AI is turning sketches into real-world products

23:26Ellis:But you also think, well, the words give the AI so much to work with in terms of structure that made LLMs work. How does that actually work with the AIs and like your doodle? Is it a similar mechanism? or it's it's very similar it's very similar um but it's like it's a combination of the two so there's like this idea uh i'm gonna kind of trust and fight it so it's like there's noise and then there's like a text description and then it kind of like basically is trying to like distill that noise and your input as like a way to kind of like generate something that's net new to some degree but guided by the text you can almost think of it's like guardrails like you're introducing more guardrails like text is like you know you've probably heard of like context like a million times like in the last month but that's and that's one way of setting context i think a sketch or an image just like another way of giving context to the model to like reason through it's like similar to us right it's like if we have the right context like i don't know there's something also about like memes i love memes and the reason i think they're so genius as well and i think there almost needs to be like an economic class around like um memeology or something like this but like did you

24:36Alex Heath:see the nicholas cage the nicholas cage interview where he explains memes this thing we call memes meme uh memification i coined the word memification what is a meme really i mean what is that because the memes were not unlike the dreams anyway sorry definitely he had an early like 2010s like meme run like i don't know if you guys remember those old formats where it's like the baby with the fist and like the old like we've evolved so far since then but i think well it's a visual language right Exactly. Exactly. Like if I send you Arthur's angry hand, that communicates almost just as much as if I were to like give you a huge paragraph of like how I felt about a situation.

25:17Ellis:As we also used to say in all of our Snapchat decks, a snap is worth a thousand words. Yes. And then the advertisers go, ooh, ooh. Yeah, no, Snapchat was so ahead of its time. Like I haven't used Snapchat in a long time, but yes, definitely super unique in its own right.

25:35Alex Heath:Therein lies the problem with the stock price, Jordan, which you just said. Sorry, I was good. Yeah.

25:41Ellis:So I didn't realize until we just been chatting, but I've actually been Vizcomming with my daughter. I recently finally got an iPad for our Access Live show a couple of weeks ago and I got an Apple Pencil Pro so I can expense it to myself. And we've been doodling in the Apple Notes app. And of course, my five-year-old discovered that there's actually an image gen built into the notes app now. And if you draw like a little plant and you do this rainbow like pen in Apple notes, circle the plant that you drew, let's say it's a flower, and then you write flower into the text and it generates you a flower.

26:21Ellis:And that's kind of it, isn't it? With that said, I do not really have much faith that Apple is actually using the doodle almost at all yeah i love apple notes i always default back to apple notes in a lot of ways like i was like a heavy notion reader and like i just went back to apple notes i don't know like i love apple notes but that that's essentially it like the the experience you're kind of creating you're describing there that's one aspect she absolutely loves it yeah i mean have you had

26:51Alex Heath:yeah apple notes is also beautiful for just how dumb it is and how simple it stays despite how much software is it proudly still can't search oh my gosh dude the new photo we're going a little bit off top the new photo gallery is terrible like is it just me like i don't know how you guys feel about this but like i think i've used it it's it's i can't i hate it i don't like i'm like where did this photo just go that i saved or took like i don't know i don't know maybe i'm just i'm entering what the kids call unk status now so that's probably so so jordan we've been talking about the inspiration for viscom a little bit about how it works and i i get that i'm curious though how is it being used what is being made with this can you point us to concrete oh i'm setting up here quote-unquote concrete examples of things that uh that viscom has made yes wait okay can you guys give me like two i'm gonna go i can graph it really it's like right outside the door yeah go ahead yeah go get it this is something okay i really want to show this off This is really cool.

27:56He's got a pretty good bookshelf game there.

28:00Alex Heath:He could fill in the middle, but... Okay, so before I show you the objects, so the flow, I guess, or kind of the space we focus on. So going from paper to production, right? That's kind of the area of focus. This is what industrial designers do, footwear, automotive. All these people, they sketch, they render, create 3D models, and then they either 3D print, mill, create prototypes, and then mechanical engineering makes it real. So where does this add the most, where can you unlock the most value here? So footwear companies, let's say someone like a New Balance, right, or a Nike, they're using our tools to help visualize and physically understand maybe how their early concepts might look like much earlier in the process.

28:44So you can think of it's like these guys up until this point, they never had like a debugger. Like a programmer can like write something and be like, oh yeah that doesn't work that doesn't work there so the ability to fail faster here is kind of a new concept which is crazy um so so in the shoe world right we worked with these guys called so zellerfeld right i don't know if you guys they make the this is a shoe this is a 3d printed shoe which is a crazy design of these like it's this idea of like two hands coming together to kind of alien meets a yeezy yeah dude exactly um so these are super neat and this is like so zellerfeld's out in Austin, Texas.

29:20They have these custom 3D printers for shoes and it's actually really soft and like, you know, you can actually like bend these and stuff. It's almost like a crock material. And then these ones are super cool too. So these are called the Caterpills. These are like these Caterpillar 3D printed shoes. So these started out as a drawing in this com and then actually became something you can hold. And this is like, you know, like the whole like make it real story, right? It's like not only producing things that stay on the screen, but like stuff you can actually physically hold. So that's kind of totally be seen

29:49Alex Heath:wearing those around Los Feliz on a weekend. So I actually got

29:55Ellis:the Celeb Embry Crocs and my wife said that they looked like human flesh and they were also kind of like a pinkish color and so I had to return them and I was up I was up clicky clicky clicky waiting for the drop trying to secure the shoes. I mean, they did look ridiculous. This is very unsettling to hold, by the way. Like it's quite literally hands on feet situation here. Yeah. Yeah, it's really cool. It's like Alien on a Yeezy.

30:31Alex Heath:So did someone just sketch that shoe, put it in Viscom, and then AI made the 3D model that was then printed? Is that what happened? So they sketched it. They used some models to visualize it first, and then they kind of iterate it. So we've created a lot of very novel interfaces to kind of help you explore forms, color materials, height, width, things of that nature. And then we're able to then take that and then generate a 3D model from this. This is like a mesh that gets exported into like an STL file. And then that gets put to the actual printer. There's some processes in between, like something called a slicer that kind of helps you set it up for the printer, et cetera.

31:08But yeah, a lot of these are straight up generated 3D models that then got prepped for manufacturing and just printed.

31:15Alex Heath:And for people who don't understand the complexity of this, like me, how long would that process have taken pre-VizCon? Like would someone have to literally draw every part of the shoe? Like what has changed in the process? The rate at which you can fail. So before, one even understanding and knowing this is what you would have wanted to do would have just taken much longer. so before you're spending photoshop like time in photoshop quite literally coloring and kind of visualizing like a flat 2d line drawing um and then you're going into like a rhino a blender moto like these 3d like maya for example to then try to understand that first of all then you got to first okay first i'm going to sketch this from multiple views because you don't have multiple views at all you just have a side view maybe so now you gotta okay i gotta draw that out and then you got to build that manually and first interpret it first in 3D because there might be some loss in translation here.

32:13So that's like another thing, right? The designer's intention and clarity of his thoughts now are able to stay way more intact versus like before all of this. So you see the same thing happening in software, right? Now the designers can kind of like push PRs. You're like, oh, there's no more of this like pixel correction back and forth situation. The same thing is happening in the physical world. Like the designer is now able to kind of really carry his like torch, I would say, much further in the process of going to production versus before it was kind of like a multi handoff process of like everything I just mentioned before required maybe seven different professions.

32:48Now it's like these are all starting to converge into like one thing similar to this, like this PM versus engineer versus designer conversation you see happening in software. It's like that same thing is starting to happen in like physical product creation.

33:02Alex Heath:And there's an argument to be made that, yes, that's kind of taking jobs away. You described a bunch of jobs that are getting kind of pulled into one. But at the same time, I think what you're building shows how AI can help humans be more human, do things more efficiently. it's an interesting counter narrative to a lot of the doom and gloom out there about AI just wholesale replacing people. And maybe you didn't have a strong POV on this when you started, because you started like pre all this, you know, narrative that we were talking about earlier. But I'd be curious to hear how you're hearing, I'd be curious to hear the reception you're getting from people in the design world to this.

33:41Alex Heath:And I know there's a lot of fear about AI in every creative field. And I'm sure there is in this design, in the design world that you're in as well. yeah i i i i hesitated to say the words like taking away like i almost feel like it's evolving jobs right like like a videographer existed 50 years ago but they look very if you showed him a videographer today you're like wait is that even my what do you mean that's my job that's that's that looks very different from what i'm doing today um so i i think just the the makeup of a lot of these jobs are just going to change fundamentally right like this exact situation here would have been a news broadcaster 20 or 50 years ago.

34:18Now it's like, no doubt, we're now podcasting. It's like the same thing, just maybe a slightly different title. Now we have four deployed engineers, but I think that was maybe like consulting back in the day, possibly. So I really do think it's an evolution. And so to kind of go back to your question. So I think from the beginning, we were always in this camp of authorship. Like how do we instill authorship? and you kind of lose this sense of authorship when you lean too much on these models doing things for you and you kind of feel this with Claude and like LLMs a little bit where you're like yes it can do these long-running agentic tasks but I'm like ah like I feel like I needed to like intro like I don't know like I feel like I lost my sense of authorship slightly and I don't know if that's like innately human I'm still trying to figure this out I don't have the answer but I don't know if it's us trying to seek like a sense of purpose still or if authorship is something that's just something that we truly just need as people but that's something we've stuck to from the the very beginning i did not know at the start though that the kind of public zeitgeist would evolve into what it is today and have such a negative i saw some like google exec dude giving like a college talk thing and like he's like guys like graduating use ai and they're all just like tomato tomato this is eric schmidt some google exec guy eric schmidt yeah eric schmidt And I was like, dude, I was like, oh, man, this is bad.

35:42Like, he doesn't know. He doesn't know. Yeah.

35:46Ellis:Well, so what do you think changes in modern shoe design as a result of tools like this? Am I going to be downloading models and 3D printing my own shoes in a few years? Or do things get more experimental? Do more people become designers who may not have been? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the last two where, you know, I don't think everyone will, you know, we had a moment we all had laser jet printers in our house. I don't think I have one still because I like printing stuff and collages, but I feel like that's not as crazy as it once was. But so I don't think that will happen. But I do think it's going to push the envelope of what is actually possible.

36:22It's like these kind of ideas I'll just show you guys. It's like, it's like, whoa, like, okay, like this is almost a reflection of the tool just as much as it is the person themselves. Like the reason cars in like the 70s and 80s looked so boxy wasn't because no one couldn't think of curved cars. It was more so a constraint driven by the tools. But the moment Alias came out that allowed for curvature in 3D to be a lot more accessible, then we started getting these more like jelly bean, like early 2000s, PT Cruiser, kind of like looking cars and stuff. And we didn't just all of a sudden get more creative.

36:56It was like, oh, the tools enabled that. So I think with generative AI, it's like, man, we're going to see some really funky products potentially. Like the next IKEA catalog in like 2030 is going to look very fascinating, I believe.

37:07Ellis:Alex, did you know that the car I drove around in college was a silver PT Cruiser with flames on the side? Is that on brand or is that an aberration?

37:16Alex Heath:That's incredible. You said flames on the side?

37:19Ellis:Yeah, they were flame magnet decals that my grandma got me. I just tore around Ann Arbor, Michigan, slipping and sliding all over the ice in my front-wheel drive PT Cruiser.

37:33Alex Heath:The Hamburglar.

37:35Ellis:I love it. Yeah. So Jordan, tell us the story of the team member who built a concrete keyboard from scratch. The concrete keyboard, man. I wish I could go grab that. It's upstairs. But yeah, so Emil Lucas and our team. So it was kind of a collab between me and him. I have like a little doodle. And he's like, quick Vizcom render. I was like, yo, like, we have this concrete keyboard. That would be so funny. And he's like, wait, like, wait, I think we can actually do that. Like, I actually have cement that I can pour and like try to do this. And I was like, oh, wow. Okay, cool. So he took it all the way.

38:05He generated a 3D mold for it. And then we sliced it in half, poured some cement in there, and then built like a functioning keyboard. It was kind of wild to see. And like, that's an example of there where it's like, I would have never thought of or even wanted to put the effort into visualizing that initial cement keyboard to want to then be like, okay, let's make this real now. Like, so getting to that conviction much quicker. But yeah, that was a wild situation. and then holding it in your hands is like, it's really satisfying to use. I actually use it like pretty much every day at my desk.

38:37It's like, it's really chunky, but it's cool.

38:41Ellis:And people say mechanical keyboard bros are annoying. This is a whole new level. But I mean, this is beautiful though. I mean, it's just like, you know, having a kid, I mean, it's one thing if your kid is gonna vibe code an app, but it's another if they're gonna like draw something and then make it somehow, whether it's with a 3D printer or otherwise. I mean, I know some dads who play with 3D printer stuff all the time. And that seems like a net good for humanity in a very obvious way. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And yeah, I mean, how does it feel to be working in the hardware world versus so much of tech that's making like digital stuff, you know?

39:18Yeah. It's interesting. We're definitely at the intersection. Like a lot of the stuff we do is still very software as far as what we're providing. But to then see it manifested physically is like really cool. Like, I just think in general, like things that are super high fidelity and digital and stay digital on our screens, the signal of effort is no longer there. Like, it's like, you see things super cool on the internet now. You're like, okay, like, that's cool. Like, it doesn't have that same, like, like 10 years ago, you see like a really nice rendering. You're like, whoa, like, first of all, how did he do that?

39:52That person knows their shit.

39:53Ellis:Yeah. Yeah. Spent nights on this. Exactly. So I think the next signal is like, okay, well then how real did he make that thing? That's like, okay, like the physical becomes the new signal of effort in my opinion. So just kind of really leaning in in that and like being a part of it is super cool. And seeing like even these like shoes, right? It's like, okay, well, like this is like, there's something here. We're still in the early innings of this in my opinion, but it's cool to be a part of the early signs of it being real.

40:25Alex Heath:Yeah, I'm curious where you see this going when you, you know, you've raised a decent amount of money and the business is growing. You said you've got hundreds of thousands of designers on the platform. Are you coming for all of these, you know, legacy creative tools, the Adobe stuff, maybe even something like Figma? Like, where do you see this ending up with what you're building with XCOM? yeah i think it's it's really focusing on that that paper to production pipeline so understanding to the best of our abilities how physical products are made in the real world and then just keep going down that value chain now i always jokingly say internally like hey guys if there's like build-a-bear for bears like we can be the like build-in-anything store like i want to be able to like go somewhere and just build like almost like what's that thing from star trek the that like fabricator thing yeah yeah yeah exactly like Captain Picard says Earl Grey hot yes exactly like if we can do like I forgot this is someone will comment it but like like if we can do that like that experience of like can I really hold my ideas like now what does that look like as far as form factor do we get into the world of hardware like do we have to start inventing net new ways to like build things because of what's happening upstream I don't know.

41:44But I do see us being the ones to unlock the kind of like instantaneous, like, you know, I upload a drawing and next thing you know, it's in the mail by the end of the day or something like that. Right. Like, like some kind of like physical thing.

41:57Alex Heath:Do you think that process gets to a point where someone like me who doesn't really understand this workflow at all, especially how it used to be, could create a physical product in the same way that I can now code with Cloud Cowork or Codex without knowing that I'm coding? Totally. Do you think that eventually I'll be able to make something physical with this? Yes, totally. Absolutely. And I try to stay away from the word easy and more so inaccessible because easy to me almost degrades the craft. It makes something seem like it's less valuable. It'll be easier, yes, to do these things. Now, will you be able to make something as good as a designer from Muji or T-Engineering?

42:44maybe not but like you will be at least able to play the game that they're playing to some capacity which is kind of what these like llms have done for like a widespread of folks who i do pretend

42:56Ellis:i am as good as uh fukusawa and the muji products he's made but i cannot yet prove it because i can't make stuff yet yes and that's where the whole like taste conversation comes up and which I'm like, and I've still kind of like trying to understand like what that means sometimes, but like, yeah, that's definitely like your judgment and that kind of stuff comes in, which is, which is really hard. We're just really hard. I am a believer in that. I mean, you know, I am a writer by trade, but as you saw, when we were together, Jordan, it's like, I, I have, I have the heart of a product designer. And I think of words as part of the product design of like helping people experience the entirety of a product you know and a lot of times those words can in turn uh inspire the product in mind and people have all sorts of experimental ideas in their mind and i feel like historically it's just been gatekept by whoever could could make that stuff like like words are your like brush or medium to do something of sorts like i think you're starting to see this a little bit more where physical outputs of sorts are becoming like the medium of like whether it's marketing like you'll see someone kind of like do like i saw someone do a cassette tape release for an album which is fascinating i was like oh wow that's interesting or um what's the one space movie that came out recently you could scan a qr code download a 3d file as part of the promo and then uh project hail mary probably yeah yeah project hail mary they have like a little like yeah yeah i heard that movie i haven't seen it yet i heard it's great um but there's a lot of good movies coming out recently.

44:36But anyway, it's like, yeah, stuff like that, as far as like using physical things as like another form of expression, I think it's going to become a lot more accessible. Yeah.

44:45Ellis:So I think one of the things that informs your taste in judgment, we don't talk to very many founders from Detroit, where I'm also from. How do you feel like your background has informed how you build differently? Oh, man. And you are in the Valley. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Midwest, man. Oh gosh. I like, I didn't realize garage bands was like a Midwest thing. Like someone told me that. Oh yeah. Tweet or something. Someone's like, Oh, they're trying to cost. We don't have, we don't even have garages here. Exactly. We don't even have garages. Same with basements and stuff. Right. Um, but I think like being from Michigan one, you get all seasons, but the most prominent one is winter.

45:25And when it's winter time, like you do not really want to like go anywhere. Like, I don't know. Like even the idea of going to warm up your car is like this, like, oh my gosh. So you inherently just spend a lot of time indoors. So that just naturally caused me to like play on computers, like woodshop stuff with my dad in the garage. Like, so I think just being in that environment kind of ushered those kind of things. And then also, I don't know, there's something about the Midwest where the like career thing, being your personality, kind of like forced not that not being a thing. almost like forces you to like just try a bunch of stuff like i was into like magic the gathering i was like i tried playing guitar i just like i don't know i just try like a bunch of random stuff

46:09Ellis:um and i think dude why were we not hanging out i was playing magic and going to the detroit auto show every year i'm sure we uh brush shoulders at that event yes we probably crossed cots it's like seminal shit for me seeing all the concept cars back then oh yeah like that was the future that was the future like seeing the detroit it's sad what they've done with it now but back then like the auto show like pre-internet getting really like algorithmic social media stuff it was like whoa like i'm here in like game informer magazines nintendo power like i was really into this stuff so like i don't know maybe it's just like the time period i was in the midwest i'd be curious what someone 10 years younger than me thinks but all of these things kind of like is I don't know.

46:55It played a part into how I've developed my mindset.

46:59Alex Heath:Jordan, considering that you worked with Ellis at one point, I like to ask every guest who has done that, and we could maybe end it here. Was Ellis actually helpful to you? What did he come up with? What were his shower thoughts? How did this translate into meaningful venture dollars that you raised? yeah i was i was actually so i think chris was the one that originally brought this up and i was i was relatively skeptical i was like what do you mean like words i got words in my head i can do this so what are you talking about chris i was like chris bro we have gpt now it's like three point something i was like chris we can just like chris we can we can figure this out he's like no jordan like trust me like i know you care about stories like this is someone that can help you i was like okay great so yeah it was it was awesome like the whole like make it real statement like what you see on this hat here um that that really stemmed from that exercise right alice like i don't know if you remember that like we we've went through a many different iterations and just kind of like really getting to the core ethos timeless nature of like what it is we're trying to do like in a world where the mission is now the moat right like i don't think it's no longer like technology's the mission is the moat that's gonna go on elsa's website you gotta be careful Jordan.

48:10No, but like, that's what we say. I say this a lot internally. Cause I'm like, guys, like the mode is not what we're building per se. It's the reason why we're building it is more so the important aspect of it. So Ellis really helped at least us to establish that direction. And it's pretty timeless. Like even the make it real video we released almost two years ago. Now you watch it today. You're like, Oh yeah, yeah. We're still trying to do that. Like that is still holding up today. So yeah, that's, that's, that was a fun exercise and yeah. Cool process.

48:39Alex Heath:I'm imagining Ellis like smoking a big blunt with no shoes on and he's sitting cross-legged with you, you know, in the park and SF and he's just like, make it real. Yes, but on a Zoom call. That's exciting.

48:56Ellis:I love how like romantically you think about it, Alex. Like I'm literally sitting right, right at this very spot in a cave with no natural light. just like in the Detroit winter. I know, I know. All right. Last but not least, predictions for industrial design for tech. I know we talked about General Monster before you came on. We've got the new loom lamps that are kind of stainless steel, robots that do your laundry. What do you think is next for product design and tech? Oh, man, I don't know. Who's going to have the best glasses that people actually want to wear? I know it was just reported this week Apple's working on it as well.

49:37Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think OpenAI is really going to surprise people with their dime thing. Like, I just think that's really going to shock folks. I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard many great things. I just think that there's something there potentially. But I love the Sunday robot, actually. I love that thing a lot.

50:01Alex Heath:Shout out former guest, Tony, another LS client. Oh, no way. Really? Oh, wow. Okay. That's awesome. I love, there's something about just like the personable aspect of it. So, but yeah.

50:14Ellis:Memo has a hat, which makes all the difference. Just like us. Genuinely. There's something about the similarity. Like now do robots need eyes? I don't know. Like human, do we really want to like see that? But yeah, I don't know. I think the open AI hardware device is really going to like blow people's minds potentially. Like, I wouldn't underestimate that.

50:34Alex Heath:Ooh, that's a good bet. What do you expect it to do? Yeah. Yeah, what do you know? So. You know something. You wouldn't be saying that if you didn't know something. No, I just think it's going to be something very surprising. Like, whoa, I didn't maybe think of things could be that way. Or similarly, like when GBT dropped, you're like, oh, whoa, I didn't even expect to even be talking to my computer. Or like, I didn't expect this to be a way to interface with this stuff. here's what I think this is a semi-informed take and I want to get your reaction I'm expecting ambient contextually aware lots of sensors like a puck or almost like a Walkman that you could wear put in your pocket when you need it set it on your desk set it on a table between you and someone else but it has like a personality it's proactive like it'll interrupt you mid conversation and say oh actually know you're booked you can't do that or something like that it's like almost this this other being i think they may tweak that and maybe you know there's probably contention internally about how much of a being to make it but that's my bet is that it goes in that direction which would be like you said it'd be pretty pretty unique and pretty new um react to that uh maybe i mean that sounds really cool uh i think you know one thing i like to relate these two sometimes is like imaginary friends like when you're a kid you have your imaginary friend and like it feels so real and like he he doesn't like he only reacts when you react like it's not maybe as proactive maybe i don't know i don't know i i honestly don't know i can go down this rabbit hole forever but i do think there's something there where people i love the this thing called the the little guy or something like the little it's like a star another former guest oh daniel kids no way okay no way no way jordan do you really not know that else did that too that daniel's where to god on

52:27Ellis:my well but daniel said that i didn't do any of it on the show so that's true yeah there's something about this like sunday little guy uh like there's just some i don't know like i was talking to chris about this the other day it's like and somebody posted this really funny thing i'm sorry i'm going to load over time but like tinge someone was this tinge nearing taste slop or like aesthetic slop and i was like oh that's i get what you're trying to say like they're almost like a victim of their own success, like them being so good and like people being able to be like, huh, my favorite product is iPhone and teen engineering.

52:59Like it almost like, it's like, it's like, yes, we know that. Like we already, we can all agree that that's good. So, so yeah, I don't, I don't know how to explain this kind of like thread between like Sunday, little guy, like that world, but I don't know. There's something novel about it still to me. Um, sorry, I was kind of like a, a word salad.

53:17Ellis:That's all good. What's important to me, Alex, Alex now has proof that I'm not I do have taste and I am the taste maker that I aspire to be. Make it real. Yeah. Well, thank you, Jordan. We will let you get back to the workshop. Yes. Thank you. Thanks for coming on. No, thanks for having me and love what you guys are doing. And this is great. So thank you. Thank you. And that's it for this week's episode. Stay tuned after the break for Alex and my reactions.

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54:47Alex Heath:You know, we need more people in the tech industry like Jordan who think about AI as not something that's replacing people but empowering them. And I think if more people building this talked like Jordan, I think you wouldn't have politicians railing against data centers and Bernie Sanders pitching a sovereign wealth fund for AI companies like he did in the New York Times the other day. I think this rhetoric about AI is really a result of the way that leaders, especially like the big labs have been talking about it. And then you've got people like Jordan who are actually building tools that hundreds of thousands of creators are using and sees it, I think, correctly as an empowerment thing and also just a natural evolution of how these jobs change with new technology.

55:34Ellis:I mean, it sounds so silly, but like to be solving a real problem, which is that you have to draw manually every single side of the shoe and how much longer it takes to see if things are working or not. That's a real problem. And I mean, that's why we didn't get super into it, but that's why you have companies like New Balance, Ford, and Canon. I mean, I assume it's a lot harder to get your tool into Ford than into a new tech startup that is always in the market for trying new tools, right?

56:03Alex Heath:Well, it sounds like he's winning on product. I mean, he said it's bottoms up and the designers are bringing it into their workflow and into their companies. And that's how Slack grew back in the day. That's how Figma grew. That's how all these great kind of generational SaaS, you know, creative platforms, collaboration platforms grow initially. So it seems like he's approaching it right. And yeah, to go from, you know, kid in Detroit, works at Honda, goes to NVIDIA. We didn't say this in the interview, but gets shouted out by Jensen during a GTC keynote a few years ago and now doing his own thing.

56:36Alex Heath:It's cool. It's very cool to see.

56:38Ellis:I'm also hopeful that we will have more characterful products in the world as a result. I think at the end of the day, these companies still want to make something that is mass market appealing. But you have to hope that if you could present your idea better, that it has a higher chance of getting through executives and other barriers internally. And I mean, you know, we're in a time with a lot of visual consolidation, I think, especially in tech. I mean, former guest of the show, Carl Pei, you know, his whole mission is to make tech fun again. And I'm wearing the nothing headphones now, even though they don't connect as well as Apple AirPods.

57:15Ellis:And they aren't as seamless and they don't have quite the same Apple TV spatial audio experiences. But I'm wearing them because they rule, you know. Well, it's because you want to look cool in Tokyo Town in downtown LA. Tokyo Town. Yes, exactly. And so I do think there is a desire for a lot of this stuff. And as Jordan alluded, the teenage engineering design that tech has kind of the alt tech hipsters have been following for the last 10 years, maybe a little bit played out and we have to see what's next. But you're already seeing a lot of interesting innovation, whether it's in shoes or glasses or some of the new cars.

57:53Ellis:As much as you might hate something like the Ferrari Luce or even the Cybertruck, they're at least putting things into the zeitgeist that are so different that maybe they give someone the freedom to try something new and experiment.

58:05Alex Heath:I also just want to acknowledge how we're thinking about the show. We're about, what, September? We're about nine months in. Time is a Blur, 30-ish episodes. And we've experimented a lot with the kind of guests we have on, the format, how much we do news, whether we talk at the front, whether we talk at the back. And I think what we're doing this episode and what I think we've decided we're going to do more of is really explore these more earlier stage, interesting companies and founders that, you know, I think it's going to be a mix of us putting you on to things that we think are cool and unique.

58:44Alex Heath:And then also maybe some names in the early stage world that are a little more known to start. But I think we're going to mix it up and make it interesting. And yeah, I feel good. I feel good about the direction we're going. I think we bring a good balance to these conversations where we're not going to glaze the guests too much. But we're also very genuinely interested in how these interesting startups are getting built.

59:11Ellis:How are you thinking about it as opposed to your newsletter? I mean, I feel like it's been a little bit blurry. Who's going to be interviewed where? I'm sure that weighed on you a little bit.

59:22Alex Heath:Well, the newsletter is such a fast paced thing. It's very on the news and very quick and a little more business focused. Right. I mean, I'm very interested in this stuff. We're talking about the show, but on the show, but I also have a lot of interest in kind of how AI is impacting the financials of these companies, the economy, the palace intrigue of the executives, where they're going, all of that. And you're definitely going to be getting that in sources. And then, you know, sometimes people can only talk for 20, 30 minutes. And I think this show is a good example of a format where, you know, you really get to know someone more.

59:58Alex Heath:It's a hang. And I think a newsletter isn't a hang. And that's something that I'm more cognizant of lately. I think people want, they're looking to newsletters for something to get out of it. And not that you don't do that with podcasts, but I think there's this hanging out aspects of a good podcast that we're trying to achieve here. And it just it doesn't lend itself to the fast paced, quicker world of the newsletter.

1:00:24Ellis:Please send us feedback if you like the new format or hate it or have ideas for how to improve the show. You could find us. Where can you find us? You can feel free to email me, Ellis at meaning dot company. if you made it this far, you deserve to know my email. Yeah, I've never given my email. How would you like to be found?

1:00:46Alex Heath:I haven't given my email in here ever either. I'm alex.sources.news. I'm a little scared to say that aloud. I've got an alias on my website that I filter, but the real heads who are listening at this point, they can actually email me.

1:00:58Ellis:Yeah, you don't wanna, that's the beauty of creating a new email address is that you're not yet in the PR wankster email database. Yeah. which you will never, ever get out of.

1:01:13Alex Heath:Yeah, and you know what? Just saying that means that an agent has likely crawled this transcript and it now is in the PR database. Oh, fuck. And that's it for this week's show. Thank you to Jordan for coming on. Yes, if you like this show, don't forget to like and subscribe everywhere you get podcasts.

1:01:31Ellis:We are access.show online and you can find us in video via AccessPod on YouTube.

1:01:36Alex Heath:And if you really like this episode, We'd love a five-star review, a thumbs up. And if you really feel like it, share it with a friend.

1:01:45Ellis:You could find me at Hamburger on Twitter and at Meaning.Company for your storytelling needs.

1:01:49Alex Heath:And you can find my newsletter at Sources.News.

1:01:52Ellis:Access is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and the show is produced by Hook Creators.

1:01:57Alex Heath:See you next time.

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