Interview with Ryan Carson | Episode #25

Names matter because they set expectations, and expectations drive momentum. We open with a playful roast of our working title and turn it into a real exercise in clarity.  Why a simple, memorable name can act like a launch ramp instead of a speed bump. From there, we bring in Ryan Carson, a three-time founder who helped a million people learn to code, to talk about the biggest shift he’s seen: AI as a new kind of compute that lets tiny teams ship at enterprise scale.

Ryan breaks down the emerging tool spectrum with uncommon clarity. If you want to prototype without touching code, prosumer tools will get you moving. If you want to build durable products, you’ll need a power tool that meets you where you code. That’s where AMP comes in, opinionated by design, fast by default, and armed with the Oracle, a specialized agent that helps you break out of doom loops when you’re facing gnarly problems like the Google Ads API. We dig into what that feels like day to day: fewer friction points, smarter escalation, and a workflow that mirrors how great senior engineers operate.

Community threads everything together. Ryan argues that as agents get better, our need for human spaces actually grows. Build Crew is built for that - tool-agnostic, open to anyone coding with agents, and activated by live sessions, shareable threads, leaderboards, and badges that reward useful contributions. We also tackle the human-only question head-on: some work will stay embodied and personal, while high-friction knowledge services become agent-augmented. The opportunity for founders is to choose a narrow problem, ship something imperfect quickly, and use community to turn small wins into sustained momentum.

Want to build faster with agents and stay grounded with real humans? Tap play, then join Build Crew at www.buildcrew.team & try AMP for free at ampcode.com/free. If this conversation sparked an idea, subscribe, share it with a builder who needs the push, and leave a review telling us which agent use case you’ll ship next.

Chapters

• 0:00 Kickoff, Hosts, And Rebrand Tease
• 2:40 Mallory’s Wins, Clubs, And Community Habits
• 9:45 Celebrating Deals And Founder Mindsets
• 13:30 TV, Travel, And Type A vs Type B
• 19:28 Naming Debate: Launch Pad And Incubator
• 26:10 Hackathons, Momentum, And Big-Name Judges
• 33:20 Timing, Sales, And Lessons From Failure
• 36:51 Guest Intro: Ryan Carson And Music Icebreaker
• 39:20 Ryan’s Path: Coding, Startups, And Treehouse
• 44:45 AI As New Compute And Solo Founders
• 49:35 Why Agents, Where AMP Fits, And Tool Spectrum
• 53:50 AMP’s Opinionated Agent And The Oracle
• 58:35 Community’s Role Amid AI Noise
• 1:02:40 Human-Only Work, Art, And Agent-Augmented Services
• 1:07:20 Who AMP Is For And Learning Pathways
• 1:10:35 Build Crew: Purpose, Format, And Rewards
• 1:15:05 Evergreen Community Principles And Advice To Builders

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:10

And we're back, episode 25 of the AI Code Central Podcast. That's a working title. We are currently going through a rebrand. We have Mallory Lohr, the community and branding expert, formerly Bolt.new in Discord.

SPEAKER_00: 0:24

Let's go.

SPEAKER_02: 0:25

And myself, Charlie. I'm the SEO guy. Connor is uh he's he's out today. Uh he's the paid ads expert. And yeah, it's just Mallory and I rolling on this episode. And we've got a special guest, uh Ryan Carson. He is with uh Build Crew. He's he's leading the charge there. He's got a community of developers shipping with agents. So that is very exciting. And look, I don't know anything about community. I uh that's just not that's okay.

SPEAKER_04: 0:56

That's why you have me. That's why you have me on the head.

SPEAKER_02: 0:59

So uh yeah, Mallory's the expert in that. So we're we're we're pretty pretty stoked to to chat with Ryan.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05

I'm very, very excited. He's got such an interesting background. I think that there's a lot, you know, that our listeners, but also um just even us, like we can we can learn so much from him. So looking forward to that. And also, um since we're like doing the podcast intro, at some point maybe I'll sing the intro out.

SPEAKER_02: 1:22

Oh, oh, that's right. You're you're a classically trained uh vocalist, right? Like a opera singer.

SPEAKER_04: 1:28

Yes. Well, I like to classically trained, but love to sing other kinds of music too. Um, but I do this thing, uh, fun fact, I do this thing where like I sometimes come into meetings and kind of just like break the ice. I'll just start singing people's names, like as just for fun. So like maybe I should bring that energy in and find a way to incorporate that on the podcast somehow.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51

What's the best reaction you've ever gotten?

SPEAKER_04: 1:53

Well, people are just like, wow, like I well, people are just like, I didn't know you could sing, which I don't sing it seriously. Like, yeah, I'm like, Jolly, like just like and then like people are like, what is going on? I'm like, you know, I'm having a good day if I sing your name. So um, or just it's not super serious. Like, I just like to have fun with people's names. Um, but they're just like, Good morning. Hey, you're I'm like, what's up? Are you ready to go or what? Because if you weren't, now you are. Now you are.

SPEAKER_02: 2:22

Well, yeah, now you are, huh?

SPEAKER_04: 2:26

Okay. That's you won't have too much singing for today's podcast. Okay, guys.

SPEAKER_02: 2:30

Just badass, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 2:31

Just an idea.

SPEAKER_02: 2:32

So when we get together, we'll we'll definitely have to do some karaoke.

SPEAKER_04: 2:35

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 2:36

I might have to have a few drinks first, but um, yeah. Anyways, um, what has been going on in your world past week or so?

SPEAKER_04: 2:45

What has been going on in my world? Well, on work side of things, I did just get um locked down our first client for the marketing agency that I'm slowly working and building up. So that's really exciting.

SPEAKER_02: 2:58

All right, order in.

SPEAKER_04: 3:00

Yep, let's go, let's go. Um, on top of that, I'm in the process of launching my Substack this week to do some really exciting long form content on community. Um, and I'm going to be launching that soon. So for those of you who are like want to learn about all things community, I'll be, I'll be, of course, sharing that here on the pod, but I'll have more of that information on Substack too. Um, outside of that, just kind of getting back into working out. I did some cycling this past weekend. Um, not like out, like cycling out in the real world, more like a class, but um that was really, that was really great. I had brunch club with my old Discord uh co-workers. So I got to catch up with them. We do this thing where um every month I have a standing brunch club calendar invite on our calendars. Um and it's it's no pressure, right? Like if you can join, you can and you're free, come join. If you can't, because you're busy that month, come next month. And I just wanted to find a way to get together with a group of people that I love on a regular basis, but make it not so high pressure. And so I have this thing called Brunch Club, also doing another club called Craft Club soon. Um, so I guess I'm addicted to starting little clubs with friends, but um, so I did that this weekend.

SPEAKER_02: 4:19

Is that at the same brunch spot? Or do you guys no?

SPEAKER_04: 4:23

We switch it up.

SPEAKER_02: 4:24

We switch it up.

SPEAKER_04: 4:26

Yep, we we change it up every month. We try to rate the places we go to. We go to different spots in San Francisco, in the Bay Area. It doesn't always have to be in the city. Um, and it's been a thing we've been doing for almost two years now. And I'm really proud. Yeah, it's been we started it at the end of 20 or at the beginning of 2024. I was like, we need to be not catching up every four months. And like I know that maybe a once-a-month thing's a lot for people, but if it's like a no pressure thing, like can't join this month, come next month, sort of thing, I think people would be open to it, and we're still doing it. So awesome. Yeah, that's uh, you know, maybe uh inspo for some of you out there that are thinking about, you know, how do I get together with my friends more often? And look, if that's like too expensive for you, like could just do something at your house, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 5:12

Um you said crafting, like yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 5:15

I'm starting a little craft club um with a few ladies, and we are going to start off with polymer clay this week. There's like um, I'm addicted to craft talk. Like, there's this whole side of TikTok that shows you really easy crafts that you can do. I already like to paint, I like to color. Um, so and I love to sing. No, I don't knit, actually. I don't. Um, maybe that's something I'll add. I'm I'm one of those people that likes to start a lot of hobbies and like will I like be an expert or finish it or see it through? No, but I like to start a lot of things, and so um, yeah, we're gonna do this like a dry clay situation where we can make little magnets that are like shaped as cute foods and put them on the fridge.

SPEAKER_02: 6:00

That's cool.

SPEAKER_04: 6:01

So yeah, um, you know, that's kind of what I've been up to, and it's been it's been pretty chill. The weather here in San Francisco is gorgeous this past weekend. So we were at going to the beach, my husband went surfing, we went hiking with the dogs. So honestly, I can't complain. It's been good. How about you?

SPEAKER_02: 6:18

This uh real quick, this first deal that came in. Did you celebrate? So at my old sales job, and we we we do it with my agency too now. We we have a giant gong and we just we we just smoke the thing and it just makes this giant noise. So it's like, okay, order came in for John Doe. Here's the company, and then then like everybody like celebrates. I'm like, okay, how'd you book it? Like, just you know, cold email, a cold, cold call, or um, so how did you celebrate with the uh that's a great question?

SPEAKER_04: 6:49

I'm like, I don't think I did, did I? I don't know. I don't think I celebrated any. I mean, I was really excited. I journaled about it. I think my husband and I made a really good dinner.

SPEAKER_03: 6:58

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 6:59

Me and um the designer that's gonna be working on this project, we were celebrating on Discord, but like nothing major. I didn't have a gong. I but I should.

SPEAKER_02: 7:07

I should have because I'm musical, so I'm like, I feel like I need to have something where I'm like a desk pop too, or you know, like something.

SPEAKER_04: 7:15

Yes, but it's just me here. It's just me.

SPEAKER_02: 7:17

Okay, yeah, yeah. I I get that. My whole sales manager would say, All right, you this came in, you want to celebrate? I was like, okay. He goes, go get another fucking deal. Oh my god. Like, all right, like that's good.

SPEAKER_04: 7:28

No, but like I think that I think I love that you asked me this question because I think working in a fast-paced AI tech space allows us to always be on to the next thing. And this is actually why I love doing events so much because it's one of those, it's one, it's like the type of work where you get to see the final outcome of your work, et cetera, et cetera. But um, and then even like when I worked at Discord too and we would fail, like we learned over time that we need to celebrate even those, right? Because you learn from those failures and it leads you to a place of more clarity. And so even if it's like, right, not a win, like how can you make it a win? So I love that you've you've asked that question or like how you celebrate, right? Because I think I think that's really important. Um, I don't have this thing and I don't have money or you know, or I don't have fundraising, I don't have customers, I don't have but it's really easy to do that, I think, as a founder and as a builder. So thank you for asking me that question.

SPEAKER_02: 8:28

Yeah, yeah, of course. And it's it's hard. It's it's it's really hard. You know, the interesting space is not easy and closing, yeah, getting a cool client. That's that's good stuff. Cool, cool stuff. Congrats.

SPEAKER_00: 8:40

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02: 8:40

Um okay, past week.

SPEAKER_00: 8:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 8:44

Um, what have I gotten into? So we went, we finished a show. Uh I'm I'm trying to do like maybe one show like every six weeks or something, like a Netflix. We finished The Haunted House on the Hill, whatever that's called. Cool show. Yes. I liked it. It's not Halloween anymore, of course. And I've never seen this. Uh my girlfriend has seen like half of it. We started Peaky Blinders. I've never seen it. I've heard great things about it. Um so we started that. We went to one of my favorite restaurants, which is it's a steakhouse, so you know, I I'm a I'm a um fillet guy. So I got all right. I like dry wine too.

SPEAKER_00: 9:22

I like okay.

SPEAKER_02: 9:23

I like dry wine and look, I have two glasses of wine and I already get sleepy. So she's like, oh, like what'd you think of the first episode? So we we went to the restaurant and then came back.

SPEAKER_00: 9:33

And then came back, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 9:35

And then I just passed out on the couch. Like, yeah, what do you think of it? It's like, oh, it doesn't really make sense. It's I think I missed it. Oh my god!

SPEAKER_04: 9:41

But no wonder it didn't make sense. Are you you know what's okay? So when I'm watching a movie with my husband, I'm like, and he starts falling asleep, and he I can see it. Like he's his eyes are closed. He's like, I'm not falling asleep. I'm like, I literally can see it. You can't lie to me. And like, I'm not asleep with his eyes completely closed, and it's the most, I don't know, it's a pet peeve of mine. And I hope you don't do that either, Charlie, is what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02: 10:06

Uh no, okay. So I I I have insomnia, so like if I'm falling as I'll just I'll pass out like like so fast. Uh but no, I've never I'll have to do that to my girlfriend. I'm not asleep and just keep my eyes closed.

SPEAKER_04: 10:16

Yeah, she'll be like, I see that you're asleep.

SPEAKER_02: 10:18

Yes, she got kind of annoyed.

SPEAKER_04: 10:20

I mean, yeah, that's that's typical. Typical.

SPEAKER_02: 10:23

Uh okay, so we started that. Um, yeah, back on the ice. Um, let's see, I've got like a little list here. Oh, yeah. Okay. So this the past like couple weeks has been me just bitching about this Google Ads API.

SPEAKER_04: 10:35

I know, I know. I was gonna ask you. I'm like, he's gonna give an update about it. And if he doesn't, I'm gonna ask him about it.

SPEAKER_02: 10:41

Uh okay, so as we build out our app, Campaign Pilots, which pulls together campaign data, GA4, Search Console, ads. That Google Ads is no freaking joke. And I I found I was we were talking about this before I hit record of like there's like a bunch of documentation, it's like a thing that it's really hard to work with. It doesn't pull data, like part of the app fetches the data via connectors like very efficiently, and then another part of the app doesn't. It does it doesn't fetch the data at all. So in my brain, I'm like, why the hell doesn't this work? So yeah, that's pretty cool. I'm gonna drill into that after we get off this call. And uh oh yeah, we're heading to Raleigh this week, which would be pretty cool. So it's hopefully the government shutdown doesn't, yeah, you know, the flights don't get canceled.

SPEAKER_04: 11:29

I think that they're reopening now, but um that I mean that doesn't mean everything is going to, you know, operate at 100% overnight. I'm sure it'll take some time to ramp up. Um what are you gonna be doing in Raleigh?

SPEAKER_02: 11:41

So we are we're seriously considering uh moving there to a suburb of Raleigh. And I've heard nothing but good things. I've never been there, so that's the reason why we're going there. Yeah, uh, we'll be there from Thursday to I think Monday. Very cool. I I can't remember. I don't know. I'm not a details person.

SPEAKER_04: 12:03

Okay, well you can report back. Okay, so you're are you more like type B? Is that what I'm sensing? Because I've been having this topic with friends lately around like the differences between the type A and the type B friend. Like, I'm very type A. I'm very like everything's on my schedule. I like, you know, know things ahead of time. I'm very organized. And then I have a lot of type B friends, and that's okay. I love them. I don't want to hang out with a bunch of type A people because that's gonna make me neurotic. That just like they just show up places. They don't even, they're like, I'm here, I don't know what's going on. Like, they're just not organized, you know. I gotta corral them. So are you the type more type B or type A? I think there's a type C too, but I actually don't know what that means. So what would you consider yourself? Type B?

SPEAKER_02: 12:45

Before I answer this, what would you categorize me as?

SPEAKER_04: 12:48

Well, it's not, I mean, I feel like you could be like there's a world where you could be a little bit of both. Like I've just because I've gotten to know you over the last few weeks, I feel like when you get focused on something, you like, and it needs to be detail-oriented, you're gonna like go in and like go in so hard that like you're like, I have to isolate myself from the world with this whole Google is API thing. And then like doing the podcast with you are super organized with notes and stuff stuff and what have you, so that's good. But then I hear these things, so I'm like, hmm. I think you're probably more type B, but you have type A tendencies.

SPEAKER_02: 13:23

I've learned to be type A. You have to be hyper-organized and have a plan to an extent uh as an entrepreneur, as a founder. So I started my first company, I didn't really know what I was doing. That was pre-COVID. And then as time went on, I I think I learned, I got I inherited, I guess you could say, type A tendencies. But for example, like when I went to Thailand, I didn't know, like I knew we were flying. We like we went from Denver to Vancouver, but I didn't I didn't know from Vancouver, like where we're going. I think we're still in Thailand. Like, I don't know, I didn't put together like our constant our travel person, like she put it together. It's like, oh I'm not sure. That's why I kind of like airports, like airports are very liberating.

SPEAKER_04: 14:09

Uh that's so funny. That's so funny. Wait, what do you mean? What wait, what's liberating about airports? I I've never heard someone say that in my life and then eat enough.

SPEAKER_02: 14:18

Are airports very relaxing to me. And we by the way, for context, we talked before we hit record that I can I can go ham at an airport, I can crank out hundreds of emails at an airport. Uh I know it's just like efficiency. I know it's like, okay, it's here, do this. All right, stand in this line, there, there. Okay, cool. I got my food, I'm in a lounge, and I just go, I just go nuts. Uh I don't know what it is. It's very relaxing, and knowing like you're you're about to get on the plane, and you know, you're you know, and it's just kind of liberating.

SPEAKER_04: 14:50

So I I I love that though. I love that you were like, I'm you know, at the airport and I don't know where this connecting flight goes to, but like it's it's gonna lead me to where I need to be. I trust, I trust in the process, and it doesn't fucking matter.

SPEAKER_02: 15:04

She was so bit. Oh, she she was like, Do you even know where I was like, not really? We'll figure it out. Like, we'll figure it out. That's so funny. I think founders like kind of get that. I mean, look, I think we'll we'll take some steps forward, but yes, because like we can figure it out along the way, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_04: 15:21

Yes, because like you can't be type like as a founder. It I think like you'll become crazy if you try and type A your way out of like in everything in your life, your personal life, your business, right? Your your health, your, you know, how you um, you know, organize time with friends and family. Like you just become like you're gonna, you're a robot. You can't, yeah. I'm not calling myself a robot, right? But you exactly, exactly. You can't be so rigid. And look, life, life is you can have whatever plan you want, but life is gonna take it and be like, no, this is not like you think this is the plan, but actually, this is the plan, right? So you can't like when people ask me what's your five-year plan, I'm like, I cannot tell you that. I'm so sorry. Like, that's just I I as much as I I love those questions, I'm like, I can't. I don't, I don't know. I don't plan my life out like that. So I'm only type A to some extent, right? And then it's like I gotta chill the fuck out.

SPEAKER_02: 16:16

So uh I've I I used to be, I think there was a point where like I was seeing success in like maybe my second company that that's when it was like a hard type A, but uh I was like so focused and like so driven, you know, because when you scale to a certain amount, you're like, I bet I could 10x this if I just do more of this. So I learned to chill out. Um yeah, so I guess I don't know, maybe maybe that's type C, right? Hybrid, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04: 16:40

Whatever it is, maybe maybe we do like a a podcast episode where you, me and Connor, we get we like dive into our Myers Briggs or like I don't know. Oh yeah. I I love that stuff. That is like okay, I have I have a problem when it comes to self-discovery. I'm like, Myers Briggs, cool. You want to talk to me about the Enneagram? Awesome. You want me to take the strengths binder test? Cool. I'm gonna do that. You want me to, I don't know, anything, anything that I can look into regarding, you know, how to better understand myself so I can then, you know, show up as my best self at work and in my personal life. I just I can I I I'm like, yeah, it's like crack for me. I just love that. So maybe there's an episode where we kind of like do a deep dive and then yeah, figure out like the similarities and what have you one of these days. Just an idea.

SPEAKER_02: 17:28

Yeah, I mean, uh I I think Connor's more type A.

SPEAKER_04: 17:32

Is he? Okay, yeah, okay. I I feel like I need to I need to build a relationship with you two more to like pinpoint it, but I could see it.

SPEAKER_02: 17:42

Yeah, we we've never seen each other in person.

SPEAKER_04: 17:44

No, we haven't.

SPEAKER_02: 17:45

We've been we've been working uh pardon me, Connor and I. I mean, yes, we've been working together for four years, obviously just a couple weeks, you and I and yeah collectively, the three of us, but yeah, at some point we will see each other. Um I think y'all should buzz over to Colorado and just buzz up to the mountains and go ski or something.

SPEAKER_04: 18:01

Say less, say less. Uh that's easy for me being out in San Francisco. So I would love that.

SPEAKER_02: 18:07

Um so yeah, that's uh that was roughly my week. Uh yeah, so all that to say, let me loop back to Raleigh. Very excited, her great things, great things about the area that we're gonna check out. We'll go to a hockey game um her with her parents. And her her parents are they're they're from outside of Raleigh, like not too far. So we'll go to a good barbecue spot. I love barbecue, I freaking love barbecue. And uh yeah, her her dad's awesome. They're I mean both her parents are great, but uh yeah, her her dad's the kind of guy that can like talk to anybody and like very like charismatic. And so his name is Stu. I call him Disco Stu, like on the sentence. I call him Disco Stu. So uh yeah, we'll we'll get together, maybe have a uh a soda pop or two.

SPEAKER_04: 18:51

A soda pop? Oh my god, yeah, who says that?

SPEAKER_02: 18:54

Well, it's it's an old hockey saying.

SPEAKER_04: 18:57

Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02: 18:59

Old uh Canadian.

SPEAKER_00: 19:01

It's like, wow, soda pop.

SPEAKER_02: 19:03

Yeah, well, root beer float. So um, yeah, that's I think we I'm not gonna try and act like I know when we're heading back to Denver, but it's sometime next week. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04: 19:12

Got it, got it. Of course, your type it, your type B self's like I'm gonna just show up at the airport when it says it on my phone, and then when the Uber pulls up, it's yeah, when the scheduled Uber is is there, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 19:25

Then I I know it's time. So um anyway, okay. So last week we talked about a rebrand. What goes into that? We're gonna rebrand the pod. It's a working title, AI Code Central. Uh Mallory said your title of the podcast is hot garbage, so it needs to change. So we've been kind of throwing some ideas around of like a launch pad, uh, you know, as we get into the angel investing side. Um, a launch pad, maybe like a I don't know, is it is an incubator.

SPEAKER_04: 19:55

I like launch pad actually. Launch pad's interesting because to me, like the word launch kind of covers marketing, go to marketing, like go to market, building and launching something, obviously. Um and the pad component makes it feel like it's a place or a space or what have you. So I actually think that's kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 20:19

Okay. All right. Yeah, I don't I like it.

SPEAKER_04: 20:22

And it's two syllables, launch pad. It's easy. It's two syllables.

SPEAKER_02: 20:25

Like is that what it is, is that kind of like the the the rule, I guess, the law of the land rules, but it's like you want it to be.

SPEAKER_04: 20:36

You want it to be easy to say. Yeah, you want it to be easy to say, right? Like, um, I think my I was talking to my sister this morning and she's like, What are you doing today? I'm like, Well, I'm recording a podcast. She's like, What's the podcast called? And I was like, it's called, I was like, it's called, it's called AI Code Central Podcast.

SPEAKER_02: 20:55

And what'd she say?

SPEAKER_04: 20:57

She's just like, oh, that's so exciting. But like it's just okay. Like she's excited. I just she wasn't like that's a shit name. I was like, we're working on the name, we're working on the name, you know. But I think she's just like, Okay, okay. Like, I, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, anyway, but it's just a mouthful. It's just a mouthful, you know what I mean? Like, I think that's that's really what it is for me. Um, it's not that it's like bad, it's just it's a mouthful. And I think something like launch pad Charlie is great because it's just easy to say. It actually makes sense with what we're doing. Um so there's something there. There's something on on us noodling on that that name specifically. And then you had a different idea too.

SPEAKER_02: 21:39

Um incubator. You said incubator, right? Incubator. I don't know if that's I don't know if that's the right, because uh, I think the the core of what we'll be doing, well, the the heartbeat, I guess, linchpin is the podcast. But as we get into like more educational content of like SEO and paid ads and you know, community slash branding, yeah, um, there'll be an arm to that. So I I I don't know if that's um I don't hate it.

SPEAKER_04: 22:07

I think I think we'd have to attach another word to it. Um, of course. It's interesting because like the word incubator to me, like immediately I think of like, okay, we're in the heart of Silicon Valley. We're like early 20s, we're like building something in a garage with other founders that like are also you know trying to build.

SPEAKER_02: 22:29

Like and I like the energy of that. Like uh Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley as one of the funniest shows. It's I I can't say things that is on real. I was done.

SPEAKER_04: 22:41

It is real. It's okay. That show, okay. Based on my, I've been in San Francisco for those of you listening now for almost 10 years. And I've been, I've worked in all kinds of startups, and that show is too real. Like it's freaking hilarious, and then unfortunately, it is too real. Even today, like looking like watching that show again, like I'm like, this is just this is like my experience, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 23:06

It's such a funny show.

SPEAKER_04: 23:07

It's so funny.

SPEAKER_02: 23:08

So funny. The writing is so good on it. Yeah, it's freaking uh what's the guy's name? Um uh he's from Denver. Uh is he? Uh the the owner of the incubator, the the house.

SPEAKER_04: 23:20

Well, I only know Pied Piper. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02: 23:23

The kind of heavier sick guy, the the guy with a really big personality.

SPEAKER_04: 23:27

Yes, yes, I know who you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02: 23:28

His character is so funny.

SPEAKER_04: 23:30

It's so funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 23:32

Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 23:33

There's some there's some truth to it, unfortunately. A little bit to that show. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 23:37

Uh okay, so incubator, that's kind of what I think of.

SPEAKER_04: 23:40

So but like what I was gonna say is, and how that ties back to us, Charlie, is okay, we are, yes, we have the podcast, you're building out this product. We're thinking like, how do we support founders in the long term? We're gonna do this educational content component. So I can see us building like a mini digital incubator. So I could I could see that working. I kind of I kind of hate how mouth and how it's like it's it's just it's a little bit of a mouthful, but I think if we attach it to something really interesting, I'd be down.

SPEAKER_02: 24:09

I like that. I like that uh digital incubator. Doesn't Gary B do something like that?

SPEAKER_04: 24:14

Uh I don't I wouldn't be surprised. He probably does.

SPEAKER_02: 24:17

I think he does something of that like dated brands and then runs it through his conveyor belt and yeah, um rebrands it. And that would be cool.

SPEAKER_04: 24:25

Like, you know, thinking dream and bag here, it would be cool over time to be like, okay, how do we do like little workshops um where we do IRL incubators with like a small set of you know founders or builders? And what does that look like? And that's because I'm such an IRL person, but I would love that's like my dream. Like, how do we yeah, take it from digital to testing it or experimenting it, IRL? And that I literally that just popped in my brain. I'm like, I have to say it because I'm gonna lose it, but just just a thing, an idea to plant.

SPEAKER_02: 24:56

What if we did a build-a-thon and then the winner that we can invest and then we can do the uh hands-on approach of the three arms of of marketing that we that's cool, we that's cool, that'd be cool.

SPEAKER_04: 25:08

And you know, I I did help, you know, execute the world's largest hackathon. So you did just a little bit. So, like perhaps we can, you know, take a look at the case.

SPEAKER_02: 25:18

Yeah, that's that's still bananas that like the world's largest hackathon. That is yeah, that's banana lands.

SPEAKER_04: 25:25

Exactly. And then we'll just we'll we'll figure out what that looks like for us. And it's funny that you say build-a-thon because when I was working on the hackathon, before when I joined the company, I was like, we need to rebrand this to call being called a build-a-thon because we're attracting so many people that are non-technical. Yeah, and unfortunately, it's a blocker for most people. When you go, hey, do you want to participate in a hackathon? They're gonna be like, I'm not an engineer. Why would I ever participate in something like that? So I remember when I joined, I was like, eventually we should rebrand a build-a-thon so that you know we can kind of own that word and expand outside of like what the word hackathon means. So, yes, I like that you're already on you're already thinking about that.

SPEAKER_02: 26:04

I am I'm down. By the way, did they change that? Do you know?

SPEAKER_04: 26:07

No, I'm not, I don't think they're hosting from what I know. I think they're they're partnering um with a ton of different hackathons. And actually, that was a community program I worked on at the end of my time at Bolt was like there was so much inbound of all these different hackathons from you know, um, businesses that were running them internally to college campuses. And so I was like, we should build a scale scalable program here because the inbound we're getting is insane. And okay, we we toss them a few codes, we give them a few, you know, we give them some swag. And now, you know, people are using builders are using our tools during the actual hackathon itself. And so that was like a community program I worked on scaling at the end of my time there. But um yeah, I don't know if they're gonna throw another hackathon or what that would look like, but maybe they'll they'll use that term. So we'll see. I didn't kind of get to do anything around that that term while I was there, but I'm not sure what their plans are. So we'll see.

SPEAKER_02: 27:04

Can I ask? Maybe I can, maybe I can't. Uh how did you how did y'all how how did your team get some of those like big names like Calicanus and like um Imagine Dragons? Didn't they did Imagine Dragons play the concert?

SPEAKER_04: 27:21

Chain Smokers pay played the concert and chainsmokers, imagine.

SPEAKER_02: 27:24

That's okay.

SPEAKER_04: 27:25

And then the chain smokers also invested in the company. So you you can imagine that when you have those type of investments in your company, not only are you receiving those funds, but then you also can tap into their network, right? And so that is what we did. Um, not necessarily for Jason Calicanist per se, but um, I think like we just had really great investors, great board members that has that have these really great connections.

SPEAKER_03: 27:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 27:51

Um, and so they wanted to play the concert um that we kicked off with. And then look, I think um I think you and I talked about this a little bit yesterday, Charlie, about the importance of momentum when it comes to building as a founder.

SPEAKER_03: 28:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 28:07

And I think what was really sexy about Bolt back in the spring is that they just had this undeniable sort of momentum being built up not just by themselves, but organically by the community. So um, someone we should interview, actually, who we should eventually interview on this podcast, his name is KP.

SPEAKER_02: 28:25

Um, and he You've made mention of him.

SPEAKER_04: 28:27

I have mentioned him. I know when we brought on Suk, uh, Suke has also, um, I know he's really close with KP as well, but he's very well known as like the guy that it like will build in public in the developer space in particular. Like he um and he basically put out a tweet that was like if lovable or you know, um bolt.new like throws the world's largest hackathon this year, it's gonna be like the marketing campaign of the year. And then Eric, who's the CEO, responded to that and was like, we're gonna do it, right? Um, and so by the time I had joined the company, we were gonna do it. It was more so like, uh, how are we gonna do this? What's the executionary plan? And so what I'm trying to say is like it it started to build this momentum on X. And then the folks like Jason Kalcanis, right? And within the space, when they get approached and we get to ask them, not only do we have this like robust network because of our investors, but then we have this sort of like external momentum and people want to be a part of that, I think, you know. Um, and so, and then of course it's like for the Jason Kalkanis, it's like, you know, when I came to the judging period, he was not going to. We asked the judges a lot for their time, and like he's not gonna be the type of person who has a lot of time. So making sure that like our asks are very straightforward, easy for him to kind of be a part of, et cetera, et cetera. So um, and then look like once you get a few amazing judges locked down, you share that. So it's like we he wasn't one of the first judges to lock down. It's more like, hey, Hey, we're throwing the world's largest hackathon. Look at this momentum. We have a panel of sick judges. Here are the names, name drop, right? Like, do you want to be a part of this? And that I think like and that helps. And then on top of the fact that we had, you know, 20 different AI companies hop on board and want to be a part of the hackathon too. So I feel like that's it's a mix of like momentum and connections is what I would say on how we were able to like lock lock him down.

SPEAKER_02: 30:26

And that the the timing too of the space of vibe coding was bananas. Yep. I mean so many like that from an SEO background, that's my background. Just that keyword like AI code, vibe coding. I've I I bought the domain vibecoding.com.

SPEAKER_04: 30:39

I spent Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02: 30:40

Yeah, I spent X amount on it.

SPEAKER_00: 30:42

No way.

SPEAKER_02: 30:43

Yeah, I have that. And then that was kind of why I wanted to, you know, why I went with the name AI Code Central.

SPEAKER_04: 30:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 30:50

Podcast. That's a mouthful.

SPEAKER_04: 30:52

Um no, it's okay, but like I think that's a really powerful domain, by the way.

SPEAKER_02: 30:57

Yeah. I I'm I'm just sitting on it. I don't even know what to do with it. So anyway. Um, yeah, I mean that that's the power of of communities, right? Timing, and I I think that's a very underrated um component to startups and um traction. I think timing is huge.

SPEAKER_04: 31:16

Um definitely it can it can um sorry, I was just gonna say it could just completely make or break your startup. Like, you know, when I was a founder myself and at the end, like, you know, my my company uh you know failed, and it was it's sometimes like a mix of timing and luck and like all of these things that like are to some extent out of your control. Obviously, some of those things are in your control, but not everything. Um so yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 31:43

I think what you've learned though, we we did talk about this a bit yesterday, is is like so valuable though, going through that and like the direction that you want to go now as you start your agency. I mean, I would imagine it'll be like ten times easier.

SPEAKER_04: 31:58

I think so. I think so. And um not not to you know beat a dead horse, but also Charlie and I were talking about just like how important sales is. Um, and I know Charlie's talked about that, I'm sure, on many, many, many, many, many, many, many episodes. But um, as someone who doesn't have a a formal sales background, uh becoming a founder taught me how to do that, and it is an invaluable skill that I'm so glad I have now. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 32:26

You can hone that. It takes years and years to craft, years and years and years, many punches square in the teeth that takes to um to hone. So it's fun. It it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_04: 32:38

So you gotta get knocked down and then you get back up and you try again, you know?

SPEAKER_02: 32:43

Yep, yep, 100%. Um, so yeah, we were talking communities earlier, and we've got uh Ryan Carson, uh the dude's a boss. Um he's he's uh he's he's leading the charge. His community is I I have to look up our show notes again here, build crew. So it looks like they're teaches people how to um ship with AI agents. And so I initially saw that uh I was on X. I mean, I I saw him on Claire Bose podcast, and then uh on Twitter, I followed him on Twitter, and then he he put something out that was like, hey, like what's your favorite band? And then he said, Mine is Rage Against the Machine. I was like, uh okay, all right. This guy all right. And then I tweeted back and I said, Mine is Metallica. I by the way, I'm wearing a Metallica shirt right now. I said mine is Metallica.

SPEAKER_04: 33:30

Is that a coincidence? Or no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02: 33:33

I I just I have like five. So oh my gosh. Actually, I was talking to my girlfriend about this. I I only own like nine or ten shirts, and like three of them are I know. I just well, that I wear. I have like a lot. I just I don't have need now to wear like real nice, like collared shirt. I have them.

SPEAKER_04: 33:52

I mean, of course, if you're gonna be locked in Google API land in your basement for five days, why would you need to wear a suit? You know, thanks, Google gumbags.

SPEAKER_02: 34:03

So uh yeah, he he said rage. I said, okay, I responded back with Metallica. He's like, Oh yeah, great choice. And then uh I did some digging. I think I knew this a couple weeks ago, too. But I did some digging into Sourcecraft, the company, and a guy I went to high school with works there, and we went to that Metallica concert. I'm like 99% sure that's him. So that that'll probably be one of the first things I'm so crazy. Um, but yeah, that's uh that's what you've got lined up here. Uh Ryan Carson. So yeah, what why don't we throw it over there?

SPEAKER_00: 34:33

Can't wait, can't wait.

SPEAKER_02: 34:35

All right, we are back with Ryan Carson. Uh Ryan, thank you for joining the podcast.

SPEAKER_01: 34:40

No problem. Excited to be here, talk about all things AI, community, and more.

SPEAKER_02: 34:45

Ryan, for our audience, uh, you know, I I follow you in X, and uh, you know, you you put out a tweet, what's your favorite band? And I I even have a screenshot on our uh episode outline like what's your favorite band? And you said Rage Against Machine. I was like, uh okay, I think uh let's go. I think this guy gets it. I I said Metallica.

SPEAKER_01: 35:03

Metallica's pretty great, but uh Mallory, what about you? What's your favorite band?

SPEAKER_04: 35:07

What's my favorite band? Oh man, I'm a I'm an indie gal, I'm an indie rock gal, so I like like foster the people, empire of the sun, the parcels. Ooh, they're so good. Yeah, I just saw them in concert and not to be one of those people, but it was definitely a religious experience.

SPEAKER_01: 35:24

So what about MGMT? Are you a fan of them too?

SPEAKER_04: 35:28

They're good. I feel like they've had a good, but they're not good live. They're not good live, like they've got a few hits, and like that's fine, but I don't think they're very great, great live, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 35:37

I get it. I so I actually grew up um super religious. I thought I was gonna be a pastor and I'm not that person anymore. But um, but so switching to Rage Against the Machine was a big life moment for me. Um, and we won't go too dark here, but basically my parents got divorced and I got mad about it. And then I listened to Rage Against the Machine and I liked it.

SPEAKER_04: 35:58

No, that's powerful. I actually had a similar journey. I was going to be a youth minister in the Catholic Church. No way, really. I mean, I was about to major in religious studies before I realized I wanted to work in games and on the internet, um, which was, you know, I it broke my parents' heart. So I can only imagine what that was like for you to like, you know, um about to be a pastor and then just switch things up.

SPEAKER_01: 36:19

Um I'm gonna do something else and code instead.

SPEAKER_02: 36:24

That's it. Yeah. I I will say that album, Battle of Los Angeles, is incredible. That is that's a that's an all-timer.

SPEAKER_01: 36:32

I mean, Zach De Roach, like as a lead singer, he's just so he has so much passion and and the music's so good. And it's like it's fun music to listen to if you're a little bit angry. So it's like great. So have you seen him live? No, this is the crazy thing. I was for the first time, I was gonna go see him with a friend, and then COVID happened. And so we could go. Gotcha. So it's on my list. Gotcha, gotcha.

SPEAKER_02: 36:55

Well, um, Ryan, we've got the music out of the way. Um, why don't you tell our audience uh who you are and um really what's what you're doing in the AI space?

SPEAKER_01: 37:06

Yeah, sure. So um I first fell in love with computers because my dad brought home an Apple II e computer in I think it was 87. And I was like, what is that? And so I started playing with it um and totally fell in love. But then, you know, sort of didn't end up going on the programming route until I was walking down the highway, uh the hallway in my high school. And my um calculus teacher, Miss Bruce, who was super cool.

SPEAKER_02: 37:34

Shout out, Miss Bruce.

SPEAKER_01: 37:35

Um, she changed my life because she basically tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hey, Ryan, you should take our computer programming class. And I was like, What's what's computer programming? And she said, It's where you tell the computer what to do and it does it. I was like, What? Okay, I'll I'll gonna do that. Um, and so I learned Turbo Turbo Pascal, and and I just it blew my mind how you start with a blank screen and then you summon this creation, like out of nothing, right? And um, and so fell in love with programming, uh, and then ended up studying computer science. And so went that route. And um uh like I like I said, my parents got divorced, and I was like, I'm out of col here. So I went uh to Colorado State, so Charlie kind of close to your neck of the woods, and um, and then I was like, I'm just gonna totally change my life and I'm gonna move somewhere. So I walk I watched um Notting Hill, which is the world's best movie, in case you weren't clear about that. And I was like, I'm gonna move to London. So moved to London, was a web developer there, and then just kind of, you know, like most people, you know, bumped around and figured out what was going on. And I really discovered I I was an entrepreneur at heart, and I was like, I want to be my own boss. Um, and what actually happened to that is I I was working at this web development studio, and my boss was just a terrible person. Um and uh he gave us this insane deadline to get this F1 website live because we worked for uh one of the F1 teams. And it it literally took us like 48 hours of straight work. I slept underneath my desk, you know. Oh yeah. We shipped it, it went live. And then the moment I decided to become an entrepreneur was he walked down. Uh, he came in the morning. We had slept there, and he walked up to our desk and said, Okay, cool, you know, you you shipped it way to go. And like, here's a six-pack of beer. And I just remember thinking, I'm done. And so, anyways, just I was like, I can do what he does. And so started my first company, built uh built a SaaS app, and then that was acquired, then went on to start um another company, decided to get really passionate about teaching people how to code, because if you know how to code, you can change the world and change your life. Um, and then just did that for 10 years, ended up launching uh an online school called Treehouse, raised venture capital for that, scaled the team, taught about a million people how to code. Um, and then that was acquired in 2021. And then large language models happened, right? You know, and I had studied neural networks in college and the perceptron, and none of it worked. And all of a sudden, you know, uh pre-trained generative transformers and large language models change everything. So it went deep on that, you know, learned everything, built an app, um, and then realized, yeah, this is exciting. Used agents, you was using cursor, and then uh someone said AMP, and I was like, What's AMP? And I tried it and I was like, wow, this is an amazing coding agent. I love it. And then uh decided to join the team as a builder in the residence, where basically I'm building my startup on the side and using AMP to do it and building community around it. So it's been a circuitous journey. Um, but here I am.

SPEAKER_02: 40:56

Okay. Question about CSU college. Was there a place called Deepy Dough that was there when you were in college?

SPEAKER_01: 41:05

Dp-Dough. Um, they had the best zones. Really? But remember, all I did is is go to Bible studies during college. So I had didn't have fun or do anything, you know, great.

SPEAKER_02: 41:16

So okay, gotcha. They had the we used to get that just crippled and it was like delivered to your door, and it was it was so good. So that's that's that's that's what I took out of that. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_04: 41:28

I mean, I guess like in a more serious question, I feel like you've kind of seen the evolution and have been a part of tech from like the just the early days. And so what is like the biggest shift that you've personally seen in software since like the early, early web days? And what has that been like for you?

SPEAKER_01: 41:47

The world we live in is a brand new world. Like I, you know, I keep saying to people, this is not just like the iPhone or you know, even the internet. This it AI is the creation of a new type of computer. Like this is a new type of compute, right? This is fundamentally as big as that, right? Um, and so the reason why I say that is because yeah, I've lived through the whole model. Like you're a developer, you join a company as a web developer, you build products, you know, then you start, you decide you want to start a company, you build the first primitive MVP yourself, and then you scale up, you raise money, and you build a big team, and you know, and then hopefully you have an outcome. And now you you don't need any of that. I mean, it's so crazy to me. So, like I'm building my startup by myself now. So I'm the CTO, I'm the CEO, I'm the product manager, I'm the front-end developer, I'm the back-end developer, you know, I'm the infrastructure guy. I'm all of it because of AI. Um, and so we really are gonna see the rise of you know the one to 10 person companies that are building hyper specialized vertical agents, right? And there's gonna be a million of these, right? And the startup I'm building is another example. It's a very niche vertical agent, right? And all these people who have understanding of a problem, you know, but didn't think of themselves necessarily as a technical founder or even a founder, will realize, like, oh yeah, you can start really easy with a bolt, a replit, you know, um, you know, except a lovable, et cetera, then you then you basically learn how to code with a more advanced agent like an AMP or like a cursor, and then all of a sudden you realize, oh my God, I can build a company now. Um and if you are hungry and you have agency yourself, um and you're willing to work, like there's nothing you can't do now. Um, I mean, before, you know, I taught a million people how to code. Learning how to code is hard, super hard. Right? Yep. And and so now it's hard, but it's much easier because you have this infinitely patient, almost all knowing tutor, you know, for basically free. Um, you know, we actually launched a free version of AMP like two, three weeks ago. And now, so literally it's free. Like if you want to learn how to code or code for free, you can. So what a time to be live. It's just totally insane.

SPEAKER_04: 44:24

And as someone who has recently kind of come out of the vibe coding space and has worked in that space, has done marketing in that space, has built community, I feel like it's very noisy, it's very crowded. And so positioning and messaging and making sure that your product of course is like the best of the best is really important. And I love that you said that you're really focused on a very specific niche because I think that's where you'll find success. But um I'm curious to hear about like why you're focusing so heavily on agents right now and and what that what's that problem that you're trying to solve for builders, especially in a space right now that's very competitive and very noisy.

SPEAKER_01: 45:00

Yeah. So so there's so Ryan has two hats, right? So I have my you know, founder startup hat where I'm building my own startup, and then I am a builder in residence at AMP, right? So um I'll put on my my AMP hat, right, and say, um, you know, developers need a really good agent, right? And you know, there's all sorts of choice right now. There's co-pilot, like on the bottom end, uh like it works, it's not amazing, you know, and then you have ideally what's on the top end um for serious developers. Um and I would say AMP is on that end. Like if you want a real power tool, um, you should be using AMP, you know. Then if you're kind of in the, you know, if you're starting off and you're not coding, you know, like I said, there's a lovable, there's a bolt, there's a V0 to kind of get you started. And then if you need more hand holding, there's, you know, various IDEs like a cursor or a windsurf. Um uh and I think AMP is just on the top end of that. If if you really want to build some really amazing things, then AMP is good for that. Um so that's kind of the way I see it, but you know, we're just in like uh we're not even in the first inning here, right? So of agents and what's gonna happen in the coding space. So I'm excited to be a part of the AMP team. You know, I think we're gonna be one of several winners in that space. Um, but if I put on my startup, you know, CEO hat, um, and I'm being sort of cagey about what I'm building because it's not really ready for the public yet. Um it's a specialized vertical agent, you know, with that, it's like, okay, we're gonna have millions of agents, and a lot of what people thought were jobs are gonna be now run by highly specialized agents, and then the humans will will puppeteer those those agents, right? So we're uh we're going into that world.

SPEAKER_02: 46:47

Got it, got it. So what initially drew you to AMP?

SPEAKER_01: 46:51

Um, so you know, I was just coding night and day, you know, using cursor. Um, and I was building my startup with that and loved it. I mean, it's cursor's an amazing product, the team's amazing, it's great, right? So I was using it, talking to the team a lot, was you know, uh using all their beta features and giving feedback. And then I live on X. So I've I've been on Twitter um for 19 years, literally. So I signed up in 2006. Um, and so my whole community is on X. And and then someone posted a tweet and they said, um, cursor or clawed code. Because at the time that was the big choice. Uh, and then someone in the comments said, Amp.

SPEAKER_02: 47:32

Like, what is that?

SPEAKER_01: 47:34

Like, I've never even heard of this. Um, and so I tried it and I was kind of annoyed because I I pride myself on knowing every single tool and framework and library. Um, so I tried it, and I was like, whoa, that was good. Like it just did what I wanted. And but it was very opinionated. It didn't have a model selector, so you couldn't even choose what model the agent was using, and it didn't ask to accept the diffs, it just changed your code. And I was like, What is happening? And I started tweeting about it, both like this is amazing and this is annoying. And then the CEO DM'd me. Um, uh his name's Quinn, and and he's very active on X and very engaged with our customers. He's amazing. And he's like, hey man, let's have a meeting and talk about this stuff. And so we just, you know, chopped it up and started talking about the whole industry and what's happening. And and uh and and that impressed me. I was like, man, there are very few founder CEOs that are this active and this proactive at actually communicating to their customers. Um, and when I hopped on the call with him, it was like, man, this guy gets it. And uh he's like, Well, why don't you join and build your startup, you know, and use AMP and cool and you know, help us build a community. And I was like, Well, that sounds amazing.

SPEAKER_02: 48:49

Is it is the tool still like that where it it just kind of does it and like doesn't give you a plan, like you were saying, it just execute so it you have, I mean, you can do whatever you want.

SPEAKER_01: 48:59

You can plan, you can do all sorts of stuff, but what it doesn't do it is ask you to accept the diffs. So, like if you say change my code, a lot of tools will say, Well, here's what I'm doing. Do you accept like an AMP just changes the code, right? Because it's super smart. So and that just surprised me. I I was used to this step of where you accept the diff and say, Yeah, I it's okay, make that change.

SPEAKER_02: 49:21

Gotcha. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 49:22

And then after a while I was realized how primitive it was to have to, you know, okay the agent every time it wanted to change a file, was really handicapping the agent.

SPEAKER_02: 49:31

It's not really an agent then, right?

SPEAKER_01: 49:32

Not really. I mean, it's like you're on a super tight leash, and what's the point of that? Um so uh I loved how opinionated the AMP team was.

SPEAKER_02: 49:41

Got it. Okay. I I asked because I'm I've we're building an app right now, and I'm dealing with uh and I've complained about this for like the past month, uh, the Google Ads API. I think it's oh my god, that is gnarly. It's gnarly annoying.

unknown: 49:55

I know.

SPEAKER_01: 49:56

So how can you be a you know a trillion dollar company almost and like and have your main product have an API that's so terrible?

SPEAKER_02: 50:05

Oh my gosh. It's like GA4 is fine, Search Console's actually like really good, and that freaking ads API is giving me brain damage. So I was in this error loop last night, and I'm like, if they're like I'm on lovable, and I'm like, okay, how how does this okay? It's this without getting too technical. Okay, how does this get fixed? So if I I now with that in mind, I went to your to the um YouTube channel and I saw a thumbnail that says how the Oracle breaks you out of AI agent doom loops. Yeah, would that solve what I went through last night and kept me up for about four hours?

SPEAKER_01: 50:41

Yeah, so so it's the AMP team. We've chosen to something kind of interesting, which is where when you want extra intelligence and you want to basically walk over to a senior engineer and tap them on the shoulder and say, Hey, you know, I have this problem with the Google Ads API, I can't figure it out. Can you help me? Um, you don't need, you know, a senior engineer like that very often, but sometimes you really do. And so being able to go over to her and say, Will you like look at this thing is amazing. So we call it the Oracle, right? So all you do is, you know, you'll be in your chat, and most of the time we're using Sonnet 4.5 right now as the primary agent model. And we have a ton of subagents that use all sorts of different models, but the main agent is Sonic 4.5 right now. Um, and then what you do is all you all you do is type the Oracle, the words, and say, hey, why don't you ask the Oracle how to fix this bug? What it will do is it will make a subagent call to a highly specialized agent called the Oracle, and it uses GPT-5 with like super custom system prompt, extra tools. And uh, and I tell you, almost every time I have an early bug where if I'm going around with the agent like more than twice, I just call the Oracle. And it's it's kind of shocking like how well it works. Really? Okay, it's super cool.

SPEAKER_04: 51:58

All right. So that's what you got to do, Charlie, to to fix some of the problems that you were dealing with.

SPEAKER_02: 52:03

Talk to the Oracle.

SPEAKER_04: 52:04

Yeah, talk to the Oracle. Great, it's that easy. It's that easy.

SPEAKER_02: 52:07

Why didn't I think of that? Like, I I picture on my head like the the matrix, and like you know, he walks in the kitchen and the Oracle.

SPEAKER_01: 52:14

It's like that. She serves cookies. Yeah, I didn't say she's she makes cookies, right? It's like in the movie. I mean, so the question is well, why wouldn't you always use the Oracle? I don't understand. And well, the idea is because a lot of tasks just you don't need a lot of intelligence for, you know, it's like edit this and you know, change the variable name to blah blah blah. But sometimes you do and you need more intelligence and a better system prompt. And the Oracle is really, really good at that.

SPEAKER_04: 52:38

Very cool. Um, so what I think is really interesting is that you have been building communities for over 20 years, and I'm curious on why you think community matters more now, especially with the internet just being flooded with AI slop, AI noise. Like, why do you think community is so important right now?

SPEAKER_01: 53:00

I think because we are finding our humanness even more precious than before. Um, you know, now when you can, you know, talk to a being, you know, on your phone uh that is very intelligent and empathetic and kind and knows you well, it's even more important, you know, and I'm talking about like Chat GPT, for instance. Like I talk a lot to Chat GPT, I have a lot of helpful, valuable conversations, you know, with it, but it's not human, right? And you know, we're gonna we're a long way from us like truly feeling connected to these, you know, large language model agent, you know, AIs. So I think community is is very important to us as humans. Like we have evolved this way. We've evolved to gather around a campfire, right? And to trust small groups of people and help small groups of people and recognize, okay, this person helps me, I'm gonna help them. Like we've evolved this way. And so I think community is built into our DNA. Um, number one. Number and number two, um, it's never been, I think, more scary than now, because everyone's realizing that they are standing on unstable ground. You know, all the everything we thought about the way the economy works, you know, marketing works, company building works, finance works, it's all shifting. And so more than ever, you need a group of humans, you know, that you can chat to about that. Um and you know, I want to take it way back. So, like back in 2000, like I had moved to London and I didn't know anybody, literally nobody. So I moved and I used to go to church back then. So I went to church, right? Because I needed community. Like I'm like, I don't know anybody, I don't know how to connect to anybody. I'm not just gonna walk up some person in a bar. Like, I don't do that. Um, so I went to church and ironically met another guy named Ryan, which is hilarious. And we he was he was a web designer and I was a web developer, and we hit it off. And then we decided like, let's do a meetup where we talk about web design, web development. Let's invite people, we let's invite people to a bar and you know, put us a projector on the wall, show work, and talk about it. And it blew up. So we ended up doing these events around the whole world. Um, nights and weekends, we would fly around. We called it Create a Fight Club. And and that was kind of so it's like that was the moment where I realized like people need connection. And then ended up scaling that to the point where it's like, I love building communities of developers. And now that we're in AI land, um, it's just it's just hard to keep up. It's scary, it's confusing, you need emotional support.

SPEAKER_04: 55:48

Definitely, definitely. As someone who is really obsessed with like just the consumer sentiment around AI, especially when it comes to just like sustainability, how much power it's using, um, you know, psychosis that some people are experiencing, the fear that'll take jobs away. Like I'm always curious to hear, you know, how you think about the humanist component within AI. And my question is that do you think AI agents will eventually become members of communities, or will communities become the last things that humans do better?

SPEAKER_01: 56:23

Um, yes. Um, I think we'll become integrated. Um, but I'm also like a techno-optimist. So you should take what I think with a grain of salt. Like I read, you know, um Ray Kurzwell's stuff, you know, whenever it came out a long time ago, thinking, yeah, you know, humans and machines are eventually, you know, gonna evolve to be the same thing. Like this is just evolution. Um now that's like, okay, that's like a long ways away. But now what about today? Um, I think, you know, I spend hours and hours every day building an agent. Um, and I work at AMP where we're building an agent, right? And I can see these things becoming more and more sentient, right? Not literally, but like in their with their toolbox and their abilities, they are they are able to do more and more, right? And so yeah, I think at some point you're gonna have super complex agents that uh that give you a lot of what you would need from a human, but I think as humans, we're still going to want and desire connection to other humans. As great as you know, AIs are and will be, yeah, you're just gonna want humans around too.

SPEAKER_04: 57:37

Yeah, I definitely predict that there will be like the rise of just human-only type services.

SPEAKER_01: 57:43

I totally I think you're probably right. Well, what do you think that like give me an example of how you think that'll manifest?

SPEAKER_04: 57:48

Wow. Um, I mean, I'm just for example, um, I know the artist Rosalia just came out with a wonderful new song and album this past week, and it's very classical in nature. And she talks about how this entire album and this song was only made by humans and humans sort of playing the instruments and singing. There was no AI in the creation of this song. And so I think from an art perspective, we will see more, and like we already have it, right? We already have human-centric art, but I think you're gonna see that positioning and that narrative around how artists show up with their work. Um, and I just saw that in Rosalia's music in the past week. Um I think that with the rise of obviously Chat GPT, Claude, character AI, and what have you, um, and just having easy access to speak to any sort of AI personality you you can have access to. I can now see the pendulum swing to the other side in a similar way. I don't know what the structure of that would look like, but making sure that when you're connecting to someone that it is human and is not AI. Um, so that I don't know. Those are some of my random predictions, but I think you're right.

SPEAKER_01: 59:01

Um, I mean, my my uh I I think I have a lot of people in my life that do things. One of them is my wife, she makes jewelry. And um, and I I think you know, she's crafting, you know, this essentially artwork and it's very human and and she sells to other humans and it's it's very physical and human. And I think we'll continue to see that. I think when it comes to though access to information and services, what we're we're going to want and expect these things to be agent augmented, right? So my startup is in the legal space. And and so it's like, okay, we need more access to legal expertise. Like we need the price to drop here. Like we need the uh the expertise to increase. So this is where you know certain fields are gonna be made much better by uh by agents and largely as well.

SPEAKER_04: 59:53

Yeah, my husband's a high chiropractor as well, so he puts his hands on people every single day. Like I my sister's a pastry shop. You know, so I I see I see those types of roles sort of at least for now, you know, mostly being human-centric.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:07

Mallory, we would when you were at Bolt, this is kind of a rounded question, but when you're at Bolt Mallory after the hackathon, uh, was there still an emphasis on community at Bolt, or was that kind of like on the back burner, would you say? Or like were they pushing that hard?

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:22

I mean, they were, but I think at the same time the business was pivoting. I I feel like, you know, Ryan kind of laid out the spectrum really nicely earlier in the pod, and that like lovable and bolt are more pro-sumer types of tools. Like if you are not a developer, but you need to like build a mock-up or a prototype and you have no technical skills, those tools are really great. But when it comes to actually building a product at scale, right, that can be used by millions, that can be trustworthy, et cetera, et cetera, like there are other tools like AMP, like cursor, et cetera, et cetera, that are out there to support that. And I the business kind of wanted to start to shift into an enterprise direction. And so the question then becomes how do you build community when you're building an enterprise business? And what does that look like? That sort of B2C to B type of mentality. Um, and so wasn't that community was port and it was more so how does that shift was the was the question. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:16

Gotcha. Okay. Um, Ryan, so how in regards to AMP, like how technical does somebody have to be to to get involved? Like I I learned to code from YouTube, basically, and just great not having a social life for like two years. Okay. Not having a social life for like two years and just coding and just going nuts. Um, how technical can somebody like like what's the barrier to entry?

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:39

Like, yeah, I I will I would say so. I mean, I have a computer science degree, but the the reality is I learned how to code. Uh, you you actually don't learn very much that's useful when you study computer science, just FYI. Um really. Yeah, you learn about you know binary and and you you write stuff in Lisp. I mean, it's just all very theoretical. Um, probably maybe it's not, maybe it's less so today, but anyway. But I learned how to program by reading O'Reilly books and and watching videos and reading tutorials, right? So, and I use AMP every day. So I I think AMP is designed for engineers, right? Okay, so we're not for vibe coders that don't want to understand the code. Like if you don't want to see code, AMP's not right for you. But if you want to, you know, see the code, read the code a little bit, you know, understand it, you know, talk intelligently to an agent about it, have a real power tool, AMP is perfect for you. So um, so we're very far away from like a lovable ball replet. Um so I'll say that. Um, but it's it's sort of like, okay, so you know you have an amazing chef, right? And they have a beautiful knife, right? So it's a tool, right? And they will choose the the most beautiful, sharpest, you know, well-crafted knife in the world because they literally use it in their job. They're a professional, right? We view AMP as that tool, right? So discerning, you know, high-level experienced engineers love AMP, right? But just like you watch, you know, um a chef like uh Jamie Oliver or uh or or someone like that, and they use a sharp knife, you may not be yet a professional chef, but you still want to use a good tool because someone you respect uses that tool. So we have a lot of folks that are becoming engineers use AMP as well. Um, but I'd say if you just, you know, if you don't have if you don't really have any interest in the code, then go for a you know, lovable bolts, you know, V0 type of thing. Um one thing I want to touch on is is uh the launch of uh Build Crew. So we decided, you know, there really should be a community for people coding with agents. That's like a unique thing that people do, right? So I want to write code, but I want to do it with an agent. And we felt like there wasn't a community that welcomed everybody. Um, you know, there was very product-specific communities, right? Where if you used, you know, product X, then you could come to that community and go there meetups, or if you use product Y, you could go to those meetups or that kind of what about? Hey, I use a lot of these tools and sometimes I interchange them. Um, we launched Build Crew for that. And the idea is if you are building with agents and writing code with agents, you are welcome to join. And so we launched that um uh pretty recently, and we're already up to like I think about over 1,500 uh people in that community. And yeah, so if anybody listening wants to join, it's free.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:31

Just go to buildcrew.team and uh we'd we'd love to welcome you in. And and that's where you have like like weekly stand-ups, or is it daily stand-ups of what you're building?

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:40

Well, so we we do all sorts of stuff and experiment with like how do we help people? Um, so we have a Discord um where you just can come in and ask questions and get get help. Um, we have a weekly live uh stream, it's called Bill Crew Live, where we invite on Bill Crew members and we we basically talk about like what are we doing this week, what's working, what's not, you know, what is a useful tip and trick when it comes to coding with agents. Um and then uh we we have basically leaderboards and and badges as well. So as people unlock things, they get extra rewards and fun stuff. Um, it's just it should be an encouraging fun place to be if you're building with agents.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:19

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:20

With that, um I oh building okay, I I feel like that that's so valuable, just like being in that space and like, oh, like here's here's me at like level one that's like building with agents, and I'm using this tool. And there's oh yeah, I'm up okay, I'm like there too. By the way, if if you're listening to this, you just pull over and pull out YouTube. So like yeah, if you're on like level three, you're like, oh yeah, I've been there before.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:43

Here, like, you know, don't do this, do this, and then you can like level up and yeah, it's it's helping people out that you know, I've been there, you know, let me pull you up and help you um because it feels good, or if you have questions, you get them answered there as well. So it's that human connection I think we all crave.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:59

I think um as we record this in the second week or so of November, what what's next for that? Like, where is that going in the next couple months?

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:08

So um I think we're gonna introduce uh just more fun stuff. Like, so we have a leaderboard. So as you code with AMP, you get points, you unlock badges. And so I think we're just gonna do fun stuff like, hey, the person that you know uh changed the most lines of code this week gets a special badge and and they get elevated in the community and we call them out. Or hey, the the person that shares the most helpful thread. Um, because whenever you talk to AMP, you get a thread that has its own uh URL. And so you can share those and you can star them and you can follow people. So people can actually share. Like, here's how I talk to the agent and here's how I ship this feature. Um, so if you share helpful threads, then we give rewards, you know, we give away credits if if you do that. So I think it's just how do it's almost like a gym. Like, how do you encourage people to use the gym? Right. Um, you you know have contests and rewards and call-outs and all sorts of fun stuff like that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:07:05

Do you feel like, well, two things. Do you feel like the way in which you've built community in the past has changed and shifted the way that you would do that today? And and what does that approach look like? And sort of my follow-up question as well is like, what is the most surprising or creative sort of agent or product that someone has built recently within the build crew community?

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:26

You know, the way I build community actually has not changed, I think, in 25 years. Um, you know, I mean, we've evolved over billions, right? So it's sort of like, I think, you know, 25 years of human behavior is not gonna change. I think people want to be recognized, they want to be supported, they want to be seen, they want to be supported, you know, um, they want to be encouraged. It's all the same stuff. So it's like, well, how do you do it? Um and and that's what we're doing. Um, so it's not rocket science. You just have to put in the work.

SPEAKER_04: 1:07:58

Definitely. Definitely. It's like um what I like to tell people, you know, if you're gonna try and grow a plant from a seed, you're not gonna expect it to grow a flower the next day. With when it comes to community marketing and community building, you have to nurture it and support it and and water it over time for you to to really sort of have a meaningful community. So um, I love that answer. I love that the answer is it hasn't changed because human connection ultimately has been the way that it has been for thousands of years.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:26

Yep. Yeah, there's no there's no shortcut or trick. Yeah, just gotta put in the work.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:30

So for uh Ryan's for like, I don't know, maybe like first-time founders or builders or whatever in in your community, what are like three pieces of of advice you would give them?

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:41

I mean, the the first is just get your hands on the keyboard and start trying to build. Like it, I I meet so many people who are like, oh, I mean, I could use AI to build this thing that does this thing. And and you know, I'm like, well, do it. You know, go to ampcode.com forward slash free, you know, sign up and you can literally code for free. Like that. So I think the first thing is just get your hands on the keyboard and try to figure it out. Um, is thing one. Um, thing two is is don't try to bite off more than you can chew at first. Like just get a very primitive thing out in the world, right? Um, and just see how people react to it. Um and you know, it's always fun to remember, you know, like if you go back and watch Mr. Beast's first video, how bad it is, right? It's just good to remember remind yourself of these things. Like people's first thing is always bad. So get your first thing out because it'll be bad and you can get better. So um that's part of it. And I think the the third thing is just we really do live in a world where you can just do stuff now and and you know, talk to agents to get support, to get help. Like you're not alone anymore, like you used to be. Not now, they're not human, but you definitely have a lot more support um than you've ever had before. So um just get out there and and try to do it. Just do it on.

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:04

I think what a powerful time to be a founder.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:06

Yeah, I I think it's so it's so imperative, so critical to surround yourself with the right people and and doing things like as long as you're aligned, I think that's that's pretty amazing stuff. So um build crew sounds awesome. I mean how I'll I'll probably jump in as soon as I can. Come on. Yeah, join us. It's fun. Yeah, if there if y'all have answers with Google Ads API, I I should have done that. Seriously, I think you know maybe you guys can pay my therapy invoice or something.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:31

I yeah, well, the oracle can answer that. Now I can you know encourage you and build crew.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:37

Okay, okay, gotcha. So I as we wrap up here, Ryan. Um, how can people find you and how can people find build crew?

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:46

So uh I am just at Ryan Carson.com or on X, I'm Ryan Carson, or on LinkedIn, I'm Ryan Carson. It's like I'm everywhere. Um, so hit me up and hop in my DMs. Like I I try to read all of them and respond to all of them.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:58

I will confirm that. Yes, because I I jumped in there. So yes, that is that is accurate.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:04

Success. And then, you know, as far as build crew, just go to buildcode.team. Like it's literally free. Um uh apply, and then uh we we let almost everybody in. Um, we just want to make sure, like, yes, you you have a GitHub account, for instance, stuff like that. And then give you a hundred bucks of AMP for free as well. So join, it's fun, it's free. Um, and then if you want to code for free, just go to amp uhcode.com forward slash free. Um, like there's just no excuses now. You can go build stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:33

Just do it.

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:34

Absolutely. Just do it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:35

Cool, awesome. Well, Ryan, thank you for the time. Thanks, y'all. This has been fun.

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:40

Thank you, Ryan.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:41

Good. All right, I learned a lot. All right, uh, we just wrapped up the Ryan Carson interview. Uh, great interview. Uh, cool dude, by the way.

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:49

What a guy. What a guy. I mean, like, I think the fact that we get the chance to chat with people who have really just been through the whole evolution of the tech community and the tech scene and has adapted and changed to that, but at the same time, kind of like keeping some things core and just not like when it comes to building community, right? Like, is is really interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:11

Um I think that's that's huge what they're doing with with his community's build crew and just surrounding yourself with the right people, which is critical as an entrepreneur, right? As a founder, surrounding yourself with the right people. And he's had three exits, I want to say.

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:24

Yeah, yeah. We didn't talk too much about that, but um, I know on his LinkedIn it talks about how he has built and sold three startups.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:32

So yeah, he's he's a pretty good resource.

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:35

Uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:36

He's the dude to talk to. So cool stuff there. Uh, what do we have as we wrap up here? This episode, uh, we're gonna get back to the episode next week, obviously, and chat about uh as I read off my list here, the update on the rebrand efforts.

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:53

Yes, yes. I think that if of course, if you listened to last week, we did an entire workshop. Um, we kind of just started asking some high-level questions of um, you know, what we would want the brand to look like and who we're serving and how we want it to feel, how we want it to look. And so um just we're we've been kind of sitting on that and would love to kind of chat through next week on some name update ideas and how we kind of like take it to to the next level.

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:20

So after that, um and by the way, like I I am like really interested just because I've been staring at this freaking thing for like months and months, and I I kind of tell you know, I as an SEO background, I'm thinking like, oh man, like what's she gonna come up with? Like, like where is this gonna go? But that's good because uh like we need this expertise. Like nobody knows it's better than you. So um, yeah, that this expertise is uh much needed. Um also hopefully I say in bold, loud words, hopefully the Google Ads API will not cause brain damage for me anymore. Uh, we can debut our app campaign pilots that will uh help builders and well and agency owners um properly know what's going on with their data via GA4 Search Console Google Ads. So hopefully that approval process will go through. Good. I was up to 1 a.m. last night dealing with that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:14:20

Okay, we need to we need to pray to the Google API guys.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:23

For my mental health, yes. Uh for my own sanity. Uh Connor should be back next week. Um, the the third uh arm of this podcast. Uh he should be back. I think he's in Vermont.

SPEAKER_04: 1:14:38

He's on vacation. What is that? Yeah, seriously.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:41

Like what is that?

SPEAKER_04: 1:14:42

Yeah, what is that?

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:44

Um and yeah, and our guest next week is uh Steven Steerman, um, an old uh not colleague, but uh acquaintance. So that so his app now, his AI company now, uh it's is like uh from my understanding, like a charting solution for psychologists. So that is the when he previously had a marijuana card company, and that is the project that Connor and I met on. He was doing like the the data analytics. It's so boring to talk about, by the way, data analytics for websites. And then I my team, my company did the SEO.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:20

So Connor like objectively saw the data, and then he would see the SEO just like go up and up. He's like, who's this? This guy is crazy. Who's this person that answers the emails at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday? Okay. And that's that's basically how Connor and I I asked Connor, I was like, what's more what what's more weird? Like what's weird, like sending an email at 2 a.m. or getting a response at 2 10 a.m. Like what's eight. Yeah, I guess both that's the answer. Uh and we'll also do um the AI uh get like industry insights. Um maybe some, you know, with your background, Mallory, I think you know, your time at bolt.new, like I mean, um I I think you'll have like valuable insight there.

SPEAKER_04: 1:16:00

And uh yeah, I want to um I would love to find ways, like I mentioned earlier. I'm gonna launch a Substack where I kind of do some community marketing deep dives, but um would love to kind of do a lot of that on the podcast as well. So if anyone has any requests as well, should definitely reach out, let me know. So I can I can do a whole segment here on the pod.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:22

Damn. Do you know when that Substack will go live? Because that that's a heavy lift, right?

SPEAKER_04: 1:16:27

I'm hoping it's gonna go live this week. So by by next week, I'm hoping I can, you know, actually be like, you can go check it out and read the first. Yeah. So I'm I'm already I'm drafting up some articles and and working on it. But yeah, I'm excited. I actually love Substack too as a platform. So um subscribe to a lot of different writers on there. And um, I wouldn't consider myself to be a writer, but I just have this this wealth of knowledge. So um, and also now that I've been a you know, post bolt, wouldn't call myself a writer, but it's been nice to kind of like get in the rhythm of writing and and working on that skill set myself. So um yeah, excited to share it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:17:06

Cool. Awesome, awesome. We got that and more in the next episode. See ya then. Peace.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:12

Bye.