An Inside Look at Building an Email Client in 3 Months - Ep. 44 with Kieran Klaassen, Brandon Gell

[00:00] instead of going and archiving those and reading them and archiving them one by one, what I can do with Quora is I can just scroll through and be like, okay, there's some partnership stuff going on with every, I got an agreement from our lawyers, all that kind of stuff, and I can just sort of scroll through. [00:14] I can see the money that we spent. I can see all my newsletters summarized. I scroll through it. Oh, I can see all the promotions I got. And then when I'm done, [00:23] I'm done. So Kieran, I remember we got off the phone call and I was catching up with Dan and he was like, how long do you think it's going to take him to do a V1? And I was like, I think he is going to have something by the morning. And that's just like not something that we could ever imagine a year ago, two years ago, that you could possibly do that. And you did. And we woke up and we're like, we had a functioning V1 of Quora in a day. Your process is basically go take a walk, like talk out a prompt, get home, transcribe the prompt and then get started. But like, give us more [00:53] selfishly, I'm like, how can I leverage this in my own process? I wanted to make a music app that had a whole complex compositional system. But really what I do in a moment like this is I just start building a prompt in my head. And then from there, I go into my choice of LLM for the moment and start working on it more and converting this into a PRD in cursor. Sometimes I add a notebook

[01:23] I take it from there, but it's a separate thing. There's a lot of talk about how prompt engineering is dead or will die, but being able to say like, hey, I want an app that does this and I want the background to look like this and I want the style of the button on the left hand side to look like this is actually, that's not going away. And that is prompt engineering. [01:53] you [01:55] Kieran and Brandon, welcome to the show. [01:58] Thanks, Dan. Thank you. So, Brandon, you're now the top recurring guest on AI&I, so people should be familiar with who you are. But if they're not, you are the head of studio and consulting at Every. And Kieran, this is your first time on AI&I, and you are the GM of Quora. And, yeah, tell us a little bit about who you are and what Quora is. [02:28] excited to be on here. I'm building Quora. It's a product that solves the pain we're all feeling when we think about the word email. Hence my hat here, anti-email. I wear a hat that says anti-email very largely printed on the front. [02:47] Um, [02:48] We're trying to solve a problem that everyone is feeling when they're thinking and working in email, which is dread. And no one feels like, oh, yeah, let's open my email inbox with my 10,000 unread messages and let's go through or people that want stuff from me or.

[03:09] random people that sent me stuff that I have to do now today. And there has to be a better way. That's like Dan and Brandon and I, [03:19] When we met, we all kind of felt it. And we were like, why the hell did no one solve this problem yet? Like, why is Google not doing this? Why are the big, like, no one is doing this. And, [03:30] we were playing with AI and we felt like there was something here. So we, [03:36] started working with Cora [03:38] And it basically helps you reduce the stress you feel when you open your inbox because we take away 90% of your email from your inbox and brief it twice a day. So there are two moments in the day where you can read through emails. [03:56] Yeah, read through everything that you need to know and read the bottom line of that and really focus on the important stuff. That's a very short version of it. We do way more, but we'd love to like. [04:08] get into more details. Uh, yeah. And here are the perspectives as well. Totally. And, and, and for, for context for people, we, we built this internally. We launched it as a, uh, as a wait list product, uh, right before the holidays. And it went, it went really viral. I'm like super, I'm super proud of that launch. I'm super proud of the product that we have. And we're just starting to onboard people right now and try to figure out like how to make it

[04:38] product actually look like? Cause I think, I think it's, I think it's very cool. And I think it's, it's a really good example of like, [04:43] the new types of things that you can do with AI that were like previously impossible like a couple years ago. So this is the product. This is what my email inbox looks like. So... [04:53] basically all of the emails that I get that I don't really have to respond to. So like you can think newsletters or any kind of email that I get where someone's saying like, here, here's like a status update or whatever. Instead of going and archiving those and reading them and archiving them one by one, what I can do with Quora is I can just scroll through and be like, okay, like there's some partnership stuff going on with every, I got an agreement from our lawyers, like all that [05:23] the money that we've spent. I can see all my newsletters summarized. I scroll through it. Oh, I can see all the promotions I got. And then when I'm done, I'm done. And I don't have to press archive. I don't have to do anything like that. If any of these things are something that I want to actually see in my email inbox, I can press return to inbox. I can click and read the full email if I want to. But basically for me, it just saves a ton of time every day going through my email. [05:53] But it really deals with that dread feeling. And for me, it's sort of like a pleasure to use. But I think what's really important for people to understand is, Kieran, you built this end to end in three months or something like that, which is kind of crazy. Yeah. And it's really fun as well. It's the best thing. It's also like, yes, I built this in three months.

[06:23] Thank you. [06:23] four months and we were thinking about this, like it's in the air. Like we're not the only email tool launching. [06:30] Yeah, I think it's worth talking about the history of Quora for a second, too, because we actually didn't start here. We didn't start with briefs. We kind of started where everybody else is right now, which is email assistant. [06:45] which there are like hundreds of products out there at this point that do that for you. They'll draft your emails. [06:51] Um, [06:52] And we did that. [06:53] at first, and we got really good drafts. [06:56] But I think what we realized is – [06:59] It doesn't matter how good an LLM can mimic your voice. [07:03] if it's not in your brain, so it doesn't have context that you have, and it just can't write a good email for you, period. [07:10] for like 50% of your emails that you need to respond to because 50% of your emails that you need to respond to, you need additional contacts the LLM doesn't have. [07:18] And, um, [07:21] So Quora does draft emails for you, but it only drafts emails that it thinks that it can do a great job drafting, where you're going to have to edit. [07:29] very small amount. [07:30] And I feel like we actually throughout this process realized that the actual cognitive load is the stress that you feel about like managing your inbox, not necessarily responding to emails. Because the responding to emails is kind of like the pleasurable part of emailing because it means you're maybe progressing something forward. [07:49] It's like the managing and cleaning of your inbox, which is actually the majority of what we all do.

[07:54] Thank you. [07:55] that is really... [07:58] stressful. So I feel like [08:01] Yeah, there's been an interesting arc getting to where Quora is today. It has been an interesting arc, and I think that we're starting to hit on something that I think is important for anyone who's thinking about building... [08:12] in AI right now, which is... [08:14] Um, for a long time, we've always talked about solving problems in software, right? But for a long time, the most expensive thing was actually like building the software. Um, and that's changing dramatically. It's much, much cheaper now. And, and what, what that does is it makes the question of what you're building way more important because like you can build anything in a couple of days if you want, at least like a really rough version. Um, yeah. [08:41] And so going on that journey of, okay, we have an idea, let's do drafting. And then, oh, wait, drafting works. But we're actually spending a lot of time reading and archiving emails that we don't need to respond to. And maybe AI is better for that. That arc is actually, in some ways, it's getting more and more valuable to be able to do that than it is to write the underlying code. Because a lot of the underlying code can be written for you. [09:06] But I am curious, like, Kieran, how are you able to make this so quickly? [09:15] And, like, take us into a little bit of your process. How much of it is just like you're I mean, you are you've founded companies before. You're you're a fantastic programmer. How much of it is that you're just a fantastic programmer and how much of it is you're using AI to like to make you faster at this?

[09:31] Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's everything together. It's really about really drilling down to understand what the problem is you're trying to solve and at the same time being super free and trying to get it. [09:48] just doing shit. Like how we started, like we started with drafts and Brandon and I were on a call and we were like, oh yeah, like, hey, hey, I have an idea. And we started suddenly let the spark lit and we were like, oh yeah, we should do this and this and this. I was like, it was buzzing in my head. And I think I was walking back home and opened up my phone, just memo recorder, started speaking a large prompt. I was already like, okay, [10:16] It's in my head, like I have some idea of [10:20] what we need to do. And from my experience as a programmer before, I already was thinking about, like, how would I implement this with what technology would I use? I would just... [10:31] talk it all out. That's probably five, eight minutes. Um, and, and convert it to text. And, um, [10:40] Yeah, go from there. And that night, I think I built an MVP and sent an email, said, yo, Brandon, here it is. Send emails here and it will drop now for you. We were both like, holy shit. [10:54] I remember, so, Kieran, I remember we got off the phone call. [10:57] And I was catching up with Dad. [10:59] And he was like, how long do you think it's going to take him to do a V1? And I was like...

[11:02] I think he is going to have something by the morning. [11:06] And that's just like not something that we could ever imagine, you know, a year ago, two years ago that you could possibly do that. [11:14] And you did. And we woke up and we were like, we had... [11:17] functioning v1 of Quora in a day. [11:20] Um, [11:21] Kieran, how much, I don't even know how you'll answer this, but how much of the code behind Quora, which is a huge product now, [11:31] It does a lot. [11:33] was written by AI, do you think? [11:35] What percentage? [11:36] Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think everything is written by AI or maybe 80% or 90%, but 100% has been thought of by me. So I think that's how I think about it. It's like... [11:52] AI helps me, but it's really a collaborator just enabling me to do things faster. The tedious things are just faster. [12:03] So, probably I didn't think about everything. But who does, right? Most of it. Well, what's amazing is like you're almost more of a writer now that knows in a program versus a programmer. Absolutely, yeah. Like, for me, this is very natural. Like, a little bit background. I'm a musician. I studied composition. I did film music for eight years. Did, like, conduct orchestras and scoring and, like, [12:31] the whole thing, commercial music, and

[12:34] For me, software is very similar. What you try to do is tell a story. With music, you do that. You support a film or a short with music to make you feel a certain way. And I think of it a similar way with software, where you create an experience where it makes you feel or experience something or tell a story. [12:57] And that's kind of different than maybe [13:01] like a problem solver, like engineering kind of perspective, which is like another way to look at it, which is like, Hey, I have, I'm going to program this thing. I always think big to small. And then I don't like, don't really care really how it works. Like clearly I care about beautiful codes and things that looks good, but if it works, that's more important. And if it's, um, [13:26] solving the problem or telling a story or like making you feel something like that's the most amazing thing. Like if you build something that excites you, [13:35] you as a user, like that's, that's positive energy. Uh, and that's been something we've been talking about a lot here at every, like in, in the Q1 sort of kickoff that I did, we, like we were talking about, um, software becoming a little bit more like content. Cause it's like, it's just much easier to write. And it all, it also like, um, uh, goes viral. Like a lot of our growth at every has been us releasing software products like Quora or last couple months.

[14:05] and also writing becoming a little bit more like coding because you can actually build stuff with your writing. So there's this merging. And I think what you're pointing to is, for a long time, we thought a lot about software engineering as about problem solving, like solving really, really well-defined problems, which is, I think, a great way to look at it. And we think about that also. Today, we were debating what problem we were solving with a particular onboarding feature, and I think that's a really important lens. But I think... [14:33] Being able to really crisply define and resolve a problem is, in a lot of ways, a function of the fact that software has been really expensive to build, and so you don't want to take a risk to build something that doesn't actually solve a problem for someone. [14:49] And I think you're coming at it from a different direction, which I think is in general how we try to think about it at every – because it's really compatible with writing and just creativity in general, which is like making something that makes someone feel a thing, which is a lot harder to define. And a lot of it has to come from sort of like taste and vision and experience and creativity and all that kind of stuff. And I think software is moving in that direction more, which is another way in which it's a lot more like content now. [15:19] an email summarizing tool or an email response tool or whatever, the one that makes you feel great is going to be the one that wins because everyone can solve the problem. And I think that's a really interesting thing. And it's one of the most special things about Every is I think we're all trying to do that. Yeah, absolutely. And what is very interesting about that concept is it's more about...

[15:44] good taste and style and just experience and like what you take with you, like your perspective and, [15:53] And especially with Quora, you see that everyone on the team [15:59] like brings their vision and it's a different kind of solution to email. Like we hear people say like, there's no one else like this. Like it's different and that can be good. That can be bad, but we're very proud of, [16:15] that. And sometimes we have discussions like, "Oh, should we make it a little bit easier on the user here, or make it a little bit smoother?" And I'm like, "Eh, maybe it's okay to make a statement or do something a certain way, especially to stand out." [16:34] And that comes with that taste and, yeah, like kind of feel you get. [16:39] Yeah, I feel like a lot of what we build and a lot of what the most successful businesses are that I'm seeing right now that are being built using AI – [16:46] or leveraging AI. [16:48] They come from people or organizations that have really strong perspectives. [16:53] Like sparkle is the same thing. [16:55] and Cora, they're actually very similar. We're applying a perspective that we have, [17:02] And it's not going to work for some people and it'll work great for some other people. [17:06] And it's a perspective that only can be applied by hand. [17:11] in a previous world. [17:12] Like how I organize my files. That's like something that takes a certain level of intelligence to be able to do.

[17:19] I'm only looking at my emails at 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. That's something that you need to force yourself to do. [17:27] Um, [17:28] so having like a really really strong perspective right now feels or or methodology [17:34] It feels like for the first time you can actually force people to... [17:38] follow that methodology superhuman for email like kind of did this a little bit i remember when um i use it for the first time and [17:46] Instead of marking emails as unread, you are marking them as done. [17:50] And that felt like the big... [17:53] unlock where you're actually saying I'm archiving this email. I don't want to see it in my inbox whatsoever. [17:59] And I think... [18:02] Yeah, it's just amazing how much more you can do now that you can apply an intelligent perspective. [18:07] through LLMs. [18:09] Yeah, and I think that that's also another overlap with writing is like it's a writer's job to have a perspective. [18:16] And and that's another way in which product I think product building is is starting starting to overlap. I do want to go back, though, to Kieran. You said you had this great anecdote of like building that first perspective. [18:29] Quora MVP in one night. And you said like your process is basically go take a walk, [18:36] like talk out a prompt and, [18:37] get home, transcribe the prompt, and then get started. But give us more details into how that works. Selfishly, I'm like, how can I leverage this in my own process? Because... [18:48] For example, like one of my big questions is what is that prompt? Like, what are you trying to, especially let's say for a new project, what are you trying to get into that initial prompt as you're walking and talking that sets you up well? Can you find this prompt here? That would be great. I love that idea. This is an example.

[19:09] of something I was thinking of [19:13] um at some point walking somewhere so normally what i do uh is when there's a new model coming out like i think this was oh one [19:22] coming out [19:24] I want to make an app, I want to build an app, and I'll see how far I can push it, how far it will go, and where it breaks. It's just a good way to test it out. So, I'm going to [19:35] I was a composer and I wanted to make a music app that had the specific thing where you, where you click somewhere and there's a synthesizer and a sound generator and like a mirror note, like a whole complex compositional system. But yeah, [19:48] Really... [19:49] What I do in a moment like this is I just [19:53] go walk. Walking enables me to just keep going, not thinking too much about it, getting more into a flow state. [20:02] Um, [20:03] and just starts [20:05] building a prompt in my head. It's kind of weird. You're basically talking like it will become a prompt, and this is something I actually learned from you, Dan, in the earlier... [20:18] episodes where you said you need to ground it and like how to like [20:22] push the model into a certain direction. So I should start dropping like, oh yeah, you are a very good iOS engineer and you do like Swift, Swift 18. You're amazing. Or like, just start with something like that. And, and, [20:36] it's a start and you like start grounding it, [20:39] And here it's like, I'm going to describe an app and its elements. This app is called

[20:45] these, if you open it, there's only one screen. [20:48] Well, I just visualized the app here in my head and just... [20:53] Do like I'm opening my phone and just imagine it and just... [20:57] talk through what happens. So maybe every corner has a different color, four-way gradients, [21:05] Tones of green and blue, a little bit of texture on it, like a grainy, noisy texture. So it looks a little bit fancy. [21:11] like using words like fancy and maybe [21:14] Apple design, like just describing the feel [21:18] Um, [21:19] That's the background. Then in the middle, there's a separation, there's a line in the middle, somewhere in the middle, and the line is... [21:27] Actually, it's not a line, but it's like, [21:29] two parts of gradients. So you see, I was thinking about something, I was like, "Oh, no, no, no, scrap that, let's go." So I just jam like that. Here you can see everything, and until I don't know. And I try to just add details everywhere I can until my brain is [21:48] empty. And then I stopped the recording and, and I, I don't take it anywhere directly from that. That's just step one. That's really interesting. So for people who are, who are listening, basically like, um, what you did is you went, you went and took a walk. You, uh, you, you just rambled off the top of your head, but the way that you're rambling is, um, you're actually, it's, it's kind of wild how much detail you're able to give about what you want.

[22:18] which I think is really actually important and interesting. Like there's a lot of talk about how prompt engineering is dead. And I think like, [22:26] Or will die. [22:28] And I think what's important to know is maybe like the, I'll pay you $10,000 if you do, giving you a good answer is like going to die because like, [22:36] And the model should just give you a good answer no matter what. But being able to say like, hey, I want an app that does this and I want the background to look like this. And I want the style of the button on the left-hand side to look like this is actually, that's not going away. And that is prompt engineering. And that is really, really important being able to know that. [23:06] vision in your head of what you want. You're walking and talking in as much detail as possible, and you're not really worrying about [23:13] whether or not you're getting it right as you say it, because you just walk back and say, "Actually, I don't want that. It should be like this." And then it sounds like you're transcribing. What was that screen you're showing me? What did you transcribe it in? Yeah, so what I do is I use voice memos, and then I put it into MacWhisper, which is a free [23:35] free just whisper converter, but [23:37] Actually, now, Voice Memos does transcription as well with the new iOS 18, so I use that once in a while as well. [23:46] Yeah, so, yeah, I'll just use that, and then from there, I go into...

[23:52] my choice of LLM for the, for the moment. And, [23:56] start working on it more and converting this to like [23:59] into a PRD, most of the time I say, "Hey, okay, I have this idea in cursors." Sometimes [24:09] notebook [24:11] And I create like an outline of files or like depending on what it is, like if it's simple and cloth is great for artifacts. But whatever I want to do after that, I take it from there. But it's a separate thing, like that initial burst of inspiration. [24:26] Doesn't matter where it goes. Let's get into the details on that. So basically, you have the initial burst of inspiration. You write down the prompt. You transcribe it. What is your model of choice right now to make it into a PRD? And for people who are listening, what is a PRD? What are the elements that make that effective for moving into coding? Yeah, what I use now is I just always try to use the best model there is, [24:56] the longest and the deepest. And currently that's O1 Pro. [25:02] But I have to say others do it great as well. So Claude Sonnet is great. Like there are no bad models anymore. Are you using O1 Pro a lot? Do you like it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think for that cursor most of the time for coding, but O1 Pro for everything else. Like, yeah, it's good. It's slow. Like planning coding or what else?

[25:26] Yeah, it's planning coding, but also thinking through... [25:31] thinking through strategies or like just doing some collaboration that's not coding, just like as a partner, [25:39] like bouncing ideas or laying out options. Yeah. I find myself using a one all the time. Like that's my main model right now. Um, and I have Owen pro, but I just, um, it takes so long. And I think some, sometimes it feels like it's a little galaxy brain, like it's, it overthinks maybe the quicker response from a one is actually better. And in certain cases, I haven't figured [26:09] of like you were, it's like 90% AI generated, but it's different from you in that I'm too lazy often to think about what the architecture should be. Cause I don't think that most of the stuff that I'm doing is like not going to last beyond like the couple hours when I'm doing it. Um, and sometimes right now, like a lot of the coding assistants, uh, like I use either windsurf, um, or cursor composer, they get stuck in like loops and like do weird stuff. And so when it, when it's getting [26:39] I'll send the code to O1 Pro and be like, is there anything in here that I should be aware of? Like, is it actually doing what I think it's doing, which is helpful. But other than that, I tend to just use O1. So it's interesting that you're using it for like almost everything other than coding. Yeah, I use it for coding too. But very specifically, if I know what I want and just say do it and then it does it.

[27:03] perfectly. But the interesting part about using it is actually that it takes so long. Like, yeah, you can say it's a bad thing, but what I use it for, like, if I use it, it also makes me [27:15] chill a little bit because working with AI can be very like, [27:20] energizing but also a little bit stressful because it goes so quickly. And your brain, it really goes hard. And it's kind of refreshing to have to just sit on a chair, do nothing for three to five minutes once in a while. So I kind of embrace that. Do you find that, how often do you actually look at this thought process? [27:43] Never, never. Because I would think that that would also be helpful too, to look at that and be like, do I agree with the way that it's thinking? And, [27:49] I think the output will represent this, but I guess you can just go for it. Yeah, so I never look at it because it's like a summary either way. Also, why I use it is because it is the newest model. I want to learn the most with it, and the only one to really learn about a model is to use it. That's how you get better is to use a model. So it might also be that, where I'm not... [28:13] It's still a new model in my mind where I don't really understand [28:19] or have a good feel for it. So that's why I use it as well. It's another reason. Brandon, what are you using these days? I use primarily O1. [28:29] I actually can't use clog right now because it's not available in Nicaragua. Oh, no way. I just can't wrap my head around why.

[28:39] But, yeah, so I'm, like, full OpenAI right now. [28:42] And I just honestly, I use whatever it defaults to, which right now is 01. I was going to say, I don't do anywhere near as much coding as you guys, but I did use it to make a sort of a luxury personal app the other day and was blown away at how much better it is since the last time I tried to do that. What was the app? I'm still building products to help me learn Spanish better. [29:06] Um, [29:07] And I just can't seem to find a flashcard product that works well. [29:15] Because I really like, you know, I feel like my writing and my reading is far surpassing my listening and my speaking. [29:22] And I just want verbal flashcards. What's a verbal flashcard? Like it speaks to you? I want it to say the word and I want to respond with what, you know. [29:31] Either way, Spanish or English. Cool. Did you get that to work? Yeah. Yeah. It was fun. And it was like, maybe it was... [29:42] Three prompts. [29:45] to like get the product to a place that like it kind of worked and then just have a bunch of error handling that was like very easy. But I mean, it was remarkable how quickly it got it to work. Did you use the real-time API or what did you build it with? First, I just used like Google's audio API and it was awful. And now I'm switching it over to the real-time API. That's fascinating. I love that.

[30:15] easy it is for non-technical people or just [30:19] even technical people to just like make something really quick. Like it hasn't filtered into public consciousness yet. Yeah. And that's why like Replit's agent is going to be so important because getting stuff actually like hosted, [30:33] and push to a website that you can access it regularly so I can do it whenever I want versus like going to need to – [30:38] run npm run dev in the terminal, which most people don't know what that is. [30:43] Like that's really where luxury software and one-time software becomes possible. [30:49] Um, because like maybe 01 pro 01 is the best at writing code, but that's not what's hard anymore. It's what's hard is actually hosting it. All the environment stuff. Yeah. Have you used like cursor composer or windsurf, um, for this kind of thing? Cause it'll run that, all that stuff. Yeah. But I should, I should be getting a, a 101 from, from either of you at some point. Yeah. That's been the, that's been the nice thing for me is like with windsurf and, and cursor composer, like they're now, they can use the file system. [31:19] So they'll set up a lot of those things. And then there's a, because they run, like, let's say they run NPM install or whatever, they install the dependencies. If it runs into an error, it will see the error and then fix it automatically. And that just has saved me tons and tons of time, tons and tons of time where I would usually be like banging my head against the problem and like Googling for like what this random error is and it just fixes it. Yeah. [31:43] I'm curious, Kieran, you're using Cursor Composer mostly, right? Yeah, yeah. That's my main, yeah, still main driver. Yeah, I've used...

[31:51] Many others, but it just works best for me, yeah. [31:55] Do you have any tips for effective cursor composer coding? [31:59] Yeah, it's not a tool. It's in your head. It's kind of like the problem Brandon is describing, like people think they can do it. I love the midwit response. [32:13] No, it's really, it's like a friend of mine, we spoke on Monday, like two days ago. And I was just saying to him, like, why are you not building stuff? [32:29] Just try it, just download Composer. [32:32] do a basic thing, and I gave him a few instructions. [32:36] Yesterday, he has been texting me every hour, "I build another app, Luke!" And with the video. And today, he said, "I build an app for my daughter, school, this and that, with a leaderboard and confetti and all kinds of things." He is on the Schuber AI rush, for sure. But it's in your head. And what works is just [33:02] go do it, go feel that. Because if you've never felt that, it's hard to understand. And, yes, you need to understand a few things, like what is the difference between chat or composer and agent mode, and which one should you use? So, it would be nice.

[33:25] Yeah. Like the limiting factor now is not knowledge. [33:29] It's just patience. [33:30] And like... [33:32] your own determination to actually like run into a problem and then [33:36] just literally put it back into... [33:39] Also that. Like I don't even read the errors. When I get an error, I don't even read them. And sometimes I wonder like, well, is this bad because I'm not truly understanding what the problem is? [33:51] And then I'm just sort of like, screw it. Like that world is over. [33:56] And also I'm never going to be a great programmer. So like my goal is to not understand this. My goal is to just build a thing. I agree. I think like that's, that's my big question for you, Kieran is like, I find myself like sort of like Brandon said, like being almost like a copy paste monkey where I'm just like, paste the error, go back. Like, and, and then I think there's a, there's a real question. And I think it's a real actual, like turning into a skill question, which is how do you know when to check the work of the model? [34:26] and to get into the details versus not. And I've been talking for a long time about this sort of like allocation economy thesis, which is like we're moving from... [34:36] knowledge economy to an allocation economy where previously what you know was how you were compensated. And now it's like, how well can you allocate intelligence? And the skill to allocating intelligence is sort of like the skills of human managers right now, where a human manager always has to answer that question for themselves too. It's like, someone did some work. Do I micromanage and get into the details or do I fully delegate? And then how do I know when to do that? And I'm

[35:06] You said earlier, like you really understand the code that's being written. Is that because you're actually reviewing most of the code that gets written? Or is it because you are architecting the code before the AI writes it? So you're pretty confident you understand how the system works? Like, yeah, how are you dealing with the kind of get into the details versus delegate? [35:27] Yeah, that's a really good question. So for Quora, it's different than for an app that I just quickly do for fun. There are differences. [35:40] Um... [35:41] For Core, it's also different because I use technology that I've been using for like [35:46] 15, 16 years already, so I know it very well. It's just different. If you know something, this is Ruby on Rails HTML, which I know for like, [35:59] very long. And that's what we use. And [36:03] It's different if you use technology you know, because you look at it and you have an opinion, or you have a feeling, or there is feedback there. So I can use that. [36:14] Do you need to? That's a good question. Maybe not. So for me, the most important part is actually, it's not the code that's written. [36:23] But where things go wrong, [36:26] If things go wrong, it's always because the idea or the problem is not clear. If I do something that writes...

[36:36] where a cursor writes code that is not good, it just means it's not clear what it should do. Like I'm not clear in how to structure things. And think of it like, [36:48] like models, for example, where we use emails. So, email, we need to define what is an email, like what kind of states can an email be in? And if I don't understand, [37:02] all those aspects, it's very hard for a cursor to do the right thing, and it will fill in details. [37:09] When it's filling in these details, sometimes it goes rogue into different directions that are contrary, and that's not good. So you need to be very clear on a direction. [37:20] How do you deal with filling in on details? Because one thing that I notice, and again, I'm mostly using this for one-off apps, is when I create the app, I'll make all these decisions. Let's say I use Supabase as the database, as a simple example. [37:39] that. And then the next time I use it, if I open up a new session, I'm going to [37:44] Um, it'll forget a lot of that stuff. [37:47] And then it will make new or different decisions. Like it'll be like, oh, let's assume that the database is a local hosted P SQL Postgres database. And I'll connect to that. And I'll be like, no, no, no, it's Superbase. And then it's like, well, where's the end file? And I'm like, here it is or whatever. Or I'll ask it to build something new and it will go delete something old as it's building the new thing.

[38:17] um, [38:18] So there's all this like weird stuff. Are you like continually creating like a context file for it, for it to know certain things? Or like, how are you making sure it remembers the decisions that you've made and not messing things up? Yeah, there are a few things. So for people who are watching, you're in cursor. We're looking at you have your cursor settings are open and you're going through the file system. [38:43] Keep going. [38:44] Yes, so there's this file that you can create in your project called .cursor rules, and [38:52] You can write stuff. This is linked to the current project. So normally what I do is [39:00] When I see things go wrong, like what you said, where I do something wrong, I just go in here and edit. And it's very simple. So, for example, for controllers, I like to say, hey, actually, there are two helpers always present that you can use. So basically you're putting like in cursor rules at the top. You have like a heading that says controllers. And then underneath that, you have like some information about controllers in your code that you want it to follow. [39:30] Yeah, and mostly these things come from things that go wrong or things that are like, oh, it did something, and then I say, oh, but can you actually do it like this? And I'm like, okay, let me add that instruction already in the cursor rules, so I don't have to say that every time. Do you do that manually, or do you say add this to cursor rules? Yeah.

[39:53] - Yeah, I don't know. Probably you can edit it now. It's an interesting idea. - Wait, I know that you put the every style guide in there. One of the things that's been really interesting is [40:07] At our core, we're a media company full of writers and editors who care a lot about language. And so all of the copy for all of our apps gets carefully copy edited, which can take a little bit of time. And I know you put the every style guide in your cursor rules so that hopefully we can get some of the copy editing out of the way. Does it work? Is Cursor Composer able to apply that style guide to copy in the app? [40:35] I think so. So I've been opening emails and apps and what I do is like, hey, can you apply every style guide to this especially? So I try to reference it a little bit so it doesn't... [40:51] better. So far, it has been changing how we write things a little bit, but [40:58] In the end, we'll see how many... [41:02] notes come on the copy. Wait, can we try this? Can we try this together? I really want to see this. So basically, I'm sending you a link to a very, very drafty section of an essay I'm writing. Can you throw it as a text file into this project and then just ask Cursor to copy edit it? I want to see if it'll work. Yes. Wait, here's the chat.

[41:24] Studio chat. Because honestly, if this works, this changes a lot. We're going to have all of our editors start to use cursor now. [41:35] People have been writing novels in cursor, so I know it's possible. I put it in the studio chat. And please don't judge the terrible writing. [41:48] You can still see cursor, right, Sharon? For people who are [41:53] So basically I sent Kieran a draft of a essay I'm writing or part of a draft, and he's saving it as a markdown file in his Quora project. I guess we should make sure this doesn't get committed. [42:23] our copy editing style guide. And he's saying, can you review and apply the every copy style guide [42:30] And that's it. Guide without, without an E. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yeah, and it's saying, I'll often review and edit the text according to the provided style guide. Let me analyze the content and make the necessary changes. If this works, I'm going to be so happy. [42:48] Like, I think people don't understand how interesting and important this agent interface is and how common it's going to be for every kind of workflow.

[43:00] this is going to happen everywhere. It's going to happen in word processing. It's going to happen like in, in all parts of like our lives. And I've started to use this actually for like, whoa, for, for like note taking and stuff. It's been really cool. Um, um, [43:15] This is really interesting. So it says, I've applied the style guide rules to improve the writing. Here are the key changes made, tile case for headlines and section headings. [43:24] Interesting. [43:25] Um... [43:28] I'd have to really look at this, but based on what I can see, I would guess that it's missing things. And what you'd need to do is ask it to go rule by rule through the entire file. It doesn't know how to do that yet. Yeah. And also, if we want to lean into it more, what you could do is you could create a notepad with the styles so you can reference. [43:56] that notepad and say, hey, everything in this notepad go line by line, or you can say just go through it once and then do the other. There are other ways to do this as well. Clearly, this is not set up to do this, but the cool part is like, yeah, it's a hacky thing, but the cool part is like, okay, so let's say this is it, but also you can say, [44:26] promotional email using the [44:29] core of this idea to link to the full blog post. That's interesting. Yeah. So like you're basically using it to, you're using this as, as a content creation tool that isn't just creating the content. It's also like putting it into your whole system, into the code and writing the code for it. And yeah, I think

[44:59] together. [45:00] Yeah, and it can run things on your computer. The beautiful thing working Cursor is you can access everything and just... [45:10] rethinking this content now you can use to write a landing page or do something else. I want to see what happens. So you're saying, can you create a promotional email using the core of this idea to link to the full blog post? And we'll see if it actually works. So let's do it here. So we take this. [45:31] This will just go here, and we say, can you use this copy to write the email from there? [45:39] Thank you. [45:40] Thank you. [45:40] And what it will do now is it will look at my other email that I already have and [45:47] It's editing the template. [45:49] Yeah. Which I don't think you want. See, this is an example of what we don't want. I just go back. So create a new email called... [46:01] This is why you have to keep your eye on your agents because they'll go off and do things that you might not want. And basically what you're doing is you're just going, you're noticing it and then you're editing the original prompt rather than like waiting for it to do something. And now you've redone it. You've said create a new email. It's not saying like, okay, I'm going to go create a new mail or template. And it's like basically rewriting the email and creating a new template. [46:23] And, um... [46:26] What's the – how can we teach what we cannot define as the subject line?

[46:33] Which is only funny to me because I wrote this piece and you guys have no idea what this is about. But it's very, very funny. [46:42] I love this. I think this is really cool. My last question for this is like if you ask it to go line by line through the style guide, can it do that? Yeah, let's try that. So let's go to the curse. [46:56] go. Yeah, we are. So you're going back into cursor rules and you're, what are you doing? I'm trying to create a notebook or notepad. So notepads are these pieces of prompts or whatever you want it to be. It could be a PRD that you can inject in the composer or anywhere else. [47:26] but if you want to inject it, it can go here. I see. So crucial rules is like always follow this, always use this, and notepads are like use it in specific cases where I specifically ask you to use it. Yeah. Yeah. Go through the... [47:41] items one by one. So what I'm doing is a quick and dirty every style guide. It says, "Always use the following style belt. Go through the items one by one," and suggest edits. [47:59] Okay, so these are lots of lines. Let's go.

[48:05] I'm going back into Composer, Command-I, Reset. What I do is I go to Notepad and say [48:13] This one, oh, it's called new notepad, I'll rename. [48:17] So you're basically going back, you're adding a new Composer window, you're adding your new notepad in the Composer window, or you're basically going to rename it. So you're adding the notepad in your Composer window and then saying, can you apply the style guide? [48:34] I'm sorry. [48:35] Let's see what it does. [48:39] Thank you. [48:41] And the cool thing is, like, currently we're using Cloud 3.5, but if you want to try a different model, like, every model out there is here. So you can just switch to another model, and you have the same interface. You can just see how that goes. That's super cool as well. I think this is not quite working yet. [49:11] every instance where it's violated in a piece of text, they find a couple. The only one that's good at this is O1, but O1 is not in any of these agent interfaces because it doesn't have tool, tool calling yet, but that's coming. Like it's definitely, it'll come out like this quarter, I'm sure. And I think that will like, [49:28] totally change how this works. Yeah, and so I went to normal, because we don't really need an agent for this, because this is kind of a one...

[49:39] one shot. So yeah, it's a little bit hard to understand, but normal and agent, the difference is the agent's [49:46] Can... [49:47] Think in steps. [49:50] and normal is more like you say something and then it says something back. It can still create files or do things [49:58] So that part is not the agent-like thing. It can create files, but it cannot [50:04] see what the error is. An agent can run code on your computer and see, oh, there's an error. Oh, let me fix the error. And then you don't need to do anything with the normal one. It just creates the files you have to do yourself and then say, oh, there's an error. Can you fix it? So, [50:18] That's the normal, but you can use 01 in normal, which is still good. The agent, basically, it runs in a loop and just tries to finish the task for you. And chat, like, tells you what to do. It's sort of like having ChatGPT in your cursor. And you have to kind of manually apply each change and... [50:40] So, [50:41] I'm sorry. [50:42] So it can do that iteratively based off of the problems that it encounters, but it can't, it doesn't yet work within a single prompt. [50:49] Like it's not going to work iteratively inside of a single prompt. It's not going to like based on one, based on your initial prompt, it's not just going to keep running until it thinks it's finished the entire task. It will just respond with all of the responses and then you apply the changes and then you can say like, okay, like let's keep going. Yeah. Yeah. And there's also the chat, which is like the most simplistic version.

[51:15] One other way we could try it out is like selecting one section and then do command K and then say, I think that would work better. [51:24] Yeah. I'm just trying to think about what our... [51:28] editing team would actually do. Until it's agentic, I don't think they're going to do this. No, no, no. But I think there might be a way to instruct the agent to think in a loop. There might be, yeah. There might be. We just need to go through it. I'm pretty sure you can do it. [51:48] But it doesn't work as simply. So, yeah, it needs some work. Okay. Well, we're getting close to time, and so I just want to, like, take it back to, like, [51:58] So one of the interesting things to me about getting to do this kind of podcast is we get to take people along in our journey to build these businesses, which are – it's like a new generation of business under a new kind of structure. We have multiple different products, multiple different businesses under one roof. [52:15] Um, and we're, you know, figuring it out as we go along. And I think the more we can bring people into that process of figuring things out, the better. Um, yeah. [52:24] I'm curious, like, let's talk about the main problems right now, right? Like we launched Quora, we have the waitlist, there are 7,000 people on the waitlist, which is amazing. We've started to take people off the waitlist. And we've done that. And just like, you know, we sent it sends an email to them and saying here off the waitlist. And then also, Brandon has put the team on his back and is doing a lot of manual onboardings.

[52:49] Your whole schedule today is filled with doing manual onboardings with people, which is amazing. It's the superhuman style of onboarding. We decided to do this because... [53:00] It's just – [53:01] Like signing up with your email and letting something have access to your email is like a really it can be really stressful. It's it's the high, high pressure thing. And having the kind of like over the shoulder onboarding allows us to identify problems so that we can guide the initial people through it and then fix the problems. [53:22] Um, and, but I want to talk about like, what are, what are the main problems that we're trying to solve right now? Like, what are, how are we approaching? Okay. We're going from here to, um, the next step, which is like, we can probably, uh, we can, we can launch it publicly. Um, but there's a, there's a lot of steps to that. Um, so yeah, what are we thinking about right now? [53:44] Thank you. [53:45] I have before we get into that, I just think I can share what the hardest part about this is, which is that we just have a bias. [53:55] to use the products that we make. [53:58] And sometimes I feel like that can make us feel like – [54:02] the products are working because we use them. [54:06] even though we may be convincing ourselves that some of the problems that we're encountering aren't real problems because we want to be using the product. [54:14] And that is... [54:17] Thank you. [54:18] It's like an impossible question to answer.

[54:21] If we're doing it or not, because it's hard to recognize that for some types of problems. So I feel like onboarding manually helps us get a sense of like, what are people's real concerns or apprehensions, specifically with a product that's going to manage such a critical part of your work life. [54:40] And I feel like that is, I mean, that's one problem that we're all very aware of right now, which is, [54:46] Quora archives your emails. It makes it so you don't see stuff that people may be sending to you that is important. [54:55] And... [54:57] The debate that we had this morning was like, none of us feel this problem, but we've onboarded some of the people, some people that have. And how big of a problem really is it? Are those people our ideal customers? [55:08] Or are they not our ideal customers? Because we seem to not have that problem. [55:14] But are we convincing ourselves that we don't have that problem? So I think navigating through that is – [55:20] This is sort of like a big overarching theme. [55:23] how to prioritize. I do think that's a great point. And yeah, one of the things I love about the products we're able to build is we build products for ourselves. And I think that's a great place to be. But I think the potential downside is you get one moment when you first use a product where all of the like, I'm unfamiliar with this problems come up. And then once you've been using it for a couple of weeks, you forget what those are. And only through contact with

[55:53] remember like oh this is like what it's like to go through this from a blank slate um [55:58] And you need to take those really seriously. But then you also have to figure out, well, if we've only done a couple of onboardings and the people we did the onboardings with didn't like the onboarding experience or didn't like the product, what does that mean? How do we square their feedback with our sense that this is a good product? And I don't know about you all, but my feeling is you just need more data, basically. And just trying to get more people through the pipeline. [56:28] two people to rely on, we have like 30, uh, you start to like zoom out and, and sort of pattern match and be like, well, they fit into these different buckets and some people like love it. And like, let's just, let's focus on those people for now. Or like everyone has this problem. It's clear that we need to fix something. Um, yeah. [56:44] But I think that's, that's, that's what people are talking about when they talk about the startup rollercoaster is, um, you get early data from a couple of people and then you extrapolate. And then that's like really either emotionally, like really exciting, or it's like really emotionally like draining. Um, and the more data you have, the more even you can be about your assessment. Yeah. One other thing also is you, you can focus on what are the biggest problems to solve, um, [57:12] or you can say, [57:15] what works very well, and what can we make even better. Because it's kind of flipping it a little bit, because that's kind of what we do. We know we have a lot of problems we need to solve that is kind of like...

[57:27] not there, but we also have something that works very well and like, [57:32] people use it and think like, "Holy shit, this feels amazing." People, after one day of using it, just think, [57:41] "This is special," or people that tried 20 tools before that kind of does the same thing. They're like, "Ah, but yours is different," or like, [57:48] Yeah, I can't do many things and certain things are very annoying. [57:52] today, but I love the idea or the why or like, [57:56] at what you have already. So that's another way to look at it. Just be very good [58:01] at one thing, because then it will forgive you for the rest. [58:05] Yeah, it feels like right now the core problem that we're solving is Quora is just a different way of managing your email and – [58:13] We all maybe have a bias to be open to this different way of managing our inbox like this. And the question that we need to solve right now is are. [58:22] millions of other people [58:24] interested in handling their inbox like this. That feels like the main thing that we need to solve right now. And then, you know, there's a thousand other problems that get thrown in there that sort of muddle our view of solving that core problem or distract us. [58:43] from solving that core problem. [58:45] Yeah. And I like that framing or that flip because I think one of the problems that early startups can run into, especially if you're tackling something as big as email, is to say, well, in order to truly know if we're solving the problem, we need to build...

[59:05] a full email client. [59:07] And we need to get to table stakes with Gmail, for example, maybe even before we launch. And I think that's always a losing battle. [59:16] Because what you want to build early on is something that's so good for a certain type of person. It's like 10 times better for a certain type of person such that they will use it even though it's not at feature parity with other email products or whatever. Pick your competitor. [59:35] And I think that's what we're doing with briefs. Yeah, it would be great eventually if Quora was a full-blown email client. [59:46] at the one thing that it does, that even though it's not a full email client yet, people still love it. And also to figure out who those people are. It's not going to be amazing for everyone off the bat, and nor should it be. The question is, is there a core group of people who fucking love it? And my theory is, it's too early to say, but my theory is where the product is right now, the answer is yes, 100%. And it'll be a really sticky, really amazing experience for those [1:00:16] If you're just drinking your own Kool-Aid, because like we came up with it and we built it and we like it, you know, but we'll find out. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like sitting here thinking like, I don't want to go back to Gmail or Super. Oh my God. And then, and then you say that and I'm like, but maybe I would, I don't really like, it's hard to, it's hard to really know. I don't think that that's true. I think that I would be a very disappointed on a PMF. Me too.

[1:00:39] Like, can you imagine? Like, it's like going back to the dark ages. No, I mean, I just don't think about email anymore. [1:00:45] And it's ridiculous to me to think about how email basically mimics a physical experience. [1:00:51] Mail inbox right now. There's a bunch of spam that I'm going to delete without opening and [1:00:57] This is exactly what happens with my physical mailbox. And there's some mail that I'm going to open and then be confused about, like, do I need to respond to this? Why – [1:01:06] This is like tricking me. [1:01:08] And this quarter sec completely turns it on his head. So I, [1:01:12] I think that we've nailed that. But this, I feel like what I'm feeling right now and what we're circling around is like, [1:01:21] The core problem that feels like it shouldn't exist when you're developing software, because software is very binary, either it works or it doesn't work. But the problems that we're solving are very, very mushy. [1:01:32] And, [1:01:34] you, [1:01:35] It feels like the way to solve that is to have a perspective, but then you just keep iterating on stuff. [1:01:42] One of the biggest problems, you know, we sort of have two challenges ahead of us. One is like fantastic product market fit represented by a product. [1:01:50] that solves real problems with a certain perspective. And then the other problem is like, [1:01:56] Getting a shitload of people to know that Quora even exists... [1:02:00] And figuring out how to prioritize on either one, like, [1:02:05] That's where the mushiness of building a product goes. [1:02:08] comes in,

[1:02:10] Because you have to make a decision ultimately. [1:02:13] Um, [1:02:14] And. [1:02:16] Yeah, I find it emotionally sometimes hard to, like – [1:02:22] Give things up. [1:02:23] we've yeah we've been talking about that a lot like one of our uh one of our uh q1 or just 20 20 25 in general questions is like what are what do you want to sacrifice um because i think we're as an organization very all of us just love doing lots of things and we don't want to give anything up um but giving something up is often the best way to like [1:02:46] make progress on the things you care about. Um, and yeah, I think, I think you're right though. Like that, that's the place where I think we're heading, which is, um, if you believe what's coming out of like the open AI is like, we're, we're basically getting to AGI in the next like one to two years. And, and I think, and by some definition of AGI, um, and I think that that's probably likely to happen, but the really important or interesting thing about that to me is [1:03:16] And all the big labs are concentrating on getting AI that can solve problems step by step where you can verify the solution to each step, which is something like coding problems or math problems. And I think what will become apparent once that is done is how few problems in the world are actually like that and how often problems are much, much more squishy and are not able to be reduced into step by step problems.

[1:03:44] solutions like that where each step is verifiable. And that's where you get down into like taste and intuition and pattern matching or whatever, which LLMs are also quite good at, but they're not good at, we can't optimize those problems in the same way with the same feedback loop as we can for like provable problems because the feedback loop is always going to be do something, get data from the world, like come up with new ideas, come up with new ways of seeing that data and then try something again and see how that works. And I think that that's sort of like an inescapable [1:04:14] like really beautiful and it and it uh it's i for me it's the most fun part of building [1:04:19] I agree. It's the most fun part, and it's also the most... [1:04:23] Sometimes anxiety inducing because there's just so much to be done and, [1:04:29] and you want to be [1:04:31] at a completion state, but the reality is that completion state doesn't exist. It exists when you're writing code and you're building a feature maybe, but for building a company, building a product, it's like really enjoying the journey and sort of embracing the suck of it, embracing the messiness. [1:04:50] Um, it's, it's very, uh, I'm a, I'm a big type two fun person, which is maybe why. [1:04:56] I enjoy doing this stuff, but it's really type two fun. You need to enjoy the suck of difficult decision making. And also collaboration, just working with people that push your brain further, like ask difficult questions. Yeah, like that's the best when you when you feel like, oh, shit, that's a good question. It's great. So Kieran and I, Kieran and I have we we go back and forth a lot.

[1:05:23] You know, I think sometimes I get stuck with like, let's talk about everything that needs to be done. [1:05:29] And let's get really detailed about everything that needs to be done. And Kieran is so good at just being like, that doesn't matter. And I have really big problems to solve right now. And let me solve these problems and we can deal with that later. And that's been a really fun experience. [1:05:43] thing. Fun is maybe an interesting word to use, but like, it's been a very healthy thing for us to like navigate in our relationship personally. And then also just like with how we actually built Quora. And I think, um, [1:05:57] you know, if we're too like sort of stubborn, like, [1:06:01] rocks we are definitely like rubbing against each other and like [1:06:05] polishing a diamond that is Korra. So ultimately it's like a really, really good, [1:06:11] Good thing. [1:06:12] I have a total aside, a total tangent that we may want to cut. [1:06:17] But did you guys see that... [1:06:20] I guess... [1:06:22] OpenAI and Microsoft's deal... [1:06:25] Ends. [1:06:27] When open AI has proven that it can build a product that can generate a hundred billion dollars. Yeah. Cause they couldn't define AGI. So they said, I just feel like this is like the best negotiation for Microsoft to be like, [1:06:41] Once you do that, we're all fucked anyway. [1:06:46] Yeah, I think it's a really interesting lesson in how often...

[1:06:54] I think this sort of utopian vision for company building can really help people get excited. And how often when you create exotic business structures to match that utopian vision, it ends up – you end up being like actually the regular business structure is probably better. OpenAI has the nonprofit, then they have the cap profit, then they have the Microsoft investment. It creates all this complexity where Microsoft is finally like, fuck it. [1:07:24] billion you're free to be a non-profit or whatever it is you want to do um [1:07:29] And, uh, and I think there's something parallel to that with just like AI in general. I've been doing a lot of reading about, um... [1:07:39] the history of AI and, um, all the different like waves of it. And I think we're, we're in this place where I'm sitting here being like, I think we'll get AGI in like a year or two or whatever. And, um, and I think we've all felt those, those feelings of like GPT one, GPT three was released to chat GPT was released. We're like, wow, like everything is going to change and it's going to be like completely different from here on out. Um, um, [1:08:02] And sometimes that's a feeling of like dread. It's like, whoa, like, where are we even going? And I think what's interesting to know is that that has happened in every single AI wave, every single AI hype cycle. Like when they first started working on AI in the 50s, they were like, yeah, well, we'll get it done in the summer. [1:08:23] And then there were all these other waves in the 60s and the 70s where they're like, yeah, we made this breakthrough. It's coming. And what's been interesting is there's always a new frontier that opens. Once you get to a certain level, you realize how much complexity is still left. And it reminds me a lot of...

[1:08:44] I don't know if you guys have ever been to Zion National Park. [1:08:49] Did you do the Angel Landing hike? Yeah. [1:08:56] So curious where this is going. [1:09:00] I'm curious if you had this experience, but like basically when I, I went to, I went to Angel's Landing and I hiked it, um, with, uh, with an ex-girlfriend and there's a point at the Angel's Angel Landing hike where you do, you do a bunch of switchbacks and then you're kind of like, um, shimmying or I don't know if the right word is shimmying, Brandon, you probably know where you're basically like, um, facing a wall and you're kind of moving [1:09:26] walking on a tightrope and there's like a cliff face that's like, you know, 500 foot drop that you're trying to like get across. [1:09:33] And I was doing that and my girlfriend at the time was like, I don't want to do that. I'm scared of heights. And I was like, cool, it's fine. I can see the peak right there. I'm just going to go get to the peak and then I'll come right back. And what was interesting is I got to the peak and as soon as I got there, I realized there was another peak. And I was like, oh, okay. [1:09:51] I can, now I see this new peak. Like I'm just going to go get to that one. Um, and then I'll go back. And like, that just kept happening. Every time I got to like a peak, like a new one appeared until it had been like two hours. And I finally got to the end of the hike and I was like, wow, this is amazing. This view is awesome. But my ex was like, what the fuck you like, you like left me. And then your girlfriend broke up with you. And I think like AI is like the way progress works

[1:10:21] Like I can get there and you get there and then you're like, oh, actually there's there's this whole other peak that I didn't even realize was there, but it has clearly been there the whole time. And and that's how I feel about AGI. It's like we're going to probably get there just by some definition in the next couple of years. And then but it's going to reveal how much complexity there is still to be done. [1:10:51] reality is going to be much more complex. Um, and that makes, honestly, that makes me excited. I like that. So this is you're describing what's called a false peak in the biz. [1:11:00] There you go. [1:11:01] And I have another visual that like really makes me that this reminds me of that I saw at some point, which is. [1:11:11] um [1:11:12] I saw some visual that was like, this is the whole of human knowledge. [1:11:17] And by the way, for people who are listening, so Brandon has opened up a Figma file and he is real time whiteboarding his his his vision here. So this is all of human knowledge. It's a circle in the middle. [1:11:30] In a big circle. And then, so like one way to think about what's happening in AI right now is like, it feels like it's this huge, like important big thing that's like changing the world. But the reality is like, if you zoom in, like it's this. [1:11:45] So now I've just zoomed in to, like, one, you know, the edge of the circle. I've zoomed in a lot, and there's, like, a little blip there. And, like, what this is going to do is – I can't do this in Figma – but, like, this is just going to expand the circle, like, ever so slightly. And now that little blip will be, like, inside the circle, and then it'll move, you know –

[1:12:06] It'll move slightly over here and then it'll just keep expanding and, [1:12:10] like that slowly over time. [1:12:13] And it's important to just remember that whatever we're learning right now, like it's, I just, it's easier to have, it's easy to have a doomer mindset that like, [1:12:21] BGI is just going to take over... [1:12:25] like everything and we won't have jobs anymore and we won't be able to be creative, but it, [1:12:31] The reality is – the human reality is it will just open the door to something else. Yeah. And, yeah, I think to bring it back to Quora, like that's one of the things that I've realized about Quora is there's all this like Doomer stuff about like, well, what happens when it's just AIs emailing each other and no one's emailing? And what I found with using Quora is – [1:12:54] like my inbox now is only humans. The only people I have to respond to are humans. And then the AI is summarizing all the other stuff. And it's, it's incredible how much other stuff I get. That's not even AI generated, but it's like, [1:13:08] some combination of a person who doesn't care and some automated marketing email or whatever that I get in my inbox all the time anyway. And what the AI is actually doing is... [1:13:19] And presenting all that other automated stuff to me in a way that's more consumable and allowing me, which gives me a lot more time to focus on the people in my inbox who matter. And I think that's actually great. And it's something that doomers just miss. [1:13:32] Yeah, it's interesting. Maybe Quora is the most human way to email. I think it is.

[1:13:37] *laughter* [1:13:41] All right. Well, this has been a great conversation. Any final thoughts, Kieran or Brandon, before we sign off? Join the waitlist, Quora.com. [1:13:52] I love that. Yeah, join the waitlist. We're onboarding every day. Also, if you are every subscriber, you might have a little bump here and there. [1:14:02] That's true. Every subscribers, you get access, you get early access to Quora. You'll get bumped off the waitlist at 7,000 people. So you get to cut the line and then you get access to all the other products we make and all of the writing and other things that we do. And we will do another Quora update hopefully soon. Hopefully we'll have more stuff to talk about. But until then, thanks for joining. This is awesome. I'm super excited for the future of Quora and to get to do it with both of you. Thanks for having us, Dan. Thank you. [1:14:32] We'll be right back. [1:15:02] craving for more. It's not just a show. It's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship.

[1:15:09] So do yourself a favor, hit like, smash subscribe, and strap in for the ride of your life. [1:15:15] And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you.