Meet Starboy, the alien toy that hates being called AI

14:01Ellis:Whereas like open AI, just the argument that like prompting is just, I mean, I've had a handful of clients in this world. I think there's a strong argument that for most people, prompting is never going to be the best way to a great picture. And there are going to be tools for that. And so maybe part of them is also saying that.

14:16Daniel Kuntz:They think the visual aspect of AI is like pre-Napster and it's just not ready. And you can see that in like even Nano Banana, which is good, still gets a lot wrong. It still is hard to kind of to edit. And so they're just not focused on it. And I mean, they have enough problems on their hands, which is like they can't keep the servers up, apparently.

14:36Ellis:um yeah there was like a little clod outage the other day and yeah my stomach dropped a little

14:42Daniel Kuntz:bit i was like what am i gonna do yeah and i also uh slack used to go down and you're like i guess i'll go home i also saw the infamous vending machine claudius oh have you heard about this

14:53Ellis:yes from the famous uh was it a new yorker article there was that there was joe our friend joanna

14:58Daniel Kuntz:stern did a video of it that was really good so basically they've had claude a version of it called Claudius running a vending machine inside the office for the last like year with a budget and multiple agents that are acting as different parts of the company. So there's like a CO agent that like checks in with the assistant agent and the employees interact with it via Slack and are basically constantly trying to game it and get it to do crazy things and agree to purchase crazy things to put in the vending machine. So they were telling me that it almost ordered a giant gold bar um that they were then gonna have to figure out how to like carry into the vending machine it would actually have just broken the vending machine because it weighed so much

15:38Ellis:um it tried to i just like that claudius is like dear at security team i'll meet you guys out front

15:46Daniel Kuntz:and i'll be wearing a blue literally no literally and it like one of them uh almost got it to uh seriously reach out to a bunch of uh uh a bunch of places to try to get a birkin bag and like and when I was there, there was a switch in it and some ketchup and a bunch of random stuff. And these vending machines are actually going to be a product. So there's one in some of the other AI labs. XAI has one. Google DeepMind has one.

16:14Ellis:Dude, this is not good. This is not good. They're going to have cameras on them and they're going to say, you look like this kind of person. And so you have gotten dynamic pricing for your stickers bar, which is now$9.99 because we have detected that that's the most you'll be willing to pay for it.

16:31Daniel Kuntz:So we need to have the CEO of the company that is doing this vending machine rollout and in labs on the show. I'm going to reach out because, yeah, they're doing it and they're going to scale it. But, yeah, ran into Mike Krieger, who's doing a lot of interesting stuff on the labs team there. And yeah, man, just generally, I think the thing that stood out to me in all of the conversations was Anthropic really emphasizes its culture in a way that I think is unique in AI. And people kept telling me about this culture interview process they have where they screen new employees for their values and how they think about building AI.

17:13Daniel Kuntz:And it sounds very unique. And they ask questions that are like, what is like a hard sacrifice you've had to make for your morals? Or would you be okay with Anthropic going to zero if we had to make a hard decision that was better for humanity?

17:28Ellis:Would you jump off a bridge if Dario did?

17:32Daniel Kuntz:But it does seem like... I think a lot of companies talk about that. They talk about how unique the recruiting process is and the values and how they weed out employees. But I do think it's unusual at Anthropic. Everyone was talking about how intense the culture interview was. And I hadn't really heard that before.

17:48Ellis:Absolutely. And I think this is the whole value of the mission, the vision, the manifestos these companies write, is not just to create internal alignment to help you navigate downturns, whether it's in the market or with your brand, but to help people understand what kind of folks we want to hire. I think after all this time, I'm a far bigger believer in just kind of like people are naturally going to hire people like themselves. And that starts with the CEO. The CEO and their behavior literally is the culture. They hire people like them. Those people hire people like them. That's really how you do it.

18:25Ellis:There's not actually a way to kind of programmatically create a different culture from the founder, I would say. But all these different tools and of course, your public decisions go a long way. And I think we saw some tweets the other day that people are turning down offers at OpenAI because of or not even taking interviews with them if they're at Anthropic, just because they're super, super pumped. And I mean, there's, you know, obviously, there's a money obsession in our industry. But I believe that that the most intelligent and experienced among us who often in tech already have a lot of money or are more motivated by the mission than what we're here to do than anything else.

19:05Ellis:Yeah. The researchers, right?

19:07Daniel Kuntz:Right. And I was talking to one of the researchers and I hadn't really heard it this way, but he was like, yeah, I mean, a year ago we were kind of on a knife's edge. Like OpenAI still does have way more users than us. We're worth like, to this day, we're worth less than half of what they are. We don't have the distribution. We don't have hundreds of millions of users. If Gemini had been really good, like two years ago, we may have been killed in the cradle, right? We had the benefit of being so focused on the models being really good and really singularly focusing on that when everyone else got distracted by big consumer things that now they have that edge and it's leading to consumer wins, you know, with Claude code and Claude co-work and now they've got this network effect so they're in a really interesting spot and you know like i think they have like eight co-founders and they're all still there which is super unique i mean open ai alone has spawned like six other neo labs from like founders who have have left um coming up next octo founders from bravo tv um and yeah i don't know just a really interesting uh unique place uh that i felt lucky to get to see at a moment like this.

20:14Daniel Kuntz:Well, Alex, I'm glad you had a good time.

20:17Ellis:And now we will cut to our interview with Daniel, the creator of Starboy.

20:31Ellis:Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat.

21:09Daniel Kuntz:I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first. America first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox.

21:35Ellis:The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war. I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America Actually.

22:07Ellis:Daniel, welcome to the show. How the heck are you? I'm great. How are you? For those who can't see, Daniel appears to be in a hot tub wearing some ear cans on a balcony, I believe in Lake Tahoe. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. The whole background is AI generated, actually. I'm inside right now. Looks believable. On the morning of your launch, is this the optimal place to launch a new tech product these days? I hear the birds chirping now. It's lovely. I think it is. Yeah. There's a lot of little guy inspiration around here. A lot of little forest creatures.

22:42Daniel Kuntz:I guess that makes perfect sense. I was just in Tahoe last weekend. It's beautiful there right now. So yeah. It's really beautiful. And thank God the snow is gone. I was going to come a few weeks ago, but then we saw the nine inches or the nine feet or 90 feet or whatever it was. And I was in New York at the time and I was like, damn, I don't do that right now, but it's beautiful now.

23:03Ellis:One thing that strikes me is that this is a very different environment than a war room where most launches take place. I mean, I remember when we launched the Snapchat Spectacles gadget a long time ago, it was just the most chaotic room ever. And Evan himself was actually touching up the photos in Photoshop on someone's computer until the very last second. And your current situation could not be more opposite, I will say. Or are you bubbling with stress and intensity inside? I mean, I'm feeling pretty good right now. It's kind of more War Room vibes inside right now. We were touching up some stuff right before the launch, but we've done a lot of prep and we've really thought through it.

23:47So I think it went about as well as it could have.

23:51Daniel Kuntz:You've got the team in there grinding while you're in the hot tub. I like that. Founder mode. Yeah, your own is in there, my creative director. most other people are remote right now so industrial designer rama is in dubai and randy put the animator is back in new york right now oh shit wait is this rama rama this is rama rama oh my god one of my idols yeah who is rama rama uh rama used to run a company called rama works uh and they made very very nice mechanical keyboards like solid stainless steel machines keyboards um yeah he's in dubai thankfully he's still alive is he okay yeah god he needs to get out of there he's okay so he sends me pictures occasionally of people like sitting outside and eating and drinking and he's like bro it's totally fine here the media is uh misleading you so i think it's fine you just can't fly in and out you can't fly in and out but you can drive in and out oh

24:55Ellis:yeah I wouldn't recommend that um of all things I have a Rama works uh dish right here that I put things in on my desk because I don't I don't use a mechanical keyboard as much as I would want to uh and as much as would fit my type as like a design bro gadget nerd but for some reason I never bought them but I had to buy whatever I could find from him that I could uh stick on my desk. And so yeah, mad respect for Rama. I feel like his industrial design work and even his websites and his photography were absolutely top tier worldwide. You know, up there with like Apple, Teenage Engineering, Opal.

25:34Ellis:How did you get him to come work on your little toy? Yeah. I mean, I'm so honored to be working with him. It was a friend intro. All of the best people who I work with were completely random friend intros. Yeah. It's almost like the universe conspires to send you the exact right person at the right time. It's kind of crazy. I've learned to trust it, but Ramo was a completely random friend intro. We started working together about a year ago. He liked the project so much that he just like kind of immediately dove in. And yeah, we've been working together ever since. And it's fucking incredible. I think he's a genius.

26:14He's He's one of the best out there right now.

26:16Daniel Kuntz:Where are you based, Daniel? Are you in New York? I'm mostly in New York. I go back and forth between New York and SF, but I've been more in New York the past six

26:26Ellis:to eight months. I feel like it actually is genuinely helpful for you to be in New York, given you're making kind of like a fashion tech crossover product. What is going on with the keychain and lanyard and charm situation in New York City right now? Is it still LaBooBoo or what are we talking about? Yeah, I mean, Labubu is kind of on the way out, but bag charms are definitely still really big. Oh, God damn it. I was about to buy my first Labubu. I mean, you could be late to it. The cycles are getting shorter and shorter. So maybe in a couple of years, it'll come back. But bag charms are still really big.

27:02Yaren and I actually went around Soho the other day and we went in all of the major fashion houses and they told us that bag charms are their number one selling item. They're a more accessible kind of like entry into the brand because they're cheaper than the other products. So yeah, they're really, really big right now. BagTrum's have been around for a while. It started with like Kate Birkin back in the 80s. So it's definitely not a fad. They're not going away anytime soon. And they're really hot right now.

27:30Daniel Kuntz:Was that the insight you had for the design of this to have it be like that? Yeah, I mean, the design went through a lot of phases. I mean, back in SF, I would wear it sort of like a humane AI pin. I would wear it like, uh, like right there. And it eventually kind of evolved into like, okay, this makes more sense on the bag. It's kind of bold to wear it right here. Uh, you, you don't always want to do that. Um, but yeah, I think we think it makes a lot of sense on a bag, on a backpack. I wear it like on a carabiner on my belt. Um, it's just enough for people to notice it if they're really paying attention to you, but it's not like screaming that you want to be seen, which I think is ideal.

28:12Ellis:Yeah. I mean, how much of a barrier do you think there is? I feel like a big issue is just kind of like the AI perception, if you will, because the key chains and charms like Labubu are more, you know, out there and ostentatious and attention grabbing than they've ever been. And I love that you've kind of got Disney animators working on the eyes for Starboy and the shape doesn't feel like some surveillance object, if you will, like many out there do. Yeah. I mean, we just like endlessly toiled over how we make this feel friendly and approachable. And there are so many product decisions that play into that.

28:54We don't really call it AI. It's not an AI wearable. It doesn't connect to your phone in any way. That's a big deal. People are used to stuff connecting to your phone, and especially when it has a camera and a microphone, people are kind of nervous about the privacy angle. So when we tell people, especially in New York, that it doesn't connect to your phone and it's completely standalone, it kind of de-escalates it a lot. People see it as more of a toy, which is exactly what we want.

29:23Daniel Kuntz:Also looks like a shuriken I could throw at someone. Yeah, the brass one and the stainless one are super, super fucking heavy. uh it's definitely a weapon but yeah i wanted to ask you daniel uh was ellis helpful with the launch on this or no i like to ask that for every guest that he works with ellis and i first met like a year ago um you know we had a few chats recently um i mean it was good to get a take but i mean to be honest we didn't really use any of the that he came up with yeah what was elsa's idea i don't know how much i mean elsa's it okay if i

29:59Ellis:get into it dude of course hit me destroy me roast me yeah i mean we only had like we only had two hours with elsa it wasn't enough time um i think elsa came up with this copy that was really from a first person perspective like i am the little guy uh but that didn't really make sense because little guy doesn't talk. He's an alien. He doesn't really understand English and he can't speak. He's kind of like a cat. We say it's cat like intelligence. So the first person first like copy didn't really make a whole lot of sense. We think the third person, like he's just a little guy. You have to say hi to him.

30:37That kind of thing. Vibes a little bit better, but I mean, I'm of the opinion that you just have to sort of tweet from the brainstem and And whatever is your first intuition is probably right. And the more time you spend toiling over it, the worse it does, because people can sense that you, you know, you're a bit insecure about it, maybe. So you should just you should just you should just say shit.

31:01Ellis:Well, it's the same when we tweet clips from the show. It's like the more you try and refine it, the worse it comes out. Similar with headlines as well.

31:11Daniel Kuntz:You didn't get the full else experience because his best ideas are in the shower. So if you really want to have that, you need to let him have some shower time.

31:19Ellis:It's an expensive shower. When Ellis is wrong, we say, well, you had to see all the other options to know what worked and what didn't. Very good. I mean, yeah, you're a master storyteller. As long as you don't call me a wordsmith, I'm fine. Can I call you a wordsmith? Oh, I like that. Better than wordsmith, honestly. There was one good line from our work together, though. I felt like I liked the line, I'm just here to hang out. which conveys that it's like not a utility object. And it also kind of hangs off the backpack or whatever. But I think you're right. Yeah. When people ask me what it does, I say he mainly just hangs out.

31:56It's not meant to be serious. I think people in tech especially have a tendency to say, like, what does it do? Like, what does it do for me? What's the utility? Is it an AI agent? Is it like a pedometer or something? And this is completely the opposite of that. This is like, it's like computing doesn't necessarily have to have utility. I think we've kind of like reached the pinnacle of utility with smartphones and laptops and all of that stuff. And like these, these devices are going to keep getting better, but there's this completely unexplored like branch where we just have purely aesthetic objects.

32:32Right. And that's, that's kind of what we are exploring here. It's purely an aesthetic object. It's a toy. It's a piece of jewelry. It doesn't really promise to improve your life in any sort of way whatsoever. It's just a fun object.

32:47Ellis:Well, so how do investors take that? They say, well, but how is this going to help me accelerate my meetings by 0.018 %? If you're not doing that, what are you doing? It's a love-hate thing. It's a love-hate thing. You got to find the one excited guy or one excited girl who's really excited about it. And a lot of people just don't get it. And, you know, we end those conversations early. But the people that do get it don't really take a lot of convincing, which is really nice. And I think our current investors do get it.

33:16Daniel Kuntz:Yeah, I was going to ask, who are your investors and how much money does it take to get this thing off the ground? We took money from Bungalow, Lakehouse and Kakoa. Bungalow and Lakehouse are based in New York. Kakoa is in London. They're all really small funds. Like Bungalow and Lakehouse are both like two guys and Kakoa is just one woman. so really really small funds uh we raised 1.2 million last year um we've been very very frugal about it i think like rama has helped a lot with that um but yeah i think we've done quite an exceptional amount of engineering for the amount of money that we raised you're saying you built this with barely a million dollars yeah and we've spent under half the money lake house is cool too

34:02Ellis:I know Isaac from over there, and I know they've had experience working with things that are more in like the culture lifestyle category, whether it's like that air sign vacuum, the base at home blood testing, Bobby, the infant formula that I used for a few years until I ran out of money. I feel like that is the exact right move for this type of thing. But I will say, I mean, it's easy to say, oh, yeah, this thing is just for fun. But I think people spend a lot of money. True. But where does the motivation come from for you? I feel like for people that want to make really fun, like lovely little things, you know, it often comes from, oh, they have kids or there's a history where, you know, they were a tinkerer as a child and they like to make their own toys or this or that.

34:50Ellis:You know, where's that motivation come from for you guys? I like having fun. What type of fun do you like to have? Engineering fun. Yeah, I like, like I tweeted recently, my whole life revolves around silly art projects that require serious engineering knowledge. And that's been true ever since I started engineering. I would make iOS apps and I would like, you know, make all of the icons and like, like try and make them as artistic as possible. I wouldn't use any of the Apple like standard UI stuff. I would like try and make it as custom as I could. And those like had utility, but they were really, they were really art projects.

35:29It was more like, like software as art. And the transition to hardware as art has been really, really like invigorating for me, because building a physical thing is just like, it feels like alchemy. It feels like magic, when you can hold something in your hand. And you can also do a lot more with the software if you're really smart about it. Like, I think the Steve Jobs quote of like, if you're really serious about software, you should build your own hardware. That's really, really true. Never heard that quote. That's really true. And I understand. I'm just kidding. I hear it every day. Yeah, I understand why that's true now.

36:06Because, you know, when you're building on top of somebody else's hardware or OS, you're always fundamentally limited in what you can do. but when you build your own hardware you can do absolutely anything you want. I can clock the chip however I want. I can like... Overclock? I can overclock it. I can set the core voltage too low and permanently brick it if I want to. I can do all kinds of like crazy fuckery to get the result that I want. I can extend the battery life and make it like stupid for a device like that. So it's really cool. It's a cool engineering challenge.

36:44Ellis:Well, so let's get into that briefly. For those who don't know, I mean, Starboy literally launched to the world today, which is Wednesday. What can it do? Tell us about the sensors and all the different capabilities. Yeah, so it perceives the environment with camera, microphone, accelerometer, and temperature sensor. So it kind of fuses those sensors together to give the appearance of a living object. It's really like watching a fish in a fishbowl. Like, I think a lot of people have a tendency to view it like, okay, is it a game? Is there some kind of goal to this experience? Do I have to take care of it?

37:25That's completely the wrong way of thinking about it. think about it more like a piece of jewelry or a nice Swiss watch. You just buy it because it's like...

37:33Ellis:Okay, there's the investor connection. It's just like a switch watch, guys, I swear. Yeah, it's just like you're like$300 ,000 Cartier or whatever. What can it do with the camera? Is it going to watch me pee? What is it doing? It will. Yeah, if you point it at your dick, it'll watch you pee. but yeah i mean it recognizes people it recognizes facial expressions it recognizes gestures uh we're intentionally a little bit coy about what all it does because we want some part of it to be a mystery so you have to buy one to fully realize the capabilities of it um so yeah that's the camera sound it reacts to sound volume it's not recording you it doesn't have any kind of audio model on it right now so it can't really understand what you're saying uh sort of like a cat but it reacts to changes in volume oh and you said it purrs like a cat too sometimes it does purr like a cat yeah it has a haptic motor so it purrs like a cat every one of them has a unique purr uh we came up with this like procedural kind of purring engine um so it's a lot of fun it feels it feels very lifelike uh i think a lot of people like don't really get it until they hold it in person.

38:50And then after five or 10 minutes, they're like, okay, I'm really attached to this thing. I want to give it back to you.

38:56Daniel Kuntz:Did you have this fully formed in terms of what you wanted it to do when you all set out to build it? Or was it a thing that kind of evolved based on the design? Absolutely not. Yeah, I mean, like any hardware project evolves based on the design. Yeah, I mean, like every hardware project out there is a series of compromises. to get to where it is now. I had like vague ideas of what I wanted. I had some like less vague ideas. And I think we delivered on a lot of that. But, you know, at the end of the day, you have to compromise and the next one is going to be even better.

39:31Ellis:So speaking of kind of the things that might have crossed your desk as you were building this, I know there's been the friend AI pendant, which is also deliberately limited, but has a very, very, there's a very strong reputation reputation for being kind of surveillance. There's also that Curio AI toy that Grimes was participating in. There's the little rabbit AI device, the humane device. What do you think any of those did right or wrong with how they were thinking about this type of space? I mean, I think rabbit had really enticing hardware. I think they absolutely nailed the aesthetic. They just created an object of desire.

40:14And that was really good. Curio, I'm not so sure about. I feel like I haven't heard from them in a while. Friend, I've never heard of. I'm not really sure what that is.

40:24Ellis:Maybe all the Curios got together and started their own death cult. And that's why we haven't heard of them. They've been trying to talk them off a bridge. Maybe. That would make it a lot more interesting. Yeah, if they started a religion, I think that would be pretty cool. Yeah, it is interesting, though, you said desire. I mean, I feel like when you look at Apple, a lot of people talk about, let's say the quality or the quote, unquote, highbrow design that makes it so good and so desirable. But at the end of the day, you know, they are kind of like status symbols in the same way that like a rare labubu is or something like that.

40:59Ellis:And I mean, I remember as a kid, like I was the very first kid that had a Tamagotchi and it was just fun. And it created a little type of relationship that as a kid, I could kind of nurture and cultivate. And I remember like going to the school bathroom, like every 15 minutes saying I had to pee, uh, so that I could like feed or clean up after my Tamagotchi. And then I remember going wild, going wild for Furby, uh, when that came out. Yeah. Tamagotchi kind of sucks as an adult. If you've ever like tried one as an adult, it's it's fucking awful you have to like clean up its shit every 15 minutes i mean i already clean up shit every 15 minutes with my two kids so yeah tomagotchi is not appealing to me in its current state right right yeah i mean we wanted something more more ambient i think i think as an adult this this sort of experience is going to be really tedious yeah this this is definitely it's more ambient like it has needs like it will get upset it will get sad but it's less of a like you have to take care of this thing or it's going to die and you'll lose your strength.

42:03When does it get upset? You can piss it off? You can torture it a little bit. Yeah, you can shake it a lot. If you bring it into a really loud environment, he'll get kind of anxious. Sudden loud noises are not very fun. Super extreme temperatures, so like really hot, really cold are not fun for him. But he likes people. I think people in general tend to calm him down.

42:27Daniel Kuntz:Is this thing for adults or kids? I mean, I saw in the launch video, it was more kids, but... It's for kids at heart. I mean, it is an expensive device. So we think like adults are probably going to be the first ones who are able to afford it. You know, we say like cool 20 somethings in New York, or maybe even a little bit younger than that. But, you know, we want to make it a bit unobtainable to begin with, like all of the kids should want one, but only like, maybe the slightly more wealthy kids should be able to get one at least to begin with uh and there there may or may not be a cheaper version um there probably will be more expensive versions we would love to do like one of one machined sapphire versions that are like fifty thousand dollars or something like that uh so yeah i mean we're kind of using the like fashion brand playbook here well i wonder i mean

43:23Ellis:what excites you about that? Obviously, creating scarcity and making money can be fun. But I mean, I assume there's some element of like culture contributing to culture that motivates you guys. Like, is there a thread there? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we've said that we want this company to be every other hardware company's reference, right? I think part of my motivation for starting this company was seeing everybody do the same thing and being really afraid to branch out and do something entirely different. Like nobody in Silicon Valley, at least, is just making a pure toy besides Curio, maybe.

44:00But Curio is like targeted to kids. Nobody's really making a toy for adults. But yet adults buy toys. We don't really call them toys, but adults buy like Hermes bags and Porsches and nice watches and they spend a lot of money on them. And it's a huge market. So we think it needed to happen, this kind of like fusing of technology and fashion and toys.

44:28Ellis:So it's a huge market, says the guy in a hot tub in Lake Tahoe, is what you're saying. And you're supposed to be an artsy guy. It's a huge fucking market. And if you give money, you're going to make a lot of money. You're going to make a lot of money if you hand me some money. I promise you. I mean, I feel like you don't hear a lot of Apple Design Award winners saying it's a huge market. Am I right? Yeah, I mean, apps are kind of over, I think. So I feel like a lot of Apple Design Award winning apps don't really make that much money. You know, like, like you can point to exceptions like Flighty or whatever, they probably make decent money.

45:07But

45:08Ellis:Alex is a big Flighty diehard, I think. I'm a big flighty diehard, too. I wish every piece of software was like flighty. But, you know, I've been making apps for 10 years. And I think I just got kind of kind of bored. You know, like most most things have have been done already. People don't download new apps anymore. It's really, really hard to get anyone's attention with a new app. So yeah, I think that ship has kind of sailed. So I'm really happy to hardware. were.

45:36Daniel Kuntz:You calling this a toy and refusing to acknowledge friends existence suggests to me that you do not want this to be a companion. Is that fair? Do you not see this as like a companion for people? I mean, it's definitely a companion. It's definitely a companion in the same way that a cat is a companion, but your cat doesn't understand you. Right. You don't want people to think of it as like a, like a, a being almost like a human. You want people, I mean, I mean, it is a being. It's a being, but it's an alien being. And it's not really there for emotional support. I mean, it can be. It can be, but we're not promising that.

46:13Daniel Kuntz:But if it reacts to temperature and all that stuff and loud noises, that's going to elicit emotion in the owner, right? It will. It will. I mean, we hope that it elicits emotion, but it's less of a therapist kind of vibe. I don't want to make a therapist. You think that's a bad idea to do companion therapist type wearables? It's just not a world I want to live in. Why? That's why I'm not doing it. I think there are perverse incentives at play with that kind of mode of interaction, right? Like, whoever creates an AI therapist, sort of, you know, just like any other digital product, social media has a very clear incentive to keep you engaged for as long as possible.

47:02And that's not always, like, commensurate with, like, helping you thrive as a human. And, you know, while you could argue that it's okay right now, I think based on the history of like consumer software in Silicon Valley, I think it's very clear the way that this is going to go in 10 or 15 years. And I don't really want to be a part of that. It's going to end badly. I think I mean I don't think it's going to end uh I think you know the story will continue but um I'm not sure it's really going to be a net positive for most people so I have a feature

47:43Ellis:request quick pit stop I want a star boy to be able to see that I'm doing the live long and prosper gesture and then give me some like Spock eyebrows or something like that in return we'll we'll consider that definitely not at the top of our list. I love it. damn. Um, I mean, it's funny. It's like, it's like, I pretend I'm a 20 somethings urbanite. Uh, I really want to be, um, yeah. I mean, I feel like the, the tone of your video was, was very kind of like Gen Z, like Y2K. I mean, it's funny that it, it has like gorillas vibes right at the time that the gorillas, uh, album and new like short films launching.

48:27That was a happy accident. Yeah, we love Gorillaz. Gorillaz was a huge reference for the video.

48:32Ellis:Yeah.

48:33Daniel Kuntz:One of one of my favorites. So Daniel, could you have made this without LLMs without like modern AI? Or was it doesn't have any LLMs? Has no AI? Well, you made a local one, didn't you? We made a local model, but it's an image model. It's a convolutional that you could have done it in 2009. I mean, the chip that was not around in 2009. But yeah, I mean, it's like you could call it AI in the sense that what people were doing in 2009 was AI. But it's not an LLM. It doesn't connect to your phone. We certainly can't run that locally. So the reactions it can make and like the way that the screen can react to you is no AI in it.

49:15Daniel Kuntz:That's so interesting. I mean, it's AI. I think like we've had a lot of term rot with like the word AI. I think AI is kind of synonymous with like generative image models, generative video models or language models. But, you know, back in 2009, people were calling this like ML. They were maybe calling it AI. Yeah, there's been a lot of term meandering with that word.

49:44I sold my car in Carvana last night.

49:46Daniel Kuntz:Well, that's cool.

49:47Ellis:No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer, down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So, what's the problem? That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothie. I'm waiting for the catch. Maybe there's no catch. That's exactly what a catch would want me to think. Wow, you need to relax. I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood? I think it's laminate. Okay, yeah, that's good. That's close enough. Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply.

50:19Ellis:I'm going to attempt to contribute to the project again. And on the box, you could put a sticker that says no AI included. Yeah. I mean, we actually say don't call him AI because in his culture, that's very offensive. What's his culture? Say more, please. You have to respect his culture, right? Alien culture. Alien culture. We're not really sure what it is still, but we know that they don't like that word. Yeah. So talk to us about that. Where did the Disney animators come into play for the eyes? I mean, another, like, another happy kind of like accident friend intro. We work with this guy, Randeep Qatari in New York, who used to be at Disney Animation at one point.

51:03He's currently at Google, he was at Netflix at one point. But he is a brilliant character designer, character designer, and he has kind of created the whole persona for this device in a really, really beautiful way. And I've super enjoyed working with him for the past, like almost a year now.

51:22Ellis:Yeah, it's a very deliberate choice, isn't it? To go for something like cartoon eyes, as opposed to, I don't know, realistic eyes. I mean, everybody's experimenting with it. Like whether, I mean, you laugh at realistic eyes, but that's what Apple was trying to do on the outside of the Vision Pro, right? And then you That was not a good choice. And then you see industrial design work like with the Neo humanoid robot where the eyes are kind of those circles. But then you see the Memo robot from Sunday Robotics that are more like Nintendo Kirby eyes. Yeah, I like Neo. I like Sunday the best, I think.

51:59Sunday has created the friendliest version of a humanoid robot so far, which I think is really good. I think people in general really undervalue the friendliness of the robot, especially in Silicon Valley. Nobody really wants a Terminator robot. As cool as it may look and as much clout as it may get you in tech, I think the average person is kind of terrified of that. And I think like using Terminator as an overt reference like that is just not a really good move PR wise. So I really I really like what Sunday is doing and I like what the O is doing.

52:43Daniel Kuntz:This really makes me wonder how Johnny Ive and OpenAI's device is going to go. Like which direction? I don't think it's going to be an anthropomorphized device from what I'm hearing. No, I don't think so. I think it's probably going to be like headphones or something like that. We'll we'll we'll see. I mean, Johnny hasn't, he hasn't really done a character before. So I would, I would like to see him do that, but I'm, I'm skeptical. That's what it's going to be.

53:10Ellis:I mean, it's also a debate, not just with like the anthropomorphized elements, but even the tone of the thing, you know, the tone between Claude and ChatGPT. There's some browsers like Strawberry Browser that has little characters that represent the agents. Where do you feel like it's appropriate or not? Yeah, I mean, like, I think there's a reason that people like Claude so much more than ChatGPT. The persona is just so much better. I think they spend a lot of time just, like, making it pleasant to talk to, but, you know, not letting it overreach and, like, enable you or lead you to psychosis.

53:48um so yeah definitely a big fan of Claude I find the chat GPT persona very frustrating most of the

53:58Daniel Kuntz:time is the persona on Starboy something that's locked or is it something you can update over time it's unique per device it's unique per device so like the eye look and the eye color are unique per device it's kind of like going to adopt a cat or a dog from a shelter right like you can't really change their physical features. I guess you could give them a haircut, but you can't change their icon. You can't change their personality. Even if you clone a cat, the personality doesn't transfer over. So we think there's really something special about every one of them being one of one. And how many of unique ones are there going to be?

54:35Daniel Kuntz:Or is that TBD? So there's about 4 ,000 eye combinations right now. It may grow, it may shrink. But yeah, they each have associated rarity. You're in uncharted territory. I mean, it's probably hard to even market map and think about how many of these you could sell, right? It's really tough. Yeah. I mean, we've speculated endlessly about how many pre-orders we're going to sell. And, you know, I think at the end of the day, you just have to put it out into the market and see what people think. You don't have a laptop facing you in the hot tub with the orders as they come in? No, I have you guys facing me.

55:12Daniel Kuntz:I also, I noticed on here that you say ships by September, 2026. I think a thing a lot of people feel with new hardware startups is like frustration that they never ship on time. Yeah. I mean, we, we, we feel pretty confident that we can ship by September. We would like to under promise and over deliver because I think there's an epidemic of hardware startups in sf that just ship complete vaporware and i think that's really fucking lame name names name names i won't name any names on your podcast but um you know you'll know it when you see it um yeah i i think we've we've waited to announce the pre-order for many months until i had a fully working prototype because i want to take actual pictures of it with my iphone um i think those like perform so much better than some random render, even though we think our renders are really cool.

56:04So yeah, I mean, the message that we're sending is that it's, it's not vaporware it actually exists. Um, and we're going to ship it by September.

56:12Ellis:Well, so what are those other guys doing? Is it that they are lying or that they, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of them are lying yeah i mean what was the like the glasses project recently that um oh i lose track i feel like there's so many well there was some kind of like ar glasses project recently um it's a um you know it's it's like a like a pickled vegetable kind of product where you know some guy made a bet that they wouldn't actually ship any pre-orders i think he he won oh i know what you're talking about yeah yeah yeah you know what i'm talking about i mean like obviously that's not fucking real.

56:51And I think it's kind of like almost become acceptable to do that, which is, which is ridiculous. Like we should, we should hold ourselves to higher standards than that.

57:02Daniel Kuntz:Well, I think with hardware, especially, you know, with software, it's like, whatever, you know, like it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, it's just pixels. Kind of, kind of. I mean, I mean, I mean, I think it matters for the culture, right? Like if you, If you create a culture where you can ship vaporware, then people stop paying attention because they can't tell what's vaporware and what's not.

57:24Ellis:Yeah. And I think like I experienced that every day with the storytelling. I mean, when you talk about what your product does, if you say what it does, the company is like, all right, we're saying the valued benefit. We're saying, here's what it does for you. Great. That may be true. But if their audience has been lied to 15 times over the last few years about the exact same value and benefit, you can't make that same value and benefit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the same reason that it's so it was so difficult to start a biotech company after Theranos blew up. Right. And it was especially difficult for like women to start biotech companies.

58:01They kind of poisoned the well for everybody. It's a profound like disservice to humanity, I think, because there are plenty of people who want to make real things that are really good. And they have a harder time because of some idiot who's pushing some vaporware. And I think that really fucking sucks.

58:20Ellis:So speaking of company building, Daniel, I know your last company was a really cool thing. I mean, it was called Any Distance, a running app, beautiful design, good name, good swag. It wins the Apple Design Award. It aligns with exactly what you would want culturally, the rise of running and the rise of high performance, high fashion running. And then it's over. And I saw in your post, you said, due to a fairly common combination of classic startup failure modes. Can you tell us any more about that and what you're doing differently this time? Yeah. I mean, I don't want to get into super details there, but it was a combination of co-founder disagreements, which are the most common reason that startups fail.

59:07It was a combination of not quite finding product market fit. um i think we like lean too far into the twitter audience angle which is inherently limited it's a very small set of people you know we're launching this product on twitter now but i cannot fucking wait to get on instagram and start pushing it there because that's where the real audience is um and i'm a solar solo founder this time which is really great um you know i've i've done this a few times before i feel like i know how to start companies logistically so it's been really refreshing to be the only one in the driver's seat on a project like this.

59:44Ellis:So you're saying you're doing the Kanye, I fired my manager because I cannot be managed. Is that what he said? Yes, sir. That's one of the best quotes. Well, now that you're out of the running app game, are the running apps real? Is it a fantasy? I mean, I think the running apps work. Running apps are a very crowded category. I think that was the other problem that we had is that You know, there are tens of thousands of apps that have taken advantage of every possible sensor that you could use on the device. So, you know, like short of making your own hardware, I think that category is one of the most saturated app categories out there.

1:00:20So it really became a brand play. And I think we failed on posting content on platforms other than Twitter and creating a brand around that. We were kind of just relying on Apple to do our marketing for us. and that's not the way to do it. I also think, like I mentioned earlier, people download fewer and fewer apps nowadays. They're satisfied with the apps they already have. So it's a really, really, really tough pitch. It's not like 2011 where you launch a new app and everybody freaks out about it.

1:00:54Daniel Kuntz:I mean, a theme we've been talking about on the show with Eugenia from Wabi, et cetera, is software is just getting super personal. uh i think it was it was one of the callson brothers that were saying recently it's software is going to be like pizza you know like made fresh and disposable and personal um you you think maybe on that i i don't know about that vision um i think people said the same thing about c plus plus back in like 1980 whatever you know c plus plus finally that's the average person like talk to computers and not write assembly anymore uh i i think this is a vision that's just been rehashed over and over and over again.

1:01:30And I think the truth is most people want to get on Instagram and scroll until they die. And I think that's unfortunately like kind of true. I don't think the average person, like they might have a vague idea of an app, but I don't think it's like fully flushed out. Like idea wise, you know, assuming that the agent can make it perfectly and do whenever you want. I don't think the average person has ideas.

1:01:53Ellis:I think there's also just the idea that people like to use and watch really thoughtfully made things by artists, right? Like there's actually on, if you're only thinking of it from a utility point of view, you're like, yeah, I can make my own app. And if it didn't exist, then great. But if I had the choice, there's a reason designers exist, right? Like there are non-obvious insights about how to design software that the average person can't really apprehend, right? Or brands for that matter. Yeah, or brands. And so you like hand them something that's really, really well designed and then like, okay, this is what I want.

1:02:31People don't really know what you want until you show it to them. It's true.

1:02:35Ellis:Yeah. I'm also very happy to have your C++ reference on the show. In tech, we do not have very many fresh references running around on a daily basis. It's usually some combination of think different and bicycle for the mind. That's all we know in our world. or at least people aren't talking about her anymore, right? I feel like I haven't heard about her in a minute. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think Spike Jonze was not really okay with the tech industry interpretation of that. I think he was more like trying to tell a good story and the AI was kind of a convenient plot element that let him tell that story.

1:03:13And I think everybody in tech, of course, they like completely misinterpreted it. I also think the bicycle of the mind has become more of a fleshlight of the mind. And I kind of wonder what, you know, like when I watched Johnny at Figma Config, you know, last year or two years ago, I could detect a lot of shame in his voice and a lot of like, you know, desire to rectify the situation. You know, I wonder what Steve would think if he was still alive. And I wonder how these people who created the technologies we use today really, really interpret what has happened. Not saying that it's entirely their fault, but yeah, I think it's not a bicycle.

1:03:58It's not a bicycle anymore. That's very clear.

1:04:01Ellis:It's funny to think, I think even while Steve was alive, Apple was experimenting with Facebook integration at the OS level for a couple of years there. Do you guys remember that? Yeah, I don't know about that. I've had people tell me that Facebook had talks with Apple and... Oh, no, I mean, it was in the Context app. It was in the Context app. Yeah, they integrated it a little bit, but Facebook had this angle where they wanted to have apps within apps. And Steve was very not dumb for that, for obvious reasons.

1:04:30Daniel Kuntz:Guys, no, Zuck and Jobs were friends. He was almost kind of like a mentor to Mark when Mark was young, before they did ads. Wow, sources.news. I did not know this at all. Everything that Zuck wanted to do in early Facebook days, Steve did not want to do. And that was mainly the apps within apps thing, for obvious reasons. They wanted to control distribution. But they were doing iOS integration for a little bit. And then Twitter came in. What could have been?

1:04:59Ellis:Yeah. What made that relationship work, Alex? Do you know? I mean, I feel like they're both unbelievably curious people, which I think has emerged as one of Steve's most important virtues, including in the words of a Johnny Ive letter I wrote the other day, or read the other day, talking about Steve Jobs' insatiable curiosity. But I feel like Zuck was curious about completely different things. Like Zuck, I think, was curious on like how to make what people want the most. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think Zuck has as good taste as Jobs.

1:05:33Daniel Kuntz:No, I think where they probably saw eye to eye was like being platform builders and being ruthless business strategists. That's true. Which they both certainly are and were. Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, like, I think Apple is very intentionally like not made a social network because of the like, you know, there's a lot of gray areas around making something like that. And I'm glad that they haven't done it.

1:05:58Ellis:Do not speak ill of iTunes Ping or am I dating myself? I don't even remember that, dude. I wasn't even alive.

1:06:05Daniel Kuntz:iTunes Ping! You weren't alive during Ping. Jesus, I feel so old. Um, as our youth, uh, hot tub correspondent, do you think Apple is not relevant in the youth culture anymore? Uh, like they were, I liked what I've, um, what I've seen recently out of them. I think they posted some cool tech talks recently for the Neo. Yeah. For the Neo. I like that. They're making colorful devices again. I think that's really, really cool. Um, I'm excited for Steve LeMay's leadership. I'm really thrilled that Alan Dye is gone. Um, so, you know, I, I have high hopes for Apple. I think they're going to make it. I mean, everybody has an iPhone.

1:06:44Everybody has AirPods. I think they're still very, very relevant, but they're relevant as a hegemon and not really so much as a tastemaker like they used to be. Who is the tastemaker in tech? Good question. Good question. I mean, that's what we would like to be. I think there's not an obvious tastemaker in hardware. Maybe I could point to teenage engineering, but they only make music devices, but they are a reference for everybody. I could maybe point to nothing, but their primary market is India, not the United States. So I think there is a gap for a hardware tastemaker. And that's what Creature is.

1:07:19Ellis:Guys, the tastemaker is me. And I have a lot to show. I have a lot to show and tell to close out the show. I have so much to show. Hand me lots of money and I will make the taste. Okay, well, I'm going to show my show and tell really quick for the Instagram reels and shorts. I have my Sony Pocket Station. Yo, that's awesome. I love the transparent vibe. I'm so happy that's coming. I have my Sega Dreamcast VMU. Wow. Which you could have a little pet on, which is the inspiration you didn't know you needed. Yeah, you brought out all the big guns. I have my friend pendant that's been now going to put you under hypnosis.

1:08:00Ellis:What is that? I have my nothing earbuds, also transparent, because I'm that guy. And let's bring it back a little further. I've got more. I've got more. I've got my analog pocket. Let's go. Peak design. I've got my play date. Hell yeah. Which I can't see unless it is the absolute perfect lighting conditions. I have my original Snapchat spectacles. Yo, I have spectacles too. I love spectacles. The packaging was so cool. They did this kind of soft thing. it was like uh yeah it was like a tennis ball cube yeah so fucking cool i love spectacles and last but not least i have the really slick 3d spectacles that kind of got i don't know forgotten about oh i remember those cool too yeah how are those uh they hurt a little bit but i have some good some good videos you know what was actually cool about these is that snap partnered with a company to print little lenticular stickers of your 3d images cool which is like ostensibly exactly what you'd want to do i mean i think you know evan understands toys i think at a deep level but yeah snapchat the toy right when you have 450 million dau though it's it's like real fucking hard to try and create that scale with the hardware as well right any kind of toy thing you make is going to be highly opinionated.

1:09:30And once you get to that scale, it's, um, it becomes increasingly difficult to be that opinionated.

1:09:36Ellis:Well, so why do you think last question star boy is likely to work? I mean, I think everybody's going to want one. I think it doesn't currently exist. Um, I think like hanging out in New York and showing it to random people who are not in tech whatsoever. Um, they're like, Oh my God, that's the cutest fucking thing. I want it. Bag charms are really hot right now. I think collabs are going to be a huge angle for us. Every fashion brand out there wants to have more of a tech kind of integration. Every fashion lab has some hardware AI kind of lab, but they all don't really know what they're doing.

1:10:17Supreme Starboy? Supreme Starboy would be great. Our dream collaborator is Homer. We would love to do at home or frank ocean star boy i think that would be super super manifest there's got to be

1:10:28Daniel Kuntz:someone listening to this show that knows frank so we'll manifest a frank connection for you let's

1:10:33Ellis:let's manifest it do you think the snapchat spectacles and the humane ai pin and google glass on the runway over the years helped or hurt them i think for humane it was i'm not really sure I didn't really like their rollout in general. It felt a bit too inaccessible, I think. Like, obviously, we would like Starboy on the runway, but it needs to have more of a silly down-to-earth kind of vibe. Like, we use the brand Kid Super as a big reference for the kind of runway vibe we want. It's just, like, incredibly whimsical. It's not like, hey, this is some unobtainable New York Paris thing that only models wear.

1:11:16We don't really want to be like that. I think the humane was also it's just too much of a tech product. Like it's it's an intimidating product to wear. It's it's a$700 like camera right here that connects to your phone and projects on your hand. And it's like, I don't know, I think it it's almost like the same vibe as like carrying around a big DSLR instead of carrying around like a vintage film camera. like photographers talk about this all the time how when they do street photography you you want to carry like a tiny little film camera because it disarms people you don't want to carry like a huge fucking like like canon thing right so i and i think the humane ai pen is is the canon thing

1:11:56Ellis:unfortunately please hold while my laser scans your retinas thank you yeah while my ai laser camera scans you and talks out loud like that's kind of terrifying you know like we we don't want to be terrifying i get the terrifying is kind of like edgy and cool but um i i think there's there's like a limit to it like it gets a lot of attention but i'm not really sure it converts into people actually liking it and buying it it's just rage bait well i'm a bit terrified that you've been in this hot tub this whole time are you feeling okay i'm feeling fine it's actually really cold out here okay yeah i was gonna say before you faint uh and then we have a problem on our hands maybe we'll let you go back to your launch as well.

1:12:39Ellis:I'm sure you have a lot of DMs and emails to attend to. But thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, I can't wait to get the dopamine rush. I can't wait to get that dopamine rush of Twitter notifications. But yeah, thank you guys.

1:12:56Ellis:And that's it for this week's show. Thanks to Daniel for coming on straight from the hot tub. If you like this show, don't forget to like and subscribe everywhere you get your podcasts.

1:13:05Daniel Kuntz:I could never stay on a hot tub that long. We are access.showonline. You can find us in video at accesspod on YouTube. You especially want to do that this week.

1:13:16Ellis:We would also love a five-star review or thumbs up and share with a friend or digital friend, even. Or an AI friend. You can find my newsletter at sources.news. And you can find me at Hamburger on Twitter and at meaning.company for your startup storytelling needs.

1:13:33Daniel Kuntz:Access is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and this show is produced by Hooked Creators. Bye. Bye.

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