101: Ambre – Sofia Larsson and César Pinto Castillo

César Pinto Castillo:
Somehow I see that a big comedian in Sweden named Magnus Betnér, he posts on Twitter like, "Hey, can someone make me an app?" And I have no idea how to build an app. I didn't have a Mac. I didn't know what Xcode was. I knew nothing, but I was like, "Yeah, I can-

Charlie Chapman:
Well, you didn't even have an iPhone at this point, right? You just saw it?

César Pinto Castillo:
No. No, I've just seen one. So, I write to Magnus like, "Hey, I can do it for you on a problem." So, then I go back to that store and I was like, "Hey, okay, I've taken also build an app. I think I need a Mac, right?" And they said, "Yep." So, I asked them like, "Hey, could you sell one cheap for me?" And they said, "Yeah, we have a few old ones that have been returned or whatever." So, I bought that for $150.

Charlie Chapman:
Whoa, wow.

César Pinto Castillo:
I think it was a MacBook G4.

Charlie Chapman:
Oh, so that's like a Power PC then, right?

César Pinto Castillo:
Exactly. And I didn't know-

Charlie Chapman:
Wow.

César Pinto Castillo:
... Power PC was.

Charlie Chapman:
Could you even build iOS apps with that?

César Pinto Castillo:
Nope.

Charlie Chapman:
Welcome to Launched. I'm Charlie Chapman, and today I'm excited to bring you the developers behind the Indie App Studio Ambi Studio, Sofia Larson and César Pinto Castillo. Sofia, César, welcome to the show.

Sofia Larsson:
Thank you.

César Pinto Castillo:
Thank you. We were together at this point, it was a few months ago now at WWDC. We did a live show together, which was brief, but it was very fun. At least I thought it was very fun.

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

César Pinto Castillo:
Short and sweet.

Charlie Chapman:
Short and sweet, exactly.

Sofia Larsson:
Very short and very sweet.

Charlie Chapman:
So, as I've been doing mostly with these live shows, I found that it's actually more fun to just do a normal episode with you all where we can stretch out and have our longer conversations rather than trying to fit it into the time slot and deal with the technical issues like we had to deal with there. So, this will be fun. I think both of us have been kind of traveling all over the place, so this is our first chance to get back together. Are you back home?

Sofia Larsson:
Yes, finally. We spent a month in San Francisco more or less, so just being able to sleep in your own bed and have your own smells is like, uh-huh.

Charlie Chapman:
Speaking of that, I want to kick off the show the same way I always do, which is always fun whenever there's two different guests. So, we'll start with César, but I always start by asking the same three questions, which is where are you from? Do you have a formal education? And then usually I ask what's the story leading up to you starting your indie development, but let's just go with those first two questions for now and then we can go to Sofia and then we can talk about your development journeys together.

César Pinto Castillo:
Okay. So, I'm born not far from here, knee shopping here in Sweden, south of Stockholm. And yes, I do have a formal education. I got a bachelor's in computer science.

Charlie Chapman:
And then Sofia, what about you?

Sofia Larsson:
So, I'm born on the West Coast. That's very important to me. So, we're currently on the East Coast of Sweden. It's a city called Gothenburg. It's the second-biggest city in Sweden, and I moved here for this guy.

Charlie Chapman:
And then do you have a formal education in software development?

Sofia Larsson:
No.

Charlie Chapman:
No. So, this was a decent part of our conversation that we had live, and I think it's one of the fun things to explore here. Starting with César, because your story is a little more typical in terms of people I've had on guests, how did you get into software development and building apps?

César Pinto Castillo:
Okay. So, it is a long story, so I'm going to try to make it short. I told you the short version back in June.

Charlie Chapman:
Perfect. All right. See, this is why we do this so we can really get into the meat of it.

César Pinto Castillo:
Okay. So, when I first. I was actually going to join, what's called Lumpen in English. Is it the military?

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah, it's educational military stuff.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah. Yeah. So, I was actually signed on to do that. It was all, I had gone there, done the tests, they had signed me on something I was going to do. And then out of nowhere one day, I see that in a city in Sweden called, there was a game development education at Mälardalen University. So, I see that and I feel like, wow, this is what I want to do because young me loved games. Why wouldn't I want to be doing that all day?

Charlie Chapman:
Right. Yeah, exactly.

César Pinto Castillo:
So, I wrote a letter by hand to the guy who assigned me to the thing in the military, whatever it's called. I'm not sure, sorry. I sent him a letter explaining that, "Hey, I'm so sorry. I know I signed on to do this, but I found this education that I would love to do. Is there anything we could work out?" And I just waited and I think two weeks later I get a reply from him. "Yeah, sure, César. No, not a problem at all. Whenever you're done with your education, just call me back and we'll sort this out. "This by the way, would never happen today because of the state of things in the world. But back then-

Charlie Chapman:
A little more easygoing.

César Pinto Castillo:
... pretty sure peacetime. It's like we don't need more guys in the military. So, I go to I start studying this game development program and then I started maybe a year or something and I feel like maybe not my thing. I switch over to studying to become a teacher at the same university. Meantime, I also start working as a croupier blackjack dealer at night and bartender. And I do that for maybe another year and then I just feel like, nope, this is not it either. And somewhere there I just get so tired of continuously working, not knowing what to do. So, I go back to university and I talk to... Oh my God, I'm losing all the words today.

Sofia Larsson:
The counselor.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah, thank you. The counselor. Talked to her and explained like, "Hey, you know what? I think I'm going to go back to study. And I studied a year here, so I shouldn't have much left, right?" So, she prints out my results from the first year and also the year, I started to become a teacher. She was like, "Yeah, César, you don't have a lot of points here or finished courses and almost none of it is usable if you want to have a bachelor in computer science because I wasn't feeling it anymore for the game development thingy." So, I was like, "Ah, okay then. Okay, let's just do this." So, I started from scratch.

Charlie Chapman:
Goodness.

César Pinto Castillo:
And this is I think three years in. And then in the last three years, I just bam, bam, bam. I just did it.

Charlie Chapman:
Is that because it clicked, like this is a thing you enjoyed or were you just like, I got to get out of here?

César Pinto Castillo:
Yes, yes. Something clicked. I can't say what, but because I tried everything else, bartender, black cake dealer. I went a few months to Spain and worked as a phone salesman. I did all these things that I thought I was going to do and I was like, nope, nope, nope, nope. And then I was like, okay, let's just go back to this. And somehow I felt like, okay, now I know this is the thing I should do. But it was in csharp.net, et cetera. So, I did the thing and in the final course I had where you do the... I'm losing all the English work today. What's the word?

Sofia Larsson:
Your thesis?

César Pinto Castillo:
My thesis. Yeah. Okay, thank you. So, I was doing my thesis and when doing that, so they basically. We were a class of, I don't know, maybe 20 people and they made us into small groups and I got to choose my team. So, I choose a couple of classmates. We were like three or four. We get an assignment that we should do and we do that as a thesis. And then at the end of the semester when we're done, our examinator, he looks at it and he's like, "Yep, this is cool. This is very good. Good job. But just so you know, this assignment was not a fake one. This was a real one.
This is actually an assignment from Volvo and they saw what you implemented, so they want you to build this for real in their factory in Olveston and you get to pick one of your classmates." When I was saying classmates, it sounds like we're eating crayons and stuff, but it's not like that. So, I take one of my classmates or study buddies, whatever.

Sofia Larsson:
Study buddies.

César Pinto Castillo:
I don't know what to call it.

Sofia Larsson:
It's a classmate.

César Pinto Castillo:
Is it a classmate?

Charlie Chapman:
I think classmates is a-

César Pinto Castillo:
It is a classmate. Okay.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, I think that's pretty good.

César Pinto Castillo:
So, I choose one of my classmates that I trusted the most. And during summer, they relocate us down to Olofström and we actually get paid and we implement this for real and it's put into the factory line.

Charlie Chapman:
And this is some sort of custom software then for use in the factory, right?

César Pinto Castillo:
Yes. This is really C# and asp.net and yeah.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah. Okay, okay. Similar backgrounds here, although mine was a lot less. I was doing insurance claims processing, so slightly less exciting than Volvo factory floor software.

César Pinto Castillo:
I can go into what the software did if you want to, very vaguely.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah. I mean, I guess more interested in doing that, which sounds more like industrial/enterprise type development in the C# land. How do you get from there to building consumer software and specifically mobile consumer software?

César Pinto Castillo:
Okay, that's a good question. So, I did this. I knew how it worked, et cetera. I never felt the good thing inside you had to build something. I didn't get that when building something in C#. I had an Experia X1, that's a Sony Ericsson cell phone. You can just flip up the keyboard. I had that and I built software for that and it was just terrible. I just hated it. Whatever I did, it just didn't look good. It felt overly complicated. And then one day I go by a store window in Västerås and there's an iPhone there and it's in this demo mode, so it's just scrolling through the contact sheet or the contact app. It's going into apps doing stuff and it looks so fluid. It looks so simple.

Charlie Chapman:
The visual I have in my head is you walking down an icy street in the middle of winter, and then there's this glow coming from a window to your side and you stop and you're like, "What is this?" It's like music starts building, you're struck by inspiration.

César Pinto Castillo:
That's exactly what it felt like. I just saw it and I was like, "Oh my God, this is amazing." Because in my world, I was thinking of the, what was it called? Windows Mobile CE?

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

César Pinto Castillo:
That's what I had looked at 20 minutes before. I was like, "Okay, this is it. This is how good it gets." So, I see that iPhone, it looks amazing. I talked to him in the store for a bit, and then I go back to my apartment and somehow I see that a big comedian in Sweden named Magnus Betnér, he posts on Twitter like, "Hey, can someone make me an app?" And I have no idea how to build an app. I didn't have a Mac. I didn't know what Xcode was. I knew nothing, but I was like, "Yeah, I can-

Charlie Chapman:
Well, you didn't even have an iPhone at this point, right? You just saw it?

César Pinto Castillo:
No. No, I've just seen one. So, I write to Magnus like, "Hey, I can do it for you on a problem." We chat back and forth, what he wants it to do. I was like, "Okay, I can figure this out." And we agree on a price. Then I go back to that store and I was like, "Hey, okay, I've taken also build an app. I think I need a Mac, right?" And there's a gap. They knew you needed a Mac, so I asked them, "Hey, could you sell one cheap for me? Do you have maybe something behind the counter?" And they said, "Yeah, we have a few old ones that have been returned or whatever, so you can buy that really cheap." So, I bought that for $150.

Charlie Chapman:
Whoa, wow.

César Pinto Castillo:
I think it was a MacBook G4.

Charlie Chapman:
Oh, so that's like a Power PC then, right?

César Pinto Castillo:
Exactly.

Charlie Chapman:
Wow.

César Pinto Castillo:
I didn't know what Power PC was.

Charlie Chapman:
Could you even build iOS apps with that?

César Pinto Castillo:
Nope. So, I get back to my apartment, I booted up. I installed Spotify because that's what you had to do, right?

Charlie Chapman:
Of course. Yeah, you were sweet.

César Pinto Castillo:
That worked awesome. It booted so fast, even though it was three or four years old by this time, and I installed Xcode, I prepare everything, and then I just have the sample project and I tried to build it. It was like exactly what you're saying. You need an Intel PC to compile this. God damn it. So, I go back and I was like, "Hey, do you have a used Intel Mac back there?" Nope, because they were brand new. So, I had to spend all the money I was getting paid to build the app to buy my first Mac.

Sofia Larsson:
Did you get some money in advance?

César Pinto Castillo:
Nope.

Sofia Larsson:
Oh, okay. High risk.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yes. So, that's how I got into app development.

Charlie Chapman:
So, how did that go then? You figured it out?

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah, I figured it out. So, basically he wanted an app that showed his blog posts and he had a WordPress website. So, I was like, "Cool. Okay, WordPress." And I need it in the app and I heard about this thing called JSON, so I built a plugin for WordPress that made all the blog posts available through JSON via an API. And then I just pulled it into the app and presented it in a list. That was the very first version.

Charlie Chapman:
Simpler times.

César Pinto Castillo:
Oh my God, yes. When there only was one screen size.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, that too. Okay, so that's how you got into it. And then before we jump over to Sofia, obviously you got it working, you enjoyed it. Presumably you got paid so that you could pay for your stuff. Did you then just start being like, "This is what I want to be doing and try to find kind of odd jobs or something, building software for people or apps for people?"

César Pinto Castillo:
Exactly. So, one day I was walking down the street in Mr. Lewis and I ran into this friend of mine who was like, "Hey, you know what, César, I'm working as this ad agency around the corner. You can join us." The company, the name was Care of House. So, I joined that company. I go there, talk to the CEO, and I remember this conversation because my friend Alexander, who was there, he was working for free. He was sort of a-

Sofia Larsson:
Internship.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah, an internship, exactly. Sort of, where he would work for free, but to learn the ropes. So, I'm sitting there, I'm talking to the CEO. Alexander's there as well. We're talking for maybe 30 minutes about how the whole setup works and we really click. I walk out, I get back to my apartment, and then I realize I got rent to pay. I got to pay off my student loan. I can't work for free. So, I send him an email like, "Oh, you know what? I'm sorry, sorry for taking up your time, but I won't be able to work for free, so I guess this won't work."
So, he then just calls me back and was like, "Hey, why don't you come into the office tomorrow and we'll figure something out?" So, we talked about it and then I got my first job at that ad agency and they wanted to get into apps. So, that was sort of the-

Charlie Chapman:
Perfect jumping off point.

Sofia Larsson:
So, it was the first time for them as well?

César Pinto Castillo:
Yes, exactly. And then what happened is that they didn't get any app assignments, app clients, they found none. So, I was there for six months doing web development.

Sofia Larsson:
But you got paid.

César Pinto Castillo:
I got paid. I got paid. And in all of this thing, I got in touch with a company in Stockholm, ID Labs, and that's my first app job. That was an app agency making only apps for the app platform.

Charlie Chapman:
Cool. So, where we're at with you is you're now building apps as your kind of normal day-to-day job, but you came through with a computer science degree, although there was some twists and turns to get there, but kind of in some ways more typical, although a funny starting story for the iOS side of the house. So, if we roll back to Sofia, you do not have a computer science degree, or at least that wasn't your original kind of career path, right?

Sofia Larsson:
No. So, I have a background in textiles. I have a bachelor in textile engineering and science.

Charlie Chapman:
I think it's safe to say that this is the first person on Launched whose background is in textiles. We've had a lot of varying different backgrounds of people that kind of fell into this industry, but I don't think we've had anybody else who has textile engineering as their background. So, how did you get into that for starters?

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah, it's very niche. I can tell you that. Actually, to begin with, I wanted to be an architect or work or study in industrial design. So, always been this scientifical, artsy combination you can call it. Which

Charlie Chapman:
From an American's perspective anyway, feels like it's, stereotypical isn't the right word, but a thing that's very popular in Sweden. Industrial design feels like an elevated art form. Is that really a true thing or is that just because we associate IKEA and some design firms with-

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah, I was just going to say it's probably-

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, that might be purely all it's about. So, it's not something that everybody around you is also into.

Sofia Larsson:
I haven't really thought about it. I think it's like when we go abroad, you can really tell that Sweden has very high standards when it comes to a-

Charlie Chapman:
That's a very nice way to say other places don't have high standards.

Sofia Larsson:
There are a lot of laws and how things can and should be built and there are some restrictions, let's just say that.

César Pinto Castillo:
I don't want to be that guy, but Germany has a lot of laws.

Sofia Larsson:
Okay. Yeah, we're not Germany.

César Pinto Castillo:
And Germany's not that nice, Sweden.

Sofia Larsson:
No, but we have very good laws. Not unnecessary laws.

César Pinto Castillo:
Find a good Delex.

Charlie Chapman:
So, you wanted to get into industrial design or architecture or something like that?

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah. And then when I was in school, it's called gymnasium in Sweden. It's like high school, I guess. You're like 15, 17 years old.

Charlie Chapman:
Like pre-university.

Sofia Larsson:
Exactly. Exactly. So, we had guests coming to our classroom. I think this was in math or in physics or something, and they just talked about different educations. So, they had two engineers because I was studying science and one was a textile engineer and one was another type of engineer from another very big university in my hometown. And when she talked about what they do and the courses they were studying, I was so inspired because they combined my passion for science and physics and chemistry and not so much biology, but all the typical science and subjects.
They combined it with textiles and some, it's not super aesthetical, but they touch base with aesthetics like color wheels and other things that are aesthetical.

Charlie Chapman:
What is textile engineering then? Is that the engineering behind obviously creating of textiles and stuff, but you just mentioned color science. I imagine a major part of it is just manufacturing things with the right types of properties, including the way it looks and how long it lasts and everything like that.

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah. You are the first person that has asked me what it is that actually can guess it.

Charlie Chapman:
Guess.

Sofia Larsson:
And that's very impressive. So, most people ask me like, "Oh, so are you a designer? Do you design fashion?" I'm like, "No." "Oh, so you're a seamstress? ""Well, no. We did take a class in that because we have to have an understanding of different seams and how to give its different strengths and things like that. But it's more about the study of the fibers, I would say, and how you can process different fibers and different techniques of when you're weaving, you get different features for the textiles and the fabrics and knitting and so on. And then that's just one part. Then you have all the coating.
If you prepare it with this type of plastic, you get these different features like raincoats, for instance, or it can get more complex than that. So, if you take geotextiles, for instance, is what you put in the ground underneath airports. So, when it's below freezing-

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah, below freezing point.

Sofia Larsson:
The ground is still smooth. And then you have geotextiles in farming and you have medicinal textiles in hospitals, and there's so many textiles with different features and capabilities that we don't really think about in a normal day. And then don't get me started in automobile textiles.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah. Well, I mean, as you're talking, I'm literally just looking around my room and I'm like, it's like that overwhelming feeling of when you think about the details that go into everything in your everyday life. I don't know if there's got to be a long German word for this or something, but I go through this sometimes, but you've now added a new layer to this, which is going to be the actual material science behind everything. But just seeing, I have a scarf sitting over there, but then I also have one of those standard, I forgot what the. Actually, it might be shelves that has the box, the cubes inside of it, but those cubes are textiles, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Even just looking at the different materials on there, I'm like, yeah, it's almost overwhelming to think about the amount of engineering that goes into all of these different materials that there's five layers up of engineers that are then using it in products, I'm presuming. But it's almost like you're at the kernel layer of software development and then there's a bunch of people building on stacks on stacks on stacks. It's like the same thing exists in physical engineering as well, I guess.

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah. So, my thesis was actually about a medicinal textile. When you have, I'm not sure about the English name, but vertical vibrosis. When you have your veins on the legs, they turn blue because-

Charlie Chapman:
Oh, yes.

Sofia Larsson:
... they can't pump up the blood correctly. So, my thesis was about getting a bandage that you apply to the leg after surgery so it would get the right pressure independently on who would apply it. So, I didn't make this bandage, just to be clear, but my thesis was about how to get it a CE standard and a CE standard is like-

César Pinto Castillo:
We don't have it in the US.

Sofia Larsson:
No. So, that's a European thing.

Charlie Chapman:
It's like some sort of regulatory hurdle, like you have to get an approval or something.

Sofia Larsson:
Yes. You should have that standard for certain appliances and objects. Anyway, so my thesis was about, okay, so which ISO standards should it test through and what results after those tests should it have to get these CE standard?

Charlie Chapman:
This is super fascinating, but that is not generally speaking related to what you're doing now. So, what's the path from this to building apps?

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah, so like I mentioned, in textile engineering, the education is a lot about both scientifically and aesthetics and design.

Charlie Chapman:
The intersection of science and art, you could say.

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah, kind of. And I've always been into that. I started sewing when I was four years old. I would sit in my mother's lap and she was behind the sewing machine and I was just like, "Get the startup." So, I've always been into creating things. And for me, it's not necessarily important how I create things, just that I do. So, working digitally is like, it's so nice because then I don't need a full stash. You should see my storage of my scraps.

Charlie Chapman:
Saves a lot of money. Yeah. My wife is really, or I guess was really into scrapbooking, and so we would go to scrapbooking stores a lot and build up this big collection of materials and heat guns and all this stuff, and it was very, very cool. But then whenever she started transitioning into Photoshop, the amount of money that we spent, even though we spend a lot of money on printing these big photo books, it's still just nothing compared to the amount of material you need to buy whenever you're into some sort of physical craft like that.

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah, because with physical things, you run out eventually. Or it's the wrong material. Yeah, kind of. So, imagine if you're going to populate a list in an app and then you're like, "Oh no, you ran out of images." That doesn't happen with app development.

Charlie Chapman:
Although with tokens now, maybe you could say the same thing.

Sofia Larsson:
Sure, sure. But you have to prompt it responsibly.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Sofia Larsson:
No. So, for me, going into app development, it wasn't that big of a deal, to be honest, in terms of what I like to do. But to take it back a bit, why I got into app development is a different thing. So, I applied for a lot of jobs as a textile engineer, and like I mentioned earlier, it's very niche, so it's very hard to get into, and you practically have to know someone on the inside to get a position, which I unfortunately didn't because my parents, they wasn't in that field at all, and I didn't know anyone who was really.
So, I would get one rejection after another, but then I've heard of this internship you could take because when I was applying for jobs, they told me, "Oh, you don't have enough experience." I was like, "Well, this is what I'm trying to get." How do you get it in the first place? How do you get experience if you don't get the job anywhere? Well, so I started to apply to those internships even though I really didn't want to because I felt like it should be enough that I have my exam as a bachelor. But if this is the way in, then okay, I will take this. I will take the extra steps just so I can get in.
And I started to apply to those internships, and then they told me, which are free, by the way, you work for free.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, exactly.

Sofia Larsson:
And they told me that I don't have enough experience.

Charlie Chapman:
For the internships?

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:
Goodness.

Sofia Larsson:
And that's when it hit me like, "Okay, so this is what it's going to be like. They don't value you as a person. You are nothing for them." So, I decided, okay, that's not for me because that doesn't correspond very well with my view on humanity and people in general. And simultaneously, I was sitting. So, we have a very big desk. So, César and I would sit at the same desk next to each other doing our things, but he would work and I would apply for jobs or internships in this case. And he would just get one email after the other, like, "Come work with us. We have ping pong and it's free beer. And if you work late, you get a free dinner too." And I was getting the-

Charlie Chapman:
Sharp contrast.

Sofia Larsson:
... stink eye every day. And then one day I just decided, "I'm not going to have it. I want that. I'm going to get in on that."

Charlie Chapman:
So, how did you go about starting that process then? You decide you want to do it. You don't have a computer science background at all. What's step one?

Sofia Larsson:
I started with Swift, what's it called? Swift Playgrounds on the iPad. And this, I should disclaim that I was also in the beginning of my burnout.

Charlie Chapman:
I know of multiple people who've been burning out in their careers and started hacking with Swift or learning how to do software development as a almost coping mechanism for it. Most of them don't complete it though.

Sofia Larsson:
Talking about the burnout, I couldn't do anything, to be honest. I would make some puzzles, like 15 minutes here and there during the days. I couldn't even watch TV. I couldn't read. I was that at that point. And then I worked up from there, and then I started with Swift Playgrounds. You have a little character, it's called Byte, I think, and you have it through a maze by adding codes one step forward, one step to the left and so on. And then you would loop over and over and it would get more and more complex.
So, that's how I started to get an understanding of what is code and how can you use it and how can you make it more effective, like reuse code. And then César wanted to change the code base for Ambre, well, previously known as Kookin.

Charlie Chapman:
Okay. And I guess we need to pause right there and back up just a second. So, for some reason, I thought this came later. So, you already had your own app then, César, and that was called Kookin?

César Pinto Castillo:
Oh, yeah. Kookin. Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:
Okay. So, what's the story there?

César Pinto Castillo:
Okay. So, which year did it launch a cloud kit? 2017, 2016, something like that?

Charlie Chapman:
It would've been, I mean, that era. Yeah.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah, it doesn't really matter which ship, but that year that they released that, I was like, "What can I build with this? I need to build something mostly because I just want to..."

Charlie Chapman:
Had you built your own stuff before that?

César Pinto Castillo:
Oh, yeah. So, I've been employed as an engineer since 2011, and by 2016 or '17, whatever it was, I've already gone through multiple companies and employments and building my own apps on the side.

Charlie Chapman:
Had any of your own apps through that popped and made any real sort of money?

César Pinto Castillo:
I would say no. Real sort of money, no. Real sort would be like 10K USD. So, nothing even close to that. Nothing even close to that. So, the apps I released, maybe a few hundred dollars tops.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, yeah. Pay for your developer account.

César Pinto Castillo:
Sort of. Yeah, exactly. So, one of the early ones was we made an app for Arlanda, which is Airport in Stockholm. So, we basically, not for them, but we just made an app, me and a friend of mine. So, we just pulled the website and we would send you push notifications, whatever an airplane arrived or departured.

Charlie Chapman:
Oh, interesting. Okay. Like an early, is it ATC, the one that's blowing up right now?

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah, but not the cool voiceovers.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah, yeah.

César Pinto Castillo:
Way, way more basic. The ATC app is way more cooler. So, 2017, '16, whatever it was, iCloud is launched and I look at it and see I need to build something with this because I wanted to learn the technology, what was possible, what was not possible. So, what I do is I build a recipe app, that simple. You upload your CK records and those are recipes of course stored in your own cloud kit and you could see others people's recipes. And I named it Kookin and I put it out there and I forgot about it.

Charlie Chapman:
So, it didn't blow up, it wasn't getting a bunch of recognition?

César Pinto Castillo:
No, absolutely not.

Charlie Chapman:
Okay.

César Pinto Castillo:
Absolutely not.

Charlie Chapman:
All right, that's the context anyway for-

César Pinto Castillo:
But it was being used. Yes, it was being used.

Charlie Chapman:
It was being used. Okay. So, you had some users at least.

Sofia Larsson:
Oh yeah. We had Phyllis because you could create profiles. So, you had a name and a little image and then just a list of your recipes. And she had more than a hundred recipes.

Charlie Chapman:
Ah, okay.

Sofia Larsson:
And this is an important detail. You had to enter them manually. You couldn't rearrange order in-

César Pinto Castillo:
Instructions.

Sofia Larsson:
... instructions, thank you. Or ingredients. You would have to get it right the first time or you would have to redo everything.

Charlie Chapman:
Oh, there was no editing.

César Pinto Castillo:
You could edit, but you couldn't reorder it.

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah.

César Pinto Castillo:
So, let's say, you messed up on the first instruction.

Sofia Larsson:
Basically, we would have to redo most of the recipe.

Charlie Chapman:
Wow. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

César Pinto Castillo:
I just wanted to test the technology, put it out there. And for some reason-

Charlie Chapman:
This is the classic looking for some app as an excuse to try out a piece of technology.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yes, exactly. That happened and then I didn't touch it for many years and then we come back to Sofia's story.

Charlie Chapman:
So, you built this and it was kind of sitting out there. There were users using it. And this is sitting out there presumably for some amount of time. And then Sofia started learning Swift development and the concepts of software development in general. And that's where you were like, "Oh, I'd like to update this app. Maybe she can start doing that." Is that kind of the origin there?

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah. So, César wanted it to be in Swift and SwiftUI.

Charlie Chapman:
So, it was in Objective C originally?

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah, it was within Objective C originally, and I think I added some stuff in Swift.

Sofia Larsson:
You must have.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah. And that was basically just all the communication with CloudKit, but there was no UI. Oh yeah, the UI was still in UI kit. That was it. And SwiftUI has been launched and Sofia wants to learn how to code.

Charlie Chapman:
Perfect combination. Okay.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah, right?

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah. So, César said, "Oh, well, I have this app lying around and I want it in SwiftUI. Why don't you just rewrite all the views?" I was like, "Okay."

Charlie Chapman:
Easy first task.

Sofia Larsson:
I had only touched Xcode before by. So, my first encounter with Xcode was these iMessage sticker apps because I wanted to create real stickers, but then you have to handle all the logistics and the printing and the sending and they're hopefully not refunds. So, this was like, "No, you can do it digitally." I'm like, "Yeah, let's do it." So, I actually have a sticker app on the App Store with illustrations from my hometown, Gothenburg.

Charlie Chapman:
Oh, nice. Okay. And it's still sitting up there. And you had done that already? This was before you started learning Swift and all that?

Sofia Larsson:
Yes. So, I was somewhat familiar with Xcode, but I haven't touched code in it. So, yeah, I started just building up the views and I guess I never stopped because I'm still building the views.

Charlie Chapman:
How did that process go though? I don't know, it's a weird thing to talk about. It's the type of story that I always loved bringing up here because there's lots of people at different stages in their journey, but it's like I don't even know nowadays with AI, it's like everything's just so radically different. But for you at this point, you're just going one by one and trying to, how do I make this thing work this way over here? And you're just doing lots of Googling essentially and trying and failing?

Sofia Larsson:
Yes, a lot of failing, because I think my biggest problem was I didn't have any terminology. So, when I wanted to Google for something, I had to describe what I wanted. I couldn't just say, "Ooh, I'm looking for this modifier or this whatever."

Charlie Chapman:
Even the word modifier is not part of your nomenclature already. And that's where I feel like the AI thing comes in. It's so much easier to describe in all of the wrong words a problem and it fully understand what you're talking about and then tell you what all the right words are.

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah. I wouldn't say fully understand, to be honest.

Charlie Chapman:
Well, certainly a lot better than Google would have in this stage.

Sofia Larsson:
But enough.

César Pinto Castillo:
Charlie, you're absolutely right.

Charlie Chapman:
There it is.

Sofia Larsson:
Oh, I know. So many times, I've had to correct Claude.

Charlie Chapman:
So, you started doing this and was your goal to get a new version of Kookin out and then build that into something that was making you money? Or were you using it as a springboard to get into building software yourself and having your own clients or working with César? Or what was the goal ultimately here?

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah, a springboard. I needed to practice and to learn basically because I wanted to become a developer. And then the idea was that I was going to work as a developer being employed somewhere. But then César heard of something called Apple Entrepreneur Camp. I think this was in 2020 or 2021. And he said, "Oh, honey, you should definitely apply to this." I was like, "Yeah, but they're never going to accept me because I know nothing. I am such a beginner and I don't even know the right words. I can't even communicate about what I'm building."

Charlie Chapman:
And this is the program run by Apple, right?

César Pinto Castillo:
Yes. And can I just add one thing here? The whole adventure with Apple, the thing Sofia's beginning to explain now is thanks to, what's the UX evangelist at Apple? Stern.

Sofia Larsson:
Mike Stern?

César Pinto Castillo:
Mike Stern.

Charlie Chapman:
Oh, Mike Stern.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yes. It was his post that started all of this.

Sofia Larsson:
Oh, thank you, Mike.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:
There you go.

César Pinto Castillo:
So, he made a post. I saw it about Apple Intramural Camp, and I went over to Sofia like, "Look at this."

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah. And I was terrified. And César said, "Oh, whoa, what's the worst thing that's going to happen?" They say no or they say yes. And I said, "Yeah, that's the worst thing. They can say yes."

Charlie Chapman:
Them saying yes is the worst thing. Yeah.

Sofia Larsson:
Then I would actually have to do it. And I got an email where they said it was imperative that we got a call scheduled this week or early next week.

Charlie Chapman:
It's a very Apple email.

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah, like it was last minute.

Charlie Chapman:
All of a sudden, they're like, "We need to get ahold of you right now and no details so that you sit there and think there's a hundred ways I could make this go wrong." And then you stress about it over and over and over again.

César Pinto Castillo:
I even remember the exact phrasing that we used. It's of utmost importance that we get on a call.

Charlie Chapman:
It's effective.

Sofia Larsson:
It was, it was, but I was shaking like a leaf. I was so nervous. And then I talked to César like, "Oh, what do I do? What do I do?" I was like, "You take the call." Oh, okay. And then we had the call and César. Well, before we scheduled the call, I said to César, "Well, what do they want to talk about? Why would they want to call me?" And he said, "Well, it's just like they want to welcome you in person properly, not via an email. They just want to tell you you got in." It's like, "Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, do I have to prepare anything?" He's like, "Ouch, it's going to be a five minutes call. They're just going to say, "Whoa, you're on board. Welcome in."

Charlie Chapman:
I mean, that's what I would've guessed based on this.

César Pinto Castillo:
And it's a valid guess, right?

Charlie Chapman:
I don't know what else I would've even expected. I'm waiting on the edge of my seat to hear what it actually was.

Sofia Larsson:
Oh, it turned out it was a technical interview for two hours.

Charlie Chapman:
Oh my goodness. Wow. Okay.

Sofia Larsson:
I was not happy.

Charlie Chapman:
Do you think it was helpful in a way though that you weren't expecting that much because then you weren't going into it with the same nerves?

Sofia Larsson:
Probably. Well, my nerves were all over anyway, but-

Charlie Chapman:
Fair.

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:
Okay. So, you had a full interview, but how did it end up going then?

Sofia Larsson:
Well, I got in.

Charlie Chapman:
You got in.

Sofia Larsson:
I got in.

Charlie Chapman:
Congratulations. Yay.

Sofia Larsson:
Thank you. Thank you.

Charlie Chapman:
So, what did that entail then? Getting in means what? What did you actually do after that?

Sofia Larsson:
So, I think it started a couple of weeks later. It was definitely within two months. It was the same summer. I think this was end of spring and this was in the summer. It was a two weeks bootcamp for how to create apps, what to think of, how you pitch it. We had DTS hours with Apple engineers. We had design sessions with Apple designers. We had pitch meeting, how to elevator pitch with, I don't remember their titles, but they were very high up.

Charlie Chapman:
Yes. Was that in Cupertino or was this, because this is in that kind of COVID in between era, so was it virtual?

Sofia Larsson:
So, unfortunately it was during the pandemic, so it was virtual, but it was also nice in one way that it was because I still wasn't recovered from my burnout. So, for me, this was actually the best outcome because then I could sleep in my own bed and have access to myself.

Charlie Chapman:
Or flying across the world in a different time zone, in a different place, eating different food.

Sofia Larsson:
It was enough as it was. We literally slept and ate and coded. That's the only thing we did for two weeks.

César Pinto Castillo:
And it was not a lot of sleep.

Sofia Larsson:
No, no. So, to be able to get the most out of it, we would eat during the sessions. So, yeah, we didn't really have time to eat, to be honest.

César Pinto Castillo:
No, and it was a US based, right? Because it was adaptive because they were back in Cupertino.

Charlie Chapman:
Because time wise was also very weird.

Sofia Larsson:
Oh, yeah, yeah. It was a nine-hour time difference.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah. So, out of all of that, I mean, it sounds like that was a boon for your career. It was helpful for you. What was the big thing that you feel like you got out of it? Was it technical or was it process or understanding the app store better? Or what did you get out of it that you feel like then helped you with your career?

Sofia Larsson:
This is going to sound super cheesy, but my confidence, because going in, I felt like such an imposter. I was nervous at every meeting thinking, "Oh, they're going to call me out."

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, they're going to find out. I have no idea what I'm doing. Yeah.

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah. But the environment that they created, not only for me, but for all attendees, just made me believe in myself and in what I do. And I could see the progress. When I had my first DTS hour with an engineer, I had never pair coded.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah. Pair programmed. Yeah.

Sofia Larsson:
Pair programmed before. And so, I didn't really know what was expected of me, but I tend to set very high expectations on myself. So, I thought that I would have to know everything and have it all figured out beforehand. And like I mentioned, I had zero terminology, so just trying to communicate in the first place was terrifying. In my eyes, it was going to be so obvious like you don't belong here, but it was great.

Charlie Chapman:
That's awesome. So, as you came out, so you come out of that with renewed obviously skills and knowledge and whatever, but also renewed confidence. How did that go into your work then?

Sofia Larsson:
I would get the energy to keep on pushing forward because trying to explain to someone who doesn't program, I tend to say it's a roller coaster. Your day is a full-blown rollercoaster. You have something that you are struggling with and you're basically grinding and you don't know why it won't build because we didn't have Claude. You couldn't ask anyone really. And then you would get it and when it would build, you got zero errors and you would be at the top of that roller coaster and it was like. So, you just get the energy to continue doing that.

Charlie Chapman:
I feel like software development, not as a rule, obviously plenty of people don't fit this, but if you've done this for long enough, you kind of almost can't see yourself as infallible because you just repeatedly are running into massive roadblocks that you have to push through. At least most people, I don't know, there's probably super geniuses out there that never ran into build errors, but most of us would have sometimes days where you're just banging your head against the problem and it's like you can't be like, "The computer's wrong, I'm not wrong," because as much as we all like to think it's the compile error, we always end up finding out most of the time that, "Oh no, it was actually we misplaced a comma or didn't release some memory in some spot or whatever."
And so, getting roadblocked almost creates a specific type of culture that we all have this shared understanding that we could be wrong. But I almost wonder if. I feel like we're entering this era where you almost never really get roadblocks. Sometimes you have to keep asking the thing to do it multiple times, but at least in my experience, I am aggravated at the machine for not getting it as opposed to this feeling of I'm doing it wrong, which I wonder if that's going to tweak how we think about ourselves and our brains a little bit as a software engineering field or something. I don't know. Weird sudden observation based on that.
But anyway, so you're coming out of that, now you have the confidence to push through and build things. Did you pour that into the Kookin app then? Was that kind of your primary muse at that point?

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah, because we were starting to get featured on App Store. It was like, "Oh, whoa, this is starting to take off and now we really need someone to actually continue to improve. Now we have a legit reason." So, I would do that and yeah, it would continue to grow. And fast-forwarding, I would take on more work. I got my first client job together with César because again, I was terrified, afraid being called out. She'd have no clue. She doesn't know what she's doing. And this was together with Molin and Kai, the client they had.

Charlie Chapman:
Oh, nice.

Sofia Larsson:
So, we would be here in Sweden and they would be in Vancouver, and then the client was somewhere Midwest, I think, in the US. So, we would cover three very different time zones. It was cool.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah, it was cool.

Charlie Chapman:
That's awesome. So, you've kind of folded in client work into both of your work then, but you do both keep up a collection of apps yourself. So, Ambi Studio, as we referenced here, it has the Kookin app, which is now renamed Ambre, is that correct?

César Pinto Castillo:
Exactly.

Charlie Chapman:
And then you have a podcasting app. Listen, there's a couple other ones on there. What are the things that you've done over time to make those more visible? I feel like Ambre in particular is one that I see picked up, it's referenced, you all have kind of become voices in the community in a way. Is that all something you've been intentional about or are there things that you've done that have worked or haven't worked in terms of marketing?

Sofia Larsson:
I think we haven't done that much marketing, not properly anyway. We do have an Instagram account for Ambre, but it's more just because we feel like we have to have it because it's a great way for users to reach out to us and if they have feedback or they have some problems or whatever, and that's mostly because of that. But it was actually César and a contact at Apple who, I wouldn't say nudge, they almost kicked me into get a social media presence, which I did. And then when I started to post about app development, but Ambre in particular and more towards UI and design, I would get a following.
And I think it has to do with I am a minority because I'm a woman and also because I was posting about design, had a feeling it was more code-based posts before in the community or it's like I had this idea and I saw this new API or SDK, I'm going to try it out. Whereas I would like, "Ooh, this color combination is super nice. And if you put it this way in the layout, it would read much better," or I don't know, things like that.

Charlie Chapman:
There's a certain creativity in the stuff that both of you put out. I think Listen, your podcast app has a fun, I will say chat head style window that you can throw around the screen. But the thing I'll never forget is the first time I met both of you. I don't know if you remember this.

César Pinto Castillo:
I remember-

Sofia Larsson:
I think I do.

New Speaker:
I think we were sitting on the roof of the Apple app store that's across from the Apple Park and-

César Pinto Castillo:
The mothership.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah. And you were introducing yourself and then Sofia pulls, what was it? You had a card, I think is what you started with, and you're like, "This is my app." And it was Ambre and it was a QR code and you scanned it and then you downloaded the app. And then inside of the app, there was another QR code that you scanned to get a specific recipe, and the recipe was for how to make Swedish fish. And I watched you do this to other people after me, and we all have the same reaction. It would open up the recipe and you're like, "Oh, that's cute. Oh, you're from Sweden, that's funny."
And then you would pull a Swedish fish in a little baggie out and hand it to them like, "Here's the ingredients you have that you can make it." So, it was one of those where I'm like, "Okay, these are very fun people." That was such a cool way to introduce yourself to everybody there.

Sofia Larsson:
I think it was the year after app clips were introduced.

Charlie Chapman:
Oh, maybe it was an app clip. That would make sense.

Sofia Larsson:
Because we wanted to use an app clip, and I think one of the most frequent comments were like, "Oh my God, you have an app clip. I've never seen an app clip."

Charlie Chapman:
What's funny is if you did the same thing, you might get the exact same reaction now. They didn't exactly take off the world. Yeah, not many use them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just when you're paying for your food, at least here in the States, that's where I see them the most. We're getting at time, and I don't want to end without asking both of you the question I ask everybody in the show, which is who is a person or people out there that have inspired you and your work that you'd recommend others check out? And César, I'll start with you.

César Pinto Castillo:
Oh, wow. This is so incredibly difficult. Along the journey of many years of doing ad development, it's so easy to look up on these idols or these very successful people and seeing them as your, I don't know, your goal or wherever you want to be. But as I've become older, I'm starting to value more the people in my position doing the hustle. So, for example, ask me 10 years ago, I would say Steve Jobs. And sure, Steve Jobs, still super impressive. I still love a lot of things he did, but in a way I can today understand that I can't compare myself to what he did or was or managed to do.
We are in two very different places, but when seeing other people in my position today and seeing what they achieve, they might not be as famous, they might not be as visible, but they keep on doing it. They believe in themselves, they believe in their product. That is extremely humbling. I think that those are my idols. And I don't want to name anyone because there's a saying in Sweden [Swedish 00:52:56].

Sofia Larsson:
I knew you were going to say that.

César Pinto Castillo:
Basically, it's like nobody mentioned, nobody's forgotten.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, yes. If you're giving an award speech-

César Pinto Castillo:
Does that make sense?

Charlie Chapman:
... you never start listing names because as soon as you do that, you're like, all you can think about is who am I forgetting now?

César Pinto Castillo:
Yes, exactly. And you always forget someone. But to be honest, the biggest aspirations is seeing other people trying to build products, build apps, build the signs. It doesn't have to be the entire app, but maybe just an app icon or the product or your landing site and trying to be original and trying to create something new. That is extremely inspiring because I know that is also the most difficult part, creating something brand new from scratch.

Charlie Chapman:
All right, cool. Well, César just copped out of giving a real answer, so Sofia. No, that's a good answer. It's a good answer. It's a good answer. I mean, you didn't give a name, but I respect the working your way around it. Sofia, do you have a person that you'd inspire or are you also going to avoid names?

Sofia Larsson:
I was just thinking about what César said, how hard it is to get started on a project. I don't think it's hard to get started. That's the easy part. You have a thousand ideas. It's like, "I want to do that. I'm going to do that. It's continuing."

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Sofia Larsson:
Following up, finishing up all those loose ends, the last 10%, that's the hard part. I don't have anyone in those 10% though that I know. But in terms of having an idol or someone-

Charlie Chapman:
It doesn't have to be an idol. You don't have to put them at that level.

Sofia Larsson:
But I would say, so I follow a lot of product designers and designers in general on social media because that's where I get my inspiration just to see how they solved complex UI or UX flows. But also just being goofy and silly and exploring how can you use shaders or how can you look at a to-do list differently? And so, whenever I see something good, I don't just bookmark it because I'm never going to go back and look at that because it doesn't happen in my everyday flow. So, what I do is that I message myself. That is my good list.

Charlie Chapman:
I immediately dump it into a group chat, generally speaking. That's almost like my... because I'm the same way. I've tried all the Read It Later apps and putting it in notes and all that, it's like I'm never going to go back. But for some reason, if I throw it in a group chat of some kind, it's like a place I'll actually remember putting it there. Or in my case, it'll spark a discussion which helps cement it. But, and this is going to be the case for you too, in the new Siri AI world, all of that is so much more searchable and easy to access than it was before.

Sofia Larsson:
So, I was going right before this call, I actually went through my iMessage chat with myself because I don't really think of, this sounds so boring. I don't really think of anyone in particular when I look at designs because I don't want to be blocked at like, "Oh, this is from this person, so it has to be good, or this is from that person, so it's probably not that good." I just try to look at the content. But I did see a design that I really liked. So, I want to give a shout-out to a person, not that he need it maybe, but it's really cool. His name is Alex Weichart, I think, and he has the same handle. I can send you the handle name if you want later.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah. How do you spell the handle?

Sofia Larsson:
Alex, as in Alex. And then W-E-I-C-H-A-R-T.

Charlie Chapman:
Oh, building whimsical apps in Japan. Okay. Yeah. Well, these are very cool.

Sofia Larsson:
Very cool, right? And you probably haven't seen it, so you have no idea what we're talking about.

Charlie Chapman:
No.

Sofia Larsson:
But it's pretty cool, right?

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah. And this calendar sticker app looks very unique too.

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah, I like it. So, it's like a posts like that that can spark a new idea of how to solve something or look at. So, if he's working on calendar things, it doesn't necessarily spark an idea for me within calendars or meal plans in Ambre, but it can be how I look at everyday objects differently. How can you bring it in the UI? And yeah. And I have two more names if you want.

Charlie Chapman:
Sure.

Sofia Larsson:
I don't know the pronunciation, so bear with me. Proskuaa.a.

Charlie Chapman:
Okay.

Sofia Larsson:
Proskuaa.a. So, his handle is P-R-O-S-K-U-A-A-A. He also has cool designs. And then there's Aurelian, and he posts about branding in general. He usually lift up different websites that have cool landing pages. I try to look at project designers, I guess. Yeah.

César Pinto Castillo:
Looking at the signs today and how things are made is getting so much more interesting now that it's so easy to build stuff. I mean, with AI today, we can build so much stuff. The thing that's going to put you apart or your product apart from the competition is the experience you offer. It probably won't be the feature set anymore. So, I think the sign is going to become even more important in the coming years than it has been.

Charlie Chapman:
Absolutely agree. It's so easy to build the same thing. I think also on top of that is how hard it is to design something like that comes into play too, because it's so easy to copy a simple design concept. So, making the overall experience feel right and feel polished and have lots and lots of those little details, that's what's going to go a long way because yeah, what you need is for all of the little. When you use software that's been really well crafted, you feel it constantly in all the little choices that were made.
And if you're giving up all of those little choices to an AI model, they can often make really good. It's not that they can't, but they're all going to feel a little more similar unless you can guide that programmer or whatever you want to call the model.

César Pinto Castillo:
Oh my God, yes. So, we should call out a website that's been designed by Claude today. Yes. Same glow, the edges-

Charlie Chapman:
But there are websites built by Claude that feel good and well crafted as well. It's not that Claude is the problem, it's that you're giving up all of those little choices. And maybe there's a world where that goes away too. I'm not going to act like I can predict how this is going to look in five years, but at least right now, if you sit there and you do that same level of refinement and revision, even if you're not the one writing the characters in and doing the code, I think that's where you can really bring in your design and experience expertise and stand out from the cruft of everything else.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah, exactly. So, I need to mention one thing which I saw the other day, Linux Toolbox, the Linux guy.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah.

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah. So, he mentioned that, and I'm paraphrasing now, but he was mentioning that people are complaining about AI and how you don't know what is being written. And I think he compared that to people writing code, not reading the assembly code.

Charlie Chapman:
Yes. That's how I feel anyway. It's like I don't know what's going on under the hood of core data.

César Pinto Castillo:
Exactly, exactly. And I think he's totally right on that. And I mean, what it means is that we as developers or engineers or designers, what we own is the UX and quality of our app. Our customers are not going to read the code, are not going to worry about what the assembly codes look like. They worry about performance, solving a problem, and hopefully doing in a beautiful way.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, exactly. And harnesses for testing essentially, actually validating that it does the right thing at the end, especially when it comes to data-

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah, exactly.

Charlie Chapman:
... privacy and then validating that the information's correct and all that. But yeah, no, I definitely agree with that.

Sofia Larsson:
I want to add something.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, yeah.

Sofia Larsson:
The way I see it when talking with people about AI, because there's this echo going around like, "Oh, AI is going to take all of our jobs." But I see it as a tool. Procreate is a tool. An iPad is a tool. A pencil is a tool. When you buy watercolor, it's pigment and something that bind the pigment. That's a tool for you to express yourself, right? It's the same with AI. It's just a next level of being able to express yourself. And it just opens doors for so many more people, like designers, for instance, who didn't have the tools, the right toolbox for creating it, but they had it in their head instead.
And now we get to see what they visualized and it has helped us improve and build Ambre immensely this year because I've gotten into AI coding and now I can put in the things that I had in my head and not relying on César having the time to actually understand me, first of all, and then implementing it. But I can talk directly with Claude and see my ideas come to life within minutes, hours, depending on the complexity. So, I'm all for it.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah. The ability to reduce that cycle time to feeling something and then trying to change it or tweak it or refine it for me has been extremely fun. Even if it's a little scary whenever I get deep into that and realize I haven't looked at anything under the hood and who knows what's going on under there, but I'm slowly letting that go more and more as I go.

César Pinto Castillo:
I think that's the way that we need to go. Like you said, I mean we need to make sure we are compliant with laws or whatever, depending on what kind of product you're building. But if you ignore that for a moment, if you make sure QA is awesome, the app looks amazing and it solves a real problem, does the code details really matter?

Charlie Chapman:
Right. Yeah, exactly. Cool. All right. Well, thank you both. It was super fun. It was super fun getting to talk in a little bit more of a relaxed atmosphere than in front of a big crowd shooting T-shirts out of my fake cannon. So, thank you for coming. This was super fun.

César Pinto Castillo:
Thank you for having us.

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having us. A second time, I would say. I'm still counting the live one.

César Pinto Castillo:
Oh yeah, that counts. Has anyone been on twice?

Charlie Chapman:
Jordan Morgan is on every year. We have a Christmas special.

César Pinto Castillo:
God, always Jordan.

Charlie Chapman:
And then Ryan Jones kind of has been on twice because of we did a live show after he had been on for real. It was years later, but I'm trying to think. There might be somebody else who's been on twice, but it's pretty rare. It's pretty rare.

César Pinto Castillo:
Okay. So, if anyone calls in sick, you know who to call.

Charlie Chapman:
Yeah, there you go.

Sofia Larsson:
We can talk textile engineering.

Charlie Chapman:
Oh, no. Yeah, maybe we'll have a separate side episode just on that. All right. So, where can people find both of you and your work?

César Pinto Castillo:
I would say, yeah, the App Store. So, in September with OS27, we're launching a new update for Ambre. We're embracing all the new APIs. We don't need to get into details, but we are using almost all of them, right? I think so. And we're adding some social elements as well.

Charlie Chapman:
Nice.

César Pinto Castillo:
On the App Store for OS27 release.

Charlie Chapman:
And that's A-M-B-R-E Ambre?

César Pinto Castillo:
Yeah, exactly. It's going to be in the show notes.

Charlie Chapman:
Of course, of course.

César Pinto Castillo:
For sure.

Charlie Chapman:
Awesome.

César Pinto Castillo:
I'll send you the list. I'll send you a list. But you can find us on Twitter, right?

Sofia Larsson:
Yeah.

César Pinto Castillo:
What's your handle?

Sofia Larsson:
Fosia Design.

César Pinto Castillo:
And mine is Jag César.

Charlie Chapman:
All right, perfect. And then thank you all for listening. Launched is part of the Revenue Cap podcast family now. So, if you want to learn more about the growth side of the mobile app business, you should check out the Sub Club podcast hosted by my good friend and colleague, David Barnard. You can check out revenuecap.com to learn more about the easiest way to grow and monetize your mobile app business. And of course you can find more Launched at launchedfm.com. And yeah, that's it. So, I'll see you all in two weeks. Bye.