← Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Use AI to Understand the World and Get Ahead with GNOMI Founder Eva Cicinyte
00:57:00
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- [00:00]
Host 1
We had a heat wave which put me in the mood for some ice cream. Since it was the first pint of the season. I went with burnt sugar vanilla from gingers.
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Eva Cicinati
I mean it is heaven.
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Nicole Lapin
Ginger's uses Square so I could order online and skip the wait. No lines, no stress, just grab and go deliciousness. Now I paid online but they use Square as their point of sale in restaurant orders as well. It just makes the process so easy. So if you're looking for a way to smooth out the customer experience at
- [00:28]
Host 1
your restaurant, why not give Square a try? Square works for one location shops, pop ups, mobile service businesses and multi location franchises. Take payments at a kiosk, counter, website or with your phone. All synced in real time.
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Nicole Lapin
And right now listeners get up to
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Host 1
$200 off Square Hardware when you sign up at square.com Go MNN that's sq
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Nicole Lapin
u a r e.com G O/MNN Run
- [01:01]
Host 1
your business smarter with Square. Get started today 2025 had some of the lowest points in my life, which is saying something. It also had some of the best moments of my life as a new mom. It was a lot. Thankfully I have a great therapist who helped me with the ups and the downs. Our sponsor Rula helps match everyone with a great therapist while keeping therapy affordable. Rula partners with therapists and psychiatrists nationwide, enabling you to find your personalized solution and the right therapist for you based on your needs, preferences and state requirements. And Rula isn't just affordable, the experience is tailored around you because they know that finding the right therapist can make all the difference. Rula makes it easy to find a mental health provider who is accepting new patients and appointments are available as soon as tomorrow. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable high quality therapy that's actually covered by Insurance. Visit rula.commnn to get started. That's R U L A.commnn. you deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. Here's my tip to feel safer in this crazy world, start building an emergency fund. Just knowing it's there will cut your stress so so much. Here's a pro tip though. Don't let that money just sit there. Make sure you're getting the highest APY possible. Put your fund to work. With Chime, you can earn up to 3% APY on savings. Chime is changing the way people bank fee free and smarter banking built for you. Not like old school banks that charge you overdraft and monthly fees. Chime recently launched the new Chime card. It unlocks safer credit building and cash back with everyday spending. Imagine cash back and credit building with your own money. Finally on the same card. No annual fees, no interest and no strings attached. Chime is not just smarter banking. It is the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to chime.commnn that is chime.commnn Chime
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- [03:54]
Nicole Lapin
I'm Nicole Lapvin, the only financial expert. You don't need a dictionary to understand it's time for some money. This is not breaking news. AI is transforming the way we work and the way we make money. And here's my prediction on things. The people who will win the next decade will be techno optimists. The people who learn to leverage AI to make money and scale their time. Today I'm partnering with Eva Cicinati to teach us exactly how to do this. She's the founder of nomi. It's an AI powered news platform designed to help people understand what matters in real time without clickbait, doom scrolling or 10 tabs open. And because she's a woman after my own heart inside know me, she built a feature called Finance Mode specifically to give you real time updates on financial news you can use. And this is the exact kind of AI use case that will help you get ahead. Eva and I also get into building in the AI space, whether patents are still necessary and how to actually get one. What it's like being a woman in a very very male dominated space space and why vibe coding is probably the most empowering thing you're going to do all year ever. Cincinnati welcome to Money Rehab.
- [05:06]
Eva Cicinati
Thank you for having me.
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Nicole Lapin
I'm so excited to have you because we have girl talked offline about news and this is like the kind of girl talk that I have and I wanted to share it with the audience specifically about what you're doing with Financial news. Thank you so much for doing that. And we'll get to that in a minute. But is traditional news broken? You know that I've been in this space for a hundred thousand years. What's wrong with it, in your opinion?
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Eva Cicinati
Well, first I don't think it's the fact that people no longer are interested in, in the news. I think the way people receive the news in the format, as they receive it, they just no longer trust it. I think traditional news was very much created for limited information, but now we have like a complete opposite problem, which is we have infinite amount of information. And so it's really difficult for people to understand what it is that they're consuming and have that intelligence ability to contextualize information that is relevant to them. And I think that's the biggest problem today.
- [06:10]
Nicole Lapin
We're just bombarded all the time and what we see too, just fed to us through our feeds or through Apple News or anything. Like we don't even know what source it is. And they all are on the same playing field, so you can't even discern.
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Eva Cicinati
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's really difficult. And I talk a lot about this where we see us covering Europe and it's really not what's actually happening in Europe. I'm Lithuanian in the way that, for example, this whole Russian aggression is happening in Lithuania, United States really much covers it in a very different context. And so for someone that is looking for things that are relevant to them, it's really important for us to understand not just the language barrier, but also the cultural barrier of how things are actually different based on coverage. And so I think that's something that is very much impossible today to gather through the traditional news aspect. But you need it.
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Nicole Lapin
Like when you're even managing your own portfolio or if you're running a business. Like, we need to know what the inflation numbers are, we need to know data that's coming out. Unless you are digging through the BLS numbers directly, which most people don't do. What is the best way to find what you need in this crowded marketplace? Like, the solution is not to cancel the news. We need it.
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Eva Cicinati
Yeah, and I think that's exactly the pain point that we try to solve with KNOWMI is really not eliminating the information, but just creating an intelligence layer that allows us to really provide that information at the right place, at the right time, to the right individual, within the context and their values. Because all of us quite honestly only care what's really happening in our own backyard. And if we are able to succeed in that, to deliver that, have any tool that allows us to really contextualize the information from the entire world based on the topic of my interest, then you know, that's something that was going to be successful in allowing people to make that informative decision.
- [08:09]
Nicole Lapin
Okay, so you mentioned Nomi. You're the mastermind behind Nomi. You believed, and I'm paraphrasing this, this is how I've seen you. As your fan, you said that news basically needed a glow up. Could not agree more. So what were your early brainstorming around solutions for that?
- [08:25]
Eva Cicinati
Oh gosh, my brainstorming started before Nomi even existed at all. My background is interesting in that regard because I come from entertainment, but I also come from running political data analytics for a really long time. It really allowed me to understand the power of information firsthand because our sole job was to personalize and contextualize messaging to each individual to get the message across. But also it showed me the power that could manipulate people with the messaging in, in relation to getting the right outcome. And so even though it was such an honor and the phenomenal, craziest time of my life, I at some point became really frustrated with the fact that only research teams like this, with so much money behind them were able to make that informative decision where someone like me, I could never make money because I just don't have these kind of tools to understand the context of it all. And so I think I didn't know that Nomi is going to become know me. I just knew that I really wanted to solve a problem for myself and also for people around me that were just constantly very confused and also very convinced that they were very informed. And I knew that they weren't because the power of messaging and personalized messaging is unmatched. And so yeah, that's kind of where the idea came from before any of this started. And then I just kind of thought, you know, as the idea was developing, we first started with a computational cloud where how we're going to scale, how we're going to develop all these products, we had no idea what the product was going to be like. We then did the market fit, looked at the news, traditional news. And so this is really where we said, listen, this is what we need to do. We have a goal to make create a tool that allows humanity to be more informed. We need to make a real time intelligence tool that allows them to constantly help in making these decisions. And then we just stuck with news because that's the only thing that constantly
- [10:44]
Nicole Lapin
flows and you're doing it in such a amazing analytical way that's data focused and unbiased. Because a lot of companies, media companies, apps, have tried to do the unbiased without the spin stuff. And still there is somebody behind that messaging that makes me feel like. Like what actually am I supposed to believe? You mentioned that you were in entertainment and I love that you're posting more on LinkedIn now too. You wrote this great piece that you wanted to underplay that.
- [11:14]
Eva Cicinati
Can you explain why there's a quote that really matches this entire experience of mine, which is a jack of all trades is a master of none, but a master of none is better than a master of one. That second part took me a really long time to come home to because I firstly came from a country that was post Soviet Union, literally a year before I was born. And the entire nation really honored and rewarded perfection constantly. And so everything that I have done in my life was really valued based on how good I was at something which required time. And I, when I got into tech, I got into tech really fast. I didn't have the traditional Silicon Valley, Stanford background. I was times two, immigrant, immigrating to Canada, then United States. I had absolutely no traditional background to talk about my data analytics background because politics was very confidential and made me very invisible. And so I just thought that if I could shrink myself into this one page to put myself in the box and erase all these chapters and put myself in this one little one liner where I'm doing this because I thought that people are just going to understand me better. But obviously through time, especially having my daughter, I realized that this is not the example I want to set. My diversity and my rage, everything really allows me to be where I am today. And so yeah, I just, it was definitely a 27 year mark. I was really learning as I went. I was afraid to tell my story because it was just so untraditional. But I think everything has changed now, especially when you're running a startup and you realize that there's no way you could have been successful in any way unless you had the ability to pivot. Which is exactly what my entire background taught me, is how do I pivot very quick, how do I not know the answer, but how do I find the answer? That's where I realized, I think a lot of other people feel this way and I need to just vocalize this because it's being the maximum capacity that you are is what's going to get you to be who you want to
- [13:42]
Nicole Lapin
be, but also who is like an expert, so to speak, in AI.
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Host 1
It's all being written right now.
- [13:48]
Nicole Lapin
Yeah, it's all happening now.
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Eva Cicinati
Yeah, I think, I really think the expert is going to be the AI. And as AI continues to develop, we no longer have to be the linear expert of it all. The biggest thing we're going to bring as being human is the ability to adapt very quickly and know how to use these tools. We no longer have to be experts at anything anymore. AI is going to do that for us. That's how we're going to apply AI to come to that particular result. I think that's what's going to allow us to really excel in using these kind of tools.
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Nicole Lapin
And it's a tool like anything else. Right. It can be used to build a house and to tear it down. So when you had the idea, you said computational cloud, that's what you started with. So basically that's a big brainstorm of ideas. And how did you test those ideas?
- [14:39]
Eva Cicinati
We build a computational cloud. Before Chad GPT or any of these came out, we knew my background was sentiment analysis in the political data analytics. We were all used to gather a bunch of data to understand the sentiment analysis on what people thought. And that was done in a very rough and manual way. Like, think of it as like billions and billions of data points just trying to group them and understand the commonality between all of them or maybe none and just then do the targeting ability of messaging. When we started thinking of how we're going to scale and the fact that our goal was to really help humanity to be more informed, we didn't, we didn't know what the product was. And so we started with the fact that how do we create the base of the house that we're going to eventually build with the architect to ensure that it's strong enough to stay. So we keep on building on top of it. And so that's why we build a computational cloud with machine learning capabilities so we can essentially build as much as we can and have that base kind of withstand all of our changes, pivoting adaptability on anything that we want know me to be and more. And that's what it was. It obviously still stands today under our holding company where we built nomi. And that's why we were able to pivot so quickly with NOMI when Chad GPT came out. Because we're generative AI, we leverage so many different large language models is because we already had that base. So we were just really, just building on top really quickly and maximizing all these Tools that were just coming out and powering them in onto our system.
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Nicole Lapin
How do you deal with all of the tools and advances coming in so quickly? I just imagine you like whack a mole style as a new update comes in. Like, how are you integrating that? Or how are you maybe Vibe coding yourself? Because so much of it doesn't require an engineer.
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Eva Cicinati
The word wipe code is just so funny because I don't even think it existed until like this year, especially when lovable before lovable came out, which was such a genius idea, because now vibe coding obviously is not for hard coding. You're not, you're not going to be able to build a product, at least not today. But what you can do with that now is to really build a prototype that would have taken you maybe two, three months to do that in like 24 hours. Just very quickly throw that out in front of your customers that are willing to test the product, or you're kind of the. The product category, people that are able to really just understand what's the market fit here. Is this going to stick? Is this not going to stick? And do that extremely quickly without really providing and injecting too much capital into that? And so, yeah, it's been transformational for us because this entire industry is like a tsunami, it's going so fast. And the reality is not everything sticks. And so that really allowed us to move quickly and just throw things into the trash if they didn't work within 24 hours versus two months. So it's been, it's been great.
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Nicole Lapin
I trust you. I trust know me. But how does somebody who hasn't used the product differentiate between what you're going to get there versus just asking ChatGPT a question.
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Eva Cicinati
Yeah, I mean, search engines in general retrieve information for you based on referencing the links, and then large language models really provide you information based on the data that they've been trained on. We are analyzing the entire information ecosystem to provide you the information that is contextualized for you specifically to your needs at the right place and at the right time. ChatGPT is a product within itself. We use it as a tool as we use any other large language model to help us power our intelligence layer that is going to be providing you relevant information at the right time, at the right place. Chad Beatty is really a search engine, answer engine. We are really allowing you to understand the world better, and that's mainly our goal.
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Nicole Lapin
But you're not only the founder, you're also. There was a commercial back in the day about this. I'm not only the founder of the Hair Club for Men, but I'm also a customer. So you're also a user yourself, but how do you use it to consume?
- [19:06]
Eva Cicinati
My consumption has really changed because I started off with firstly ensuring as a founder to ensure that we started off with verified results for for the user. Now the fact that I know the way Nomi has been built on for for a year and a half, I'm starting to use know me as a customer based on the things that really matter to me. Like for example, more so to verify the information for me. Is it really true that this happened in Europe? Is it really true that the market is crashing? Is it really true that people are afraid of the market today, whatever that is. I'm asking very personalized questions that are relevant to me that day and I'm. I'm really looking at the way it solves the complexity for me as an individual versus as a CEO. And if I'm able to be satisfied as a customer and not just an asset CEO to provide you the best quality response, I am very much hopeful that others are going to use it the same way and be satisfied. So it's switched from being a CEO and using the product more so and now I'm using it as a user and seeing if I'm satisfied with what I'm getting as an individual.
- [20:18]
Nicole Lapin
I mean, I've heard you talk about this in, in a time that it almost was too early to resonate with me because you were like, I know that there are deep fakes and AI generated stuff that's not real. And I was like, I don't know, deep fakes maybe has to do with porn and other stuff like doesn't have to do with the news. Then I thought of you because I got really deep into the Epstein files, for instance, and I, I saw a bunch of social media posts that looked really real about it and I was like, I've been in news for more than 20 years, is this real or is this not? And I could not tell. And I asked the AI, I'm like, is this real? Is this not? And it's so to now discern. And every single day it feels harder and harder.
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Eva Cicinati
Yeah, look, there's a lot of Epstein files out there. And so firstly, you're getting opinion from someone that's maybe read a fraction of that and is now telling a story based on the findings that they have found. Because the entire social media is based on the people and how they report, how they narrate the story that they want to tell according to their agenda, which is great because opinions are very important and they're important to how they shape our society. But when you're only listening to one story and then you kind of exit the social media, that's all you think about. That's all you think that there is to that story. And so that intelligence layer is extremely important because what it does, it really just gathers the entire ecosystem, the entire landscape of information and then it really contextualizes this for you. So if you ask a question, is this really true? It's going to say, well in this case it is, but actually in this case it isn't. And so you need to be wary of the things that you know, how, how you consume these whatever Epstein files. Because in this particular situation, this particular person, there is no record of this being verified information whatsoever. So I think that intelligence, we're not trying to eliminate information. I think that's really important to know too. It's how do we really just personalize it for our own use that makes sense for us to answer our own question versus what the rest of the world wants us to know.
- [22:31]
Nicole Lapin
But do people want that or do they just want to hear what they want to hear from people who believe the same thing as them? Do they want to be in an echo chamber or do they want non biased news? Because I know you listen to your customer and if you found that everybody just wants to be in their own echo chamber and hear whether it's fake news, not fake news, you would probably pivot again.
- [22:54]
Eva Cicinati
Yeah, look, we're not here to tell people that they should like cats, if they like dogs. We're more so trying to allow people to be more informed about the things that they care about. And yeah, everyone wants a sense of belonging. Obviously I want to know that I'm not the only crazy person that thinks about this idea the way that I do. Which is not something that is a problem. I think more so it's a problem if we believe in something that is factually false, especially Gen Z today they're one of the most vocal generations. And so when you have a generation that is extremely vocal about things that they care about. The most important thing that we can do as a generation is to provide them tools where they can verify their information before they become really pumped up to talk about it or to stand up for whatever it is that they believe in.
- [23:46]
Nicole Lapin
But people want it to be verified.
- [23:48]
Eva Cicinati
Yeah, I've seen that myself. I want information to be verified for me. I don't want to spend time Believing in something that isn't true and then be talking to you about something that ends up being that I don't know what I'm talking about. All of us like to feel intelligent and in control of our lives, and the only way to really do that is to be informed. And so that's where the verified information context comes in.
- [24:09]
Nicole Lapin
And the media matters too. So you guys have a partnership with 11 Labs. We love 11 Labs. How did you see, like, the consumption change from text, video, audio, the. The medium that people are consuming more?
- [24:24]
Eva Cicinati
Yeah, I think as AI continues to develop, everything is going to be moving towards voice. You're going to want to be sitting here with someone, with me, and you're going to want to have a little assistant in your ear, navigating you through a conversation, through your life. And I think 11 Labs is one of the partnerships that we're really proud of because firstly, they are amazing at what they do, and they really have that ability to translate things so quickly and so effortlessly where the language barrier just completely disappears. At this point, we were kind of calling it injection of news as a local. You're really just consuming news as a local. Even though you're just reading news from China or, or Japan or. Or India, it just feels like you're really much just consuming something that you've consumed for your entire life. Except now it's just much more broader spectrum. And eleven Labs makes that possible in
- [25:19]
Nicole Lapin
the language thing is crazy. We've been working on sort of a stealth AI project with 11 labs too. And to hear my voice, and we've trained hours and hours on it in Japanese or whatever, is. Is wild. And. And that's a huge game changer in how you're consuming news and information.
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Eva Cicinati
It's a huge changer for us as AI news agent because we are trying to humanize this experience so much for the consumer, where they feel like they're actually talking to the best friend that knows everything about the world and that should be delivered to them not just by speaking their language, but their accent and their voice that they're trying to feel the connection to. We don't want that to feel static and robotic. We want you to feel like you're literally talking to Mark. As my mother says, you know, I talk to Mark, and I'm like, who's Mark? She's like, mark is your AI news agent who, you know, is the voice that I speak to every single day. And so that's what we want. We want that to be very much personalized experience And I think 11 Labs has really done a great deal for us to be able to do that for our product.
- [26:32]
Nicole Lapin
And your mom is not weirded out by listening to an AI club?
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Eva Cicinati
I think my dad is more freaked out that she constantly refers to Mark versus I'm talking to Nomi. I think there's a few times where she hasn't actually explained herself to my dad. And my dad called me, he goes, do you know who this Mark guy is? I'm like, what are you talking about? He goes like, mark is our AI news agent my mom talks to. And he goes, why does she call him Mark? I'm like, because he renamed him Mark. And so I think that itself just really tells a story that people don't want to feel like they're talking to an agent. They want to talk to someone that feels like a human being that understands them. Yeah.
- [27:14]
Nicole Lapin
I think it's so common now that we're just going to have to get used to it. And I think that there's. There's so much value there. Like, for me, I have listened to the clone of my voice and could not tell the difference.
- [27:27]
Eva Cicinati
Yeah.
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Nicole Lapin
At all. And it allows me to focus on the things that make me uniquely human and that I can bring to the table while still scaling myself in my reach. And so I think when we look at what AI can do for us, how do you balance that, the human element, and the opportunity for scale and reach to other languages?
- [27:55]
Eva Cicinati
Well, I think overall, AI should be leveraged as a tool. And the way that we really want to succeed in is where information feels like empowerment versus confusion, where we could. Where they could use our tool to empower their lives and shape their lives. May that be again, personally or professionally, where they're able to make that decision at the right time, at the right place. Understand that this is a tool that is going to empower them as a human being to be confident and in their decision making. This is where I think AI is going to be revolutionary, regardless of what, you know, in which sectors it's being created.
- [28:36]
Nicole Lapin
You guys launched Finance Mode.
- [28:38]
Eva Cicinati
Yay.
- [28:39]
Nicole Lapin
Thank you so much. So thankful that you made this whole product just for me. That's so kind. What a good friend. How does somebody use that now in the. In the landscape of the same thing? Like so much finance news, so much fake news out there.
- [28:56]
Eva Cicinati
The way that we really want to position Finance Mode for our customers. Customer is for it. For it to be more so of this intelligence layer for markets where we help you to understand what moves markets. And so we are working with all of these partners and creating this real time dashboard specifically for individuals like you that have the ability to then go on our dashboard and understand what signal versus noise. And so of course we leverage live earning calls, we leverage all different company KPIs, we leverage transcripts where you're able to really just have this entire dashboard where you're able to ask a question, where you're able to position yourself as someone in a specific position and then ask an agent that is able to then give you not just a response but context based on the things that you are looking into.
- [29:51]
Nicole Lapin
Thank you again. I want to be the voice. Can I talk to your mom? Like, well, I'm over Mark now Nicole is talking to me. I feel like your dad might like that a little bit.
- [30:02]
Eva Cicinati
Probably would love that. Yeah.
- [30:04]
Nicole Lapin
And I really love what you guys did with the adaptive Fear and Greed index specifically because look, I am so happy that there are more finance creators out in the world. It's just not regulated and people can go on and have a microphone and say just about anything but it's not connected to earnings calls, to company reports, to KPIs. And so I really worry about that. Like I'm equal parts excited by the proliferation of more finance content and and nervous about it.
- [30:35]
Eva Cicinati
Nomi's version really focuses on the real time information flows which is constantly changing that particular sentiment. We also go beyond that too. We are injecting the sentiment of how people feel about the market is it versus what's happening versus how people feel. And we're injecting that as part of the formula into the Fear and greed index. So you can actually see an overall picture that is constantly changing and adapting together with the market and humanity intertwined together.
- [31:11]
Nicole Lapin
It's so smart that you're doing that. Thank you. Because there are so many indexes, there's so many things to track. Like sure, you can track the vix, that's kind of fear, but it's not a vibe. And for the last couple of years we've talked a lot about the fact that data is really strong, but there's a vibe session happening. Like people are upset still. It doesn't matter what the data is showing if people are scared, if people are fearful that something's going to crash, regardless of what the numbers show, they're going to pull their money out of the market. And that's something you need to know.
- [31:39]
Eva Cicinati
Exactly. I mean, you know, what's actually happening is not necessarily how you need to react in response. And I think the fact that going back to the belongings, knowing that you're not the only one that feels this way, knowing that the market overall actually people feel a certain way about the market, is telling you a lot of how you should be acting and what you should be doing next based on what is happening versus how people are looking to react at that particular moment in time.
- [32:02]
Nicole Lapin
So how do I use it?
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Eva Cicinati
The Fear and Fear and greed index mode right now is even though it's not static from the back end, it's fairly static for you, just for you to understand where the market stands at that point in time. So it's constantly adapting so it's real time. And every single time that you're checking even five seconds, that could drastically change depending on what's happening in the world. And you're able to really maybe me being biased and saying that you can really depend on that because again, we're not really focusing on the fixed signals. We're focusing an overall image of how people actually feel of what's happening in the world today. So that Fear and index mode is constantly adapting based on what's happening. And so at this time it's not an interactive feature, but eventually based on what we're working on right now will be.
- [32:48]
Nicole Lapin
Tell me just between us girls, no, I'm really excited about this. Well, how would you ideally want Finance Mode to work and help our listeners on their journey to financial literacy at all stages, at all levels of the game?
- [33:04]
Eva Cicinati
I am someone who is not so much capable in making these tremendously important finance financial decisions. I have never really understood when and how and to what I should be investing my money in. And I think what I really want to accomplish with this particular feature and Mode is not just build it for the professionals, which is what this dashboard really is. You really need to know what you're looking at and the questions that you are asking. You really need to know those questions in advance. But I really also want to build it for people that are going to be able to actually take this dashboard that is going to be specifically personalized to them and adapt it to their level of understanding so it could help them make that more personalized, important financial decision based on where they their capacity and understanding is fine.
- [34:01]
Nicole Lapin
You can build it for other people too. But I know where your heart was when you were thinking of this. One of the first times we spoke, you were also like, just casually, I have a patent for this. Okay, amazing. First of all, second of all, tell me about what that process is even like. And in this world of creation being so accessible, even just sort of in the vibe coding sense. How important is the patent?
- [34:28]
Eva Cicinati
It's important because that's your moat. Especially when you're building something unique, you want to make sure that that's not going to be repeatedly done in the next six months, Especially when you're injecting capital into something that is evidently working. The reality is people tend to copy things. And yes, it might be a nice compliment because people tend to copy things that actually work, but it's a complete, complete tragedy for investors and for you that have been focusing on building something for a long time now, it's very also important to understand what. They're very expensive and they're extremely tiny, like how expensive they're expensive. I mean, you definitely have to hire a law firm that understands how to file patents, that understand how to position your invention in a right way that allows the patent office to understand what it is that you're actually trying to build here or you're trying to protect here. Is it even patentable is another thing. And I think the right attorneys are going to be extremely helpful for you to position your invention in a way where it's very much simplified on the piece of paper. Now it's we ourselves, we have patent one of the most important core intelligence of our platform, which is the sentiment analysis ability that allows us to have this very unique intelligence layer that understands that that is a bridge between humanity and information. That's something that we needed to patent and something that was very much patentable because it was the formula that we have that we have put together into this particular strategy that allows us to function the way that we do. Kind of like our secret sauce. So that was really important for us to patent because if anyone else does that, then of course that's where the patents kick in. But it's not important to. To patent your entire product. One, is nearly impossible, and two, it's just completely useless because things are constantly evolving. Technology is constantly changing. By the time that you get a patent, which if you do takes you up to at least two years, you know it's going to be very much useless. And now you spend all this money patenting something that no longer is even needed. So patenting 30% of your core intelligence layer, or whatever it is that you are building your formula is what's very much recommended.
- [36:52]
Nicole Lapin
After this, I have to bring out my husband. Not that he's like hiding, but he has. My husband also has two. He's going to kill me if I don't say this correctly. Two sentiment analysis patents. Yeah, you told me you guys need to nerd out. It's a small, nerdy. Nerdy class, but very specific nerdy club about this. Yeah. So don't go on upwork and file it patent with some guy who says they can do it. Like you have to do it. Right. And that's tens of thousands of dollars.
- [37:21]
Eva Cicinati
Tens of thousands of dollars depending how complex your invention is. And most importantly, all the details and the regulations and whatever it is that needs to go into these hundreds of pages of a patent are a very important factor of that being either a success or a failure. Obviously once it's rejected, you can always refile, but it's always very hard to do that, especially if you don't have the right team. And the right team is very expensive. Because unfortunately, no matter how many startups are trying to do the patent capability right now, I think they're just creating much more work for lawyers to begin with when it comes to that.
- [38:02]
Nicole Lapin
What has it been like financing this company?
- [38:05]
Eva Cicinati
Yeah. So until this day we've had only one investor who has bet on me when. No, Wendy, nobody else did. And he's been very large investor. He's invested over 30 plus million dollars.
- [38:21]
Nicole Lapin
She says one investor. Just one investor. 30 million dollar.
- [38:26]
Eva Cicinati
Yeah.
- [38:26]
Nicole Lapin
Single investor.
- [38:27]
Eva Cicinati
Now that I think of it, incredible. If I, if I were him, I probably would have never done it because. Oh, stop. It's interesting because I didn't have the background at all. And I think as an investor, when you look at things, you're trying to really minimize your risk. You are betting on people. And I know that he very much bet on me. But at that time I was so green, I knew nothing. All I knew is that I'm gonna, I want to win and I want to solve this pain point. How I'm gonna solve it, I have no idea. Give me your money. That's how it was. But he really bet on me as a human being and I will never forget that because it really allowed me to make a lot of mistakes throughout this process and learn so quickly on my feet because I also had this massive responsibility that I needed. I had somebody that bet everything on me and I had no other choice but to deliver. And that really kept me up at night and still does because we're not done. We're nowhere near done. We're not past stealth mode. We are still very much a startup. Yes, we're going into series A and we're raising Series A now. But you know, nothing is won yet besides the fact that we have made tremendous progress into solving this problem and we will continue doing so until we can't.
- [39:41]
Nicole Lapin
Yeah, I mean taking $30 million would definitely keep me up at night to makes all the sense in the world. One person, I mean that's so unique. I am assuming that you know him having that much money, he did his due diligence and he made a very educated bet. So thank you for your self deprecation but I'm sure there's a real reason that he put that much in. Do you think the future doesn't include my former employers, alma maters of cnn, cnbc, Bloomberg?
- [40:17]
Eva Cicinati
Look, I think this agent specifically and an overall news agents, they're not going to eliminate journalism. I very much believe that these agents will help people consume even more information. I stand by it because right now we have so much information, so many podcasts, so many journalists, it's so difficult to even find the people that I think we would be dying to listen to because we don't even know they exist. And if these agents are able to bring the right people to our platter to listen to, I think we, the consumption is going to rise tremendously and do the opposite of elimination. I think we're going to be very much, much more engaged into journalism than we've ever been done before because it's going to be at the peak of it.
- [41:09]
Nicole Lapin
I just think even as a media business owner, is there more consumption that people can do?
- [41:16]
Eva Cicinati
Not more consumption, the right consumption. And I think that's exactly what agents are here to solve is to know who you are and know what matters to you, when it matters to you. And these are the people, podcasts, contents that you know are relevant to you right now to make that decision. Whatever it is that you're making.
- [41:38]
Nicole Lapin
Normal people don't, don't start business.
- [41:40]
Eva Cicinati
Normal people do not start businesses. I think, you know, if people actually know how hard it is to run a startup, I think nobody would.
- [41:48]
Nicole Lapin
It's also birth. There would be no humans if they're really real. No birth is like the least of
- [41:53]
Eva Cicinati
my worries after a startup.
- [41:55]
Nicole Lapin
Yeah, there's no epidural for the startup.
- [41:58]
Eva Cicinati
No there isn't. And you know what? I, I like at some point I'm gonna like, I would love to cover like one day where I just don't want to scare people. I was on a conference call when I was giving birth and nobody knew I was pregnant. Job. No, no one knew I was pregnant because it was Covid and we were firstly a remote startup and people just thought I was getting fat. I kid you not. People are, like, calling my chief technology officer Eva. Okay? Like, she's gaining so much weight because the camera would just be here. And my chief technology officer was the only one that knew because he had to know. And he's like, no, she's just. I think she's just stressed because I prohibited him for telling anyone that I was pregnant because I was so afraid that the top engineers that we stole from the top companies are gonna just be like, oh, man, she's a woman and she's pregnant, and she's running a startup, and she's got no background. Like, this is a suicide mission. Like, we quit. Yeah. And so I. When I went into labor, I was induced. I had pre Clemsia, and I just. My nurse was like, what is she doing? I'm like, I have a conference call, and my chief technology officer is like, what's happening? Why? Where are you? I'm like, I'm giving birth. I'm giving birth.
- [43:12]
Nicole Lapin
Are you serious?
- [43:13]
Eva Cicinati
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm so. It's interesting because. I don't know. I'm not really proud of that either. Like, I want to have more children, and I just don't want to have this kind of story ever again. I'm sure it's very inspiring for an investor who's like. For investors who would invest money into me and say, like. Like, she's able to walk through fire, but, like, it's just not the life experience I want to encounter again. But, yeah, no, I. Yeah, I was giving birth to one baby and then also to another.
- [43:46]
Nicole Lapin
And the fact that you had to do that still speaks to the truth of. Of the culture that we're in as women who have run businesses, raised money, led teams, because there still is that perception. Yeah, you're just very honest.
- [44:04]
Eva Cicinati
Well, now nobody can tell me something is really hard because I swear to God, giving birth at the same time as, like, running a startup and then also just pushing the baby out in three hours and going back to work literally in 48 hours was the most insane thing I have ever done. And at that point, I was really proud of that, because I'm like, you know what? Nobody can tell me I can't do something ever again. And I think that was also one of those, like, breaking points where I'm just like, I'm just done pretending that I'm this one little linear thing because I just pushed a baby out, and I. I just stood up like nothing happened the next day, and just ended up working. And so for Me, I feel like that was more so, Like, I feel proved that to myself more so than anybody, because quite frankly, I don't even think people are gonna would care that I came back to work 48 hours later or not. It was just something that I wanted to do because I was always told that you can't have a baby and have a startup, but the reality is that when you're at the peak of your career, you're also in your peak fertile year. Yeah. And so you can't. It's not really a choice unless you don't want to have children. So it was just one of those things I had to prove to myself, I think more so than anybody. I don't think anyone cared.
- [45:26]
Nicole Lapin
But not again.
- [45:27]
Eva Cicinati
But not again. No, I, I, I really want to remember my pregnancy this time because I really just don't remember. Maybe it's also hormonal. I don't remember a single thing. But there's that. I also want to remember the experience of just being pregnant, of what it's like to experience that part of nature, which I don't.
- [45:47]
Nicole Lapin
Crazy.
- [45:47]
Eva Cicinati
I worked through it all.
- [45:48]
Nicole Lapin
So what did you, you just, Just had a baby. You, you were just like, meet my child that nobody knew. I knew what's coming.
- [45:55]
Eva Cicinati
Pushed it out in 30 minutes. I was induced, so I was in, like, an act. I wasn't. I was in labor, but not actively where my active labor was, maybe just like two hours. And I really, just when it was time to push, I. My obstetrician just barely caught the baby, and she's like, what just happened?
- [46:14]
Nicole Lapin
Like, what just happened?
- [46:16]
Eva Cicinati
What happened? And so, yeah, I just said, okay, I'm done. I have to now go recover, and I have to go back to work.
- [46:21]
Nicole Lapin
Oh, my God. Well, I thought, I mean, I thought being on the phone with my accountant, literally while I was having contractions, which I wasn't sure, because your first baby, you're just like, is this it? You're like, asking chat gbt, like, am I going through leaping bur?
- [46:38]
Eva Cicinati
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [46:40]
Nicole Lapin
So I was on the. Because it was toward the end of the year, so I needed stuff from my accountant, and I'm like, okay, hold on, let me time the thing. And he's like, are you sure you still want to have this call? I was like, yes, it's really important. We have to get the wires out before the holidays. Like, Christmas is coming, Banks are closed, and then. But yours is next level. And so your team. Did you, did you come back and be like, surprise, my chief Technology officer.
- [47:06]
Eva Cicinati
We used to use. We use Slack now, but back then we used to signal. And my chief technology officer goes, can I please now tell the team you had a baby? And it was very obvious something was going on. I just think, firstly, because my entire team is at that point was made out of men, that they just didn't really put that together, because why would they. And so my chief technology officer just said, can I just please just let them know now that you know you're okay? Because I think it's becoming like a health concern. And so I'm like, yes. So he goes, just so everyone knows our CEO just had a baby. And then everyone just was like, what?
- [47:46]
Nicole Lapin
She was.
- [47:47]
Eva Cicinati
Because I didn't post anything. Like, I was just so quiet because I was just so afraid of people kind of thinking that I can do both. And I really wanted to prove that to them, but most importantly, prove that to myself, because nobody can tell me that again. So I'm basically came out of it stronger.
- [48:04]
Nicole Lapin
Stirring. Yeah. So what does that say about women in business? And now two years later, that you feel differently?
- [48:12]
Eva Cicinati
Gosh. She's just the, like, everything just changes. And I think when you have a baby, you just kind of go like, this is the most important thing that I'm holding in my hands. And I'm going to do everything in my capacity not to let this little human down. And you just start working even harder that you never thought you can work. You just kind of become this like super mom, super, super human because you just don't have the ability to be like, you know what? I just gave birth. I'm kind of just gonna relax now for six months and I'm gonna come back to that. It's. It's not that you kind of give birth and you're like, okay, now I have to. Gave birth to this human, and now I have to keep them and her alive. So now more than ever, I have to do everything in my power to show what humanity is capable of to my little human that is going to be watching my every step. And so I think that's. I think that's something that most women feel.
- [49:17]
Nicole Lapin
But you're vocalizing it, so thank you for that. There was actually an article that I wrote around Covid that more women got promoted because you couldn't see exactly the pregnancy.
- [49:28]
Eva Cicinati
Yeah.
- [49:28]
Nicole Lapin
And it didn't have an impact on.
- [49:31]
Eva Cicinati
Yeah.
- [49:31]
Nicole Lapin
Raises or promotions the way it truly still does, if we're being honest.
- [49:37]
Eva Cicinati
We just have to prove it over and over again with good actors that you can do both. But it's still very hard and I just now know that I can do it. That's all I care about.
- [49:48]
Nicole Lapin
And I think about all the time. Our daughters are very close in age 1 and 2. What the world is going to be like when she starts driving. Is she ever going to need to know how to drive? Is she going to go to college? How do you think about our little, our mini me's and how they're going to consume news and information?
- [50:09]
Eva Cicinati
I think equipping them with the right tools is going to be really our job. And to also be responsible for the things that we're building now to be genuinely good for humanity. That's extremely important because all of us, not all of us, but a lot of these companies are just going after hype and they're building things very, I would say with no responsibility whatsoever because we're trying, they're trying to reach X amount of revenue in X amount of time. And they're being incredibly responsible of how they're building things. And I think that's going to be our responsibility as a generation to set that tone for the next generation that comes. The world is going to be constantly evolving. Our parents did not prepare us where to walk. They showed us how to walk. And it's really our job to teach our children to be responsible in their actions. But I think as AI develops, I truly believe that if we equip them with the right tools or it could help them to make those decisions, it could help them to navigate the world of AI. That's going to be very important. Same same way as parents taught us how to drive, hopefully. And then we kind of choose our own car model and year and what we're actually going to drive at the end of it.
- [51:25]
Nicole Lapin
And destination.
- [51:26]
Eva Cicinati
And destination. Most importantly, destination.
- [51:29]
Nicole Lapin
Because you say humanity in a way that sounds really hopeful, but I think there's a flip side to that. Are you scared?
- [51:37]
Eva Cicinati
Scared is a wrong word. I'm not scared. I am just maybe cautious of the things that you know are coming out and how effective they're going to be. And manipulative. If we're looking at the dark side, I think to everything good, there's the bad side. You can't solve the problem of communication without injecting the over communication of the misinformation or people that are ending up communicating with you. Same thing as Facebook. With Facebook they solved the massive problem where I was able to connect with my school of or my kindergarten kid friends. But they've also created naturally and unwantingly the dark side. And I think that's inevitable. I think it's how we solve that as we move forward with AI is all that it's going to matter. We're not going to solve all problems at the same time. We're just going to have to navigate the way we see fit.
- [52:37]
Nicole Lapin
Are you meeting a lot of female founders in the AI world as you go on to build the company?
- [52:42]
Eva Cicinati
Sadly no. But I think that's going to change. One, because I think I'll find myself a bit more active in Silicon Valley. And two, I think AI is going to really allow, allow us to close that time capsule gap that is and was very much needed to build something spectacular 10 years ago where it was very much man dominated industry because we needed to do this manually. Now we have all of these tools that really if you find the pain point in humanity, if you find a problem in the solution, you're able to leverage all of these tools to build this particular thing. And I think a lot of VCs now are betting on the next billion dollar company that is going to be really run by one person with many different agents because more so than ever before, it's actually possible. And I think I'm very hopeful that women are gonna come out and play.
- [53:45]
Nicole Lapin
I. Yes, amen to that. I have a couple of girlfriends who are also in the space and they're just like yeah, definitely the only lady at the conference, the only woman in the room. So sad if, if this turns out the way you envision. As you were saying, if I'm successful. I think when you're successful, I think you already are. What do you think changes for people and how they consume news and information in this crazy world where I think to myself every day like what even is truth?
- [54:22]
Eva Cicinati
I would really hope that our tool allows them to, allows people to find their own truth in what they care about. And I think just going back to the fact that I would really wish to accomplish that. Tools like Know Me will provide confidence in information and consuming information rather than just confusion and overwhelmedness of the things that you thought you cared about. And now you're just ultimately just super confused and you don't know where to go. Confidence versus confusion. We really want to solve that problem in how people consume information today.
- [54:59]
Nicole Lapin
And what do you want our listeners to understand about what they're walking into in the future of AI?
- [55:06]
Eva Cicinati
Going back to the traditional news where information is infinite at this point, I think the power will belong to those that don't have access to information. But have the tools to contextualize it, because that's going to be the most important thing. And I think that if AI is able to be a tool for that, I think that's going to be transformative for everybody on the most personalized level that you could ever have had it before.
- [55:43]
Nicole Lapin
And what do you see as the future of the traditional news landscape now?
- [55:46]
Eva Cicinati
I think we're beyond feet. I think at this point people no longer want to read articles, they want answers. People don't want to know what's happening, you know, about inflation. They want to know how inflation is going to affect them personally. And I think that personalization capability is how do we have someone or something that we can trust to really provide information that matters to us most at the right time and at the right place. And I think that's where the news format is very much changing. It's, it's, it's also going to change beyond the answer engines as well. I think we're going to be going into the simulation effects now. That's the new paradigm of that. We're going to be able to really understand the model of your life based on the decisions that you make before you make them, where you can actually see your future based on the decisions that you're willing to make. Wait, things are going to be in your life. And I think that's assimilation is going to be the new paradigm.
- [56:51]
Nicole Lapin
So assimilation is my own psychic by my fortune teller, I guess you can
- [56:58]
Eva Cicinati
put it that way. But if you're trying to model out your world based on the decisions that you're making right now, like an architect, think of it. You receive the blueprints before you build something. If you just ended up building something, which is what we're doing, doing right now with making decisions based on the best tools that we have, we're going to make mistakes if we have a tool like a blueprint that is going to be able to actually model out the world for us based on the decisions that we're willing to make, most likely we're going to make the changes before we actually make that decision.
- [57:33]
Nicole Lapin
That's crazy, but also makes a lot of sense because as a business, I look at my data and I model that out into the future.
- [57:44]
Eva Cicinati
So to the best of your ability?
- [57:46]
Nicole Lapin
To the best of my ability. There could be black swan events or stuff happening in the world and that all changes, but I can model it out and with assumptions rooted in data and truth. So you can do the same thing for yourself and your own behavior.
- [57:59]
Eva Cicinati
Except now we have this, like, most powerful AI tool that is able to foresee much further than you would be able to if you were just. Just depending on yourself to make that decision.
- [58:10]
Nicole Lapin
Dang. Okay, I'm scared, but excited. As you know, we end all of our episodes by asking all of our guests for a tip that listeners can take straight to the bank.
- [58:20]
Eva Cicinati
If I could say one thing, it would be, don't make any financial decisions without having the full context of it, simply because I very much believe in this, that it's not the smartest people that become wealthy, it's the ones that are the most informed that become wealthy. And I think having the context before you do anything financially is extremely important.