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Swipe Right for Spiritual Growth: The Dating App for Your Soul
Swipe Right for Spiritual Growth: The Dating App for Your Soul
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- [00:00]
Dr. Tamara Nall
What if the next revolution in AI isn't about productivity, but about purpose? In a world full of endless noise alerts, algorithms and information overload, more and more people are quietly asking, but who's helping me make sense of it all? My guest today believes the answer isn't louder tech, it's deeper tech. Tom Fitzsimmons is the co founder of Byway, apparently an AI powered platform designed not to match you with a job or a date, but to connect you with something far more rare in the digital age. Spiritual insight. Whether you're deeply religious, quietly curious, or completely non believing, Biway is pioneering a new kind of experience. One where artificial intelligence doesn't just react, it reflects. Today we're talking about the intersection of belief, belonging and breakthrough technology. And how AI might actually help us become more human. This is a conversation about connection, the kind that could shift your inner world. Let's get into it. Welcome to lead with AI I'm Dr. Tamara Nall. In each episode, we will take you behind the scenes with visionary leaders shaping the future of AI across public and private sectors. Join us as we explore groundbreaking projects and innovations that are transforming industries and making a real impact on people's lives. Let's dive in. Hi everyone. This is Dr. T, your host with lead with AI and I have the pleasure of speaking today with Tom Fitzill Simmons, aka Fitz. Hi, Tom. How are you?
- [01:53]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Hey, Dr. T. I am blessed this morning. It's beautiful day. I'm super excited to be here.
- [01:57]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yes. And we are excited about having you and everything that we're going to learn about Byway. So before we get into the tech, I want to start with the why you're not just building another AI app. You're building something that speaks to the soul. But so before we get into Byway, can you take us back a little bit?
- [02:19]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Yeah.
- [02:19]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Who are you? What's your personal journey that led you to Biway that's going to help people find meaning, connection, and maybe even healing?
- [02:30]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Dr. T. Start from the beginning. So there I. I always had like a. A love for my, my faith life. I grew up as a Christian Catholic, and I probably shouldn't even be Catholic based off my story, but. But you know, it's funny, God has other plans, right? So I was thinking about going into religious life. I wanted to be a priest and a monk. And I went, I went overseas, I went and lived in a, in a monastery in Rome. And while I was there, I dealt with the very ugly side of, of what you would see and experience in religious orders. I Saw the abuse. I directly dealt with the problems there. Right. It's the stuff you don't want to hear. It's just, you know, not to destroy the vibe here, but the stuff you don't want to hear, it's the stuff you hear about in the media. And I saw it and experienced it. Wow. And I got out of there. But fast forward a couple years and you know, I work in tech and startups. I have a background in government. And one of my buddies is like, hey, Tom, we had done some business before. We're both working creative. And he was like, hey, what do you think of the product Better Help? It's like a therapy product that had gotten a lot of traction.
- [03:46]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah.
- [03:47]
Tom Fitzsimmons
There's a lot of marketing around it. I don't know, like 35,000 therapists. And he's like, dude, what do you think for like, Christians, you think, you think some this would be useful? And I remember being like, that's ridiculous. I wouldn't do that at all. But what happened was at the time I was going through a breakup and I'm hard on myself. And I was like, man, I want to better understand the feminine heart because I really blame myself for the breakup. I was like, I really messed up. I feel like I really heard the woman at the time. And I was like, so if you're.
- [04:19]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Listening, he's apologizing, right?
- [04:22]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Yeah, yeah. But what I recognized is I was like, I'd love to talk to like, I don't know, would it be possible to talk to like a nun or something? I want to better understand the feminine heart because I, I, I recognize I was like, I'm, I don't think I was doing a good job trying to, to help and just there's a lot of growth there. And I, I, I, I hit up my, my co founder and I was like, hey, man, like, I think I would actually use this product. So that, that's kind of, that's kind of that, that led, led to kind of the inception of it. And I didn't realize, like, my story of abuse would actually come back and help me with, with the startup side of things. But that was the why. It was like, oh, wow. I actually, this, this is something greater than myself and I think I want to, instead of being a spectator in the arena, I decided to jump in and actually be a participant.
- [05:11]
Dr. Tamara Nall
That's an amazing story and thank you for being so vulnerable and open. You know, that's really what our listeners need, though. It can be like, brought down to a level and I'M sure that this is going to bless a lot of people. So I appreciate that vulnerability. I really, really do.
- [05:25]
Tom Fitzsimmons
It's a problem.
- [05:26]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah, absolutely. So you're building something that most people have never seen before. It's not a dating app, it's not a therapist, but it's something deeper. So how do you describe by way in 10 seconds, we're.
- [05:38]
Tom Fitzsimmons
We're basically building the Christian Catholic version of Better Help. In ZOC Doc, we. We look at Better help. It's therapy. Zoc Doc is quickly scheduling virtually with doctors. We were like, why can't we Catholicize this product and tap a niche market?
- [05:53]
Dr. Tamara Nall
What if you're an atheist or a Buddhist? Can you also find some help there, too? Or some therapists or some guidance? Or is it just really for. For Christians?
- [06:04]
Tom Fitzsimmons
The whole idea behind it, and I don't think many people talk about this, is there's a misconception of the door slamming in somebody's face if they're open or if they come from a different faith life. It's like, well, no, like, this is right and this is wrong. Right. I think the beauty of Byway and it's all we're doing is facilitating a connection point. If someone has questions, it could be atheist, Buddhist, Jewish, Mennonite, Christian. The idea is like, hey, I'm interested. How quickly can I connect? And I often say this. You know, we have an intern now. As I was describing Byway to him quickly, I was like. I was like, well, you know, you can meet up with. You live in D.C. you can meet up with somebody using a dating app like Hinge or Tinder or Bumble or Coffee Meets Bagel in a couple seconds. Why can't you do that with a faith life? You don't have to attach a faith tradition onto it. But if you're open, that would be an amazing way to start a conversation and just see where things go. So, yeah, absolutely. It's open to people that are outside of the Christian faith. The whole idea is to start dialogue and conversation and grow so someone just starts that journey. It has to be a human connection.
- [07:13]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay, love that. Love that. And what was the moment that you realized that people are craving that advice and that they are craving a spiritual connection?
- [07:22]
Tom Fitzsimmons
I mean, look at the data. We had to look at the data, the numbers. I mean, we saw. We saw that. We specifically, we looked at Better Help's business model. We saw they were doing a billion dollars in annual revenue. We saw that they have 35,000 therapists. The issue that we saw when we Were doing market research for almost nine months now and trying to find our product market fit and just understanding our ideal user. Who can we serve? We saw that it was 80% of people within the therapeutic session, they want to talk about their faith life. In most therapists, you have to be careful with that. Unless the patient brings it up, you have to make the person focus on themselves, which is awesome. Right. I'm all about knowing thyself, right. But I think we're called to a higher calling. I think a spiritual director should be able to call that out in a person and basically encourage them be like, well, how is God prompting you? Or how is the higher power of your understanding prompting in your life to grow? It has to be bigger than themselves. So that's where in me being in spiritual direction was a gosh, almost nine years now. I've had the unique blessing to be able to talk to different spiritual directors from different spiritualities all through my. Throughout my journey. In all it's. All it's done is it's taken me outside of myself.
- [08:38]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Right, right.
- [08:39]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Which is so humbling. Right. Because I've been in the therapeutic side of things where it's just focused on the books in the literature and understanding more about me. And that was awesome. All this head knowledge, nothing was really resonating until I started to get out of myself and be like, oh, what is God calling me to do with my life? Are other people interested in hearing perhaps an inclination or a voice within their own heart saying, hey, like, go out and do something. Grow in your faith, have a relationship with God, talk to other people about it within a safe environment where things can grow and they can actually be encouraged and affirmed. So anyways, I can go down the rabbit hole on this, but there's multiple ways.
- [09:18]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay, that is perfect. Now, how does biways AI actually get to know someone's spiritual life, even if they don't fit into a nice category?
- [09:28]
Tom Fitzsimmons
There's a beauty there with using AI. So we were encouraged first when we went and started asking for venture capital. It's like, well, why don't you just make an AI spiritual director? Eliminate the people. Don't even use people. We want to use byway to parse information. And what I mean by that is there are thousands of spiritual directors. There's people we don't even know, but they're able to download an app. We want to take the information and quickly pair somebody. So, you know, jumping into the user experience. And our app deploys in a few short months, by the way, we can get to that. We want to parse the crazy amount of data of different directors and what they do and how they want to help and which kind of spiritualities can they encourage? Because the church offers so many different ways to grow in your faith. Right. I'm just learning about this now. The Benedictine, Jesuit, Franciscan, Carmelite. I was like, I don't even know what these mean, but this resonates deeply, and it's been around for thousands of years. And so what our AI does, and this is all on the back end, Right. It's not upfront in person, when a user is like, okay, well, you know, okay, what the heck is a spiritual director? Okay, cool. Well, maybe I'm just looking for a counselor or a therapist. Okay, cool. Am I single? Am I interested in dating? Am I open to religious life? What our language learning model does in the back end is quickly connect people instantaneously to someone that's going to be able to help them fast. The AI is never going to replace the human connection of growing in a spiritual life. That's between the person and that's between the higher power of God.
- [11:05]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Right.
- [11:05]
Tom Fitzsimmons
That's between. That's. It's so unique and personal. And dare I say, I'm on hallowed ground here even speaking about this, because it's unique and personal to every single person. I'm not going to pretend to know. Right. My spirituality is going to be different from yours.
- [11:20]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Sure. Absolutely.
- [11:21]
Tom Fitzsimmons
That doesn't mean that there can be tech that can facilitate it to a human connection. But right now, we just saw a tremendous disconnect. Right. Like an AI is never going to know your spirituality. It might be able to pass a Turing Test and, you know, maybe ask you the right questions. But what we want to do is just connect people quickly to another human being that can accompany them or guide them. That's all it is. It's not going to be in your face. It's going to be like, oh, wow, that was really fast. Connect with this person. Okay, cool.
- [11:48]
Dr. Tamara Nall
You know, okay, so as a user, I open up the app, you ask me questions to ask me some questions, and then it's going to match me very quickly to someone whom I can actually speak to in real time.
- [12:01]
Tom Fitzsimmons
That's the whole. That's the whole point. How can you do this? How can you connect somebody instantaneously? Right. Yeah. I mean, integrating everything. Right. It's. It's just. We live in this kind of world, and I was kind of dwelling and meditating on this before our conversation. I can have Uber Eats delivered In, you know, within an hour. Yeah, I can connect on a dating app probably within a day or two if I want to meet somebody. Right. I'm able to go on Amazon and purchase something that's delivered to my door. Right. What buyway is going to do specifically for the user, it's not going to speed up this. You're not going to have instantaneous in the sense of, like, growth in your spiritual life. In that moment. All it's doing is prompting you. You meet with another person. And that's all going back to that connection of that question of, like, okay, you know, like, how is this going to go? Like, what is a user going to need? Like, what is the user going to experience? All we want them to experience is human connection. We just think that there's going to be a way to do it because we're not naive to the fact that everybody has phones now. But ultimately we want that human connection to happen first and then. And as we build out features, we want to build in the geo, tracking, the fencing. So eventually a person is encouraged to actually meet if they're local, in person. That's the whole point of this. We're not meant to replace human interaction. Just like we're able to hop on a podcast right now and talk virtually, but we met in person. God, God willing, we'll be able to grab coffee again in person and keep this conversation and build the relationship and connect each other to our networks. But I think the bigger thing here is like, oh, well, if we can use a product to prompt connection and it's deeper, it can leverage. It can begin to leverage this desire in all people to build community. We're just using the. We're just using tech in order to connect people. I mean, it's not going to replace any of this stuff. It's just going to actually help. Help people grow and build community a lot faster. And that's the whole point. I mean, the data that we've seen, you know, this is one of the most connected generations ever, but everyone's so lonely. It's like we want to flip that on its head. It's like, well, we don't want everyone to be super connected. We saw that with the advent of, you know, Facebook. We saw that with, with TikTok. You know, people are lonely, but they're super connected. We want to prompt the connections to go from virtual to in person, God willing. But create that functionality where you can. Yeah, if your life is busy and you want to build, cop out and connect with a spiritual director. Oh, My gosh. You can do it over a video call. Oh my gosh. You can connect people. Oh my gosh. You could have AI be able to quickly spit out summaries and actionable things where you're able to follow up and grow.
- [14:29]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Right.
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Tom Fitzsimmons
The whole thing is the human connection. I'm riffing here a lot, so pardon me.
- [14:33]
Dr. Tamara Nall
So I can be connected with a spiritual advisor and then I can have a long term relationship or can I also have. Maybe I want to talk to different people. I can, I have those options that flexibility.
- [14:44]
Tom Fitzsimmons
You're not married to a spiritual advisor, a guy. All a guide is supposed to do is prompt an inclination in your heart to grow and know God deeper. That's all the, that's the whole purpose of by way. By way is short for by way of the cross. That's what the whole idea behind this. Right. And from the Christian Catholic perspective, it's not supposed to be something that is easy. And we, we know for a fact that you're not going to hit it off immediately with maybe you find someone that's awesome and amazing. But for me, I personally had three different directors me, my own problem is I get so with guides that we have to like re refunction our relationship. We become buddy, we become buddies. And it's like, okay, like I need someone I can go to as an advisor to push me. I can't be like buddies with you and giving you a hard time and going out and grabbing a meal. So I think the hope is that it's not going to be a one and done. Maybe you're like, oh my gosh, I'm trying to grow in my professional career and my work has become God in my life, my work has become God. So maybe I'm looking for a spiritual guide that's willing to help me re center. And that might only be for, I don't know, a couple weeks or a couple months. But then perhaps you're in the dating world or you're maybe like, oh my gosh, maybe. They often talk about this. As a famous Christian saint, Mother Teresa, she experienced the dark night of the soul, which basically means she felt no inclination towards any form of prayer God. But she kept doing it. She felt it was like 10 or 12 years. She felt nothing. She, she literally felt nothing. So we're thinking with Byway there's, there's unlimited ways to serve people in where they're at with a guide. And you're not always going to probably need to be in direction. That's the point in all Humility. We're building a product that we're constantly trying to encourage people to go deeper into their faith. And that doesn't always mean with a digital product. We just want to accelerate that person's experience as they grow. And AI is a useful tool in this process.
- [16:40]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Now by way says that it's spiritual, not religious. How do you that thin line between honoring faith traditions and then keeping things inclusive?
- [16:49]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Well, I think there's a, there's a misconception there this line and I disagree with that. The spiritual not religious approach for what people talk about. I think there's an integration. Spirituality and religion are part of the same process. There's a misconception in modern day in my opinion, and I'd love to debate people on this, that oh, I'm spiritual, not religious. Well, I still, I still desire structure and community. Well that comes from different religious institutions. You can have the spirituality and flow in the wind. But what I've noticed that can only last so long with byway. We want to encourage the desire for spirituality and build structure around it with the beauty and wisdom of this Catholic institution that I, you know, personally thought I'd never go back to. So I'm kind of a testament to this. I'm like dude, I should have, I should have ran for the hills after my experiences. But for some reason I was like, well hold on a second. There's a spirituality here of the people that I've come to know built in these institutions imperfectly that are, that are actually, it's actually quite inviting. I'm, I'm, I'm not blind to the fact that there, there's brokenness and difficulty and, and people are going to come from places that they're, you know, they've come from tremendous pain and hurt. But, but I ultimately think what bio is going to do on the spirituality and in religious front in the inclusivity is just be like be an open door. Be it. Be an open door. Come on in, come on in. There's this, there's this misconception, you know, like, you know, people say that churches are like, you stay away. It's all this hoity toity or the, an individual has made someone have a horrible experience and they're like, I don't want to ever be around those type of people. That made me feel a certain type of way. And that's all wrong. A church in the religious, the religion aspect of it is a hospital for broken people. It's a hospital. It's like, come on in. That's my Whole. My whole purpose with the product of byways that we don't want something that turns people off. We want people to come in and grow and make their own decisions in the spirituality that they're growing in with the guidance of this, of this, this Catholic institution, but that I'm still learning about all these different ways of growing your spirituality. I was like. I was like, I had no idea that there's ways to do this. It's more step based. There's more kind of like the open mind, like go out and do. Do certain things in certain ways. It's been so humbling. And I'm recognizing there's a beauty there of having an open door, which we're growing in as of right now. It's like, okay, well, what do people need? What do users need? What kind of spirituality are they desiring? We want to encourage that dialogue, and if it's not for them, that's okay too.
- [19:27]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah, you kind of touched on it, which was around. My next question is, how can byway help those that are going through grief, anxiety, life transitions? And you said that, you know, I'm actually a preacher's kid, so I'm a pk, so all my life. And so I definitely hear what you're saying. Growing up, I was always in the church, and I actually looked forward to going to Sunday school and going to church and, you know, being around believers, et cetera. And then as I kind of grew up and moved out and went to other churches, I saw the pain that people were going through. And if a human, if you will, were to do something that they found was disturbing, then it seemed like their entire world was shot. When in reality, it should not be about the person, but about your connection with that higher being. So that way you're not disappointed. Right. And so I definitely get what you're saying, but. And there have been times where I strayed away and there were times where, you know, but I was always drawn back, even. Even to this day. So. So, yeah, so byway sounds very, very encouraging.
- [20:35]
Tom Fitzsimmons
I just want to honor that too. Like, the. The difficulty there of seeing human brokenness in that experience. That. That is. It's a complex problem, and we're in a complex world. I heard this once. It's that there's not a right answer there. And I just want to, like, affirm that. It's like, well, I can choose to be disgusted with the problems, and you mentioned that straying away, or I can choose to be the change that I want to see in the world as difficult as that may be, I mean.
- [21:05]
Dr. Tamara Nall
In your story, nonetheless, is a perfect example.
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Tom Fitzsimmons
I wasn't expecting to share it. So, I mean, it's, it's, it's a testament to, you know, you, you tell God your plans and he laughs. Right.
- [21:16]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Thanks, Vince. That's amazing. So, you know, there will be people that will listen here and will be very skeptical about AI and how you can like intermingle that into spirituality and something that's so personal. What are y' all doing to make sure that biway feels human, safe, wise and not so robotic?
- [21:35]
Tom Fitzsimmons
First and foremost, I mean, my, my personal side of this, right, we're approaching it from a cyber security posture, right? There's, there's a handful of organizations that we want to approach things from a background checking perspective. Yes. And, and that's not from a robotic sense, but like think, think about it as just like credibility, right? We just want to make sure that the people that we're able to provide and that comes on, it comes on both sides, right? People that are coming onto the platform, they need to feel like, safe. They need to feel open to the fact that there's high quality people and they're able to connect. Regarding the robotic side of things, look at the world that we live in. Even 10 years ago, right? It would be really weird to hop into somebody else's car and get to the airport, but we do that with Uber and Lyft. It's bizarre to have this aspect of like, okay, so I can go onto Amazon and order this and it comes to my house in two days and like a.
- [22:27]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Same day.
- [22:28]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Yeah, exactly. Same day even. I mean, God, God, it's so amazing, right? So the aspect of it by way on the robotic side of things, we think we're right on the pulse with instantaneous connection. We think this is right, right on the times. And I was having this beautiful conversation yesterday with one of our advisors and we think the next generation, they will be. And these are like the Zoomers, right? It's going to be this kind of regression from the tech. But what we see is, and what I mean by that is like, okay, right now there's a lot of people that are always on their phones all day long. This is cell phone addiction. But we see like, okay, people have learned from that. This, this next generation is going to be very, very, very comfortable with leveraging the tool. And we'll have AI products, right? Like, you know, people think you quickly get information and things are happening instantaneously, but they'll know how to use it as A tool and not something as, not as a lifeline. It's like, well, we have this tool that can instantly get information. I think the world that we live in right now allows for this. Yeah, I jokingly say this about language learning models, but in particular I have a love for these voice learning models. Right, the voices, right, These quick, fast, you know, you can chat almost in regular cadence with a robot. And I think that's going to be a huge part of our product moving forward. You can quickly chat with an AI to collect information or move quick and get things set up, but then that's going to lead to an in person thing and that's actually going to be, I think the best thing about making a product more human is that you'll be able to quickly connect and get things done. I mean, human beings are called to do stuff, right? The Benedictines is that ancient monastic order they often talk about or in labor, work in prayer, work in prayer. And there's an integration. I think there's people that are always going to want to work, especially the next generation. And as you're seeing now, this return to the office, return to work, people are always going to want to work. How do you integrate the prayer? I think we are poised right now to be able to serve that moving forward. And we talked about this before, this recording, it's like, okay, how do you, how do you plan for a 10 year projection now? I think this will be in the next two years, two to three years.
- [24:42]
Dr. Tamara Nall
And one thing I really like about Boy is that it's a hybrid model. You know, I've spoken to some people where it's all AI and then you have like, once you get past it, better help where they're helping you. You know, it's a tech, but it's ultimately with that person and that person's time and the scheduling conflicts, etc. But this is a hybrid model where we're starting to connect real quickly. But should that person want to then go out of the virtual, they can then go into the physical. And so that's, that's really, really exciting. That's really, really exciting. It's very interesting. I think, you know, like I said, I was a pk.
- [25:14]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Yeah.
- [25:15]
Dr. Tamara Nall
And first time that I ever remember really questioning God was when my mother passed away, which would be about 10 years this May. And I just could not understand. I was walking around floating for like three years. And I went to therapists and, you know, spiritual counselors, talked to my dad, all of that kind of stuff, but nobody could do it they were more concerned with how she died, what were the causes of her death, then my growth, etc. And then one of my best friends recommended a book and I cannot find that book. I don't know the name of it, but it said to me if you could go and ask them now, would they come back in return they would say absolutely not. I've gotten my just reward and this after three years and I just snapped out of it. And so one thing I really find exciting about by weight is the fact that that could be like compressed to maybe I would have gotten that after a month or after a day or after a week versus after a full three years. And then number two, being able to find somebody and even if it doesn't work the first time or the second time, eventually finding somebody faster. And then if I want to connect physically, that's fine. But I mean it was years of trying to find the right person. I don't think I ever really did. I think it was the book that did it. And so that is one personal example that I can give that makes by way very exciting.
- [26:40]
Tom Fitzsimmons
I want to be aware, you know, God's going to work through his own timing and I think there's something very beautiful. Yeah, I mean some would say I can't speak for you, but it's an observation. Maybe it took those, those three years and you hindsight is 20 20. Okay. I should have, could have, would write. Right. But it's like maybe I needed that time. Whether I want to admit it or not, my own humility, it's like good God, would I ever want to build a spiritual direction? Being abused in the Catholic Church? Of course not. Five years later, here I am and we're talking. So it's like when you describe like it took that time, I want to be abundantly like clear. Like I think God's got his own set of timings right? And we don't know them but it's like, or I, I, I talked to my, my girlfriend who God willing I'll get to, you know, God willing we're on the road to engagement and, and she, we, we often talk about this. She mentioned to me, she's like, well try to co create with, with, with God, try to co create with him. They always think he's like an off scary force out there. It's like, well I'm going to try to do something about this and I'm affirming that journey that you're mentioning. It took years, right? And then through the, through this book, it's like, oh, wow, okay, cool. Like there's, there's, there's things going on here and it took the time that it needed. So, you know, dare I say, even like, we're building a tech product that can help people, but by no means, no, no means do we want to get in the way of whatever God's doing in people's lives or whatever. The higher power. I always, I love referring that kind of 12 step language, the higher power of someone's understanding. And then wherever that goes, it can. Wherever their higher powers taking them, wherever God's taking them in their journey, it may look very different. It might not be a tech product. It might be a book, like in your experience. And then, and then like look back or like we just want to search. It's, it's serving people in a very naive, humble way. How do you, how do you co create? How can you do, how can you be the participant and not the spectator in the arena? No, no.
- [28:36]
Dr. Tamara Nall
That's amazing. I would say, though I agree that it might not come through tech, but there have been a lot of cases where I've had conversations with my friends, primarily around, honestly, around ivf, et cetera.
- [28:50]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:51]
Dr. Tamara Nall
We're like, oh, you don't want to get in God's way. But I'm like, but God created the technology and the brilliance and so why wouldn't it work? Why wouldn't that be in the master plan at some point? So anyway, it could be, or it could be by way.
- [29:06]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Stay open, stay open, stay open.
- [29:08]
Dr. Tamara Nall
And anyway, stay open. So let's talk about, how are you training the AI to speak to someone who's atheist one minute and then someone who's deeply religious the next without any bias?
- [29:20]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Well, the beauty of it is all our AI is going to do is connect people. We're not going to train the AI to actually do any of this kind of conversion or try to take them away from where they are personally on their journey. I want to be abundantly clear. There were points in my life where I was like, I didn't believe in God or I was fake about it. And maybe I wasn't publicly atheist in the sense of I don't believe in nothing, I'm me. We're not trying to train AI to convert people or change people or their own personal journey. I want to be abundantly clear. Their journey is unique and beautiful in and of itself. All we want to do is when the person feels that inclination to be able to quickly connect them. And AI is not going to Convert somebody, it might prompt certain things, right? A language, a language learning model can pass a Turing test. You might think you'd be talking to a human being, but usually within three to five minutes, maybe, maybe longer, maybe shorter, you're going to be like, huh, something is aching in this God shaped hole in my heart. I might not is. And there's only, you know, you can connect with human beings who are ultimately able to get you closer or it's ultimately, in my opinion, God is going to create that inclination in your heart. So I don't see the AI as actually being able to talk to people in a certain way. All it's going to do is connect you so you can talk to human beings. We have a product on our roadmap that we thought was really cool. And this may answer the question. We look at all these saints, you know, I mentioned one of them earlier in the cars, it's Mother Teresa. You know, we look at all these saints and we were like, okay, oh, we could probably train up our AI on the saints writings, right? Could be a Mother Teresa. Or we could train On John Paul II, you know, one of the famous popes, training on St. Benedict, the first exorcist, right? It was, you know, reported in history, casting out demons 800 years ago. We could train it up on their, their teachings and their literature. So someone in between spiritual guide sessions, like, well, what would St. Benedict think about this? And they could chat him up, but we don't ever think that we're going to be able to. The language of the church should be some, a place of openness and invitation. So whether the person is atheist, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, there should be an invitation. We'll come check it out. See. See what? See what? See what? See what? The God of. See what? God's kind of stirring in your heart. So that's just one of our product roadmaps is like, oh, we can train up AIs to chat with people. And this is the worst it'll ever be, by the way. I mean, you know this, right? This is the worst AI. It's only getting better. From self driving cars, to these voice assistants, to these incredible LLMs that are able to do incredible data. I mean the way we met, right, we were chatting, we're nodding in the, in that, in that talk about deep seeking. And we were like, yo, like the Chinese made this product.
- [32:13]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah. Turned around and you were like nodding. I'm like, okay, that's my dude right there.
- [32:17]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Well think about that, right? In scarcity. And I'm Tying this in in a way in scarcity. True and incredible innovation can come. And I'll tie this into the faith journey. I think there is going to under immense pressure and scarcity and quiet. That's where God can speak. And obviously we see incredible technology and innovation in this world. But I think us creating a platform where people are like open to something and they're like oh well, I think I want to talk about it. I think I want to connect with somebody. I think that's where we're going to service and be able to help a lot of people. I don't know if that answers the question. I'm going on a bit of a tangent.
- [32:53]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Think about the connection or the correlation. It's around in scarcity of connection, spiritual connection, faith connection, soul connection. Then you have by way to. That's amazing. So feel free to use any of that in any of your marketing.
- [33:09]
Tom Fitzsimmons
So cut you at 20% Dr. T. Okay, what?
- [33:16]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Give it to the church. Just give it back. Community. How about that?
- [33:19]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Amen. Amen.
- [33:21]
Dr. Tamara Nall
So let's dream for a minute. I love to dream. What's your wildest vision for boe? What could it be in a few years? You know we said that like you said the 10 years, the five years. What could it be in a few, couple of years, A few years. And could it be someone's daily check in for the soul? Let's talk a little bit about your dreams for my way.
- [33:39]
Tom Fitzsimmons
The biggest thing that we see is, I mean it starts from humble beginnings. My co founders and I, we were like, hey, do you want to make a bunch of money off this? And all of us were like, I don't see a multi, multi million dollar exit. What I do see is if we can serve a thousand people on their journey to get to know Jesus more deeply. And it starts slow, right? That would be within the next year if we can serve a thousand people within five years, if we can serve 10,000 people. If there's an opportunity to create products where people can grow in their faith. My hope is to bring people back in person to community. Whether that's an opportunity to talk to each other, maybe meet their vocation, maybe share brokenness. My hope is to bring people closer to the hearts of these community centers, churches, small groups, dating opportunities building in your professional career. If you can bring people closer together in community, I think that's where we're going to serve. Because the spiritual life is a deeply interior journey. I think if people are not asking these questions from a young age, it gears them up For a lot of difficulty and not knowing what to do later on in life as the complexity builds, if we're able to. If all we can do is a company and build hope, and then the end goal within five years is to have stronger community. Leveraging an app, oh, my gosh, that would be awesome. Yeah, it starts small, right? I hear this often from. I love this YouTube channel or this guy, the school of hard knocks. He interviewed some in some entrepreneur and he's like, if you're small enough long enough, you'll be large enough soon enough. So that's the beauty of it, right? Start small. We're just starting small. I mean, they often talk about this. The story of the mustard seed, right? If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can move mountains.
- [35:38]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah. So that's the whole Sunday school. We actually got one and put it in our hand, like, whoa, is this all I need? This is amazing.
- [35:45]
Tom Fitzsimmons
And that can move mountains, right? I can move mountains. God willing, it can move mountains. So it's that hope. And dare I say, maybe that's not mountains that you would think of in the sense of the world. I could share this story. My aunt was dying of terminal cancer. And I remember how concerned I was. Within the Christian Catholic tradition, we wanted to have a religion. A priest in her hospital room before she died to give her last rites, to be able to anointed. They call it anointing of the sick. And I had all this. I was like, we need to do this, we need to do this, we need to do this. And by the grace of God, the priest came in there and gave her anointing of the sick. And she died peacefully, I think within 24 hours. But the reason I tell this story is maybe two years later, my grandfather was dying as well. And I had the desire to get him a religious someone to come and help him anointing the sick. And he explicitly said, no, thanks, I'm good. They can come to the funeral. I don't want them there. And my heart just fell. My heart just fell. But I had that faith. I was like, oh, man. Was he, you know, is he going straight? Is he getting straight? Is he going to be condemned? He didn't want any of that. And it was a couple years later, I was at a monastery in called St. Michael's out in Southern California. I was meeting spiritual directors, and the spiritual director, I said to him, I was like, my grandfather, did he die in vain? Did he die? And he went straight to a place that I probably would be so sad to know. And this guy, St. Michael is a spiritual director. God willing, will be on the platform. He said to me, he's like, dude, you don't know. I don't think Jesus had the same faith tradition. With all these rules and traditions that you're dealing with right now, you don't know what's going on. For all you know, your grandfather's in an amazing place. So why do I share that story? Well, I say, well, I had the inclination with my aunt and things worked out in the rules and context that I wanted, right? Inclination with my grandfather dying where I wanted a certain thing and it didn't work out the way I wanted that. The reality is I just had faith. It was the hope to do something. It was the hope that I could do something to help them. And I think that's the most important thing, right? Have faith as small as a mustard seed and it can move mountains. These are not beautiful, incredible stories of things changing career wise or tons of wealth coming in. Me personally, we're talking about being able to help somebody's soul. So that's the, that's the hope.
- [38:16]
Dr. Tamara Nall
It's like, I love that story and I, many people have that question. Like, there are all these rules and it's the structure of this framework in which you need to operate. And then like, we don't know, we don't know, we don't know. I also, when my mother passed away, I got to a point where I said, I just. When I die and I'm reunited with her, I want her to know me. Like, will she know me or will she just be some. I'll be some random person. And I went to my uncle who's also a minister, and he was like, of course she'll know you. And it was just so simple. I've been struggling with that for months and months. And then I just kind of like, even as an adult skipped off because that's what I needed to hear. He doesn't know either. The truth of the matter is. But yeah, I love the fact that your spiritual advisor, like took away all this stress and anxiety about these questions that you at least were holding for a couple of years, right. Since then, about, we don't know, we really don't know. And being able to connect people to get kind of those answers or to not be so stressed about those answers is absolutely amazing. So. All right, and so basically, what's a story that made you think this is exactly why we're building byway? Oh, there was some, you had some conversation where you Were vetting by Wei or maybe even with your co founder where you're like, this is why we're doing it.
- [39:36]
Tom Fitzsimmons
It's been an ongoing place of humility. I think Dr. T, the story is being written. I wish it was a lot more clean cut. Right. I wish I was like, you know, it was like Morgan Freeman in the clouds that he told us, right? He said, he said it. Do. Do this. No, we are. I mean, that's the beauty of startups, right? Pre. C. Pre. Yeah, it's. We are actively making our story. I can say it very personally for me in a simple way. I can't see a world without being able to connect with a spiritual guide within a few seconds. I can't see a world without it. That's me personally. My co founders and I, it's unique in all I can do is express gratitude. Right. My co founder and chief of product Vin, my technical director Val, my operations officer David. We have an intern now. All these people had different whys. They have different whys and they keep me humble and grounded. We're writing the story that in humility, 99% of startups fail. I jokingly said this to venture capitalists and they laugh at me. I jokingly say this before we pull up the five year plan with the projections of revenue and I'll say, my business plan is Jesus Christ. And they laugh, right? Because it's crazy. But how does one man and 12 apostles change the world? So there's 1.4 billion Christians 2,000 years later. There has to be something there. There has to be. I mean, or maybe we're all just crazy. I don't know if that kind of helps. Right. That kind of answered the question.
- [41:09]
Dr. Tamara Nall
And my next question was going to be around, you know, if someone downloads the app, what's the moment you think they'll stop and say, whoa, I didn't know AI could do this. And I think you just answered that like, open it up. And it's like, whoa. In seconds I'm connected to somebody.
- [41:23]
Tom Fitzsimmons
The beauty is we just want to facilitate the connection. That's all we're trying to do. The people already there. Yeah. I run into this, be like, oh, there's not enough directors, there's not enough this. Or you have a quality assurance, quality control problem. Yeah, yeah. You know, there was only 12 apostles. Quality control, quality assurance. There weren't many. Right. But you go, you go out and you encourage that. I think what the user is going to experience, God willing, it's just an ease. It's just it should be easy. I mean, one of our. One of our advisors, he's like, dude, just make it like Amazon. Make it easy. Make it easy. I want to be. I want that experience to be like Amazon, can I get and connect? But obviously what we're doing is we want to feed the soul. The soul is priceless. We want to feed the soul that God shaped hole in people's hearts where they're like, okay, I really want to connect with somebody. And using. I think it's going to be the speed. Right? There's a beautiful quote from. It's either CS Lewis or GK Chesterton. They talk about the science, it being so good, where there will be points where technology or engineering is so good, it's mistaken as magic. And I think that moment's going to be for the user. It's just going to be like, okay, I. I'm seeking this, this and this. I can connect like this, right? And then ultimately, it's as easy as any other online mobile first experience. We're able to actually receive a product or service that's affordable, that's easy, it's useful.
- [42:49]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Absolutely. Okay, well, this has been a great discussion, and my listeners know that we have a couple other things that we do before we, like, log off. And one of them is to have rapid fire. So these are five questions real quickly. First thing that comes to your mind. So, number one, most overrated technology trend right now.
- [43:09]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Virtual backgrounds that move. I think that technology trend is overrated. Stop having virtual backgrounds that move. I don't have one right now.
- [43:17]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Most underappreciated tech that deserves more attention.
- [43:22]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Shameless plug. I think There is an AI product out of Google's DeepMind lab. It's called Notebook LM. I think, okay, it's underappreciated. It is so dope. You can create. You can create a podcast with two voices based off data. And then the best part about it is you can hop in and chat with it in real time. I did it to prepare for this interview.
- [43:42]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Y' all heard it now. Okay. One book everyone should read.
- [43:46]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Oh, this is big. Shout out to my friend Cora Safner. She recommended this book to my girlfriend and I. It's called the Hapsburg Way by Edward Hapsburg, the Archduke of Austria. Highly, highly recommend. It's a short read. You can probably read it in an afternoon. But the Habsburg way. H A B S B U R G way.
- [44:06]
Dr. Tamara Nall
And you had it there for our viewers. That's amazing. An essential skill everyone needs to develop to thrive in the next couple of years.
- [44:14]
Tom Fitzsimmons
I told this to a young woman I'm mentoring right now, networking. She was on LinkedIn. She was on LinkedIn and freaking out. She's like, dude, I feel so useless. No one's responding me. I like, don't open up LinkedIn for seven days. Talk to people you already know. Go out and meet. I mean, hey, Dr. T, look how we met.
- [44:28]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Probably like 36, to be exact. Around 36 hours. And here we are.
- [44:32]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Amazing.
- [44:35]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Technology you're personally most excited about.
- [44:38]
Tom Fitzsimmons
There's a really cool AI product out there right now. I don't even see. I bet I can pull it, pull it up. What they did is they trained language learning models on. It's like the cadence of human language. So there's a product out there. It's called Sesame S E. S A M E. And the cool thing about this, I can draw. I know I can email it or text it to your linkers. It has a product demo. It is the chillest, most human AI conversational experience that I've had to date. I'll drop. I'll drop you a link in the chat or share with you after this conversation, but Sesame is crazy. I've never seen anything like this. It was an AI that I actually wanted to keep talking to. And it's totally open source. So one of our, Our future product roadmaps, we're like, we should design our saints with this kind of AI because it's conversational. It's creepy. It's creepy. I'm telling you, it's. It's nothing like you've experienced with any of these chatgpt voice things. Sesame, they are doing some. They got some wizards on the engineering department. Shameless. Plug to those guys out in San Francisco where they're developing this product and the fact that they made it open source, crazy. I think that's going to be the future of what we've seen in these movies where you're talking to a robot and it sounds human. These guys are doing it. These guys are totally doing it. It's crazy.
- [45:55]
Dr. Tamara Nall
And then I always ask, and I'll ask you this as well, but I always ask my former guest what we should ask you. So I actually got that from a Diary of a CEO podcast that. I love it. Yes. And so the question is, what is the thing that scares you most about AI?
- [46:12]
Tom Fitzsimmons
I mean, we connected in a more, you know, focusing more on the military or government or intel conversation. What scares me the most is leveraging AI for problems. Right? Like, or, you know, not solving problems. And making people's lives better, but creating problems, militarizing AI. The deepfakes that are already going around that we don't know, which is on even television, right? There's lots of deep fakes going around now that we don't know. I think the military application of artificial intelligence scares me because I'm on the opposite spectrum of it. I'm literally trying to bring souls closer to Jesus. It's. It's like, this is versus like, you know, there are folks out here, huge tech companies making military applications. I'm not biased to the fact that the beauty that we live in is, you know, the United States and people, we have to have a military posture in order to be in a safe, effective place. But it scares me because this stuff is. Reading about this Moore's Law, right? Anything that can happen will happen, or no part of me. It's Murphy's Law, perhaps. Is Murphy's Law any? And, and, and they were talking about how AI advancement, it's just doubling. It's doubling based off compute power. So, like, within a year or two, we're gonna have what in the, in the. The conference we were at, right? Two years, two years from now of artificial general intelligence. The military application for this stuff is terrifying. I'm aware, I'm aware that we need it and the capability of the war fighter is necessary, but it does scare me because it's the exact opposite of protecting and maintaining and helping, helping people grow in their humanity and human life. It's scary. It's scary. Hey, you know, it's the world we live in.
- [47:47]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Got it. And so my last question for you is, is there something that I did not ask that you thought I would or should something you want to share the listeners.
- [47:55]
Tom Fitzsimmons
Two things, right? The first thing is. Oh. Oh, my gosh. Your tenacity, which is sharing, creating a podcast and just sharing that. Being an entrepreneur, building businesses, that, that openness to go out and talk to people. I want to affirm that. I think, I think affirm, affirm that in every episode as I feel like, how. How do you end up, like, finding people? How do you connect with people? How do you build businesses? Just asking, like, why do you have that mindset? Something I can share? I mean, in this, in the spirit of humility, 99% of startups fail. They fail. I am so excited to be on the journey of humility and growth with a mobile app and a product and leveraging AI. But be aware that it's. It's a tough road ahead. My company is Literally short for by way of the cross. It's not going to be an easy, it's not an easy experience. And I want to encourage the people that are in the entrepreneurship space that are leveraging AI, that everything sounds so easy. I think, I think Be prudent. An advisor of mine, he always gives me a hard time, which I love him for a reason. He's like, prudent, don't, don't give me the wishy washy. Be prudent. So big, big, big, shout out, shout out to Toby. You know, he's like, he's like, dude, be prudent. Don't be stupid. But I also think the entrepreneur, you got to take calculated risks, you got to dream big and think crazy ideas. Don't let some of these old farts get in the way. They have, they have a certain way of thinking. They didn't see G, they didn't see GPT coming two years ago and they're not going to see what the next thing is. Otherwise they would have made it up. They would have came up with it. So I say that with a grade of salt. Right?
- [49:21]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Awesome. Awesome. Well, I enjoy this conversation. It was amazing. I look forward to seeing By Way. And we're claiming all the goodness and we're claiming you in the 1%. So yes, we'll have you on as a guest in a year or so so we can see all the great things that are going on and the lives that have been changed. So, so excited. Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. T. Bye bye everyone. Thanks for tuning in to lead with AI. I'll see you next time as we continue exploring the cutting edge innovations shaping AI across the public and private sectors. Until then, keep leading with AI.