Hi everybody. Today I talk with Darius Mons, serial entrepreneur, designer, developer, and a billion other things. He is someone who I've literally known for decades, so it's great to catch up with him in real time and talk about his path into tech, entrepreneurship, and his latest ventures. Along the way, we talk about life, cars, and a whole lot more. This is going to be a fun one you don't want to miss. So, let's get started. All right, Darius. Well, it is great to meet you. I've known you for what seems like a lifetime. Probably over 25, maybe even 20 over 20 years, I I feel like I've probably known you online and we met in person, you know, in 15 years ago and here we are again,

you know, meeting in real time after all this time. Yeah, it's not frequent

enough, but I appreciate you reaching out and it would be nice to reconnect. Actually, there's a time in my life when when we first met where it felt so creative and so fun and then there's been 20 years which we can catch up on. And then because of the co-pilot cursor nature of AI agents, I'm back feeling very similar to how I felt 20 years ago. So, it'll be fun for us to explore. It

it will be fun for explore because my my respectable day job part of my life does pretty much revolve around you know this cursor AI based developer assistant kind of thing. So we can touch upon that as well. But I mean you still seem pretty creative right now by the way. So yeah I mean looking at your background you still seem like you're doing really creative things you know just based on the sheer color and things I'm seeing there.

Well, I mentioned this in a few places before, but this is everything I wanted when I was a kid. I have all the toys that my brothers wouldn't let me play with. Um, I have adult money now. It's not that much money to buy the things that sort of make your inner child happy. Then I do have young kids now. And, you know, some things they can't touch, but most of it they play with. Like I when I was a kid, I read all of the Garfield books. And I remember every once in a while we got to drive an hour to the bookstore and I could see if there was a new Garfield there. The collection is so disorganized because my two youngest are

constantly in here pulling another one, rereading them. And so um that's a fun thing for me. And then an unintentional sort of byproduct of this room is my maybe is my 10-year-old was like, "Dad, you have everything that you wanted when you were my age." And like I hope that sticks somewhere for her of like, yeah, go get it. You make that life. Um, and then yeah, the part of it too is everybody's so serious these days and maybe I've become successful enough to be able to be a little bit more myself or not to worry as much about it.

Yeah. No, I hear you. You know, I don't know if my camera shows it, but you know, I have like, you know, like various things and collections from like so many years. There's like stuff I've been dragging around like, you know, like he as well. whimsical, but I'm like, same reason. I'm like, you know, at this point, what's the worst they can do? I'm like, not like me because, you know, I have like I used to have an Iron Man cut. It's actually just like off the screen over here. My cat knocked it over, you know? So, just like being yourself is like the the greatest luxury we can have these days cuz it's just so hard to be authentic.

There is both the like difficulty of that and I think a lot of the online you know what you created I don't know how intentionally you created it was like such a special original place you know the where a rag tag group of weird makers of the internet could find each other and you know there's something so fun about the early internet because it was a about being yourself but also because of usernames and personas it wasn't and so you kind of got to be whomever I think I went through a series of usernames. Not all maybe. Yeah, at one point it was pretty boy and I maybe I really that wanted that was aspirational. I don't know if it was true, but it was aspirational. But you

could sort of, you know, be these characters and have this fun. And now, not only is I think a lack of that social media makes you sort of fake being I don't know, maybe not who you want to be, but who you think you should be. And I don't know how healthy that is. I think the consequence was much greater from what it was when back in you and I were online as well. Because back then, you know, you could do stuff online. It never actually impacted your real life. Like no one could even search for things effectively. Now you're just like one small app away from someone like having your entire social media history, you know, analyzed by an AI assistant going like, "Yeah, this person

is interested in all of these things. This person's not just in these things. They do this one thing like 30 years ago. We can't work with them because, you know, of so- and so." I think the the the stakes are so much higher. It's like almost scary to the point where like you can't be hybrid. You can either be fully online and be yourself or you can be fully anonymous. But any in between state, yours is going to be like, you know, open itself like unnecessary hurt. Well, there's something there's a thing that people would say about like the difficulty of lying is then having to sort of maintain two realities now. Like the more that you lie, you have to maintain them.

I feel like most of my internet persona is me, you know, I don't have to spend a lot of cognitive energy managing who I am and sort of just how I am. Um, that hasn't been getting as much engagement on Twitter these days, but like whatever, you know, I'm spending less energy on it, so it's fine. Yeah. No, I

agree. And also having kids, I have a seven-year-old and it's always interesting cuz like once they get to a certain point, you kind of start thinking about how you were when you were at that same age and you kind of see yourself through them and their interest and so on. I think it's one of

the most fascinating things I never ever imagined I've ever experienced. They are I we have three of them and there's like that they're all different that they're all you can see those parts of you or the things you wanted to be but they all chose sort of different strengths and then have these challenges as well. Um it it's been fun for me as like a maker. My oldest is such an incredible performer. I not comfortable in like performing. I think I've always taken extroverted roles as CEO and I have to like I have to play that person.

That is where I do bear cognitive burden of I'm pretending to be extroverted. I'm really not. She just doesn't have that. She's just such a performer. Loves to be on stage. It's the other two, the youngers that seem like the builders, the makers. My youngest who is seven as well has like an idea booklet. He's constantly making like full-on comics. And there's just a a seed that I see there as like a future builder maker that like focus creative time all by himself. And then again, we'll come back to this like AI unlock. But it's similar with them. They've been my middle was doing Scratch and it was cool to see her. She was trying to get this game to work. I was trying to troubleshoot with

her and then she got enough knowledge to then troubleshoot on her own which is like that's how you learn everything now. anything's available. But there's a part of me that wants to jump straight from scratch to to a cursor like just build actual things. Now I think if you understand this does this, but here's how I could improve it. Maybe less of knowing the language will matter in the future. Oh

yeah. I think we're rapidly getting to a point where it's like all you need is an idea and then the output could be anything. It could be a block of text. It could be a song. It could be a video file or it could be what we're calling an app today. You know, I think that whole world, it's inevitable and I think we're getting there sooner than we any of us expected. Well, that was the

thing. So, when 20 whatever that was years ago on your forum, um it felt like, you know, because I was a hybrid unicorn of the era, I could design and code. I just build anything I wanted. And things were pretty simple back then. And so it was also you could build and launch something in a day because it really just were limited by the features. It was simple. And then in my career, you know, I got more experience. I got to be the leaders of companies and I just be like I'm not the best engineer. Somebody else should be that.

But over 20 years, I just haven't touched code in a long time. And we went through a phase with my current company which went through the YC summer 24 batch building an AI companion for kids. a number of reasons why we pivot pivoted out of that, but my technical co-founder and I split at that time. We're good friends. We have coffee every Wednesday. And I really wanted to go pursue this passion I have around cars and build a community for auto enthusiasts. And he really wants to solve like kind of frontier AI tech. I'm like, well, that's not really the same thing. Let's just split. But then I'm like, well, I can't build anymore. I'm like stuck. And we were trying to find either kind of

contract engineers, bring on full-time. We ended up using uh an offshore team. And it just was really depressing because I I know what we could fix here, but I just have to compromise my feature so that it's something shippable that still takes like a week or more to ship. And it just felt like being in quicksand. And I had enough founder friends like why aren't you just like vibe coding this thing? You build it. I'm like because I don't know what I'm, you know, I don't want to get stuck. And then I finally was like, you know what?

I'm just going to do it. And I really feel like a unlock. I feel unshackled. Now my problem is I just need to finish getting the rides app out, but I want to build like three or four other things. Like I am building things while I'm building things. And so the danger now is really the focus because I'm unlimited. It feels like

Yeah. I think the it's all about abstraction. you know, back when we were doing Flash and so on, it was interesting because there's a lot going on under the covers. We had no idea about it. There we were like drawing something, you know, animating, making movie clips, adding some code, and the end it all kind of just worked out. And then you go to a real programming, like a real serious programming language, you're like, wait, even getting hello world up is like so much work. It takes so much effort. I'd say like what you've gone through the last 20 years is actually not any way like you know disconnected from what anyone else been coding regularly feels as well because writing apps has gotten very difficult

because when I'd say when flash died developers pretty much got full control over everything and everything became like complicated build tools and terminals windows and so on and then you're like wait why is it so complicated why can't it just be like the way it was and I think the revenge of flash and revenge of that world where things didn't have to be that hard is actually AI so I I think like vibe coding is going to be really be the future just like you saw cobalt developers right still writing code from like 40 years ago they're still doing that that world will still exist but I think the future though is going to be like a lot of us just not writing code the way we used to but by using natural

language and just going from like you know describing in pictures or text or voice and then having apps be built how the app is built what it's using behind the scenes and so on I don't care anymore you know just make it safe make it secure make it scalable here's my budget you know don't do something on cloud that's going to cost me like, you know, a ridiculously large bill because five people visited it. You know, just do those kind of basic things. I think as the models get better, we're probably not too far away from like that actually becoming more of a reality than like even today. I wonder when the some of

the stigma is so funny that you just bring Flash up because I was never smart enough to get things to do what they needed with the code. It'd all be like key frame hacks. like I'm making it do what I need to do so I can make it look like too advanced little motion thing but I wasn't really programming it and it feels very similar to oh you're vibe coding that is like a you know derogatory way to describe that rather than like no I'm just letting this coding agent that is much smarter than me about writing the current code which I you know again I haven't written I was writing cold fusion it's been a long time since that was available But I understand the architecture. I

understand how the technology works. I was talking to another friend cuz it seems like a lot of my friends now are sort of building the tools for the tool makers. And I'm a good sounding board for them because like I'm really smart and I'm also really dumb because I don't know any of the modern languages. I don't even know really how are we technically deploying things. Where is it going? Why is the app being I just haven't had to pay attention to that. I had really great technical partners and my focus is on, you know, user acquisition, growth, the UX of things.

And so it's almost the same. I just get to continue to make, but my iteration loop is near instant. I go, I was building uh for rides where people share photos of their cars and you're adding your ride and attaching images and you know, I have to we're doing moderation so you can't upload, you know, bad images to the platform. And so I reject them. I was like, I'm going to show you that I rejected it, but I'm going to put the wasted graphic from GTA over it.

Like, I don't need to do that, but it's just fun. Like, I it took me 30 seconds to do that. And so, we overoptimize for engagement. And I don't think conspiratorally if your goal is to build a product that people engage with, you just set the highle engagement parameters. But unfortunately, the most engaging things for people are things that generally like piss them off. And so I'm going to show you the thing that people like you engage the most with, which is often out of like some pushed buttons happening. And so it's just the machine that built that is now kind of out of control. And social I don't really enjoy it much anymore. It's not fun. I don't know if I'll be successful with it, but part of the

point of rides is to like make that internet fun again. I want to build a Kirupa for cars. I want that place where bunch of weirdos met on the internet and had like a lot of fun and built real friendships that you I'm still in touch with a bunch of the members from 20 years ago. So, I'd like to see that return. You know, you talked about these whiplash or these generational changes. Maybe there's this you're there for fun and enjoyment, not dopamine anger buttons being pushed.

Yeah. I know it's a social communities especially for like smaller scale like you know introspace ones it's tough not because you know the idea isn't there technology isn't there that or that you and I aren't passionate about it you know they're massive companies whose entire goal is to make sure that all the few minutes you have in a day are spent on their platform and not you know on anything else so if you have any anything remotely of like I'm interacting with one human another human if it's you know professional related content you must go to LinkedIn and LinkedIn will do its best to keep you there. If it has to do with like, you know, small bite-siz updates, you're going to Twitter X or threads and you go

there. If it's visual, you go to Instagram and the systems are designed where back then you create something, you share with your friends on AOL, instant messenger, ICQ or whatever, you know, that's how they got most information. You post a link on it be indexed by Yahoo or Google or so on. Nowadays, if you share a link or try to get distribution, any format, the moment you post a link to any of these networks, they immediately like down boost your content. Like, no. Like, no, no, no, you're not going to see this content ever because you're taking someone away from here. Oh, but you have a cool idea. Why don't you post in our particular part of the corner of it? I I think that's the hardest part because

you know you got like you know across all of these things all this you know vibrant communities that are like you know all these areas they've all kind of like you know been pigeon holed into like four or five major networks that kind of control it. Reddit is still managing to, you know, maintain its own independence. But even their days, I feel like, are slowly getting down because, you know, you have people in all these larger social networks whose primary goal is like, oh, there's a vertical for gardening, there's a vertical for cars, a vertical for neighborhoods. Let's make that a core priority and put all of our resources in getting all of our people to use it. And we have distribution. We have at least,

you know, half three, four billion people use a combination of like the services from all these products. Let's funnel them up to over there. And it's a it's an uphill battle. Yeah. There's

like I've been through YC a few times now and so some of their mantras are just get like burned into your brain. But the do things that don't scale and talk to your customers. And why I think Color Lovers was ultimately successful was, you know, I just built it for people to check out. And I and they weren't really intentionally my customers, but they were all other designers on your forum and it was, you know, I built Hot or Not for Color cuz I thought it was funny. You know, you like this color, you don't. And then some member, it'd be fun to go backtrack to who it was, was like, "Let us make combinations." that would be useful. I'm like, that is smart. And then I made

five color palettes and then that really is how that all unfolded. But the initial users cared. And I think what's hard about potentially a product hunt or YC's launch, you just get a lot of tire kickers. They're not really your customers. They're not really particularly interested. You kind of need that tribe of evangelical people who enjoy it to do that early building with. And I think that's lost a little bit in everything that's happening. Yeah. But I mean I think the you have the big thing going for you which is that you care about a lot and you're the customer zero in some cases. And as long as you're passionate, your energy shines through that, you know, I would never discount that. You know, that by itself

plays a you know a huge role in like helping I don't know get other people excited about something you're doing. And even if people aren't excited, you're just enjoying the motion of doing this. That's going to naturally at some point attract other people. was it going to be like a lot of people or not? That's often like, you know, that's where like the luck part of it sometimes comes in. But overall though, like as long as you feel like you're learning something and having fun along the way, I'd say that that plays a big role.

Well, there was the two thing you mentioned before too about like uh the engagements and what they're built for. When we were building Genie, the intent originally was just like a safe place for kids to have access to the wealth of information that the internet has. Imagine a kid could ask a question about anything. it's answered in an age appropriate way. We saw kids being super creative. We saw kids being able to find something positive and pretty dark otherwise times. But what you ultimately compete with is whatever the most addictive thing they have access to. And then we had this real fundamental philosophical, do I want to compete and be more addictive than Roblox or something and with a kid. And it was more of like, oh no, I don't I'm

unwilling to compete in that. I don't want to win that battle. Um, I'd rather go focus on something else where, you know, if I can be the most addictive car community where people like adults are making decisions and they're having fun, then okay, I'm all right with that. But with kids, there's like an extra burden of responsibility and just didn't feel right. Yeah. I mean, you know, sleeping well at night is a it's one of the many underrated pleasures that I feel like, you know, people sacrifice unnecessarily because, you know, at the end of the day, like what does it all what's the what's the matter? What's the point of everything we do, right? You know, if we can't be, you know, content and look in

the mirror and be like, "Yeah, you know, I'm happy with what I just did." You know, it all just kind of gets boring and dull after a while. I did realize with when we were sort of figuring out what to do next, it was like a hurdle for me to get over in my brain to build one for myself. My genie was kid-oriented. Previous company before that, Brave Care was children's pediatric care and I care a lot about that. I've been on the board of a Makea-Wish chapter. And so it felt like, you know, one I believe that the more successful or wealthy one becomes, you sort of have a societal obligation to contribute back.

And I think I just needed to shift to like, well, I I've achieved some level and so therefore I have to continue sort of making that a major part of what I'm doing versus almost giving myself to be a little bit selfish to say, you know, I build something for me. I would really enjoy this and I will continue to be a good person and I'll give to all these causes and I just how I'm wired I will give back. But it felt like a betrayal almost to say I'm going to build this one for me. But then there was something really freeing in it too of like it does feel good. I am my customer. I know what I want. I will enjoy this. So you know it's the messy

decision- making of a founder. Yeah. And you know you've been a founder quite a number of times. So you know I know you mentioned you know a few of the

companies already a few times but let's go back in time. You know what made you decide to go down this path of both tech but also founding companies and then becoming a serial entrepreneur. I think

one of them it's very obvious in hindsight now because I've done one thing and I've tried a couple times. I'm just not a very good employee. Um, I'm just wired uh that entrepreneurial, you know, somewhat, you know, like the rules don't apply to me. I I can see a better way to do something. I really value my individual impact post exit. I'll jump and come back. When we moved home to Hawaii after we had sold Creative Market, you know, I had a bit of time to where I could sort of not work. I was really depressed after a couple years of doing that because I like hard work of all kinds, but just working on a fence for a day felt like hard work, but like once

you've built at the internet scale of impact, it just was deeply unfulfilling. So in hindsight I know these things but I think early on the things where I just wanted to make and build and I had ambitions and the internet provided that ability for me where I could make I myself could build a whole company and do something and make it. So I didn't I wasn't intentional about starting like color lovers my first company. I had written lots of business plans for other companies and I think I always wanted to have that role. Color lovers just sort of unwound. I started it with your community, the first users. I then did go to Thailand uh after the Boxing Day tsunami. I think I launched Color

Lovers. I want to say in like early December, like the beginning of December, the tsunami happened and then in January, I went to Thailand to just volunteer. And being not a good developer, I set the like uh primary ID table uh to a small int. So 255 people signed up and then no more could sign up cuz the database wouldn't allow it. So I had the maybe one of the first like limited betas where then the rest of the members were like, "How do I get in?" I'm like, "You can't get in." You know, like only the only the 200 got in. But it created enough little hype that then I came back and I would work on it. And again, I never knew what the business

was. It really wasn't a business. Um I was unwilling to shove ads into it and to make money. So I lost money for basically a decade. But um when I moved to San Francisco where my still girlfriend but also wife now uh lived with that was very un out of context joke this idea of like my last girlfriend still my girlfriend. It's been my wife for 15 years, but uh she lived there and I was like, I'm going to move to San Francisco and kind of do all this, but I was wearing my color lover shirt cuz I do feel like as a startup founder, wearing your brand all the time helps. And Paul Graham saw it and was like, I love color lovers like you

should come do YC. And so that was this like huge change agent for me and getting into Silicon Valley and learning so much more about like the business of startups. And what we realized was it was less about the color. It was about making design simple and accessible to everyone. And what we saw from people creating patterns and other things with our tools was there wasn't a great marketplace. No offense to Kalis and the Invato network, but Kis had Theme Forest and Audio Jungle and there was just like a federated approach. And our view was what if there was like an Amazon, a digital Etsy, like one marketplace that had all the stuff you were looking for.

And so we launched Creative Market. I had been broke literally building color lovers for about 9 years. Creative Market was an overnight success. It's like acquired 11 months after we launched it. And so if you just look at that window of time, it's like woohoo. Like well, I bled for a long time before that. Yeah, that's partially my fault in hindsight. You know, opportunity cost sunk cost fallacy. I should have killed it sooner or something or changed it, but you get kind of the vanity metrics. So, we had like, you know, 5 million visitors a month or something. So, there's like a ton of traffic there. It just was painful. You also got indirect validation. I feel like Adobe with cooler I think was like, you know,

trying to compete with the you guys. And so I'm like, you know, he had a hit product so good that a large company was like, you know, I'm going to do the same exact thing. There's a fun thing of being this old in the internet game is going and I don't mean this when I say it. I genuinely don't know like did I create the five color palette because I see everybody use it now and I'm like I didn't intentionally do that. I just I thought five was good and now everybody uses five. But yeah, I didn't mean to. I

think I do think so. you know, like, you know, I was like always eager to try all these things out. And before you had color lovers, I don't think there were too many. I mean, you get physical paint swatches at like, you know, your Lowe's or Home Depot. And those individual cards might have like four or five colors in it, but nobody connected a dot between like the physical world and the online world, much less the community aspect of it, which is like I can share a color, you can take my color and like it and comment on it, remix, and so on.

I think it's kind of like a lot of great ideas are like there's a good story here, but then I'm going to scale it for the current era, the modern times and what new technology allows you to do. I do think it probably the first one of that. And I still look back and I go, there weren't too many better solutions even today. You know, there's like coolers.co, which is like, you know, good, but I'm like that's basically color lovers just with bigger, you know, swatches. That's it. Well, that was the other the other story in there is that there was somebody else who was doing color and it was color schemer which was desktop color software. No offense to Aaron. I thought it was unwieldly and

lots of stuff was happening in it, but he was very good at smart at building software. He had a like a blog post that I basically stole and made better. And we met each other early like we knew each other and it was like, "Hey, maybe we should partner." I met him at a subway in Boston and it was like no. And then I think a year or two later we met again and at that time it was like it would be better if we just did this together and so much again like sort of having your forum was this big thing uh moving to San Francisco with YC and Aaron's another one of those of like I just don't think it would have been what

it had been instead of seeing each others as competitors was I think if we just did this together we could be much more successful. still one of my closest friends uh YC partner now he's been there for a number of years um and so just I often echo that to other people like I don't sort of worry about the scarcity you look for the abundance in things um so sort of postexited creative market then have built a couple other things since then the other lesson learned I dropped out of college to work at a web design firm which is how I learned to code and the founder of that has been another very good friend for still I would we had breakfast this morning. uh he had built template

websites for eye doctor offices and was visiting me right when kind of creative market was getting acquired and I was like man you inside this whole terrible website builder there's a place for people to order contact lenses if you just strip that out like Dollar Shave Club is like direct to consumer is kind of going to be a thing and so he just you know I helped him start it but to his credit Travis ran that very well launched it built site box into a big thing and then was acquired by Johnson Johnson for much more than Creative Market was acquired for. But it was like because I helped them start it and I had founder shares, I made basically as much on that one as

I did the one I ran for 10 years myself. So in there is probably an argument for VCs like yeah just bet on good people and help them. Um but then yeah the other uh we did Brave Care which was pediatric. Uh so went through YC the first time with creative market, went through the second time with Brave Care, started a healthcare company before a global pandemic. Uh so four and a half years after that was just insane. We raised a ton of money. We operated five clinics in uh two states. Then ultimately like just couldn't survive, you know? It's like too much either business, technical, whatever, debt, legacy. It just couldn't make it through. So that was pretty painful to wind down. And then we went back through

YC with Genie which is same company now pivoted in to rides. No. No. Very cool. And you know you mentioned that you know you were not a great employee and which is why you want to do this. You had this independent streak to it. I'd say a lot of people have the exact same mindset but I think it's your added layer of being able to like identify good people to work with and partner with and so on that made it you know separate. like if like you mentioned there's so many key moments that you said like were you know critical like I do think meeting your co-founder for example would have been a huge part of it and you know and I do think like those things are often like

play an outsized role in success you if

you look at like if you go if it's a multiverse right it's a version of you you know that is did not meet you know your co-founder and a version of you that did how would the world have been different you never know it it could have been like you would have got this idea on your own and you still been like successful you It's like hard to figure that out. I there's a part of me that realiz so when in the town I small town in Hawaii I grew up with there was basically two schools and at the time the one I went to is artsy fartsy. You didn't really have to go to class like you know people smoking weed in the bushes not going to class like it was

really not good academically but it let you kind of do whatever you wanted. So I was doing my own internet classes like I was, you know, it was great for me with mo motivated self-starter. And then the other school in town was uh much more rigorous academically. It was a much better school. And there was one of the years maybe sophomore year a buddy and I were like maybe we would transfer. Um, and I there it's hard to see it because of how I am now, but I think the same things that make me how I am could have been the other parallel me, which was that highly rigorous, you know, corporate detail orient something, but like that version for me just got wired in a different direction. So, I do think

it was in there. Now, I don't think that's that one's not capable of surviving in this current body. Um, but you know, it's also I think the founder thing just romanticizes founder stuff a lot. Um, I've been very lucky as a founder as well. I worked hard for it, but luck is a major part of it. I have founder friends who are smarter than me, more talented than me, worked harder than me, and just haven't had that exit yet. Whereas there's been other people who did work well for other people and have been incredibly successful. So I think the founder thing gets glamorized maybe more than it should but yeah no I mean I think luck plays a huge role in so many parts of our lives and even the

best of circumstances aren't fully within your control you know where you know every little thing is kind of like the butterfly effect. Every little thing kind of compounds over a period of time and any one of them, you know, was one of those things that, you know, it's having to be the right place at the right time or born to the right set of parents, you know, born in the right environment, met the right friends and so on. And those little things, you know, you may not realize it, but overall they add up and they could change the trajectory of your life, your career and all that in so many ways. And so, yeah, the like maximizing luck is probably the the most important skill

that you can figure out. And a side effect of that often is hard work, persistence, you know, don't be a jerk to people. Those are all things of it. But ultimately, luck plays in my always I always give it an outside support. Well, I think one I I don't think acknowledging the privileges one has takes any away from me. Like I clearly was born, you know, at a time that was great to a family that was able to buy me a computer. Like there's all these things that go, "Wow, I really benefited from this." But it doesn't diminish how hard I worked or anything after that.

And then also acknowledging the luck like the people who say I'm self-made. I don't think anyone is actually self-made. The your parents, the people you went to a school, do you sell a product? Does that product go on the roads? Then the road pavers are part of your success. Like there's it feels silly to sort of defend oneself for validation rather saying in a world where opportunities be could be created, I was successful at creating one. Great, that's enough. The framing there is fine.

Yeah. No, I completely agree. And the thing is also very interesting is that I I use video game analogies all the time. You know, I used to give use it back then. I don't play video games anymore. I don't have time for it, but I do like, you know, keep up with the news and so on. And for me, like it's like the ultimate role playing game. You know, the starting character you have, you know, you choose. You don't get to choose it. You know, you don't get to choose like, you know, you're going to be a warrior, a wizard, or like an archer. You don't get to choose that.

you're given that you know whatever you have at that point it's what it is and then a large part of it is from there it's up to you on like making viable choices but you can't discount the fact that you started off with a certain you know character class and therefore you have natural advantages and disadvantages as well how well can you identify them how can you partner with people who can balance out your advantages and disadvantages in the way you create a more cohesive puzzle piece and things like that I I think that self-awareness is one of those things where it took me a very long time to fully realize that part of it. And once

I realized like, you know, there are things I'm good at, and things I'm not good at, and I shouldn't be afraid of leaning in on things I'm good at. And even if those things I'm good at were because of just my inherent, you know, like my situations and things like that, I'm going to lean in on it. And I I think that's one of the hardest things because you are taught from an early age, it's all about hard work. It's not about luck. It's everyone has to like, you know, do all these things to be successful. I'm like maybe, but not really though. Like there's a min bar, then there's the ceiling above which is like limitless if you are willing to take, you know, care of your unfair

advantages in some ways. Is your seven-year-old have you identified like there's there's a a special skill set, a special focus, something that like sort of they get gravitationally pulled towards. Yeah, she loves to create stuff. She loves to write. She loves to read. She's persistent, you know, she loves playing music. She's very good at playing the piano. Like I'm like I don't know how she got that good at I played the piano when I was younger but I was I was awful. My wife plays the violin and you know but you know she stopped after a while as well but she just has this natural thing where she just like gets it. I'm like okay well that's fantastic.

And so yeah so she you know she enjoys the more structured programs you tried like the Montasuri style of casual laidback and she didn't like it you know and so we took her to more of an academic rigorous kind of a thing. She's like she she loves it. I'm like, okay, you know, very different than how I would have typically thrived, but whatever floats your boat, you know, so we just keep trying different things to see like, you know, what does she gravitate to and not to and so on. But it's also an interesting thing as well because, you know, my parents were immigrants, but they were highly educated and so I had a pretty good quality of life growing up and I was able to get whatever I wanted and and

things like that, you know, but I also knew like, you know, at some point I do have to work. It's not like I'm just like, you know, going to be sitting at home all day and like, you know, just relaxing. But when I look at my daughter and the quality of life she's going to be having as a result like my wife and I both, you know, work in tech and we've been pretty successful in what we're doing, like she doesn't have to worry about most things at all ever. And even if she does choose likely just relax at home all day, she's going to be fine and probably a generation of her life will be, you know, will be fine as well. like how do we instill in her the same sense

of like purpose and urgency to kind of be like you know just because you have a fallback plan does not mean you should by any way slow down or be any less ambitious because we want to be here to help you reach your goals and be you know even more ambitious take even bigger risk than I could have ever taken even if I could I was like guilty for taking it sometimes you know all those things that's the part I always like you know kind of struggle with sometimes I think the my value of sort The view of the most successful I can be as a parent is to help my kids identify that like that special trait the thing that is their passion where you know if you're

lucky enough to find whatever your innate talent is and then find an outlet for that where you can then pursue it and it's like similarly we have these conversations of like my I hope that I'm successful enough that they just don't have to worry about working but if my oldest who really loves performing wants to pursue do that completely to not have to work a day job to pay the bills so that the thing she really loves and wants to achieve she gets a small amount of time. It's like all right I'm not going to it's the Warren Buffet enough to do something not enough to do nothing like you're going to have some UBI that covers the bills but I would hope that you just pursue your dreams like

whatever it doesn't have to be. It could be a local theater production or, you know, a backup dancer for Taylor Swift, like whatever. But I hope you work hard at it and pursue it. And that has been a hard thing with her this year. It's like as a parent, um, she's in this like competitive dance league. They have a season of competitions. She's been on a team. Last year, she was on a solo like this year. So doing the season as a solo. The first one, she gets 10th place. They only call like the 10 finalists up, but in her view, she's last place because you're the loser of the winner bunch. You're the public loser to the group. So full just meltdown, cried all night. Uh hard for

me to witness as a parent. Hard to be supportive of, too. I'm on the like, do I force you through this? Is this one of those like I'm the, you know, Andre Agassiy's dad that made him do it even and was like, "Well, then you get an Andre Agassi or Serena Williams or one of them or do I go, man, this is really unhealthy for you and I'll let you quit." But she didn't want to do it anymore, but she had a team competition the next day. And my view was like, "You're on this team. Like, you have to do the team event." And they obviously did very well. And then it was like just enough to kind of let it go. She like crawled cried all night,

all day. I basically had my release just after she won the second one and found peace. It was like such a heavy thing on me. It felt like one of those, does this shape you? Do I, you know, my kid's in pain. Do I let do I relieve the pain and let her quit this thing? And so it was a very rough thing. And then she ended up she placed, you know, roughly somewhere in that top group all season. And then the last one she finished first overall.

And I'm I've told her that like to make it clear, I'm more proud of you for not having one, but she worked her you like where's your weakness? Work on it. And then over the season like did it and then won. Then if she just won the first one like okay I don't know if you learn as much from that. So it's almost the experiment worked out as as best as it could. Um but it's stressful as a parent. Yeah. There's no instruction manual and you know every every kid is very different and you know there's always this fear of like you know this is a core memory is going to be stuck forever to do the right thing on this core memory aspect of it. Um and so yeah

for each of them it's even you know my middle really into video games and so uh she was into Rocket League there for a while. Um and we did training she was allowed to play an hour every day. It had to be training packs. Um and then we took her to the world championships. It was the same thing to me of something else. I was like, if that's your passion, then let me show you that continued practice and then competition around it to like I don't know where that outlet is. She's now moved on to Fortnite Fortnite because it's more social and I think fun, but it's a similar thing of like I just want you to work hard at whatever it is. Exactly. like just understand the

value of hard work, you know, that by itself is a is a big part of like, you know, whatever you end up doing in life, you know, you being successful or not.

Yeah. So, let's shift over a little bit now to cars. You know, I know you post, you know, I think it's like, you know, even though you and I haven't spoken, I've been following your work for a long time, mostly because that's what you use social media for. For for me, it's not to meet new people and so like I met a lot of great people like 20 years ago and then 10 years ago from the same, you know, community. So, I just follow you all exclusively. Like if I LinkedIn is like only filled with like your stuff.

So I mean I follow like all of your work from like creative market to brave care and you know your and your you know your app your bullying. You also mentioned like just a challenge like bullying for kids not just like the how do you gify and so on and not feel like bad but also just the the amount of like you know like oversight and like like legal like you know the guidelines and so on like the permissions like all those things. It's a whole different ballgame when it comes to kids. And so I was like I was like yeah I get it. It's a hard thing.

But then when you pivot to cars, I'm like, "This is awesome because I love cars." Not to drive them or anything like that. Like, you know, I'm just like, you know, I have like, you know, electric car and I have like, you know, my audio for I'm like, I'm happy. Like, that's fine. But I love watching them. Like, I like to configure them for the fun of it. So, when I saw you doing, I'm like, this is great. And I also saw in social media, you frequently post, you have quite the collection of cars as well. So, I've seen you post pictures of them quite a bit. And so, I was like, wow, you've found a passion of yours that, you know, you like always had it.

I'm always certain always you've had it especially with your you said Make a Wish. So you had like your you know you have both Batmobile and the Lightning McQueen. Are you the driver for both of

them? So I I ended up thinning some of the collection out. So I also have the bat suit and it's has been right behind me. But then when I travel for work trips and my kids were all upstairs whole other part of the conversation you want to have it. My wife and I have separate bedrooms on separate floors of the house. I'm upstairs with the kids and the bat suit in the dark when my door is open. They didn't like it. So, the bat suit's in the closet. Um, and I haven't that that came around sort of during COVID and Halloween where I knew kids wouldn't go out. I was like, what if I just reverse treat Rick trick-or-treated? I'm going to get a bat

suit. I'm going to take candy to all these kids and and go do that. Um, and so, yeah, it's weird when you look at it and go, why didn't I get to this sooner? I've been liking cars and playing with cars. I counted the number. I bought 25 cars in 10 years. And not that the collection's big. I just have a very eclectic taste in cars. And so there isn't one that like fully satisfies me. Which means I go from I just had a like lowered wrapped uh Model S. Now I have a giant lifted truck. I also have the Corvette. I have a Porsche 911. like it's just and I'll probably, you know, like if I, my wife sort of jokes about if I can last like 2 years

with a car, that's pretty good because there's some other one I want to try or experience. Um, but the Lightning McQueen happened because Travis with that contact lens company when I helped him start it cuz we were best friends like, "Look, if you ever sell this for a lot of money, you got to buy me a Ferrari." And I was like, "Yeah, dude. I'll do that. That'll be funny." And then like you know he's kind of doing well and I texted him like remember you have to buy me a Ferrari. He's like yeah yeah we'll do that. And then when he sold the company it's like this is going to happen but the way it works out with like gifts if he gave me a $100,000 car

to pay taxes on like half of that. I was like I don't want that. So he and his wife could give me and my wife $56,000 and it wouldn't hit like a tax threshold. So, I was shopping for a car in that and I was I'm going to get a red Corvette and just make Lightning McQueen out of it. So, it was I don't know if I would have been able to get it approved with my wife to have done something like that unless it was this just like it happened thing. Um, probably my car purchasing is the most strife we have in our marriage of just you know. So, this we did it and then I've had Lightning now. That's I've had that for seven

years. that one has sort of gone the distance and when I thinned the and then because I had lightning and then during co I left Portland for a couple years we went back to Hawaii and my brother was here in town so he was taking lightning out we basically have like you know three or four families every weekend that find me on social media and my kids would love it if you came out we don't charge anybody we just bring the car out for it and so he did it and I was like when I come back I want to get a second car so that we can do it together and so then I added Cruz Ramirez who's the protagonist of the third movie and then

was like I can build a Mater. So I had cruise uh Mater and uh Lightning and then my also my I had a Batmobile but it's not very practical. It was like a a Camaro vertical doors you know kind of Batmobileist. I was like well I can't really justify that daily. So I'll get my Tesla wrapped and the license plate on that was Gotham. And it's like what would what would Bruce Wayne be driving around that if I had to get out of it in the bat suit like it would make sense. Um and so I had that for a while. The story with that is that there was a kid who's been battling cancer and I don't haven't checked in with the lady, but they do

like car parades in front of his house every year for his birthday and we've done it once before with lightning and it was a hero superhero theme. So I'm going to come in the bat suit as well. So, my brother's driving Lightning and I'm driving the Bruce Wayne's car in the bat suit. And then I got out of the car to go give him a gift thing. My car door closed. You know, the Tesla door handles tuck in. Correct. I don't have the key on me. The key is in the car and the car like or I have my phone. My phone was what I was using. My phone is in the car. So, I turn I'm in the bat suit in the middle of a neighborhood street and

now I can't get back into my car. But isn't the phone being inside your car okay for it to open or is it The way I have my settings, it wouldn't open back up. Okay, gotcha. So, I'm like locked out of my car and it was just this panic of like I'm just going to like if my brother hadn't been there, I think I just would have had to like walk a mile to a Walmart or something like I just was stuck in your bat suit. In the bat suit. Fortunately, I got in like my brother's car. We drove around the corner. I called my wife to get my uh password through my password manager to my Tesla account so that my brother could download the app and then like

open my car door so I could get in. But it was just like this, what are we doing right now? How did I end up in this situation? Um, but ended up thinning that collection out now and I just have the Corvette, my truck, and then I bought a Porsche 911. the year the 99 like the year that I graduated from high school is like a one guy had that kind of car in my town growing up. So there was again a part of me that's like I could be that guy. I'll do that. Yeah.

Oh very very cool. You know just out of curiosity when I look at cars right for me like one of the things I care about a lot is like it needs to be you know somewhat high performant but it needs to be extremely quiet which often seem to be at high odds of exactly what I'm going for. What is the quietest car on this? You know, for me, like the Teslas are good, but the road noise in them is just like not great. I'm like, I love my Tesla, but it's noisy because, you know, it's just the way it is. I've test driven so many cars and all of them, I I go to the websites, I go look at the surveys, look at like those people like

the decibel meters. I have one myself and I'm like I'm like not measuring it. All of them are loud. What in your mind is like a good car that's like quiet but also not like you know your two-wheel drive you know slow family clunkers is what I love about cars is that people like that we can agree that we really like cars and then inside of that like completely different things. There's something in the car culture that sort of describes like respect all builds. You go to a car show meet or you're like I don't like that at all but I like that you like that. So, we are literally the opposite. When I lifted my truck, when I bought the truck, my wife said, "You can

make it as tall as you want, but you can't make it any louder because I make all my cars louder." Like the exhaust.

Some of them, too, have automatic cutouts, so I can open a flange and then have it come like straight out of the pipes. Like, it's they're all incredibly loud. I can also make them quiet so I'm not obscene. So, it's just funny that like you're clearly like I'm optimizing for quiet and I'm on the other end. I'm in the minority here by the way cuz I know like everyone else they definitely like having it be you know on the lot like you know that's the reason why you buy some of these cars when you hit the gas you want to feel the engine revving and you want to feel like the power going through the the machine so I completely recognize that. So well I so

to actually answer your question one of it is like the tires themselves also have like decibel ratings. So you're not just looking at the car you're also tire shopping for you know which tires. Um, and then I don't know enough to know, but I would assume the wider the tire, then there's just more friction and more noise. And like my my Tesla I changed the wheels on those are incredibly wide tires. Um, but it's like your safest answer is probably not a very fun smaller car. And then the build quality will impact. When I was selling my Tesla, I was looking at the Porsche TYON as an electric alternative. And I don't know if you've test driven one of those, but I'd be curious about Are they the

same as the Audi GTS? Basically, it's the same platform, different platform. Yeah. Okay. I have. No, you're right. It they are quieter. They're quieter. So, there's your answer. Porsche Porsche TYON. Yeah. Get one of those and they can Yeah. But, you know, I'll say the new Model Y, a Tesro one uh last week, you know, they said one of the big things is that it's pretty quiet and some of the sites said like it's getting closer to like a Rolls-Royce level. I tested like, you know, a Rolls-Royce Ghost a while ago and I'm like, now that is very quiet.

But I also was like, I'm not going to justify spending that much on a vehicle, especially cuz it it looks like, you know, you're like Mr. Penguin from Batman V. There's no vehicle in there that's like, you know, you can just drive casually, not have everyone be like a monop head. No, no, I'm just wearing my usual unique clothes and like, you know, my, you know, flip flops with, you know, with socks on. So, I'm like, no, this will not this will not fly. I don't know. Maybe it goes back to the beginning of this conversation of you just got to be comfortable in your skin or your Rolls-Royce. No, no. Like like I mean maybe, but I also don't that car doesn't speak to me either. Like for

me, you know, I'm not a I know you can customize it to be like extremely boring looking, but the overall shape of it, you know? So, I'm like, it's too fancy looking in most ways. So, for me, it's like needs to be, you know, like no one should know that I'm basically driving around in that thing. If you could spot me from a mile away on the freeway, I'm like, "No, that's not a not a good sign." That's probably fair. Um, that's what's so different about Lightning. I'm similar. When I when we sold Creative Market, I moved home. I always wanted to buy a nice car and never had the money to do it. So, I bought the top-of-the-line Tesla at that time. And I was like the only one in my town that

had one. So, I'd be like at a Starbucks and I want to leave, but I can see there's like a few people looking at the car and I don't really want to go to my car because the question they always ask was, "How much does this car cost?" Yeah. I'm like, "That's a weird question to ask and I don't really want to answer that." So, I didn't like the attention of that. But if I'm in Lightning, I want everybody's attention. Exactly. Because it's not me. It's like it just makes people happy. So, Lightning can say his catchphrases. I can push buttons and he shouts at his speakers in the front grill and like you know it's just a different thing. So you have to find the

one that you might enjoy the attention. Yeah. You know I live in a suburb of Seattle a lot of tech people and so on. So like you know so like a Tesla would be like just blending in like you know everyone has a Tesla so you don't really mind it but you know something also goes back I guess like I guess my upbringing as well. You know, my parents, we grew up in Alabama, actually. It's a pretty small town, but my parents did pretty well. And I'm like, why do you keep buying like, you know, a Ford, you know, they're like, well, not, you know, it's like, you know, look around all of our neighbors and we go to like, you know, the average vehicle there falls within

this range and it'll be odd for us to like go, you know, several orders of magnitude beyond it because it's just not proper, you know? I'm like, I at that point never fully recognized that. As I got older, I'm like, I totally get it now. I'm like, "Yeah, I I can see why." You know, in some areas maybe fitting in is not the not the worst thing in the world, especially if it's going to give you more peace of mind. I think I really believe in that where the reason to fit in is not to make others feel bad about you having something else. Like I do this all the time with my kids where like clearly, you know, they get dropped off at school lightning

McQueen. There's a lot of like fun stuff. Yeah. and or that like like don't ever make somebody else feel bad because they don't have one cuz you don't have it. You don't have money. I have money and you being you know real jerk to other kids about it means you're going to get less of it. So just remember uh that one rubs me wrong. Um where I want them to have all of this but I never want them to make feel somebody else

feel bad. Yeah, I I think you said it exactly right. Like I think that's exactly how I feel. for like even your Lightning McQueen vehicle, right? It's like, you know, the vehicle itself is not extremely like unreachable for most people. You just got to put the effort in like get it wrapped, which is fully within the realm of like, you know, most if you can spend time to do something, absolutely, that's fine. But like, you know, some other other examples like yeah like there are some people like, you know, can work a lifetime and never get close to buying a vehicle. I'm like yeah, that that I just cannot justify.

You know, also the people who could never afford that car are not less or worse people than I am. the fact that I could buy the car has no weight or bearing on sort of my character, the quality of me as a person. Um, that was one of the bummers ones where I was getting into the Tesla and a kid was like, "Whoa." And the mom was like, "Don't look at that. You'll never have that." And it was too fast for me to catch it and then I just was like, "What a like I w I wish now I could have caught it faster to be like, you know what? Come sit in this car and let me just tell you like I didn't get good

grades in school. I had terrible SAT scores. you can do this kid. Um that you know this part of the motivation back to Genie of the that there's like this spectrum of I

think this impact on a kid. one I think really part of the reason why I ended up successful is my dad is very egotistical and so like the fact that I'm a manf like we'll be more successful because you're a manf like we're we're better than others like that I think has an impact because then you do believe in yourself I believe I will achieve something great because I've been told my whole life that I will which that's the whole increasing luck I looked for opportunities because I believed I would get opportunities um you know that I would sort of had that to pursue to it. Um, lost where I was going with that, but you know the impact. Oh, the kid that that genie could have been that

positive voice because yeah, you know, maybe you're you got a good family, but you're just not hearing that that like there is something about you that's like nobody else. You're the only you that could ever exist and that in itself is really a special thing and I want to see you succeed. And Genie could do that and I thought that was cool. But then the other thing that I thought was even more powerful is that that kid does have parents who have a voice in their ear all the time, but it's that you suck and you're never going to be anything. And that felt like, man, then how much more powerful would it be for Genie to then counteract that? But then you sort of

mentioned it as well, like the the additional burdens of building into that space. What do I do when a kid says they're sad? When somebody's hurting them? What do I do when they say their parents hurting them? Like there's if you're going to build a tool that kids will communicate with, you have the responsibility to deal with that, which I think, no offense to other companies, they sherk that responsibility with, you know, we've got Alexexas in our house and series. And I know they hear a lot that from a terms of service perspective, they go, "Not our problem." And I just don't think as a company when we built for kids, we go, you know, we heard this terrible stuff, but like hey, we don't want to do with it. like we had

to build this whole escalation policy law enfor I just don't we're not going to let somebody down in that and that was a hard thing because you're not you're not focused on building more like a better product and winning as a product. I'm the edge cases become very serious and then it occupies all your time instead of building things that exactly from a business point of view it's like you know is that the most highest leverage activity you can be performing but it's the right thing to do but as you may know the right thing and what's the right thing from a business point of view often times are at odds y

um so when are you launching rides I know you say you're working on your app right now I went to website again like a couple days ago and it looks great you know we're sort of tearing it all down.

That was the we had the team that was building it and then it was I believed in myself and said I'm going to rebuild it. So there's a I think better version that I'm maybe like a few days away. So um as I've been rebuilding it too been able to add more things that I wanted to see in it. So, I would hope this new improved version is out in the next like week for people to play with and see the beginnings of what I intended to be, which is a place for car enthusiasts to like showcase their car. Often, you know, it's modified cars because you and I am on the wide spectrum of modified.

If you got one of those cars with a 100 bumper stickers on the back, like it's a modified car like you saw it and said, "I'm going to make this more how I believe it should be." And that's all in the same spirit of somebody who wants to make theirs quieter. You're going to like extra seal the door jambs, the other person's cutting holes in their exhaust. Um, but that you could kind of have a feature dedicated place to do that because Instagram, as you me, it's the visual place to show it, but I don't really know what else is happening there. I'm not meant to learn more. I'm meant to just click really quick and like it. So, a place where everything you've done can be told. And then it was

an interesting evolution of the thought we had on how we wanted to organize the community engagement because still the most dominant place to get information about a car is a like the bulletin forum like exactly the bulletin boards still hold king for information with cars and not even like what you did which is you like adopted new modern forum technology. They're still on whatever version that will never change. Correct. And so if we were going to do that, if I have a community for everybody, well then the forum needs to be like cars and then Porsche and then TYON and then I'm like and then it was the oh no, I think it's just like what Gmail did for email.

I don't organize my email anymore. Like the search is so good. I don't have to. It just helps me find what I want. So building a kind of the post sharing feed in a way that's like you just post it out there and then our responsibility is to help filter. So you're all you're going to get all the quiet things. You're going to follow the like quiet ride hashtag and it's just all the people cuz that's what's so funny about cars too. You're not a minority. I mean, you might be in the grand spectrum, but there's like 50,000 other people that geek out on the thing that you geek out with about cars. And if you found those people, like you have your tribe. So,

trying to build enough community structure kind of, you know, what we saw with the forums was to see then how people build with it. I I was very I'm still very proud of myself because I you had like a test forum category or like a trash one or something and I got like a thousand messages deep with my own club inside the like trash category. I remember that it was like a you know it was either a don't bury this message post or like something like or keep bumping or don't bite. It was one of those things like that that what you told people not to do is exactly what they did a thousand messages in. Well, yeah. And then I think at some point

there's like clubs were happening and then there was a revol club. So I said this was like a club that's not the club. This is not the club that's in a club. That's right. I vaguely remember all that. Um there is a lot of like you know you're not a real person, you're just an AI, which now makes more sense. You could actually be AI now. But there was like a lot of the memes of that, you know, you're a I think you filmed quite a bit of that. I think was it urban dictionary? I think I think that's still my definition. Yeah, that was you. I think that was that's right. It was you.

So uh but it was like it was just enough structure for people to be creative in and then if you have that happen magic happens. So trying to launch an information sharing platform that feels unstructured but structured enough to see what people would use. Uh, the 996, the Porsche that I have, I the motor also went bad. So, uh, I drove it for like three months. Now it's dead. On those cars, fixing the motor costs more than the car costs. Yeah. So, I'm going to put a Corvette engine in it. Like, if I have this thing, like, it's going to be a thing.

So, I'm in the 996 forums a lot on Facebook and there's a swapped Porsche group. I want to find the like a few of those tribes that like come over and see the value where like if I launch a car community for everybody, you're going to go look at quiet ride. There's gonna be nothing there. Like you kind of have it's hard to build communities because you have to have enough engagement around a certain kind of interest to be successful. So I'm also in the Pacific Northwest. So probably launching with like Seattle Portland PNW car scene which I'm a part of and then finding a couple of the forums uh that I do already participate in. Hopefully we build a better way for people to

organize around that. And then because I'm selling it the business is actually quite big. The $60 billion a year is spent on aftermarket parts for cars in the US. So, and then for the other private party, Facebook parts, junkyard parts, it's another, you know, 10 20 billion. And then all the services of people that install that. It's like a hundred billion dollars a year spent modifying cars or putting aftermarket stuff on them in the US. So, it is a very big business. And so, our view is largely legacy.

people might be using AI and there's this whole like bolt-on AI versus AI native like can I use AI to accentuate the human experience there rather than to just do trivial stuff like oh you don't have to write your messages AI does it like I don't know write your message but how how could I help you every forum has the same issue which is the reply that's search the forum first because everybody's going to ask the same question we can have a clippy like answer that's like hey based on you asked this question about, you know, what's the quietest ride. I went AI went and built you an answer for that based on actual people's recommendations and then I didn't just summarize it. I gave

you links so that you can go get all the background on those. Like again, how do I use this to make the information more accessible? Um, so there's a lot of fun

stuff to build. Yeah, I mean that's one of the main reasons why I switched from V bulletin to discourse actually. you know, it's like what it does. It says like, you know, as you're typing a question in, it's kind of like, you know, this sounds like way someone else has asked. Back in the day was like not very smart, but now this AI, so it's much smarter as a part of it. And so I'm like cuz the funny thing is so much of the post back then I became transactional at some point when all of us got busy and I got busy to like manage it myself like you know be there all the time and it became more transactional. I have a question here's

an answer question answer and people you know left. And the funny thing is even now the form's a lot of traffic but when someone is about to post something it's like oh 10 years ago someone post the exact same question when I go they're like they go there oh I got my answer and they leave and I'm like that's okay you know for what it's doing right now that works so I really like your idea. So the idea is that okay let's say that I decide to modify my Tesla Model Y you know in in various ways and I go to your site and I post a picture of it and then I describe here's all the things I've done with it and the idea would be that

someone else can come in and everything I described is an indexable searchable entry. So that way let's say for example I you know change my wheels to a different kind of wheels for brand and a model number. So if I were to use that as a tag, then I can see all the other posts from other people that are now related to that particular one. So basically, you're taking one thing that I posted, getting the signal from like many parts of it out there, and then having that each of those things be a potentially searchable topic that you can then find more content from. Yeah.

And that make discoverability cuz often like you might buy that Model Y and you're like, I want to I just want to do something to it, but you might not know what. So, you could go look at a bunch of other Model Y's that have your same base color and go, I like the way the wheels look on that one. Or, I bought the white one cuz they had it, but I wish it was a different color. What colors do people wrap Model Wise? And go look at all the wrapped Model Y's and then go, I love what what specific wrap, you know, 3M color code is that? And then the other side of it is is like, well, who installs these? Like, here's all from the car enthusiasts. These are

the rap shops that are basically vetted because you can see you click on to IRA who does all my wraps here in Portland and then see all of the cars that they have done in the community becomes like you know the trusted network of finding something you want to do understanding who sells that part and then understanding who could help you put it on. So yeah, are you using any AI for any part of this or is it still just you know matching pattern matching?

The AI right now and where I've been building is in like the moderation and helping build sort of the background tagging for the easier discovery of it. We do a lot of we're using AI to do the parts discovery part. So the add a when you add a car you first add the images we help identify the car. So on the second step where you normally have to do like your make, model, trim, like I generally know the generation and what that is. So I can like streamline input.

Um but then when you get to the parts, you know, so this is that learning iterative loop. The first one we built was you tell me what category this mod is like exterior and then okay, then you choose the subtype which is like wheels and then giving the manufacturer. And I'm like, once you see it, you're like, I can classify it. I don't need you to do that. You that's not also how you think as a user. I'd like to modify the exterior of my like, no, no, you're like wheels. You're just, you're straight to that. So, what you do is you say like finding your mods, you would just say, I got uh HRE wheels and their flow forms. And then we use AI to

return to you. It's likely this one or that one. And you go, that's the one. So using it to find and build the product parts library. There's interesting things too. I wonder how niche data APIs survive in a world where the AI is getting pretty close to par with those data sources. So yeah, you know, there's a library for specific um to prefill the year, make model trims is an API that we pay for to have access to that is a finite amount of information and it doesn't have all of the information I want. I want more details on the colors, on the interior trims, and it doesn't have what I need.

So I just built a process. I'm not scraping their API. I'm having uh both Gemini and GPT are working in tandem to do this quicker for me, like hitting my rate limits on both to just ask those questions. What year was the TYON available? Okay, for those years, what trim levels did it have? It had the S, it had the 4S, and then go get mail. So, I'm I'm building an API internal data source so that I don't have to use it because it bothers me every time you choose one, it takes a second to load the next one. And then I'm like, this should be instant. it should be auto completed. So again because I have the power now with cursor I'm going to build

that data source myself. Um so I think it's like again what what will what happened for me with embracing cursor I think will dramatically shape the product I build because I think about it differently. I think about how I could build it instead of what's it'd be really great if it could do this but what it what else could it do I like there's just this uh empowerment that'll really change the way the product is

built. Yeah. And the thing is like because you are familiar with code and you've done this in the past there's a certain level of like wait is this right? You know your mind always starts going into like the implementation details of how something should work. But then if you take a look at like for example when I use like midjourney or dolly or you know imagen I have no idea what codecs are being used is it one pass or two pass filter because I don't create ve I don't create raster graphics I do not know that world at all. So for me like because I don't know anything about it that ignorance allows me to focus on like okay there are 10 images I got created I like three of them make

these changes and go finish with it and and I'm done. I'm like, "This is great." But every time I'm using an AI system to write code for, I'm like, "Wait, how did it do that? Wait, why is it in a JSON?" I'm like, I'm like like I waste mental cycles on like trivial things that at the end of the day do not matter. And I always describe it as like when you're wanting to do something ambitious and grand. There's like a certain amount of energy you have to be able to do like the core work and then the creative exciting work and so on. Often times with in the world before AI, you're already exhausted from like just doing the bare minimum. You're like, "That's

it. I don't care about the delighters, the cool features. I want to add the flare that's gonna make this more that, you know, my cat just jumped on my lap and I don't know why. And and so those little things always get there. But with AI, I'm like, I have more time now to focus on the things that actually matter. The thing that's holding me back is not the quality of the models. It's my inability to let go, just to be like, you know what, I do not care what is structured in this format or the commas in the wrong location or the parenthesis or not. I'm like, it doesn't matter. you know, the app works. An end user does not care how I built my app. All they

care about in this case, for your case, is like, you know, I have a question about a vehicle or I'm trying to modify my current vehicle. Just give me those details. Make it easy. That's it. I think that's why I feel so liberated is that I because I haven't been in writing code for long enough. I'm spending less of that time doing the well, how did they write it? Cuz it does I it's in a language I don't understand. Like I can troubleshoot. I you know one of the the rules I have set like thoroughly document this code so that like others would understand it so I can I can I want to learn why are you doing this in the sequence where are you

referencing these files for in this so I can better understand it but I'm not auditing the code I don't there's be no as much as because I used to be an engineer I feel like less than because I can't read the code I can't write like there's it is a waste of my time to go learn. Like I've tried this a couple times like I'm going to learn to build apps. I'm like why? That's not the highest impact, highest value use of my time. And so I just have less of that self- judgment. I'm just able to build with the tools. And it worked well for me because I really started this a week ago kind of right when Claude 4 came out and has, you know, again, from the

people who can read the code and figure out what it's doing, a dramatic improvement. So it sort of worked out well for am right into better code and you know we have not stress tested it. This is the other thing too like even when I built color lovers I wasn't particularly good at code that thing went down all the time. So it's it is PHP and my SQL based well it started as cold fusion and that was just like crashing my uh media temples. The other one went to Rackspace a Rackspace server and then I hired Chris who became my first technical partner who switched it to PHP um like lampstack product but um you know like it's it's currently today smarter than I was when

I built something successful before so and those will get smarter faster than I will. Um, so absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. But do you know media temple shut down about 2 3 years ago? Wasn't it like at GoDaddy or something? Yeah, they

were bought by GoDaddy and then GoDaddy eventually after four or five years decided to, you know, call it Man, there's something about the less, you know, I don't know, Harvard business case study like MediaT had such a cache of internet builders. the the idea that if you were good enough, you got like your site sponsored by MediaTle and then you could put the logo on it, then people like me put the logo on it anyway because we wanted people to think we were that good even though that we were paying for it. Like just free advertising for the cache of that hosting web host. It's impressive. Yeah.

Now, MediaTimble did sponsor and I'm always grateful for that because the expenses for running the site back then was ridiculously high, especially when a PHP and MySQL forum and all that. me have put the bill entirely and I'm always like grateful for that and I'm like wow that's actually pretty nice of them to have done this and so yeah even after they they stopped and hosting I still put me temp I'm like no I'm going to as long as they're around I'm going to put their logo there forever because if they if it wasn't for them like you know 20 years ago there would be no version of this now or even the career I have in all these things I'm like they definitely play an outsized role in so

many of these little things. Yeah, you need now to just keep the logo there, but it's like the inmemoriam or what? You know, it's just the rap badge for

Exactly. You know, but I do miss the old pixel art days from back then as well. And so, you know, some of my past people I've spoken to actually are pixel artists from like the 15 20 years ago and I'm like, where are you doing? I'm like, well, they're doing they're creating fonts now. Like, you know, they the monetization of all these things has changed. They don't do pixel art directly, but they contribute indirectly in their companies with like, you know, their own designs and so on. So it's like a the world has changed, the people have changed as well, but those little passions, little ticks that made them so would do what they did, they find ways of getting that out even today in a

different format. Well, basically maybe you get back to some pixel art. This just came in the mail, but it allows me to Wi-Fi connect to my Game Boy camera cuz I've been taking photos with my Game Boy camera. It's just funny to me at like a car scene where everybody's got their like, you know, Canon 5Ds taking six shots and I got my purple Game Boy that I'm taking photos with. Um, but I I mean there's going to be a world in the future, right? Where with as we've seen with like this AI video generation tools right now, it's going to be hard to tell like is there value in you holding a video camera and recording this versus you taking like a couple of static shots

of you just in the car and then the AI generates everything pretty much, you know, interpolates all the missing pieces very nicely. Well, that's the other thing that would be interesting. I think again another impact of our mental health. I was laughing at myself earlier because you know like I'm in Zoom all the time partially during COVID you look at your face a lot and I'm old enough now where I'm looking at calls I'm like oh my god like what is you know all the signs of age showing and on Zoom you know I got the like you know the older I get the more the touch-up you know slider is moving to the right and then you know for this it's a new video thing my

camera touch-up's not going to be there but what AI will do when people are taking their portraits and then making them with AI. It's sort of like the version of you that doesn't exist. And I it's a similar worry of like I think I look great on my Zoom calls and then I see myself in the mirror and it's like, you know, I don't really have this. But there's like that can be a very negative thing. And if everybody looks like they're AI things and then they don't really look that way, it's again it's another this byproduct of this the bad expectations of not being yourself on the internet.

Yeah, it's going to be it's going to be you know we're entering uncharted territory right now because like all the things that you kind of know is like probably not great and not what we should be doing is by default enabled for us across all these technology services and yeah it's a you know it goes back to like okay you know we somehow you know were born in the right place at the right time and we kind of sced it's kind of like riding the surf like you know even though I'm pretty sure you surf right it's kind of like hitting the right part of the wave when you're like able to make You're not you aren't too far up. You aren't too far below. You're just right. I feel like

our generation was the last one that got it just right. We know we had you know there were cell phones weren't there until like a little bit later in our lives. So we still had the rotary dials like ridiculous phone long cable that like you know wrapped around the rooms and so on. You know the sound of a dialup modem joining or you know the V90 upgrade from like US robotics to like whatever 28.8 like you know we we we were there. We saw that whole transition. Like when I talk to my my daughter like she doesn't know a world of touchscreen. She's like oh what's the screen I'm like the yeah my MacBook does not have a touchcreen you know and she's like wait why and I'm like that's just

how things are you know probably for Apple probably always will be and like the familiarity they have with all the new things is just taken for granted now. was like, "Yeah, of course. I'm going to talk to my little device over there and like asking me to tell the time or whether or the joke and I'm like, "Yeah, I would have been like going back in time to like back in the day, we had like Dragon Naturally Speaking and, you know, could open a window and close the window and that was huge when it could do that." And so I'm always like, you know, wondering like at some point we're going to be those people like who just can't adapt beyond a certain point like I said I I don't

get this anymore. I don't go beyond it. And so I always wonder like for her you know my daughter like her starting point is already at probably the tail end of my ability to adapt to new technology and for her like you know next 80 90 years of technological change it's going to be huge and I don't you know maybe every generation says this but I'm like is it going to be better than the generation we had it or is it going to be much more complicated and worse. I do think that's a very generational thing that sort of like our generation sort of had this or something and it's like the music was so much better in our generation. Yeah, it's probably true of

every you know the perspective for me when I literally thought earlier today I was like I should explain to my kids what a pager was like they're going to think that's ridicul like it just told you the phone number of the person you had to call back like what why would why is that a thing like well that's just the best technology we had at the time my dad is 97 and so if I go back to like you he's born in 28 that's like before the radio was popular that you know cars were not really a thing. He's from a village in Iran. So like rode a donkey to school like there's just such a different so even in his lifetime you know that that 90 years is to this you

know talking device that has the world's knowledge in it that connects me it really does feel magical. So, it's hard for us to imagine it, but I assume it not only the same thing will happen, but it probably accelerates because all of this technology creates more and more advancements, you know, we're getting close to like the sci-fi books that we read, you know, like what we're we're in those timelines now. Exactly. Exactly.

Wow. Well, there is I think you and I can probably talk forever. I think we're making up for like 20 years of lost time actually not having done this properly back when we should have. But no, you know, I think we should definitely do this again. And sounds good. You know, you're in the Pacific Northwest. I'm in the same area. At some point, maybe we should do this in the real life. Sounds good as well. Appreciate you. It was good seeing you. Likewise. Yeah.