53: AI Profile Pic - Rony Fadel
Transcript
Autogenerated by MacWhisper
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Welcome to Launched. I'm Charlie Chapman, and today I'm excited to bring you the developer
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behind the AI profile pick app, Ronnie Fidel.
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Ronnie, welcome to the show.
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Hi, Charlie. Thank you for having me.
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Thanks for coming on.
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This is a we actually we talked a month or so ago when we were talking about doing the
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show but scheduling wise a little peek behind the curtain.
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We're like sort of dancing around holidays and vacations and stuff.
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This AI category is that what you call it?
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Like you know the chat GBT as well as all the stable diffusion stuff.
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Do you just call that AI?
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Is there a name for this?
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I guess you'd want to call it maybe generative AI.
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Generative.
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AI is like, it feels like an older and more broad category than these things.
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Mm-hmm. Yeah.
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But like this space is moving so ridiculously fast that I didn't want to record early like
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I often do for this show. So, we're kind of, this is the first one after break.
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So, I'm excited to have you on.
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Yeah, it's been wild, right? The behind the curtains thing is that we talked about this
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a month ago and it's still going fast. It's still changing on a weekly basis.
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I feel like everyone's just keeps on catching up to whatever the new thing is.
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Yeah, it's been wild. And I think it will continue on being wild for the foreseeable future.
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Before we get into that, and I have like a million questions in this area,
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I want everyone to get a little bit of a background on who you are. So
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the questions I asked to start this off is, where are you from? Do you have a formal education
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related to what you do? And then what was your career like that led up to this sort of generative
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AI space that you've been playing in? I'm from Lebanon. I'm Lebanese, born and raised.
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And then I went to France for higher education, right for uni. So I studied software engineering
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there. And right out of school, I joined Apple, first on Mac OS, and then on iOS. So I worked
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at Apple for about six years as part of the application frameworks team.
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So I worked on Spotlight, sharing iCloud, iCloud Sync and iCloud Drive,
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so which became the Files app. So that's kind of my career path at Apple.
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And at some point, I was like, it would be great to, you know, explore the world
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and kind of switch it up career-wise. I knew that I wanted to leave the corporate space
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for a little while just to kind of experiment with my own things, develop my own products,
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really own a product from A to Z, be it development, design, marketing, and just
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learn as much as possible. That's what I had done. I left Paris in 2019, so that was three,
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three and a half years ago and set out to just kind of YOLO, like, you know, figure it out,
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right? And I started developing smaller apps. So there's Mission Control Plus, an app that helps
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you just take control of all of the windows that show up in Mission Control, being able to... so
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it's kind of an OS tweak. And the Batteries app, which tracks all of your device's batteries. And
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And these were kind of hits, even though they were kind of very small, targeted, very specific
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apps.
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Yeah.
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And on the Mac too, right?
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Were those in the Mac App Store or they like separately deployed or distributed?
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They both use private API.
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Ah, okay.
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The choice is made for you then.
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Choice was made for me.
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So I can't sell them on the App Store.
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So yeah, I sell them off of my own website.
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How did you, how did those end up being hits?
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They weren't through, you know, the Mac App Store.
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What was your sort of marketing?
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Even before talking about marketing, I, why did I want to create these apps?
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Right.
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It kind of started off that way.
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It's like it had been these two problems solved by Mission Control Plus and batteries had been
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nagging me for four years.
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And so, so they were on my list.
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It's like, I would love Mac OS to do this someday.
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And it became a nagging issue in the sense that like on almost, you know, this is annoying.
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I needed them.
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I needed them both of them.
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And so that's how I, you know, thought of creating them.
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That's how I developed them.
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And it just turned out that there were so many people that had these same two nagging
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issues.
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So I imagine I kind of lucked out on it in the sense that there were so many other people
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that had that same nagging issue.
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And that kind of helped marketing.
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It helped it quite a bit.
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I only launched on Product Hunt, I think, and I didn't have that many Twitter
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followers or Twitter audience, but it just seemed like these issues were
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nagging enough so that people, it clicked to people.
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Nice.
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Well, that's cool.
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And those are still, those are still in the store too, or not in the store, but
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those are still available on your website, right?
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They're still available.
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They're, they're still up to date.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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So you have, you have some Mac utility apps.
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How did we get from that to not a Mac utility app, an iOS app built around this generative
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AI art sort of space?
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What's the path there?
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After batteries came out, I was sort of in exploratory mode and wanting to play around
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with different technologies, things that I hadn't touched before, doing some web dev,
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Electron, right, just to kind of try something new and trying to make some kind of product
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or business out of it.
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And that didn't really pan out.
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Quite interestingly, if you're ideating and trying to launch a new product, do stick to
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what you know.
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Do not try to learn a new technology at the same time.
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Like that will slow you down.
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And then the pandemic hit.
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And at that point I started contracting for Snap, Snapchat, for a while and that kind
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of dove me back into the iOS world.
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So kind of steered away from Mac OS, went back into iOS.
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And I did that for about one year full time.
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So stopped focusing on the indie side of things.
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After that one year I had decided, okay, like I'm going to dive back into the indie world,
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But this time it's going to be kind of the more straightforward, streamlined way of
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developing, meaning back into the App Store, focusing on developing something for iOS.
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Because the market is there.
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The Mac App Store market felt a bit smaller, and it just made more sense to develop something
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for iOS.
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And so I set out to develop a kind of a small portfolio of apps, of editing apps.
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So a interactive audio editor where, so PodBuddy is this app that transforms your audio content,
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let's say a podcast clip or a music clip, into kind of an Instagram story-like UI that
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you can share on a video that you can share on social media.
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And after that, I developed VidCap, which is a captioning app for videos.
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I had set out to develop these because I had always been interested in designing and making
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editing UI or editing tools. So anything that you can add media to sort of canvas.
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For some reason, I had always been interested as a kind of experiment to just develop something
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like that. So I set out to make these two apps, put them on the iOS App Store. And
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I started also, you know, I got in contact with iOS marketing on the App Store.
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I got in contact with marketing on the App Store in the sense that, you know, ASO, knowing how to
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monetize any an app on the App Store and kind of just becoming more in sync with how to develop an
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an app store business.
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Like you were digging, you were digging into those and becoming interested in
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like growing that skill. Is that what you're saying?
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Exactly. So it's kind of a how to create products that delight me and others,
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but also how to create a business out of it.
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Yeah.
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And so I became more tied in with the with the app store business in general,
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right? It is its own ecosystem. And I thought that there was opportunity there.
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And so I just got into that. At that point, I started contracting for Mighty,
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which was a web browser that is based in the cloud,
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that is streamed onto your machine.
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So all the rendering, all the heavy lifting is done on the cloud for you.
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And then what you receive is just a video stream of that rendered content.
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I did a lot of prototyping and kind of ideating for what the browser of the future
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could look like at Mighty.
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And at some point, there was kind of a,
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you know, we had finished all of the prototyping tasks, we still had a few, but this generative AI
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thing started becoming, you know, more, let's say, present, right? We started seeing more of it on
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Twitter and tech circles, etc. And just playing around with these tools at the time, the CEO was
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like, it will be interesting to explore something in this space, because this tech is, it's something
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else. We haven't seen anything like that in such a long time, like this could be something big.
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And so from prototyping web browsers, we started prototyping, testing out these
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generative AI art APIs, call them, right? We started playing around with stable
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diffusion and thinking how can we make interesting tools based on that. And that
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became Playground AI, which you can visit at playgroundai.com. It is a bit of a
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generative AI tool slash social network where you can see other people's
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creations, can remix other people's generated AI work, etc.
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That's right. Okay, I have seen this before.
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And at that point I had felt like I had swallowed the red pill.
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I was bitten by the AI bug. I was all in on this. I was like,
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this is going to change everything.
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And at that point, I had finished or stopped my contract with Mighty.
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Just to kind of explore how I can solve problems using AI.
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It's kind of like everything became a nail
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and AI was the hammer that I was wielding.
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It kind of did.
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But I did feel like, oh my God, this is so transformative.
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This will change so many things that I better jump on the bandwagon.
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There is a hype around this, like, obviously, I won't hide this fact.
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But I was, yeah, so
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deep into this, I was like, OK, let's let's start making products around this.
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We've been living through a decade, I guess, of Web3 and crypto
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kind of being the.
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The red pill, like this is
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everything's a nail because I'm holding this hammer and everybody was searching
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for how do I use this tech that's cool on something and everybody's just
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trying to come up with products and the AI thing or generative AI thing feels
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like it started with obvious products, but then you can imagine a thousand
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more, like it just seems like there's a much more obvious fertile ground for
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actual products that people would want in this space.
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And I def I share a similar feeling as you, where I can just imagine like a
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thousand possibilities.
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Like if the tech gets a little bit better, imagine this and imagine that.
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I feel the interesting thing about the current state of generative AI is that
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what we got with DALI APIs, such as DALI stable diffusion, is like going from
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from nothing to something so fast.
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Yeah.
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It just felt like a shock.
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We immediately got good enough.
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Uh, instead of, and maybe that's why the whole world is still reacting to this.
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Like we got from zero to good enough so fast to compare it with.
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Web3 I kind of agree is like, I was never bitten by that bug.
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I, it just always felt like maybe it's my lack of imagination, but I could not
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conceive of an interesting application to make out of all of these web3 technologies.
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Yeah.
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somebody who doesn't live in the world of finance or investment vehicles or whatever,
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yeah, it wasn't like I looked at that and thought, "Oh my gosh, the possibilities."
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And so admittedly, I'm in the category of people that it's easy to dunk on.
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I know I'm in the space where I don't know it well enough to really make fun of it as much
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as maybe I do. But I do live in being bad at writing copy and being okay at illustrating
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things. And so these generative AI, you know, ideas that have come out so far,
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it's like, yes, I imagine this tool built into Photoshop and yes, I can
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immediately see where I would utilize this.
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And, you know, people are already doing that all over the place.
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A hundred percent. It's just so amazing that these tools, just one tool, right?
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Taking just stable diffusion, for example, it's like there's this one tool that
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you can prompt that has so many applications, whereas back in the day, you had to form a
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team to solve each of the problems that this thing could solve.
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For example, I don't know, remove a background or outpaint an image, like add, you know,
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around the borders, add more content, etc.
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Adobe had, you know, teams working around the clock just for each of these features.
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And then we, you know, one API lands that can do all of these and do them quite well.
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a good way of phrasing it. Because every Adobe Max has been somebody in basically a white lab
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coat coming up and showing off the latest content background removal that you can run in After
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Effects. And look, it can work on video. But it's like they're opening up a script and running a
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thing and you're just like, "Wow, in 10 years or 5 years, this is going to be amazing."
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And everything with stable diffusion in DALI, it feels like, "Wow, next week, we can now do XYZ."
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Like the pace of improvement has been ridiculous, which is I think part of what adds to that feeling
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of excitement. I feel like every time excitement, worldwide excitement starts waning, some new
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advancement in AI just lands and it just renews, gives everyone that dopamine rush.
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And it keeps on going.
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Yeah, that's a good comparison.
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Before we get into the product that you then built through this excitement,
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I think we should address some of the controversy around it in terms of
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legally, everything about this is still murky.
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And I don't mean that in a "is this shady or not?"
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I think everybody's pretty upfront with exactly what's going on.
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on. It's just that the laws in every country are still catching up because of how fast
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this is going and like what your take on that is. I know we've talked about this a little
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bit, but hey, that was a couple of weeks ago and like we talked about then everything will
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probably change by the time we record. So I don't want to like not address that though.
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Oh, for sure. The funny thing is like a month ago we had briefly discussed this and what
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I had said last month is like my view on this. And again, I am not a lawyer, so maybe I'd
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like to more talk about the ethics of things more than more than the legality.
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Right. Yes. Agreed.
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Yeah, it was back then it was still evolving on a weekly basis just to kind
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of also get as many data points as possible from smart people around the
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world. And it's still ongoing now.
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My viewpoint is really is still evolving.
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But one thing that I'm kind of still fixated on, to be honest, is
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How does a human being get inspiration?
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How does a human being learn how to create art?
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It is never created in a vac or in a bubble.
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It's always born out of inspiration from other artists.
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Obviously, and again,
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if we're just taking the human being example,
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like a human artist, if it looks copied,
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if it seems, if it's obvious that it's plagiarized,
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then that is considered unethical.
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But there's just no way that you can create art without having seen art.
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There's no way you can just, you know, create amazing masterpieces without
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seeing, without learning how art works from other great artists.
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Right.
00:17:38.760 --> 00:17:41.620
I still haven't fully formalized that because what, how do you
00:17:41.620 --> 00:17:43.040
translate that to a machine?
00:17:43.040 --> 00:17:49.640
Like how do you teach a machine to just be inspired by art, teach it what art is.
00:17:49.780 --> 00:17:54.220
and actually tell it, this is great art and this is not,
00:17:54.220 --> 00:17:57.500
and then expect it to produce some kind of art.
00:17:57.500 --> 00:17:59.860
My viewpoint has not fully matured on that.
00:17:59.860 --> 00:18:02.300
It's not black and white.
00:18:02.300 --> 00:18:04.780
If it were easy, then it would be more obvious
00:18:04.780 --> 00:18:07.580
in the sense that we do want,
00:18:07.580 --> 00:18:09.180
like technology is moving forward,
00:18:09.180 --> 00:18:10.900
we do want machines to be able
00:18:10.900 --> 00:18:13.180
to create illustrations and art,
00:18:13.180 --> 00:18:15.020
but we don't want machines
00:18:15.020 --> 00:18:18.980
to basically steal art from artists.
00:18:18.980 --> 00:18:20.580
And what is the healthy middle?
00:18:20.580 --> 00:18:22.480
I'm still not sure.
00:18:22.480 --> 00:18:23.540
This is evolving.
00:18:23.540 --> 00:18:28.040
This, this whole thing did not exist at least to me six months ago.
00:18:28.040 --> 00:18:31.540
Uh, so yeah, it's, it's, it's not an easy one.
00:18:31.540 --> 00:18:38.300
There's sort of explicitly not a fine line between like plagiarism and
00:18:38.300 --> 00:18:40.760
stealing something and inspiration.
00:18:40.760 --> 00:18:46.700
It is like very fuzzy and everybody's going to have a different impression
00:18:46.700 --> 00:18:48.060
of that, of where that line is.
00:18:48.060 --> 00:18:53.980
yeah, how do you define that at a machine level is difficult. The comparison I keep running to
00:18:53.980 --> 00:19:02.860
is it feels like we're in the same beginning era as the Napster days with MP3s.
00:19:02.860 --> 00:19:07.420
Another example of one that went the other way is the VHS days. When VHS first came out,
00:19:07.420 --> 00:19:11.580
it was like, "Yeah, people should be able to record whatever's on their TV." And it's like,
00:19:11.580 --> 00:19:17.260
You can imagine during that time, that seeming obviously wrong. Like, "Well, you don't own
00:19:17.260 --> 00:19:22.700
that. The corporation owns that." And now nobody gives a second thought to like,
00:19:22.700 --> 00:19:26.380
"Yes, of course, you should be able to record things with a VHS."
00:19:26.380 --> 00:19:29.900
Well, I guess maybe now that's a bad example because with Hulu and all those,
00:19:29.900 --> 00:19:34.540
it kind of reversed on us. But you get the idea. We kind of went a certain direction and the whole
00:19:34.540 --> 00:19:40.940
world and industry adapted to that. And then Napster with MP3s was the same thing. It was like,
00:19:40.940 --> 00:19:46.620
nobody knew this is illegal because it wasn't illegal. It was being figured out.
00:19:46.620 --> 00:19:51.900
And it sort of feels like we're in that phase again, where we have a tool that is obviously
00:19:51.900 --> 00:19:59.900
has an extremely high utility. And how do we manage that? And it's going to have to be figured
00:19:59.900 --> 00:20:06.460
out. At least that's where I'm landing with it. It could be interesting to give back to artists
00:20:07.660 --> 00:20:17.900
whose works have made it basically into the model, right? So, I'm guessing there's a few artists
00:20:17.900 --> 00:20:24.700
definitely gonna botch the name but I think it's Greg Rutkowski. That name has been seen in like
00:20:24.700 --> 00:20:33.740
every stable diffusion prompt available basically because he is an artist on ArtStation and his
00:20:33.740 --> 00:20:43.340
style is somehow, I don't know, sexy for stable diffusion, it just works. And so, "Buy Greg
00:20:43.340 --> 00:20:50.300
Rutkowski" just appears in so many prompts. And it would almost be unfair to have Greg Rutkowski
00:20:50.300 --> 00:20:55.180
producing art for the world being reused by every application based on stable diffusion
00:20:55.180 --> 00:21:01.980
and not having the artist, I'm guessing, maybe paid back, but at least getting some sort form
00:21:01.980 --> 00:21:06.220
of attribution, right? That's the minimum. And there are some platforms that already give
00:21:06.220 --> 00:21:12.300
attribution. If the prompt has the artist's name, they get attribution, they get a link back. I'm
00:21:12.300 --> 00:21:17.180
not saying this is enough, but this is a start. I don't know enough about it, but that's where
00:21:17.180 --> 00:21:22.860
it starts feeling weird is when it's like, it is explicitly from this one person that you're
00:21:22.860 --> 00:21:30.460
generating something, right? And I know, I don't want to go too far into this because I'm pretty
00:21:30.460 --> 00:21:35.900
ignorant of it, but like stable, was it stable diffusion to the added the, the feature where
00:21:35.900 --> 00:21:40.780
you can basically opt out of being included in the model, or is that the next model that
00:21:40.780 --> 00:21:47.500
they're going to build? I believe it was art station that added an option to be up to opt
00:21:47.500 --> 00:21:54.860
out of being included and stable diffusion. Oh, like it's specific, uh, databases basically.
00:21:54.860 --> 00:21:59.660
And artists are also angry at, uh, at this option because I think it's opt out. So I
00:21:59.660 --> 00:22:03.420
I think it's opt in by default and you have to opt out manually.
00:22:03.420 --> 00:22:09.920
It's also about understanding what solution kind of serves everyone equally,
00:22:09.920 --> 00:22:15.820
what feels fair. Is it a Spotify like model where if you actually use artwork
00:22:15.820 --> 00:22:21.420
from a specific artist, they get paid back somehow, they get some form of royalty?
00:22:21.420 --> 00:22:25.940
Interestingly, that would change the whole economics out of it.
00:22:25.940 --> 00:22:32.380
Because currently you might as well treat it as stolen art and it's all baked into this
00:22:32.380 --> 00:22:40.780
brain that is the stable diffusion V1.5 model and you can hash and rehash this art as much
00:22:40.780 --> 00:22:44.940
as you want and just make it your own, right?
00:22:44.940 --> 00:22:47.540
Into your own creations out of a prompt.
00:22:47.540 --> 00:22:52.140
It could feel unfair for sure, but currently it's almost for free, right?
00:22:52.140 --> 00:22:55.640
I mean, it's just a GPU cost.
00:22:55.640 --> 00:23:05.520
What would it become if you start having to pay a small fraction of royalty to every artist
00:23:05.520 --> 00:23:07.140
whenever you generate the prompt?
00:23:07.140 --> 00:23:10.280
And how do you distribute that fairly?
00:23:10.280 --> 00:23:12.560
Could be an interesting problem to solve.
00:23:12.560 --> 00:23:16.380
It's really, I don't know, the whole space, both on the product side, like we were sort
00:23:16.380 --> 00:23:21.960
of fawning over a second ago, and then from a sort of ethics legal side, I find it all
00:23:21.960 --> 00:23:24.120
really fascinating as an outside observer.
00:23:24.120 --> 00:23:31.040
I think we're in that phase where both technologically and I guess legally, everything's getting
00:23:31.040 --> 00:23:34.800
hashed out that feels like it's going to drive the next 10 years of what this space looks
00:23:34.800 --> 00:23:37.600
like, which is really fascinating too.
00:23:37.600 --> 00:23:41.980
I'll pull us off of this train because there's probably people way deeper in this than either
00:23:41.980 --> 00:23:50.220
of us having more maybe accurate conversations about this on other podcasts.
00:23:50.220 --> 00:23:54.460
This episode of Launched is sponsored by, well, maybe you.
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00:25:09.800 --> 00:25:12.520
Now back to the show.
00:25:12.520 --> 00:25:16.160
Let's pull back out to the app you ended up building.
00:25:16.160 --> 00:25:20.640
So you're playing with this as part of the contract, that job that you're doing, the
00:25:20.640 --> 00:25:23.080
generative art, you know, sort of world.
00:25:23.080 --> 00:25:26.480
What led to the AI profile pick app?
00:25:26.480 --> 00:25:27.760
Was that like the first idea you had?
00:25:27.760 --> 00:25:31.400
Or were you trying to figure out, you know, what's a product that you can build around
00:25:31.400 --> 00:25:32.400
this?
00:25:32.400 --> 00:25:37.920
I was indeed trying to figure out what kind of product I could create in the space.
00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:47.600
And around that time, I was watching a YouTube channel that just tracks advances in AI.
00:25:47.600 --> 00:25:53.120
And it's this guy, Medved Pro, that just plays around with all of the new technologies coming
00:25:53.120 --> 00:25:54.120
out.
00:25:54.120 --> 00:25:58.800
If I remember correctly, he was using this tool called Astria back then, which is an
00:25:58.800 --> 00:26:04.640
API that is based on Dreambooth and stable diffusion.
00:26:04.640 --> 00:26:09.520
So what Dreambooth is, is you could consider it as a layer on top of Stable Diffusion,
00:26:09.520 --> 00:26:15.000
where you can fine tune the model based on some kind of input images.
00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:20.960
For my own understanding here, so Stable Diffusion is a giant model with, you know, millions
00:26:20.960 --> 00:26:28.020
of images and whatever magic sauce that they're doing to take text that you input, and it
00:26:28.020 --> 00:26:33.760
turns that into an image based on this massive library of images that it understands.
00:26:33.760 --> 00:26:40.840
And then Dreambooth, you're saying, is a layer on top of that that will let you combine your
00:26:40.840 --> 00:26:43.920
own images into that model, essentially?
00:26:43.920 --> 00:26:44.920
Yes.
00:26:44.920 --> 00:26:54.200
So Dreambooth initially was a paper written at Google that basically takes diffusion-based
00:26:54.200 --> 00:26:59.840
models and fine-tunes them into being able to add a new subject.
00:26:59.840 --> 00:27:06.600
So stable diffusion currently does understand, if you will, what a chair means.
00:27:06.600 --> 00:27:13.100
So if you write in, type in a prompt with the word chair in it, it will pop out an image
00:27:13.100 --> 00:27:15.400
containing a chair, right?
00:27:15.400 --> 00:27:19.920
But it doesn't know who Charlie Chapman is.
00:27:19.920 --> 00:27:21.400
You're still not famous enough, Charlie.
00:27:21.400 --> 00:27:26.040
So it doesn't know who Brad Pitt is.
00:27:26.040 --> 00:27:30.440
As you know, BreadPit exists on the web and it's quite popular.
00:27:30.440 --> 00:27:32.700
It doesn't know who Charlie Chapman is yet.
00:27:32.700 --> 00:27:40.940
So what you can do using Dreambooth is fine-tune the model into teaching it a new subject.
00:27:40.940 --> 00:27:47.020
So you add in an identifier that Stable Diffusion doesn't know.
00:27:47.020 --> 00:27:52.300
So you can't use something like dog, cat, or chair, but some sort of random identifier.
00:27:52.300 --> 00:27:54.480
And then you teach it.
00:27:54.480 --> 00:27:57.660
These are the instances of this identifier.
00:27:57.660 --> 00:28:01.880
So it's pictures of you, let's say pictures of your face.
00:28:01.880 --> 00:28:10.280
So once you put in, let's say about 10 or 20 images of you with this instance name,
00:28:10.280 --> 00:28:16.340
that's enough for stable diffusion, the fine-tuned version of stable diffusion to learn what
00:28:16.340 --> 00:28:18.560
or who Charlie Chapman is.
00:28:18.560 --> 00:28:24.020
And so then I could say something like Charlie Chapman in a chair and it's combining, it's
00:28:24.020 --> 00:28:27.500
understanding of chair and understanding now new understanding of Charlie
00:28:27.500 --> 00:28:29.580
Chapman into a single image.
00:28:29.580 --> 00:28:30.220
Yes.
00:28:30.220 --> 00:28:34.860
So that's generally what that's what dream booth is.
00:28:34.860 --> 00:28:38.180
You said dream booth was just a white paper that somebody wrote or Google,
00:28:38.180 --> 00:28:41.340
somebody at Google wrote, and then it was productized, I guess.
00:28:41.340 --> 00:28:43.720
So dream booth has this paper written at Google.
00:28:43.720 --> 00:28:44.220
Yes.
00:28:44.220 --> 00:28:49.580
Um, and it's based on two parts, the fine tuning part and a diffusion based
00:28:49.580 --> 00:28:53.300
model that Google owns, uh, that is not public called image.
00:28:53.300 --> 00:29:05.300
So someone figured out how to re-implement Dreambooth, but not use Imogen as a way to generate images, but use Stable Diffusion.
00:29:05.300 --> 00:29:08.300
So that was released as open source.
00:29:08.300 --> 00:29:15.300
We haven't specified here, Stable Diffusion is one of these models, but importantly, it's open source, right?
00:29:15.300 --> 00:29:21.300
So anybody can download it, run it on their machines or on a virtual machine or whatever, right?
00:29:21.300 --> 00:29:29.540
right? Exactly. So the model itself can be used. The training data is not
00:29:29.540 --> 00:29:34.220
available and obviously, well maybe not obviously, but it would cost hundreds of
00:29:34.220 --> 00:29:39.620
thousands of dollars to train your own version of Sable Diffusion, meaning to
00:29:39.620 --> 00:29:44.360
train it from scratch. But the model is out there and the code that calls into
00:29:44.360 --> 00:29:48.140
that model is out there as well. So yes, you can run it on your machine to run
00:29:48.140 --> 00:29:52.440
on inferences, which means image generations based on a prompt.
00:29:52.440 --> 00:29:54.980
So that is out there.
00:29:54.980 --> 00:29:57.440
And the fine-tuning part of Dreambooth,
00:29:57.440 --> 00:30:01.320
off of that paper, was implemented and released as open source.
00:30:01.320 --> 00:30:06.920
And you just plug the two together, Dreambooth and Stable Diffusion,
00:30:06.920 --> 00:30:10.320
and you can start training any object or any person,
00:30:10.320 --> 00:30:16.600
have Stable Diffusion "understand" that concept,
00:30:16.660 --> 00:30:21.460
and then generate any variation of image
00:30:21.460 --> 00:30:23.440
containing that new subject.
00:30:23.440 --> 00:30:26.940
- We have stable diffusion, open source software,
00:30:26.940 --> 00:30:31.500
that, or at least the model itself is open source
00:30:31.500 --> 00:30:33.280
so that you could build software around it
00:30:33.280 --> 00:30:36.300
to generate images from a prompt.
00:30:36.300 --> 00:30:39.460
And now you have, I already forgot the name,
00:30:39.460 --> 00:30:43.460
but not Dream Booth, but an open source implementation
00:30:43.460 --> 00:30:46.580
of the Dream Booth paper that lets you
00:30:46.580 --> 00:30:52.980
basically add your own training to that stable diffusion model.
00:30:52.980 --> 00:30:54.940
And that is also open source.
00:30:54.940 --> 00:31:00.180
So now you have the ability to take, to add your own things to
00:31:00.180 --> 00:31:04.060
stable diffusions, understanding of the world, to make your prompts more specific.
00:31:04.060 --> 00:31:07.180
That's the sort of end result of these elements.
00:31:07.180 --> 00:31:08.460
That is correct.
00:31:08.460 --> 00:31:12.420
So you have these two, um, and even better.
00:31:12.420 --> 00:31:14.940
And that's why the, the, the bar was so low.
00:31:14.980 --> 00:31:17.340
And there was also an API.
00:31:17.340 --> 00:31:19.380
There was also someone, Astrea, who
00:31:19.380 --> 00:31:24.700
had made an API to do all of the ML work, et cetera, for you.
00:31:24.700 --> 00:31:26.180
It was implemented for you.
00:31:26.180 --> 00:31:28.780
And that's how-- and it was basically
00:31:28.780 --> 00:31:33.540
a service that cost $3 or $5, et cetera,
00:31:33.540 --> 00:31:38.620
to where you could just send off your own images,
00:31:38.620 --> 00:31:42.420
and you'd get a fine-tuned model ready-made for you.
00:31:42.420 --> 00:31:46.660
And then you can prompt it with whatever prompts you want, and it would generate
00:31:46.660 --> 00:31:47.740
these avatars for you.
00:31:47.740 --> 00:31:49.500
Okay, cool.
00:31:49.500 --> 00:31:54.340
So the bar, the bar, it was like the level of entry, it was, it was pretty easy.
00:31:54.340 --> 00:32:00.180
And at that point, it kind of started just clicking that there should be an app for
00:32:00.180 --> 00:32:00.540
that.
00:32:00.540 --> 00:32:06.100
Around the same point, like other indie devs had discovered Estrea as well.
00:32:06.100 --> 00:32:11.980
So, uh, Levels.io and Danny Postma started tweeting, you know, some, um, kind of
00:32:12.020 --> 00:32:17.700
thinly veiled tweets about a product that could leverage something like that or create
00:32:17.700 --> 00:32:19.780
your own maybe pictures or avatars.
00:32:19.780 --> 00:32:28.020
And around that point, knowing about Astria, I immediately knew like iOS is the place
00:32:28.020 --> 00:32:30.420
for this. This is where your photos live.
00:32:30.420 --> 00:32:36.620
Yeah. UI can be made very, very simple, very intuitive, and the result could feel
00:32:36.620 --> 00:32:41.540
magical. And at that point, I had decided like the web is not the way to go.
00:32:41.540 --> 00:32:45.500
And these two in the hackers or in the developers
00:32:45.500 --> 00:32:51.420
were primarily web developers and were making these hints
00:32:51.420 --> 00:32:54.340
that they were shipping something on the web.
00:32:54.340 --> 00:32:56.780
And yeah, I mean, I am an iOS dev.
00:32:56.780 --> 00:32:58.540
And I knew from the beginning, like, you'd
00:32:58.540 --> 00:33:01.340
get such a better user experience on iOS.
00:33:01.340 --> 00:33:04.420
And so I went like 100 miles per hour
00:33:04.420 --> 00:33:08.340
trying to implement this ASAP and release it on the App Store.
00:33:08.340 --> 00:33:14.020
Funnily enough, because of a lack of GPU computing scalability,
00:33:14.020 --> 00:33:18.140
Astrea had to move to another backend provider.
00:33:18.140 --> 00:33:20.580
So they were on AWS and they moved elsewhere.
00:33:20.580 --> 00:33:25.180
And overnight they moved from $3 per fine tune to $20.
00:33:25.180 --> 00:33:28.100
Was that while you were building this or after you released?
00:33:28.100 --> 00:33:31.180
It was the day I was releasing it, I think.
00:33:31.180 --> 00:33:32.260
Oh my gosh.
00:33:32.260 --> 00:33:32.780
Yeah.
00:33:32.780 --> 00:33:34.660
Yes.
00:33:34.660 --> 00:33:37.060
And that was a good lesson to learn, right?
00:33:37.060 --> 00:33:42.700
like own your back end, own your info now for obvious reasons.
00:33:42.700 --> 00:33:49.700
Because I knew that, again, this would be a winner on iOS,
00:33:49.700 --> 00:33:53.500
but the pricing had to be very fair, especially that not a lot of people were
00:33:53.500 --> 00:33:58.460
familiar with the technology. So might as well seem like a scam app,
00:33:58.460 --> 00:34:01.100
that is asking for so much money up front.
00:34:01.100 --> 00:34:02.140
Right.
00:34:02.140 --> 00:34:06.380
So five dollars could have been OK, but charging,
00:34:06.620 --> 00:34:09.680
after Apple's tax and how much it costs to run on the back end,
00:34:09.680 --> 00:34:14.620
charging like 25 or $30, that would seem like a big investment.
00:34:14.620 --> 00:34:19.860
And so that would kind of stifle the app's initial popularity or launch.
00:34:19.860 --> 00:34:20.400
Right.
00:34:20.400 --> 00:34:25.460
But I had just decided like I needed to launch and you had to launch ASAP.
00:34:25.460 --> 00:34:29.220
And, uh, and I knew that compute would get cheaper.
00:34:29.220 --> 00:34:30.660
Like that's how it always works.
00:34:30.660 --> 00:34:31.160
Right.
00:34:31.160 --> 00:34:31.580
Right.
00:34:31.580 --> 00:34:34.620
It's going to get cheaper with time, but now's the time to just
00:34:34.620 --> 00:34:36.140
launch and get something out there.
00:34:36.500 --> 00:34:44.260
So it took about 48 or 72 hours of not much sleep to really get everyone running.
00:34:44.260 --> 00:34:48.100
And then, yeah, I just put it out into the world.
00:34:48.100 --> 00:34:49.180
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:34:49.180 --> 00:34:51.380
Like that was how long it took you to build the app?
00:34:51.380 --> 00:34:52.460
To build the app.
00:34:52.460 --> 00:34:53.100
Yes.
00:34:53.100 --> 00:34:55.660
Yeah, it was about 72 hours.
00:34:55.660 --> 00:34:57.460
It was a simple app.
00:34:57.460 --> 00:34:58.580
It was a simple app.
00:34:58.580 --> 00:35:03.420
Just calling into a backend and it was a B1 like bare bones.
00:35:03.420 --> 00:35:03.980
Right.
00:35:03.980 --> 00:35:04.700
Wow.
00:35:04.700 --> 00:35:05.380
Okay.
00:35:05.700 --> 00:35:09.460
So, so you had the idea and when you said you were off to the races, I mean, it's
00:35:09.460 --> 00:35:15.960
like zero to in the, or submitting to Apple in less than a week.
00:35:15.960 --> 00:35:17.560
Yes.
00:35:17.560 --> 00:35:19.180
Um, something I did help.
00:35:19.180 --> 00:35:23.820
Firebase is, is honestly amazing.
00:35:23.820 --> 00:35:26.520
Like that's, that's my take on Firebase.
00:35:26.520 --> 00:35:28.660
Uh, like kudos to them.
00:35:28.660 --> 00:35:29.900
These guys really did the job.
00:35:29.900 --> 00:35:35.020
They really do help you go from, from zero to a hundred quite fast.
00:35:35.580 --> 00:35:40.920
Um, and thanks to my previous apps, I already had my kind of standard library,
00:35:40.920 --> 00:35:41.220
right?
00:35:41.220 --> 00:35:41.380
Yeah.
00:35:41.380 --> 00:35:45.120
Like UI components, all these helper methods, et cetera.
00:35:45.120 --> 00:35:49.140
So that also helped a lot into getting something done.
00:35:49.140 --> 00:35:50.200
Wow.
00:35:50.200 --> 00:35:50.540
Okay.
00:35:50.540 --> 00:35:52.840
So that's pretty crazy.
00:35:52.840 --> 00:35:58.680
And I assume part of you rushing through this is, you know, that other people are
00:35:58.680 --> 00:35:59.660
going to do the same thing.
00:35:59.660 --> 00:36:05.660
And it's it's sort of like a land grab, you know, type situation where you want
00:36:05.660 --> 00:36:08.900
to get that early press, you want to get that early set of reviews.
00:36:08.900 --> 00:36:11.660
So you're sort of the established, you know, version of this.
00:36:11.660 --> 00:36:12.860
Yes.
00:36:12.860 --> 00:36:17.060
Were you, were you one of the first ones then to get out there with this?
00:36:17.060 --> 00:36:18.200
One of the first ones?
00:36:18.200 --> 00:36:18.780
Yes.
00:36:18.780 --> 00:36:24.100
Um, either the first or the second, and it was almost a month ahead of the big
00:36:24.100 --> 00:36:29.740
players such as Lensa, Prequel, so like these heavy hitting
00:36:29.740 --> 00:36:33.740
companies with an existing user base of millions of users that
00:36:33.740 --> 00:36:36.540
they can just simply send a push notification to saying, hey,
00:36:36.540 --> 00:36:39.420
there's this new feature. Regarding your point about
00:36:39.420 --> 00:36:44.660
needing to go very fast and chipping and putting something
00:36:44.660 --> 00:36:49.060
out there, that is also related to this new generation of AI,
00:36:49.380 --> 00:36:52.180
where it's very hard to build a moat.
00:36:52.180 --> 00:36:56.940
So since this technology is open and it's so magical,
00:36:56.940 --> 00:37:01.340
it's so powerful, but accessible at an API call.
00:37:01.340 --> 00:37:06.300
So technology like GPT-3 or Sable Diffusion,
00:37:06.300 --> 00:37:11.660
well, now anyone can build these magical apps in days.
00:37:11.660 --> 00:37:13.140
So there is no moat.
00:37:13.140 --> 00:37:18.180
So the new kind of advantage that you need
00:37:18.260 --> 00:37:26.300
is possibly better marketing or maybe niche down on something, but the bar of
00:37:26.300 --> 00:37:32.120
entry has just become solo that this magical effect is basically one prompt
00:37:32.120 --> 00:37:34.260
away or one API call away.
00:37:34.260 --> 00:37:35.280
Right.
00:37:35.280 --> 00:37:38.580
And so, yeah, anyone can build something like that nowadays.
00:37:38.580 --> 00:37:42.420
You spent a couple of days building this thing.
00:37:42.420 --> 00:37:47.840
Um, although, I mean, we're saying it like it wasn't, it was the small amount
00:37:47.840 --> 00:37:52.400
of work, but you're building off of this amount of time that you had spent
00:37:52.400 --> 00:37:55.400
learning and understanding the whole space, right?
00:37:55.400 --> 00:37:59.960
Like knowing how to use all these models and these APIs, part of that is the
00:37:59.960 --> 00:38:03.160
experience that you had, but either way you spent this time getting it out
00:38:03.160 --> 00:38:03.560
there.
00:38:03.560 --> 00:38:09.160
You had to update your pricing, presumably on the fly day of, but you got
00:38:09.160 --> 00:38:09.600
it out there.
00:38:09.600 --> 00:38:10.400
So how was that?
00:38:10.400 --> 00:38:12.160
How was that launch itself?
00:38:13.120 --> 00:38:19.320
The launch was exciting because even at a price point of, I think it was around $30,
00:38:19.320 --> 00:38:28.920
$28 or $30, you still have these early adopters that just want to try new technology.
00:38:28.920 --> 00:38:35.840
That kind of, you forget about the price point for a minute because they know that it's still raw, it's still fresh.
00:38:35.840 --> 00:38:40.800
But they would want to try any new technology no matter what.
00:38:41.160 --> 00:38:44.800
Right. And and they love giving feedback as well.
00:38:44.800 --> 00:38:46.600
Like I love early adopters.
00:38:46.600 --> 00:38:50.120
They kind of put blind trust into into a product.
00:38:50.120 --> 00:38:54.800
A lot more willing to accept bugginess and stuff because what you're comparing
00:38:54.800 --> 00:38:58.760
to is running through what all the blog posts were doing a week before where
00:38:58.760 --> 00:39:03.360
they're like, all right, you can download all these little, you know, scripts
00:39:03.360 --> 00:39:08.080
that you run locally and then you need to like rent this space on some Google
00:39:08.080 --> 00:39:10.240
server somewhere. And it's like, yes.
00:39:10.440 --> 00:39:15.640
What if instead I just hit a button to send, you know, $30 over to this person on the app store
00:39:15.640 --> 00:39:20.680
and then it just did all that for me? Like, that's the comparison. Exactly. And it's also that
00:39:20.680 --> 00:39:28.360
if they do that on, you know, Google Colab, then they would have to also research into writing
00:39:28.360 --> 00:39:35.880
their own prompts, getting the effect that they desire, etc. So it is quite like time investment.
00:39:35.880 --> 00:39:41.400
I mean, the whole thing on Google could take one hour just to train, fine-tune, etc.
00:39:41.400 --> 00:39:46.680
And then you get into another interface where you have to get some kind of prompting magic going to
00:39:46.680 --> 00:39:52.760
be able to create these avatars. So it is true that all of this was productized for you,
00:39:52.760 --> 00:39:59.800
even though it was at a price of $30, which is quite high, right? So even if you do compare it to
00:40:01.160 --> 00:40:06.440
you know, paying an illustrator for one illustration of you and the back and forth,
00:40:06.440 --> 00:40:13.160
or getting, you know, similar images of decent quality from a photographer, still $30
00:40:13.160 --> 00:40:20.600
with that blind trust could seem like a high price point, right? Yeah.
00:40:20.600 --> 00:40:26.440
So that became a priority very early on. I knew that I had to reduce the price point somehow.
00:40:26.440 --> 00:40:31.440
So that essentially translates into reducing backend costs.
00:40:31.440 --> 00:40:34.440
And that became the priority is rolling out my own backend.
00:40:34.440 --> 00:40:36.840
So that's what happened.
00:40:36.840 --> 00:40:40.840
Eventually fully focused on rolling out the backend
00:40:40.840 --> 00:40:44.640
because all of the players in the space
00:40:44.640 --> 00:40:46.840
were using that same API, were using Astria.
00:40:46.840 --> 00:40:51.040
So Astria was free to choose their price point
00:40:51.040 --> 00:40:54.240
and essentially drive the whole market to,
00:40:54.240 --> 00:40:59.040
You know, they capped it at a minimum of, let's say, $20 or $15.
00:40:59.040 --> 00:41:02.400
So whatever SGS price was, everyone else followed along.
00:41:02.400 --> 00:41:03.680
Yup, exactly.
00:41:03.680 --> 00:41:09.720
And that's, yeah, when I had to put kind of my ML hacker hat, knowing almost nothing
00:41:09.720 --> 00:41:16.320
about machine learning and starting to have to learn how to use and tweak PyTorch and
00:41:16.320 --> 00:41:20.920
Stable Diffusion and Dreambooth and understand all of the bits there.
00:41:22.640 --> 00:41:29.920
And yeah, so since so at that point, I, I deployed my own backend and the cost went from
00:41:29.920 --> 00:41:36.480
think between 15 and $20 on Astria to it was like around $4, I think, at the time.
00:41:36.480 --> 00:41:37.200
Wow.
00:41:37.200 --> 00:41:38.320
Right? Yeah.
00:41:38.320 --> 00:41:38.960
Yeah.
00:41:38.960 --> 00:41:42.640
And that was the new unlock, right? That was the how to get the next
00:41:42.640 --> 00:41:50.000
thousand or 10,000 users is by charging $5 and not $30.
00:41:51.040 --> 00:41:57.360
something that I guess a lot of people know, but people do not like to pay for apps. People do not
00:41:57.360 --> 00:42:04.480
like to pay for... like a small minority of people are okay with paying for things, especially on the
00:42:04.480 --> 00:42:11.440
App Store. And so charging any amount, even one dollar up front, instead of having a freemium
00:42:11.440 --> 00:42:19.680
kind of model, rubs people off the wrong way. And I saw that in the reviews, right? So there were so
00:42:19.680 --> 00:42:25.040
many, unfortunately, but there were so many one-star reviews. I'm like, "Oh, there's no free
00:42:25.040 --> 00:42:31.440
trial." Even though you try to explain that this costs money on the back end and it's just the
00:42:31.440 --> 00:42:37.440
economics of it just don't work out where I can offer a free trial first. Most people aren't
00:42:37.440 --> 00:42:44.880
interacting with software that has that much of a unit cost, right? Like unit economics aren't
00:42:44.880 --> 00:42:51.680
really a thing in our world. So pricing is bonkers and backwards in software because
00:42:51.680 --> 00:42:58.160
per unit cost is like zero almost. But the actual cost to build everything costs money.
00:42:58.160 --> 00:43:02.560
And so you have to do weird things. But you actually had real unit economics to deal with.
00:43:02.560 --> 00:43:10.000
Yes. And there was an FAQ in the app. There was an explainer that just lays the whole thing out,
00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:18.000
explains why it costs up front. And it's because, well, you know, we have a GPU on the back end
00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:23.680
that we have to park for one hour just to fine tune your photos. And even then, the reviews were
00:43:23.680 --> 00:43:28.480
like, I know that there's an explainer, but I am still, I still don't buy the argument.
00:43:28.480 --> 00:43:36.720
It's like, just people don't want to take it. Yeah, that's funny. Man. Yeah. And like,
00:43:37.280 --> 00:43:44.000
And everything about it is unproven, right? There's not any norms built around this in
00:43:44.000 --> 00:43:48.240
terms of people's expectations. Like weather apps, you can get away... Not get away with.
00:43:48.240 --> 00:43:52.400
That's the wrong word. But people are kind of trained to understand like it costs money to
00:43:52.400 --> 00:43:58.400
figure all this out or to pay APIs to figure this out. But generating an image is something that
00:43:58.400 --> 00:44:03.440
you're used to happening on your device itself. So it doesn't feel like that should be costing
00:44:03.440 --> 00:44:07.520
the company money, even though it obviously really is in this case.
00:44:07.520 --> 00:44:10.880
Especially when you don't get a sample.
00:44:10.880 --> 00:44:14.080
I wish the technology worked that way.
00:44:14.080 --> 00:44:20.240
I wish we could sample a few images, but it's a bit of all or nothing.
00:44:20.240 --> 00:44:25.680
We got to fine tune the model first, and that's where most of the cost goes in.
00:44:25.680 --> 00:44:29.040
And then it's not that costly afterwards.
00:44:29.040 --> 00:44:36.040
Right. The actual prompts in each image, the cost is pretty low relative to generating that actual model, right?
00:44:36.040 --> 00:44:42.940
Yes. Interestingly, I had record sales when when Lenza came out.
00:44:42.940 --> 00:44:51.340
Lenza having millions of users and Lenza having millions of sales really did and a huge boom on social media,
00:44:51.340 --> 00:44:56.400
really that teach people about the AI avatar thing, call it.
00:44:56.700 --> 00:45:00.060
So people started understanding that, oh, this thing exists.
00:45:00.060 --> 00:45:01.420
I've seen it on other people.
00:45:01.420 --> 00:45:05.620
So it added a lot of social proof in the sense that, well, all of my friends have one.
00:45:05.620 --> 00:45:08.900
So this thing kind of works and these avatars look cool.
00:45:08.900 --> 00:45:10.980
And so I'm going to try this thing out.
00:45:10.980 --> 00:45:16.620
And I understand because my friends told me as well that this thing costs money upfront.
00:45:16.620 --> 00:45:19.300
They paid first and they got these results.
00:45:19.300 --> 00:45:21.500
Yeah, that's true.
00:45:21.500 --> 00:45:24.660
Then the trust, it started building trust, right?
00:45:24.900 --> 00:45:28.860
Interestingly, competitors, bigger players
00:45:28.860 --> 00:45:32.180
on the market or in the field,
00:45:32.180 --> 00:45:35.420
brought this into the mainstream,
00:45:35.420 --> 00:45:37.360
removed so much friction,
00:45:37.360 --> 00:45:40.980
and resulted in record sales for AI Pro Fat Pick.
00:45:40.980 --> 00:45:45.540
- I feel like also, this is where your naming for the app
00:45:45.540 --> 00:45:48.260
probably helped a significant amount.
00:45:48.260 --> 00:45:49.620
I feel like in our indie circles,
00:45:49.620 --> 00:45:51.440
especially people listening to this,
00:45:51.440 --> 00:45:52.740
or people that I've had on,
00:45:53.780 --> 00:45:58.020
would want the name... Most products you make, you want it to have this sort of
00:45:58.020 --> 00:46:05.620
cute name that you can slap on stickers and it's like a whole... It's a very different thing.
00:46:05.620 --> 00:46:09.540
But in your case, when you're in this rat race where it's like,
00:46:09.540 --> 00:46:15.940
there's 1000 competitors instantly, you have to play the ASO game.
00:46:15.940 --> 00:46:21.860
Having a name like AI Profile Pick, establish yourself so that when one of these giant
00:46:21.860 --> 00:46:27.460
players with all the marketing money and user bases, when they come out with something that
00:46:27.460 --> 00:46:32.260
goes viral, if you don't remember the name, what are you going to search in the App Store?
00:46:32.260 --> 00:46:36.500
You're probably going to put, "Well, it's an AI thing and I want a profile picture." And then
00:46:36.500 --> 00:46:44.340
boom, that's your app, right? Yes. To be honest, though, that is a side effect. Obviously, the ASO
00:46:45.620 --> 00:46:52.500
gains here are good, but it was, to be honest, a lack of imagination on my end, in the sense that
00:46:52.500 --> 00:46:59.380
it's more like, because this was quite rushed for V1, I didn't have the time to really
00:46:59.380 --> 00:47:08.980
give the app that much character, right? So, actually give it a cute name with identity,
00:47:08.980 --> 00:47:15.140
with a nice app icon that really fits
00:47:15.140 --> 00:47:19.820
to what kind of identity you want to give to the app.
00:47:19.820 --> 00:47:21.780
The app had to be generic on day one,
00:47:21.780 --> 00:47:23.660
because what does the app do?
00:47:23.660 --> 00:47:27.100
It creates AI avatars or profile pictures.
00:47:27.100 --> 00:47:29.700
This is AI profile pic.
00:47:29.700 --> 00:47:34.220
The actual app icon is someone who has actually used our app
00:47:34.220 --> 00:47:37.940
and just created a support ticket because they
00:47:37.940 --> 00:47:39.860
needed help.
00:47:39.860 --> 00:47:42.580
And they sent us the avatars they had created.
00:47:42.580 --> 00:47:44.580
And we're like, these actually look pretty good.
00:47:44.580 --> 00:47:45.740
Can we use them?
00:47:45.740 --> 00:47:48.660
I basically bought the rights to use it as an app icon.
00:47:48.660 --> 00:47:50.180
Ha, that's pretty cool.
00:47:50.180 --> 00:47:52.700
In exchange for free credits.
00:47:52.700 --> 00:47:54.140
That's awesome.
00:47:54.140 --> 00:47:56.580
It reminds me of Clubhouse.
00:47:56.580 --> 00:47:57.500
Well, I say remember.
00:47:57.500 --> 00:47:58.740
I guess they're still around.
00:47:58.740 --> 00:48:02.740
But how they would have a different picture every time
00:48:02.740 --> 00:48:03.260
of--
00:48:03.260 --> 00:48:04.340
I guess that was a real user.
00:48:04.340 --> 00:48:06.100
I don't remember what the story was there.
00:48:06.100 --> 00:48:07.380
But that's pretty cool.
00:48:07.380 --> 00:48:11.980
Yeah, exactly. So it kind of showcases what kind of results you could get from the app.
00:48:11.980 --> 00:48:15.480
But at the same time, well, V1 had my face on it,
00:48:15.480 --> 00:48:18.680
and I couldn't wait until, you know, removing my face from it.
00:48:18.680 --> 00:48:20.680
So that's kind of how it worked out.
00:48:20.680 --> 00:48:24.180
That makes sense. Yeah, I would not like that myself.
00:48:24.180 --> 00:48:25.180
[laughs]
00:48:25.180 --> 00:48:25.680
Nope.
00:48:25.680 --> 00:48:31.280
So we already talked about Lenza coming in, and in your case,
00:48:31.280 --> 00:48:37.280
they did a lot of the legwork, essentially, of helping build this as like a
00:48:37.280 --> 00:48:44.320
legitimate, trustworthy thing, I guess. So in your case, that was mostly helpful. What about
00:48:44.320 --> 00:48:53.120
like, because I have looked in the App Store recently, even since we talked like a month ago,
00:48:53.120 --> 00:48:58.880
and it seems like there are just 1000 of these apps. Now, how has that been? Like, have you
00:48:58.880 --> 00:49:03.280
have you felt the sort of land rush of a bunch of other people coming in? And how have you
00:49:03.280 --> 00:49:08.320
differentiated. I guess having a back end is probably a piece of that. I feel like the top
00:49:08.320 --> 00:49:16.800
five apps are getting 90 plus percent of the market and then it's just a long tail of these
00:49:16.800 --> 00:49:25.680
smaller apps making peanuts and getting almost no users etc. And are you in the top five apps?
00:49:26.480 --> 00:49:27.600
I'm not even sure.
00:49:27.600 --> 00:49:30.080
Like, the app is doing quite well,
00:49:30.080 --> 00:49:33.920
but it's far from making the millions.
00:49:33.920 --> 00:49:36.360
So the trend went down as well.
00:49:36.360 --> 00:49:38.080
Linza was making about--
00:49:38.080 --> 00:49:39.720
I imagine, like I saw that on Twitter,
00:49:39.720 --> 00:49:43.120
but they were making about $1 million a day
00:49:43.120 --> 00:49:46.200
for about 20 days straight, right?
00:49:46.200 --> 00:49:51.560
AI Profile Big did not make $1 million a day any day.
00:49:51.560 --> 00:49:55.800
So it is a smaller app, but it's making decent income.
00:49:55.800 --> 00:49:57.960
But yeah, the big players came in.
00:49:57.960 --> 00:50:04.720
It was such like this Dreamboost and stable diffusion technology was such a good way to
00:50:04.720 --> 00:50:08.000
revamp apps that have existed on the App Store.
00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:12.800
They're like face tuning apps or removing backgrounds or blemishes.
00:50:12.800 --> 00:50:15.240
Which is a whole category on its own.
00:50:15.240 --> 00:50:20.680
Yes. And it was such a good way for them to revamp their product and add these magical
00:50:20.680 --> 00:50:23.040
new features, right? These magic avatars.
00:50:23.240 --> 00:50:30.680
And then it is true that the App Store now is crowded with this kind of app, with avatar apps.
00:50:30.680 --> 00:50:36.520
That's why it was quite important to be there very early on, because having had a one-month
00:50:36.520 --> 00:50:44.440
head start has also meant that the app has had, AI Profile Pick has had a lot of App Store inertia.
00:50:44.440 --> 00:50:49.720
So it's got a lot of reviews, ratings, downloads,
00:50:49.720 --> 00:50:53.560
so it just boosts the app on the App Store.
00:50:53.560 --> 00:50:58.680
And right now, the name of the game is ASO,
00:50:58.680 --> 00:51:00.360
and adding interesting features.
00:51:00.360 --> 00:51:03.160
So I'm working on a few new features.
00:51:03.160 --> 00:51:05.240
There's a few in the pipeline.
00:51:05.240 --> 00:51:07.560
Once your model has been fine-tuned,
00:51:07.560 --> 00:51:11.400
since it doesn't cost that much to do extra generations,
00:51:11.400 --> 00:51:13.160
it's to do interesting things with that,
00:51:13.160 --> 00:51:14.720
be it being able to do.
00:51:14.720 --> 00:51:19.960
So with this app store in inertia, it's also about how to keep the ball
00:51:19.960 --> 00:51:23.240
rolling because there's still an influx of users.
00:51:23.240 --> 00:51:27.120
There's still an influx of shares of generations on the app.
00:51:27.120 --> 00:51:34.240
And the idea is to how how to keep the ball rolling for for the long
00:51:34.240 --> 00:51:35.240
while to come.
00:51:35.240 --> 00:51:42.720
One of the things we talked about a while ago was like how fast the whole
00:51:42.720 --> 00:51:48.640
space is moving. And I think when we were talking last month, you were like, some new paper came out
00:51:48.640 --> 00:51:53.760
this morning that I'm trying to figure out somebody's in the process of trying to implement
00:51:53.760 --> 00:52:02.480
that paper now. Does that pace of change in that space? Is that coming into play with this area?
00:52:02.480 --> 00:52:07.280
Or is it kind of like those are kind of moved in a different direction than what would affect
00:52:07.280 --> 00:52:16.960
like your app and business now? I feel like stable diffusion v1.4 or 1.5 was really the mother load.
00:52:16.960 --> 00:52:25.280
That was kind of the big thing that shook up the industry and just gave so much
00:52:25.280 --> 00:52:33.680
to product makers. I do feel that it's slowed down a bit since then. So interestingly,
00:52:33.680 --> 00:52:39.840
it comes in waves. It doesn't feel like it comes on a daily or weekly basis. This kind of unlock
00:52:39.840 --> 00:52:49.760
that this technology or AI in general creates, it does come in waves. I don't think that the wave
00:52:49.760 --> 00:52:56.320
has been as... The few waves of recent times have been as big as the stable diffusion release,
00:52:56.320 --> 00:53:03.280
but I do think that there will be other medium-sized or bigger waves to come.
00:53:03.280 --> 00:53:09.440
Do you feel like you have to kind of be on top of that so that when one of those comes through
00:53:09.440 --> 00:53:14.240
that could have an impact, you know, you're one of the people that's jumping on that quickly?
00:53:14.240 --> 00:53:20.880
Thinking forward, it definitely is stressful to be on the lookout for something and then
00:53:20.880 --> 00:53:26.960
to ride that wave. So I don't think I would want to ride every wave.
00:53:26.960 --> 00:53:30.160
Well, right. Because most of them, you know, once things get going,
00:53:30.160 --> 00:53:36.160
most of them probably won't produce, you know, actual results for your business specifically.
00:53:36.160 --> 00:53:39.360
So that would start getting really overwhelming.
00:53:39.360 --> 00:53:46.240
Yes. So there's the aspect. And there's also the aspect of lessons learned from shipping AI
00:53:46.240 --> 00:53:53.440
profile pic. It's understanding the value of a mode, the value of not wanting to go
00:53:54.000 --> 00:54:02.320
head-to-head with the big players with no mode that can outspend you when it comes to ad spend,
00:54:02.320 --> 00:54:08.560
for example, or have a bigger marketing team or have these big influencer collabs, right?
00:54:08.560 --> 00:54:09.120
Mm-hmm.
00:54:09.120 --> 00:54:09.280
Yeah.
00:54:09.280 --> 00:54:15.280
So going head-to-hand with Lenza is impossible. It just dictates a lot when it comes to doing
00:54:15.280 --> 00:54:18.640
business, which is quite an interesting challenge as well. So it's still fun.
00:54:18.640 --> 00:54:22.960
Do you feel like you were going head-to-head with the big players? It sounded like when
00:54:22.960 --> 00:54:27.360
when you're describing it earlier that them entering the market was helpful
00:54:27.360 --> 00:54:30.320
for you? Or was it, do you think that was helpful for you in the short term,
00:54:30.320 --> 00:54:33.360
but then long-term that becomes more of a challenge?
00:54:33.360 --> 00:54:38.840
It never felt like I was going head to head with Lenza or the other players
00:54:38.840 --> 00:54:42.720
because I just do not have the user base.
00:54:42.720 --> 00:54:45.200
They have user bases with millions of users,
00:54:45.200 --> 00:54:50.280
meaning they can shoot up to the top of the store within a
00:54:50.280 --> 00:54:51.640
sending a push notification.
00:54:51.640 --> 00:54:57.360
Like this is the actual value that they can propose that I do not have.
00:54:57.360 --> 00:55:03.520
So I was just glad that the interesting thing is like Lenza as a player, so big
00:55:03.520 --> 00:55:07.800
that they created a small way for me to surf on, so they're a whale.
00:55:07.800 --> 00:55:12.520
Lenza's tail just hit the water and it created this ripple for
00:55:12.520 --> 00:55:14.000
everyone to, to write off of.
00:55:14.000 --> 00:55:16.520
Well, it's, I mean, it's kind of like what, how a lot of people
00:55:16.520 --> 00:55:22.080
describe getting Sherlocked by a platform owner like Apple or Google or
00:55:22.080 --> 00:55:27.240
whatever, where it's like, when they enter that space that you have had an
00:55:27.240 --> 00:55:32.440
app for a while and they implement it as a native feature in the platform, it
00:55:32.440 --> 00:55:36.680
can sometimes be beneficial for you because it like highlights this as a
00:55:36.680 --> 00:55:40.160
thing that people might want and legitimizes a business.
00:55:40.160 --> 00:55:43.160
And then more people end up seeking you out because you're the more, you know,
00:55:43.160 --> 00:55:44.680
advanced version or whatever in that case.
00:55:45.560 --> 00:55:47.560
It works quite well when
00:55:47.560 --> 00:55:52.840
Lenza, for example, launched the Magic Avatars feature,
00:55:52.840 --> 00:55:54.720
but it was paid, right?
00:55:54.720 --> 00:55:59.240
And we were almost offering it at the same price or even cheaper.
00:55:59.240 --> 00:56:03.280
So it kind of made sense, like a lot of people wanted to try both, right?
00:56:03.280 --> 00:56:05.560
Because the avatars are not the same, right?
00:56:05.560 --> 00:56:10.760
We produce more photorealistic avatars,
00:56:10.760 --> 00:56:13.240
and we just have a different value proposition.
00:56:14.560 --> 00:56:20.480
Contrasting that with getting Sherlocked is I would imagine it to hurt when Apple
00:56:20.480 --> 00:56:26.680
Sherlock's a feature and offers it for free and installed by default on the OS.
00:56:26.680 --> 00:56:27.720
Yeah, that's true.
00:56:27.720 --> 00:56:28.200
Right.
00:56:28.200 --> 00:56:32.120
It's like I already have this feature and it doesn't cost anything.
00:56:32.120 --> 00:56:38.000
So, so now the value proposition of the existing product has to be so much higher
00:56:38.000 --> 00:56:42.840
for people to download it, install it, launch it and, and pay for it.
00:56:43.640 --> 00:56:48.840
The last kind of big thing I wanted to hit on was, and you sort of mentioned this, but like,
00:56:48.840 --> 00:56:58.360
clearly this was a big wave situation. That wasn't going to last forever in terms of the
00:56:58.360 --> 00:57:03.160
height of how popular it was. But hopefully it has a long tail. How has that played out?
00:57:03.160 --> 00:57:07.880
And did you realize it was like a big wave and you didn't know what it would end or when it
00:57:07.880 --> 00:57:11.640
would end while it was happening? How did that kind of go through in your mind?
00:57:13.480 --> 00:57:18.840
The whole thing so far, and even from the beginning, even though in monetary terms,
00:57:18.840 --> 00:57:26.200
it could be a cash grab or land grab, it was also just an experiment, right? It was
00:57:26.200 --> 00:57:31.480
even in part just to have fun. It's like, this seems pretty cool, like the technology is pretty
00:57:31.480 --> 00:57:36.600
magical, so let's just launch something in the space and learn as much as possible, right?
00:57:36.600 --> 00:57:41.560
So there was always that aspect involved. One other aspect of it is
00:57:41.560 --> 00:57:46.560
is learning how to launch viral products.
00:57:46.560 --> 00:57:50.680
And this is where it leaves me.
00:57:50.680 --> 00:57:52.700
It leaves me into thinking
00:57:52.700 --> 00:57:55.820
what my next product would be, right?
00:57:55.820 --> 00:57:59.240
And it's always quite fun and interesting
00:57:59.240 --> 00:58:02.560
to learn about marketing on one end,
00:58:02.560 --> 00:58:05.600
but also how social networks are born
00:58:05.600 --> 00:58:07.560
or how virality works.
00:58:07.560 --> 00:58:08.400
- Yeah.
00:58:08.400 --> 00:58:11.120
- So I just consider it as kind of a V1
00:58:11.120 --> 00:58:15.200
or experiment number one in a series of experiments
00:58:15.200 --> 00:58:16.920
in launching viral products.
00:58:16.920 --> 00:58:20.000
- Right, not necessarily a V1 just of this product itself,
00:58:20.000 --> 00:58:25.000
but in terms of your sort of career of launching products
00:58:25.000 --> 00:58:27.360
sort of in this area.
00:58:27.360 --> 00:58:28.840
- Yes, exactly.
00:58:28.840 --> 00:58:33.560
And that is also very much related to
00:58:33.560 --> 00:58:35.040
how to create products where
00:58:35.040 --> 00:58:38.960
users do the marketing for you, right?
00:58:38.960 --> 00:58:42.680
So product-led growth or product-led marketing,
00:58:42.680 --> 00:58:47.080
instead of having to force product onto users
00:58:47.080 --> 00:58:49.640
by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars
00:58:49.640 --> 00:58:56.840
in ad spend, and once you turn that spend off,
00:58:56.840 --> 00:58:58.880
the product dies off, right?
00:58:58.880 --> 00:59:02.120
So as an indie developer, it's always
00:59:02.120 --> 00:59:05.600
interesting to seek out these kind of alternative ways
00:59:05.600 --> 00:59:11.640
of marketing products, just to see if you can create something that can sustain itself
00:59:11.640 --> 00:59:16.400
without having to push it onto users.
00:59:16.400 --> 00:59:26.000
So I treat it as experiment number one in this overarching, in this arch of potential
00:59:26.000 --> 00:59:27.440
products in the future.
00:59:27.440 --> 00:59:33.240
I'm excited to see, you know, where this app itself goes, but also, yeah, what you have
00:59:33.240 --> 00:59:41.320
in store for the future. With the AI advances, just the landscape is so bright. It's just
00:59:41.320 --> 00:59:48.800
such an exciting time to be alive, to be honest. I wonder if we're getting close to some kind
00:59:48.800 --> 00:59:54.200
of inflection point. A lot of people are, and a lot of smart people are talking about
00:59:54.200 --> 01:00:02.440
AGI and that it could happen within our lifespan. Actual artificial intelligence, but the singularity
01:00:02.440 --> 01:00:03.720
basically. Is that what you're talking about?
01:00:03.720 --> 01:00:04.720
The singularity.
01:00:04.720 --> 01:00:05.720
Yes. So.
01:00:05.720 --> 01:00:06.720
OK. Yes.
01:00:06.720 --> 01:00:09.480
So general intelligence, right?
01:00:09.480 --> 01:00:10.720
Yeah. OK. That's the word.
01:00:10.720 --> 01:00:15.320
To have a kind of a sentient machine that is
01:00:15.320 --> 01:00:17.640
as intelligent or more intelligent than humans.
01:00:17.640 --> 01:00:20.760
And a lot of smart people are betting on it.
01:00:20.760 --> 01:00:24.720
So that is it's just interesting.
01:00:24.720 --> 01:00:28.880
Right. And on the way to get there, if we do ever get
01:00:28.880 --> 01:00:31.840
there. But it doesn't matter because on the way, there's just
01:00:31.840 --> 01:00:34.640
so many interesting advances happening. And the pace is so
01:00:34.640 --> 01:00:37.720
fast that as a technologist, it's just so exciting.
01:00:37.720 --> 01:00:42.880
Yeah, there's it's constantly spawning new opportunities, new
01:00:42.880 --> 01:00:47.960
ideas for, you know, interesting products, right? It's like the
01:00:47.960 --> 01:00:51.640
space race. We're not an interplanetary species, like we
01:00:51.640 --> 01:00:54.840
thought we would be in a decade in like the 70s. But we sure
01:00:54.840 --> 01:00:58.200
got a lot of cool stuff out of, you know, lots of big money
01:00:58.200 --> 01:01:02.040
spenders coming up with new technology at a rapid pace?
01:01:02.040 --> 01:01:03.720
Yes.
01:01:03.720 --> 01:01:09.840
Well, that's, that's a good note to sort of leave off on. So I'll,
01:01:09.840 --> 01:01:12.840
I'll ask you the question that I always try to wrap the show up with,
01:01:12.840 --> 01:01:17.760
which is what's like a person or people out there that have inspired you that
01:01:17.760 --> 01:01:19.360
you'd recommend other people check out.
01:01:19.360 --> 01:01:24.560
Someone that appeared on your podcast previously is Christian Salig,
01:01:24.560 --> 01:01:25.520
the maker of Apollo.
01:01:25.520 --> 01:01:27.000
Yes.
01:01:27.040 --> 01:01:32.040
I just love his spirit, his wholesomeness, uh, and the product he creates.
01:01:32.040 --> 01:01:35.780
So overall, yeah, he's definitely an inspiration on my indie journey.
01:01:35.780 --> 01:01:38.280
Cannot agree more on that.
01:01:38.280 --> 01:01:43.160
Uh, got a chance to hang out with him in person, uh, over the summer at WWDC.
01:01:43.160 --> 01:01:44.680
And he is.
01:01:44.680 --> 01:01:50.220
As he is online in exceptionally kind human being, and also makes something
01:01:50.220 --> 01:01:53.800
that's a massive source of inspiration just as a dev and designer.
01:01:53.800 --> 01:01:56.040
So, uh, yeah, hard agree on that one.
01:01:56.040 --> 01:01:56.960
Awesome.
01:01:56.960 --> 01:02:02.760
Cool. Well, I guess we can go ahead and wrap this up. So where can people find you and
01:02:02.760 --> 01:02:03.760
your work?
01:02:03.760 --> 01:02:13.620
People can find me mostly on Twitter. So it's twitter.com/ronyfadel. And they can find my
01:02:13.620 --> 01:02:15.980
apps on fadel.io.
01:02:15.980 --> 01:02:21.860
Thank you so much for coming on this first episode of the 2023. Yeah, this is a fun one.
01:02:21.860 --> 01:02:24.100
Charlie, this was a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
01:02:24.100 --> 01:02:25.540
Yeah, no, the pleasure's all mine.
01:02:25.540 --> 01:02:32.340
Thanks for listening. This episode was edited by Jonathan Ruiz. If you'd like to discuss
01:02:32.340 --> 01:02:36.880
the show, you can find me on Twitter at underscore Chuckie C, or you can reach the show directly
01:02:36.880 --> 01:02:43.100
at Launched FM. You can also find me at Mastodon.social as Charlie M Chapman or the show at Launched,
01:02:43.100 --> 01:02:47.060
and you can find show notes and more at LaunchedFM.com.
01:02:47.060 --> 01:02:49.640
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