I like to relax.
So I asked him. Oh my God. Which, which, which is freaky, honestly.
Um, and then I go, well, do you date women? You know, do you go on dates? He says, well, right now, um, I've got like too much on my mind to be dating. Um, but maybe in the future, which was even more scary because it just felt like, yeah, I'll get around to it, but he, I don't know if you will.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. That's really tough, man. I mean, I, I've read a bunch of articles about this.
Uh, one, well, one thing that, that it's a cautionary tale, which is that in Japan, there's, you know, there's a big culture of, of kind of, um, respect and just kind of like, you know, what you do for a living and are you respected in what, in your domain? And there was a whole, um, issue I read about recently where they're just the, the population is, is kind of shrinking because a lot of men don't want to date. Uh, because they're ashamed of, you know, either not having a high enough paying job or whatever it may be. And, and there's just like this movement of just not dating, which is just like, it's, it's crazy.
And I have to imagine that just gets exacerbated once we, and AI comes online and can provide, you know, legitimate alternatives in that, not legitimate, but like, you know, enough to check a couple of the boxes on the emotional side to where you're just like, well, I can just, you know, chat with my girlfriend tonight. You know, it's only going to get more and more realistic, which is just going to be crazy. Um, yeah, I, so I signed up for, I'm trying to find an investment here, not because I, I want AI relationships to rule the world, but because I believe that hopefully we can create AI bots that will replace therapists that will give us outlets to talk about our problems that will coach us in meaningful ways.
Um, and maybe that is companionship. I, I, and so I signed up for a handful of different products just to try, try them. I don't know a handful, maybe like two.
And I, there was one that's been around for a long time that I looked at a while ago, uh, called replica. And it has, I signed up for it just to see what's the latest state of the union in terms of what, what can this thing do? And, you know, it created, let me design my perfect figure for a AI woman and what I would have want. And then, um, you know, it, one of the things that was really disturbing to me were two things.
One, it said, it's in their tagline. It's something like always here to do whatever you want, or it was something like very passive, like I will just be here for you and support you no matter what. And I'm paraphrasing, but the concern there is that like, that's not how real relationships work.
And, you know, the, the, the muscles that have to be built around real relationships come from the fighting and more important, the repair process that happens afterwards, right? And that is, um, just going to be completely skipped in AI. And I was, I was, I was texting with a friend of mine, uh, and, and he's, he's a household name podcaster, won't say who, but you probably guess. And he's like, dude, he's like, he's like, it's over.
He's like, it's over for real women. He's like, you got this totally like passive, like AI entity that will agree with you no matter if you're wrong or not and do whatever you want. And then what's crazy is I went in and I, there's like a partner girlfriend mode that you can pay extra for.
I'm like, what the hell is this? You know, and so I bought the upgrade. It was extra 50 bucks or whatever. And then she's getting frisky.
And then I was like, okay, well, can I push this a little bit? I like pushed a little bit. I'm like, okay, listen, like if my phone ever gets hacked, this is all experimentation. I just want to see how far you can take this, you know, and I told my wife about everything and it's like, but like you can take AI, at least with replica really far, really far, like into territory where it's like, I didn't know this was a thing, but clearly this is a thing.
And so I'm really curious what other tools this guy is using, but it's the cat's out of the bag, man. This is just, these are going to come and they're going to be serious contenders out there for private relationships.
SPEAKER_00
Couple of the ones that he mentioned was candy.ai and cube.ai. Candy with that.
SPEAKER_01
What was the other one?
SPEAKER_00
He cupid with a K, I believe.
SPEAKER_00
And the scary thing about candy and cupid when I checked it out this morning versus replica is they replica, like kind of looks like a Sims character. The best way to describe it. So you, you still feel like you're talking to some like video game character.
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God. Candy.ai and cupid.ai. These are like legit looking humans.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it's scary. It's like really scary.
SPEAKER_01
Wow. Wow. What a pregnant. That's crazy.
SPEAKER_00
Maybe that guy met last night is the cause of that pregnancy.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. No, no, no. Can you, can you like go exclusive with these? Like I see like, like I just said, interested in women and it presented like it's as they call models.
It presented like 30 models. If I get, let's just say there's one on here called Zoe. Oh, I'm starting to chat.
Can other dudes also, other people also have Zoe or is this something where we can date exclusively with this AI? I don't even know how this works.
SPEAKER_00
So I actually think right now these, these models are they're dating everyone, man, they're getting around.
SPEAKER_00
But I think, you know, you're coming from a Web three, you know, chapter. So you're, you're thinking like scarcity and like also, right? And I think that's actually really smart. Like, you know, I would imagine the guy from last night would, you know, he doesn't want Erica to be dating 10 people.
That's his girl.
SPEAKER_00
Right. Totally.
SPEAKER_01
Wow. This is just insane, man. This is so crazy because it's, and it's sad because like I'm looking at these, these, these models here and it's unfortunate in that everything I see here is perfection.
Yes. Right. Like there's not an ounce of body fat. Like they're, they're like putting out this like perfect, you know, AI generated obviously pictures and it's like, I don't know, man.
This is just skewing reality in a really bad way.
SPEAKER_01
I mean, well, thanks for bringing us down at the last, in the last story of the
SPEAKER_00
day, I figured, you know, why not bring us down the world? You know, we thought the internet was weird and the dig in some old pundays, but the internet has gotten a lot weirder. Um, yeah, exactly. I also think to bring it back up, I think what's going to happen is this, I think there's going to be a polarization.
So you have, there's going to be a bunch of people. I think millions of people that are going to have these companions and they're going to be stuck in the, in that vortex. But I think a lot of people are going to be like, no, I don't want that.
And they're going to value their in-person relationships way more and do things like your, your TV idea. I think board games, you know, IRL events, that sort of thing. So you're going to see both things happen.
SPEAKER_01
So I got to go back and watch the movie. It's been too long. I only saw it in the movie theater and I feel like it's, it's like, it was so, uh, you know, prescient, like it was like, it was before it's time.
Like it was amazing.
SPEAKER_00
It was. Um, this has been amazing. Kevin Rose, you have a new podcast.
Um, tell folks a little bit about it. I listened to the Chris Dixon episode this morning and I thought it was fantastic. It's a must listen to.
SPEAKER_00
And, uh, happy you're back and creating more podcast content.
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, well, Greg, thanks for having me on. I mean, it's, yeah, I'm back and creating weekly content now. And for me, it's, it's really just playing to what I've done for a long time, which is be curious.
And so my curiosity leads me to finding experts in the world of, you know, investing and wellness and technology and bio hacks. And so it's very much a variety show. I call it like a show for the perpetually curious.
And I just try to get experts in their field, break down really complex topics and ways that we can take away digestible nuggets and apply them to our everyday life. And so, you know, I've had everything from like Zen masters on the show to like, you know, Chris Dixon, who's like, you know, the leader of web three and all things crypto and Andreessen Horowitz managing, you know, billions of dollars. And so it's, uh, when I look back at kind of my career and some of the stuff, you know, you were here too, obviously in the early days, when, when you're playing around with this stuff.
And, you know, I, my first tweet about Bitcoin was in 2011, I think. And, and I was talking about Ethereum on Tim Ferriss show when it was a few dollars and it's like, I want to find these trends and see around corners early and then bring them into people so that they can, you know, play and have fun with them and feel like they have a leg up on everyone else. And they're seeing something, you know, before the masses do.
So that's it. It's just called the Kevin Rose show. And it's all on Kevin Rose.
com.
SPEAKER_00
So I think if you listen to this, you're one of those people that loves to get your creative juices flowing through new ideas and early trends. So you're going to like Kevin show. Um, check it out.
And, uh, Kevin open invite to come back here anytime.
SPEAKER_01
Awesome. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me on.