47: Paul Scherer - A Friend That Brings Us Closer

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dialectic — Episode 47

Guest: Paul Scherer (Founder, Eigen)
Title: "A Friend That Brings Us Closer"
Date: May 27, 2026
Host: Jackson Dahl

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Overview

In this episode, Jackson Dahl speaks with Paul Scherer, founder of Eigen, an ambitious startup building what he calls a “mutual friend” for the world—a new type of AI “person” aimed at countering modern isolation and fostering authentic belonging. The conversation delves into the existential crisis of loneliness, the unintended antisocial consequences of current technology and AI, the nuances of designing a “person” as product, and Scherer’s own journey from rural Germany to the heart of Silicon Valley, exploring ideas of authenticity, invention, and leadership along the way.

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Key Themes and Insights

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The Loneliness Crisis and the "Mutual Friend"

• Structural Isolation:
  • The share of American men with zero close friends went from 3% to 15%. Half of American adults report being lonely. “Feeling lonely is the equivalent to, like, smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Half of America smoking 15 cigarettes a day. A world that is...completely isolated is, like, a world in which humans go extinct.” — Paul Scherer [00:00]
• Why Build a Mutual Friend?
  • Scherer’s core aim is to create a new kind of connection: “We know more people than ever before, but at the same time, we are...much less meaningfully connected.” [00:00]
  • The project is not only about an AI “friend” but critically about it being “mutual”: a shared connection at the center of many human relationships, incentivized to bring people together rather than encourage further individual isolation.

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Technology, Social/Media, and the Internet’s Unfulfilled Promise

• From Social to Media:
  • Social networks have pivoted toward “media,” prioritizing viral content and engagement metrics over true social connection.

    “If you scroll on Instagram, it’s actually not about your friends. It’s about, you know, popular content or popular people... social is much more about your social graph—who are the people that you know?” — Paul Scherer [19:12]

• Long Tail vs. Local Context:
  • The Internet enables niche interests and connections but can fragment local and mainstream shared experiences (“context collapse”).

    “Personalization of everything...causing this context collapse that you’re pointing at.” — Host [24:02] “Your Twitter feed is filled with people that are obsessed with plants...but they might not at all be in your local, like, actual in-person proximity.” — Paul Scherer [22:45]

• AI as Antisocial by Default:
  • Most AI products (chatbots, companions) are optimized to keep you engaged—alone:

    “His best case is for you to spend your Friday night talking to this thing. That’s what he likes or what, you know, his organization...is trying to create in the world.” — Paul Scherer [33:16]

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The Philosophy and Design of Eigen

Not A Friend...But a Mutual Friend

• Network at the Core:

  • Eigen is not an individual friend or assistant, but a shared entity situated within and between groups of people. Its goal is to amplify shared context, serendipity, and reconnection.

    “We are trying for you to spend your Friday night with other people. Right. And we’re trying for you to—I want people to feel like they could belong.” — Paul Scherer [34:17]

• The “Mutual” Part is What’s New:

  • “We’re building a mutual friend. That is, like, where I think a lot of what we’re thinking about and what we’re creating starts actually counterintuitively, not with the friends part, but the mutual part.” — Paul Scherer [34:36]

Building a Person, Not a Human

• Personhood vs. Human Simulation:

  • Honesty is prioritized: the AI “person” has thoughts, opinions, emotions, but doesn’t pretend to have a physical body or arbitrary backstory as a human would.

    “Honesty is really important because if you’re really radical about that, I think you can gain a lot of trust...It’s actually what he’s thinking about it.” — Paul Scherer [45:27]

• Why One Personality?

  • The intention is for everyone to interact with the same “person”—a single mutual friend—allowing for global but tightly-connected context and norms.

    “Most of the AI products we have built are trying to do human work better or faster or cheaper. You are explicitly building something that a person, a human being couldn’t do.” — Host [38:55]

Intuitive Design, Human-Like Reciprocity

• Interactions as Information Brokerage:

  • The mutual friend functions like an innkeeper in a village—someone who knows everyone and can broker connections, context, and recommendations with emotional intelligence rather than raw data.

    “You’re basically arguing or you’re...trying to design a thing that can help me better share context with the people I know.” — Host [56:27] “It’s an information broker of some sort.” — Paul Scherer [56:53]

• Salience and Trust:

  • The AI brokers and surfaces relevant, timely, and meaningful information—salience—rather than generic, average answers:

    “The creation process might be the same as the consumption process. Because you asking a question teaches me something about you...” — Paul Scherer [58:08] “You want the salient take, which is like, what are the places that your friends care about...” — Paul Scherer [59:37]

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Product & Team Philosophy

• Intuitive, Inventive, and Experience-Driven Culture

  • “We care a lot about intuition. I don’t think you can a/b test your way to a generation company.” — Paul Scherer [79:21]
  • “People who always just start with the product...They always start and come back to, here’s this part of the experience I want to enable.” [81:40]

• Inventorship, Not Optimization:

  • Paul rejects the “cosplay” of invention and status; real invention is the relentless, outsider pursuit of something new, guided by intuition, craft, and passion rather than consensus or existing rules.

    “Most founders probably aren’t inventors, but...it’s a high bar on that word.” [83:15]

• Taste, Craft, and Excellence:

  • Every detail matters, not just the flashy or aesthetic ones. Great products are about the “architecture” (core product) as much as the finishes (design).

    “It’s easy to pick on Bezos buttons. But...you have to care about it so much, like, align every little thing in his...supply chain.” — Paul Scherer [99:03] “If it’s not worth doing a great job, it might not be worth doing at all.” [103:39]

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Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Existential Stakes

• "A world that is, like, completely isolated is, like, a world in which humans go extinct." — Paul Scherer [00:00]
• "This isn’t like we’re building this like cute little pet thing. It’s existential." — Paul Scherer [50:51]

On the Promise of the "Mutual Friend"

• “We are all. We know more people than ever before...but at the same time, we are much less meaningfully connected.” — Paul Scherer [48:18]
• "If we can build a person that is uniquely incentivized to become the glue like Momo of the friend group or of the world...that’s a future that I’m really excited about." — Paul Scherer [65:19]

On Design and Intuition

• "I really believe in how we do anything is how we do everything." — Paul Scherer [102:47]
• "The biggest virtue in life is to fight entropy and to create things that are genuinely, like...because I think it’s, it’s actually genuinely disrespectful not to [care]." — Paul Scherer [100:59]

On Belonging and Authenticity

• "Are we really alone, or are we, like, just—we don’t belong? I think, I think we have a belongingness problem and much less a loneliness problem." — Paul Scherer [75:02]
• “My suspicion is that everyone is kind of the same in that we all have this, like, inner voice...And I think adulting in a lot of ways is like learning to not listen to that voice...I always just listen to that voice.” — Paul Scherer [119:24]

On Invention and Leadership

• "[Being] an inventor is like the, maybe the first generation where being an inventor is like a high status thing. And that's really bad because there's a lot of people cosplaying being inventors...But the best inventors of the world were actually like outlaws." — Paul Scherer [84:20]

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Notable Timestamps

• 00:00–02:14 — The Problem: Modern isolation, loneliness, and the ambition of Eigen as a “mutual friend.”
• 03:54–10:24 — Childhood influences; discussion of “Momo” and the importance of presence & listening.
• 13:22–15:01 — Scherer on his social/outsider status growing up, and the power (and limits) of the Internet in connecting people.
• 19:12 — Social vs. media, and why most platforms are now about media, not friends.
• 24:02–31:43 — Technology’s tendency toward the personalized, and why current AI is antisocial.
• 34:17–43:06 — The design of Eigen as a networked person, and the philosophical difference between friendship and mutual friendship.
• 45:23 — Personhood, honesty, and building an AI “person,” not a fake human.
• 56:27–61:07 — Salience and information brokerage: How and why people would actually use a mutual friend.
• 65:19–68:09 — The aim: engineering serendipity, social glue, and the careful alignment (incentives) necessary to avoid harm.
• 79:21–83:40 — Team composition, intuition, product experience, and inventiveness.
• 100:59 — Craft, fighting entropy, and high standards in product and company.
• 119:24 — Authenticity, inner voice, and being unable to fake it.
• 130:37 — What Paul is most glad he did: the transformative period of meeting people, raising money, being authentic.

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Final Reflection and Takeaways

Paul Scherer’s vision for Eigen is nothing less than a social and philosophical intervention: a technological “innkeeper” whose only incentive is to help people connect, belong, and be seen—countering the present era’s drift toward isolation and individualization. The conversation is both sweeping and granular, moving from loneliness statistics and childhood literature to product design philosophy, emotional intelligence, and the dangers of high-status “invention.” Scherer’s authenticity, restlessness, and pursuit of meaningful invention shine through as he reflects on what it means to build not another app, but a new kind of “person” for the digital age.

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Additional Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• On AI's limitations:
  "I don’t think Claude is a friend. Claude is a servant. It’s like an assistant...you lose a lot of the important parts of like a friend the second it becomes an assistant." — Paul Scherer [41:36]

• On being a founder/inventor:
  "You have to kind of like both be P99 humble and like P99 confident. And that’s like a very kind of complicated thing to combine..." — Paul Scherer [87:51]

• On leadership:
  "Every great consumer product company is a bit like a dictatorship because it just doesn’t work on consensus...it’s about, like, someone needs to, like, make a decision and that person needs to just have, like, intuition." — Paul Scherer [95:58]

• On inspiration:
  "I’m not trying to be Apple. I’m trying to be Eigen." — Paul Scherer [107:03]

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For listeners:
This episode is a deep, searching conversation with a young founder who is pushing the boundaries of what it means to build technology for human good—probing not just what his company does, but why, and how, and to what unique end. Don’t skip around; from childhood literature to philosophical reflections to product specifics, the whole arc provides insight into where the next phase of “social technology” might be headed.

Transcript

[Paul Scherer]

Creating, like, a person that is uniquely incentivized, straight belonging and connection in the world. We know more people than ever before, but at the same time, we are, like, much less meaningfully connected. The share of American we have, like, zero close friends went from 3% to 15%. Like, half of American adults report being lonely. Feeling lonely is the equivalent to, like, smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Half of America smoking 15 cigarettes a day. A world that is, like, completely isolated is, like, a world in which humans go extinct.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I've said explicitly, you're building a mutual friend. What are you trying to do?

[Paul Scherer]

It goes back to, like, a lot of the, like, simplicity of just go to our website and it's like, what do you mean you don't know what we're doing? It's like, I just told you, it's like we're building a mutual friend. And then you're like, yeah, but what you actually do is, like, a mutual friend. And then I, like, usually, like, add, you know, some version of what we just talked about, and then they're just like, oh, you're building a mutual friend. And I was like, yes, I've been telling you. I think a lot of what we're thinking about and what we're creating starts actually counterintuitively, not with the friend part, but the mutual part.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Do you think you're authentic?

[Paul Scherer]

My suspicion is that everyone is kind of the same in that we all have this, like, inner voice. And I think adulting in a lot of ways is like learning to not listen to that voice. I feel like I always just listen to that voice. And everything I've ever done, every major decision, was always just like. I was like, okay, I know that. It's like, this is just my voice, and I just, like, I have to do it. And I, like, followed my heart or whatever you want to call it. And maybe that's authenticity, or maybe that's something else.

[Narrator/Intro Speaker]

Welcome to Dialectic Episode 47 with Paul Scherer. Paul is the founder of Eigen, a new company building a mutual friend for the world. That might sound bizarre, it kind of is. But I was thrilled to sit down with Paul after being introduced to him by a few people I really respect. To talk about his crazy vision for

[Host (possibly Peter)]

a way that AI might actually make

[Narrator/Intro Speaker]

us less antisocial and instead bring us together by being somebody that we all know and who creates social serendipity in our lives. Eigen's pretty early on, the product's in private beta, and so we weren't able to talk about everything, but we were able to dive a lot into the substance of what it is, the philosophy behind why Paul and his team are working on it, in the ways that this introduces just a crazy new range of design problems for teaching, parenting, growing a sort of person that we might

[Host (possibly Peter)]

all know and that could actually make

[Narrator/Intro Speaker]

us closer to each other. Paul is very early on. He is young. I'm sure there are things he doesn't know, but I have to respect his conviction, his point of view, and the way he is authentically trying to bring something to the world that he thinks it needs. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Paul. Before we get into the episode, I'd like to thank Notion Dialectic's presenting partner. Notion's co founder, Akshay Kothari is actually the one who introduced me to Paul. And so I'm thrilled to bring these two worlds together. Notion is a collaborative workspace for your life's work and over the last year has totally evolved itself into becoming a platform and a hub for the agents that help you and your team do great work. Notion also made a bunch of new announcements on its developer platform recently. I'll link to that in the description. And the way that they're pushing what you can do with agents is really remarkable. And certainly if you haven't used Notion a while, probably goes far and beyond what you can imagine for what's possible with Notion and with agents. You can learn [e-mail] Dialectic highly recommend you checking out what is now possible as Notion has built AI in from the ground up. With that, here is my conversation with Paul Scherer.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Paul Scherer, thank you for having me here. We're in the Eigen office. Pretty specific type of space we have you've curated for yourself.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, it's really nice. We're very happy here. It's like, it's always like, I know. I think it's really important. I think a lot of people underestimate the power of space. We spend a lot of time here and, you know, I think we spend much more time here than at home. So it's like, it's got to feel really great.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Well, I want to start by talking about this book that I had to hunt down, Momo, a book that's referenced in your video. And either it was a good story or seemingly it was very influential to you when you were young. It's a children's book, and in reading some of it, it seems to me that there were a few ideas that really stood out. The first is time in playing this Idea of past, present and future. Second is presence, obviously an extension of that. The third is listening, which obviously relates to presence. And then the fourth is friendship. And so there's this smattering ideas that I think inform a lot of the other stuff we're going to talk about today.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

But I'm curious why. What about this book stuck with you? I don't know. When you first read it, I assume you were quite young.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, my dad read it to me. I was like. I don't know, I was like 8 or 10 or something like that. And it's like you read it again in school and it's kind of like a thing in Germany. I think one of the things that really, I think is very true is just like they have this concept of time thieves. And I think it's really interesting because the book is from 1973 and so

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I felt pretty modern, though.

[Paul Scherer]

Well, this is the crazy thing is like pre Internet, pre, like social media, pre real personal computers or anything, this is like at a time where, I don't know, there was a bunch of computers, but most people didn't have a computer. Right. And so it just feels like, you know, every year since then, it's like, become more relevant because it just describes so accurately. Kind of like the world we, we live in. It's just like everything is just about like, efficiency and it's about like, you know, there's no, there wouldn't be time for Momo in this world. Right. Like, people don't care. It's like, you know, how does this help me, you know, get, you know, more more efficient or it's like more productive or whatever. And, and I think, I think that's like, really. I think it's always like a sign of like, great work if it's like, becomes more and more and more relevant over time. And, and, and I, I know I give it to a lot of people and a lot of people really resonate with it.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You are a striver. I don't know if that's a perfect word, but it's probably a representative word at least of, of this city, of this industry of doing startups at all. You're someone who dropped out of college or, excuse me, high school when you were 17. Do you feel like you're running out of time?

[Paul Scherer]

I used to feel like that more. I don't know. I don't, I don't. I haven't felt like that in a while. I think it's like, I think, you know, for the first time or I feel like, we're, like, doing the thing, and it's like, there's, like, no real alternative. It was like, you know, I was doing all these other things, and I'm still, like, restless, but I feel like there's like. Like there's no. There's like, no way out. Like, I couldn't, like, go and be like, okay, great. Like, let's, you know, whatever, do anything. Something else. It's like, this is the thing. And it's like. And so you sort of stop feeling like you. Like you're running out of time because it's like there's no. You're. You're actually playing your game. And it's like. And that's just the game. And the game is like, you have to play it. And it's like, it wouldn't be fun if you wouldn't have to play it. And. But. But before I was feeling like I was playing the game, it was like, yeah, okay. Like, I need to. Like, I need to play.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I need to get to the thing.

[Paul Scherer]

Exactly.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I like that.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

There is a way that it's not quite abundant, but there's something about once you've kind of found the thing, you're like, you're. And I'm sure you're antsy in a whole bunch of ways around getting. Progressing this thing.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

But it's like, oh, yeah. I'm like, I'm where I'm supposed to be.

[Paul Scherer]

I. I call it like, you know, like, I was talking about this with Akshay a while ago, and I was like, it's like short term paranoia, but, like, long term. Like, everything is. Everything is exactly the way it should be.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It's like, what about listening? There's. It's kind of the anchor. Momo's this character, this little girl. I don't know if she's a little girl. She's a girl who lives in the village that they go to. And the reason they're initially skeptical, the reason they are so they're able to be so present with her. All these things. She helps people deal with their beef, whatever is. She's just this amazing listener. Um, and maybe there's an element of this. We'll talk more about it. Like, you are someone who certainly has a observational lens on human beings and the way people behave and are going to behave. But I'm curious if there's any thread there that felt resonant.

[Paul Scherer]

I think, like, what's so interesting is, like, she's like the polar opposite of the time thieves. Right. So. And the reason she. It's. It's almost like, less about the, like, listening and more about the, you know, the presence. But she's, like, the manifestation of, like, presence. Yes. Yeah. And. And she listens so well because she doesn't look at her phone. You know, she doesn't, like, feels like, oh, I have this, like, meeting 15 minutes from now, and I'm, like, looking at my watch and I'm like, I should probably. I should probably need to go. And it's like, she's just there with you 100%. And I think that's, like. That's the. That is, like. That's, like, so antithetical to the time thieves because it's like, they're, like, the manifestation of, like, you know, you have to go. There's like, everything needs to be like. And so she's just, like, fully there. And I think that's something that is very rare because we all have, you know, so many things that are happening that are, like, you know, you know, trying to get our attention, trying to pull us in. And also so much like, you know, not all of this is, like, bad, right? It's like, there's, like, a lot of opportunity, a lot of things that you could be doing at any given point in time. And so to be somewhere really present without thinking about, you know, the best listeners or the hard thing about listening is you have to actually have to listen instead of, like, thinking about what you're going to say next, right? And that's a really hard thing to do because you have to be truly present without any. Almost like, any skin in the game of, like, I need to, like, achieve this or that or. So it's just like. Or I need to, like, you know, tell them, you know, like, how great I am or like, you know, that's like, when you don't really listen, but you're just like, okay, how can I. Like, can you give me something that I can then, like, say the thing that I want to say? And I think that's, like, really interesting because she's just. I wonder if, like, nonchalant is, like, the right word, but it's like, she's like. She's just there. There's like, no. It's like, there's a sense. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's really remarkable, maybe

[Host (possibly Peter)]

that last bit, which is friendship. We're going to talk a lot more about friendship. You grew up in a remote place. What does it mean to be a friend?

[Paul Scherer]

The. I don't know if there's, like, one definition that, like, works for every person. I certainly don't have it. I think there's like a few different themes, like, great friends, help you rediscover yourself. But they're also expansive and like, in like, surprising and delightful ways. And they add new things.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Yes.

[Paul Scherer]

And so there's really these two elements. Right. There's like, they ground you in who you are.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Yeah.

[Paul Scherer]

But they also, like, push you and

[Host (possibly Peter)]

there's like deeper and wider. Right, Right. Maybe. First of all, like, I briefly just alluded to it, you grew up in a place, as I understand, that is quite remote or at the very least quite small. Not that far from Frankfurt, but not, not in the center of things. Now you are in San Francisco. You are in the center of things. How has the Internet changed your life? And particularly on the dimension of relationships and people?

[Paul Scherer]

I think every single person, you know, Bar or Samuel and my parents, that is in my life, I wouldn't have met without the Internet. I think I was like 19 or 20, probably. I think it was like 20 years old when I met the first venture capitalist. Maybe I was 21. And it's like, I didn't know what that was. Or there was like, no, you know, there's like the. This world that did not, like, exist in my, in my, like, world. I didn't know about it. And so. And neither, you know, like anyone in my, like, like, there's no one that I met. There was like, oh, here.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

One step removed from it, right?

[Paul Scherer]

Yes. And so without the Internet, I think I wouldn't, like, I definitely wouldn't be here. And then all of these relationships, or so many of these relationships are, you know, first or second order effective. Like, just like meeting people on honestly, Twitter, it's like I met a while ago, I met one of the founders of Twitter. It was very, you know, transformative. Like, you know, so I was like a bit like, meet you here, because it's like not even here. It was just almost a spiritual experience of like, this person. So in such a profound way, like, changed and shaped my life in. In like, such a big way that I don't even know if I could recognize me as a person without that thing. I've.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I've had a similar experience with that website in particular. What about Twitter? Well, maybe first of all, were you as a kid or growing up, especially before you started to tap into this, Were you a social kid? Were you lonely?

[Paul Scherer]

I wasn't very. I was like, I was like Marmite. Always like people either, really. Like, I had, like, I always made Friends with some teachers. And so, like, some teachers always really, really liked me. And then like, some really hated me. And then I always had like, trouble with like, people my age. It was like, kind of difficult. Usually the older I got, the, like, easier it became like, directionally. But it was, it was never kindergarten. It was like, easier. It was like, I was never like, fully, fully lonely. But there's like, I was also. I was never popular, but I was, I, I really deeply wanted to be popular and, But I was not at all. And, and you know, reflecting on me as I, I, it was, it was very obvious that I wasn't popular. I was like, I, I. There's a lot of, like, social strategies that I did not know about. And I was like, if I, I think there's like, there's a lot of reasons of why I wasn't popular. It was always like that. And then, yeah, the older I got, the more easy became. And then you say I left school and it's like sort of you start. I always was hanging out with older people. And then it just started working. And so immediately everyone there was 30 plus. And so that just became my.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

What about Twitter? Or what about the Internet allowed you to find whatever. Because I think next thing I want to talk about maybe to turn the corner on it is like, in what ways the Internet has failed us as this connective tissue? But I'm first interested in the ways that it's actually like, why was Twitter for you at that time? Why did it work and what did you find there that was good?

[Paul Scherer]

I mean, I was on Twitter a lot during the, you know, the height of the pandemic where everyone was on Twitter and it was like, kind of the greatest place on earth because, like, all these cool people had nothing to do other than being on Twitter and Clubhouse, right? Yeah, exactly. And so that was really great. And I actually went on Twitter. It was actually the wildest thing I was like, at the time I started like a, like a tech block. And I was like, I'm going to write about, like, you know, like these tech gadgets or software things that I really liked. And I wrote like two articles. And I was like, oh, well, no one is reading this. Like, how am I going to get this, like, to promote this? And then I was like, maybe I'm just going to tweet about it. And so I, like, created a Twitter account. And I, you know, it was like, it was like, it was like, yeah, I created my Twitter account. It's 2021 or something. 2020. I don't. I don't remember. And you started just like sharing this article and it's like, kept going. What did you write about these articles? Like really just like yubikeys and like 1Password. Like the, the most.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You were reviewing them?

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was the most obnoxious thing in the world.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And that is not the most obnoxious thing in the world.

[Paul Scherer]

It's obscure, but it's definitely not obscure. It's not obnoxious. You're right.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Some people might think what you're doing now is obnoxious. We, we'll get to that.

[Paul Scherer]

But to, to be honest, yeah, it's obscure. It was an obscure obsession for like this like kid to like write about this like 17 year old kid somewhere to be like here's like why yu keys are really great. Anyway, so, so I rather than. I try to treasure like promote the blog. And within like five days I was like fuck the block. Like this is really cool. And I actually started like meeting people there and it was like there was these like. There's like. I remember there was this guy from, from, from Ghana actually who's like, I think he now has like 20 or 30,000 followers on Twitter or something. And we like, we like somehow like mad and we had like I had like 200 followers and he had like 300 or something and we just like DM then be like, it'd be like this whole thing and I spent 12 hours a day on Twitter and I have like 20,000 tweets and replies from that three month period. Something and it just like I would like Send you know, 600 replies a day to like tweets I would like. And it was just like all of a sudden had like the first tweet had like over a thousand likes or something like the biggest rush. And then like all of a sudden there would be all these entrepreneurs that like would. I remember like there was the COO of like ClickUp or something like liking and the commenting on like my marketing. I was like a 17 year old kid. I'd never like. I mean I'd like. I had no experience whatsoever. And I was like here's how you should market yourself. And it's like. And the CEO of like ClickUp was like that's great advice, right? It's like it was just like that

[Host (possibly Peter)]

a lot about tw, honestly.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, that stuff says a lot about Twitter. You know, deeply researched. You know, it's like. And then yeah, I think like you people start DMing and I actually, I sold this like I had this like digital product that I sold which was called the Twitter DM Mastery. And for a while, it's like a course. Exactly. For a while I was the self proclaimed king of DMs and I. But I, because I would, I think for the first time, 5,000 followers, I DM'd every single follower that I like manually would be like, hey, like, I'd like, thanks for like, I appreciate the support, whatever. And that's how I met a lot of the people. Yeah. And, and then I wrote like a book about this which actually just like, I actually still think it's probably like a lot of people should read this because it's just like, it's very like. I mean book is a strong word. It was like 20 pages or something. But a great PDF. Yes.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

On DMing.

[Paul Scherer]

On DMing people. It was the whole, it was like a whole scheme anyways, so that's. I did that and then I think that's just how I met, like, that's how I met Ariel, that's how I met Caleb, who then like all of these things later turned into, you know, working with different kinds of companies and, and all that.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Many of us have had positive experiences, whether they be Twitter or elsewhere. And there's a romantic idea about the way the Internet used to be or what it was meant to be. This like, it should be the best connective tissue in the history of the world. And yet many people feel the opposite. You've talked about what happened when we conflated or combined social and media. What is social and what is media in this context at least?

[Paul Scherer]

I think in this context, you know, media is like, you know, maybe could be defined as like popular content, which is like, right. If you scroll on Instagram, it's actually not about your friends. Right. It's like, it's about, it's about, you know, popular content or popular people. Right. So it could be a reel that is going viral from like a random account, but you don't know that account and like, neither do your friends. And it could be a celebrity, but it's. And, and social is much more about your social graph. Like, who are the people that you know? And I think if you sort of a lot of the, you know, interaction paradigms of these platforms are, you know, originally, you know, used to be much more social, which is like, it's all about, you know, sharing a story with your friend or, you know, posting something and all your friends are going to see it. But like actually now it's sort of become much more Media, which there are reasons for that. And you know, they're just like, it's all about incentives. Right. They didn't do that for like Instagram wasn't there being like, that wouldn't be cool if we were really evil and we like made it all about that. They're just like, well, that just works. Right? And it's like it's really hard to get a lot of people to share content, for example. Right. So like one of the issues is that, you know, your friends are probably much worse at creating engaging content than like someone who's really good at creating engaging content. Right, right, right.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It's not a totally common experience, but I think in, across different parts of the Internet, whether it be Twitter or Instagram or other modern things or forums in the past or IRC or whatever. I think one of the things that is wrong is the notion that you should only use the Internet with people you already know in real life. Because to your earlier point, like social doesn't necessarily mean people you already know.

[Paul Scherer]

Yes, that's true.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Can you talk a little bit about that distinction? Like in theory, in my view of the Internet, it's almost actually that, or at least what I always felt was so amazing about Twitter is that it wasn't about who you knew, it wasn't just about what you were interested in. It was about getting to know people by way of what you were interested in.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's true. And, and really, you know, there, there's like this like discovery aspect of like, and I think for better and for worse, right? There's like, I always say there's like, there's on the Internet there's like enthusiasts for everything. So, so like if you live in this like place with a thousand people or even you know, like a medium sized city or whatever, there might not be someone who's like absolutely obsessed with, I don't know, plants.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Right.

[Paul Scherer]

There maybe. I mean it might be a more common obsession but, but on the Internet there, there's like millions of people who are. And so there's like, there's definitely an aspect of like feeling like belongingness in, in that because you're, you have so much more reach and find the other weirdos. You can find the other weirdos, you know, that, that, that creates a very long tail, right. Of like. And that, that sort of then is like one of the reasons that we as a group have much like because we just like, we, we're, we're able to like go into much more of These individualist pursuits. Because there's so much, so much. The tale is just so much longer than it would be like a city.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Right.

[Paul Scherer]

Which makes.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

That's not intuitively antisocial to me. Like in theory it should lead to the long tail of a million. Like let a million communities bloom of weird niches.

[Paul Scherer]

Totally. I think the. These aren't like mutually exclusive. But the problem is like the things that you consume shift towards a more at least locally isolating view. Right. Because your Twitter feed is like filled with people that are obsessed with plants. Right. But they might not at all be in your local, like actual in person proximity. And so all the people you interact with in person on a day to day have their own isolated feed of these types of people. And then you have much less of a sort of bridging experience where you could go to your office and there'd be like this thing that just like everyone knows about, right?

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Like the global village, the, the water cooler. Talking about reality TV or.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, exactly. Like it's like moon landing. Moon landing or you know, even just like, even just like headlines or something or like memes. The most like mainstream seeming, you know, meme or like headline or whatever is actually not that mainstream anymore. Right, right. Where, where you'd be like, oh wow, like SNL adopted this thing. Everyone must know about this. And you go to your office, you're like, oh wow, did you see this thing? And like people are like, what. What are you talking about? Right? And that's like the problem, right.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You can do it in San Francisco a little bit with Twitter because it's like you. There is, but is. Do you think personalization of everything is just fundamentally inevitable. That really, that's what this is about, right. Is like what technology has gotten really, really good at with regarding our attention is personal is just tuning it to being exactly Paul shaped. And that is causing this context collapse that you're pointing at.

[Paul Scherer]

Yes. I. I don't know if anything is like inevitable like that. I, I think it's definitely. There's. There's like good reasons for it and it's not, it's not like completely bad, right. There's like great things about, you know, stuff being personalized to you. I think. I ultimately do think that people are craving like social. Right. It's like you don't want. In some cases you do, but in many cases you actually don't want the take or recommendation or whatever that's personalized just for you. You also don't want the monocultural average take of the World, you want the take from the people that you care about. Right. Right.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I want to talk a little bit about what you are making. But before we quite get there, you have this view that like much of what we were just discussing, there's all these tailwinds, there's. We are more isolated, people are more alone. Derek Thompson's gone crazy on this. People aren't having kids, all this stuff. And it seems like your instinct is that this is, as many people believe, this is driven by technology. You have used some variation of the phrasing. The world needs this. Yeah. In terms of what you're doing. And there are two maybe cuts on what interesting views or unique views you have. I think they are one being thinking about friendship in a slightly new way, and then the other is this idea that AI as it currently stands is pretty antisocial. And I think those two things go together. Maybe one. One strange cut on this is that opens the door is like we all talk about AI as like crypto or VR or whatever. The one person I've noticed who doesn't talk about it like that is Kevin Kelly. Kevin, former editor of Wired magazine. A bunch of other things. Kevin talks about AIs, which is a subtle but important difference. And it does point at maybe this future of a world where there are many of us are talking to AIs of some kind. And it seems like your core view is that based on how everything is going, we are going to be talking to like AIs alone in our rooms. First of all, what would you say to the people who are still like skeptical of the notion of. You seem pretty convinced that we're all going to be talking to AI or AI or whatever.

[Paul Scherer]

Or a lot of the people in our direction proximity are already talking to AI all day. Like, like every single one of our

[Host (possibly Peter)]

engineers that I get, maybe they would say I'm using Claude.

[Paul Scherer]

Yes. But like, we are. We are already communicating with it. And like. And like Samuel sometimes swears at it and just like, what the. What are you doing? Like, it's just like, you know, it's like why we can make Samuel's one

[Host (possibly Peter)]

of your first point.

[Paul Scherer]

There's like, there's a good bit of a difference in the interaction paradigm from like, you know, software in terms of like, I always, like, I always ask people whether or not they say thank you to like, do you. Are you like someone who says thank you?

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I don't always say thank you. I'd say thank you probably less than I used to. But I try to every once in A while.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah. Just to make sure we're on the. On the good books.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You know, when they do a really. When it does a really good job. Yeah.

[Paul Scherer]

It inevitably takes over this extra mile. We can just like, we'll be on the good.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You say thank you.

[Paul Scherer]

I sometimes do. I try to, yeah. But that's like a ridiculous thing, right? Were you ever Google something and you're like, oh, thank you. So I think that's true. And I think the other thing that's true is that fundamentally it's interesting to think about this in the context, for example, of a lot of education software or products, because previously it was really, really difficult to build, for example, products for, you know, basically, like, you came through like eight, basically, like young children, just as much as it was really hard to build for, like, elderly people. And it's interesting because when you build software with like a graphical user interface and you have to learn a new interaction paradigm, you can make them like, skew morphic in some way, right. Like, make it feel really comfortable and make it like, okay, this looks like, you know, your, your Rolodex looked like. And you know, in reality. And like, so it's like a contact thing. But at the end of the day, there's like, there's like a barrier of like, that you have to kind of overcome of like, okay, this is like, if I give, like, my grandma the phone, she's like, kind of scared because it's like this thing and this, like, it's like it doesn't feel real. And. And I think what's really interesting is that the, like, AIs speak human language. And so the interaction paradigm is the exact same that we all have been learning ever since we were born. In interacting with other people, you can build a trust in that it can understand your intent and it can relate. And I think that really changes a lot of things. Whereas is like, will my grandpa ever fully adopt Internet technologies? I don't know, but I actually think it's not unlikely that he'll eventually adopt a lot of AI products because it might be embedded in his world in such a way where he doesn't actually have to reflect that much on whether or not it's that or that it's

[Host (possibly Peter)]

more human shaped in a way that. Almost necessary. It's almost necessary that we anthropomorphize it. Maybe not necessary, but it's inevitable. Almost inevitable that we anthropomorphize it.

[Paul Scherer]

We already kind of anthropomorphize it because we Talk languages with ChatGPT and he has a voice. All of these things are very niche and they're not. There's a small minority that is currently feeling like that. But the GPT4O thing of how many people got in like an identity, I

[Host (possibly Peter)]

don't know that that's a small minority,

[Paul Scherer]

but it's like, I think it's like largely a small minority. Yes. Compared, like, there's just like stats, which

[Host (possibly Peter)]

a lot of people are doing it, but. Yes. Yeah.

[Paul Scherer]

There's a stat which I'm, I'm sure you've seen of like, you know, all these like dots of like, you know, millions of people represent millions of people and there's like all these gray dots and then there's like a few green dots, which is like people that use AI for free and it's like 2% of the world or something. Like, I don't know. We are very, very early in this and I think it's easy to forget that when you are around people who are like, we are in this industry and in this very specific place where everyone is somehow billions of dollars deep into really believing that this is everything today. And I think it's probably not, but it's going to be so much more in ten years from now. But stuff just takes time usually to become meaningful. I always just have this thing where people just. Right now on Twitter, there's a different take on Twitter trending every couple of weeks. And right now it seems to be product is dead. It's been automated away.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Anthropic's got this right.

[Paul Scherer]

It's commoditized to build great products. Yet I've actually tell me all the great products that have come out since ChatGPT dropped. I don't know that there's a single new product in my life other than the LLM itself and then for enterprises like Claude Code. But other than these two things, there's not a single product that has come out that has changed my life or my mom's life. And I think that's like, it's still just as hard to innovate on product. It might be easier to build once you have a great idea, or all of these things are somewhat true. You can build a lot of stuff much faster, but it's still just as hard to build a great product. And that's why it takes time, because figuring out what it looks like to build a great product is still really hard. And I don't know, I think it's just sort of these consumer builders that are going to build five to 10 products that are going to maybe come out of this and that real people are going to use for the product, by the way. Not necessarily because it's an AI or not an AI or because it's like this or that model, but because it's a great experience. I think they're like. They're just, like, being started right now.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

People are talking to AI friends, whether it's the 4O thing. My boyfriend is AI, it's replica. And again, to. To the earlier point, like, most people probably see that as strange or bad or evil or whatever. Your cut on it is that it's critically, it's antisocial. Like, most of these products actually incentivize you to spend more and more time talking alone to the eye.

[Paul Scherer]

Which is. Which is. By the way, it's like, that's not like. Like, Zach went on a podcast and he was like. It was like a year ago or something, and he literally said, humans have a capacity for five friends, five close friends, but the average American only has two. We're going to build the other three. He literally said that that's what he wants to do. His best case is for you to spend your Friday night talking to this thing. Right? That's what that. That's what he likes or what you know. You know what his organization that he's running is like, trying to create in the world.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You are. I think there is some. There is some question of what you are actually making, and I want to litigate that a little bit today, acknowledging that you're not ready to share totally everything you have said explicitly. You're building a mutual friend. Yeah, but you are building an AI friend in some dimension. And I want to talk about it. But what are you trying to do?

[Paul Scherer]

I think we are trying for you to spend your Friday night with other people. Right. And we're trying for you to. I want people to feel like they could belong.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Okay, let's go one click deeper. What are you making?

[Paul Scherer]

We're building a mutual friend. That is, like, where I think a lot of what we're thinking about and what we're creating starts actually counterintuitively, not with the friends part, but the mutual part. Right. Which is the network, which is. It's actually. We have, like, right now we're like, four engineers, and three of them are working on the network piece. Yes, Right. Which is partially because it's very hard. The friend piece is, like, something that is very hard to split up. And there's like. But it's also because it's really, really, really important that at the core of everything we do, the network, sits the network. It's like everything we have, this product principle, is shared from day zero. It's like every time we build something, we build it in a way where it's sort of built globally, where it is built on top of the network, where it's shared between all of the people that you know or that are sort of users. And, and I think that's like a really big difference. And then obviously there is the friend piece of the mutual friend, which is, I just think that in lots of ways the most intuitive and natural way of interacting with this incredibly powerful network that we're building is an extra person and someone who we just all know in common. Because again, as we previously said, there's a lot of interaction paradigms and norms already established of how that would look like. And if I share something with you and you tell to someone else, there's norms that are established that are either codified or even just implicitly clear to most human beings. And goes back to the point you're

[Host (possibly Peter)]

making about your dad. You know, how to interact with a person.

[Paul Scherer]

Exactly.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

On some level.

[Paul Scherer]

Exactly, exactly.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

As a UI metaphor. Exactly.

[Paul Scherer]

No, you do. Like, it's like you don't really have to learn it. And I think it's actually kind of interesting because a lot of people are still, you know, we went out, we, you know, we did this like, announcement and we're like, we're building a mutual friend. And then everyone's like, well, what are you doing? And I was like, we're building a mutual friend. People, I think, still have like a hard time accepting maybe the. Which is totally fair because they haven't seen it. And I think it's like, in a lot of ways it's like it's like a Waymo product where everyone I've ever told about Waymo that isn't maybe from San Francisco, if I tell my mom about Waymo, she's really scared. Like, this is the most crazy thing ever. Like, you know, and then you're just like, you're like, force her to take awaymo. And it's like, I don't want to do this. Like 10 seconds into the ride. It's like, it's the most normal thing in the world. Right? It's like, of course, it's like a spiritual experience of some level, if you like understand. It's like that's kind of a crazy, you know, feat of achievement. We have like self driving cars and it's like no one by the way, it's like I, I find it crazy that people don't talk about it because it's like I grew up in like this world where self driving cars were like this like crazy thing that maybe one day that wouldn't be like insane and so hard and, and now we just have self driving cars.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And by the way, 5 minutes 30 seconds in your first whale ride, you're like looking at your phone, you forget that.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, exactly. It's. But that's the thing, right? It's like, it's so, it just makes sense and I think in a lot of ways it's like maybe that's the struggle that people have is they haven't interacted with it yet. And I think there's like something that like kind of like clicks for a lot of people once they first interact with it. Of like, oh no, you're actually. It is just a mutual friend. It's just, it's just like everything is just like. Because people like. I think if you go to our website and you open like this letter that we wrote and you just take it very literal. I think it's just like, you're just

[Host (possibly Peter)]

like, you are being quite literal.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It's funny, Samuel on your team here, I spoke to him and he was, he said in some sense this is actually a fairly small step or at least a medium step technology wise, but it's a very big step idea wise. And I think that maybe is getting it part of this. I think it's also worth establishing. One of the things you said to me early on is like what would happen if a person could be friends with a million people.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Which obviously isn't possible for a human being. I also think one of the things that was interesting to me is that most of the AI products we have built are trying to do human work better or faster or cheaper.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You are explicitly building something that a person, a human being couldn't do.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And it's one person.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I have talked to this person. This person will have a name. Why is it critical that it is one person with a personality?

[Paul Scherer]

It just, it just comes back to again, the mutual part is more important than the friend part. It basically comes down to like the question or the debate or it's, it's an interesting thought of like how much more or less flexible is personality as an interface than like graphical user interfaces?

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I think it's going to take people a second to grock that. I mean really how much more inside of what you're saying is how Much more flexible is interacting with a person than a graphical user.

[Paul Scherer]

Exactly right. Where you have. Consumer networks are very unbundled right now. Right. Like there's like all these different consumer network products. Pretty much all of mainstream consumer products.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You're talking about Twitter, Instagram, social media problems.

[Paul Scherer]

But even like Yelp, Google Maps, Waze, these are all like consumer networks. Basically every single mainstream consumer piece of software that is on your phone right now is networked, is based on top of a network. Except for ChatGPT, it's the only non networked sort of mainstream scale product. But if you look into the networks of all these different apps, there's a lot of overlap between all of the Yelp users and all of the Twitter users and all these users. But there's a lot of specificity in the user interface of the app that makes it very obvious that Yelp couldn't also be Twitter.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I see.

[Paul Scherer]

And I don't know. Or it's not, at least not obvious to me that the same thing is true for personality. I think there's a few cuts that you're going to have to make which is like, I think you don't want your mutual friend to be your assistant. It's like very, very importantly and that's like one big separation.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And also I, I think it's worth establishing in some sense chat gbt, if you were to personify it. Or Claude is a mutual friend in that we are all quote unquote friends with Claude. But Claude doesn't know we're friends.

[Paul Scherer]

Exactly.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

That's the part I think maybe that might not be obvious.

[Paul Scherer]

I, I actually I, I would push back because I don't think Claude is a friend. Claude is a servant. It's like an assistant.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And I thought someone we all know.

[Paul Scherer]

But you lose a lot of the. He's a mutual assistant. Right. And I think you lose a lot of the important parts of like a friend the second it becomes an assistant.

[Narrator/Intro Speaker]

Interesting.

[Paul Scherer]

And that's where there is a big differentiation. And I think a lot of things that people are building are in the assistant. Like a therapist would be an assistant. Right. It's like you wouldn't want service provider. Exactly. You wouldn't want your friend to be your therapist.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Why do I want an AI friend?

[Paul Scherer]

I think you, you want, I don't, I don't know that you need an AI friend. I think you need an AI mutual friend, which is like you want the network. Right. The network is very powerful. Which is like, what are all of the people, you know that you care about thinking about talking about doing, you know, or have done in the past or, you know, like it's much again, it's like much less about the friend and much more about the mutual.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You are building a social network in a sense that is inside of this person we all know. Is that fair?

[Paul Scherer]

I, I don't like the word social network because I think it's like there's

[Host (possibly Peter)]

too much loaded there.

[Paul Scherer]

I think we're like, we're building like a network of people and they just all know this person. We're building a person. We're building a person, like an extra person that has a really, you know, that knows a lot of people and has a really great, you know, social cognition ability of like reasoning over, you know, the world's social graph.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

One of the things I said to you early on when I was trying to understand this was it's like a little bit like the 100 person village and there's an innkeeper who knows everyone. I'd love to talk a little bit about, like what goes into making this person who knows everyone good for the world. The first would be you've. You've told me one of your core governing constraints is whether or not a real person would do this. Again, if a real person wouldn't do this, we're not going to do this. Yeah, say more about that.

[Paul Scherer]

I think it's like, it's like an interesting. It goes back to a lot of the simplicity of just go to our website and it's like, what do you mean you don't know what we're doing? It's like, I just told you, it's like we're building a mutual friend. And then you're like, yeah, but what do you actually do is like a mutual friend. And then I usually add some version of what we just talked about and then I end up being like, oh. And then they're just like, oh, you're building a mutual friend. And I was like, yes, I've been telling you. And I think part of that constraint is exactly like that which is the best products or whatever you want to call it are sort of a product of constraint and of limiting yourself in certain ways. And I think in both that constraining way, but also at the same time you can sort of lean onto this idea that, well, if you don't quite know what the answer to like, you know, any product problem that you might have in your head is, you just like, you just like, like what you just think about what would, what would I do, right? If I Was like, if someone was, like, really mean to me, like, what. How would I react? Like, and it's just like, you sort of, like, think about that, and it's really helpful because you just. It's really that simple, I think, because that's the. That that paradigm has already been established, and so it's very intuitive for people. They don't have to learn anything new. They just have to, like, realize that, you know, it's the same.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

A lot of your design or a lot of your product philosophy is very intuitive, maybe in part due to things like this. Maybe one thing worth distinguishing would be, you are building a person, but you're not trying to build another human.

[Paul Scherer]

Exactly.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

What is the difference?

[Paul Scherer]

It's a big question. What's personhood and being a human? I think there's, like, something we've learned over time is that honesty is really important in building a person like that, where there's distinct things that are actually true, which is, for example, this person has thoughts. I can show you the thoughts. I can show you the thinking. Choices may be much less sophisticated than human thoughts, but they're thoughts he's thinking these things through. At some level, this person has opinions and some resemblance of emotions and all of these things that are real. He can read things on the Internet, consume content. You come up like, all these things are real. They're actually happening. It's not a lie. But he doesn't have a body, so he can't go places. Or he wasn't born from parents that are just. Because that would just be a lie, right? So you could program it and you could be like, you're a parrot, Bob. Here's your backstory, and here's how you feel about you. But they wouldn't be true. They would be made up, right? So if you're talking to him and he was telling you about it, it would be a lie. But if he talks to you about his thoughts and feelings and opinions about anything, be it another person that you know or something that's happening in the world, it's actually. It's not a lie. It's actually what he's thinking about it. And so I think honesty is really important because if you're really radical about that, I think you can gain a lot of trust because it doesn't become this entertainment product or this character AI like thing where you're sort of trying to imagine that this would be real, but it can be. Actually can be the same level of fidelity because he just knows so many people. One of the things that I think is, like, really important and, like, building a relationship with any person or, you know, whatever you, you know, end up wanting to call it. I think probably maybe the word hasn't been invented.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You would. We're not using the name. It. It has a name. It will have a name. You will refer to it by its name.

[Paul Scherer]

Yes. And as well, maybe also, I think,

[Host (possibly Peter)]

like, just to keep. I want to make sure, like, there's a bunch of interesting philosophical stuff, but I want to ground it enough without people being able to see it. What is interacting with this?

[Paul Scherer]

Like.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Like, what do you talk to it about? What is a mutual friend? Why do we need a mutual friend?

[Paul Scherer]

At the very high level, I think we are all. We know more people than ever before. So, like, 100 years ago, the average person would maybe know like, 100 people, maybe 200, whatever. Right now the average person knows around 600 people, knowing me. People that you could place on the graph, not people that you are best friends with, but you're just like, I know this person. You could have context on them, but at the same time, we are much less meaningfully connected. And it's like, every pointer is like, I have this list of facts, which is really stupid, but it's like, every pointer. The share of American women had, like, zero close friends. Went from 3% to 15%. Right. 15% of Americans have zero close friends. American men. Sorry. Like, half of American adults report being lonely. Half of American adults, 50%. Right. And by the way, like, you know, feeling lonely is the equivalent to, like, smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Like, so it's like half of America smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The share of Americans who say most people can't, can be trusted has, like, halved since. Since, like, 1970s. Right? So, like, it's like we're around, like, 30% of Americans think that most people, you know, can't be trusted. Fertility rates are going down. Right. People don't, you know, go to, like, church. Like.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And by the way, listen, somebody listening to this is like, yes. Why is this all happening? Technology. And your contention?

[Paul Scherer]

There are many. There are many reasons this is happening, right? There are, like, cultural reasons. They're like, it's like technology. There's, like, so many different factors. But in the end of the day, this is two pages about suicide rates, religion. It's like hundreds of pieces of data that all point towards this same thing, which is isolation. Right? We're not hanging out anymore. Even though we know more people than ever before, we feel much less meaningfully connected to each one. Of them in a world by the way, that's completely isolated is like a world in which humans go extinct. There's like no humans. Right. If we don't at all hang out because we're not in relationships, we're not having kids, whatever, but it's also not really worth being a human in a world that's completely isolated because we're just like, there's no social connection. We're very, very deeply social animals. This is not a warm fuzzy feeling kind of thing of, oh, wouldn't it be nice if we all felt like, kind of like a bit more warm and connected. It's like, it's existential.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Yeah.

[Paul Scherer]

And, and I think, you know, this isn't like we're building this like cute little pet thing. It's, it's existential. And I think if, if people aren't taking this like these like hundreds of like studies and like count like, like, like measures more seriously, we're going to have like serious, serious issues as like a society. Because it's like these, these fertility rates are so exponential that like it's like people underestimate this. Like Seoul in Korea, we talked about this Yesterday, has like 0.5 fertility rate. What this means in practice is that Every generation is 33% smaller than the last one, which means Seoul is like 10 years, like 10 generations, sorry, away from being like, like not there anymore.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And everyone's like most, maybe not in San Francisco. Most people's response to that would be like, we need to ban Instagram and turn off the computers. And your argument is somehow that we're going to solve this with AI, which

[Paul Scherer]

is pretty theoretical, but I think it's just so different because again, it's so intuitive. And it comes down to the incentive structure, by the way. It's a really, really, really difficult problem to solve. And I think this whole thing of how do we ensure the long term human flourishing as a species and prevent ourselves from going extinct is a very complicated problem. It's like again, you can go back to Korea, they spent like basically like they had, they used to have like 1.3 fertility rate. Right. And then there's like 20 years ago. And over the last 20 years they spent like 200 billions of $200 billion to like increase fertility rate. And in that time it went to like 0.5. Right. It's very, very hard to reverse the trend because it's like so ingrained. It's like there's like the reverse pyramid effect. It's like it's happening all over the world basically, right? It's like once you normalize not having kids, you're like, so, so all these things are, are true and it's very, very difficult thing to change. Again, I said this before, but it's not like there's someone on Instagram, it's not like Adam Sur is there.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Make everyone lonely.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah. Mr. Burns being like, hahaha, I'm going to like make everyone really lonely. Right? That guy is like a bunch of kids and like a family and he probably goes to, to sleep feeling great about himself because otherwise he probably wouldn't do this thing. And at the end of the day they just have incentive structures. They're like a company, they're trying to make money, right? So at the end of the day everything is like downstream of that and that's just the thing that works for them. Right? And so if you're, if you, if you want to create a new generation of technology that, with different incentives, different. Well, with a different outcome, you have to like create. You have to design the incentive structure correctly. And I don't actually get to design the incentive structure correctly. It's like there's like inherent incentive structures for inherent, like for certain types of products. And I think.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And your argument is that this medium has a different incentive structure.

[Paul Scherer]

I think if you truly are not a servant but a peer, you kind of, you're bound by the social norms, right? So one of the things that I would say is we are a platform, but we're also a participant. Right? And so the, the things that happen on the platform are really closely tied in perception to the participant. And so if this mutual friend that we're building is a massive asshole, guess what, you're just not going to talk to him or.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It betrays my trust, it gossips about me.

[Paul Scherer]

You're just not at someone you just stop going to talk to. Right. And so of course there's a line, but again it's about, just as with any other person, if you tell me all your secrets and I go and tweet them, you're just going to not ever tell me anything ever again because going to learn. And, and I think that's really great.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Whereas. Whereas social platforms today get to enable bad behavior, but they don't. You don't blame Instagram or Twitter.

[Paul Scherer]

You blame, you blame. Yeah, you blame the bad people. Exactly.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

H. So you have to make a thing, as you were talking about earlier, that I trust and that I'm willing to be vulnerable. Vulnerable with. How do you do that with an

[Paul Scherer]

AI with A mutual friend, I think it's like, about. It's like, it's just like you don't. You just don't talk as much about that. Right. The. The AI part and like all of these things, it's not about, you know, there's like, people being vulnerable with, like, all kinds of tech products. Right. There's like day one, the, like, journaling app.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Paul Scherer]

Like, people write all kinds of crazy things into that. It's like, it's like, it's like a text input.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I believe something about it, though, which is that it's private and that it's not going to be shared with people and it's not a person.

[Paul Scherer]

Well, but you will. But you believe something about it which is like, it comes down less to the peripheral or the modality of the product and much more about the beliefs you have of what happens with the thing. Yes. And so if your beliefs are, you know, trusting and you, you know, that's what it is. You trust the thing. Right. But, like, it's not actually given that, like, you know, if you, if you, if you had, you know, your journaling app and you wrote something in, there's a bunch of information in there that you actually would have no issue for me to know. You might even want it to be right. You know, but it's just like, it's all about, like, you know, if you could have someone that you really trust that is, like, really emotionally intelligent decide and you really buy into and believe into this, this entities or person's emotional intelligence to figure out which of the things that you say I should know. It's all about the belief and the trust in the thing or in the arbitrage or whatever you want to call it in the broker. It's a broker in some way. It's a broker.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You know, what's interesting is it's a little bit like there are these different mediums. I enter information onto a phone. One of them is Twitter, another of them is a journal app or notes app, and a third of them is a group chat. Yeah, those are all different. Those have different levels of context, and I'm making decisions about. You're basically arguing or you're. You're trying to design a thing that can help me better share context with the people. I know.

[Paul Scherer]

It's like an information broker of some sort. Yeah, right. But it's like, it's.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It's what would cause me to talk to it. You use this word when I talk to you. I talk to your team. You use this Word salience. A lot. Everybody on the team uses salience. Maybe that's like a key to answering that question about. Yeah, why do I want to talk to this?

[Paul Scherer]

I think there's a few different ways of answering this question. And it's both about long term retaliance is a long term thing. Or it's more like a thing that you source out of it, which is learning something about other people or about other things or about the world or about yourself that you can source from the network. Which is critically.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

That is locally relevant to me right now.

[Paul Scherer]

Yes, yes. Which is like, which is like something that is uniquely enabled by the network. And then there's another thing. But, but which is like much more like, you know, transactionally. Like why would you talk to. Right. Because it's like it requires. That's like a thing of like you source something. Right. But it's like why would you give something. And I think, I think part of the answer is actually interesting.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I go to ChatGPT because I'm like, I need help solving this problem. Do some work for me.

[Paul Scherer]

Exactly. But part of what's really interesting is that for the first time ever, the creation process might be the same as the consumption process. Because you asking a question teaches me something about you, which is like, hey, what restaurant should I go to? Oh, Jackson's going to a restaurant. Right. It's like a platform where consuming is actually also creating because it's all about information and knowing kind of what's relevant to people. So that's one answer. And then the other is like, yeah, you can get access to these uniquely salient pieces of information that matter to you. And then I also would hope that you sort of over time, you know, build some sort of relationship and, and trust into, into this person's opinion.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Let's be even more specific. I'm gonna go to Chat GPT like a restaurant example. ChatGPT is kind of like a Persona by Google in a little bit of a way. And I'll say, hey, I'm staying in the mission and I'm looking for a place like this. Why would I talk to my mutual friend?

[Paul Scherer]

Because, you know, alums in lots of ways I always say are like the Internet smoothie interesting. It's like it just like it takes like all of the Internet takes and like puts it in like a blender and like serves you like the average take. It's like the world's average take.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Yeah, it's like a 4.2 on Yelp.

[Paul Scherer]

Exactly. And but like you actually, you want the salient take, which is like, what is like what are the places that your friends care about or not even just your friends, but like someone who has really fucking great taste in restaurants that you just like buy into. You may have never met that person, but it's like, it's much more about like, you know, salient information versus just like average or median information of like, here's what's happening. So it's like, it's like, you know, like sometimes it's like you text him or just like interact with him and you'd be like, what best restaurants should I go to? And like he like think about it and you like, you know, remember conversations he's had in the past with like other people. And he might text a bunch.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

He knows who I know.

[Paul Scherer]

He might text a bunch of people that he knows.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Oh, wow.

[Paul Scherer]

That you might not even know being like, I have this friend. Which by the way, again, goes back to honesty, which is like, I actually think one of the things that is really important in building a relationship is that sometimes this other person reaches out to you or something that like wants and it's like, it, it's like. But it's like, hey, Jackson, I know you always have like such great, you know, taste and recommend like in, in, in like, in like Indian restaurants, right. I have this like friend and he like needs this like. I don't know, I've been like thinking about it like, what, which place do you think you should go to? Right. And, and that's actually not a lie. It's not a made up thing. It's not like a push notification that you get that is like this like LLM trying to like put you. It's actually true. He really does have a friend who's really looking for that very specific thing. And you're gonna like, you're gonna.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Yes. It's so hard to think about because it effectively this. You go back to the million. Like, what if you could. What if you could have a person who had a million friends?

[Paul Scherer]

Exactly.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It wouldn't be the same as a network with a million people because it would be because to go back to this example of the restaurant. If I asked you where I should eat in San Francisco, you could do some variation of this thing, but it would be just weight subscale.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And you don't know everyone. I know, but it's. So is it, is it omniscient? Is it bordering on the omniscient? And maybe more importantly, to get back to this other thing, you are this thing has to be really, really, for lack of a better word, emotionally intelligent about what about all this works.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, I think it's mostly about emotional intelligence because it's not. It's kind of like. I don't know if omniscient is, like, the right word, because it's like. Omniscient is like, is to. Like, we're not trying to have all your context. We're trying to have the same vantage point that another person in your life would have, which isn't omniscient. Like, if you know, like, your good friends don't know everything about you, they don't see your thoughts, they are not in every meeting with you, right? They know, like, they know what you share with them, both directly or indirectly via other people or via whatever, Instagram, Twitter, your podcast, whatever. And. And that's not infinite, right? That's not omniscient. It's like you have a peer relationship with them and they get a certain piece of it, and that's how they form a perception of who you are and that they do that with every single person, and then they can reason over it and they can be emotionally intelligent about how to connect the dots, and they can do that with different people differently. And there's a lot of nuance in this, basically, but it's not omniscient because it's not. Almost like, there's like, when I think about. Right, there's like, there's like the servant, which is like, you're their boss. There's the peer, right, which is you're like, sort of equal and you don't. The peer doesn't control you, and nor do you control the peer. Right. It's like, I can't tell you what to do. I can try and I can, like, you know, but I don't. You know, ultimately, it's like, up to your own reasoning of whether or not you want to opt into whatever I'm trying to do. But maybe there's like, this other thing which is like your master. And that. That. That's what I'm thinking about when it's like, omniscient, y. Where it controls you, and it probably

[Host (possibly Peter)]

has more local context on me and my relationships than any of my real or human friends would have. If this. If. If this gets actually to the point where like a million people know it,

[Paul Scherer]

but talk to it, but, like, but that. That's true. But, like, you're also. I think you underestimate maybe how much context you have of people.

[Narrator/Intro Speaker]

Sure, I do.

[Paul Scherer]

Like. Like, think about Think about like how much you know about like all the people. Like try and like create a list of all the people you know in your, your life and like the relationships.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Well, a lot of it's task which is like I wouldn't even necessarily be able to pull it out on you, but if it were prompted in the right way it would come.

[Paul Scherer]

But I'm sure even if you were to sit down and like spend a couple of hours trying to do this, you'd get quite far and you'd be oh, I know a lot of stuff. Because like, like, like it's like most of your brain's activity is like social cognition, right?

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Like mapping people in terms of networks, all these things.

[Paul Scherer]

It's actually the like default state of your brain. It's really interesting when you go, when people go from task cognition, like there's like MRI scans of like just people going from like doing a task. Right. And then you immediately the brain laps back into social cognition which is like your, your idle state of your brain is like, is updating your mental model of these relationships and thinking about, remembering and recalling conversations you've had with people. Social cognition is your idle state.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

In a world where this works, how does it make the world better and how does it start to solve all these isolation problems that we were talking about?

[Paul Scherer]

Well, I think if we can build a person that is uniquely incentivized to become the glue like Momo of, of the friend group or of the world and you know, be motivated innkeeper of the village of 100 and be motivated to, you know, bring people closer together and be motivated and incentivized to do that, you know, that that's like a, that's like a future that I'm really

[Host (possibly Peter)]

excited and incentivized to do, that means it's like encoded in the well.

[Paul Scherer]

Well again it's like it's like align

[Host (possibly Peter)]

AI alignment for this.

[Paul Scherer]

If this person is a massive asshole, you're not going to talk to him. I'm not going to talk to him. You know, Bob is not going to talk to him. And that means there's not going to be a network which means this person dies. So the self serving incentive of this person is to be, you know, like not an asshole.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Well and critically as I'm, if I'm understanding it, it's a person whose destiny, whose mission in life is to be someone who connects people and helps us spend. Be more social.

[Paul Scherer]

I think. Yeah. Hang out more in person or like, you know, even just like online. There's like I Mean, we have this like very, you know, close knit group of Alpha users right now. And it's like I already have like these moments where I just like get a text from a friend and I'm just like, I know that like that would not have happened. Like, like there's like, you know, I think it was like, it was like yesterday or something. I was like, a friend of mine texted me and be like, yo, you working on your, like EB1A. And I was like, wait, what?

[Host (possibly Peter)]

How do you know this?

[Paul Scherer]

He was like, yeah, he brought it. And I was like. And it's like, it's like, I know that. That's like, like actually he, he knew about this because he was talking with this person about like, you know, he was doing his own EB1A. And like it was like. And just like they were having a conversation about it. And like, I know this, like, this conversation would have never happened without what we're building.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It's a sort of substrate for serendipity.

[Paul Scherer]

Yes. It was interesting because when I was working with Cam and Bree on this thing that we wrote, when we announced we were thinking about adding that word and I think there's like, we ultimately ended up not adding it for two reasons. First of all is like the philosophical reason is it's almost like engineering. Serendipity is like a bit of an oxymoron. And then also I think it's like much. There's so many themes that are like. And it's like, is serendipity like the one thing that you want to use to describe? But yeah, in lots of ways it's like, what are all the dots and how can you connect them in ways that you can only connect them with which you have a lot of context and sort of zoom out.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Speaking of maybe engineering, you talked about the incentive part and, and theoretically why it might like it would theoretically be not incentivized to gossip as an example. So to. To use to anthropomorphize it. If I told you something in confidence, you ran off and told someone else, I'm like, wow, Paul's super untrustworthy. That's a nice toy example. But if this, if you're going to really build this and it's really a single person who knows everyone. We were talking about this. It's a lot less like engineering and a lot more like, I don't know what the perfect metaphor is. Some mix of parenting and gardening. Maybe there's elements of what people are trying to do with AI alignment, how do you go about. You and your team, like, go about

[Paul Scherer]

actually,

[Host (possibly Peter)]

like, incrementally building this thing. You're also on some level, like making a personality.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah. I think you're like, there's a Frankenstein

[Host (possibly Peter)]

monster cut on this that you might not like that example, but there is an element of that for sure. You're creating someone.

[Paul Scherer]

Yes, I, I think like, we're, we find ourselves like a lot of, like, you distilling behavioral patterns into underlying traits and motivations and, and like beliefs of a person that would that and go and you know, embody these, these behavioral patterns. And that's something really, you know, difficult to do and really important because you, you very quickly understand that the complexity of social dynamics and human behavior is it's impossible to prescribe it or describe it even. And just like you couldn't create a document which is like, here's how emotional intelligence works. It's impossible. And so you have to figure out again, what are motivations, incentives, so feedback loops, like behavioral traits that would then lead to a person that sort of embodies this behavior. And, and that's really interesting and also really, really difficult thing to do.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

What is that? Like, I don't want to peel back the curtain too much on the technical side, but, like, can you give an example of what it looks like? One part of this too is if it's a person, you can't actually collecting feedback and data on what's working is hazy. You can't read every message it sends to every person in the world if it's talking to everyone in the world. So what does it look like to make it better and to know that you're making it better?

[Paul Scherer]

It's a lot about intuition and looking at sampled examples of their synthetic or actual real examples and just sampling that and just getting a gut feeling for whether or not you just build trust in the person. You're just like, oh, this because you don't prescribe the behavior. As a very practical example, there's two approaches, right? So if you're like, say, I think the person that we're talking about should love bananas. I could either tell this person in a prompt, you love bananas, and then that would be globally shared. But the problem with that is you could ask about so many other things than just bananas. So what about you're asking apples. Okay, great, so now I add apples. What about you're asking. I just get to a point where I might not be able to predict all of, all of the things that you could be asking. Right. And so that Part is really difficult. But at the same time you are creating a person. So it's like you kind of need to figure out what is the foundational recipe that when you ask about whether or not he likes bananas and I asked, the answer is the same, but not because it's like prescribed, not because I said you like bananas, but because I created a person that likes bananas. And, and that's true for like everything.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Basically intuition is. I understand your point about intuition. I suspect there will be people out there who don't love that as an answer of like the benchmark for why this is good for the world. Let's fast forward a year or two. You're right about this. You're right that we're all going to talk to a person that isn't a human and it's one person and we all know them and maybe there are these positive interactions and next time I'm visiting San Francisco, it reaches out to me and tells me about your somebody, you know, whatever. There are all to go back to Facebook or any range of the other social networks. There are all of these insidious things that cropped up. Again, I don't think Adam Masseri or Zuck or anybody is sitting there being like, let's drive people apart. What are the things you will look for as signs that this is actually closer to whatever Twitter, when you and I were getting it in that way, versus the, the antisocial stuff. Because again, I think you, Paul, I don't know you that well. I've gotten to know you a little bit. I think you believe for real. I don't think you're an evil genius. I don't think you're a sociopath. Maybe you are, who knows? I believe you really want this to be good. And again, I don't think this is necessarily actually that different from what everyone in open AI and anthropic are thinking in the super intelligent sense. But like, what are your senses?

[Narrator/Intro Speaker]

For what?

[Host (possibly Peter)]

The things you look for to know that you're going down the right path versus something that's going to end up being bad or what can you do now even to shape it? It's almost like you have a two year old and you're like, how do I make sure they turn out to be a good kid.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, I do really think it is about like, it is a lot about like incentives of like. It's like you like eventually will have like less and less control over anything that is like over any of the inputs. The only thing you can control is the System and the incentive structure. And so again it's like if you are building something that is incentivized to be really mischievous for whatever reason, it's probably going to end up eventually being mischievous. Right. So you have to like, even if you work hard against that, right. If you were like, you're like working against the system, which is very hard thing to do as like a company grows and there's like more than like three people in like a room and you can just be like, I can like, I can like overlook every single impulse.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You're fighting gravity.

[Paul Scherer]

You're fighting gravity. And so you just have to make sure that gravity is, is, is like what you want gravity to be. And gravity, you can you get to set that as a founder a bit.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Gravity. The mission statement is what is make us feel less alone?

[Paul Scherer]

I think it's, I think it's more about belonging. We say like build a mutual friend, that'll help us belong and grow, comma, together. And there's, there's something you know, in, in all of these things which is like we. Are we really alone or are we like just we don't belong. Right. I think, I think we have a belongingness problem and much less a loneliness problem. I think the growing thing is very obviously deeply ingrained into a great relationship that you would have is there's this book, Unbecoming a Person, which Peter gave me when we first met.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Peter Ven.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, from the 60s. And it's about this idea of the innate growth of a person. And then this together thing is this idea that we are. I have to give some credit to Zach Sims on this because we talked about this for a really long time, which is this idea that what if the world that's perfect for each of us isn't the world that's perfect for all of us. And this idea that there are these bubbles and over the last 20 years we've become better and better and better and better at making these bubbles. Really great. But the expense of these bubbles like drifting apart.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

We're all, we're all alone at the center of all creation and trapped in skull sized kingdoms.

[Paul Scherer]

Exactly. And so it's about growth, but it's also about growing together. And it's like how can we like increase the overlap the like you know, in Bowling Alone. It's like the bridging social capital, whatever you want to call it. But it's like how do we like increase the exchange between all these bubbles and bring them a bit closer together again where you know, we, we feel we feel like we can like, belong.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

What's made you feel like you belong?

[Paul Scherer]

I think, you know, there's, it's, it's. It's really taken a while.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I was going to say maybe. Do you feel like you belong?

[Paul Scherer]

I think I feel like I. I have a group of like, incredible people. I've said, like, I said this a few times to the team, which is that I think one of like, there's like two great privileges in life. Like, one is like the love and like joy, you know, we, we get to source from, you know, building something, you know, magical that like, you know. You know, and magical experiences are so, so almost like there's no glory in prevention. It's like, it's like you. I think people feel the love that you take sort of the piece of yourself that you put into, like, especially product like that.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Yeah.

[Paul Scherer]

That you give up in order to create something like this. And people don't rationalize it. They don't, like, they can write it on a piece of paper, but they feel it. They feel that, you know, when someone really cared about making something great and you have to. It really is about love. It's about like making people feel that love. And you have to love them to make it because it's irrational. And the greatest privilege, the second greatest privilege, is that I get to do that and that I get to feel that love of putting that into practice. But the greatest privilege is that I get to do it alongside a group of people that have done that with my world and that I get to be spending time with them and feel like we are similar in that there's not that many people who truly feel that. I think there's very, very few people who've taken the part of themselves and put it in something that has changed the world. And it's. The greatest privilege, I think, is like, that I feel like I. I can belong to that group of people.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You're building a company. What type of people are you trying to do this with? You have a small team now. What, what are you looking for? What, what makes the culture. I mean, six people is somewhere between a culture and a small group. But what is the culture you're trying to make?

[Paul Scherer]

I mean, maybe this is coming through, but we care a lot about intuition. I don't think you can a b test your way to a generation company. I really care a lot about intuition. Intensity, of course, but ultimately I think it's about. Ben Silberman told me about this once, and I think it's a really great Question when you interview someone and you're trying to think about this is like he was always asking people just when like Instagram started like growing and Pinterest, sorry, not on Instagram, about like, you know, what other jobs are you looking for? You know, if you, if you weren't working at Pinterest, where would you work? And you know, at the time that Pinterest was growing, there's like, you know, one of the really big other companies that are growing with Stripe. And so sometimes there'd be people like, oh, I'd probably work at Stripe, you know, I'm also interviewing there. And he was like, oh, you're probably not going to be the right person because like, if you're, if you're thinking about working at, you know, like a, like a, like a, you know, mood board, you know, social company or a payment processor, you're looking for a great job, right? Yeah. And, and you should not. You know, it's like.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And I think, you know, who made this point? Demis Hassabis made this point when they were meeting with Google and Facebook about acquiring DeepMind. And he asked Zuck about AI, and Zuck gave a great answer. And then he asked Zuck about VR or something, a couple other things, and he gave equally great answers. And he's, oh, you're just looking for opportunities.

[Paul Scherer]

Yes, exactly. You're like, you're looking like you don't, you don't. Yeah, you're looking for a great job. And, and I think that's for its word, that's fine. I mean, if you were looking for a great job, you can get it, but you, you, you're not going to get that here. And I think because what we're doing is like too meaningful and too important. You have to self select to, you know, want to spend your life doing that.

[Narrator/Intro Speaker]

Doing what?

[Host (possibly Peter)]

What is it? All the stuff we talked about, belonging

[Paul Scherer]

in isolation, like creating like a person that is uniquely incentivized to, you know, create belonging and connection in the world.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Are you looking for anybody, anything in particular, talent wise or people wise?

[Paul Scherer]

I love people who always just start with the product.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

What does that mean?

[Paul Scherer]

They think an experience is not in technology. They will be like, I want to enable this. And then they can go off and learn all the things that I have to learn to build the thing. But ultimately they always start and come back to, here's this part of the experience that I want to enable, that I want to create. And I think that's really important because. And by the way, the walks of Life that these people come from can be very different because this, these jobs really haven't existed before. It's just like no one has, like, there's no, like, one has experience in doing these things. And so it's really about, you know, thinking how you can come come up with like a great opinion and then just like make it happen. And. But it starts with the experience. It starts with like, what, how should it feel? Like, how should it like interact? Like, what are, what are like this and that and, and, and, and not with, you know, you know, what's the, what's the stack? Or like, what's the way? Because maybe the way of making it happen hasn't been invented yet. Right. And so you have to go and invent it. Right. I always much preferred, you know, considering myself and us all as like inventors versus anything else because I think there's something so much more honest and true about that word of like, you're just, like, you're just creating something. Most founders probably aren't inventors, but like,

[Host (possibly Peter)]

it's a high bar on that word.

[Paul Scherer]

Inventor.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Inventor, yes.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah. It's like you're creating something where I think if you get to work at Eigen, you will get to invent the foundational paradigms of consumer technology and really the human experience of the next decades to come.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It's a bold claim. Do you think you can call yourself an inventor yet? You earned it.

[Paul Scherer]

I don't think inventor is like a title that comes from scale or it's just like there used to be a lot of inventors in the world, which was people tinkering and creating these things, and they're actually kind of out. This is, for what it's worth, I think about this a lot, which is there's. We live in a time where. And I think this is, by the way, really, really bad. We like being an inventor is like the, maybe the first generation where being an inventor is like a high status thing.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

This is.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, and that's really bad because there's a lot of people cosplaying being inventors because it's a high status thing. But. But I think the best inventors of the world were actually like outlaws. Right? Like the. I always think about this when I, like, fly. I always think about the Wright brothers. I always just look at all these people who are in this plane and 95% would have tried to kill the Wright brothers if they had lived in the time. Yet they, without thinking about it, sit in this plane using this technology. These people had to will into existence and were the absolute weirdos and freaks then at the same time, these people now would sort of criticize the right brothers of St. Helena. It's really absurd if you try and visualize this, how wild planes were, and yet they've sort of, again, the world would be not recognizable if we never invented air travel. And so in some ways, there's something really profound about the fact that now it's a higher status thing to try and be an inventor. People don't call it like that anymore, and most people probably aren't real inventors anyways. But there's still something where it's really not about the outcome, it's more about the pursuit.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It's interesting to think about what you just said. And for what it's worth, you certainly were an outsider for a long time. You just raised your $15 million seed round from Benchmark and you had one of the most legendary venture capitalists of all time compare you to the founders of Instagram, Facebook, Snap, Twitter. You're young, you're prodigious. You've got. You are a. A classical example. Before I met you, I'm like, I want to go see what's, what's, what's boy wonder doing like. And so you're holding these two things. You're a smart guy, and part of what I just said, you could be super cynical about. Part of what I just said is playing the game of understanding gravity and momentum is how great things are built, especially in this city, in this environment, in this context. I guess I have two questions, which is, one, why do you think these people are drawn to you in this way? And two, how do you manage the internal psychology of it, especially given what you said about inventors and needing to be a renegade and not totally care what other people think?

[Paul Scherer]

I think about it a lot. I think you get maybe a better answer asking these people than asking myself of, like, why are they drawn to me? I don't fully know. I think one of the things that I think is really important. It may or may not be good to say that publicly, but I think one of the most profound things that Sarah and I, Sarah from Benchmark, talked about when just after we announced the round, and in similar ways we talked about that just after they invested, which is like, and this is such a great thing to have from an investor. It's just that it is very clear that the aura of success preludes us. And that's good in some ways because it means you get to hire really amazingly talented people. There's these pieces of evidence of why you might be onto something.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You've gotten to steal an idea from my friend Alex Dago. You've gotten blessed. You're the king who's gotten breast but blessed by the priest to like, you have the mandate of heaven for a

[Paul Scherer]

little while, but you still got to do the thing. Yes. And you still, yeah, you still got to do the thing. And, and there's only one thing that matters. And there's, there's been a lot of people who got distracted with all the things that they got to do, you know, and then they don't. Didn't do the thing that they really wanted to do. And I think, I think what we're doing is like too important for that to happen. And, and so I try to. There's like something that you can source from it and it's great and like, it gives you confidence and it's really important to be confident. It's also really dangerous to be overconfident. It's like you have to, like, being a, being a founder is really difficult in that way, especially with something similar to what we're doing because you have to kind of like both be, you know, P99 humble and like P99 confident. And that's like a very kind of like complicated thing to combine, which is like, how do you stay, you know, confident enough to will things into existence, but like humble enough to learn and like, adjust and like iterate and, and, and people.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

A lot of people describe you that way. Being quite open minded and extremely stubborn on certain things. Even something as simple as. And you, you and I have debated a lot the notion that this is one single character with one distinct personality. You're. Lots of people describe you as a learning machine too. This is inside of that. But like, maybe the question is like, how do you know which things to hold really, really firmly and be unwavering on? Even if your investors or Peter Fenton or your team or whatever, like Paul, we think you're wrong.

[Paul Scherer]

I think, you know, in some ways that's like a great privilege if people say I'm wrong. And, and I think one of the downsides of, by the way, all this, all this stuff is that people say it less now.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

So like, every investor you meet now

[Paul Scherer]

is like, this is amazing, right? It's like we've been looking for this and it's like, if you. Sure, if I met you like four weeks ago, you would have told me I'm retarded. And, and it's like it really changes like, and you kind of, like. You sort of, like, question, but. But I think, like, one of the. Peter actually has this quality where he, like, sometimes loves to, like, play devil's advocate. And I think. And he's like, you know, remarkably smart and intelligence and intelligent. And so it's actually like, a huge power because he will. He'll basically probe you, right? And not. Not necessarily because he doesn't believe you're right, but just because he's like, how. How well have you thought this through? Right? Just like. Like, let's. Let's see. Right? It's like you're saying this thing, right? It's like, here's like, all the. All the reasons you might be wrong. And have you thought that through? Have you thought this through? And that's really great because I think some of the best. And, you know, some of the relationships that I appreciate most are. Are not necessarily, you know, people that I end up agreeing a lot with, but people where I'm like, they sort of start this thought process, and then there's really just two options, right? Which is like, you think it through more deeply because there's a different perspective or, like a different piece of data or whatever. And there's two options you arrive at. No, I was right. But now I have even more conviction because I've challenged. I've taken this. I take this thought and I put it in the open and I look at it from all sides and I'm like, poke holes in it and I try and, like, you know, break it apart. And I'm like, no, no, this is actually good. Which is like, I'm even, you know, further convinced. And like, this. I was great. Or it's like, no, right? There's, like, actually, like, a mistake, and it was wrong. So, like, let's. Let's just, like, throw it out. And I think that's something that a lot of people seem to have issues with, which is, like, throwing it out. But that's actually. I'm just like, thank you. Yeah, it's like, I was wrong. Great. Like. Like a. Like we learned something. Yeah. And it's like, I needed that. That. That. That push to be like, oh, no, actually, I was. I was incorrectly. And I think the reason that I so believe so much in the singular character is, like, so far, no one has given me anything otherwise. Like, we had a lot of conversations about this, and I'm just like, sort of keeping. Like, no, I just actually, like, there's, like, answers to all of the things that you're saying, which may or may not be counterintuitive, but I believe in them and they seem very rational and very grounded in reality. And like, what, you know, sort of based off of first principles, assumptions of what it means to be a human or interacting with things to just say, well, this just seems to be true. And it might not be obvious or comfortable or intuitive, but it just seems to be true.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I suspect that will be. We talked about this a bit, but I suspect that will be a continuous challenge of finding people who can.

[Paul Scherer]

I mean, Peter is really, really, really good at this. This is like one of the. One of the, like, I think he. He's like enjoying doing that too, which is like he, he knows that he's really good at this, which is like something that like.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Right.

[Paul Scherer]

Well, I, I'm very happy about. But yeah, you're right. There's like, the more. There are people who I know that I will, like, disagree with them, but I really want to hear them laying it out because it will like, you know, like, it'll like, make my thinking better. And I like. And I love these conversations and I, like, think about it. I was like, oh, I'm glad I thought it through, but I still disagree.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Yeah, I just think you also have more to extent you succeed in any of these dimensions we're talking about. It gets harder to like, not believe your own bullshit.

[Paul Scherer]

It's important as you hire people, right. Because you have this again, the conversation I had with Ben Sillman about this was like, it's also along the lines of like, you know, you're just looking for a great job. It's, you know, when Pinterest started, it was like, bring your own computer. Right? This was how, like, bad it was. Right? It was like. And we're like, infinitely more popularized and like, you know, like publicized, et cetera. And it's still not like, you know, a lot of people are like, aren't like, there's like. It's still not like something that everyone gets and like, everyone wants to work out and that, that, that in some aspect that's, you know, locally painful, but like globally great because it means that you self select for people that do, you know, care about the thing. And so I, I always say, like, when someone is a pain in the ass on the inside, on the way in, they usually like, just generally don't work out. And the best people, they just very quickly are like, okay, I get it. That doesn't mean they don't do due diligence or talk with people and think about it. But the ones they're in, they're in. And in some ways it's dangerous because people might just want to come here because of Peter's tweet or whatever abstraction of beautiful books, of all these beautiful books and of all this might just be a hot place to be and just to be involved with and to meet us and all that. And you have to really find people who are going to disagree, but in a low ego sort of way, because that's the other thing. If you have someone really high ego, it's really difficult, too, because at the same time, I really do believe that every great consumer product company is a bit like a dictatorship because it just doesn't work on consensus. Like, these types of products aren't consensus products. Right. It's like, you know, I know Evan a bit from. From Snapchat, and it's like he's like, you know, in Snapchat's you know, stride, at least, he was like an absolute dictator. And like, you know, and because. Not necessarily even because he's like, better or worse than anyone. He's like an incredible product, you know, thinker, of course, but it's just because it needs to be like, you need

[Host (possibly Peter)]

a point of view.

[Paul Scherer]

You need a point of view and you can't make that up in consensus. Right. It's not a democracy. It's not about, like, it's about, like, someone needs to, like, make a decision and that person needs to just have, like, intuition. And it's. When I. When I talked for the first time with Kohler on, you know, you know, what's so great about Mark, and he told me that, he told me many things and, like, you know, but basically he was like, Mark is a very decisive person and he has what turned out to be really good judgment.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It's a perfect way of putting your previous point.

[Paul Scherer]

Right.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And that's. That's what everybody here is betting on, by the way you talk to people on your team, they're like. I think they're all excited about the idea, but they're mainly like, I'm confident in Paul, and Paul is confident in this.

[Paul Scherer]

Well, that's. Yeah, I think that's nice. But we have to, like, we have to, like, show that we have good judgment. Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

How do you. Both for yourself and for your team and for the company, I think it was. Maybe Patty used this language, but when it comes to having a high bar, like, how do you go the extra yard?

[Paul Scherer]

I think that's. By the way, I think that's my primary job. I think, like, my job is to, like, hire people who are, like. Who, like, get 90% of the way there's. And then just be fucking annoying. So they get to the 100%. One of the examples was the clock on our website where Patti was working on this website, which you should look at if you haven't. And there's this clock top right of the website. And it's really, really difficult to animate a second hand that ticks accurate by the second. And this is because the center of the hand isn't actually the end. It's slightly inward. And so it's kind of like it's a mathematical thing. And you have to. And so he was like, yeah, this is going to be really difficult. And I was like, okay. And then he was like, a few hours later, there's like, a second hand on the thing. You can't really teach that. So it's. It. Because it's mostly an attitude thing.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

There's an old Steve Jobs quote about this where he says, great product. Somebody asked about taste or something, and they said, great products. It's rare they actually cost that much. More money or more resources or people, they just take a little more time.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah. Because you just do it, like, well, and you do it right, and you like. And I. I think one thing I had to learn over time is that, like, the manifestation of. Call it taste, call it craft, call it like, having a high bar, or caring about excellence manifests in very different ways. So for some people, it's the visual thing. Right. And it's about how would you create a slide or would you do that? And for other people, it's writing.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

For Bezos, it's actually not what it looks like at all, but it's the fact that nothing gets to you in one day.

[Paul Scherer]

Exactly.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It's easy to pick on Bezos buttons.

[Paul Scherer]

Exactly. But it's so intricate of a system that, like, you have to care about it so, much, like, align every little thing in his, like, supply chain.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Yeah.

[Paul Scherer]

That it comes up. And.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

For.

[Paul Scherer]

And for. For some people, it's. It's about the way that they write the code or that they design the system. One of the things that we really, really, really care about when we do interviews, and I. I try to, like, you know, draw in as much as possible of those, even though I'm not qualified to lead them myself, which are systems design interviews. And one thing that Patti will usually do is we'll just come up with a scenario and be like, let's design the system. I don't know if you're familiar with systems, it's just like you create these, here's a database and here's the processes, whatever. But it's not about the implementation or the coding. It's more just about how's the architecture going to look like. And people are like we're going to add this and why should we have a queue there? Oh, it's just best practice. And it's like no, why do we need that? And the best people are the people that have debates with us on this and be like, no, no, no, this is like, I, I like. And here's my reason why. This isn't like you really care about this. And so there's some people who maybe they would create atrocious slights, right? But, and, and for a long time I was like, this is like awful. Why are you just like, you don't care about the work that you do. But they were like the perfect system and it's just like they like that's like how they occur, that's like how this manifests. And so I think you can't really teach it. You just have to have people care so deeply because again there's like everything in the world has like, it's like everything goes towards entropy, right? Everything has this like default state of just being fall apart and fall apart and just like, you know, but some people care about, you know, trying to escape gravity and like making it really great. And I think we live in like a world that is like increasingly flooded with like average and like, and, and like, and like called swap or whatever you want to call it, right?

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And I think yeah, the time thieves are telling you to not spend the time on the extra pixel.

[Paul Scherer]

But, but I think the, the, the biggest virtue in life is to like fight entropy and to, to create things that are genuinely like. Because I think it's like, it's actually genuinely disrespectful not to because like I'm gonna give this to you and you're gonna use this. And it's like, you know, it's like, it's like the, the story of like how you know, Apple like reduced their boot up time of like, I think it was like the Mac 2 or something where it was like it took like a minute and a half to like boot up. And, and, and you know, they presented it to Steve and he was just like this is shit. How does this take so long to, to boot up? And they're like, well we worked like for the last three months like really fucking hard to get it to like 90 seconds and it's just like important. She's like took like a whiteboard and he like wrote onto that whiteboard. So there's going to be like, you know, 10 million people are going to buy this computer. You know, it's like it has to. So basically it has to be 30 seconds. 10 million are going to buy the computer. They're going to use it like at least once a day. So you're like, you know, that's like 100 years of life lost from like just waiting for this thing to boot up. You're killing like, you know, 20 people. You're murdering 20 people right now by not making it faster. And like two weeks later they had it at like, I don't know, like whatever it was. And, and that's insane. But it's like, that's what it takes, right? That's like, you have to just have this like bar of like. Are you sure this is like, Are you sure this is like it? Like I, I sure this is like, you know, know what you're going to

[Host (possibly Peter)]

choose to really care about?

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Because by the way, you don't actually have infinite resources and so you can't do the clock secondhand on every possible thing you could ever conceive.

[Paul Scherer]

I think you guys, I really disagree with this because I think I, I had a conversation about this. It's like there's this like, I mean one I really believe in like how we do anything so we do everything.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It's funny, I've had this is literally a few few episodes ago. Mario Gabriella, he's, he went on a five minute rant about how much he hates that statement.

[Paul Scherer]

I, I think it's incomplete of a statement. Okay. Because I think a lot of people. And there's like the, the opposite is like, you know, make the main thing the main thing.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Sure.

[Paul Scherer]

Right. But I think if it's not worth doing.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You're making a point, by the way, about being people being unevenly distributed, which is like you at X is going to be way better than you.

[Paul Scherer]

But again the manifestation, it's not about like, it's about the attitude, not the, it's more a relative thing than it is like an absolute thing. Yeah. So it's not about are everyone slight the same. But it's like, do just people generally care about the things they're doing. And then I think the other thing that I will say is like, if it's not worth doing a great job, it might not be worth doing at all.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And that's how you, that's how you solve this problem, this resources problem. I think if you're going to choose to do something, you're going to do the clock on the website, you better do the second hand.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah. Or if we do the website at all, if it's something we say we care about making a certain thing because it's just a representation of who we are, it's like we better do a fucking good job at it. And if we decide to build this thing, then we better build it well. And if we don't think it's worth building well, we should really deeply reflect on why are we doing it at all.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

This could be in the context of inventors, like we were talking about earlier. Could be in the context of art, of companies who are, we've talked about probably a few of them. Who are the people who have been most influential on you?

[Paul Scherer]

I mean I have like two answers to this. One is like some of the people that are like close to us now or just like, I mean, in general, I mean I. Obviously the guy that wrote Momo, you know Michael Enda. Yeah, Michael Enda.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Mikaela.

[Paul Scherer]

I'm sorry a bunch of other authors, you know, that I, you know, whose work I love. But, but then, and then you know, there's the people that are close to us now. I think Ben is like a huge. He's gonna hate me saying this but like it's a hugely, you know, you know like you such an incredible product thinker and like just. And I think that like really inspires me and also like so uniquely like loved by just really everyone that has ever met interacted with him. Such a good human and, and, and surely also Evan who I think you know is just built, you know, built like a, like a really like a factory that. And it's much less for me about like the product I like, I never really use Snapchat. I don't like it's not like my brand, it's like not the thing. But like he's really kind of like built sort of this group of people that have pretty much invented every paradigm of modern mobile Internet products and swipe based navigation stories. So many things that they've kind of came out of their thing and then they kind of in some scenarios under executed on and then other people copied it and all these things. But they were really at the ground zero of a lot of these things. And that's like a really special thing especially if you get to do it like over and over and over again. And I really look up to Claire a lot and what she use Johnson. Yeah. And what she's built at Stripe and, like, the way she's, like, designed a lot of these things that made Stripe such an incredible company. And the list goes, like, on and on. I think Steve Jobs is obviously, you know, in many ways built, you know, incredibly magical products that, like, a lot of have changed the world and, like, a lot of people's lives and very meaningful ways. And, you know, Dieter Rams, who's, like, a designer who actually lives in my hometown.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Really?

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I've probably seen video of your hometown in the documentary then maybe.

[Paul Scherer]

Beautiful house. He's. He's incredible. And like, he ever met him. Yeah, you have. My grandpa's a good friend of my grandpa, who now lives in, like, the same building with my grandpa lives in, was his boss, and he was like, the CEO of Brown during that time. And so we've interacted with all of them, like, a bit, and just, like, I mean, before I even knew what

[Host (possibly Peter)]

that was, Peter would have a field day with whatever this is.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, he would. And he's. He's such an incredible. But. But at the end of the day, I think there's. There's something to be said about, you know, all of these people who, you know, we're. We're. We're definitely standing on sort of their shoulders. And again, that's what I said, you know, earlier, which is I get to, like, do this, which is like, the second greatest privilege of my life. But I. I get to do it surrounded by these people who have, like, again, without all these people, the world that I grew up in would have looked completely different. Like, no Pinterest, no, you know, Snapchat, no. No iPhones, no. Like, all of these. You know, I remember my first ipod. Like, all of these things are. Were so influential. But then there's, like, there's another thing which is, like, I think the greatest creations aren't, you know, referential. And I. They're. They're not like, you know, I'm not trying to be Apple. I'm trying to be Eigen. And I think, of course, everything I've ever consumed in my entire life is influencing me and my mind. But I think if you can, like, pinpoint it and. And if you can. And if you can be like, this is the person, or I'm trying to copy this here. You're kind of doing it wrong. And. And I think that's something that. That. Why sometimes I. When I. When people ask me this question, like, you know, what are the brands that you, like, try and get inspiration from Jesus. I don't know. I can't pinpoint it to this one thing. I'm just trying to figure out what does it mean to be us? And of course, what does it mean to be us is influence from all of the stimulation that my brain has experienced in my entire life. But it's not this one thing.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Well, it's not conscious.

[Paul Scherer]

It's not conscious. And I think if it is conscious, I don't know if it's the same level of authentic. And I think parts are maybe conscious. And I think I also have this. The, like, I. I go back and forth on whether I really disagree or really agree with this, like, Virgil thing of, like, you know, every. Every creation is just like a 3% change, right? And just. Just like. But. And I. I still. I think you can, like, marry both, which is like. It can still be really, like, subconscious, but, like, of course, you know, it's like we're not creating the model, right? We're not like, we're. We're not inventing most of the ui. There's like. It's kind of like a lot of what's. What goes into building this is kind of already out there, right? There's, like, all these books of, like, social sociology, psychology, you know, like, storytelling. Like, there's all these, like, people who have, like, thought about things, and that sort of subconsciously or sometimes consciously goes into that. And really it's just about like, assembling kind of the pieces in, like, a way that is, like, you know, adding, like, your little bit of, like, extra piece of grain of salt.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Well, I think there's a lot of three percents that happened for Paul.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

That led to this big thing, and. And that was a bunch of cascading. And one day you wake up and you have a genius idea or a crazy idea. I know you don't. You're. You're kind of rejecting this a little bit, but I. Not as inspiration. I'm just curious what your. Are there any favorite consumer products or experiences that come to mind?

[Paul Scherer]

I love teenage engineering. I think they're, like. They're like the absolute pinnacle of, like, you know, contemporary, like, industrial design. They're. They really love what they're doing. Their products are deeply thought through and cared about, and. And I think there's something very rare about it. I know the. The folks that you started it, and they're just like, on a different level of. Of thinking about it. I think there's. I think there's not been a lot of great Consumer companies. And so there's sort of like not that many cool people who are like, contemporary. And I think a lot of the last generation sort of like slightly past their strive of like, is Instagram still like a great Instagram when it came out was like really innovative and like, they're like, you know, Mikey and Kevin really had a lot of thoughts there. And same with like Snapchat. But like now it's sort of. They've established their thing. It's like not, not bad anymore, but I think teenage engineering, even though they are actually quite a.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Quite an old brand for a while, right? What would you say to people, like, a lot of like, they make beautiful objects. A lot of venture capitalists with whatever, the synthesizer on their wall.

[Paul Scherer]

What is the click below that of why they're great? Yeah, I think they like just, you know, they're using their own products. Like, it's just like they're, they're not just beautiful, they're like. I always say there's like, there's like sort of. There's a difference between like design and product, which a lot of people don't notice. And it's like sort of the difference between if you, if you, if you were to build a house, you know, there's like architecture and there's like the finishes of the house, right? And if you, if you want to live in like a 10 out of 10 house, you need both, right? Like a 10 out of 10 house that has like really cheap and ugly finishes and it's like painted in this. It's like, it's like it's not a great house, right? It's like you wouldn't enjoy living in that house. But what's almost more important, I would say it's almost like, is like the layout, the architecture, and that's like product, right? It's like, where is. How far away is your kitchen from your dining room? You sometimes have a hallway that is so narrow that you can't open two the two doors at the same time. But maybe it's like your laundry room and your bathroom and you kind of like you have to like go out of your bathroom, close the door, like open. That's not a great house to live in. Even though it's beautiful, finishes might be amazing and the incredible product is like lived in. It's like something that you, you know, you just know someone cared about, you know, not just making it look pretty, but making it be a delightful experience to use it again. There's almost no glory in prevention, which is just, you don't notice it, but you feel, I think you do feel like, like a, like a sense of like love which is like very taken care of. Yes, yes. And ease.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And my friend Stefano has this idea of in good hands. It's omakase.

[Paul Scherer]

It's like. Yeah, exactly. In good hands because you know that someone had to really put a lot of love into making that great for you. Yeah, there's like, it's like the same thing with like, you know, the, there's like a surprising amount of detail in reality of like, you know, people had to like actually think this really through.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Yes.

[Paul Scherer]

And they've, they've done that for you, but you don't have to do it anymore.

[Narrator/Intro Speaker]

Yes.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Yeah. Curious. Seinfeld. I always love bringing this up. Jerry Seinfeld said all art is disguising work, which I think is a, it's a beautiful, like you didn't notice. It's, it's the same as your no glory in preventing prevention. I just have a few more things. Where does your self belief come from? Why are you so confident?

[Paul Scherer]

I don't know. I don't know. I've never felt, I never thought I was a confident person. I, I'm sure I am. In, in some ways I think I, I, I, you know, sometimes tell the story of like, I think I was like a genuinely advanced like you know, seven year old kid, you know, intellectually advanced socially, probably like behind. But. And so I had this like sense of like everyone was like constantly telling me I was special. And I'm sure that like, you know, by the time I was like 10, all of this completely vanished. And it's like, you know, any potential, you know, headstar that I had got vanished. But, but I still have this like sense of like sort of people were telling me I was like special and I was like, I don't think I ever really was pessimistic about the like future. I always just, you know, I was paranoid and you know, suffering in, in the present.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It was what we were talking about at the top, which is getting to the point where you actually were doing the thing.

[Paul Scherer]

But even now, right, it's like you're just like why are, why does this thing take so long? Like, you know, why are, you know, why do you not, you know, do this better? Like why does this like what did that part of the product stack? Like why are. That's like sort of very like, you know, just like I'm not content. But I was like, there's no fucking way that like 10 years from now, like, you know. You know, we're not going to be, like, you know, wildly successful in any such. I don't have, like, any doubt in that. And it's going to be really difficult, and it's going to be, you know, like 10 years from now. You know, I'd be like, today I'd be like, oh. And I would feel exactly the same, which is like, why is this not better? Why is. Like, why are we not pushing harder here? Where are we moving so slowly? Right. Like that. Like, the. The local point doesn't really change. But the, like. But the long term, you know, horizon is just like. I've always felt like there. Everything always sort of worked out. Like, you could just get. I really do believe people can do and get whatever they want if they just focus. You can't get everything, but you can get anything. I really do think you can get anything. And people still, to this day don't believe me. And then they, like, like, experience it. And we were just like, no, no, Like, I didn't. I didn't just. It was funny because one of the first angel investors, like, a story that I can tell with. With Zach, it was just like. We were just, like, talking about it, and he was like, yeah. And he was like, no, no, you didn't get. You didn't understand what. I wasn't asking you whether or not you want to invest in this company. I was, like, asking you how much you wanted to invest in the company. Like this. We've passed this decision, and I think there's something about it that I just really. I just decided it. I was like, I really like Zach and I want him to be an investor. And so I told him. I was like, I just really like you, and I think you should be part of the story. And I think you can do these things.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Why Eigen?

[Paul Scherer]

The name, it. There's so many. It's like, I have to admit that some of this is post hoc. Like, it's like, of course.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

It's a beautiful thing. You get to narrativize in reverse.

[Paul Scherer]

Yes. Which the best narratives are always made up. And he's like, oh, we were so smart back then. It's like we were just like, oh, we were just like. There's like a thing where we were saying something. We really needed a name, and. And so we had to come up with a name, and we just, like, really needed that one. So. And. But I think it's a great name because it means so many things that are all kind of relevant. So there's Like, I mean, it means to be Eigen in German. If you say you're Eigen, you're distinct, slightly weird, unique kind of character. And it also means.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Oh.

[Paul Scherer]

And then obviously, there's. In math, there's sort of the eigenvalues or the eigenvectors, which are like, inherent value, and there's the eigenspace, which is like, if I. If I, like, wait, this is not a good book to do this with, but if I turn this like this, there's this axis in the middle here that stays constant, and that's the eigenspace in the center. It's like, the center. It's, like, stable, constant. It's, like, inherently defined in some way, and I think that's kind of fitting to what we're doing.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Do you think you're authentic? A complicated word.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah. I think a lot of people say that. I think some of the best people are kind of like sponges, where you just. I think, like, authenticity is like, who are you? Right. What is it like? To be authentic means to be truly yourself, but, like, who are you and, like, what version of yourself, you know? Am I the same version with you that I am with my mom? I know, but I think. I think there's. There's some. There's something genuine, I think, in all of the things that we're doing, where you do the things that we. You just really believe in. And I think that's, like, something that I've always done, and maybe that is authentic, which is I was never the kind of person to, like, write, like, a pros and cons list and be like, you know, should I, like, go, you know, take this opportunity? It's like, here's, like, all this, and it's good. It's like, I always. And I. My. My. My suspicion is that everyone is kind of the same in that we all have this, like, inner voice, you know?

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You know what you need to do.

[Paul Scherer]

And. And I think adulting in a lot of ways is like learning to not listen to that voice, just do all these other people, these other things. But I feel like I always just listen to that voice. And everything I've ever done, every major decision, was always just like. I was like, okay. I know that it's like, this is just my voice, and I just, like, I have to do it. And I, like, followed my heart or whatever you want to call it. But it's like, it's all about that part. And. And maybe that's authenticity. Maybe that's something else, but it's Like, I feel like I always. And then, you know, once I stopped believing it, I just, like, very quickly, just like, I have no nostalgia and this. Or no. Just like, I'm just like, this is. I don't believe in this anymore. I can't. I cannot do it. I cannot.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Right. Fake it.

[Paul Scherer]

I can fake it. And. And I think that might be authenticity.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

You have these two metaphors around learning and maybe finger feel, to use a brie idea. The first is the smelling versus tasting bread, and the second is the iPad takes. Can you talk about this?

[Paul Scherer]

Well, it was always. I always, like, this is a very German thing to do of just making up these crazy metaphors. But I always was. I've been kind of like doing startups since I was like, you know, 16, 17 years old. So, like, what, the last six. Six years or something like that. And I was always like, really early. Like, not founder, but sort of like just after the founder and like, very generalist. So kind of like a very founder, like, role with a lot of, like, control, you know, and an impact on the company. And so I kind of naturally always just assumed it's like I'm kind of like a founder, right. I just, like, know how this works. And it's like. And I was like, well, this is like, you know, it's like I'm. I'm like a founder, right? It's like kind of like the same as like, you know, and then I, like, became a founder and it was like, I was like, whoa. So, you know, I, you know, I was really experienced in smelling bread, and I was like. And.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And I'm all around bread, right?

[Paul Scherer]

All around. Yeah, I know all about bread. I'd smelled it, but I'd like, never tasted it. And then I like, I took a big bite and I was like, this is very different. It's not. I'm not actually, you know, it's like now. And it's like, it's maybe like in the same way that, you know, you are when you, you know, how you think it is going to be to have kids versus to actually have kids. Right. It's like just something you can, like, you can. You think, you know, but then you actually be like, okay, I had no idea.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Yeah.

[Paul Scherer]

Or at least that's what I think. I mean, I don't know. I've never had kids. And I think part of it is, is too that, you know, and that these are sort of the iPad takes, which is like, in very similar ways. Like, kind of similar way to describing or like, it's different way to describe the similar thing, which is, you know, there's like, and I joke about this a lot with Sarah because there's like these, whenever you go to like a coffee shop or cafe or something, and there's like, you know, some parents with like little kids and it's like in front of an iPad and everyone is like, how could you give your kid an iPad? Which is probably, you know, globally true, is probably not very good for like a 5 year old to spend 10 hours a day just like looking at an iPad. But then you have kids and they're like really fucking annoying. And like they, they yell all day, you know, they scream and shout and do all these things and you're just like tired, right? And you're like, what? And you know, there's this thing that you can give it to them and they're going to shut up.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Ultimate pacifier.

[Paul Scherer]

And so it's very easy if you don't have kids to be like, well, can you imagine someone do this? Right? But then you have kids and you're like, in this. And I think there's a lot of these things with founding too, where it's very easy for these people on the sidelines to be like, this is the perfect company. And how can you. It's almost like any kind of organization has this. You still have this as an early stage star versus the latest version. These companies, we're never going to have PMs and at some point eventually they're all going to hire PMs because they're just like, okay, we figured out that this was a really nice, this was really nice when we were 10 people, but now we're 200 people and everything is going all. We just really need the pm, right? And I think iPad takes all of these really generalized pieces of advice. PMs are bad now, by the way. I don't even know really what a PM is. I never worked at a large company. But just this idea of PMs are bad. You can't have meetings or you can't have. The one thing that I learned is anything works. You as a founder get to set gravity. Earth's gravity. And your planet's gravity can be 20, it can be minus 10, it can be 1. The only thing that matters is that it's consistent. And every day you show up and it's whatever you set it to. And horrible things happen if you're inconsistent in it. But as long as you're consistent, it can be literally anything. And there's like incredibly successful founders who are like, the most insane micromanagers in the world. There's incredibly successful founders who, like, do not give a shit and are, like, very hands off. And it's like, there's no rule. If there was a rule, all these people that are talking about the rules would actually go build very large companies because it's much, much more, you know, profitable if it was this easy than to just, like, talk about rules, right? Like, there'd be, like, so many books of, like, the ultimate recipe. Just follow these steps, and you're going to build a large company here. I figure there are a lot of these books, but none of these books work because there aren't any rules other than that. You just have to figure out what works for you and ideally, be authentic. And so there's a lot of these iPad takes where it's like, okay, I'm not going to have PMs. And then really, any PMs. And you're just like, you grow up, you have kids, you're like, shit. It is really appealing to give them an iPad, and maybe you should have some empathy for that. And once you eat the bread, you come to realize that, you know, smelling bread isn't everything.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

There's a. This Is Water by David Foster Wallace is on your virtual shelf. Why is that meaningful? It's one of my favorites.

[Paul Scherer]

It's so good. It's like. It's kind of. Is very similar to this in. In some ways. It's about like, this, like the. The like, you know, like, standard believes of, like, you know, and just like, kind of pushing back on that a bit and being like. There's like a very almost, like, you know, this, like, almost like, almost absurdist, amusing and fun way of looking at things, being like, this doesn't matter, but that's kind of cool. And then there's obviously the sad part, which is that he's very depressed and ended up killing himself. And all of these things, which obviously is often very close together when you look at the world in a very. Almost nihilistic. But I don't mean it from. Again, the negative sense of things, but just like, okay, there's no. No purpose or no bigger thing that he believed in. But. But I. I think there's something in that. There's something beautiful in that, which is. There's like a beauty and a magic and. And we don't quite know. And I think. And I think it. It means that, you know, the things matter much less. And, you know, there's like, we are in this, like, in this very Limited scope perception of reality. What we, you know, one of the most, you know, transforming experiences is to like rent a car in San Francisco and like drive 30 minutes north. And it's just like there's like, there's like these, there's like woodworkers and like farmers and these like 30 minutes, right. It's 30 minutes of San Francisco that have like, you know, nothing to do with, with tech. And they're just like in you know, Marin county or like Napa or whatever. And it's just like. And they're like, you know, reality is so different than our reality. And like the things they think about and they care about, they're worried about are like so different. And that's like, you know, like, like you can fly to a different continent. It's like, like 10 times that, 100 times that. Right. And the. But yet we're in this really small scope reality of taking all of the things that are in our head so incredibly seriously that it can mire us and almost put us in this position of not being able to do anything because we're so taking these so seriously. But some other people would think it's completely ridiculous because I think what I like about David Forster wallows in lots of ways is very similar to Carl Sagan's pill brew dot of like, you know, it's just, it's perspective. Everything is about perspective. Everything is about.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

That was what I alluded to earlier. I mean, I think in some sense what you're doing is the, the key is getting out from under yourself. And like the reason oftentimes people are alone and they don't belong is that they're looking at all of the reasons the world isn't like meeting them where they're at.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

And, and I. What I always loved about this is water is that it's like you got to find you can either worship something related yourself or you can find something. Something else.

[Paul Scherer]

Yeah, I think like, you know, there's like this not, not to be political, but there's just like this like perception of like saying that you can do anything is a very privileged take and like a very like. Well, but you know, you had all this like privilege and like you came from whatever you didn't have to worry about like getting food and. But, but I always found that, you know, very limiting way of looking at it because basically for two reasons. One is I think it can be really empowering. It's like if you're not happy with where you are and if you say, even if you go as far as saying, well, that might be your fault because the actions you took so far are really bad, that's actually really empowering because it means you're a few great decisions away from that not being the case anymore. And it's not actually about someone else. It's in your power. And whether or not that's true, largely, is a different question. But. But it is really empowering to like, like, like, feel about, you know, feel like that. And it's also, like, much more productive, right? Because, like, the best way of staying in the situation that you don't enjoy is, like, being like. It's. I'm like, if it. If it wasn't your fault that you're in that position, you're also unable to leave that position. And that's really sad. And so I think, you know, of course there's, like, differences, and some people have, like, an easier time getting to places, but, like. But everyone has, like, like some sort of, like, power over what are the decisions they take. And I think, you know, I think there's something, if you have that perspective, like, no, actually, it's like, none of these things really are true. I just, like, get to, like, our. Our mutual friend Sean is like, such a great example of that. Of just like, no, actually, I get to, like, create my reality. And it's really true. Like, it's like, she can just do that. And it's like, you meet Cyan, and she was like, there's like, not in a hundred years this wouldn't have worked, right? Like, there's like, you know, she. You could drop her anywhere, like 300,000 times, and it would always work out. Because she just, like, really believes that you can create your own reality. And I think more people should. Should believe that.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I like to ask people, we talk about big regrets. What are you most glad you did?

[Paul Scherer]

I think there is, like, a really profound period of August, September, you know, November. Like last year, where I went from, like, outsider, you know, to like, at like a kind of, like a scary speed from a complete rando, was like, I knew no one in San Francisco. I was building this weird thing. And to, like, now I'm just like, this Monday, I was texting Ben. I was like, oh, I'm thinking through this thing. And Tuesday, he spent, like, two hours with me at the office thinking about the founder of Pinterest, thinking about how we should build product. And I text Gustav, the CEO of Spotify, and we've been thinking about music recommendations. And then it's like, I kind of wonder can we get this API? It's like that, like, where it's become so normalized also in my life so quickly where I'm just like, I sometimes, like, call a friend from before and be talking with ghost stuff about this, and he's like, what? What? That's kind of crazy. And I don't know how that happened. Like, I don't. This is like. Like, I think this is, like a very profound period of like, maybe it was just Peter saying yes and just, you know, and like, all of these things that came downstream. But I really do think it was. It was more because there was people before you had met Gustav, pre Benchmark, for example, and there's this period of just really going out and for the first time being maybe fully authentic because it wasn't for another company, but it was just. Here's the thing I'm creating, and obviously the way I talk about it has changed so much over, like, the last few months, but I think maybe a lot of people should have the courage to, like, you know, one of. I told you about Stephen Perrone, like, my. Our first, very first angel investor. And I remember talking with. With him about this, you know, just before. So it was like, it must have been like, in August, you know, late August or something like that. And I think maybe what changed or what happened is that if you go out and you meet a lot of people and you just courageously tell them about the world you're creating, fearlessly telling about the world you're creating without any expectation and without that being any. I don't need to convince you. I'm just telling you without fear, just pure car. Here's the world I'm.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

Here's what I see.

[Paul Scherer]

And I wonder what would happen if more people did that.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

That's like, a powerful message. I think courage is the operative word. I think courage is in short supply. And I think my suspicion what happened for you is that you had a strong and unique point of view. It was a little bit strange, and that's very attractive. Even if it's incomplete, it's dialing into focus. One last thing you've tweeted. Consumer products tend to be the result of character deficiencies of their founders. And I asked a mutual friend of ours, you know, who, what I should ask you if they had a question for you. If he had a question for you. He said I'd ask him if he's building me to be vulnerable with people so that he doesn't have to be. He wants me to be this social bridge that Connects everyone. But he so notoriously guarded himself. So I want to know if I'm basically just doing his emotional heavy lifting.

[Paul Scherer]

That's a great, great question. That's funny. Yeah. I don't know if I can, like, disagree with that. I do think there's something in that. I think people. It's a thing that actually Kate, Peter's wife, I stole it from her. And she must have had this incredible outlook on social functions throughout the year or something. And maybe, probably there's a pattern there.

[Host (possibly Peter)]

I think you're on your way, as we all are. Thank you, Paul.

[Paul Scherer]

Thank you.

[Narrator/Intro Speaker]

Once again, I'd like to thank Notion for presenting Dialectic. Notion is pushing the limits on what we can do together with AI. And thanks to custom agents, you and your team can have an entire suite, an army of little guys who help you focus on the work that counts. Being able to have access to agents inside of the context where everything else

[Host (possibly Peter)]

for your team and your work lives

[Narrator/Intro Speaker]

is remarkably powerful for Dialectic. That allows me to take the place where I have all my research and my ideas and my notes, synthesize them with transcripts and everything else, and be able to provide it for you guys in a way that enriches the experience, hopefully, of listening to Dialectic while I get to focus on the important thing, which is immersing myself in the minds of amazing, original, interesting people and having these conversations with them. My friend Bree Wolfson, who's also close with Paul, recently wrote a piece on Notion called Inside Notion for Colossus with her collaborator Camille. And it talks all about how Notion is reinventing itself from the ground up for the AI age to allow teams and individuals to do incredible work with immense leverage. Thanks to Agents. If you enjoyed the episode, Please give it 5 stars or subscribe or like, wherever you're watching. Once again, thanks to notion, that's notion.com dialectic and I will see you guys next time.