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- [00:00]
Brookfield Announcer
At Brookfield, we invest in the thing behind the thing behind the Next Big thing. Our focus across infrastructure, energy, real estate, private equity and credit is helping to build the backbone of the global economy. We combine deep operational expertise with disciplined long term investing, uncovering value and partnering alongside clients to shape tomorrow's economy. Today, Brookfield Own what's next? Learn more@brookfield.com this is not an offer to sell or investment advice. Investing involves risks, including loss of capital.
- [00:33]
Danny Fortson
This episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by Adobe Acrobat Studio.
- [00:37]
Katie Prescott
A lot of us lead very busy lives, including the tech bosses you hear from. On this podcast, we're dealing with more information than ever before, often across disconnected tools and working in hybrid teams.
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Danny Fortson
If this sounds familiar and you're someone whose life involves scrolling through contracts, reports or pitches with important data buried in long documents or different sources, then you'll know it can sometimes be a struggle
- [00:59]
Katie Prescott
to keep up, or at least to do so in a timely way.
- [01:02]
Danny Fortson
Adobe, the company that invented the PDF back in 1993, is changing that with Adobe Acrobat Studio. It's a modern workspace designed to help you work smarter and save time.
- [01:13]
Katie Prescott
Acrobat Studio isn't just for essential PDF tasks like editing or signing documents. It's an AI powered space built to help you use simple language prompts to get information quickly from multiple documents and sources, including PDFs, Office 365 files and web pages.
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Danny Fortson
It's for people with busy, demanding jobs who want to spend less time on
- [01:32]
Katie Prescott
admin and more time on the work that really matters.
- [01:35]
Danny Fortson
Check out Adobe Acrobat Studio and its new features now.
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Katie Prescott
So I've been thinking a lot this week about your description of being stuck in a car park full of driverless cars. And I was thinking about it because I, for many strange reasons I don't quite understand why, have ended up supervising my daughter's under 11's cricket team. So I'm in charge of the dulwich.
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Danny Fortson
What is it? What involves supervision?
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Katie Prescott
So you're not coaching coaching, but coordinating, especially when it comes to Sunday matches. And that involves putting the flags around the boundary, appointing a captain, and generally picking some of the dads to do the umpiring and the square legging.
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Danny Fortson
Okay, the square legging. I love this. Our American Our American listeners are like, what, are you having a shower?
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Katie Prescott
I was a little bit like that when I turned up, because women of my age don't know how to play cricket anyway. But for some reason I'm doing this thing. I turn up On Sunday morning, two small girls in tow. 8:30 to peg out the flags, ready for the cricket match to take place. And there are three enormous big barriers on top of the wicket. The grass bit, the kind of moan grass bit that they play the cricket on, that have strings attached to them that I have to somehow move out the way. And I was just sort of thinking about my life and your life and how I ended up standing in the middle of a field on Sunday morning trying to pull at ropes to move these enormous metal objects out the way and failing to do it. And you're stuck in a car park full of driverless cars. Well, and I just wondered if that's. If that's something to do with where we live.
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Danny Fortson
Well, so I was this weekend, speaking of tech, or lack of it, I was up in the mountains. We did every year we go to with a group of families up to family camp, which is what it sounds like. And it's like this idyllic camp up in the mountains while the counselors are teenagers and you're up on this river and you're staying in tent cabins. And it's like, right near Yosemite. It's beautiful. And there's no cell service. There is no WI fi. Literally. It's the only place I have been or ever go to that has zero service.
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Katie Prescott
Wow.
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Danny Fortson
And it's really fascinating. Like, in your normal life, we drive everywhere. You had a stop sign. You're like, probably have 10 seconds. I should definitely check my phone just in case something happened in, like, previous two minutes when I was driving from the last stoplight. You know, you're always looking at your phone, always looking at your phone. And there. It's like you don't even think about
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Katie Prescott
it at all, even at first.
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Danny Fortson
At first you do, but it kind of goes quickly because you're up in nature. It's beautiful. The kids are running around, and it's just like. It's really striking. By the end, we're all getting ready to leave. We're like, all right, group picture. And we all get together. We're standing with this beautiful view of the mountains and the river in the background. And then they're like, who's got a phone? No one had a phone.
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Katie Prescott
Wow, you really surprised me.
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Danny Fortson
Eight adults. Not a single one of them even had a phone on them. And it was just like. It was just such a moment where we're like, whoa. Like, none of us even had a phone. And it was so kind of like, purity to it. That was just like, oh, this is actually kind of amazing. And a couple of the kids commented to their parents like, hey, mom, it's really nice. You don't, you know, you don't have your phone. You're just kind of ouch. And you're like, oh, that's gonna hurt. But then of course, you drive back down from the mountain and a certain point you come into, back into coverage and it's like, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.
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Katie Prescott
Hello and welcome to the Times Tech Podcast with me, Katie Prescott. Katie and the city.
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Danny Fortson
And me, Danny Fortson. Danny in the valley.
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Katie Prescott
Danny, we need to catch up on everything that's going on with Elon Musk in a moment.
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Danny Fortson
Yes.
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Katie Prescott
Whether he can turn cars into votes, bumper plates into the ballot box, suspension into suffrage.
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Danny Fortson
See what you're doing there? Yeah.
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Katie Prescott
But I also have an interview with Dylan Field, who's the co founder of the hit design software company Figma.
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Danny Fortson
The man of the moment.
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Katie Prescott
He is, isn't he?
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Danny Fortson
He has the big new IPO news. They finally filed a registration statement at the start of this month.
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Katie Prescott
Yeah, finally. Been waiting that quite a while. And it definitely wasn't a household name Figma outside design circles until about 2023 when Adobe tried to buy it for $20 billion with a B. And that got everyone's attention, including the competition watchdogs, which is always what people doing deals wants to happen. The plug was pulled and the music on that particular deal stopped. So we're going to hear more about that from Dylan in a bit and a bit of a hint of what he's got planned for the future, I should say. Full disclosure, this interview was done well before that, so there isn't much more that Dylan reveals about the IPO itself. But speaking of music, I like this one. Big news on your side of the pond. Elon Musk has Boom, boom, started a party.
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Danny Fortson
Oh, party music, I see. Yeah, that's very, very clever. Yes. What started as an online poll, as so many things do these days on X, on x, Independence Day, July 4th could be turning into a reality. Elon Musk asked his 220 million followers if he should start a political party. Over 65% who voted said yes.
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Katie Prescott
It just does seem like the natural next step, doesn't it, to get what you want?
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Danny Fortson
You know, you buy therefore. Yes, exactly.
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Katie Prescott
By the party. But even though his, his voters might be saying yes, looking at the share price over the past week, his investors are saying no, thank you.
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Danny Fortson
You know, it's interesting to watch his whole evolution from like careering from the edge of bankruptcy to the edge of bankruptcy. To the edge of bankruptcy for years and years and years trying to start a car company. To now the richest man on the planet who not only dipped his toe into politics, but put $300 million of his own money, helped get President Trump elected, takes a chainsaw, literally to the government and now they have their big blow up. You know, lots of name calling back and forth, all this stuff. And now he's like, we've passed this giganto. One big beautiful bill by Trump which is going to add trillions to the deficit. And he's like, this is it. Enough is enough. I'm going to start a new political party. But I mean, the question for me is like, okay, 220 million people follow him on Twitter. How many of those are actual people and not bots? And they're of course self selecting, like the people who follow Elon, most of them are probably of those 220 million, I'm guessing fanboys, how many of them are in America? So it's this whole like self selection process that like, he's like, well, the people have spoken, therefore I must start a new party. But you're like, are you actually going to do this? What is your platform? Or is he going to be like Trump? Like, I am this figurehead. I have two or three pithy things that I'm going to focus on and I'll be like the Pied Piper. Everybody will follow.
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Katie Prescott
And I talked about the share price just then. But it does feel like his investors are getting really fed up with this. This is not his first rodeo in this regard. And it all feels like such a massive distraction from his businesses. So you just think his poor, long suffering investors who are watching his head turn in so many different directions and all they want him to do is kind of knuckle down and focus on the task in hand. But it's like he can't help himself. But as we started recording this podcast, there was massive news from X. Linda Yaccarino, the CEO since June 2023, has said she's stepping down. What do you make of that?
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Danny Fortson
I'm referencing a lot of like, pop culture. Well, this isn't pop culture necessarily. Do you ever still watch Chicago?
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Katie Prescott
Yeah.
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Danny Fortson
There's a song in there called Mr. Cellophane. Mr. Cellophane, won't you say my name can see right through me Walk right past me. I feel like that's her. Like she was hired two years ago. When you talk about X, does anybody talk about or think about Lindy Yakarino? All they Talk about or think about is Elon Musk. And she was brought in as this like advertising dynamo from Manhattan who knew all the big advertisers. All of this stuff, you know, the ad business is still dramatically down from when he bought it. The thing he did do was combine it with Grok, his AI company, to kind of boost the valuation. But X itself is a shadow of the business it once was in terms of just dollars and cents. But the Grok transaction of basically creating an AI LLM to rival ChatGPT has kind of boosted that. But throughout it all, what is Lindy Ackerino been doing, aside from just trying to kind of hold this thing together? So when she quit, I'm kind of like, and I'm sure we're going to get details, but she said after two incredible years, this is what she tweeted. After two incredible years, I've decided to step down as CEO of X. But again, I haven't dived deep into Twitter for some time. You know, we're recording this Wednesday morning, West coast time.
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Katie Prescott
Yeah, it's just happened.
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Danny Fortson
Yeah. I'm sure in this next two days we'll start to get some details about what's going on behind the scenes. But it doesn't feel like this is going to be a dramatic change at
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Katie Prescott
X. Yeah, well, watch what happens there closely. But what she doesn't say in that tweet is I'm very tired. I feel like she would say, it's been a very long two years. Peel back the layers.
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Danny Fortson
Yes, exactly. Yawn. I'm so tired.
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Katie Prescott
Rather than the euphemistic bye, it's been wonderful. Anyway. Yeah, poor old Linda. Well, hopefully we'll get the real story.
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Danny Fortson
Exactly. Well, we've got a couple of things we should hit before we get to your interview, which I'm really looking forward to. I think it's just worth talking about what's been happening out here in terms of like the AI talent wars.
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Katie Prescott
This is extraordinary.
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Danny Fortson
Yeah, it's crazy, right? So we mentioned it last week. Sam Altman, OpenAI. He said, oh, Mark Zuckerberg's offering $100 million to single human engineers to leave and to come work at his new superintelligence lab. He is just scooping up people all over the valley. Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, these very well regarded guys who have done a bunch of stuff. He just hired them, he bought Scale AI, he's poaching all of these top engineers from OpenAI. It's really extraordinary and I think it speaks to what he must see as an existential threat to his business. Because there's no other explanation for why all of a sudden you're spending literally billions on effectively aqua hiring a bunch of top AI talent around the valley.
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Katie Prescott
Which is what happened with Microsoft and Mustafa Suleiman, isn't it?
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Danny Fortson
Yes, exactly.
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Katie Prescott
A similar thing. It's interesting when you say sort of scooping them up all around the valley, it makes them sound like they're as available as moles. It seems to me that they're as rare as giant pandas and that's why they're so valuable. Because actually you don't have that many engineers who went through the top schools to study machine learning and the sort of neural nets they need and then had the experience of working in very small number of houses that they are developing this technology. We always talk about these different people working in the different companies and you need a very, very complex family tree to map them all out. If you think about all of the different businesses that Just OpenAI spawned from the anthropic lot that you met to Mira Marathi's company and Ilya was.
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Danny Fortson
She raised. Mira Muradi, former OpenAI co founder who left just raised $2 billion for her new startup at a $10 billion valuation with no revenue, no product.
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Katie Prescott
Jaw dropping, like cool. You've got that stamp next to your name. And that experience that so few people have puts you into giant panda territory.
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Danny Fortson
Exactly. I mean, I love that we're talking about moles and pandas. I did not see that coming.
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Katie Prescott
Describing these brains.
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Danny Fortson
I was just like, what is it? Moles? And then you went pandas. I was so confused. But I was still here for it.
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Katie Prescott
Thank you. Just trying to get the idea of like lots of little easily accessible.
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Danny Fortson
Yes. And yeah, like OpenAI, for example, last year. This is some reporting and the information. And they're always right on. Granted $4.4 billion in equity to employees, which is five times higher than the previous year and is equal to about 120% of its total revenue. So that's just the value of shares they're giving to their employees is, is well over what they're bringing in. And that's before they talk about what they're spending on data centers and everything else. And just again, it speaks to this kind of crazy AI talent war going on right now. And if you're a panda, then you have all the money you need to buy as much bamboo as you want.
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Katie Prescott
All the bamboo just to snack on. Exactly. You'll never look at them any other way.
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Danny Fortson
Exactly. No, but it Was like just on this week, we were away one of our friends who's been toiling away at some random startup, they're about to file for the IPO and we're like, oh. And she's like, well, it could be either a really good thing financially or it could be potentially a completely life changing thing. You're like, oh. And she's like, not an executive.
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Katie Prescott
Both of those outcomes sound quite good.
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Danny Fortson
Exactly, exactly. But it's just part of the whole machine out here is that you know enough people who land on the right lily pad where it works out and you're like, dang, that's amazing. And then that's what feeds the whole system because most of the time it doesn't work out that way.
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Katie Prescott
So they're not like pandas where you're. Is it like pandas who you're watching for them to have babies? Like Panda Watch, There was a panda. Adam pursued. Is the panda pregnant?
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Danny Fortson
Panda watch.
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Katie Prescott
A camera on it and everything?
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Danny Fortson
Yeah, let's call it Panda Watch. Why not?
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Katie Prescott
And is your friend a figmate?
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Danny Fortson
What is a, you know what a figma. I mean, I'm guessing I know what a figmate is, but that's another thing that all these companies do. They come up with pithy names to call, you know, members of the team. But Figma, if you are a figmate,
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Katie Prescott
you would be quite lucky because I
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Danny Fortson
know I would be quite pumped up
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Katie Prescott
right now and you'd be feeling quite panda smug because.
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Danny Fortson
Yeah, exactly. This would be close to my last episode because I'd be like, what? Well, if I'm about to make millions and millions, I might go back up into the mountains, you know, go off grid. Who knows?
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Katie Prescott
Just eat bamboo.
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Danny Fortson
Well, should we get today's big interview? This is a real true Silicon Valley success story.
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Katie Prescott
It is. And with a British twist as well because, you know, I like to find a London angle. So Dylan Field is the CEO and co founder of Figma. And just to explain what they are, because it's definitely not a household name. Yeah, they're a design software company and they're basically used by designers to sketch out how apps and websites will look before the devs get involved and start actually building them. But it's a little bit like Google Docs for design. So the idea is that you can design it but collaborate with others at exactly the same time. And it's proved to be really, really popular. And along the way, here's my London angle. It got investment from Index Ventures, London based VC and Danny Reimer based Here. So they were seed investors?
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Danny Fortson
Oh, yes.
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Katie Prescott
They have obviously been very excited about the journey, as you call it, in Silicon Valley. So Dylan's a bit of a boy wonder. He started the company with a fellow student called Evan Wallace from Brown. He dropped out of Brown and then he went to work to remember Flipboard?
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Danny Fortson
Ish.
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Katie Prescott
It was like this very pretty app. It was pretty. Which used to collate articles from around the web. And he was so big at Flipboard at the time that Business Insider published an article about him under the headline, this Flipboard intern is only 20 and he's already a star in Silicon Valley.
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Danny Fortson
Wow.
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Katie Prescott
So he met people like the boss of LinkedIn and various others who funded his company, Figma.
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Danny Fortson
And he already almost pulled off the ultimate amazing exit once, right in 2023, when Adobe came knocking and offered a whole big old chunk of money.
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Katie Prescott
Yeah, I mean, this was the sort of $20 billion carrot that was dangled in front of him by Adobe until that dreaded moment happened. I think all businesses hate, which is all the competition authorities got involved and they all got involved in the States, in Europe and here in the uk, and they were worried that the deal between Adobe and Figma would stifle competition in the product design software market. And I remember really well speaking to Figma's team at the time who were desperately trying to explain that it really wouldn't. And product design software was very different and they were doing different things, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it didn't wash. It didn't look like the deal was going to get over the line. And so both parties said they were going to mutually agree to terminate the merger. But, yeah, it wasn't the happiest of endings. I think it was a bit of a grumpy agreement.
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Danny Fortson
Well, should we get into the interview? I'm excited to hear it.
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Katie Prescott
Yeah. So the last time I met Dylan, two years ago, he was in London opening their offices here, and that was when he was talking to all the watchdogs about trying to get that deal over the line. This time he was hosting their big London event in the Excel Centre in East London. So we sneaked away into a quiet room, away from the Figmates and the mayhem, and I asked him what the punchline was to that whole experience with the competition authorities. Let's talk about where we left off, because last time we met, you were in the thick of talks with Adobe and you were going through competition hurdles, dealing with regulators here and in Europe as well over that deal, which didn't end up happening. How did that feel when that all came to an end, yeah, it was
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Dylan Field
a very intense 16 months to try to navigate this odd situation where your path is indeterminate. And I think, you know, many people have paths ahead of them that are unknown or chaotic, but it's a bit unique when scenario A and scenario B and they're so far apart and you have to get your own head straight about that. But also we had a company through it and I would say that at the end of the process, a certainty of, okay, this is what it will look like going forward. That was, I think, very helpful for me mentally, just from like a mental health standpoint. But also I think it just was like a, ah, moment for the team, not in any relation to Adobe, just because we knew. And I also think that it was really nice that we were able to within the degree that legally we could keep the team updated. First was quarterly and then, you know, it was more often than that around just checking in and kind of giving the latest status report to the degree we could. And you know, we also just kept telling the team, look, we don't know which way this goes. We're either going to be at Adobe, we're going to be in a pendant, either way, we gotta keep our foot on the gas, we gotta keep accelerating our business and we gotta keep building. And you know, looking back, especially with the outcome that resulted, I'm so, so glad that we did that. You know, we announced the dissolution of the deal. We shipped, I think less than a quarter later, our GA of dev mode, which has had great reception and we've only continued to accelerate in terms of our product velocity since then.
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Katie Prescott
You talked about leadership. What was it like leading a team who they must have been very excited about a deal being on the table, not least a potential financial windfall and then having to almost steer the ship in another direction?
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Dylan Field
You know, I think that as the process went forward, people got more and more sense that this might not happen. And in any case, wherever we ended up, the vision remained the same. We're trying to go build Figma to go from idea in your head to application. And if we were at Adobe, sure, there'd be more things we do as well, but that was our focus. How do we go and build that out? I think the more you can kind of keep your eye on that prize and make the focus about the work and what we have to do to serve our customers, as generic as that might sound, it's really true. There's an infinite number of things to work through and Problems to solve to make sure that we're making the best product possible and we always just kind of returned to that and that was the place we should have returned to anyway at all times because that's how you actually do well for your market.
- [22:36]
Katie Prescott
Were you personally disappointed?
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Dylan Field
Well, put it this way, I spent about zero time before we started to contemplate the transaction thinking about any kind of merger after it passed and it was no longer happening, we were no longer in review. I now spend about zero time as well. My focus is purely on how do we go and make the best product possible. And yeah, it's not really like a feeling of disappointment or joy or anything it's just like I really don't think about it but I am very, very excited to be on the path that we're on. I see so much opportunity. I think that in the context of being an independent company there's just so much that we have the potential to impact and different ways we can address the needs of our audience. And the world is so interesting right now it's changing rapidly and our team is cranking up the pace to respond. That's really what I spend my mental cycles on.
- [23:34]
Katie Prescott
We spoke a bit at the time of the deal the attempt to deal about some frustrations with competition regulators. What are your reflections on dealing with them?
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Dylan Field
I mean, look, various times in the world there's different philosophies that take hold and you know, we were in a moment where there was one philosophy that various governments shared and I think that, you know, unclear if that's where we're at now or if it's slightly different Taking a step back. I respect people that have a point of view even if I disagree with it and yeah, I think it's just not worth the brain cycles to go into like okay, well I guess it's. And loop on. Okay, is it right, is it wrong? At the end of the day I have only so many waking moments to go build my business and that's what I devoted to.
- [24:24]
Katie Prescott
I just remember you saying at the time that you felt they hadn't quite got what Figma did.
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Dylan Field
Well, I actually think that the regulators were quite smart but I think that there's philosophy around antitrust and you can have different points of view about what should be the way you go or not go and who am I to say about what's wise or what's not wise? I don't think anyone really knows.
- [24:47]
Katie Prescott
That was then, as you say now you're looking forward. It's been pretty widely reported that you have filed for ipo, you're looking to go public. When might that happen? Where might it happen? What sort of valuation are we looking at?
- [24:59]
Dylan Field
Well, you know, in the, with the sec, they mandated a quiet period, so not something I can really speak about. But what we are focused on is just again, how to build the best product. And the reason I bring it up again is because literally, I think if you surveyed everyone at Figma, that's what they would be talking about. And that's where all of our attention is, because we have so much we just introduced, we have so much we need to make better those new surfaces area to improve on the surfaces we already have and so many new opportunities that are coming down the pipeline. Yeah, I mean, it's the most interesting, intense and fun time we've ever had with the company.
- [25:38]
Katie Prescott
And as you alluded to earlier, with the world changing at the same time, it does feel like a very intense time.
- [25:45]
Dylan Field
Absolutely. I mean, I think with models coming out constantly from different parties, it's kind of interesting because you look at social media and maybe it's the algo feeds, but everything's either, oh my God, everything has changed, or oh, everything's bad. It's never in between. It's always extremes and clickbait. And there's part of it where it's like you just have to get the truth. I feel like we all have to have and develop the journalistic instinct that maybe you and your fellow journalists have now. Although I do think that Gen Z maybe gets it for free. And so they have this sixth sense. Of course it's fake news, or of course it's hyperbole or inbuilt cynicism. Well, yeah, or maybe you can call it cynicism, but for me, I thought it was pretty good knowing what's true on the Internet, but recently I've had to check myself a few times.
- [26:35]
Katie Prescott
Oh, really? What sort of things?
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Dylan Field
Oh, just, you know, you read some headlines somewhere that's shared on social media and you go, oh my gosh, is this true? Share it with a friend. And they're like, I can't believe you believe that. What are you thinking? So I just think that it's both like, we live in incredible times, but also you have to get to truth to understand what's happening at all times.
- [26:55]
Katie Prescott
And you talk about the advances in AI models and you've just launched four more products.
- [27:00]
Dylan Field
Correct.
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Katie Prescott
How do you think about that relationship between AI and creativity?
- [27:06]
Dylan Field
Yeah, there's a lot packed in that question. And just to recap for the four products. I mean, pretty wild because the first 10 years of the company we launched over 10 years, four products, and then over this last week we launched four more. I think that is a reflection of not just our speed, but also I think everyone is feeling the need to go faster in this world. But going to your question around AI, I have a lot of thoughts about the intersection of AI and creativity and design development. I think that maybe if I was going to start with a framework AI as it currently exists, I think right now we're very firmly in the AI as a tool point of time. And I think that it's easy to overstate and describe personhood or advanced agency to AI in a way that's not yet true. I don't think anyone knows how far these things go completely, but at the same time, I've seen times where AI models can do extraordinary things and specific use cases. And I've seen a lot of stuff where, yeah, AI does create content that is not all that impressive. There's this interesting balance of psychologically, I think that people actually expect more from AI than they would from a human in the same situation.
- [28:22]
Katie Prescott
That's interesting.
- [28:23]
Dylan Field
And yet when you're building with AI, you're building with a non deterministic system and it's quite hard to reliably get these models to do quality work. And so our approach, when we look at things like make, which is a product we just introduced, to go from prompt to app, you know, we asked ourselves, okay, what does our audience need here first and foremost? And what they need is a way to rapidly prototype. We have all these products that can help you on that journey from idea to app, make as one that lets you get something out of your head and just try it because it's something you can try so fast. It's also easier to throw away. And I think that one aspect that we think is really important to Rentiator is that you can copy and paste designs in from figma design and so you can really visually scope out, okay, here's how it should look. And then you can say, okay, here's my description, my prompt of the functionality, what I want to do, and that combination, if you can get it right and you can translate the design, figma design to the input to the model, it's very special to be able to then have that quality emerge because otherwise it's very easy to end up in a world where things do look very similar. And so we think that's a very key differentiator for our audience. To help them prototype faster.
- [29:38]
Katie Prescott
What's it doing within figma? Are you starting to cut the number of coders you need? Are you changing the way you do things?
- [29:44]
Dylan Field
Effect internally has been fairly minimal in terms of headcount.
- [29:48]
Katie Prescott
Okay.
- [29:49]
Dylan Field
There's some benefits we've seen on support in terms of helping our reps insert tickets with higher quality and be able to handle a bit more on the ticket side. But maybe it's just the nature of our problems. But there's yet to be a conversation at FIGMA about any kind of reduction in the number of engineers we need. And I think that more generally, as I speak with other people in the industry, the point we're at right now is that these models are quite good at toy problems.
- [30:17]
Katie Prescott
What do you mean by toy problems?
- [30:18]
Dylan Field
Well, if you think about the sort of problems you might get in university, you're doing your computer science A levels and you have a algorithmic question. What's the polynomial time or the best way to solve this problem set up with an algorithm? AI is like really good at that. It's starting to give very good reliable answers. You give it complex math questions that are maybe not on the cutting edge of the frontier, but rather things that are known in distribution. It's pretty good at giving you a way to think through and reason through those problems. But when you have an existing code base that's complex, that has patterns, it has architecture, and you need to respect what's already there. Right now we're not seeing huge improvements in the way that AI can help.
- [31:06]
Katie Prescott
I wanted to ask you how you are using it personally.
- [31:10]
Dylan Field
Oh, gosh. Well, personally I'm very curious and so I love just doing research all the time and learning about new fields and new topics and I find that different models are good at different things.
- [31:24]
Katie Prescott
I was going to ask you which was your favorite.
- [31:26]
Dylan Field
Oh, that's a complicated question because kind of apples and oranges are. It's like asking who's your favorite friend. It's like, well, I like hanging out with Jack when I go and kick balls around. And I like hanging out with Mary when I want to have a deep conversation. You know, it's. But I think that some of the models that I've gotten most attached to historically. One is Opus from Claude Opus 3. I found that Opus just had like a personality and a sort of like default topics that gravitated towards in conversation that matched my interests and the way I like to interact and have deep conversation. But it wasn't great at a lot of other tasks. Like I wasn't going to go ask Opus to go solve a hard problem for me. I also really enjoy O3.
- [32:12]
Katie Prescott
ChatGPT.
- [32:13]
Dylan Field
Yeah, ChatGPT is 03 the way I would liken it is almost to a It's like someone that you might meet in college and perhaps they're a bit drunk and overconfident. They say a lot of things, but they're so interesting that even though sometimes they get things wrong, even if 5% of the stuff they say is provocative and insightful, you always want to listen to them because there's always that gem. And I feel like with O3 that's very true. O3 is also very good at understanding the span of its own knowledge and it's not quite self awareness. That's a different concept, I think. But being able to reflect back to somebody here are topics I know about and being able to kind of trace the connections between them I think is a very interesting property that all models share. And for O3 I really enjoyed kind of connecting dots between topics. Although I will say people talk a lot about hallucinations and I think there's a new type of hallucination that's starting to occur with these reasoning models. It used to be that hallucinations were about facts. You make a fact up, that still happens. But there's also new hallucinations where you connect two topics and two concepts that should not be connected and are the wrong concepts to connect. So almost like talking to someone who's just starting to learn about an area and they're saying a lot of words, but they might not understand what the words mean.
- [33:36]
Katie Prescott
Yep.
- [33:37]
Dylan Field
I find when I'm learning a subject or when I already know a subject, it's very fascinating to interact with these models because you can very quickly spot with some level of knowledge and a topic area where those hallucinations are. But it also kind of strengthens your own intuition, understanding. Almost like when you're teaching somebody something, it makes you better at formulating those ideas in your head.
- [33:59]
Katie Prescott
Yeah. It's back to your point about Gen Zs having that cynicism, understanding that not everything you see on the Internet is just going to be true.
- [34:05]
Dylan Field
And so it kind of strengthens that muscle perhaps.
- [34:07]
Katie Prescott
Yeah, probably. We all grew up understanding about, say, advertising.
- [34:11]
Dylan Field
Yes. And also if you don't watch TV for a long time and you go somewhere with a tv, at least for me, I have no immunity. So I just, my eye is glued to it. I'm like, oh, there's like these shiny, flashy things going on. I can't take my eyes away. So I think you get a bit immune to some of this stuff after a while too.
- [34:27]
Katie Prescott
That's probably true.
- [34:34]
Danny Fortson
Let's pause there for a moment to talk about today's sponsor, Adobe Acrobat Studio.
- [34:38]
Katie Prescott
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Danny Fortson
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- [34:54]
Katie Prescott
And Adobe says your data stays secure and isn't used to train its AI models.
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Danny Fortson
So if you want to rethink what PDFs can do, check out Adobe Acrobat Studio and its new features now.
- [35:08]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fan Girls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [35:16]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [35:20]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Stephen here has not read Mistborn before.
- [35:29]
Dylan Field
That's right.
- [35:29]
Stephen
Hei hei. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every scene, single chapter.
- [35:34]
Hayden
And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [35:41]
Stephen
News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellows wherever you get your podcasts.
- [35:48]
Brookfield Announcer
At Brookfield, we invest in the thing behind the Thing. Behind the Next Big thing. Our focus across infrastructure, energy, real estate, private equity and credit is helping to build the background backbone of the global economy. We combine deep operational expertise with disciplined long term investing, uncovering value and partnering alongside clients to shape tomorrow's economy. Today, Brookfield Own what's Next. Learn more@brookfield.com this is not an offer to sell or investment advice. Investing involves risks, including loss of capital.
- [36:25]
Katie Prescott
I promise to ask you about something that my co host is really interested in, which is NFTs and CryptoPunks. Because I think you did very well out of out of this. Did you sell one for seven and a half million dollars in 2021? Is that about right?
- [36:39]
Dylan Field
Well, the full story was that I was on a vacation. I was in Thailand with my now wife, then girlfriend. You know this is early figma. I had pretty limited savings and I started to get obsessed with cryptopunks. The term NFT had not yet been introduced to the vernacular and just Explain
- [36:57]
Katie Prescott
what they are for people.
- [36:58]
Dylan Field
Oh sure, I mean cryptopunks, it's a digital collectible or some say digital art. I would argue digital art in the case of cryptopunks, but it's a deeper conversation about what is an art versus collectible. And there's 10,000 of them, digital picture, but provably ownable and on the blockchain. And also I find it fascinating because if you look at the code of it, the smart contract, there's actually not even an original implementation, any picture defined, it's just an indice, an index. So you have 0 through 9999 and then an address that is assigned to. And then you have to believe that the overall grid of all these different pixel images will continue to exist. Now they've been moved on chain by this amazing artist named Deathbeef, which I would love to geek out about for a long time, but another time, and I got obsessed with this idea of digital scarcity and the idea that you could own something that's digital and could
- [37:52]
Katie Prescott
be copied and it's a limited edition because it's on the blockchain.
- [37:56]
Dylan Field
Yeah, I mean crypto punks, there's like I said 10,000 of them and only one person can technically be associated with each crypto punk at any given time.
- [38:04]
Katie Prescott
So you're on holiday, a romantic holiday with your girlfriend.
- [38:07]
Dylan Field
Yeah, exactly. And meanwhile I just keep talking about cryptopunks and she married you, so that's. Yeah, she gets it. But you know, there's different rarities of different types of punks and the rarest was the alien one. And then of the aliens there's one in particular, 7804 that I just felt an affinity towards and I thought it was brilliant. And so I thought okay, well perhaps I should put a bid in. It wasn't for sale. And I kind of did the thinking on how much do you bid to entice someone to sell it to you? And said to my girlfriend, hey, this is like the equivalent of like $16,000. Have I completely lost it? Like I really want to do this, I can't stop thinking about it, I think I should do this. And I talked about it, I think pretty much non stop. And she eventually she goes, just do it, do it. And then like let's move on, then
- [38:59]
Katie Prescott
we can enjoy our holiday.
- [39:00]
Dylan Field
And maybe you've lost the money forever and it's a terrible idea but like you just need to move past this. And so I did and I bought some others as well. And yeah, I came back to the States, I started telling my friends that were really into art all about my brilliant discovery. And they all looked at me like I had indeed lost it. And it just. No one got it. And so then I thought, okay, well, I guess I probably shouldn't talk about this for a while. Went to the CryptoPunks, one of the first CryptoPunks events. That was awesome. Again, at the time, it was just so early, so everyone there was all about what is possible in this new area. All about the art, nothing about money. That was not all the energy of the space. And I had this idealism about, okay, if you can find new ways to digitally introduce ownable objects, perhaps it's a way you can create entire worlds online. And got very excited about that idea. And at some point the NFT craze hit and I started getting pretty nervous. I'm like, whoa, I've got on my hard drive a key that is linked to this thing that is now very valuable. And at some point I went, okay, I just think I should sell this. And I actually felt a lot of regret afterwards. I made a speech about it on Clubhouse because I kind of thought about this as the digital Mona Lisa. That's the way I think about it. And I'm sure plenty of people would disagree with that. But do you still regret it? I think long term, this will be one of the most important pieces of digital art and have some sadness to no longer have that affiliation with it in the same way. But also I think it's sort of like the bellwether of the NFT art market is this particular piece. And so it trading hands and then establishing price points and showing the ceiling of what's possible for how these things can be valued is useful. But I did get quite sad about just the Overall State of NFTs at some point, because I realized that it had evolved from my original sort of ideological excitement about the space and the new possibilities of this frontier into frankly, a lot of gambling. And there are still pockets of it though, where it is just, I think, so earnest and there's real art happening and there's really new ideas being explored digitally that never could be explored physically. I mentioned Deathbeef earlier, one of my favorite NFT artists. One of his pieces that I love is called Entropy. Every time it transfers, the piece degrades a little bit.
- [41:28]
Katie Prescott
Wow.
- [41:28]
Dylan Field
And it changes. Yeah, like you can't do that with physical art in the same way. This new canvas to explore ideas like that I think is fascinating. And I think there Is real art being created? Just also a lot of monkey pictures.
- [41:40]
Katie Prescott
And do you still own some?
- [41:41]
Dylan Field
Oh, yeah, I now have it in like a very secure way. But yes, I own some cryptopunks, autoglyphs, Daft Beef, a few other collections. And for what it's worth, some of them I call art. And some of them I'm like, very okay, calling collectibles. And some of the collectibles, you know, they were destroyed in value in terms of what people would pay for them. And I still love them as just as much so I think I have a different orientation towards this base than many others. And I don't know, for some reason my brain's wired a little differently that way.
- [42:10]
Katie Prescott
Interesting. Well, we'll keep an eye on that and your IPO as well. Keep us posted.
- [42:14]
Danny Fortson
2021, just the NFT craze. It takes me right back to the. To the height of the pandemic.
- [42:21]
Katie Prescott
Do you think, why wasn't I buying pieces of art by Def Beef?
- [42:27]
Danny Fortson
Yes, because he bought. Well, this wasn't by Deft Beef, I don't think, but his cryptopunk, he bought it for 16 grand and sold it for 7.5 million.
- [42:35]
Katie Prescott
That, my friend, is why he's a successful entrepreneur and we are not correct.
- [42:39]
Danny Fortson
And why we're just lowly journalists talking about successful people on a podcast. But I was like, grand to 7.5 million. I remember at the time, I was like, what is happening in the world?
- [42:50]
Katie Prescott
It's not about the money, it's about the art. You heard the man.
- [42:54]
Danny Fortson
Digital Mona Lisa. Although, you know, I think I would have a different view if I was like, I just made seven and a half million dollars out of a collection of pixels.
- [43:02]
Katie Prescott
Wife was really like, that's my boy.
- [43:06]
Danny Fortson
Exactly. Put a ring on.
- [43:10]
Katie Prescott
Was really great to talk to him and to catch up with him. I have to say, on the other side of the Adobe saga, because it was such a SA at the time,
- [43:18]
Danny Fortson
it was total saga.
- [43:19]
Katie Prescott
He glossed over it a little bit in that and I can understand that. It's like, just need to keep looking forward. But it must have been an extraordinary distraction.
- [43:28]
Danny Fortson
Oh, for sure.
- [43:29]
Katie Prescott
And you have this prospect of this extraordinary exit, whether he's going to leave the business himself or not. But financial exit for him and everyone involved and to do all of the groundwork for that and have it snatched away. And it was right at the heart of the time when there was a huge amount of criticism here in the uk, as there still is to a certain extent, about how the competition authorities are managing these sorts of deals and whether they're having a chilling effect on the deals taking place at all, particularly with big US businesses. We had Microsoft buying Activision, which was blocked by the competition authority here. And Microsoft's reaction to that, and this came hot off the heels of that deal. And certainly the narrative that Figma and Adobe spun at the time was that they were getting a pretty rough ride from the Brits.
- [44:17]
Danny Fortson
Yeah, no, and I think with Figma in particular, I think just the idea of focus, his ability to kind of keep the train moving forward. Because when you're talking about 20 billion and people, everybody is looking at their shares, doing the math and they're like, omg, I'm a Figma. My life is about to change. And then it becomes this two year saga and you have to just keep going and keep people motivated and whatnot. I mean, the thing is, think what's good obviously is that the company has kept growing. I mean, they brought in $750 million in revenue last year, which is 48% up on the previous year. So they're growing like a weed. He's managed to kind of keep it moving in the right direction, but I think it is a feat, especially when you have so many people who are getting paid with so much shares to be like, keep your eyes on the prize y'.
- [45:08]
Dylan Field
All.
- [45:09]
Danny Fortson
Because we don't know how this is going to turn out.
- [45:11]
Katie Prescott
Which is why they'll be so relieved that finally they've made this IPO announcement. Announcement. I mean, we don't have a huge amount of information. We don't know how many shares they're selling. We don't obviously know the price, but there is speculation in the market that they could raise about one and a half billion dollars. As you say, some of the numbers that have come out as a result of the IPO filing are really staggering. I mean the 750 million revenue figure for 20, 24, 91% gross margin, which, you know, makes sense, it's a software company, but, but still, investors will be, I guess, pretty excited about that.
- [45:44]
Danny Fortson
Yeah, for sure. And also they had chime just came out recently. Circle. There is a thawing in the tech market in terms of IPOs after a pretty barren few years. So it'll be interesting to see if Figma does well, who else follows in their wake. But yeah, interesting times.
- [46:03]
Katie Prescott
And not to mention an exit for the people who didn't get their exit in 2023 for sure.
- [46:09]
Danny Fortson
And then it begins, you know, this whole machine out here begins anew when you think about all the people like Nvidia who are just random employees who are now all millionaires because their shares have gone up, you know, 20x or whatever it is. It's, it's quite an extraordinary machine when it actually works.
- [46:23]
Katie Prescott
See, just when you thought it couldn't get any higher. While we've been recording this podcast, Nvidia hit a valuation, get this, of $4 trillion. Nvidia has just become, as we're recording this podcast, the first ever company to hit a 4 trillion dollar market cap. It's absolutely remarkable. In the last five years, Nvidia's share price has gone up almost 1,500%. Seems to work quite a lot.
- [46:54]
Danny Fortson
It does, it does. It's still the exception rather than the rule, but it works enough.
- [46:58]
Katie Prescott
Works enough that you seem to meet people at dinner parties who've landed on the right lily pad.
- [47:03]
Danny Fortson
Yeah, exactly. But again, I think the other side of that is what we talked about at the top. The boom aspect of this, the bubble. The bubble will burst. You know, company with no product, no revenue, being worth $10 billion five months after forming. That's crazy town. Nine out of 10 of these AI companies probably won't be around in two years. That's just the nature of the beast. But, you know, the 1 out of 10 will be. And they'll be doing things like Figma, where they're like, you know, 750 million in revenue and 90 gross margin, where you're like, what? But anyway, we picked the wrong business, which is the conclusion of every show
- [47:43]
Katie Prescott
that we do, every conversation. Talking of shows, can I ask you a question?
- [47:49]
Danny Fortson
Yes.
- [47:50]
Katie Prescott
Okay. Have you heard of this British TV show called Open House?
- [47:55]
Danny Fortson
No.
- [47:56]
Katie Prescott
Okay, I'll give you a clue. It's not about property.
- [47:59]
Danny Fortson
Oh, that was going to be my guess. Like some kind of rehabilitation of a crappy old property type show.
- [48:06]
Katie Prescott
It is relevant. Okay, so obviously the Brits do the best television. Agree. We have a small but perfectly formed number of channels and channel four does throw out some corkers. There's something on the telly at the moment which I think, I think you'll find amusing, called Open House, the Great Sex Experiment.
- [48:24]
Danny Fortson
Oh, God.
- [48:25]
Katie Prescott
Caption. Do you question monogamy? Get it? Open House.
- [48:30]
Danny Fortson
I see.
- [48:32]
Katie Prescott
In this bold concept, committed couples come to a luxury retreat to test whether opening up their relationships and having sex with other people will strengthen their bond.
- [48:42]
Brookfield Announcer
Wow.
- [48:43]
Danny Fortson
And it's. This is the thing that people are talking about.
- [48:45]
Katie Prescott
They're talking about it, but I'm talking about it because Channel four is Starting to use. Guess what, Guess what they're using. What technology could they be using to make things?
- [48:54]
Danny Fortson
Artificial intelligence.
- [48:55]
Katie Prescott
They're using AI to make ads on its streaming platform. But they also made an AI trailer for Open House in April.
- [49:05]
Dylan Field
Wow.
- [49:06]
Katie Prescott
Yeah.
- [49:07]
Danny Fortson
Do we know which ads are actually AI generated?
- [49:11]
Katie Prescott
We do. So they've just made one at the moment, and it's for a podcast, a healthy podcast called the Good, the Bad and the Healthy. And then there'll be a couple more over the summer with property groups. It's a very, very spurious thing. But I just wanted to tell you about Open House.
- [49:26]
Danny Fortson
No, I appreciate that. Anyway, that's important bit of British culture and actually. And it brings us back to pandas, because, you know, pandas are not monogamous.
- [49:36]
Katie Prescott
Aren't they?
- [49:38]
Danny Fortson
No, they're solitary animals. They get together to do their business, to procreate, and then they're like, see ya.
- [49:47]
Katie Prescott
Is that right?
- [49:49]
Danny Fortson
So says Google Gemini, so it must be right. So I'm here to bring the. I'm here to like, tie the room together, you know, like, should we finish
- [50:00]
Katie Prescott
by talking about media as well as we're on a media theme?
- [50:03]
Danny Fortson
Sure.
- [50:04]
Katie Prescott
Because it looks like we might finally get a sale of TikTok.
- [50:06]
Danny Fortson
Yeah. So apparently there's a US investor group that has come together. Trump is like, basically, we have a deal, we have an Investor Group. TikTok is working on actually creating a US version of the app. There's some real details to be sort out there, because who's making it, what's it look like, where's the data, all that stuff. But he's like, look, we've got a deal. Basically, I'm going to start to talk to China this week to kind of get the final sign off. But this feels actually like a deal that's going to happen now as opposed to just all the saber rattling. So the price, who's buying it, all of that stuff is to be determined. But I'm guessing, you know, there's a couple big Trump allies who are big investors in TikTok, they'll have something to do with this, etc. But yeah, this saga that's been going on for years and years and years may be reaching a new phase, taken
- [50:55]
Katie Prescott
such a long time. So TikTok's building a new version of the app for those in the US ahead of the sale, and.
- [51:02]
Danny Fortson
And he's saying, we basically have a deal now. I'm gonna go talk to my good friend G and get this all signed off.
- [51:10]
Katie Prescott
Panda diplomacy.
- [51:12]
Danny Fortson
Oh, you know that's why. That's why. That's why people come to this pod. It's called the Callbacks.
- [51:26]
Katie Prescott
Today's episode of the Times Tech Podcast was sponsored by Adobe Acrobat Studio.
- [51:31]
Danny Fortson
Acrobat Studio is about more than just the PDF.
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Katie Prescott
It's a collaborative workspace designed to make working with colleagues across teams and time zones faster and easier.
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Danny Fortson
One of the features is PDF Spaces, which brings PDFs, Microsoft 365 files and websites together in shared spaces.
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Katie Prescott
It helps centralize notes and draft documents so you can see the full picture of a project all on a secure platform.
- [51:57]
Danny Fortson
There's also an AI assistant, which can summarize information, pull out key insights, and help you understand what's in your files without reading everything manually, which helps if
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Katie Prescott
you're dealing with a lot of information but are short on time.
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Danny Fortson
And with integration with Adobe Express, you can turn documents into presentations or branded content without switching tools.
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Katie Prescott
So it's not about creating more paperwork, it's about making your paperwork work harder.
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Danny Fortson
Check out Adobe Acrobat Studio and its new features now.
- [52:29]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things, Sander.
- [52:37]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [52:41]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [52:50]
Dylan Field
That's right. Hey. Hey.
- [52:51]
Stephen
So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [52:55]
Hayden
And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [53:02]
Stephen
News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellas wherever you get your podcast.