Okay, so here we are. And I'm thinking that maybe we even share this raw audio in the blog so people can really understand. Oh, there's an you know, it starts on otter and there's a transcript and otter and how that turns into a storyteller posts. So we're at at brunch here on our first day, first official day. Yeah, we've been like, really, really working hard to get to this day. So who wants to kind of describe where we are right now and what today is for us?
I'm good with us. Still setting the same but if someone else wants to jump in, that's okay. Do
well, I guess I would start by saying, Today's a day of a lot of energy. And excitement. Because we are in San Mateo. And San Mateo is a special place for me, because it's where I started my last company, and it's a very central location on the peninsula. And it feels like a really great setup. For creating a really successful company. So we're at a we work in San Mateo, it's across the street. So we decided to get a physical office, which is an interesting choice for us to make. And we think that we're going to work a couple days from this physical office, but we're meeting here on this first official day at the new office. And we're having lunch together to really just start to talk and think about this company that we're building. And there's something that pulled us all together and made us decide that it was worth orienting our lives in a way that we all build something together. And I think that's what I'd love to talk about. today and hear from both of you is, why did you want to get on this journey? And what are you hopeful that we can accomplish? What is what does success look like? What does great look like? What does our company look like in a year or five years or 10 years? So I don't know some of the things whoever's motivated to start.
I mean, I can share just a little more that you know, is things first, official day, and what we're maybe a month out from my race and first day of having this physical office I've you know, I think we've been dedicated but been sneaking a lot of our time in on the sides and and now sharing you get to be full fledged which is momentous. And just around all of this, a check in question I had with Pat this morning as we've started our customer experience thing was if you had one year left to live, how would you spend the year and I was like you know what? I want to tell build storyteller.
That's really powerful.
Yeah, I want to answer this question. It's kind of an intense question. I was like, No, I mean, I would just want to make sure just like bringing a lot of joy to things in that. Yeah, not like not moving into a place I don't want to live in or you know, not doing a life of settling. But of like, joyful, expansive living. But anyway, yeah, that was that was pretty cool to see I think. I mean, on the zoomed in level, I'm definitely in the mode of like starting to build out. Well, just starting to build out some systems but like really wanting to do mindful company building. So there's like care for the folks inside and care for our users. And yeah, just like bringing that into our systems and processes, you know, even more and I'd like back in May I this when I like saw the actual kind of literary output of GPT three that's okay. I in the New York Times Magazine, I think you are so cute when you eat because it's like a full body experience. On your nose. Oh, sorry. Yeah. But
I Yeah. So I was amazed and it was also partially working with a book that I read that's like very famous by Italo Calvino on a winter's night a traveler and which is a very meta book. So to have this like writing essays about Italo Calvino, who's this? I don't know I think postmodern writer or post post. But it was just incredible and really interesting to come to it from, from the literary world and from being a writer at the kind of not so sure about whether I trust technology to like, this is so powerful. What can we do to like be part of making a powerful like an ethical way for folks? And, and you know, one thing I think of often and it did feel like a moment when it happened, but when I first started working with DROdio, a little over a year ago, and got used to the recording culture, like okay, recording every meeting and we've got an otter bot and everything. I was like, What do with what did people do with all these recordings, you know, when people are going back to listen to meetings, right? And then like, Okay, so are we just is it just part of Davis for all or? Yeah, so so it feels interesting how that question that's come back from Brown. Yeah, with the power of large language models and AI and us kind of, you know, to see what we could do and like making funny poems about whatever like this, that the other thing, a worm, a bear a scarecrow. And then really, you know, partnering with Yu Jiang to like have your AI genius nests here. Part of the jury. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think we all have like, unique skill set.
Yeah, I'd like to, I'd love to circle back around in this conversation to the way that you want to build customer experience and the unique background that you bring to that. So that would be really, really great to dig into more. Maybe we'll get Gittings the initial observations and thoughts on your first first day. What what resonates for you?
Yeah, absolutely. A very, very exciting day for me. The mission the first 100%, fully devoted reaching for authority building, and 100% or, boy thing, always that and one extra thing I want to add that we're not just creating compelling a physical office, but creating a compelling in a way work of crossroads. So I think that has a very great symbolic meaning as well. Firstly, the way we're, we're entering and also the second is, the first is just like the way our complaint is the crossroads. Actually, we are in the process. Probably how the building got laid. The complaint storytel is at the crossroad of two big waves. The one thing that he like Erica mentioned about the power of large language models to generate the AI, which he is after many decades of research and development. Were into a period in which that I also was super. I like that it also revealed like exactly like your revealing moment. That was also exactly the moment for me. Because the output of GPD three and a large language models can give surprise to professional writers who write in New York Times New Yorkers and all these great like so this is the one of the most prominent writers in the world and our models can even make such an expert to be surprised, which means something which means that we're reaching a crossroad in ways that the capability of AI is to a certain threshold is the single point that original point and for all this is regressing we have found out is that the growth of machine is exponential and the growth of human capital which means that as as long as you reach the cost point that that is financial and anemic growth rate. You don't know like, people are often surprised by how fast how short the machines will even become a different level significantly advanced the capability so we're very fortunately you have in this particular point well people enter too late Of course there's already some great people building this and we are in this cross Crosspoint crossroad notion that we can make this happen. So storyteller, so this is like super exciting to me. Another thing about the crossroad is that we are also at a crossroad of AI power humans. Plus were also a very big shift of work in the past probably 300 years or 400 years since the birth of company and it used to be the company and my experience of work. Joining company actually is a metaphor for this. I had a job to complete before one is Google. And the second is a startup. So the first time we joined a big company, I went to the huge buildings Google blast, and I never even need to ride a bike to surf on the on campus. And hundreds of 1000s of people just within the campus Passover so the second company I joined that was a Garrett. So it was like fun. Is so we were dead. across. And I feel like this is also a metaphor that a lot of people like assume that a lot of people experiences. The way work is a symbol of distributed workforce that we're doing the hybrid and allows people allows companies scale globally distributed, which triggered a lot of problems siloed and we, we we started with we work with one day we have we work in different cities. We have great employees of different countries. We already have crew from Philippines, which work in different time zones. And how do we make sure everyone has shelled on this? Of course we know the how to do that. We're still meeting but we don't have time to do all the meeting, especially if you have great crew member in Philippines when they are asleep. How do you do the meetings and your story how we also have like at a crossroad and what kind of we're pushing the boundary of the ability of AI and the Ohana we also make it a human's life better will save time. We'll make it work, eat reusable. And we'll make it we'll make a new type of company. And if you imagine that to your question about imagine what happens if we if we are decades from now were being remembered as
as a as a complaint who really pushed the exponential growth of the AI capability and make superhuman on top of that. Plus, we use that capability to transport our complaints that define that it will be magical
there will be magical Yeah, let's let's pull on that thread a little bit more and talk about what some of our some of the things are that we're just the most passionate about in terms of why storytelling like why are we dedicating our lives to this? I'll just give you an example of something that comes to mind based on what you're thinking. And also what you said Erica, around the way that humans communicate and have communicated and the opportunities to give humans new tools and new methods of communicating through technology that can make them more effective storytellers or more effective communicators. And one of the things that I have realized in creating storytel is I have been trying desperately trying to communicate in a this rich media visual way for at least a decade, probably longer. But as the CEO of these startups, I've always thought it's crazy that we only use text when we are rich media beings. And we have voices and we have hand gestures and we have eyes and all these senses. And so the idea that we could use technology like AI to make it possible to take assets that are started as being largely text base and turn them into what we're not calling story tiles, these kind of discrete concepts that were sussing out of the larger assets and turning into their own individual items that can then be traded and shared and remixed and distributed in a way that allow the humans to be more successful. And really what it does to me is like it's like this distributed storytelling graph where if I'm in a conversation here with the two of you, and the two of you say something that I want to share with somebody who's not here, the only way that I have I basically have two options without storyteller. The first option is I go and I tell that person from memory, what happened. Or the second option is if I'm recording it I share the whole recording with them. And they have to find that magical moment inside that larger asset. But now with storytelling, the, the opportunity to pull out to suss out that one topic that we talked about, and then really let the two of you tell that person instead of me I just become the messenger of the content in a really magical way. It's much more powerful for that person to hear it directly from the source. And you don't have to do any extra work. That's the most beautiful part and it's so it helps me be more effective. You've already done the work when I get more value from it and that person gets a better experience that is just an incredible thing that we're already doing. And we're in, you know, today's our first day and we're already doing it. And just the idea of what that's going to mean for the way people can communicate and learn and transfer knowledge and build on that. And really like removing information asymmetry in a way that makes people more effective. It's very, very exciting for me. So that's, I think maybe the thing that I'm the most excited about in the near term, like I feel like even in the next month or quarter or quarters, we're going to have a very usable system that allows for those experiences to start to happen at scale. I'd love to know maybe what are the things that you're most excited about?
I mean, that has an application for everything, you know, so it's so I see how that can pair really well with spicy salad here. With clean communication, this whole like protocol that I've created based on my experience, doing facilitation, you know, starting in personal development communities where it's like, oh, I want to be aware, I want to take advantage of every moment. That's like when you're working with a group of people to better yourselves. As like this is a microcosm of your life. So if I have a reaction internally, whether I say something or not about like you sitting where I thought it was gonna sit or whatever, it's like oh, that's an opportunity for me to better understand myself. And then I think of us as like translators learning to be translators of our own on our own behalf. So like, if I know how to use clean communication, I can share with you Oh, this is what happened for me. Not for you to do anything differently, but for me to have this awareness and I think as we're bringing clean communication in and practicing that with each other. That initial step is learning how to share in a way that's truthful to my experience and not activating for, you know, the recipient, but then doing a root cause analysis of like, what really happened here. And do we need to create or change a process so that we avoid this or so we have clarity not that we're gonna have a company without conflict. That's not the goal, but it's to learn from from conflicts and misunderstandings, like the yesterday like came to a great outcome in terms of okay, let's really make sure we're using you know, our key slash RACI. who's accountable who owns this? What does it mean to own it who gets consulted and so forth? So that just feels incredibly powerful, like if you miss kind of the harvest, essentially, from the conflict if you think of it as as kind of growing metaphor on a farm, like harvest that so that you can make your company or processes like even stronger. You're missing a lot. You're gonna have holes everywhere, you won't even know about it.
I want to try using a clean communication core skill that I'm practicing active listening to repeat back to you what I heard you say, which is, I hadn't actually thought about it this way. But what I'm hearing you say is that you see an opportunity for storytel and for AI and for machines to make it easier for the humans to inspect what actually happened so that they can do a root cause analysis around the ways that they reacted to it or interacted around it. And so it almost creates this opportunity to improve the source of whatever caused is the conflict or the activation. And there's ways to apply storytelling story tiles to enable those types of RCAs which basically never happened in the world today. But could
right Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, here's the three minutes. Yeah, here's the story tile, where this communication happened. Oh, let's watch that. It's three minutes. Let's watch that and see exactly Oh, I see where Oh, yeah, I understand why you heard. Right. You heard I was not clear at all when my communication or like, Oh, I was clear what happened on your end.
That's, that's a really cool application. That's exciting. Yeah, exciting. Yeah. Okay. All right. Jake, how about you what excites you about what we're building? Yeah.
I want to use two story to illustrate. I am very excited. So the first one both happened in the weekend. Oh, cool. Yeah. So the first one is that as a person who used to be very tech savvy and have everything I observed how both DROdio and Erika have been using rich media to to being able to be more efficient. The more things for example, you recall, or the to do needs to be the voice recording. Right? And so last weekend, I was doing some experimentation, how can I elaborate rich media and accommodations to make me more productive? So one thing I realized is that every Saturday morning, I have a block of two hours to do a weekly reflection, which I used to type in beta small articles I write what I have learned while I have something like that every Saturday. It takes me two hours. And unfortunately, I recently have been so busy as a as we can imagine that creating a startup also raising I have a 11 month old baby give you that I don't really have time, and I want to spend Saturday morning with my baby instead of my computer. Yeah. So I have to find one thing is that how about I just changed the recording to be like start typing in computer I just recall. So I took care of my baby. And I talked with her my reflection Oh, my author. And then after that, I sent the author in the phone. Yeah, to this, the Snapchat, which turns this into a summary which I just posted a link into my work I have a long document that recently reflection which I have maintained for decades. Now I just add a link. The whole process took me probably just three minutes, three extra minutes. I was of course talking but it was very good for both. I was reflecting with combination, but I also talked with my baby for the language. So at the written the result is that I had a very beautiful time with my baby in the morning. And she's very happy. I also get my sins done. Yeah, even better than that was that it was like it was more magical moments like this that have made me so excited about stars. Yeah,
that is so and there's something so I don't know poetic about you. Sharing with your baby your reflections on your life. So not I mean, like, she's 11 months old. I'm sure she's not going to repeat it back to you. But you know, babies internalize things. And so the fact that you were able to share with her something so meaningful for you is very meaningful.
Yeah, yes, yes. Yes. And one last thing is that the moss Moss was fundraising. So I was so busy working all the things didn't so my my wife and mother, you know, take care of that. At some some point she forgot. To say Papa. Oh, wow. And by bought in the past, but I think the baby just learned a lot of new things don't talk with and then in the past few weeks, I started talking more and and also especially I was practicing so a lot like this. Still do a same you probably don't realize that I was searching the Mona Lisa. Same work. But now my baby after being able to do a lot of reflection talking with her. She now learns to see papa, which makes me still satisfied. For sure. For sure, yeah.
Just just to do a quick parenting tangent because this is so meaningful. I think one of the things that I've learned being a parent, and you know, my favorite saying is that the days are long, but the years are short. And one of the things one of the things that I learned as a dad is kids don't just wake up at some age 15 years old. And create a personality that personality is layered on every day. It's like you're painting a wall with a new coat of paint every day and that personality is being formed every day. And everyday matters, you know, everyday really does matter. Even though it may feel like oh, this you know, they're not gonna retain this. It's like no, no, it did that personality. At 15 years old, is a composition of all the layers of every day of whatever they were. So it's like even more meaningful because you're building that, that personality that for your child who she's going to become through these activities, which is so incredible.
Yeah. Yeah, like that's like the magic moment like that the positive impact have a mean personally Yeah, he's already made me so excited and all that positive experiences to be everyone like everyone should have a better like, like without compromising their work and delivery. They should have the time to enjoy a lie. Yeah, they should have time to you know, stay with their kids. And I want this positive experience to be applied. Like everyone enjoyed us that once it made me so excited.
That's, I mean, first of all, that was an amazing story. As as an aside, one of the beautiful things about building storytelling, is that we get to hear amazing stories a lot like we're building a company that's about ways to connect and storytelling is what drives human connection. And really redefining storytelling in the workplace and the power of it. So I'm like, I think I'm realizing that I'm gonna be really excited building sorry. It's all just to hear amazing stories like this, that normally you wouldn't hear these stories in the work day. So that's amazing. So you said you had to is there another one? Yeah, I
did not. Okay. So this was my baby. So the experience I had with her and I also have money no come to take care of the baby. So she realized that I'm talking with baby with all these things. Of course with the English she doesn't know English. She's asking what are you doing? Also, she's very curious about our storytelling. So I gave her like description to my mother in law in Chinese and she was saying, Well, this is amazing. My mother in law is like, in her 60s and had absolutely no knowledge about computers, and no knowledge about technology. But she's a doctor. So that thing, hospital and in China, so and she had her hospital has been very, very, very big, like the doctors there because there was limited hospital resources in China. The number of hospital per per population is much lower because the developing countries plus this is a pandemic area, so everyone was super beat. And when she heard about what we are doing, she said, for this, it's incredible. And this is like not even like this is Mom Test. Yeah, right. Yeah. As a mom test and she's like, incredible, she can idea and she started to suggest something I will support Chinese or Samsung translation she's talking in Chinese and she's like, Yeah, and then she started suggest other use cases, which is fine, so meaningful for me is that because the doctor is so busy, busy because they have two things they will do. One thing is that they need to actually do the work. They take care of patients. Hey, how the patient Yeah. And another thing is that they do write down all the symptoms and the medicine. And she told me that for every doctor now on average, they spend 30 minutes on taking care of the baby. But more than 15 minutes, sometimes couldn't be more than that. Just write it down. The thing, so 50%
of the time that they're spending taking care of the patient, they're doing administrative work that's keeping them from being able to take care of the patient more. Exactly. They could do less of that other work. They could do more of the actual work that they want. To be doing.
Exactly. And then my mom told me that because the way they take care of patients that they have disappointment, they will talk with patient about all this. What is your symptoms? What is this thing and they give him medicine? Yeah, and it's just a normal conversation. The boring thing they need to do is like transcribe that write it down, squat tries it into electronic health record, right, right. And it's like takes such a like, pushes time from like the doctor they need to go to the like more than eight years of medical schools to get a professional training. And the end of days 15% of our time, is not doing the real job. Yeah, he's just transcribing this electronic health record. And my mother in law said that, if we can have this app available in Chinese, she'll be so excited to try it out. And like, and I was so I first First of all, have never thought about this idea before. But I was so happy that she got ideas immediately as I described, so pass a Mom Test. Yeah, plus, mom can even like it's not just pass the Mom Test. Mom Test means mom can understand mom's using a lot of us suggest new use cases. Yeah.
That's, yeah, that is so I think I'm pulling a few really meaningful things from what you're saying, first of all, just the meaningfulness of passing the Mom Test and it's like, yeah, I can like explain to my mom what we're doing, and in a way that she understands and not only that she's excited about like, that's really meaningful on a personal level. But I think also it really speaks to the value of listening to users, you know, we have this shared value that we created that market signal is our North Star. And we just learned so much from users, even people that we never would expect that we would be learning from, like a mother in law. Yeah, we're good. Thank you. So it's just like you. So it's just so valuable to be reminded, listening to you about the power of that. And then the other thing that really, really hits on for me, is like your mother in law. She's already doing the work anyway, she's already talking to the user anyway. She doesn't have to do anything extra. Right? If she can capture that conversation, of course in the US, there's HIPAA and all that we'd have to figure out but at the most fundamental level, she's already doing the work. What if she could get a lot of value for the work she's already doing? And I think I'm really excited about that. Like, you don't have to do anything extra. In fact, you're doing less. You don't have to go to transcribe it afterwards. Just keep doing what you're doing and magical things will happen. That's really cool. So those are great stories. Thank you for sharing those.
Thank you. Thank
you like transcription support, you know in that or it's like, okay, this will get you 50% of the way there because that's definitely a high 100% accuracy situation, right.
Yeah, it's important that the AI is accurate with health records.
By the way, did you what I wanted to share when just because you asked and I know we're coming up here and that at the time around like customer experience, and
I wanted to hear about how for for each of us, but for you specifically you bring this varied skill set to this role. So how are you thinking about it? What are the ways that you want to do it? And how might it be different from the way people envision that today?
I think it is, it's interesting, like I guess I do bring the skill set from, you know, facilitation and writing just like written communication skills for sure. But, but specifically, like connecting to people, and like sensing feeling and needs and also just being curious about them and reaching out, but I think there's definitely like how do we always keep this at a human to human level, and never make it feel like anything else? Like the, the way I've been describing is like, Okay, your friend, the user is your friend and they've they've come to visit you in your hometown or like as someone you want to be friends with. You don't really know them that well. And you're there to like, give them a tour of your home town and make it like the best place because actually, maybe they'll leave the next day and go to another city. But if you can really figure out what they want, whether they can express it or not. They'll stick around. So like there's that kind of aspect. I do tend to just mix metaphors terribly when I speak. But the other thing I think about so there's a you know, I think we live in an era where people want a lot of transparency. I think Everlane is like a great example of of that really trying to have radical transparency in their whole process of how they're, you know, making clothes and where they're sourcing everything from but but also just like wanting, not wanting to feel like you're dealing with like a faceless corporation. And, and yet customer service, like service on its own without root cause analysis without actually solving problems on the inside and feeling meaningless. It's just like a bed of lettuce and that's not a meal for us. And, and yeah, I think around that, like having had that experience with this food delivery company this summer, just over and over like 1010 just your foods delivered. No, somewhere not here, you know, and they can't ever do anything different. I'm like, why won't you fight for me? I am willing to pay after all these like you can't get it right week after week. I mean, at some point I'm gonna have to wake up and just, they may never get it right. Service. Yeah. But like that whole lipstick on a pig or something. It's like no, we're actually not changing and maybe they're not empowered to change anything internally. So it's just like little pieces of tape on on this. I don't know a sick like sink sinking ship or something like that. But, so I really want us to be coming from a place of like, fighting for our users.
That's a beautiful way to think about it. Very, very, very on board with that. And the value of that the importance of that
with the humans and users at first. Yeah, that's one like just wanting to Yes, yes. And pass on that and also add one quick thing on that is that many people they worry about oh, if we have good AI that will become human no longer human because they work for AI or something. Once they I really like solid hell idea is that is still food humans as the most because human by nature is the best storytellers. And also the way that we construct a product is that we basically creating connection, that's our primary thing and we allow, just like we should, I would put users into first, instead of having the process business propositions will make use of talking to users in your own words. So that's what's making me very exciting. We're
empowering the humans to become better storytellers. And whether storytelling means I think one thing that I've really observed is when we think of the word storytelling, we think of like, a children's fable, or a bedtime story, but really storytelling is understanding the pain of the user to build the right product. Storytelling is being able to explain what your product does when you're a salesperson. Storytelling is being able to raise money from VCs or being able to hire people into the company. Storytelling is everything that we do. And empowering people to be better storytellers means they'll just be able to be more effective in whatever they're doing. And that is exciting. Okay, so we're gonna have to run so we're gonna have to stop at a minute but I do want to do one PSA for storytel For anyone who's listening or reads the storyteller, but we have an unannounced round that we have done. So we've done a seed round with some incredible investors, including people like Brian McClendon, the creator of Google Earth and Google Maps and other amazing investors, Eric Ries of the lean startup in long term Stock Exchange and others and we're hiring. And so we are looking for a number of initially technical roles, although not limited to just technical but really on in your department Jing as the CTO, hiring engineering talent is a top top top priority. So do you have any sort of like last words about the kinds of roles that you're looking to fill whether it's back end or front end or a IML scientists or whoever is listening that might want to reach out to us?
Yeah, like, as long as you are interested about being a better humans, to better connect with other humans and being a great storyteller and you are passionate about pursuing technical career. Please contact us we are hiring across the board. And we like this is a meaningful force that will change like very meaningful, positive impact just like we shared to everyone. So come to talk with us. We can always feel that we also believe in we want to have generous and we want people to be able to grow with us. So yeah, don't hesitate to talk with us. We're happy to chat.
And one one pro tip if you are a candidate or would like to be one. We love to use storytelling to build storytelling, we have a story to tell playground. So I can imagine a world where a candidate might sign up in the storyteller playground, and then record some audio or a video and then try running storytel on it, and send us a storyteller report of on you. That would be a really fun and interesting way to learn about you. So if you want to learn more about storytelling, try it out. You can go to our playground, which I'll put a link to in the blog go.storyteller.ai forward slash playground, and you can start playing around in there and we'd love to get to know you. Any last any other last parting words before we go.
I think also just being part of the storytel team, you will get trained and we'll be using clean communication and the workplace and it's something that's it's one of those things that's so it seems so devastatingly simple and yet when you do it actually can be really really hard. And yet it has these I pretty incredible outcomes and you can use it in any part of your life. So I think that's a that's a benefit to being part of Team storytel.
Yeah, and if you're interested in learning about clean communication, We'll put some links in for that as well. That is one of our other core values is just communicating in a clean ways. Okay. Awesome. All right. well, excited about this company with the two of you and whoever else listens to this and joins our crew. Alright. Ciao.
