The Secret Sauce: How Hungryroot's Founder Built a $1B Company with AI Side Projects

0:00So Ben McKean is the driving force behind the healthy grocery delivery service which is Hungry root gave you a little brief on the intro and he is no stranger to you know the power of the power of AI in business. So at its heart, Every is kind of a unique iOS application that taps into AI's potential to craft, quote unquote, thought provoking games. This is kind of funny, but essentially it's but it's a cool concept and it's essentially geared towards self exploration. One game is called Inner Odyssey. And essentially it's a it's immersed as a user in a kind of visual narrative, prompting them to select an image or a place they want to discover.

0:50So it's like of these two, like I saw like a picture and it was like one of them looked like some street in Rome and some was like another place. And it's like, of these two pictures, which of these places would you want to like discover more? And so as a user kind of navigates through these choices, this or that, um, and like subsequent queries, they essentially get insights into how often like, or how other people have answered the same questions. And it gives them light on, you know, shared perspectives and experiences that other people have, which is kind of interesting, right? Like they ask you, would you rather this or that to a whole bunch of things that are like, oh, well, 20 % of people are like, think the same way as you and this percent don't.

1:24And here's a bunch of people that like relate to you or are like similar. So I think the inspiration behind every kind of stems from this realization during the pandemic and like isolation that came from it of, quote, the feeling of disconnect was palatable even among close acquaintances. A staggering 58 percent of Americans sense that nobody truly understands them, end quote. So that was their CEO, of course, McKean. He's kind of pointing this out, referencing this kind of alarming societal detachment statistic. but I think you know every is not just about individual introspection McKean kind of envisions potential applications within the corporate sphere facilitating connections among like colleagues of course it's going to be a little bit more toned down when it comes to like the personal inquiries and stuff I think in what might come as a surprise to a lot of people every's intricate games are kind of the offspring of advanced AI of course this is courtesy of things like opening AI and mid journey that are kind of baked into this.

2:23So these AI driven narratives are sparked by specific themes or individuals. What's cool is that this isn't just like a auto generated quiz, right? This isn't just like a complex quiz app, which is like, do you want this picture, that picture, this like answer, that answer, like, as you go throughout it, everything's customized to you personally, and it's AI that's generating it, meaning it's really completely unique. And so what you're discovering on this app is going to be different than other people, which is kind of a cool aspect. Sometimes when I see these kind of apps, though, I like ask myself, could this just be a complex this or that quiz like does it have to be generative ai to do this and i know that there's some like cool aspects to it but i don't know i asked myself that question because obviously it costs more money to have generative ai generating this every single time and so it's like you just have to ask yourself like is it necessary to do this um but in any case i i uh you know i digress i think one of the collaborations is with hector guadalupe um that's the founder of a second you foundation and they're utilizing Guadalupe's input um so the AI crafts games centered around skills crucial for reigniting uh reintegration post incarceration right so after people come out of prison um some of the skills they need and this game is slated for an October 25th release so it's kind of like a game if you get out of prison to help you find your way in life it's kind of an interesting concept right I think while the AI is predominantly autonomous it generated content um that's you know completely created by ai but human intervention remains a bit of a cornerstone they said so given the ai's training duration of about six months um mid journey then completes these ai generative narratives with a bunch of visuals um and i think in keeping with its kind of moniker every has an ambitious goal of launching a new game daily which i mean if it's all generated by ai that's i don't think that's too like out of out of the ordinary with each weekday symbolizing distinct themes so while mondays might go into like career aspirations sunday could give more philosophical kind of things after each gameplay users receive curated inspirational content tailored to the responses they have a maps feature which kind of further extends the personalization journey charting out users traits derived from in-game scores which is kind of an interesting concept again beyond individual enlightenment every's kind of broader mission is fostering genuine connections so through shared gameplay experiences users can kind of like discover shared interests or values and you know the idea is that this is going to create deeper conversations and relationships the every app is the kind of the collaborative brainchild of ben mckern right the ceo but also sarah mckern and maya valiath what's interesting is all of the development for this was actually executed by external agency and it has been in beta since March.

5:12So Every has now made its official debut on the App Store. It's available for free in, I think it doesn't have any in-app purchases. It's completely free. While it's currently operating as a nonprofit side project, McKean hasn't ruled out the prospects of expanding Every, potentially, you know, looking for investors and, you know, seeing what interest this thing has in the future. So I think what's the most interesting part of this whole story to me really is the fact that here we have the founder of an incredibly successful company, right? This thing's, it's doing like over$200 million in revenue every year.

5:46It's close to a billion dollar valuation. And he's still, when AI comes around, gets so excited that he's like, dude, coming up with AI side projects that are completely unrelated to his company that his investors in his current company don't have any equity in. It's kind of funny because I definitely see this with a lot of founders. you know they'll be working on something and then they get this shiny object syndrome they see this new kind of this new tool or idea and they kind of go and focus on that so to be honest for me this is a big part of the current startup i'm working on ai box um was i was definitely having some sort of ai shiny object syndrome i was seeing i was thinking of all these different use cases all these different tools for ai um and it got to the point for myself where i was like there's no way i can build this 20, 30, 40 different AI tools that I'm, you know, I'm thinking of right now.

6:33I'm like, I really just need to build a platform where you can create all of these different tools on the platform. And I realized, you know, there's no way I could create all of the AI use cases that existed. This needs to be a platform where I allow you guys, other people to create these AI tools. And so that's kind of where I got started building out AI box and what I've been working on for the last year. So it's kind of funny because it's definitely relatable just when you get these ideas that are you know in your head of these really cool use cases you might be like deep within another company but you really want to get them out and so for me that's what AI box is all about there's so many of you that I know work at big AI startups or big software companies or other places or just your own companies small businesses all sorts of places you have these great AI ideas they might not even be like exactly what your current business is so really building a space for you and also myself right I'm building this as you know I am the user a place to build AI tools while you might be pursuing your other endeavors is kind of really interesting and we're obviously seeing this from a big huge company like hungry root seeing this exact same thing play out so hungry root very interesting i'll be curious to see how every plays out what kind of traction they receive but definitely an interesting story and a lot of relatable aspects