Welcome to another exciting episode of the Using AI at Work Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Daigle, and today I'm thrilled to have John Turin join us. He's the mastermind behind TriPebbles.ai, which can supercharge your go-to-market efforts by using artificial intelligence combined with market-tested GTM models and proven business methodologies. John's got an incredible story. He's built this tool from the front lines in Ukraine. And now he's here to drop some serious knowledge on how AI can transform your business. As always, this episode is packed with insights on how early adopters like John are using AI at work and how you can too. Now, let's get started. Welcome to Using AI at Work. I'm your host, Chris Daigle. Each week we'll be learning how today's business owners, entrepreneurs, and ambitious professionals are getting more done with smart use of tomorrow's tech. Let's get started.ai, among a bunch of other highly esteemed accomplishments in his career. The first conversation that we had was from a war zone. So I'm excited to hear how life is in being an AI expert in Ukraine, as well as all the other places where you're practicing your skills. And I'm particularly interested, John, in talking about the new software that you're going to be releasing very soon, tripebles.ai. So with that, is there anything in particular that you think that the audience needs to know about you before we get started?
SPEAKER_00I have a background in marketing and strategy. And I worked in the big tech companies such as Google, Cisco, and Walmart Holding, as well as worked in the leading accelerators in the world as pro bono for likes of Founders Institute, PwC Scale, Virgin Startup, and other global accelerators. I have spent most of my time in my working career in London, and currently I am back and forth between Lviv, west of Ukraine, aka the IT outsourcing capital of Europe, and London. So we are treading into the footsteps of Grammarly, which is between Kyiv and San Francisco, which is a global tech powerhouse valued at 13 billion. Like them, we are a SaaS platform productivity tool.
Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. On the original call where you and I kind of got to know each other before we did the interview, you ran me through uh your software, and I haven't seen anything else like it. So I'm excited for the release. Um let me let me ask you real quick before we get into the using AI at work part of it. Software is a heavy lift, especially in the AI space where things are changing so frequently. What was the motivation for you to uh to plant your flag on the software side of AI?
SPEAKER_00Oh, uh good question. There's two reasons for this. Um I guess the first is a more professional reason. I fundamentally know that there's a huge gap in the markets between basically what the multinationals like Coca-Cola and Unilever can afford in terms of buying strategy intelligence from the likes of McKinsey, BCG, and Bain, and what us mortals SMEs have, basically, which is you know anywhere between um working with a head of marketing, which might be a mishire, where you're paying anywhere between 100 and 300k for per annual, um, or you are um basically at the mercy of certain consultants and marketing agencies that um unfortunately uh historically don't always perform the way that we would want to. So, you know, it should not come to a surprise to all of us that you know we all know that nine out of ten companies fail, but we often don't know that the majority of those failures are are actually attributed to you know go-to-market reasons. Um yeah, and and to be frank, that kind of pissed me off for a very long time. It's a very unfair distribution of knowledge and and highly skill set. You know, if you want to uh hire an Harvard uh grad, MBA grad with three, four years of industry experience, you can't afford that as an SME. So you have to figure it out by yourself. And why? I mean, there's so many founders out there and so many bigger companies out there that can they have amazing products, they have amazing services, and they don't see the light of day just for that fact. So from from you know, from a professional point of view, that that really I you know I saw that gap and running my strategy consultancy, as I kind of coined as the SME of uh the the McKinsey for SMEs, um, I I understood I I can't I can't scale myself. So the question was, how do I get my proprietary strategy models, my science-led methodologies, as well as our um very clever persuasion sciences into a SAS platform enhanced by AI for every company to use, basically having your own personal senior uh uh analyst at McKinsey, your head of marketing at Google, as well as your high emotion intelligence uh sales manager from Microsoft into a system that anyone can use, essentially. So where we can make them at least give them the chance to m let them meet the unmet potential uh in their profitability, essentially. So that that was my professional way, and the personal one, well, um yeah, it it's not like I've I've been in I've been in a position of an angel as a consultant, as a mentor, someone in corporate, uh, and now also as an entrepreneur, and the thing that really grinds my gears is you know, there are so many uh founders uh of small and larger companies that don't always make it.
SPEAKER_01You know, one of the things that I liked particularly about the demonstration of your software that you showed me when we spoke was exactly what you've mentioned. Okay, great. The the small business owner can use generative AI and they can go in there and they can say, hmm, okay, okay, Chat GPT, acting as a blank. But a lot of times those small business owners, they don't they don't know the questions or they don't know the persona that they need to define in order to get the quality output that you're uh talking about here. And with what I saw, not only were those personas already built into your software, but they were built in and calibrated based on that high-level strategic uh contribution that you've made to those larger companies and um you know that you you mentioned earlier. And so it's great that the small business owner has this tool, but if they don't know how to use it in the way that uh tripebebles.ai is doing it, it's it's a missed opportunity for that small business owner. So I was particularly impressed that the small business owner doesn't need to learn prompting. They don't need to learn, you know, become a generative AI expert to get the benefit as if they were a generative AI expert. It was very impressive. So one of the things that we like to talk about is certainly the software, we're gonna get into that because I'm very excited about that functionality being released to the public. But the process of creation that leveraged generative AI for your operations, for your programming, for your marketing. Um, if you don't mind, maybe share a few examples of how generative AI really came to the rescue in the creation of Pebbles.
SPEAKER_00There
have been AI companies before, you know, before OpenAI and and but it was really the breakthrough that OpenAI had that which allowed us to really uh piggyback basically on their logic. So we understood um very early on that the time has come and that open AI and then soon after, you know, Google, Microsoft, you know, we're all getting into the stage where we're almost like like with the internet revolution, we are getting into a similar revolution with basically with open AI. Uh sorry, with uh generative AI. Um but it is still a hor I it's still horizontal mass market, you know, product. Um their goal is from what I understood in my conversations, for example, with Sam Alpin himself, but also with other leaders in industry, is that they wanna they wanna keep the cost down for intelligence or generation as low as possible and give it and get it as much adopted as possible by the world. Um our goal is completely different. So they're building a v horizontal AI that will be soon, for example, adopted in into our Apple products, and it's for mass market. Ours is something much harder to solve, which is B2B go to market, which requires a very deep understanding in corporate strategy, mark uh um neuromarketing, persuasion sciences, communication science, digital psychology, uh statistics, data science. I mean, I can go on. Um because BCB is fundamentally uh it requires a longer um consideration process or a sales cycle. Because we're not buying an $800 iPhone here. We you know we start anywhere between a thousand dollars and a hundred thousand, if not a million. So that requires a certain dance, you know, it it requires certain processes and methodologies and a certain etiquette, certain leveraging, certain uh principles where you can get a person from tell me more to okay, give me the service agreement, I'm ready to sign.
SPEAKER_01Nice. So your involvement in AI certainly predates the release of uh OpenAI's Chat GPT 3.5
in November of 2022. Do you and a lot of the listeners here, they don't have a technical background. They they weren't involved in you know machine learning or data science. And there is some hesitation that is that going, is my technical expertise going to be challenged here as I'm using generative AI in my business? As someone who's been on both sides of it, the the deep technical side as well as the generative side that you're leveraging in your software, what would you tell the average small to medium business owner if they had that concern?
SPEAKER_00Okay, uh, there's two schools of thought here. I'll be so I'll be the Dutch direct myself and the diplomatic self, okay? Uh the diplomatic one is more what our AI director says, uh, which is yes, you don't need any technical skill set. Um, you know, we will make pebbles AI. In fact, we're in the road of making pebbles so easy to understand to use that your grandmother, you know, with half an hour training would be able to understand essentially how to use it. I, on the other hand, well, um I'm the son of two academics, so I I like teaching. And when I was doing my bachelor and I was always a tutor, um I fundamentally believe that people should have some basic understanding of you know what is to come. I mean, you can't hide w where we are heading. There is a change coming. This is I mean, there isn't genuine it's like hiding from Google search. You you couldn't hide from it. Yeah. That times 10 is coming right now. You understanding the basic principles. You don't need to be technical, but understanding the logic and and the basic principles. Like we uh we learned the basic principles of physics, of chemistry and mathematics at high school, we ought to understand that also with AI. And in fact, we are building, or we have already built, Pebbles AI in a way where there's a layer, and you don't we don't have to do this, but I wanted this. We put the extra effort there. So if you have the platform, so what you see, there's a whole um backend essentially, where you hover over question marks and a question mark is everywhere that explains to you the certain sciences and what this button does and why it does it. So I'm trying to also educate my users as well uh going to market, but also how the system works.
SPEAKER_01I wish more software would do that. That's actually pretty brilliant. I've got the choice at that point as the user. If I'm interested and curious, the information's there. If I just want to get the result and I'm not interested and curious, I don't have to know that to use the tools. You know, it's interesting. It's what you referenced about, you know, hiding from Google search. There's a quote from Ayn Rand that uh I think applies here. And that quote is you can deny reality, but you cannot deny the consequences of reality. Right? You can say, oh, AI, I'm not, I'm not interested. It's not gonna affect my industry. It's gonna be years before I need to worry about this. You can believe that. However, simultaneously, the competitor next door that's now simply using Chat GPT or something basic now has an advantage that you cannot match unless you're using that technology. So uh I like the way that's so for those of you listening, the the takeaway from that explanation is that do you need it? No. Should you should you have that understanding to some degree of how the technology is delivering the results? Yes, absolutely. Um, and I I'm in agreement. We don't spend a lot of time talking about the technical side of things. However, I'm pretty curious about like we routinely talk about the um the stages of of AI with narrow intelligence, general intelligence, superintelligence. We talk about that stuff regularly, even though do I need to know that in order to create copy with uh you know a generative AI tool? No, I don't. So um the the size of business, and I know that with your software, you're you're addressing needs across a broad spectrum of business sizes. Uh, you're not necessarily focused on enterprise, you're primarily focused on the ones like our thesis as well. The small to medium businesses will not have access to the Accenture talent that's billing a billion dollars in the first half of this year. We just won't have it. So it's either up to us as an individual or it's up to people like you and I to provide them with, to provide the SMBs with their version of that tool. The type of business, the size of business that you think would benefit the most from leveraging something like you've got. Tell me about your ideal uh customer business for Pebbless.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Um that's a good point. I think the the ideal customer for us that will benefit the most are I think there you got three groups here. You got startups and scale-ups, uh anywhere employees anywhere between um I think five to fifty essentially. That's really and this will make a huge difference for them. Huge. Um and then we're looking really in the big players, so we're really looking at companies around 500 to a thousand uh employees that have so many inefficiencies and they haven't really centralized all their marketing sales product teams into harmonized go-to-market like machine. Um that will make a huge impact. It it will not just save costs, it it saves cost while increasing efficacy, which in return increases profitability. Um and the final thing is is channel partners. So we're talking about the global accelerators in the world, like uh TechSearch, Manor Institute, Y Combinator, but also marketing agencies and lead gen agencies, they have the biggest gain on this because they can serve with much more value through their incumbent clients and also uh increase their competitive advantage as well at the same time. And we offer them or essentially an a wine label with combination of an affiliate program where we share kind of the profits. Like our goal right now is not to maximize profitability, it's adoption. It's we want to see it enhanced and we want to see it helping people, we want like Etsy did, right? Like they had a great case study. They they went for you know the case studies and for the success stories. That's what we want to see. So uh in the you know, in the first year or so, we will be very lenient with that. And um yeah, and I I think I think also going back to your previous point, I I do think that society has become slightly um I don't want to call it lazy, but let's just say lazy. Um yes, you don't like let's do a metaphor. Yes, you don't need to know the intrinsics of how a car works. But you need a driver license, you need to know the basics of how to drive it. Good point. I think that's the same with AI. And I think you need to take it seriously. You need to know how to drive it and how it high-level
operates. You know, it has wheels, if you pedal, it's gasoline or electrical. You know, you need to understand these things. And I think we came became very complacent with these just in life, you know. Uh TikTok comes in our life and it's all 30-second videos, and you know, it mergers our brain, and we our our attention spans become shorter. I think we need to wake up. Uh and and we we need to take control and ownership of our own lives, including our businesses and our communities.
SPEAKER_01That's a great point. Now, if I'm a business owner and I'm listening to this because I have an interest in doing exactly what you said, um, there's a lot of resources out there of varying um, I don't know, credibility, let's say. The the 30-second TikTok video as compared to, you know, uh an hour conversation with you, somebody who takes a more mature approach. What would be the advice that you would have for the AI curious when it comes to being selective about the information that they choose to immerse in when it comes to this topic?
SPEAKER_00Let's start with generative AI. I think you need to understand high-level uh how it works and start experimenting. I'll give you a practical example because I know your audience likes these practical examples. So, you know, what really helps with generative AI is to be very clear, you know, like what is your goal? So my goal is to uh write a newsletter to X, Y, and Z. Okay, great. Um and to go a bit more deeper in terms of okay, so here is the audience, here are the characteristics of the audience. More is not better, so condense it, like okay, uh, my all audience uh lives in New York, they're uh founders uh of larger companies, etc. And they typically love these kind of things, and they they their problems are X, Y, and Z, essentially. And then provide them with what good looks like so that the the system understands here's my benchmark, essentially. That's one problem, stop there, run it, and then take an iterative process to really home in the precision and the accuracy of that newsletter, essentially. How do I know this? Well, it's a combination, right? It's a it's it's a it's by practicing and doing uh I reverse engineered back this logic, but also by reading um research articles. You don't have to do that, just do it easier. Go on Ix. I mean, uh you can say whatever you want about Elon. Uh, but he has really uh you know um rejuvenatized the the the you know life into or forward Twitter, and you can see a lot of smart gen AI uh engineers that speak normal language that anyone can understand. It's quite Interesting actually. And you learn more. Yeah, it's it's bite sizes. I mean, every day, just read 30 minutes, and you'll be uh you know on top of your game and you'll you'll out out compete anyone.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh that that's a great resource. I I agree. Twitter tends to not be as sensational, obviously, as Instagram or TikTok. So the stuff being shown on Twitter, at least the people that I follow that are in the AI space are much more interested in rather than the magic tricks, the real use, the applications. Hey guys, look what I just built as compared to, hey, look, you know, let me show you some razzle dazzle from AI. Uh, I I think I would agree with that completely. Are there any particular um podcasts or news sources that you because I I understand who your your ideal customer is. Regardless of your position with AI and your your depth of understanding, you need to, I'm not gonna say dumb it down, but you need to be able to translate your level of understanding into a layman or a new user's experience. Are there any news resources or podcasts that you feel do a good job of what you do, which is translating from the the technical and complex into the accessible and usable?
SPEAKER_00Okay, first off, I mean, for anyone listening, um I would say go on your um X feed for Twitter or online, go into the followers. I just follow all the people that were following. And I I've I've really taken a very careful uh uh created approach of who I'm following. Honestly, these guys are amazing. So they're engineers from Gemini to opening eye to other people that I know personally, and and they're uh not only brilliant, but they're also very kind people that are really trying to make a difference in the world. And they're not like they're not money driven, they're really achievement driven, and and they want to uh you know really push some positivity in this world. So that's number one. Number two is podcasts like yours or uh diaries of a CEO, for example, are really helpful. They get very interesting people. Just go into their channel, scroll down. Um, this is also often where I I I want to listen to other um uh thought leaders in the field as well. It really helps informing um high-level R review of how to use these machines or these systems, where we are as a society and where we're going, so you can also anticipate basically the heading as well. Um unfortunately you have to do in my opinion, you have to do this. Um, because with with the internet it was different. The internet can't think by itself. At this point, this is this is a car that will become a self-driving car, which will eventually become a self-conscious car.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting, and I'm glad you brought that up. I I've been having this conversation with other people in the space. I'm I'm commercially driven, you're commercially driven.
We have to be. Like we've got families to take care of, we've got things that we want to do in the world to support others and that sort of stuff. However, at this stage in generative AI, in small to medium business enterprise, I don't, I can't speak to that. But at least for this, the the culture of the leaders in the space, like you, like others that come on the show, isn't an ego-driven effort. It is very much like um I heard a quote that I like a lot because it applied to me. And that quote was from John Doer. And that quote was, in business, you're either a missionary or a mercenary, right? And for me in business, um, ethically, but uh I was driven as the the the commercial intent of a business was much more interesting to me than than the passion behind it. That didn't never happen until I got involved with generative AI and I saw how simple it is to have a major impact on these businesses that would otherwise be struggling to afford talent for access to that talent that that has the kind of uh you know frameworks that Pebbles brings to the table. And so for any of you listening, I think that that Jen just said was uh it's important for you to understand. Now is the time to ask questions. There are a lot of people asking questions, and the people that are answering those questions right now in Gen AI tend to be very supportive and they're not they're not seeing competition necessarily. I can't share that with you. I can't help you because you're gonna compete with me. That's not the spirit of things. So right now is probably the best time for you to get involved because of the open nature of the sharing. Look, I don't care if he says go listen to another podcast. I'm curious. I want to learn just like you. So this is a great time for individuals to be listening to these, asking these types of questions, connect, following the people, reach out to the people on Twitter, communicate with them. If you're enjoying this episode and want to learn more about how to start using AI at work, we've made it easy for you. For just one dollar, you can have full access to the Chief AI Officer community, which will give you additional training, custom software, daily training calls on AI tools, using AI automations, getting more from your Chat GPT sessions, and the business of being an AI consultant. Simply go to ChiefAIOfficer.com forward slash insiders to accelerate your AI journey. Now, back to the episode. So let's talk about the the current endeavor that's that's taking most of your time. What has and I I know you've been involved in projects in the past, but what has been the biggest difference between leveraging generative AI and the creation of your software as compared to to pre-gen AI attempts at creating software?
SPEAKER_00It's huge. Uh honestly, in one word, huge. Um creating creating
uh our own models which allow us to produce agents who are autonomous thinkers, you know, as again the McKinsey thinker of the senior analyst that can provide you actionable intelligence, that agent that can act like um a head of marketing at Google, for example, or you know, the sales manager uh with very high emotional intelligence that has persuasion sciences baked in at, for example, the likes of Microsoft or Cisco. Building that requires a fundamental strong understanding of how to go to market or any vertical, like the workflow works. You need to understand like really deep and not just theoretically, you you should have lived it. And you you should know what good looks like. So enterprise, you should know how it is when it's growing, and mid-sized companies, and you should also know that the level of starting scale ups. Thereafter, you're gonna have to basically be able to find and write literally yourself empirical studies um that are scientifically proven with market-tested models or find that kind of the two-to-event diagram, like okay, this is proven, but does that actually translate into business practicality? If yes, great, let's push it in there. Um so we we've done that for everything. So every business case study we have, for example, within the platform, whether or not your goal is upsell or cross-sell or an exploration email, there is a whole specifically suite on sciences connected to that. So when you press on it, the output of that campaign or email or sales asset like a proposal is maximized for persuasion, communication, and also getting the prospective client across the different layers of the funnel, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01Makes perfect sense. And the fact that a solopreneur can have access to this kind of output is uh, I think a testament to the capabilities of generative AI. Because, again, folks, you you haven't seen the inside of it like I have. There's this saying that's been going around in generative AI for at least a year and a half now, and that is the first billion-dollar one-person company is going to be possible because of this generative AI, uh, this acceleration that's occurring. And you say, okay, yeah, whatever, until you see something like what you showed me with pebbles.ai, and you realize, oh, and the reason is because of a word that you used earlier, which is agents. And that is something that if somebody's new to generative AI or they're using maybe Chat GPT, but they're not they're not holistically understanding its application, something like an agent comes on the scene and it's like the next level up from generative AI. Do you mind taking a minute to kind of explain the what an agent is as you define it, and the impact that it that an agent brings to the table as compared to just you messing around on Chat GPT?
SPEAKER_00Yes. In ChatGPT, you take control. So if let's go back to the newsletter, shall we? That newsletter I told you, you you you push generate, generate, you're like, you're not fully happy with this. This should change, that should change. Um something very simple. It's written in American English, but us British, we're snobs, we're like, you know, it should be written, you know, British English, for example. Something small like that. You have to go and tell, like, can you write this exact article in British English, please? Right. With agents, that autonomous thinking is baked in. So before it gets to you, it's almost like having your own super smart um kind of assistant next to you that is first off, the IQ is a much higher, it's much knowledgeable, um, and it knows exactly what you want and what your business is. So it it already knows, uh-uh, this this newsletter is going towards the British market, so that should have been written in British uh, you know, American English, even though you forgot the agent did it, so it did it for you. And so when you see it, everything's already done and it's already written in British English. So you don't have to go, you know, start editing, and etc, etc. That's just one agent. But imagine if you have a group of agents, so web one, web two, web three, those McKinsey, a head of marketing, head of sales, kind of people around it, and they keep themselves in check and they talk with each other, they share things. So in our platform, our web of agents that look over, for example, actual intelligence, which is basically strategy, has different things fed into them and different frameworks and logic, and the model is um built in a different way than, for example, if you want to run a campaign. Because when you do actual intelligence, it's like, okay, should we go into the Dart region, Germany, Austria, uh, Switzerland? Okay. Um, that's a high-level question. Typically a boardroom question, like, shall we do this? You know, some very smart young analysts do some calculations, market tell us, and give, you know, yeah, I think we should do it. I think Germany is quite interesting, it's growing. Uh, maybe Frankfurt is a great place to penetrate, etc., etc. Or, for example, New York. Could be anywhere. Um, but you know, you give a general direction. At the point when you do a market campaign, I don't need that anymore at strategic level. At this point, we want to be surgical. So precision and accuracy comes into play. So different, we require different skill sets, different kinds of sciences, and different logic at each stage of that workflow, if that makes sense. So imagine if they all do the works amongst them and then come to you. You just say days, if not weeks of work.
SPEAKER_01And you know, not only that that work, but the the mental load of you having to come up with the questions that you would be answering the
models in order to get the answer. That is a that is taken off your plate. Now, all of that neural capacity, that mental bandwidth is available to address the important and urgent things that are occurring in the business, or in the Eisenhower matrix, maybe you've got time now to work on those longer-term plans while these agents are doing all the stuff and giving you an output that's already been considered, intelligently designed, reflected upon by different perspectives. It's incredible. So, you know, we hear a lot about, uh I do at least, I hear a lot about agents and people, oh, go check out this site, you can build agents, go check this site out and you can build agents. I don't know that what those sites are building, though, meets the the reality of what you're talking about here. Is that functionality available off the shelf for somebody like me to go and start building agents? Is that capability here yet?
SPEAKER_00From the Blue Ocean competitive analysis we did, we we saw that predominantly agents are built by companies with a specific purpose and they tend not to white label it. But I I do I do see things coming up, springing up essentially, where you will be able to train your white label, essentially. Got it. However, training your agents I think um is like training uh your kid, for example, uh you or or but in one specific topic or a plethora of topics um it really requires a an structured logical approach because there is, you know, if you put in nonsense, the agent will be trained incorrectly and the output will be incorrect as well. Um so it I don't see it getting very democratized in the near future, frankly, because uh I mean it it's it's our IP, it's also the IP of some other younger comp AI companies. Um but yeah, I mean um I think the future will be really like listen, I need an age uh agent for HR matters, a recruitment and policies internal and everything else. You can go to Pebbles AI, but then the HR version of it to another company, for example, which is bird built on a different vertical that is trying to make it easier. It will be for for the time being a close to guarded secret.
SPEAKER_01So, you know, just when you think you're you're getting a uh a handle on generative AI, in particular, I'm like, okay, good. I've like I'm comfortable using generative AI. Then comes agency, and and folks, we're not talking about like an advertising agency, but agents that have that can make their own decisions based on the data they've been fed, as we talked about here. But that becomes like a whole new way of thinking about generative AI. The there's this this importance that's put on proper prompting format and and you know, calibrating your prompts for consistent output. But if an agent is there, the agent is going to no longer need my contributions, and all of this investment that I've made in the the current best practice of using these tools, it's going to be I don't know about obsolete, but certainly uh superfluous because now we're gonna have a level of this technology that I can probably at some point go in and say, uh you're trained on my data, I need a public relations and uh public relations agent. Right? And that the agents will actually be building other agents.
SPEAKER_00Is that is that where we're headed? Well, I hope not. Uh because if other agents are building agents, then I'm not sure how good the secondary agents are. Um I mean look, this is this is a prediction, of course, but I I don't un unless you have uh incorporated all the knowledge, including IP, that is not uh you know public knowledge of of you know companies that respect the verticals, say HR or whatever, uh within within the angels that are building the agents, it I honestly don't think at this point that the quality will be as good as the original ones. However, what I do see coming up is a marketplace for angels. I do see so for for uh for agents, I do see that happening. Like if you, for example, I I I'm just making something up, um a crazy idea would be look, I worked at Google, so I kind of know how they're working. Um imagine you you got an extension, uh so you you have your browser extension, right? So um, you know, the marketplace for browser extensions, you know, you happen to need an an an HR or anything related or recruitment uh agent. So you download it and then you can ask it, you know, to write up a you know a certain JD or job description, or you can ask it to uh write out an startup HR policy uh within the US and in complying with the US laws, labor laws. Um that's possible. I mean I I I think that's gonna happen, but um I think I think it's gonna make everyone's life easier at the beginning. Uh and I think the first two to five years we'll we'll see eventually uh our lives being our quality of life will be better. Like we'll have more time to go home and spend time with our loved ones and uh our efficacy will be higher. After that I mean it's anyone's guess to be honest, and with all the drama that's going on on with open AI now and people quitting it from the ethics department, uh that does not promise any good. So I'm a bit concerned that capitalism is taking the forefront over AI ethics. It should be balanced.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's what happens when you give it to Silicon Valley, I guess. Um hi, Silicon Valley. Uh so this is interesting. Okay,
if I'm an early adopter and I'm using these tools right now, certainly I have an advantage over the other, I don't know, online marketer or education program or consultancy or whatever. But they're going to eventually somebody in their company is going to say, hey boss, check this out. This is called ChatGPT. Like it's going to, it's going to start showing up. Now, that's fine, but if if I'm using agents and there is a lag time between my competition adopting the use of agents in their business, the gap that I would forecast would be much greater and achieved much faster. For the companies who are, you talk about this two to five year timeline. For the companies who um are taking a wait and see approach or it's it's on their plans, but for next year or whatever, will they be able to catch up with early adopters?
SPEAKER_00No. Sorry. Okay. I had to be touch direct here. No, no. Because the longer answer is people need to get used to new technology. It's, you know, if you look at historically in any any technology, there is a there is a life like a cycle of understanding, adoption, a cultural acceptance of a new technology. So if you wait a year from now from you know doing introductions, I mean they're already um which company was it already? Like one of the top two strategy consultancies is already starting to um include AI training with their new graduates already. I mean, even if you're not adopting it immediately across the board, you need to get people used to this product. It's very funny, actually. My dad just messaged me just before this podcast. Like, this chat GPT 4.0. I mean, that's quite interesting. Um, so what can you do with it? Quite funny. And my dad, you know, it it shows even my dad is um who who is historically quite conservative in these things. Uh he's one of those people that was against Apple until I had to force it down his throat, and then now he has everything. He has an iPad, iWatch, and and and and a MacBook. He has the whole Shaback. Even the Stupid mouse. He has it. Yeah. So but he's already getting interested in Chat GPT. So anyone that's listening, my dad has already shown interest. He's 67. Just say.
SPEAKER_01It's time for people to adopt this. So, you know, um I'm I'm very there's a quote that we we use a lot in our educational material, and it's a quote from Peter Diamandis, and he was on a podcast called Impact Theory, and this was from about June of last year. And June of last year, at the time, I thought, boy, I'm really behind on this AI stuff, right? Uh now that was a year ago, but in that interview, there's a quote, and he says, and he's this is coming from the Singularity University, with all the research they do and all the predictions and the successful track record they've got of predicting impacts. And his direct quote was by the end of this century, there will be two types of companies, those that are AI enabled and those that are extinct. That's it. That was a direct quote from Peter. And, you know, when I bring that up in conversations, if I'm training and stuff, people go, wow. And I say, well, here's what's even scarier. That was from a year ago. What have you done in the past year since Peter said that? What have you personally, your company, your to train your people to make sure that you are on the winning side of enablement? And you're not one of those that's like, you know, where'd all our business go? It's all gone. So let's talk about pebbles because I think that from what I saw, this would be a tool that would be a force multiplier for that business who, even if you are still on the sidelines, if you had a tool like this, your your catch-up pace to any of your competitors would be uh compressed significantly. Now, if you go and learn the tool, let's say your competitors are already using uh the large language models, and maybe they've got some Gen AI subscription tools and that sort of thing, that's great. They're beating you. They're getting more done with less effort. However, if you were to show up and skip all of that and show up with a tool like Pebbles that had the agents, essentially agents built in that had the uh pre-calibrated uh thought environment for those specific niches within the business that were based on not, hey, what is my competition doing, but what is the McKinsey guy bringing to my business? Do you see that this would be a chance for an individual to who is ready to get off the fence to kind of bypass all of that learning curve that would that your competition has had to go through over the past year?
SPEAKER_00Yes. So we would be the third very simple, yes. We we are the third category, uh, which are essentially a bunch
of people from industry leaders and very, very skilled uh and talented um developers that are building tools that want to make sure that you know the economy thrives. And the reason for that is is because I mean in a in a healthy um capitalism you need competition. And where we're heading right now is is almost like if you look at the data, is that you know the bigger companies are quickly buying up basically smart uh you know startups and scale-ups and merging them to k together, and that's it. They died out, and you bought MA version acquisitions, done. It's two things at the same time. You kill your competition and you grow and you you um uh and you basically implement their IP within your existing stack. It's like three three three birds, one stone. And I honestly think that um there needs to be a couple of us that don't want to be that billion dollar solopreneur. Um I mean I appreciate you maybe insinuating that I might be that person. I'm really I am really not driven by money. Um I I really am not, and I I really um I find it I have this very strong sense of injustice where startups and scale-ups and mid-sized companies can't flourish to a certain level where all consumers, society itself can benefit from it. Um if we give too much, we all know how we are, like as a humankind. We get too much power, you know, ultimate power corrupts ultimately. So acting. I mean, we where we're heading is is not the right direction. And I think having um not just Pebbles AI, but there's also another company that I really admire once in the name, um that does basically um HR um workflow automation and all the smart things that you require in mid-sized companies. I mean, from little I know about them, from what I can sense and read, is they're really doing this to help companies and people and and employees and and and founders. Um we need more of this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um look if if it happens that yes, our company becomes a billion-dollar company in there in the midst of it, yeah, great. Perfect. Uh are we still performing? Are we still helping people? Are we still are we still a net positive plus four societies across the globe? If yes, I'm happy. I'll I'll I'll sleep peacefully.
SPEAKER_01That's a wonderful perspective for anybody who's wanting to use these tools. Look, the first thing uh I I get it. You're like, oh my gosh, I can make more money with these tools. I can get more output out of my employees, I can work less, whatever those things are. But now, once you've achieved that that uh I don't know, that victory in your business, this approach of now, how can I provide a better output for my customers? How can I give my customers 10 times the value that they were getting from us before? I think that that right there is that's the people that I'm encountering. I'm not I'm not operating with at the environment where there's MA occurring and things like that. I'm working with the practitioners, right? Like at least in my business. And here's what I can tell you that I'm doing is I am encouraging them to uh recognize the impact, but not necessarily the financials or the economics of the use of this, but the impact of the use of this. And what we're looking to do is we're looking to create a culture of individuals who the assumption is the money's coming, right? If I know these things, I'm in demand, I have an advantage in the marketplace. However, I shouldn't solely be focused on how can I use these tools to make money. I should be focused on how can I, exactly like you're saying, like the pioneers of this space are doing, how can I impact the other shop owner like me, who wishes he could be at his kids' game or would like to be home and not have to work on, you know, a holiday or whatever like that. If you approach it from that perspective, yes, the money's coming, right? It's inevitable because of the value that's being created by tools like pebbles and by training like what we do, the value is is obvious. And when you provide that value, people will pay you for that value. But if you're looking at this strictly through the going back to that quote from John Doerr, missionary or mercenary. You can be both, folks, but I think that the the sentiment that we're sharing here is that be the missionary who makes money. Don't be the mercenary who ends up finding a heart later in life, kind of thing, with this stuff. So wonderful perspective. So I I I would like for people to be able to follow the progress of what you guys are doing at Pebbles. What's the best way for them to do that? And what do they need to know if they are gonna follow the pro progress and get in the wait list?
SPEAKER_00Well, they can always connect with me over LinkedIn. I accept almost everyone. So um I post quite a few. Well, every two weeks I I do at least
one post with some updates everywhere we are. Um you can also go to www.tritels.ai. Uh you'll see the website, and then just click join a waiting list and just put your name and email and be there. Uh we have a very special um promo going on for the first thousand users that we call our early adopters. Um we will treat them like our VIPs because not only will they get a massive amount of discounts and and also uh additional perks, and they they will be the first ones getting the new features, but they also will be um collected at a platform such as WhatsApp in order for them to provide feedback to us as well. Nice. You know, the product around additionally around their needs to say.
SPEAKER_01Well, Matt, when you're ready to start um showcasing this, I would love for the chief AI officer community to be uh on your circuit because uh what you showed me was leveraging generative AI to a level that I hadn't come to that conclusion myself, right? But it was instantly apparent that if this thing works, it's a game changer. That I now have uh like the requirement for me to go and study how to build a uh a prompt to train it, how to be that McKenzie strategist out the window. I don't have to do that. It's it's it's ready for me to that agent is ready for me to start communicating with it right away. I would love for our community and our listeners here on the podcast, of course, as well, to be considered uh for that early adopter environment. So please, it's an open invitation. When you're ready to start showcasing it, I would love to assist in getting that message out there because it's fantastic what you guys are doing.
SPEAKER_00To build on your points, um this thing, obviously, you know, we have at least I had six engineering meetings today. We test it every day. In fact, we're it works so well what we're doing right now is stress testing it, which is completely so it works so well that we're at the stage. Exactly. So that would just make sure, you know, not everyone has a perfect business plan and not everyone has all the information. So we just want to make sure it is still it, you know, at least it has a a multiplier value effect for everyone. So we're trying to break it, exactly. Um but yeah, it honestly it works so well that we're we're I don't want to say scared, but we don't there's a lot of sciences in there that also can be used for propaganda. So um and we don't want to become the next Cambridge analytics scandal. So uh what we're doing is we are blocking it um in Iran, North Korea, obviously Russia, because the American elections are coming up soon, the inter-British elections as well. Um so thank God the Dutch elections are already over. Yeah. Um but yeah, we we don't want our platform to be abused by um actual real foreign agents, so and be used in uh in in in certain uh scam farms because if you use certain tools and and and you your your eyes are trained I had a life before corporate, um which I am not really at the liberty of talk about, um you can see the Russian propaganda is already ticking up on X. Uh it's going up and it's it's very subtle, but you can still you can still see it, like if your eyes are trained for it. I don't I don't want them to use this. So we'll block that everywhere. It's gonna be only used for in within countries that we know will not abuse it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So folks, that's a whole nother consideration. These tools, you were talking about, you know, oh, let's make an email campaign. Well, these things are powerful enough to actually persuade mass populations. So it's a consideration that is beyond um the use of how we're using it, obviously. Uh well, this is fantastic. John, thank you so much for um joining the show. I know how busy you must be with six engineering meetings just today, with you guys being so close to launching it. Um, but I I am serious, when you get close, please put us towards the top of the list, if not the top of the list, of of audiences and communities that um this is the type of stuff that is this is the future. And I would love for our people to have the opportunity to see it as we take the wrapping off the package, right? So keep that in mind. Um I guess, you know, as we we close, is there any final obviously your LinkedIn profile and the the the site, uh, the website, we're gonna be adding those to the show notes, but is there any final messages that you want to leave people with?
SPEAKER_00Be vigilant and educate yourself. I think that's the only way we can uh make sure that the AI revolution goes in a path where it's it increases our quality of life as opposed to endangering our way of life.
SPEAKER_01Fantastic. Love it. All right, everybody. Thank you so much. And Sean, thank you for sharing all of this. I really enjoyed the conversation. I never know where these are going to go, but uh based on our initial conversation, I had high expectations that this would be exactly what we did. And that was a fantastic conversation. So thank you, Chris. Thank you so much, everybody. We'll catch you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to Using AI at work. Don't forget to subscribe for more conversations about how to use AI at work. And a special thank you to our sponsor, Chief AI Officer, for empowering businesses with AI education and training. Visit their website for a free AI readiness assessment and AI strategy guide to help you get started using AI at work. That's www.chiefaiofficer.com. Well, thanks to our producer, Evan Destalnier, for making this episode possible. Follow us on Twitter at the handle UsingAI at work and visit www.usingai at work.com for free resources to help you harness AI in your role.