Paul Allen

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Look Back – Paul Allen on His Startup Journey with Keith Newman

Episode Details:

• Podcast Title: The Look Back: Keith Newman interviews top Entrepreneurs and Influencers on "Their Startup Journey"
• Host: Keith Newman, Former Journalist and Startup + GTM Executive
• Guest: Paul Allen, CEO of Soar AI Studio and Founder of Ancestry.com
• Release Date: August 2, 2024

---

I. Introduction

In this engaging episode of The Look Back, Keith Newman welcomes Paul Allen, the CEO of Soar AI Studio and the visionary behind Ancestry.com. The conversation delves into Paul's entrepreneurial journey, his transition from traditional publishing to pioneering AI-driven solutions, and his insights into the evolving landscape of technology and society.

II. Paul Allen's Background and Early Ventures

Paul Allen begins by discussing his early foray into the internet age, highlighting the launch of MyFamily.com on December 26, 1998. He reflects on the inception of Ancestry.com in September 1995, recognizing the impending dominance of the web over CD-ROM technology.

Paul Allen [00:02]: "Live life with your eyes wide open and see all the dumb, inefficient things that exist today everywhere you look."

III. Building Ancestry.com

Keith and Paul reminisce about the challenges and triumphs of building Ancestry.com during the Internet 1.0 era. Paul emphasizes the strategic decision to digitize billions of searchable genealogical records, leveraging public domain content to bypass the complexities of licensing.

Paul Allen [02:20]: "Public domain content is everyone's best friend if you think about it."

They discuss the innovative approach of releasing new databases daily, offering them free for a limited time to attract users and convert them into paying subscribers. This consistent value creation was pivotal to Ancestry's sustained success through the dot-com bubble burst.

Keith [05:03]: "Ancestry published one new database during every business day and made it free for 10 days to anybody in the world."

IV. Challenges with Venture Capital

Paul recounts the tumultuous period leading up to Ancestry's IPO and the subsequent internal conflicts with venture capitalists who were poised to take the company into bankruptcy. This crisis led to a pivotal Series E funding round, relocation back to Utah, and eventual cash flow positivity by August 2001. Paul reflects on how these challenges reshaped his role within the company.

Paul Allen [32:44]: "They literally were ready to bankrupt the company... I had a series of experiences. I think it's divine intervention that enabled us to postpone the bankruptcy."

V. Transition to Soar AI Studio

Post-Ancestry, Paul introduces Soar AI Studio, an ambitious AI venture aimed at uplifting humanity across various facets of work and life. He outlines Soar's studio model, which involves launching multiple AI-driven companies targeting different markets such as health, finance, legal, education, and more.

Paul Allen [10:15]: "We're solving basically the same problem 15 different times in 15 different markets."

VI. Soar's Mission and Products

Paul elaborates on Soar's flagship products, including CitizenPortal AI, which aggregates and makes governmental meeting data easily accessible and searchable through AI. Upcoming products like Faith Portal, Family Portal, and Friend Portal aim to strengthen social bonds, redefine friendships, and enhance family connections using AI-driven insights.

Paul Allen [19:07]: "Friend Portal will be the first social network that tries to counterbalance the lie that Facebook tells the world..."

VII. AI's Impact on Work and Society

The conversation explores the transformative power of AI in augmenting human productivity. Paul envisions a future where AI acts as a collective intelligence, assisting individuals and organizations in making informed decisions, streamlining operations, and fostering deeper human connections.

Paul Allen [15:31]: "Collective intelligence now starts to assist each person in the company to do their job better and faster."

However, Paul also cautions against the misuse of AI, emphasizing the need for an abundance mindset and societal harmony to harness AI's benefits while mitigating risks posed by bad actors.

Paul Allen [17:20]: "With an abundant mindset and with grace and tolerance... humanity's on the cusp of something beautiful."

VIII. Advice for Entrepreneurs

Paul offers invaluable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, advocating for self-awareness and leveraging one's strengths. He recommends utilizing tools like the CliftonStrengths Assessment to identify innate talents and underscores the importance of surrounding oneself with supportive mentors and team members.

Paul Allen [37:46]: "Find out what your top strengths are... play to your strengths every day."

Furthermore, he highlights the significance of integrating AI into business operations to enhance efficiency and scalability, drawing parallels to the industrial revolution's impact.

Paul Allen [39:03]: "Use AI every chance you can to augment and supplement and supercharge your own capabilities."

IX. Closing Remarks

In the episode's conclusion, Keith and Paul reflect on their shared experiences and the potential of Soar AI Studio to revolutionize various aspects of human life. They exchange lighthearted banter about sports and mutual support, underscoring the podcast's theme of collaboration and continuous improvement.

Paul Allen [40:15]: "Keith, if you'd like a free transcription and search engine of all of the podcasts you've ever done... we'll do that at no charge to you."

Keith expresses admiration for Paul's vision and invites listeners to engage with Soar AI Studio, reinforcing the episode's message of embracing innovation and fostering meaningful human connections.

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Notable Quotes:

• Paul Allen [00:02]: "Live life with your eyes wide open and see all the dumb, inefficient things that exist today everywhere you look."
• Paul Allen [05:30]: "It was the daily value creation that made Ancestry successful right from the beginning."
• Paul Allen [10:23]: "We're solving basically the same problem 15 different times in 15 different markets."
• Paul Allen [15:31]: "Collective intelligence now starts to assist each person in the company to do their job better and faster."
• Paul Allen [37:46]: "Find out what your top strengths are... play to your strengths every day."
• Paul Allen [39:03]: "Use AI every chance you can to augment and supplement and supercharge your own capabilities."

---

Conclusion

This episode of The Look Back offers a comprehensive exploration of Paul Allen's entrepreneurial journey, from the foundational days of Ancestry.com to his current endeavors with Soar AI Studio. Paul's insights into leveraging public domain content, navigating venture capital challenges, and harnessing AI to enhance human productivity provide a rich learning experience for aspiring entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts alike. His emphasis on continuous improvement, community building, and responsible AI use underscores the podcast's overarching mission to highlight stories of success, pain, and impactful innovation.

Transcript

[Keith]

You're the CEO of Soar, which is an AI studio.

[Paul Allen]

Live life with your eyes wide open and see all the dumb, inefficient things that exist today everywhere you look. Called myfamily.com and we launched it December 26, 1998. And within a few years we had billions of searchable birth, marriage, death records. That artificial or that super intelligence, that collective intelligence, now starts to assist each.

[Keith]

Person in the company to do their.

[Paul Allen]

Job better and faster. Two things happened in September of 95. Number one, I knew that the web would be the future, not CD rom. Secondly, it hit me that we could put all the world's genealogy records on the Internet without permission of anyone.

[Keith]

Paul, welcome to the podcast called the Look Back. It is a delight to have you for us to catch up. You're the CEO of Soar, which is an AI studio doing 15 or so AI companies with a goal of uplifting humanity for both work and life. And that just really resonates so well with me, especially juxtaposed against what we were just talking about. And I want to delve into that. But of course, first I want to touch on not football. We could touch on that later again, but I think it'd be fun to dig in a little bit to your earliest endeavors with a little company called Ancestry.com. if I'm not mistaken, that was started in the late 90s. So what is that? Is that officially Internet 1.0 or is that 2.0?

[Paul Allen]

Oh, it was definitely Internet 1.0. In fact, it was September of 95.

[Keith]

I was running a CD ROM publishing business.

[Paul Allen]

We were putting electronic books on CD ROM.

[Keith]

What was that company?

That was called infobases.

[Paul Allen]

So from 1990-97, my best friend and I ran Infobases. But I went to San Francisco in Dec. Of September of 95 to what.

[Keith]

A conference called Internet Developers.

[Paul Allen]

And it was the second annual Internet Developers Conference.

[Keith]

And I'd started using the Mosaic browser.

[Paul Allen]

When it came out. And then Netscape. And you start to see that the world's computers are all going to be connected. Well, when I went to that conference, Keith, I knew that the CD ROM.

[Keith]

Industry would die over the next few.

[Paul Allen]

Years because everything would be on the web. Now we, now we talk about the cloud. But back then it was like World Wide Web is taking over. And so I better get out of.

[Keith]

The CD ROM publishing business.

[Paul Allen]

And the hardest, the hardest part of our CD ROM publishing business was licensing electronic books from authors or publishers because we were in our twenties and these publishing houses were sometimes Decades old or.

[Keith]

Or long older.

[Paul Allen]

And authors typically were older. And they've put a lot of effort into writing their books. And we knew that the future was digital and we didn't know smartphones were coming right around the corner.

[Keith]

But we started to seeing handhold devices.

[Paul Allen]

In the late 90s.

[Keith]

But the hardest part of our CD.

[Paul Allen]

ROM business was negotiating rights. So two things happened in September of 95.

[Keith]

Number one, I knew that the web would be the future, not CD rom.

[Paul Allen]

Secondly, it hit me that we could.

[Keith]

Put all the world's genealogy records on.

[Paul Allen]

The Internet without permission of anyone because of something called public domain. Copyright law covers life of the author, plus so many years. And there are a lot of books that are in the public domain from.

[Keith]

1928 and before, but the genealogical birth.

[Paul Allen]

Marriage, death records were just in the public domain. And so we started down that path and within a few years we had billions of searchable birth, marriage, death records. We took our search engine prowess, applied it to searching genealogical data versus electronic books, and it was just an incredible ride during that web one turned out.

[Keith]

To be bubble and. And then that bubble bursted.

[Paul Allen]

But Ancestry has been successful, really from.

[Keith]

Day one, which is amazing, right, because you look at all the companies that were around you and you were the one that kind of managed to make it to the next level of play.

[Paul Allen]

Well, I bet if you asked 100 [e-mail] today.

[Keith]

Yeah.

What was the secret to the success of the early.

[Paul Allen]

In the early years, I bet nobody would be able to answer that question.

[Keith]

I'm scratching my head. Except to say, you having that information and that information appealing to a pretty wide audience is a good place to start.

[Paul Allen]

Well, if you think about it, software development, you would plan, you would execute.

[Keith]

WordPerfect would come out with a new version every year or two.

[Paul Allen]

Novell would.

[Keith]

Everyone was like one to two year product cycle.

Nice shout out to your fellow Utah companies too, by the way.

[Paul Allen]

Well, I used to live in Utah. I live in Missouri now. So I should reference some of the great Kansas City companies and I probably will. But Keith, what was interesting is when.

[Keith]

The light bulb came on that everything.

[Paul Allen]

Would be on the web. The light bulb also came on that.

[Keith]

You could we update your website every.

[Paul Allen]

Single day and make it make the product better literally every single day.

[Keith]

So our entire small team of 35.

[Paul Allen]

People started figuring out, how can we.

[Keith]

Add new genealogical data every single day.

[Paul Allen]

We can make it free.

[Keith]

So we go find birth records from.

[Paul Allen]

Massachusetts or New Jersey, marriage records for.

[Keith]

Some county, we would digitize it.

[Paul Allen]

We were spending Millions of dollars digitizing and indexing content.

[Keith]

But literally every day, Keith, for at least 10 or 15 years, Ancestry published one new database during every business day and made it free for 10 days to anybody in the world. We would email millions of registered users.

[Paul Allen]

They would come and try out that.

[Keith]

Database for 10 days. After 10 days, it would go behind the paywall. Well, every Friday we started publishing a big database. We called it Wonderbase of the week. So we would have database of the.

[Paul Allen]

Day, Wonder base of the week. Everybody would get an email. All of our affiliates would promote that new content. Tons of people would come and try it out. They would take as many puzzle pieces.

[Keith]

As they could get from that free.

[Paul Allen]

Database for 10 days, and then all.

[Keith]

Those databases go behind the pay wall.

[Paul Allen]

And now that pay wall, that premium.

[Keith]

Subscription, looks more and more appealing the.

[Paul Allen]

Bigger the database got. So we did that every day for.

[Keith]

At least 10 to 15 years.

[Paul Allen]

And that daily value creation is what.

[Keith]

Made Ancestry successful right from the beginning.

Wow, that is interesting. So the, the learning there is really stay on top of your market for one.

[Paul Allen]

Oh, things change so fast. I would say there's quite a, there's.

[Keith]

Quite a few lessons.

[Paul Allen]

Number one, do things that don't require permission. Public domain content is everyone's best friend if you think about it. Even the, those satellites that provide weather data, okay, they're everything published by the federal government. There's a lot of public domain content out there.

[Keith]

There's also a lot of open source content and software out there.

[Paul Allen]

So any enterprising entrepreneur can find there's.

[Keith]

Resources that are abundant everywhere, that don't require permission. And then just with your choice, just with your agency, just with your imagination, you can create value from all those free raw materials. Doesn't require permission to go buy a.

[Paul Allen]

Domain name for $10 and, and form.

[Keith]

A corporation for a few hundred dollars.

[Paul Allen]

And, and decide you're going to create something of value. And now in the world of AI, Keith, there's so many companies that are starting to do brilliant things on top of this AI ecosystem using GPT APIs or, or open source large language models. There's so many opportunities for an entrepreneur who has an imagination to do things.

[Keith]

That don't require permission, that give you access to raw materials that are abundant.

[Paul Allen]

And now you can create value. Now, if you, like you said, if you're in tune with the market, if you're adding value every day, talking to customers, talking to prospective customers on a.

[Keith]

Daily basis, if you're getting your site.

[Paul Allen]

1% better every day, and you're starting to add users and revenue.

[Keith]

My goodness. The opportunity is very.

[Paul Allen]

Is very big. And the. And the prospects are very bright for anyone that is focused on that kind of continual improvement to provide value to your customers.

[Keith]

Yes. Well, you were on a thread, though, while we started about the number of things that you learned and picked up on. Do you want to go back to that?

[Paul Allen]

Well, for sure. One of them is continuous daily improvement.

[Keith]

Another one is the public domain.

[Paul Allen]

And then we touched on the fact that open source or kind of APIs that give you access to. You're building on top of billions of.

[Keith]

Dollars of infrastructure investment. A lot of that didn't exist in web 1.0.

[Paul Allen]

You're kind of buying your own hardware, hosting your own site. I mean, when we got a few.

[Keith]

Million dollars invested from Compaq, we turned.

[Paul Allen]

Around and bought like $3 million of Compaq computers for our servers. And so then we co located them in a. In a co location center. But early on, Web 1.0 was a.

[Keith]

Lot of D. Well, now you're doing all. Now you're doing all that with cloud technology, and soon it'll be LLM and language models.

[Paul Allen]

And I think if you incorporate through.

[Keith]

Stripe, through their Stripe Atlas program, they.

[Paul Allen]

Give you something like $50,000 worth of cloud credits from all these hosting services and SaaS companies. It's like, you know what, I actually don't know, Keith, why millions of people.

[Keith]

Aren'T dropping out of the corporate world.

[Paul Allen]

And starting their own company.

[Keith]

I think the good news is a lot of them are. But I hear your point too. What a rich opportunity. But don't you need the idea? Don't you need to come up with the compelling reason? Or do you just feel like, be an entrepreneur first and figure out the idea second?

[Paul Allen]

My favorite way to be an entrepreneur is find a pain point that hasn't been solved for you yet and then go solve it for yourself and then.

[Keith]

Broadcast that to lots of other people. Because if you've solved a problem in.

[Paul Allen]

A unique way, so. So really live life with your eyes wide open and see all the dumb, inefficient things that exist today everywhere you look now.

[Keith]

Ten companies a day.

[Paul Allen]

Well, yeah, you could. And that's why we have a studio, is because we have so many markets where there's an obvious issue that can.

[Keith]

Be solved right away with AI.

[Paul Allen]

So we're actually taking the studio model.

[Keith]

We're reusing the same technology building blocks 15 times.

[Paul Allen]

We're not building a new technology for.

[Keith]

Each of the companies. We're just partnering with someone who's already in that space, who has content in that space.

[Paul Allen]

Because AI is only as good as the content that it's utilizing. And so we'll be solving basically the same problem 15 different times in 15 different markets. So. So we're not an incubator where anybody can come with a new idea and we back you or whatever. We're a stud that will replicate a.

[Keith]

Solution over and over again aimed at different markets.

[Paul Allen]

Health, finance, legal, education, sales, coaching, leadership, and faith, family, citizenship, and friendship. So we're taking kind of big chunks of the human experience, and we're saying, how can we help uplift humanity in that category?

[Keith]

And how does our existing technology stack.

[Paul Allen]

Millions and millions of dollars built by the same brilliant engineer that built Ancestry.com in the first several years? He. He wrote all the software that we build Ancestry on.

[Keith]

Now he's wrote, written all the software.

[Paul Allen]

That we're building Soar On.

[Keith]

And in both cases, we had a.

[Paul Allen]

Great supporting cast and hired lots of.

[Keith]

People to grow the company.

[Paul Allen]

But. But we're doing some really fun things that will help. I hope people live a better life, thrive at work, and flourish in all areas of life.

[Keith]

Yeah. So with the Soar platform, you touch a lot of areas. Many businesses will grow from this family tree, as it were. I'm mixing my metaphors, right?

[Paul Allen]

I like that.

[Keith]

Yeah, the pun was intended for sure. So my thought, though, with Soar, it was. It. It was more of a studio model where you were going to incubate some companies, but you're actually developing out a platform. Take me through an example or two.

[Paul Allen]

Think about human communication and how important it is. Okay.

[Keith]

Before COVID we almost always spoke with our co workers in person, in office.

[Paul Allen]

We had meetings all the time, maybe.

[Keith]

A few hours of meetings a day.

[Paul Allen]

We would write memos and emails. So human communication is fundamental to developing.

[Keith]

Marketing, or selling or supporting anything. And so every company has products and.

[Paul Allen]

Services, but they are derived from us talking to each other.

[Keith]

Now post Covid, and in a world.

[Paul Allen]

Where Zoom video conferencing and Microsoft Teams and Google Meet and Jitsi and WebEx.

[Keith]

And all these video conferencing platforms, imagine.

[Paul Allen]

How smart AI can get if all.

[Keith]

The conversations and meetings that a company.

[Paul Allen]

Holds are recorded and transcribed and turned.

[Keith]

Into a vector database where the AI.

[Paul Allen]

Can go look for content by meaning.

[Keith]

And concept, not just by keyword searching.

[Paul Allen]

Although keyword searching is part of it. But imagine an AI platform that takes.

[Keith]

Human communication inside of an organization, including.

[Paul Allen]

All the calls you have with potential customers. They're recorded and transcribed and understood by the AI.

[Keith]

All of the calls you have with.

[Paul Allen]

Existing customers, including sales and support calls.

[Keith]

The calls you have with your legal.

[Paul Allen]

Department, your finance department, your HR department. Imagine an AI that understands everything you're talking about, wanting to do, everything you're offering now, and who's, who's buying it and who needs support on it. And AI starts to become this super intelligence that's aimed at helping you build a better product, reach more customers, support them more, fully, operate efficiently with all.

[Keith]

The intelligence built in already now, through the past, data that's been captured and powered up. So now when I get on the phone with you, I understand the, the 10 companies that you've been working with, what you've been doing the last few weeks, etc.

[Paul Allen]

Exactly.

[Keith]

If you think about artificial intelligence, the word artificial intelligence, I don't even like the phrase.

[Paul Allen]

First of all, it's really machine learning.

[Keith]

It's about as old as the Internet too.

[Paul Allen]

Yeah, yeah, but there, there is an.

[Keith]

Argument that artificial general intelligence will someday emerge.

[Paul Allen]

I don't really know if it will, but I like to think of it as collective intelligence, because artificial intelligence is.

[Keith]

Only as good as the human created.

[Paul Allen]

Training data that, that informs it. And so if AI can go and.

[Keith]

Read every book ever published, or every web page, or every Reddit post or.

[Paul Allen]

Tweet, and, and it then starts to.

[Keith]

Have a perfect knowledge of language patterns.

[Paul Allen]

What words precede other words, what words and phrases proceed or follow other phrases.

[Keith]

And the generative AI is just a.

[Paul Allen]

Probabilistic word creation engine.

[Keith]

It actually doesn't know if it's true.

[Paul Allen]

What it's generating, but it's using mathematical.

[Keith]

Probabilities to answer any question you have.

[Paul Allen]

And all of us are surprised at.

[Keith]

How accurate its answers are, although we.

[Paul Allen]

Always see hallucination too.

[Keith]

It just makes up false things that.

[Paul Allen]

Sound real because they follow language patterns of humans. Now imagine a collective intelligence of all your employees based on everything that they've.

[Keith]

Written or said over the past year.

[Paul Allen]

Or five years or 30 years. And that artificial or that super intelligence, that collective intelligence now starts to assist.

[Keith]

Each person in the company to do their job better and faster.

[Paul Allen]

Because that AI co pilot that I use as a CEO, or that my.

[Keith]

Head of legal uses, that starts to be aware of facts that you didn't.

[Paul Allen]

Know about and brings them to your attention just in time so humans can.

[Keith]

Get better and more productive than ever before.

[Paul Allen]

And then we're on the cusp of not only having humans doing that work, aided by a co pilot that's a, that's a collective intelligence, but agents that can actually do the work for you.

[Keith]

Under your direction, Keith.

[Paul Allen]

And come back and say, Keith, here's five tasks that were assigned to you.

[Keith]

In the last meeting. I can do three of them.

[Paul Allen]

Do you want me to have them done by tomorrow morning? Do you want to approve my work.

[Keith]

Before I send out that email?

[Paul Allen]

And all of a sudden we'll be orchestrating the agent of AI as well.

[Keith]

As the augmented human productivity boosts. And I feel like we're on the.

[Paul Allen]

Cusp of unprecedented, unprecedented prosperity where small companies and large companies can be way.

[Keith]

More productive than we ever imagined. Humans could be augmented by agents and.

[Paul Allen]

Of course Elon Musk's optimus robots and the billion humanoid robots that he thinks will be buying and and and using.

[Keith]

To deliver products or to fix things.

[Paul Allen]

Or to do operations or whatever the robots are going to be doing. We have this opportunity to enter into.

[Keith]

This new era of productiveness.

[Paul Allen]

But the biggest problem to our earliest conversation is the lack of harmony and harmoniousness in our society.

[Keith]

If we have a spirit of abundance.

[Paul Allen]

And a mindset that there's going to be enough for everyone, if we aren't greedy and territorial and polarized instead, if.

[Keith]

We can actually embrace the future possibilities.

[Paul Allen]

With an abundant mindset and with kind of grace and tolerance for people that are different from us or that don't see the world exactly through our lens, I feel like humanity's on the cusp of something beautiful. At the same time, AI gives power to bad actors. That is also unprecedented. So it's that two, it's that two edged sword.

[Keith]

There's a, there's a divisiveness in our political but also in our social with a have and have not sort of reality that we have to face. How do, how do we tighten up the divide both from a digital standpoint but from a social standpoint. Hey, you brought up some really great points. I think your, your namesake, the guy that helped co found Microsoft would be proud too. I think he'd right in the middle of all this stuff with your co pilot references. So speaking of right where this all goes, I want to tie tie together the the plan with Sore. Okay. So does Sora then go to market as sore and I choose a, an area to access the different applications or is Sore going to launch a myriad of companies that I can then that will have its own different go to market plans? Help me tie that that together a little bit.

[Paul Allen]

Yeah.

[Keith]

So Soar will have its own corporate website and we'll announce all the new corporations that are being formed and what.

[Paul Allen]

Products they are launching and what partnerships.

[Keith]

They are entering into.

[Paul Allen]

So, for example, one of our first companies was called CitizenPortal AI, which now.

[Keith]

Has about a million hours of videos from public meetings, local, state and federal government meetings, all transcribed, all searchable, all, all turned into GPTs.

[Paul Allen]

So you can find out what's going on in your city, your county, your state. And the AI will go grab clips.

[Keith]

From meetings and come back and tell.

[Paul Allen]

You, here's what's on the agenda or here's what's been discussed. So Citizen Portal is our first and.

[Keith]

We have some partnerships that we're announcing.

[Paul Allen]

And we're getting quite a few users.

[Keith]

And we're very excited about Citizen Portal.

[Paul Allen]

Faith Portal is coming and we are hoping to form a partnership with one of the world's largest faith tech companies. They've asked us to design seven AI products that we could ship together to their huge customer base. And then the Family Portal and the.

[Keith]

Friend Portal are coming.

[Paul Allen]

And those will be social experiences aimed at connecting you to your living relatives in a deep and ongoing way. And Friend Portal will be the first social network that tries to counterbalance the.

[Keith]

Lie that Facebook tells the world that.

[Paul Allen]

You have a thousand friends or 5,000 friends, because in reality, you're very lucky.

[Keith]

You're blessed if you have three or four real friends. The word friend was completely ruined by.

[Paul Allen]

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook and everyone who thinks they're friend things if they, among many other things in Britain, I think that one third of divorces implicate Facebook in the divorce because of a old flame that was brought back to your attention, a high school sweetheart or whatever.

[Keith]

So in the court proceedings, I read.

[Paul Allen]

That about a third of all marriage breakdowns implicated, at least to some degree, the Facebook platform.

[Keith]

So Facebook moved fast and broke a.

[Paul Allen]

Lot of things, including society and civil discourse and the truth in the news media. It's like really bad how broken.

[Keith]

You're preaching to the choir. I think there's absolutely room for new social platforms very based on what we learned worked and didn't work with the existing Twitters and Facebooks of the world.

And the Friend Portal will actually help.

[Paul Allen]

You assess through some very powerful assessments who are my real friends and what.

[Keith]

Role do they play in my life.

[Paul Allen]

And what role do I play in my friend's life? And then let's get off the screen, let's disconnect from digital and go deepen our friendships.

[Keith]

We're recruiting several of the world's experts on friendship and we will design experiences.

[Paul Allen]

Offline experiences that will help people go from knowing someone as an acquaintance to having a friendship, to having a lifelong friendship. One one academic told me, he said, do you know how many hours it.

[Keith]

Takes to turn a new person into a friend?

[Paul Allen]

I said, no idea. Never have thought about the process of friendship. It's just like, who was my neighbor kid growing up that I played games with?

[Keith]

Okay, those were my friends.

[Paul Allen]

There was just a lot of serendipity and it wasn't intentional.

[Keith]

But he said, no, it takes 60.

[Paul Allen]

Hours to have both people think that.

[Keith]

Now I'm a friend with, with you.

[Paul Allen]

90 hours for a deep friendship and.

[Keith]

200 for a lifelong friendship to form.

[Paul Allen]

This is based on averages of studies they've done, but he said you can expedite that.

[Keith]

So if you're out there lonely and.

[Paul Allen]

You'Re on the screen scrolling 4, 5.

[Keith]

6, 7, 8 hours a day, streaming.

[Paul Allen]

Scrolling, binge watching, and you're probably super lonely.

[Keith]

Hopefully the friend portal will soon be available.

[Paul Allen]

You'll be able to take some very well created scientific assessments and think about the friends you have or think you have. Create a little guide book or a map of, of who your friends are. And then what roles do friends play that you don't have anyone playing?

[Keith]

There's a reason for your loneliness, your.

[Paul Allen]

Stress, your anxiety, your depression. And the way to solve it is not to be online.

[Keith]

It's not to go to Facebook and.

[Paul Allen]

Pretend and search for likes and shares and digital social validation.

[Keith]

It's to go fishing with someone or bowling with someone or have lunch or serve someone.

[Paul Allen]

It's to become a real human again, which many of us experienced before digital took over the world. And friendship could have a resurgence.

[Keith]

Family ties could have a resurgence when.

[Paul Allen]

The family portal is launched. And so, and then citizenship could become more respectful. We, we hope to reward good behavior in our citizen portal and invite good behavior, which means talking to people you.

[Keith]

Disagree with, but in a very civil way.

[Paul Allen]

The book, the book Love youe Enemies.

[Keith]

By Arthur Brooks is a fantastic guidebook.

[Paul Allen]

For all of us. And it starts by sharing the scary fact that most Democrats don't have a.

[Keith]

Single friend who's a Republican and most.

[Paul Allen]

Republicans don't have a single friend who's a Democrat.

[Keith]

Yeah, yeah. No, no. Listening and giving room to, for, for disagreement is missing in the, in the current debate. For sure. I want to switch now. It's, it feels really organic the way you moved from what you created at Ancestry over a dozen or two dozen years into this kind of a model Almost like the next version of the. Of the suite. Remember, we talked back in the day of software suites and things like that. The. The. The blended of products. It feels like that's a natural extension. Tell me how you made that leap at Ancestry and said, you know, I got to go do something bigger and broader, and I want to see a little bit of social impact mixed in well with Ancestry.

Keith it was so frustrating.

[Paul Allen]

We had a very exciting subscription business model.

[Keith]

We were growing our website by hundreds of millions of records every month, every quarter, and no venture capitalists were interested.

[Paul Allen]

In ancestry.com at all.

[Keith]

We went to Sand Hill Road, blank stairs.

[Paul Allen]

Okay? It was mostly young men in their.

[Keith]

20S and 30s that are venture capitalists back then.

[Paul Allen]

And thankfully, there's now more diversity in vc.

[Keith]

There's lots of big funds and small.

[Paul Allen]

Funds, but there weren't that many funds back then, and.

[Keith]

And they tend to invest in things they understand. None of them had a clue why older people would go to a courthouse or to a cemetery looking for records of their deceased. It did not compute for them at all.

[Paul Allen]

So out of frustration, we were like.

[Keith]

This is going to be a big company.

[Paul Allen]

This is going to be a dot.

[Keith]

Com success story, and no one will fund us.

[Paul Allen]

And we need a lot of funding.

[Keith]

To go raise money to digitize the world's genealogy records.

[Paul Allen]

We had 1200 people in China in.

[Keith]

A company called Beijing Formax.

[Paul Allen]

A really incredible guy named Jack Blodgett started that company, and they were doing.

[Keith]

Data entry of our scanned records to.

[Paul Allen]

Extract names, dates, and places from, you know, millions of images. And so we had a lot of funding needs to scale up ancestry. And so as I was going through the process of evaluating how do we.

[Keith]

Raise money for ancestry, it struck me.

[Paul Allen]

That our mission wasn't to connect people to their deceased ancestors, only our mission was to connect families to each other. So we started talking about this new company, this new website in the same.

[Keith]

Company called myfamily.com and we launched it December 26, 1998.

[Paul Allen]

It was the first robust social network for families. It was private. You could have a social network for your nuclear family.

[Keith]

You could have a social network for your extended family.

[Paul Allen]

About 10% of the family sites were.

[Keith]

Actually groups of friends, college classmates, high.

[Paul Allen]

School graduating classes, or corporations that wanted to use the new social technology. But my family.com immediately attracted 13 million in funding, then 35 million the next.

[Keith]

Year, then 30 million the next year.

[Paul Allen]

So we raised money for the whole mission of connecting and strengthening families. Ancestry.com just happened to be the Big money maker. And when the bubble burst and all of our investors were panicking, they decided.

[Keith]

To sideline myfamily.com it was a crushing blow. Having been the founder of the company.

[Paul Allen]

And the, and the instigator of both of those Ideas, I felt MyFamily.com was.

[Keith]

10 times more viable as a long.

[Paul Allen]

Term success story than Ancestry.com because only.

[Keith]

7% of Americans will take time to.

[Paul Allen]

Do genealogy research, 95% of people think.

[Keith]

That staying in touch with your living.

[Paul Allen]

Relatives is very important or somewhat important. And so it's 95% customer base or 7%. And and then of course, when my family.com was sidelined, years later, Friendster emerged, MySpace emerged, Facebook emerged.

[Keith]

Right.

We could have been Facebook scale, but with a mission to connect and strengthen families, not a mission to move fast and break things.

[Paul Allen]

Okay, so to answer your question, I've never really been a hardcore techie or a research developer. I'm a platform entrepreneur.

[Keith]

I look at what new technology platforms are emerging that are going to become.

[Paul Allen]

Useful to billions of people and then I jump on each wave. So I'm really about mission and applying good content and good experiences to create community. So content and community on the latest platform.

[Keith]

So whether that when that was CD Rom, we were publishing religious content, educational.

[Paul Allen]

Content, legal content, when it was the web, we were doing genealogical content and creating social networks for families. Today, in the world of AI, where.

[Keith]

AI is going to replace most computer.

[Paul Allen]

Interfaces, we won't have keyboards and devices as much as we'll have a human voice interface and a super intelligent AI that can answer any question, do any task, and augment our ability to imagine and create. So what we're going to try to do is just carve up all the.

[Keith]

Areas of the human experience that matter.

[Paul Allen]

Family, faith, citizenship, education, the workplace experience, leadership, health, legal, finance. We are also going to do a.

[Keith]

Sports portal and a music portal someday.

[Paul Allen]

It's not on our immediate roadmap, but.

[Keith]

If you think about the joy of.

[Paul Allen]

Living, a lot of joy comes from.

[Keith]

Watching or participating in sports, watching or.

[Paul Allen]

Participating in theater, in music, there's inspirational.

[Keith]

Concerts, and there's so many transcendent experiences.

[Paul Allen]

That humans can have.

[Keith]

And the AI can be your curator partner and your perfect memory recall partner. So if you want to relive a.

[Paul Allen]

Moment from the 49ers glory days, you.

[Keith]

Ask the computer and it plays the clip.

[Paul Allen]

Or, or like just there's going to be so many ways for AI to make your human experience better as long as it doesn't control your Time and attention. It's not trying to sell you things or, or pursue some advertising.

[Keith]

Those are all going to happen. We just have to be smart how we manage it.

[Paul Allen]

Yeah, exactly. There will be AI platforms that are.

[Keith]

Super powerful that will try to sell.

[Paul Allen]

Your time and attention to the highest bidder on an advertising model. And that will be extraordinarily detrimental to your life mission and well being.

[Keith]

All this is great. Love it.

So, yeah, we have, we have big plans.

[Paul Allen]

We hope to go public someday on the long term stock exchange, if that's ever possible. If that, if that Eric Reese invention is ever finished.

[Keith]

Well, look, still build something sustainable and strong. It can go on the old nasdaq.

[Paul Allen]

Well, the problem with short term, with, with long, with NASDAQ or NYSE is.

[Keith]

The good CEOs and the good CFOs and the other C level executives that are running a good company that's doing good for the world and good for.

[Paul Allen]

Their customers have enormous pressure put on them by shareholders and by activist investors.

[Keith]

To never miss your quarterly earnings number.

[Paul Allen]

Even by a penny. If you do, you get crushed by the market. Your stock price goes down 10, 15, 20%. So why do people do mass layoffs to avoid short term earnings?

[Keith]

You, you and I both live those things. Hey, I want to move to a little bit of short question, short question and answer, but this has been great. I really have enjoyed the discussion of, of working through Ancestry. With your background, I've got to ask you some of those moments where things got a little bit crazy. I talk in this podcast of course is called the Look Back. So when you think back on Ancestry, there had to be the one or two moments for you where you said that oh shit moment. Holy. What are we going to do? Or how are we going to make payroll? Or we got to fix the product or we got to change direction. What was the one or two big pivots for you, Paul?

[Paul Allen]

Oh, I could probably go through dozens.

[Keith]

One that stands out is that my.

[Paul Allen]

Childhood friend Darren Thain became the CTO of Ancestry.com and as we were going through our bake off trying to pick the banker, we, we actually chose Merrill.

[Keith]

Lynch to take us public in early 2000.

[Paul Allen]

And Darren and I were sitting in.

[Keith]

A company meeting together.

[Paul Allen]

The whole, the whole crew was there and he said to me, Paul, what does it feel like to be worth $100 million? Because on paper, yeah, my stock, my.

[Keith]

Founding stock in Ancestry at that point.

[Paul Allen]

Was $100 million worth and it was probably soon going to be several hundred million dollars. And I Remember, like not really having a reaction to him. Like, I don't know, I don't feel any different. Well, within three months, I. The company's IPO was postponed.

[Keith]

The venture capitalists brought in a new CEO and CFO that had delayed the ipo.

[Paul Allen]

And by the end of that year.

[Keith]

They wanted to take Ancestry into bankruptcy.

[Paul Allen]

They literally were ready to bankrupt the company. Because if you go through bankruptcy, what happens?

[Keith]

All your venture capital stockholders get wiped out, all your common shareholders get stocked.

[Paul Allen]

Out, got get wiped out. But the management team gets to raise new capital, turn the company around, and their stock options get reloaded. So there's like this tension between three groups. The founders, the venture investors, and the management team. Well, guess who's really in charge at that point.

[Keith]

The management team is calling the shots.

[Paul Allen]

Day to day and they wanted to take us into bankruptcy. So I had a series of experiences. I think it's divine intervention that enabled us to postpone the bankruptcy, raise a.

[Keith]

Series E funding round, fire the CEO and cfo with the help of some.

[Paul Allen]

Utah investors who are amazing in the process, relocate the company back to Utah. And By August of 2001, we were cash flow positive again for the second time. We had been cash flow positive July of 98, before we raised out any outside funding. We raised 90 million. We got cash flow positive again, no August of 2001. But it was no longer a recognizable company for me. I was no longer a leading executive there. It was, it was just so I would say no.

[Keith]

That's a, that's a great story because a lot of people who are starting companies and selling their equity for dollars and growing the company and they, they see these stars in their eyes when they hear the valuation, you know, comments. But they don't realize some of the risks that lie ahead and they're inevitable. You know, you're always going to come into some point where there's a decision on do we need to replace this key person, do we need to take this money, do we need to sell this asset? There are some fundamental things that can change the course and direction of the business. And you just shared one that I think is a little bit hidden from most entrepreneurs, especially at the early stage.

[Paul Allen]

I mean, the first time you raise venture capital, you have no idea what idea what you're doing.

[Keith]

They've done it 100 or 500 times and they know all the ropes. They know that the vanilla term sheet.

[Paul Allen]

Is super investor favorable and you know.

[Keith]

They know they're taking advantage of you. But they probably don't disclose that fully.

[Paul Allen]

And I'm sure there's a few exceptions, but I, I had, I had a really rough experience with venture capital. Looking back though, Keith, I feel like when I write the definitive history of ancestry.com I'll actually use our platform to do it. Keith. I'll interview 50 or 100 of the most key figures from 1996 to 2001 or 2, and I'll interview them for an hour on our Source Scribe platform.

[Keith]

You can go to source scribe.com and.

[Paul Allen]

Sign up for free and, and then.

[Keith]

I'll interview them, get a transcription of.

[Paul Allen]

Everything they said, and then I'll have.

[Keith]

Chat GPT help me outline all the chapters of the book and all the quotes from those 50 or 100 people. I don't want it to be just.

[Paul Allen]

My perspective of the founding, even though it was my idea and I was.

[Keith]

In every board meeting for five or.

[Paul Allen]

Six years and I was the head.

[Keith]

Of content acquisition at first and then.

[Paul Allen]

The head of marketing. So I think I know more than anyone else. But guess what? I. I don't know more than everyone else combined.

[Keith]

And so perspective. Right.

[Paul Allen]

It's also different and there's definitely different perspectives.

[Keith]

So the definitive history of Ancestry will.

[Paul Allen]

Be co created by dozens of Ancestry, please. We probably could, but I just want.

[Keith]

To give a shout out to John.

[Paul Allen]

Ivy, who was the data prep engineer.

[Keith]

Who put the first 3 billion records.

[Paul Allen]

On Ancestry.com by himself.

[Keith]

I tell you what, I'm, I'm really resonating with your point about find that public domain content, that open source technology that you can use with AI. Talk about building blocks that'll help you scale quickly to MVP but also go to market.

[Paul Allen]

Amazing. Exactly. Exactly.

[Keith]

John Ivey, Richard Stauffer, he wrote the first 34 applications that built Ancestry from.

[Paul Allen]

Nothing to something extraordinary.

[Keith]

And then within two years we had 60 engineers. But he wrote the first 34 programs. He was the only coder for.

[Paul Allen]

For two years we had Lou Zou.

[Keith]

Who was the most beloved person in the genealogy industry that helped us find.

[Paul Allen]

All the content sets and, and she was a publisher.

[Keith]

I can't let you roll through all the credits. I know you're a very humble guy. I appreciate all of that. I do have a. Another question though. I want you to give me a, a thought or two for young entrepreneurs, or I should say new entrepreneurs. Let's not be ageist here who have thoughts about starting something but have that moment where, you know, I'm scared. I don't know how I, how do I get, you know, have that moment of Hesitation to jump in and do it. What do you tell those entrepreneurs?

[Paul Allen]

I think Don Clifton, who is the.

[Keith]

Psychologist who created the StrengthsFinder assessment to.

[Paul Allen]

Help people find out what their natural innate talents were.

[Keith]

And he wrote a book called Soar.

[Paul Allen]

With your strengths in 1992. His philosophies about your personal growth and development are more true than any philosopher or, or psychologist I've ever read.

[Keith]

I think you should study Don Clifton's.

[Paul Allen]

Book soar with your strengths. Number two, find out.

[Keith]

Take a $20 assessment from Gallup called the CliftonStrengths Assessment. Find out what your top strengths are.

[Paul Allen]

Your patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. Find out what you're really good at without even trying.

[Keith]

Love it.

[Paul Allen]

And, and then try to play to your strengths every day. Don Clifton also taught that strengths only develop in relation to another human being. You need people that believe in you.

[Keith]

A coach, a mentor, a co worker, a co founder.

[Paul Allen]

You can't do it on your own.

[Keith]

Nobody is an island.

[Paul Allen]

And so you need someone who's honest.

[Keith]

With you, but also who believes in you, knows your strengths as well as.

[Paul Allen]

You do and helps you play to.

[Keith]

Your strengths and helps you offset your many weaknesses.

[Paul Allen]

Because we all have so many fatal flaws. They can only be fatal if you let them be. But you need systems and people to.

[Keith]

Help you manage around your weaknesses.

[Paul Allen]

But play to your strengths.

[Keith]

Surround yourself with other people who are very self aware. Play to their strengths. But most of all, in today's world.

[Paul Allen]

Use AI every chance you can to augment and supplement and supercharge your own capabilities. If you think about the industrial revolution where the guilds who were great crafts people and they could make, you know, hand crafted products or, or so clothing or rugs or whatever, all of a sudden machines come out that are 10.

[Keith]

Or 100 times more productive.

[Paul Allen]

So, so there's this disruption happening.

[Keith]

AI is about to be that disruption. Unless you are one of those entrepreneurs that is using AI.

[Paul Allen]

So, so buy some books about AI. Follow some smart people on YouTube and Twitter.

[Keith]

Try things. Even if you don't code, you can.

[Paul Allen]

Use AI to code. Even if you're not a good marketer, you can use AI to do the marketing. Pretty soon you'll have an army of.

[Keith]

Agents at your beck and call. And if you can learn to communicate.

[Paul Allen]

Clearly what is needed, those people, those.

[Keith]

Agents will put it into action what you need.

[Paul Allen]

And as Sam Altman is predicting, there.

[Keith]

Will be a one person company that.

[Paul Allen]

Becomes a billion dollar company, a unicorn company, or a small company that becomes.

[Keith]

A unicorn company in the not too distant future.

Yeah, it's possible. Folks, this is Paul Allen with Soar, founder of Ancestry. Paul, we could find you at [e-mail].

[Paul Allen]

But my email address is the shortest.

[Keith]

One I've had of my whole life.

[Paul Allen]

I was so happy. I remember when Josh Koppelman, a great venture capitalist from Philadelphia, started half.com and.

[Keith]

I had lunch with him in San Francisco.

[Paul Allen]

In 99, he sold half.com to eBay for like 350 or $400 million. But his email was [e-mail] and I thought, that is so short and sweet. I was so jealous. Well, now I have Paul at so S O A r dot com.

[Keith]

Feel free to reach out. We're launching a founder portal. We're launching an AI co pilot for entrepreneurs.

[Paul Allen]

We think that the success rate of startups can double or triple that.

[Keith]

The failure rate of startups maybe can.

[Paul Allen]

Be cut in half when you utilize.

[Keith]

The powers of recording and transcription and.

[Paul Allen]

AI agents to help you get more.

[Keith]

Done more quickly, fail faster, succeed and scale faster.

[Paul Allen]

And I think there's a beautiful opportunity for you. Take the initiative.

[Keith]

Believe in yourself by learning what your strengths are. Know that you're unique, you can do.

[Paul Allen]

Things and you know people that nobody else in the world can do and know. And you can become an inspiration. You can build products and services that.

[Keith]

Meet the needs of one company or a thousand companies.

[Paul Allen]

And you can carve out your own bright future. Don't neglect your family and your friends. If you're a person of faith, keep going. If you're not a person of faith.

[Keith]

Just know that the data shows that.

[Paul Allen]

People of the faith community live longer, happier lives than people that are not in the faith community. It might be.

[Keith]

It might be a social thing.

[Paul Allen]

I think it's both a social thing and a divine creator thing. But just open your eyes to the possibilities. Don't be afraid.

[Keith]

I was a Russian major in college.

[Paul Allen]

I had never taken a business class or a technology class in my entire life.

[Keith]

The only class I had in K through 12 or college that prepared me.

[Paul Allen]

For an entrepreneurship career was my typing class in 8th grade.

[Keith]

I love it. That's great. Paul. Paul Allen, folks. What a great catch up. And I wish you tons of success. If there's anything I can personally do to support the platform, you and I will continue this conversation. Then onward and upward. One final favor, Paul. Can you let us win it this year?

[Paul Allen]

Absolutely not. I just. I think. I think it's. It's in the cards.

[Keith]

I looked in the crystal ball, Keith.

[Paul Allen]

It's 3P 3P for the Chiefs. Andy Reid is a the funnest coach.

[Keith]

Of all time, if not the most successful.

[Paul Allen]

He'll be both, by the way.

[Keith]

Keith, if you'd like a free transcription and search engine of all of the.

[Paul Allen]

Podcasts you've ever done all these years, my team will do that at no charge to you. We could just upload it all. You'll have a search engine.

[Keith]

Your team can then find a clip.

[Paul Allen]

From any of the past interviews, clip, highlight it and share it on social media. Be happy to provide you and any other thing, any other podcaster, I would.

[Keith]

Provide the podcast back to your platform with the founder interviews and the other things that I've done.

[Paul Allen]

So fantastic. That would be awesome.

[Keith]

Yeah.

[Paul Allen]

Okay. Because you want, you want distribution, because you want to help people.

[Keith]

You're, you're abundant mindset is very evident to me. Thank you.

Yeah, I have no, no, no restrictions. This is mine and this is a passion that I really enjoy. And you have a wonderful spirit about you and so let's uplift a little bit together.

[Paul Allen]

Thank you, Keith. Let's do it. I appreciate you.

[Keith]

All right, great talking to.