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- [00:00]
Dara Ladge
It is the only solution to prevent mass revolution.
- [00:04]
Cody Sanchez
This guest today is so interesting. He's built one of the leading AI companies when it comes to taking our human mind and recreating it online.
- [00:12]
Dara Ladge
If any video you see online can be AI generated, how do you know what to trust?
- [00:17]
Cody Sanchez
I almost literally hit post on a video that I didn't even create. Exactly what jobs are, the very first ones AI is going to take.
- [00:24]
Dara Ladge
Man, I feel like, interesting. The most unique thing that you have is your mind. When everyone has the means of this hyper intelligent AI tool, people are going to pay attention to the things that stand out.
- [00:38]
Cody Sanchez
Hi, and welcome back to the Big Deal podcast. I'm Cody Sanchez and this guest today is so interesting. He's built one of the leading AI companies when it comes to taking our human mind and recreating it online. If at any point you have worried about all of this technology coming into your life and how to make sure you are a winner, not a loser in the AI race, this episode is for you. So without further ado, CEO of Delphi. So yesterday I go on my Instagram, I click on a video and I'm like, God, I don't remember recording that video. I didn't even catch it. My team had used AI voiceover on me. The only reason I caught it is because my new president was like, your voice inflection sounds weird. I almost literally hit post on a video that I didn't even create. And I think that's just touching the surface with AI now you live in this world every single day. I guess one of my main questions is, do you think it's true that no entrepreneur is worried about AI taking over their jobs as entrepreneurs? Or should everybody be thinking about what AI might take over?
- [01:43]
Dara Ladge
I mean, I think there are two parts of it. There is definitely a certain kind of person who's the doomer, who is absolutely terrified of what's going on. But this isn't the first time there's been something that has caused doomerism. You know, you think about Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos. You know, you watch that show and you're like, oh my God, the world is huge. Life is insignificant. Why should I do anything? And then there's another kind of person who's like, wow, it's actually amazing that I'm alive and I should, like, I'm empowered to do all these things and like, work. And so I think AI is just another thing that people like to create a catastrophe out of. Whereas instead it's more like, okay, it's a new thing. It's going to change a lot of things. But as humans, we find meaning and there are new ways of working and we don't have to do the things we don't want to do and we can do more of what we want to do.
- [02:31]
Cody Sanchez
I think I fall somewhere in between. Like, I'm simultaneously excited about AI and scared about it. What do you do to not get left behind in a world of AI?
- [02:42]
Dara Ladge
I think you have to start with the end in mind. You know, there's a lot going on today. It can be very easy to, you know, there's a new paper, there's a new prompting method. I think that's actually just fully a waste of time because these are all incremental steps towards what is inevitably a free, pretty much instantaneous, hyper intelligent AI at your fingertips. Like, that is the end in mind. And so we're on the path to getting there. But you should be planning for that as the end and not getting distracted with, okay, cool, new metrics, new metrics. We're going to get there. It's inevitable.
- [03:17]
Cody Sanchez
So, like, I'm a super normie. So this morning I'm like, AI for idiots. Cody version. What does somebody who doesn't play in your world at all. We're not even on X. You know, we don't know anything about AI except maybe that we've heard ChatGPT and we've been confused by Sam Altman on TV before. How do we start actually playing with this stuff live? Because you created a really fancy company that does this now, but you probably started with tinkering too. How does an average person tinker with AI today?
- [03:46]
Dara Ladge
I think it's good to know the historical context of, of AI and how it's grown. For example, when I got into AI in 2014, the coolest thing AI could do was tell you whether a picture was a cat or a dog. And then I remember in 2015, I did a project that predicted whether Trump was happy or sad based on his tweets. And so were you right? Yeah, yeah, fully right. And it's all pattern recognition. Like, AI is just math. You pass in a bunch of pictures of a cat or a dog. Think about you have a child and you show that child a hundred pictures of a dog and a hundred pictures of a cat, and then you show him another picture that's either a cat or a dog. He's probably going to know which one it is. That is pretty much AI it's pattern recognition. And when you start it from that set you're not as scared because I've seen people who try to start at like level five without starting at level one and they're like, oh, this is conscious, this is a new kind of being. And. And you're like, no, it's just math, it's pattern recognition. Just as babies are, just as we are, we learn things and we predict things based on our experiences.
- [04:53]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. Okay, so if that's where it started, what's next? Where do you think we're going next?
- [04:59]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, I mean like I said, I think the end in mind is AI that is hyper intelligent, generating realistic videos, generating infinitely all night, improving itself. And I think if you've seen in the past, whenever there is an era of abundance, you know, there's so much of this one thing barrier to entry for creating anything is low. Mediocrity is going to be the norm because anyone can create anything. The pendulum swings and people really start to value curation and trust. And so I'm actually like more bullish on the creator economy and like the individual economy more bullish than ever. Because I really do think that when everyone has the means of this hyper intelligent AI tool, people are going to pay attention to the things that stand out.
- [05:46]
Cody Sanchez
Will it be harder to stand out.
- [05:47]
Dara Ladge
100% easier than ever to get distribution? Easier than ever to be really good at something? Harder than ever to be the best. And So I think 80, 20 likely becomes 95, 5 where the 5% really reap the benefits of the 95.
- [06:02]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, I mean you kind of think about it. I remember naval had a quote that was like, the robot army is already here, it's just inside your computers. And so an Armageddon or some of these Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, you think, okay, there's going to be this robot army and we invested in figures, so it could be. And they're going to be out there. But it's not so much that it's in so many words, they're inside of your computer today and the war is sort of who can utilize them to have the highest impact.
- [06:27]
Dara Ladge
Exactly. And I think a lot of people think, oh, AI can do all of this stuff, it means I get to work less. I actually think it's the opposite. I actually think you need to work more in order to stand out. Because AI, you can only reap the benefits of AI if you have something worth scaling. AI can only build off of a foundation that you have spent time building. If you haven't built that foundation, you're just going to get a plateau that everyone Else in the world is getting.
- [06:55]
Cody Sanchez
What would be like an example of that today.
- [06:58]
Dara Ladge
An example of that is I could go to ChatGPT and say, generate this SEO optimized blog post on AI. And anyone in the world can do that and everyone in the world will do that. You can imagine SEO is not going to mean anything anymore because everyone's going to be doing this. But since I've spent time learning AI and learning the nuances, I can still leverage ChatGPT to help me write a blog post. But I can also add my own nuance so it stands out. You know, it's building off of my own experience versus what ChatGPT generates, which is the average of the, of the Internet.
- [07:37]
Cody Sanchez
I guess it's not that dissimilar to. If you think about it today, yeah, you get a lot of emails in your inbox and it's become easier than ever to send emails in your inbox. And yet subject line matters more than ever. So like, in order to stand out, you're just going to have to be more creative because that first act of creation is no longer the barrier to entry. Like I saw this graphic today that was like three levels and it was a bow and arrow, a guy shooting a bow and arrow. And the top level was what most people do. And it's like 93% and it's just a guy holding a bow and arrow, like he never actually shoots the target. And then the next level was like, I don't know, 50% and it's like, shoot once, miss. And the 1% are the people that shoot 452 times. And so now it'll be a lot easier to actually shoot 452 times, but harder to get to the 1% that actually matters.
- [08:23]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, and you need to build the character to deal with those 450 failures and you know, push through. And I'm glad you mentioned email because we talk about thinking with the end in mind. If you think about what happens with email when every single person is using an AI agent to send hyper personalized emails to your inbox every single day, people are not going to check their emails anymore. I actually think email is going to be a thing of the past because if you just think about it, I'm already getting spammed on my email, I'm already getting called by these random AI agents and people are hopping on this opportunity. But what likely is the future of email is something that you don't even check. You have this AI thing that knows you and how you speak and how you think about things and it only surfaces to you what the opportunities you care about are. And that sounds great to me. I don't know about you. I hate looking at my email.
- [09:16]
Cody Sanchez
That is true. I use it increasingly less and less. But then how do we get to people? Will real life become so much more important? Because email has become sort of bastardized.
- [09:27]
Dara Ladge
I think it goes back to doing the work to make yourself a unique and interesting and valuable person. Because I imagine in the world where there are AI agents communicating with each other and you know, an AI agent is something an LLM or an AI that can take action, it knows you and it knows the value that you can bring to others. And it is going to convince other AI agents that, hey, this person has great stuff. But that's why the foundation is important, because you need to have that great stuff worth offering other people.
- [09:58]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. So by an AI agent, you basically mean when I get an email in my inbox and I can tell it's like made by a computer, you know, it's like, hi, Cody, s dot com, you know, I'd like to sell you XYZ service. You know, please reach out at this time. I loved your most recent Instagram post. But you can tell it's somehow copy and paste it. This is an AI agent, basically, that.
- [10:19]
Dara Ladge
Would actually probably, probably just be someone typing into ChatGPT and copying and pasting. An AI agent would be like a step further where it actually scheduled something on your calendar. So it's, you know, multiple steps of reasoning, not just one thing, but one thing. You respond and then it schedules time or it takes an action.
- [10:40]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. So do you think in like, how far away are we from outsourced virtual assistants being irrelevant by AI, let's say?
- [10:49]
Dara Ladge
I think it's already happening. I think it's just a matter of adoption. And you talked about the Terminator. People just have this fear of AI. Like they're just default, oh, my God, I've seen so many movies. This must mean it's bad. And I personally hope to see more positive outlooks on AI and what it can do and what this, like, post AI world could look like for all of us.
- [11:13]
Cody Sanchez
So basically, like right now, today, I have virtual assistants for many of our companies. We might pay them 800 bucks a month to $3,000 a month to do varying routinized tasks such as scheduling, travel, email management, et cetera. Do you think right now, Today, there are AI agents that are better and how much cheaper than 800 to 3,000amonth?
- [11:38]
Dara Ladge
Well, it's kind of like power law. Maybe you have like a really, really good assistant who knows you super well and can be proactive. I don't think the agents we have right now are like that.
- [11:46]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [11:47]
Dara Ladge
But at a bare bone assistant that can manage your inbox and even like schedule traveling for you. And it doesn't require that much personalization to your life and your nuances. Yes, it's there. People are already doing it.
- [11:57]
Cody Sanchez
And in a year will it be so good, it will know me so well that it will make even somebody I've worked with for two or three years seem less relevant.
- [12:05]
Dara Ladge
Yes. And I think personalization and proactivity are the two things that I think over the next year are really going to be the things that take AI from a nice to have to. Wow. This is ingrained in my life. I don't have to think about it. It's reaching out to me. It knows me and knows the way I respond to words. And I think that's when it becomes widely adopted.
- [12:24]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. Because it is actually hard to teach people to care, I think. You know, my dad always said you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. And so when you have employees, as you, you know, do too, at some point there's just this like give a fuckness.
- [12:39]
Dara Ladge
Yeah.
- [12:39]
Cody Sanchez
That is often missing. And if AI has found a way where give a fuckness doesn't actually matter, but it's just math and processing that is going to be so valuable.
- [12:49]
Dara Ladge
Totally. And I think, you know, hiring is still a play. But you, you just want to hire missionaries instead of mercenaries. People who, who do give a fuck.
- [12:56]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. And so do you think in the future you'll just have fewer smarter humans who work for you?
- [13:03]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, I mean I tell everyone we hire I want a sub 50 person public company and I think we can, you know, you can do the job of 10 people. And specifically AI really benefits generalists because it allows anyone to be a polymath. Before to be a polymath you really had to be like a special kind of person. But now AI democratizes access to a specialization. You can become a specialist in a couple days. I don't know anything about pricing or branding, but I've become a branding and pricing specialist just by using OpenAI's latest $200 per month model. Which sounds ridiculous, $200 per month for a model, but it's like having a consultant at your fingertips that has a PhD in branding or pricing.
- [13:49]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. And explain what polymath is to anybody that doesn't know.
- [13:52]
Dara Ladge
Polymath is someone who is an expert in multiple things. You know, they can context switch, they can be a great front end engineer and then play the violin and then they can also be an amazing football player.
- [14:04]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. So this is kind of just like. What was that movie where you took the pill and all of a sudden you became superhuman?
- [14:09]
Dara Ladge
Limitless. Yeah.
- [14:11]
Cody Sanchez
This is like an enablement of that.
- [14:12]
Dara Ladge
100%.
- [14:13]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. So we won't. Well, theoretically it is the same thing because the pill didn't make you buffer or stronger or whatever, but it did make you have this mental capacity that seemed absolutely unrivaled.
- [14:26]
Dara Ladge
Totally. And I think learning and education, I personally think is one of the most optimistic outcomes of AI. Because you see something Bloom's Two Sigma. It's a study that shows that those who have a private tutor are more likely to succeed in life by two standard deviations. And obviously those who have private tutors, you need money. And that's just not something that most people have access to. But AI allows that one on one learning experience for any kind of subject. And I think when the world is more educated, ultimately in results in new innovation, higher quality of living. So I think it's very, very, very positive thing.
- [15:06]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, that's interesting. Is that also the study I saw, I saw something come out yesterday on X about Alpha School in Austin, which is Elon's new school. Did you see that?
- [15:14]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [15:15]
Cody Sanchez
And basically Alpha School came out with like two or three standard deviations of scoring by their, their students than a traditional school, which is wild. Cause that thing's only been in existence for like, I don't know, less than five years, I would say. And it is essentially my understanding, I don't know if it's different, is that it is individualized education per student that mandates about two hours of active learning assisted by AI per day. And then as soon as you get done your programming, whatever you're supposed to get done for that day, that would be like, oh, you get through your history test, you get through your mathematic tests for the rest of the day, you get to use your curiosity and dive deeper. And so these students are actually, they were a, they were a little petri dish. We weren't sure if that sounded like a good idea. I mean, back in the day somebody had told me, yeah, Cody, you can work for two hours a day at school and then you can kind of go fuck off and do whatever you want for the rest of the day. I'd have been like, this seems like a Bad idea. And yet they kind of tested it and it's working.
- [16:11]
Dara Ladge
Yeah.
- [16:11]
Cody Sanchez
Which is fascinating.
- [16:12]
Dara Ladge
It is. And it's both active learning and accountability and personalization. Think about online courses. Online courses aren't doing so well. Course completion rate is in the lower. And it's because they have this assumption that the 20 modules, I need to experience them in the same order that you need to experience them. But we're very different, we learn differently. And so the ordering of how you learn is different. And I mean, that's kind of like what we do. We have authors who have converted their books into these interactive learning experiences. And instead of just someone reading a 400 page book, it's almost like a choose your own adventure. You choose what you want to learn and then you get that productivity on how it applies to your life. I mean, how many times have you read a book and you're like, wow, I learned so many things from this book, like this book right here. And you don't actually apply it for sure. And so I think active learning is really what turns learning into something that is applicable and people can actually measurably get better in their lives.
- [17:08]
Cody Sanchez
Explain that a little more because I think you guys are one of the best in the world at it. At Delphi and increasingly your roster of big time thinkers and famous people who are using it is incredible. But traditional education would be like, okay, we have a curriculum. Here's what we go through every single day. You can either self do it yourself at your own pace or you can do it with the class, let's say. But you go from step 1 to 2 to 3 to 4Y. What is, what does education look like with AI now? How exactly will that change?
- [17:37]
Dara Ladge
Totally. I mean, people are already using ChatGPT to learn like a lot of things. I am. If you look at Wikipedia, which has documented all of human knowledge, very easy way to learn something. Wikipedia exists. But does anyone actually learn through Wikipedia? We read books, we watch YouTube videos, and I think there's an insight there about how we inherently trust things that come from human. It's just like a human need. So the next version of learning is a outcome like becoming a millionaire and learning a little bit about yourself, almost like an initial survey and then having this guided learning path over the next 30 days to make sure you understand the concepts that are relevant to you, to make sure you're applying them and then evaluating whether you truly understand those concepts and then continuous management until it becomes a habit could probably leverage concepts from James Clear's Atomic Habits to see how can you take a book and actually embed it in someone's mind for practice.
- [18:37]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. So like currently, let's say right now we teach people to buy businesses. So they go through a course in curriculum that's, you know, step one through 10 and how to buy a business. But it's linear and in this future world and we're using Delphi for a bunch of stuff in there. So I'm really excited about it. It would be like, okay, Cody, you tell me a little bit about yourself and you rate, I don't know, at beginner level for business buy in. So here's like all the opportunity areas that you're not very good at, as evidenced by the questions that you took. And so because of that, you're really, you know a lot about accounting, but you actually know nothing about how to communicate with sellers. You know nothing about how to actually find deals. So instead of wasting any of your time on accounting, you already passed that by. You're going to go straight to these other things and you're going to score them as you progress. And then finally, when you've reached like the completion level that we think is appropriate, you'll get your little certificate, but also there'll be some sort of continuous learning option, like a duolingo, but tailored specifically to you.
- [19:34]
Dara Ladge
Exactly, exactly. We take a lot of inspiration from duolingo in terms of, you know, how can we make something learning, learning that's engaging and fun and incentivized.
- [19:42]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. And so in the future, will we sit in classrooms with chalkboards, with teachers, everybody teaching at the same level, or is this going extinct?
- [19:52]
Dara Ladge
Well, I do think the in person experience is definitely always important and I don't want to live in a world where we devalue that. I think AI is about providing access where previously there may not have been access. So maybe there is a classroom you can communicate with other students, but then on the off time, you know, questions that you may be embarrassed to ask in class or a private tutoring session. So you show up in class the next day more knowledgeable, you can participate more. That is a future that I'm more excited about. There may be a world where humans don't value in person communication, but I just think that, you know, that's a kind of habit change that is going to take decades and even centuries to really manifest that we don't value in person times with, with humans.
- [20:40]
Cody Sanchez
Right? Yeah. Because at least for now, probably the thing that's super repetitive and easy to replicate is the knowledge. It's like, one plus one equals two, no matter what math teacher you have. But what doesn't standardize is like, oh, man, every time that teacher sits down with me and says, like, hey, I can tell you're struggling. It's okay. You're doing a great job. Go take a walk outside. Go get a little vitamin D. You need a little coffee here. Like, that almost mothering or human EQ component will probably be one of the things that computers are sort of last to integrate. Although they could at some point too say, like, good job, buddy.
- [21:16]
Dara Ladge
But they could. But same as the Wikipedia thing. I think inherently there is just like this unknown psychological thing where I am talking to a human.
- [21:24]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [21:24]
Dara Ladge
I'm not learning from Wikipedia, which is a summary of that human or their AI, which is, you know, good access while I can't have them. Or maybe I'm too embarrassed to tell them the thing that I want to tell them, but in the end, it is the human. And we've seen that behavior with Delphi where someone is, you know, learning from someone's digital mind and then ends up wanting to meet them even more. It's like, oh, like, I want to get to know this person. I really, really resonate with the things that they say.
- [21:51]
Cody Sanchez
It's true. Because if you think about it, you know, right now, when I meet somebody, let's say, who's read the book or followed some of our content, we already have this, like, parasocial relationship.
- [22:02]
Dara Ladge
Right.
- [22:03]
Cody Sanchez
And then if they were able to actually have me communicate direct with them and answer questions, they would really feel like they know me. And then if I'm able to, like, get a bunch of information, let's say, from them, so that every engagement we had, we got to know them too. That would be kind of interesting and doesn't exist today.
- [22:19]
Dara Ladge
Totally. And, you know, you're a big creator. You're pretty well known. So parasocial relationships are pretty common with you. I think parasocial relationships going into the business world is pretty interesting. And what I mean by that is, you know, there's that leaked email from Mark Zuckerberg to Peter Thiel where he says, like, I think my reputation with Millennials and Gen Z are particularly important. And then a month later, he has a perm and a chain and, like, really, really caring about his brand. And he's a very calculating guy. Like, none of that is by accident. And so I think the. The insight that he has that I have seen with having my own clone is people connect with people. And less so with brands like Nameless brands. And so from the business owner perspective, I think, you know, the founder led influencer, the founder, founder led marketing is going to continue to become more as this idea of parasocial relationships with business owners starts to be more commonplace.
- [23:17]
Cody Sanchez
So true. Like if you have a business today and you don't have an ability for your customers to relate individually with you or whoever you have as the face of your business, you're probably missing out on a big monetary opportunity. Like why do you think they put Jared for Subway? You know, and that one could quit a little sideways, but it's because they needed a face to go with the brand. We don't associate with corporate logos the same way we do with humans. It's a really good point. Explain what a clone is at Delphi, because I imagine people immediately think of like I think that movie with Joaquin Phoenix where he has Scarlett Johansson in his ear and they become best buds and that she's best buds with everybody and his heart's broken. What is this clone that you guys do?
- [23:58]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, it's definitely not her. And people love to reference that movie. I think it's like another dystopian movie. So I don't love it. And we're also moving away from the word clone because it's gives that dystopian to.
- [24:09]
Cody Sanchez
What do you call them?
- [24:10]
Dara Ladge
Digital mind. Like what we're doing really is the most unique thing that you have is your mind. You know, your expertise, your experiences. And up until now, the way that you scale that mind has a cap. You can only be in one place at one time. You write content to scale your mind, but it's not you. It lacks the personalization. There's no way to scale personalization. So a digital mind is something that understands your tone, your style, your thinking, allows you to scale your thoughts like a book, but is bidirectional and personalized. Like talking with you would be.
- [24:40]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. I mean you could even think about it, you know, in a non dystopian way. Like let's say you have an accounting practice right now and you have a process and systems that you use for every single person you input. And then at one point you're like, I'm so overwhelmed, I can't do anybody else's accounting. I need to hire somebody else. And then I have to train them on everything that I know about accounting. And so I hire another person and then I hire another person. And that's how we get know Ernst and Young and these big huge companies.
- [25:06]
Dara Ladge
Y.
- [25:06]
Cody Sanchez
Well in the future, part of that can be, hey, I have all these systems and processes. Every time I onboard a client, I don't actually hire a new person. I just have them interface with my AI. And so I've essentially become not only superhuman mind, but superhuman hands. Because as opposed to having to hire thousands, I have now individually created a business that is based on one sort of data set. Me.
- [25:32]
Dara Ladge
Yeah. And think about when you scale to thousands. At least from what I hear, the biggest problem when you scale as a company is that people stop making decisions in line with your culture and how you do things. Like that's where things really break. And so Sam Altman talks about the one person billion dollar tech company, but maybe there is the one person billion dollar company in general. It doesn't necessarily need to be a software company.
- [25:55]
Cody Sanchez
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, and also, I think if I remember when I first started a business, one of my favorite mentors said to me, he's like, before you even start, I'm going to tell you what your biggest problem is going to be. I already know. And I'm like, perfect, tell me. He's like, no, no, I'm going to write it down. He put it on a little piece of paper. He's like, I'm going to put in an envelope. I'm going to date it over the part that I zipped it so you can see that I haven't changed it. Then when you have your first problem, come sit down with me, we'll talk about it. And so I remember I started the business. I'm like, all right, whatever, weirdo. So I go, I start the business. Sit back down with him later. I'm like, I have this huge issue. It's a total nightmare. He's like, wait. Pulls out the envelope, hands me the envelope, and he goes, before you tell me, I want you to remember this. I still have it. And I said, he said, what's your issue? And I was like, well, this person's doing XYZ thing and he opens up and he just says the best thing about your business, the people. The worst thing about the business, the people. And so that is very true. Every time you get in business, scaling humans is really, really hard. And so I think this will be a huge unlock for business leaders if they think about it. That's why I did like that idea of like, entrepreneurs aren't as scared about AI because they're thinking about how to use it, not how to get used by it.
- [27:01]
Dara Ladge
And even if they want to hire people, it makes their team more effective. We have CEOs whose teams like love the clone because they don't want to, they don't want to bother the CEO and they're using it to, okay, is this how he would make or she would make decisions?
- [27:15]
Cody Sanchez
What do you think is the most interesting thing happening in AI right now that most people are not aware of? Like today, right now I really pay.
- [27:30]
Dara Ladge
Attention to the psychological impacts of AI and so I find these video generation models really interesting because again I always think in the end in mind, like what does this mean for, for our digital behavior? And if any video you see online can be AI generated or any picture and it's near perfect, how do you know what to trust? People are either going to trust everything or default. It's going to be, I'm not trusting that, I'm not trusting that. So I really think it's interesting. As these things get better, will social media still hold the role? Like what, what technology needs to be available to make social media something that we can still use? Probably some sort of like trust authent authentication layer where is like this is AI generated, this is true, this is false. And you have these companies like Polymarket and Kalshi, they are these companies where you can bet on events and I don't know how they validate whether an event actually happened or not, but they have found a way. So I think it's really interesting what the future looks like of trust and are we going to be okay with not knowing that something is true or false or are we going to want to know like this is a deep fake or my voice was stolen and now it's being used to call my grandma to send her money. So I think that's a little scary and I think there needs to be solutions around that.
- [29:04]
Cody Sanchez
It's a great point. I was off Twitter for like four days this week and all of a sudden I came back and it's like the CI CIA confirms there are astral projected huge beings on Mars that came to the US that built the pyramids. Did you see this? And then there's like some pillars underneath the pyramids.
- [29:19]
Dara Ladge
I told my sister, I was like, this is so cool, this changes everything. And she's like, that's not real.
- [29:23]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, I'm so interested. But my immediate take was like, okay, I guess, maybe, I don't know. But what are you going to do? Because there's so many wild things coming out nonstop. You're like, for sure JFK assassination happened by the CIA. I have no idea how to prove any of that. So what does happen in the future in order to know if things are truth or not. Do you think that the next biggest AI company is actually just a. Is it just authentication? Will there be some stamp? Or is AI smarter than a stamp?
- [29:53]
Dara Ladge
I think it's such a difficult problem to solve because you get into, like, political bias and, like, what's actually right, what's true and what's false. And then you have the Orwellian 1984 view where if someone has control over what's true, then, like, they can control the narrative of history. So it would require creating, like, an unbiased AI that has access to just, like, the stream of the Internet in real time. And maybe it's something like what I mentioned is the future of email, where the future browser is something that can filter things that it knows are true or has some, like, importance in your life. Because like you said, we see all these crazy things these days on. On television and on social media, and it's just like, oh, cool.
- [30:38]
Cody Sanchez
Could be.
- [30:38]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, aliens don't care anymore. Like, it's kind of crazy. Yeah.
- [30:43]
Cody Sanchez
I mean, think about what they would have to do to break through and make me really concerned. I mean, they've literally released multiple times that aliens exist from the government. And now there's this thing about CIA and the pyramids, and you're like, yeah, I don't know. Anyway, I'm hungry. And so what does that look like?
- [30:59]
Dara Ladge
They're aliens. Like, okay, cool. Cool.
- [31:01]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, yeah, sure. We need breakfast. I guess the other question for you there is, like, what books would you read for you to understand the negative consequences of AI? And what books would you read to understand what could be possible? Positively? Because I think it's useful to see both sides of the coin.
- [31:19]
Dara Ladge
Totally. There's obviously AI superpowers, I think, by Kai Fu Lee.
- [31:24]
Cody Sanchez
Okay.
- [31:25]
Dara Ladge
That's more on the negative consequences. And then all of Kurzweil's books are great because he was so ahead of his time. I actually got into AI reading his book how to Create a Mind in 2013, where he talks about how you can leverage computer science to recreate someone's mind. And yeah, it was reading that book and then using LLMs in 2021 that made me realize, wait, the technology he was describing in that book is pretty much LLMs. So this guy was really ahead of his time, I think.
- [31:56]
Cody Sanchez
Explain what an LLM is for anybody listening.
- [31:58]
Dara Ladge
LLM is a large language model. We talk about AI being just a pattern recognizer. So an LLM is just like a huge pattern recognizer. Trained on all of the words on the Internet and can see a pattern in a sentence and predict what the most likely next word is. So when I tell you old MacDonald had. What's the next word?
- [32:20]
Cody Sanchez
A farm.
- [32:21]
Dara Ladge
Yes. So you just. You're an LLM. You just. You just did that. We might be LLMs. I mean, that's a whole nother conversation. But then the Fourth Industrial Revolution, I think, is a good book on all the potential good things of AI. I think Peter Diamandis is very optimistic about AI and his books really go into, like, AI with biotech and flying cars. If you really want to, like, walk away feeling hyped about the future, definitely check out his books.
- [32:46]
Cody Sanchez
I like it. Would you also throw in there some of the dystopian fiction and like, the utopian nonfiction? Would you throw in there like a 1984. Would you throw in, like a. The Diamond Age? You know what, what else would. Should people be reading even to, like, break your frame of how you think about AI today?
- [33:03]
Dara Ladge
I think it's a great point. I think with AI, you almost have to, like, forget everything you've ever learned and, like, try to rethink things from first principles, from the ground up. Diamond Age is great because it talks about, you know, it has that. That personalized tutor, the illustrated primer that can grow with you and teach you things. And I think that's exciting. And then 1984 is great because it's like the consequences of what could be. And I think knowing the consequences of what could be allows you to be intentional about the decisions we make today to make sure that is not what happens.
- [33:34]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, actually, Diamond Age is one of my favorite books. Did you know that is the most often cited book by tech CEOs for their daughters?
- [33:42]
Dara Ladge
Really?
- [33:43]
Cody Sanchez
Which kind of tracks because it is about this kind of magical education book that you give to your. That's given to a young woman who kind of has no prospects and awful things happen to her and then her life changes.
- [33:55]
Dara Ladge
It's the promise of having a mentor or having someone who cares about you and can guide you.
- [33:59]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. You mentioned something weird that I want to go on a tangent on, which is, are we LLMs? What does that mean?
- [34:07]
Dara Ladge
So in Kurzweil's book How to Create a Mind, he describes the mind as a collection of building blocks and how complex intelligence results from that collection, that organization. So it's a hierarchy of pattern recognizers. On the low level, you have pattern recognizers that recognize the shapes and letters. So M I L that gets fed into Higher level pattern recognizers, where it's sentences and then there's paragraphs and then there's meaning and then. And at the highest level there's consciousness. And you're not aware of all of these lower level pattern recognizers. And so what is also a pattern recognizer, an LLM. It takes inputs and it has outputs. It recognizes things. And so something that I think about a lot is like, are we just a hierarchy of GPT10s and what we're experiencing is consciousness similar to how he described the mind working. And I also think about that a lot in terms of dreams, because if you see some of these AI generated videos, I don't know how vivid your dreams are. I have very vivid dreams. But these dreams mimic exactly how these AI videos look interesting. And so it's like when we're asleep, maybe the LLMs don't have as much power. And so they are lower level LLMs. So anyways, it sounds a little crazy. I think even if it's true, it's similar to the cosmos idea of like, oh, we're so insignificant. Or the simulation hypothesis, where what if we're all in a simulation? It's like, okay, we're all, what are you going to do about it? Yeah, you still got to make meaning out of your life. You still got to work hard. You still get to do good things. Like, so what?
- [35:47]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, yeah, so what? What keeps you out of what I think happens with some people when they start talking about this, which is like becoming an existentialist, and you're like, why does this matter? You know, what is life? What is meaning? How do you drive meaning from something super technical like AI and the belief that at some point, like, will I just do all our work for us? Will we not need to work anymore? And will we live in a utopian world in which AI does everything?
- [36:13]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, I mean, I think you have two kinds of people in this world. You have people who there will likely be universal basic income. That is the only solution I see to what's about to happen.
- [36:23]
Cody Sanchez
Really.
- [36:23]
Dara Ladge
So many people are going to lose their jobs, but a lot of people, I imagine the listeners of this podcast are like ambitious people who, like, want to win. That's not the people I'm talking about. I'm talking people who go to work and they don't necessarily love their job and they would much rather spend time with friends and family, be creative, maybe just find joy in things like that. And then the more interesting thing for me, and I think listeners of this audience, is for people who still want to win and find meaning. What does that look like? And I think that's where really starting with the end in mind and thinking about the psychology of humanity in a world where mediocrity is abundant and the barrier to entry is super low. What does that mean? It means we have to work harder to stand out. We have to think about our relationships even more. Customer service matters more. Treating people with respect matters more. Brand and creating something unique matters more. So for how do I stay motivated? I very much believe in what I'm doing, and I think I have a lot of good motivational sources that keep me going. And I just go back to the Wikipedia example where I truly believe humans value humans. And even when AI is very good, we care for one another in some way or form.
- [37:46]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. They're building a skim store on the street. I don't know if you saw it. And I saw this Instagram the other day about taking every single item from skim's collection. Sorry, Kim. And comparing it to the Amazon Basics, which are like somewhere between 200 to 400% cheaper. And yet they were explaining what was actually the material of the clothing. So in order to decide if one was better or not. And the moral of the story is, like, almost everything that you can get from skims, let's say 80% of it, Pareto's principle, 80% of it, you can buy online at Amazon, that appears to look exactly the same and be the same material, but it's about 200 to 400% less. And yet skim sells out of almost every single collection. And so why? Because brand matters more than ever. In a world that's the most important thing. Right?
- [38:36]
Dara Ladge
Status associating like communities, what you want to be, what you want to associate yourself with.
- [38:41]
Cody Sanchez
Right. So in the future, you might not need to differentiate as much your actual product, but you certainly will. The packaging, it goes back to the Tiffany's model and who you are and who you are. Explain that more.
- [38:54]
Dara Ladge
This goes back to the Mark Zuckerberg point, like where I think Kim Kardashian, a lot of people look up to her like she is a status symbol. And I think as a business owner, especially as you have a lot of get rich quick people who are building these, like, shitty AI tools and people are going to try them like, damn, this sucks. Oh, it's because the founder had poor intentions. And I think people will start to evaluate the people behind the products more so than they do right now.
- [39:21]
Cody Sanchez
So in a world in Which AI makes everything easy. The thing that's hard to replicate is you and your own ethics.
- [39:27]
Dara Ladge
Yes. And I think it's a hard thing to work on. Like how do you work on yourself and your own ethics? And I personally remember when I was working on my first startup and first startup is really hard. I was in a dark place, super lonely and literally spending three weeks just like writing my stream of consciousness thoughts, like really understanding who I am and what I cared about and coming out the other side and having a very clear understanding of who I want it to be and how to catch myself when I'm slipping.
- [39:55]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. Your first you've had a couple shots on goal to start up land. This one is appearing to be very successful. There'll be some fun announcements in that in the coming months. But what do you mean when you say that your first one was really hard and you were in a deep place? What happened?
- [40:14]
Dara Ladge
So when I quit my first job to start a company, I followed a common piece of advice in Silicon Valley which I now completely disagree with, which is just like you can start a company for the sake of it, you know, throw spaghetti at a wall, iterate towards an idea and I think that's really dumb because one, startups are super hard and the only thing that's motivating you through that seven days a week, if, if you really are passionate about what you're working on and two, if everyone is throwing spaghetti at the wall, what's left? Like what is left to work on? Like the only, all the low hanging fruit of ideas I think have been grabbed and the only ideas worth pursuing take a long time to really like manifest and flesh out. And so my first startup I left didn't really have a plan. I was a solo founder, didn't really have any mentors in my life and I also didn't know why I was doing what I was doing. I had no foundation. And an analogy I tell every person who joins Delphi, which they laugh at because it's kind of like dad analogy vibe. But you know, bamboo in its first year of life is only one foot tall. And then after that first year it grows super fast and it doesn't fall. And it's because it built that foundation. And I felt like in my first startup I hadn't spent the time building the foundation. And so while built this startup, Friday AI assistant got micro acquired. Not something crazy, minorly successful. I don't view that as a success. I view it as a great learning experience for a period where I found out what my foundation was found out what I cared about, found out what drove me and guided me towards my next thing which was okay, I need to find a co founder and learn from someone great. And that's why I moved to open Store to work for for Keith or boy and met my co founder there.
- [42:04]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. Would you not do another company again without a co founder?
- [42:08]
Dara Ladge
I don't think I'm going to start another company after this. I think this is the one. But yeah, I definitely think as an investor, great answer. Yeah, no, I think this is the one. And I can go into all reasons for why I say that, but my co founder is amazing. It's like a marriage. We have the same values, we care about the same things. We're very different. I'm go, go, go. Fast break things. He's like an infrastructure engineer, so very detail oriented. So that complementary skill set grounded on the same values is has been huge for us as a company.
- [42:38]
Cody Sanchez
How does one go and find a co like how would you go and find a co founder that aligns with you? What's the framework?
- [42:45]
Dara Ladge
I don't know if I have a framework that's repeatable. I can just say that my mentality was okay. Keith Rabois is a super successful founder and investor. He has this kind of crazy mindset about work where you know, you got to work seven days a week. The movie Whiplash is like a great movie, which is. I personally love it. We make all of our new hires watch it. And so I was like, okay, the type of person that's going to go move to Miami, which isn't a proven out tech scene to go work for. Keith is someone that is open to this work ideology and someone who's open to risk because moving to Miami is just like, why would you do that if you work in tech? So that's why I ended up working at that company. And Sam and I initially were super competitive. Like we did not like each other because we wanted to be the best at the company. But then Sam Altman has this blog where the best way to determine if someone could be a good co founder is to go on a high stakes travel trip with them. So Sam and I went to Santo Domingo with very little research of like the vibe of Santo Domingo. It's not really a touristy place and we definitely had some high stakes situations that resulted in us being like, you know what I think, I think this could work out.
- [43:55]
Cody Sanchez
That's a great idea actually. It's probably a great idea for dating too.
- [43:59]
Dara Ladge
Totally.
- [43:59]
Cody Sanchez
Like if you're Going to date somebody. Skip the two year process to figure out if you like each other and go do something really, really hard. The two of you together for an extended period.
- [44:08]
Dara Ladge
With no plans.
- [44:08]
Cody Sanchez
With no plans and see what happens.
- [44:10]
Dara Ladge
Yeah. Yeah, it was great.
- [44:11]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting.
- [44:12]
Dara Ladge
Yeah.
- [44:12]
Cody Sanchez
That could have gone really bad.
- [44:13]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, it almost did. Yeah.
- [44:15]
Cody Sanchez
Yes. Santa Domingo is a little sketchy. I've been there before. You said something that's wild to me as an insider in AI on the forefront of what's happening. You think the future of UBI Universal Basic Income is almost guaranteed?
- [44:30]
Dara Ladge
I almost feel like it is the only solution to prevent mass revolution because people are going to lose their jobs. Not everyone is like a type A person. I don't know if you can teach type A, but maybe it is an educational thing and maybe the illustrated Primer and having a personalized mentor, more people can become type A, but I think people are just not like that. And so what is the alternative? They need enough to sustain their life. And maybe we have nuclear energy and maybe it doesn't even cost money to have energy. Maybe we have vertical farms and food is free. So I think that's the cool thing. And Peter Diamandis talks about this a lot where all of these technological inflection points are happening right now. And I think it's a great time for biotech to be working well and for energy to be working well. Because for AI to really work in our society, we need some of these other things figured out as well.
- [45:24]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. You know, I'm such a traditionalist in some ways, but it seems like there's a lot of studies that say humans without purpose are not happy. That actually you have a higher likelihood of dying post retirement for no physical difference. In that you don't have a reason to wake up any longer. That also people who work versus those who do not work are happier than those who do not work. That actually there is this, you know, sort of 7 million young men in the country who are choosing to opt out of the workforce today and, and thus have deaths of despair. So what happens to society if we're given income but we're not needed? Don't you worry about that?
- [46:04]
Dara Ladge
I do. But if you think about human history, when we didn't have like all of these jobs, engineer, SEO specialist, what was the meaning that people had? It was really their communities, you know, what you can do for your family, what you can do for the community around you, art and creativity. And so I think one AI democratizes creativity. You know, anyone can be a movie director. I Personally, that's awesome because I've always had dreams to like create a Christopher Nolan like movie. I don't have the skill set to do it, but maybe with AI I can try something and I think that's personally very exciting. Yeah. And then the community, I think maybe we'll go back to like a community based society, which I think people are usually happier when they have a community and they're not just adding value to the shareholders, but they're adding value to the people they love.
- [46:56]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. Do you. Let's go tactical here for a second.
- [47:02]
Dara Ladge
Yeah.
- [47:03]
Cody Sanchez
If AI is going to take jobs, but people still need them pre ubi, let's create some bridge between the two. What jobs are the very first ones AI is going to take?
- [47:14]
Dara Ladge
Man, I feel like my answer to this has changed so much. It changes, I think almost every month. For a while I thought it was software engineering because, well, I think actually software engineering in the way it is today, I think is not going to be a thing because you already have things like lovable and these other companies where you can generate a website or app just in like a few seconds. And I think the important thing will be nuance and taste, like making the experience good, making the design good. If you're a system architect and you want to build a scalable database solution, you have to have that kind of knowledge to make it beyond just the AI slop of build a website that can tell people their finances. So I think software engineering in the way that it is today for sure, consulting 100% like McKinsey, all of those big consulting firms, I don't know how they are thinking about things internally. But doing research and creating a report and creating a PowerPoint deck is almost like the easiest thing you can do with AI, especially with OpenAI's newest Model 01 and then O3, where it is so good and you can just like pass in everything about your business and the problem you're trying to solve and it will give you like a pretty good one pager on like what you need to do to solve that.
- [48:34]
Cody Sanchez
So if there's a business owner listening right now that has problems in their business, one of the things they could do today to implement AI is go to OpenAI, use these two more premium models and try to run every single problem they have through their new co founder, which is AI.
- [48:51]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, I'm trying to get my dad to use it.
- [48:52]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. God, I cannot imagine my mother or father using AI right now.
- [48:58]
Dara Ladge
You really got to teach them. You really got to sit down with Them and teach them what are your.
- [49:02]
Cody Sanchez
Step, function, process to teach somebody who's never used ChatGPT how to do it?
- [49:07]
Dara Ladge
It's hard. I think one, starting with the foundations, which we talked about, this is just math and this is the evolution of AI. And then just when your parents ask you a question like they usually do, I just send them chatgpt, like ask, ask it. And they're like, oh, wow. And then they start to use it more and more and they start to get creative for how they're using it. And I think the key thing for learning how to use these AI tools. Right. Is knowing that it is fully based on your own creativity. Inputs lead to outputs, and so there aren't some strict rules. We're in the very early days of prompt engineering. And so that's why I think unlearning most things that you know and coming in with the mind of a child where you're like, really curious and you're trying different things, like what would happen if I just paste my entire Twitter history into this model and ask if it thinks that my Twitter content is good or just like getting creative in the types of data that you can put in there and seeing if it works and seeing what you can do to improve it.
- [50:08]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. And prompt engineering, basically meaning the questions that you ask actually become their own version of sort of in some way code or writing code. Because instead of writing code in a traditional sense, the way to use this is by the questions that you ask.
- [50:22]
Dara Ladge
Yeah. I almost think that there will be Robert Cialdini. He wrote the Persuasion and Influence, which is how do you say words that get other people to do what you want? I imagine there'll be like a Robert Cialdini for AI. It's the same thing. Like you're prompting me, I'm prompting you. And similarly, we're prompting AI to get what we want, influence it, persuade it to give us really, really good results.
- [50:48]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. Okay, I want to go back really quickly to. We talked about jobs that AI will kill. We think it's software and engineering first, we think consulting next. What are the other top three to lead to the top five?
- [51:03]
Dara Ladge
I think anything that is not relationship oriented, like you can go on upwork and get all these one off jobs. I think AI is a much better tool because the relationship doesn't matter there. Now I do think power law comes into play here, where the difference between, okay, let's use AI to give us this graphic to like the best of the best. Like, we're working with Pentagram right now. On our rebrand and they are working with them. I'm like, oh my God, the bar is so high. The difference between good and excellent is just like enormous. Where the difference between okay and good is not as wide.
- [51:44]
Cody Sanchez
That's such a good way to think about it. So it's kind of. So it's engineers, it's consultants, then it's. What would I even call that? Like outsourced service based people. Online tech services who are not the best.
- [51:59]
Dara Ladge
80, 20 turns into 95. 5. Because the best actually can scale what makes them the best. Yeah, which is why it's actually the bar is higher and you got to work harder if you want to. Want to compete.
- [52:08]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. But it's a great point because you're right, actually the best to actually think super asymmetrically. So they're not linear at all.
- [52:14]
Dara Ladge
Totally.
- [52:14]
Cody Sanchez
You know, they're like your new branding is this. I think we should look at Cotton candy. Plus his hair reminds me of a wave. And so. And they throw together things that AI just would not be able to connect the dots.
- [52:27]
Dara Ladge
And they ask questions too, that make you rethink your assumptions.
- [52:31]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. And that at this point is something that AI is not capable of.
- [52:35]
Dara Ladge
I think you can program it to be capable of that. But. And I, I have tried. You know, I, I've used AI for branding, but it's just like the, the, the, the difference is large, both in the quality. But I also like the fact that I'm building this relationship with branding people who are the best in their craft. Like, it makes me feel good, like, wow, I know these people and like they're amazing and I love chatting with them.
- [52:57]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. How do you talk somebody into using more AI that doesn't think they need to today? And the reason that I would frame that is sort of like I think about a lot of my employees right now. And as a business owner, of course you want people to use more AI because then you get more leverage out of all your people at a lower dollar amount. But there's like a deeper demand I have for them, which is a realization that those who use AI and are able to integrate it will be able to continue in the workforce on a go forward basis for my company and for others. And those who don't, won't. And so I feel like kind of this visceral need to shake some people and go, you guys, either you figure this out or you won't have a space here in the future. But I feel this inherent friction between those who are willing to do it. And those who just. It's almost emotional and won't.
- [53:50]
Dara Ladge
Yeah. And we've seen this with our product. Some of the teams of people we work with are very anxious about our product and almost like want to sabotage. It's a success. And so I think there is two things. One, when you hire and you have a job posting with the job description, update your job descriptions. Because like we said, AI allows you to be a polymath. You can be a specialist in a lot of different things. So the expectation is not just doing your job, but it's finding new ways to help in the business in any way, because you can. Now, there's no excuse like you can learn how to. Okay, there's a problem with our trust score over emails. No one knows how to do that, but you can figure it out. So just do it. So very intentionally saying, this is a job. But generalists like, the job is also figuring out what's wrong and what we can do to hit those key KPIs. And I think setting what your KPIs are and what definition of success is in your company allows people to think, okay, in a world where I could be in multiple places at a time and I didn't have to do the stuff that I really hate doing, what are things I could do to help accelerate us towards those KPIs? And are those things things that I enjoy doing? Because then there's an incentive to being like, oh, I'm totally going to use AI to get rid of the stuff that I hate doing. And I found that there is this huge impact space that only I can do.
- [55:17]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. And so almost the question you have to ask yourself continuously is, I used to say, level one entrepreneurs always ask, how, how do I do this? Level 2 entrepreneurs always ask, who can help me do this? But maybe level three entrepreneurs ask, how can AI solve this for me?
- [55:35]
Dara Ladge
Yep.
- [55:35]
Cody Sanchez
And it's just not how. It's not who now, it's AI. And so every problem you have, you should be asking, how can I prompt AI to solve this solution for me when I feel pain, AI, when I don't like something, AI.
- [55:47]
Dara Ladge
Well, I think it's both. How can AI help here? But keeping in mind that there are certain areas where the human touch does matter, communications with people. And, you know, we talked about infinite email inbound and fake deepfakes and bots. And I think people really appreciate authenticity.
- [56:08]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [56:08]
Dara Ladge
And I think being authentic and upfront now, it may not get you like, the overnight growth that people are getting with these AI agents. But in the long term, you'll build a reputation of someone who is trusted. And as the bar for trust gets higher, where it's like, I don't know what to believe, but that person has always been authentic and honest. So I know when I see that person and what they say, I can trust them.
- [56:31]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah. We put a bunch of our customer service emails in one company through AI and the team is really excited about. They're like, look, it can actually prompt to create this personalized email for people. And I was like, curious, show me the email. I'm like, for the love of all that's holy, please never send these to anybody. Because they felt like computerized sloppiness.
- [56:52]
Dara Ladge
Yeah.
- [56:53]
Cody Sanchez
And so you have to make sure I think in some ways that the things you do with AI don't become complacent because it would almost be better to have a slightly badly written human email than to have a mid AI based email.
- [57:09]
Dara Ladge
Yeah. Or what I do with, with my digital mind is I just send them my clone. Customers who have questions, it's in the product. I send them the clone and they know it's my clone. But the alternative is either me not having time to meet over the next few weeks or answer any emails or me sending them our documentation which has so many pages they don't want to read and look for the whole thing. So instead it's a much more convenient way for them to get the information they need.
- [57:38]
Cody Sanchez
God, I really need to get my clone going with you. Don't.
- [57:40]
Dara Ladge
Oh, yeah, we're going to get it set up in the next week.
- [57:44]
Cody Sanchez
Okay. When it comes to, when it comes to AI in particular and like hiring, you had mentioned the resume and that you should put on there that you know, there needs to be like some AI first. Like, how else do you think about hiring in a world with AI, Is there anything else different that you do today?
- [58:07]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, I don't know if this is different because of AI, but we hire two kinds of people at Delphi. Either those that are the top 0.1% in what they do. And how do you know they are the top 0.1%? They are more artists than scientists. Like Rick Rubin Vibes. You don't want to hire people who are externally motivated. You want to hire people who are obsessed with being the best. And so I talked to you about this growth guy we just hired. He's obsessed with the craft and he can just obsess and talk about it for like an hour straight. And I'M like, oh my God, I would work for you. And I think that's a key thing. I would work for you in your best form. Yeah. And then the other kind of person we hire is the usually high school or college dropout or young person. Very scrappy, high slope. And you can learn a lot about slope based on one in the interview process. Are they using AI to learn different things? For me, how they talk to my clone. They're curious about the business, they're learning things, they're learning fast. And our first hire was a 17 year old kid from Belgium who now has a visa. Now he's in San Francisco and he has designed everything in our app. And some people say the best part about Delphi is our design. And it's just like some 17 year old kid who has just hustled and worked super hard to because he has the potential to be that 0.1%.
- [59:29]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. You know, I was talking with Ankur the other day from Carrie, you know, and one of the lines I loved the best that he said on that podcast, if you guys haven't listened to it, you should. He was the. It's called. He's the founder of Carrie and so one of our other portfolio companies. But he said a line that you guys live in San Francisco that I forget often and I think people do in the rest of the country, that in Silicon Valley, the magic of it is that is one of the few places in the world where we unequivocally are fascinated by what young people are obsessed with. That the age has no bearing on how intelligent you are or how efficient you are, or whether you should be listened to or not. And then it's like a Latina from a culture where it's like, you know, you're too young. Like, nope, that is opposite in Silicon Valley. And it sort of feels like if you're a young person today with tech where you are, man, what a time to be alive. Because you will be listened to in a way that you never have before. I think as our ability to go backwards and learn all this stuff is so much less than your ability to natively integrate it totally.
- [60:32]
Dara Ladge
And I talked about people needing to unlearn their assumptions in order to like really open their mind in what this AI first world looks like. And some people are very rigid in their way of thinking and it's a lot harder for them. But the great thing about young people is that full open mind, the sky's the limit. They haven't been told no so much in their life. That they've become cynical and it's like default. No, it's like default. Yes. Let's see what's possible. Yeah.
- [60:59]
Cody Sanchez
And you know what's fascinating too, in some way in this world today, I always loved that line, which is, you know, pessimists sound smart and optimists make money. I think increasingly though, with technology, optimists are gonna win even more because pessimists sound incredible on the Internet. I hear them all day, every day. It's not possible to do this. Businesses don't make sense. Not anybody could buy them, not everybody could own a business. You could never make that much money. And it's like now we're in this change in our content where we're actually shifting, showing people like we are doing the thing live with as much transparency as possible. To say that it is. This bar is so fucking low, you guys. This is low actually. When you see what you guys are building, your ability to go out and start a vending route and make five figures a year and then six figures a year. Yeah, that's fucking possible. This is not rocket science.
- [61:46]
Dara Ladge
Yeah.
- [61:47]
Cody Sanchez
And so I think it's really cool. Do you think in the future then is it almost. Is this the best time to be alive for a young person?
- [61:54]
Dara Ladge
Yes, I think it is the best time to be alive for a young person who is very confident with their intuition. Because I think all of the low hanging fruit of startup ideas, payment system, accounting system, they're all taken meaning. I think really the only opportunities left are those that are weird or Keith, our investor says he likes to invest in companies where the majority of people are laughing at him. And when we started the company a month before ChatGPT, people laughed at us. You know, they, people thought it was stupid. Why would this be a business and it didn't work out for like a year. But I think both, if you're doing something that people are laughing at, lean in. And two, it's just gonna take more time for those things to develop and manifest. Because there's a huge idea maze. It's a weirder idea. It's a new space you have to travel. The idea maze, which is a concept that I think Balaji Srinivasan coined, where you have this idea and you're trying to figure out what the best way to execute it is and there's certain dead ends and you have to go back and okay, that didn't work. But eventually you get to the gold star of the idmas.
- [63:05]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, it's actually fascinating. I imagine like the Inside of a computer or an LLM actually is like a conversation with Balaji, if you've ever. Do you know him?
- [63:13]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, he's one of our investors.
- [63:14]
Cody Sanchez
Oh, I didn't even know that.
- [63:15]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, yeah. He's got Adelphi and everything.
- [63:18]
Cody Sanchez
Oh, he's a friend of mine. And every time I talk to him, I feel like I can see him actively working the idea maze because he actively is sort of talking about. And maybe this is the way of the future a little bit. Here's an idea. I want to beat it up. So here's my premise. 1, 2, 3, 4. Here's why I'm confused on whether premise 4 is real. And you can see him kind of real time speaking it out loud.
- [63:39]
Dara Ladge
Totally.
- [63:40]
Cody Sanchez
Which I think is interesting because now you can do that back and forth with AI. It's almost like premise test, premise test, premise test.
- [63:46]
Dara Ladge
Exactly. He did it with crypto, he did it with network states.
- [63:49]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [63:50]
Dara Ladge
And that's. That's why I think it's important to build a muscle of being told no. Like, it's the. Being underestimated is a good thing. People laughing at you is a good thing. Naval has this line where he's like, you want to be a loser. Like, you want to be a loser that can't fit in, because then you're just going to do things your own way. And doing things your own way is actually where the biggest alpha is.
- [64:12]
Cody Sanchez
That's so true.
- [64:13]
Dara Ladge
Yeah.
- [64:13]
Cody Sanchez
Did you have a moment where you were laughed at when you started the.
- [64:18]
Dara Ladge
Company so many times? I mean, people were like, one. Oh, like you. You're not OpenAI. You don't have any AI researchers. You're not going to succeed. You need to own the model. The model is where the mode is, which actually turns out, the models commoditize. And I think the foundation model companies are at most at risk. 2. It's like, why would people want this? I don't get it. And it just made me realize that people are very much thinking, like, now. And we need to teach people more to think about the end in mind. Like the projection. Like, where is this going? Why does this matter? And why is this? Delphi is rooted in human psychology. We want to learn from other people. We read books, we watch YouTube videos. Sometimes we pay for coaching. It's first principles, thinking, like, yes, it works. And I actually think the book that helped me stick with Delphi for the first year, which was not easy, not working. There's a book called Loonshots. It's one of our Required readings in our company. And in the book, he talks about this concept of the false fail. And basically, it's where something fails, but not because the idea is bad, but because something else about it is bad, like the execution. And so he talks about Peter Thiel evaluating MySpace as a social network. And people are leaving MySpace. And some people are like, oh, social networks don't work. You shouldn't invest in social networks. But what Peter Thiel found is people are leaving MySpace because it's very buggy, there's a lot of bugs, and Facebook does not have bugs, and it's working pretty well. So he's like, okay, MySpace is a false fail. So I'm going to invest in Facebook. And so similar with Delphi, it's like, okay, false fail. The brand isn't good enough for Delphi to work. People are trusting us with their data. So it has to be like, really, really trusting brand, really high quality product.
- [66:05]
Cody Sanchez
What other books are on your required reading list for your high performers?
- [66:09]
Dara Ladge
A lot. So we got Loonshots, of course. Zero to One. That's like a classic tech pro book build by Tony Fadell. My. One of my favorite books. He talks about how you want to follow your intuition first and then data second. And I really resonate with that because in the end, our intuition is all we have. I would rather be wrong listening to my own intuition than listening to someone else. Because at least if you're wrong, you get the data and your intuition improves. Another is I said seven Powers Loonshots. Zero to one Mastery by Robert Green. How to be the best.
- [66:44]
Cody Sanchez
He's on the podcast tomorrow.
- [66:46]
Dara Ladge
Really?
- [66:47]
Cody Sanchez
I know. He's like, on my list of people I'm gonna geek out the most about meeting. I'm very concerned about what questions to ask. You should send me any if you have some.
- [66:55]
Dara Ladge
I will totally send you. I will totally send you.
- [66:57]
Cody Sanchez
Make me look smart.
- [66:59]
Dara Ladge
Breaking the habit of being yourself. Joe Dispenza. Very big believer in manifestation and energy. And then not a required reading, but it's around is the book about my grandfather, which, you know, successful entrepreneur in Iran. And he was actually like a Rockefeller type of Iran before the revolution happened. And he had a book written about him about his values. And that book is what led me to creating the first clone of him in 2021 so that I could learn from him and learn from his values. And so, yeah. Have I sent you a copy of that book? No, I got to send you one.
- [67:34]
Cody Sanchez
I sent it to a lot of investors. You know what you need to talk about is this idea of, like, I hear some of the richest people in the world want to talk to you guys about creating clones or digital minds of their more senior members. So let's say this isn't the real one, but let's say the Valentino family or whatever might want to create a version so that. That, you know, patriarch never dies or matriarch never dies. Is this something that you see the rich and famous doing? And in the future, will all of us be able to talk to our AI grandfather version?
- [68:10]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, I definitely don't think it's only rich and famous. I mean, everything we do in our life is almost in the pursuit of legacy, Whether it's business for our family and, you know, we live and we die and then our impact is gone. What does it look like where the decisions we make today have the potential to truly impact the life of someone 200 years from now? Like, we already read books of people from the past, but imagine if something like this existed 500 years ago. Imagine you could learn from all of these people and you find out that people 500 years ago had the same problems that we have today. Insecurities, love, business, ambition. And so not only, I think, is it good for family and connection and passing down values, as that was a huge inspiration for my grandfather. I didn't want the life that he lived to be lost. I wanted to make sure that the values and lessons he learned I could apply so that you could stand on the shoulders of giants who are your ancestors and at least keep their legacy moving forward. But also for the future to learn from the past because, you know, history repeats itself. There are mistakes, but maybe that doesn't need to be the case.
- [69:20]
Cody Sanchez
Oh, yeah. Well, also, can you imagine? I mean, right now, my grandparents are going through dementia, and my grandma just had her third stroke, and I'm incredibly close with them. And so watching them slowly lose all mental function is one of the harder things I think I've ever done in my life.
- [69:38]
Dara Ladge
Yeah.
- [69:39]
Cody Sanchez
And I could only imagine what it's like for my father. Those are his parents. And I think about often. God, what are the questions that I wish I would have asked them before? Like, what does it take to be married for 60 years happily, where they, like, love each other? You know, what lessons would you have for having kids who are so close as a family unit that, you know, we get together constantly and are always laughing? Like the real things that matter in life. Not, you know, not what your tech stack was, but something deeper. And if I had gotten Some of that from them, that would have been priceless to me.
- [70:14]
Dara Ladge
Yeah. I mean, it's same thing with my grandparents and my parents. That's why we're working on this interview mode feature where you can get them to answer questions about themselves over a period of time. Luckily, my grandpa had a book, but not everyone has a book. So how do you get that information down so it can be preserved?
- [70:33]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, that's such an interesting idea because for those that are close with your family, how many times do you. At least for me, I always go to my dad with work stuff and he's. It's not so much that he's done exactly the same thing. There's just a wisdom and a trust.
- [70:45]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, trust. You know, he. He wants the best for you.
- [70:49]
Cody Sanchez
Right. No exterior motives, no unconditional love. Right.
- [70:53]
Dara Ladge
Yeah.
- [70:54]
Cody Sanchez
And so what would that be like after he was gone? To still be able to talk to a version of him and even your.
- [70:59]
Dara Ladge
Kids, to be able to experience him the way that you experienced him, they.
- [71:02]
Cody Sanchez
Just get on TikTok, watch me dance, you know, they'll be. They'll be perfectly fine. Really fascinating. Okay, where I kind of want to end is with all of this going on with AI, there's so many shiny objects, things we can chase. Where should we really be narrowing down today? And how do you decide what is important to you to focus on in a world in which information is totally abundant?
- [71:26]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, I mean, shiny object syndrome is abundant right now. There's like a new thing every day on Twitter. Uh, I think the. The top things to keep in mind, it is easier than ever to build a sexy demo that goes viral on Twitter. And the fact that it goes viral incentivizes more of that. And so don't get sucked into the hype of a Twitter demo because it is much harder to build something that is scalable. The initial Delphi demo was super easy. Actually, making Delphi useful was much harder. Um, number two is I actually think, pay attention to the motives of the founders of the company, because not only does that matter for someone who's building like a get rich quick scheme, and then the AI product that you're using is no longer active. Two, it matters for your data. You don't want to work with a company that you are talking to or giving your data to, and then they're using your data to train their models, and now you're losing your IP and moat. So I actually think getting to know the intents of the founders are really important. And then the last thing is back to what we've been saying over and over again, thinking with the end in mind. So an example of thinking with the end in mind is right now. If you wanted to build an app, you may spend $200,000 hiring some mobile app development firm to build it out. But if you look at lovable and how fast AI software engineering is moving, potentially in six months, you could just pay someone $40,000 to leverage AI tools and just get the same outcomes. So I think timing is an important thing too. Like, should you pay to do this now or should you pay to do this later? And what are the things you should pay to do now?
- [73:13]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. You know, the thing about the founder's intent, you just really hit home for me because you think about 23andMe, right. Bankruptcy proceedings. They have my data, and it's going to the highest bidder, and anybody could have it.
- [73:26]
Dara Ladge
Yeah.
- [73:27]
Cody Sanchez
And I have no rights to that. And that has material consequences in a world in which biotechnology looks different. And so it's a really good question. How do you figure out a founder's intent? I mean, no shade, and I don't know what the right side or wrong side of it is, but Sam Altman and OpenAI is a great question. In the beginning, lots of people could say, well, intentions looked good, and now there's some questions on that. How do you think you actually figure out somebody's real intentions when you're going to give them your dollars and your data?
- [74:00]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, I mean, I am a huge fan of Sam Altman and OpenAI, so I have a lot of respect for what they've done. But as you said, you know, the shift from nonprofit to profit and then training models on people's data. And then there's that one polygram essay where he says, if Sam Altman was on an island, he'd become king of the island. And it's like, okay, there's certain data points on people that you can get to see, like, what their true intentions are. So Delphi upfront, we're like, you own your data. We're not sharing with other people. It can be deleted at any time. Super important for us. And so some founders don't have an online presence, but I almost feel like it's a default for every company these days to have a manifesto, an about page. Like, why are they doing what they're doing? What inspired them, what the vision is? I think clarity and thought of the vision, and the reason I think is important.
- [74:51]
Cody Sanchez
It's a really good question. So you should be asking if you're going to use AI tools today. Who owns the data? What happens if I don't want you to have the data anymore? Company.
- [75:00]
Dara Ladge
Yeah.
- [75:01]
Cody Sanchez
And what's your background? Why are you doing what you're doing? What other questions should you ask somebody before you give them your dollars in data?
- [75:08]
Dara Ladge
What insight inspired the company? Was it like a first principled insight, or was it like a get rich, quick insight?
- [75:13]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [75:14]
Dara Ladge
What's the vision long term? And I think another example is, let's say a software says, hey, Cody, put in a topic and we'll generate a million SEO optimized blog posts. And you take a step back. Another question you can ask yourself is, okay, what does the world look like when everyone has access to this? Is this a tool that I want to be associated with? Do I want to be a part of the group that is flooding the Internet with SEO optimized blog posts? Probably not. I think that's gonna get a bad rep. Yeah.
- [75:47]
Cody Sanchez
No, I don't. Interesting. Okay. In closing, for somebody who wants to get on this journey, one, they should definitely go to Delphi. They can play with your clone live so they could actually talk to you.
- [75:58]
Dara Ladge
Ask my Delphi.
- [75:59]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. If you like anything that Dara's talked about today, you can literally go there and have a conversation with you, which I think is really cool.
- [76:05]
Dara Ladge
Yeah. So you're a podcast host.
- [76:07]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. You literally can basically say, I like something that happened. And I'm watching somebody like Dara put it into action, which I think is also a really good. A good thing to do. A lot of people are talking about things. That's a big problem that I have with AI today. It's like, okay, you guys are all talking about theoretically what AI could be doing, but can you take it all the way to fruition? We just did this on a YouTube video. I saw this thing on Twitter where a guy started talking about being able to do this XYZ activity. When we did XYZ activity, what we found is wasn't exactly the way it was portrayed. It took way longer. It was way harder. There was much more human interaction. And so when we did it, we were kind of like, all right, at the end, you could do this. But currently, it's like watching a toddler with an iPad. Heavy supervision. Right. Lots of interaction. And so I think seeing people do it live is super important. But for somebody else who just wants to start on the path of AI is the answer. Just go to ChatGPT and start playing. Or what's the playbook for somebody that wants to learn more and doesn't know where to start.
- [77:13]
Dara Ladge
I think first thing is first principles, like really try to understand the why of all these things and build up your foundation from the ground up. So you start with floor three. Without floor one and two, building's gonna fall. You gotta build that foundation. And it takes time, but like that's, that's how you're gonna grow a strong, tall building. Uh, two with that first principles, having a long term view. The long term view is what it's going to set people apart. Three is like you said, getting started with the ChatGPT, being creative, not being afraid of things not working. And then four is consistency because there is shiny object syndrome, because there is TikTok. Attention spans are lower than ever and people are less and less willing to do the work for long periods of time. And I think that's actually like a huge competitive advantage if you're able to do that.
- [78:05]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. Consistency plus grit. What are your favorite GPTs to use? Like I use Perplexity a lot and I use Grok for Twitter. Just like news based. Do you have different ones that you use for different things?
- [78:19]
Dara Ladge
Yeah, 01 is great for those consulting like projects. $200 per month, but I think totally worth it. Claude is particularly good for language and writing specifically. You know, if you're emailing someone, everyone speaks different languages. And I don't mean languages as in like Spanish or English. I mean we perceive things in different ways and we make assumptions and projections on what you actually mean by certain words. So I use Claude for very difficult emails, fundraising, negotiations, hiring, you know, this is what I, what this is what I'm saying. Help me change the wording a little bit so it doesn't come off the wrong way to this person. Wow, great for that.
- [79:02]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting. Do you use Perplexity or Grok for anything or are those really just the two you use?
- [79:07]
Dara Ladge
I use Perplexity. Sometimes when I meet someone, I'll ask Perplexity, tell me everything I need to know about this someone. Yeah, so like I can be prepared. I use Delphi obviously for learning and I don't think we use Grok or Gemini yet.
- [79:23]
Cody Sanchez
Okay. For anything interesting. Okay, let's close with this. If I had to say, are you positive on AI versus negative on AI.
- [79:34]
Dara Ladge
You would say long term, positive short term. Think there is going to be anxiety and structural change and like meaning and it's going to take some time for people to fully accept. And I imagine when we found out that Earth was a planet in a huge universe and it's actually not the center of the universe. I imagine people at that time were like, oh my God, what am I going to do? I'm not the center of the universe. And then they got over it. And I think there's going to be a similar transition period. I think the government will need to adapt. I do think UBI is important. Yeah, but long term optimistic.
- [80:12]
Cody Sanchez
Okay, Dara, you're the man. Where should people go to find you?
- [80:15]
Dara Ladge
Dara Ladge on Twitter or X and then Delphi AI Dara Ladge.
- [80:21]
Cody Sanchez
Amazing.
- [80:22]
Dara Ladge
If you want to talk to my.
- [80:22]
Cody Sanchez
Delphi And I do really like your X or Twitter. I just can't call it X still for some reason, like I'm xing today. It just doesn't work for me.
- [80:30]
Dara Ladge
The brand doesn't feel right.
- [80:32]
Cody Sanchez
But I do like what you tweet about because it is from this first person view of AI plus, you got a little edge and I'm into that. So thank you so much for being here today.
- [80:43]
Dara Ladge
Thanks for having me, Cody. Yay.
- [80:44]
Cody Sanchez
You and your teens trying to figure life out. What do you wish that you could tell him that you know now that he didn't know then? So we're gonna give you this. You write it out and then you'll read it to the listeners like you would to young you.
- [80:57]
Dara Ladge
Well, to my younger self, I would say trust the process. The world will pull you in a million directions and make you doubt yourself. And most of them know nothing. They're all just figuring it out. And your best bet is to know who you are, what you care about, follow your intuition and trust the process.
- [81:16]
Cody Sanchez
That's beautiful.
- [81:17]
Dara Ladge
Thanks, darling.