David Karandish - Shots You Only See In The Game | Episode 3

David Karandish - Shots You Only See In The Game | Episode 3

Timestamps:
Preview (0:00)
Intro (1:46)
Tip Off: What do people typically get wrong about you? (4:50)
Why entrepreneurship? (7:41)
Halftime: When did you realize you were wired differently? (10:56)
How did you become comfortable with failure and risk taking? (13:51)
Risk then vs Risk now? (15:54)
Thinking about problems in 3 ways... (18:18)
How did you get into starting Answers.com (19:27)
"If you want to be a entrepreneur.." (24:41)
Life after selling nearly a billion dollar business? (25:19)
The seed to David's next company to start (28:40)
What made you chose AI to get into? (31:01)
Most excited and most concerned about AI? (34:24)
What should a 20 yr-old student be learning about AI? (37:36)
Practical ways to get started with AI (43:07)
How does your faith influence your decision making? (46:35)
The Buzzer: What's kept you grounded? (51:35)
+MORE

The Make it Matter Podcast- YouTube Channel
Welcome to the channel!

Please like, comment & hit that SUBSCRIBE button!
#capacity  #davidkarandish #faith

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So many people look at successful people and they either ascribe all of it to their hard work. If you're gonna ask me to weight it, probably a couple percentage points, uh what you do and a lot of what you're given.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Today I get a chance to have a conversation with my good friend David Carandish, co-founder of answers.com, and his team went on to sell answers for nearly a billion dollars. Your dates and answers, right? So he had about six businesses you started beforehand. How did you get into that business? Sometimes there are shots you only see when you're in the game.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

You can't see him in the stance, you can't see him in the sideline, you can't see him in the announcer's box. You can only see that shot when you're on the court with the ball in your hand and the clock running.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Oftentimes I wonder, do we do entrepreneurs a disservice because it's highlighted are the successes and not the failures, right? And so I kind of wonder if it makes this.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

I think we've all probably seen those memes where they show that picture of what people think success looks like versus what it actually is. I feel like it's so absolutely true.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

AI is rapidly learning. What advice can you give to a 20-year-old? What should they be learning? What should they be spending their time doing to be prepared for the world of company?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

In a world where anyone has the tools and capabilities to build software, if you're young, you have to learn how to use this as a technology to go build things. If you want to be an entrepreneur, don't wait until you're out of college and you've got the student loan to payback, the deeper relationships that are starting early, start in high school, starting in college so you can get your reps in and you can go do your happy business equivalent and get that out of your system before you go and graduate.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Welcome to the Make It Matter Podcast. This is the place that we have conversations with people who are building, leading, and competing at the highest level, but doing so in a way that actually affects real change. Because it's not about just being seen doing great things. It's about the people who are changed because you were there. Today I get a chance to have a conversation with my good friend David Karandish. David is a nationally recognized entrepreneur, investor, and technology leader known for building innovative companies that transform how people access information and get work done. He was the co-founder of Answers.com. It was one of the most widely used question and answer platforms. And under his leadership as CEO, he grew it to a global destination serving millions of people. And his team went on to sell answers for nearly a billion dollars. Today, David is the founder and CEO of Capacity. Capacity is an AI-powered platform that helps organizations automate support, improve productivity, and deliver faster answers to employees and customers. His work today sits at the forefront of artificial intelligence, automation, and the future of work. David and I also share a couple other things in common. We're both graduates of the illustrious Washington University, Gobert's. He is a devoted uh husband, father of four, soon-to-be author, and also a believer and of someone who allows his faith to drive the decisions and the actions in the way that he cares for people. So, David, thank you so much for making time today.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Thanks for having me here.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

I'm excited. All right. So listen, we got a lot to talk about, but I got to start with a really important question. Um, you're a sports guy, a sports fan. Uh, you and I have been in the throes of the trenches of uh coaching uh elementary school girls' basketball. And I think I know how you're gonna answer this question as a result of that, but you never know. So I got to start with who's the who's the goat, MJ or LeBron?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Clearly it's LeBron. No, I'm just kidding with you, man.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

I was thinking, hey, we're gonna have to say that. It's 100% MJ. Good. That was gonna cause around that. Yeah, you might well based on how you answer that, you probably have have folks in the comment section cheering and you've also eaten a different people, but that's just how that question is designed to design to work. But LeBron's amazing, but it's gotta it's gotta go to MJ. I agree, I agree 100%. And I again I I asked that question one um because I think it's revealing about what you know where a person falls on that decision. Um, but also because, man, how does again this may seem like high praise, but there's some elements around NJ's story that I think um that actually speak to your story, right? Because, you know, everyone knows he won three, retired, and came back and did it again. And in a lot of ways, you've done something very similar, right? You have accomplished what every entrepreneur dreams of of you know, starting the company, building it, and selling it for almost a billion dollars, right? And with that comes a lot of uh accolades and uh a lot of a lot of benefits. You take time off, and one could argue that you're back in the game and about to potentially do it again, right? Which is really exciting. So I'm eager to hear, yes, that's what you're doing, but I'm really eager to get behind the motivation and the why. So we're gonna get to that uh as well. But I'd love to go back a little bit because you're here where you are because uh there is a larger story. And when people hear about your journey, when they hear about your story, uh, what do they typically miss? What do they typically get wrong?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

I think I think we've all probably seen those memes where they show that picture of what people think success looks like versus what it actually is. And I feel like it's so absolutely true, especially in the world of entrepreneurship. Uh, I spent a lot of time just learning and trying different things early on in my career before uh we ever had any major financial success. And so one piece of advice I'd give to startup entrepreneurs who are particularly early on is like get a lot of exposure to a lot of different areas early and then cull over time. I think a lot of times people come in and they think their first idea is going to be their best one. I started six different companies before we started answers.com, uh, all in high school and college, and they were, you know, fine. But what I learned from all of those uh businesses, we helped bring into our time at Answers.com. And so if you ever seen the movie Slum Dog Millionaire, where the guy goes on the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire India show, and the whole show is like the culmination of his life experience. I think it very much in entrepreneurship, a lot of times you're leveraging what you've done even in previous businesses or previous projects for the next project. And so when people look at the end, they don't see all the things that failed up until that point.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah. And and for you, did you so I I hear the theme that you, like you said, started six businesses before answers, uh, some of those in high school. So, like, did you learn, did you know pretty early on that you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

SPEAKER_01 6:36

I I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur into my early teens. Like I knew I wanted to build something. Um, I loved the idea of taking a concept, a dream, uh, uh business plan and going and putting it into action. The thing that I was really blessed to be a part of is by growing up in the late 90s, this was one of the first times where technology entrepreneurship was at the forefront. So if you want to go build a physical building, you need foreman and you need time and you need labor and you need materials. But if you wanted to build a website, you could you could go do that on your own. And so the rise of the internet was happening right at the time where I was going into uh end of high school, uh beginning of college. And so I got to be a part of one of the biggest changes in our economy today.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Got it. Well, and I think that's important because sometimes there's just a timing factor that no one can give, you know, you can't lay claim to just being born at the right time. Uh, but I think there's also another piece of this because there are a lot of other people during that same period of time who were exposed to similar, you know, uh opportunities, but didn't necessarily view them and take advantage of them the same. So uh I guess what my question is I think about entrepreneurship, is it just something that you feel like you just naturally just gravitated toward? Was it something that was modeled to you? You could have easily just said, hey, I'm gonna have, I'm gonna pursue just a career and take a job. So what do you think were some of the things that actually sort of pushed you that direction?

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah, I want to go back to something you said earlier. Uh, you know, if I look at all the things I had no control over, uh, I uh was born in the United States. That's that's a great hand to be given globally. I had two educated parents who love me very much. Not everybody can say that. Uh I was born right at the time where technology uh was hitting the web. Uh so it was a unique time. Uh my dad was an electrical engineer, and so I had access to computers pretty early on. Uh and at the same time, uh I got to uh you know, went to great schools, I was born in St. Louis. Uh there's just so many things I had no control over. And then so if you say it's like 98, 99% of things completely outside of my control, then it's like, well, what are you gonna do with that last one or two percent? And I I feel like um, you know, so many people look at successful people and they either ascribe all of it to uh to their hard work, which I think again, there's a lot outside of your control, or they ascribe none of it to hard work and they they treat it entirely as luck, and I don't think that's the case either. But I think it's probably if you're gonna ask me to weight it, it's probably a couple percentage points, uh, what you do and a lot, a lot what you're given.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Yeah, yeah. I think it's so true. And um because from the outside looking in, people can easily draw so many different conclusions as to why this and that. And so that's why I love having these conversations because the reality is it's always usually a combination of both. And um, in you know, in our in our humility, we can acknowledge that a lot of this has to do with circumstances that are way beyond our control, which is yeah, I mean really interesting stat I heard.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

If you're uh male born in the United States and you're six, I'm about six foot between six foot two and six foot three, right about my height, there's a one in two hundred thousand chance you will go on to play in the NBA. If you are seven foot tall or taller in the United States, you there is a one in three chance you will play in the NBA. That doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of work that you have to do. Like you don't just get in the NBA for for free, but there are definitely some height advantages that the Allen Iversons of the world have somehow overcome overcome uh that that significantly stack your deck.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's important. I think being able to acknowledge those things are really important um because that's the truth. That's and it's reality. Uh I think even with that, however, there is still an element of this where um you are who you are and you're wired a certain way. And yes, you have these opportunities, but there's still an element of hard work, some couple percentage points. So I I think the question I would ask next next is I get a chance to sit with a lot of highly talented people uh in business and in sport. Um and there always seems to be like a point in time where they sort of realize that like I'm a little different. I'm wired differently, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:17

My wife keeps telling me that all the time, but uh that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Yeah, and so I I'm curious for you, like at what point in your life did you start to sort of realize that wait, I'm a little different than than others, I'm wired a little differently.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

I I think one thing I realized pretty early on was that I have this interesting mix of being very competitive, but also having a low cost of failure. And so what I mean by that is like you think about some careers, right? If you're a oh what's the what's the uh uh the Chris Rock joke, like if you're a a pilot that lands 99% of your flights, you're gonna kill thousands of people, right? Uh so there's some jobs where you you you need better than 99% uh success rate in order to do do what you need to do. A baseball player that hits 300 you know could be a Hall of Famer, though, right? And I think what ends up happening is our educational system is designed so that you get 100 on the test and you fill in the Scantron and you follow the rules and you do the right things. And I I and again, there's there's a time and place for that, but in the world of entrepreneurship, like most of the things you do are gonna fail. Like it's not even like a bat at 300. Like if I bat 50, yeah, I that's pretty good. And so um the same reason that I would be a not great pilot or maybe not great brain surgeon is also the same reason why um entrepreneurship's a good fit, because um I can de-risk and lower the cost of failure, lower the probability of failure, but failure isn't crushing. Yes. And so uh I think a lot of people, there are a lot of people who work just as hard as your average entrepreneur, but they can't they can't handle the rejection or the failure uh that that's associated with most entrepreneurial activities.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Yeah, and it's it's it's inherent, it's baked into the entire process. Uh, oftentimes I wonder like, do we do entrepreneurs a disservice because all we well it seems that what gets the the the high what gets highlighted are all the successes and not the failures, right? And so I kind of wonder if it makes this creates this sort of you know false narrative around what the journey actually looks like, which is why I love having these conversations. But I think for you, my question would be do you think that was um like being comfortable with failure and risk? Is that something that you sort of like entered into the world with with a higher capacity for, no pun intended? Or do you think it was something that you like grew in, like a muscle that you sort of strengthen over time?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

It's probably a little bit of both. Uh we kind of grew up middle class family in the in the burbs, and then my dad had started a few businesses, didn't pan out. Um, my parents got divorced, they split up, we lost our house, we kind of hit rock bottom, and then kind of built back up from there. And so I think circumstantially I realized that like what is actually important and what's not important early on. And if you can limit what you need to a very small number of things, then everything else, you're everything else is gravy. And so I think circumstantially I grew up in a in a place where um if you hit rock bottom pretty early, then you can only go up from there.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

And at the same time, um, even outside of that, I I you know I I can remember even as a kid telling my friends, well, nothing is stopping us from doing this or that.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Yeah. You're right. And I think I think that's uh such a common thing that I see, not only in my own experience in my own life as well, but it's almost to the point that risk looks and feels differently when you are already, well, you don't have very much, right? It's kind of like, well, I can I have a greater appetite for this because I see all the potential upside. And if it doesn't work out, I can't really go any lower, right? So that sort of changes that uh perspective. And I want to I want to get into your story a little bit more, so but I want to jump ahead a little bit because I'm curious, like you're in a different place now, right? And so um, you know, one could argue you actually have more to risk at this point in time. So, like, how do you think about risk now versus when you were, you know, starting out?

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yeah, I think the the first thing that a lot of people get mixed up is what I'll call the the difference between risk and uncertainty. So uncertainty are the things that could happen to you that you have no control over, right? Um a tornado could come in and knock down a house. So you can't there's not much you can do about that. Um you know, certain certain things can happen that just happen out of the blue. There's uncertainty and then there's risk where if I can't use a poker analogy, you're deciding when to when to bet and when not to bet. And it doesn't mean that you know what all the cards are, but it means based on the hand you have, you think there's a good enough shot for you to go play and go take the pot. Uh I think people tend to confuse the two and they let the uncertainty keep them from taking calculated risks.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. And I and I think the other uh a couple of misnomers that are out there when it comes to being a leader in some capacity, especially I explained this to my team a lot. Oftentimes decisions are made, usually in in areas of uh when when there's uncertainty and when there's a lot of things that are not uh purely defined. And I think a lot of times we're we're making decisions off of probability, right? And so um that's another piece of this that also often seems uh not clear when you think about an entrepreneur's journey. You hear the stories and the you know in the movies, and all of a sudden there's an aha moment and the person like knows exactly what to do. Um, has that been how you've approached decision making, or has it been uh something different?

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Well, I think there are a couple different types of decisions you can make. Uh you know, I think Jeff Bezos talks a lot about like one-way doors and two-way doors, like the decision you make it, and it's like there's no going back from that. And there's decisions where you walk in, uh, you walk back out if you need to. Um, I also think one of the meta skills that I've spent a lot of time working on, I'm trying to get my team to uh kind of build up their muscle in, is thinking about problems in terms of three buckets. You've got your problem describers who are really good at saying what the problem is. And you need that. If you don't have the problems well described, you're a lot of bad things happen. Then you got your problem solvers. Uh, these are your engineering types, these are my people. Uh yeah, you know, you can go in, you give them a problem, they're gonna go wrestle it to the ground. But I think the hardest skill to develop is actually being a good problem selector. Like which problems are worth solving in what order over what time? And that can happen at the micro level down to an individual product set of features, but that can happen at a macro level to like what business should I start? Yeah, what uh job should I take? What uh career should I pursue? And so um figuring out how to select the right problems is one of those really important meta skills. I want my kids to take the torch and and you get better than me at.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Yeah. Makes sense. So that that actually leaves me. I want to go back a little bit. Um, thinking about selecting the right problem to solve. I want to go back to uh your days and answers, right? So when you were in that role and pursuing that, I know you said you had you had about six businesses you started beforehand. Um, how did you select, how did you get into that business? Walk me through a little bit around did you just wake up one day like, aha, this is it? Was it like a gradual progress? How did you get into that business in that space?

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Good question. And I I think this leads to something that's kind of another kind of meta framework that I've I've thought about a lot. It's that good continuing with the basketball basketball analogy. Sometimes there are shots you only see when you're in the game. You can't see them in the stance, you can't see them in the sideline, you can't see him in the announcer's box. You can only see that shot when you're on the court with the ball in your hand and the clock running. And so, in the case of answers, I had a buddy of mine come to me and he was like, David, I want to start a magazine for celebrity fashions. And I was like, I don't know anything about magazines. I know even less about celebrities, and I know even less about fashion. So let's do it.

SPEAKER_04 20:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Again, uh, these are the things you can do when you're in college and you know your cost of failure is is zero uh because you're a student, right? And so we ended up selling a bunch of um, you remember those von Dutch hats? I don't know if you were we were like one of the top resellers of Von Dutch hats for 15 minutes. But around that same time, Google launched their Google AdSense product where you could now monetize your website with the same ads that would show up on Google. Now they're everywhere. At that time, it was pretty novel. And so uh my other buddy and I started building out content for these celebrity fashions, and we actually did better monetizing the content than we did selling the hats. And so we had interned at another company here in town uh called Monster Commerce, and we said, hey, look, like we're building this kind of celebrity fashion portal. This is pretty interesting. They then took all of their uh, they were an online uh merchant for doing shopping cart software. So if you wanted to sell products online kind of before Shopify, you would work with these guys. Um, they took all their products, put them together into a comparison shopping engine. We helped them with a marketing platform for that. And then when we graduated, we're like, oh, we want to build a comparison shopping engine. And they're like, Great, good luck. You guys don't have any products. So I took a one way flight to uh California, crashed in my aunt's house, and just started calling every possible company I could think of. Uh, calling a meeting to go get comparison shopping listings. So we ended up starting our comparison shopping company, Announce Media. And then a couple of years in, we needed content for all the different categories we wanted to go into. So we had a health side and a travel site and an auto site and a real estate site. And so we started adding questions and answers to those sites. And we got about 10,000 of questions and answers there. And then we were like, well, man, I would really love it if we could find a company that has gone really deep in this QA space that led us to go acquireanswers.com, take it private, merge it with the company we started. I kicked that process off when I was 26 years old. So it's just a wild ride. But to answer your question, um one of the big things that I noticed in my time at Answers was that it was all about leveraging that last poker table into the next one. Yes. So we wouldn't have had bought answers.com had we not added the QA to the site. So we hadn't had the QA, had we not launched comparison shopping. We wouldn't have done that, had we not gotten that um comparison shopping feed. We wouldn't have done that had we not interned at this company. We wouldn't have done that had we not uh you know launched this fashion blog. So like you can see how these things all line up.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yeah, I love that, man. That's a beautiful story. Um, and I think that's just so true. And again, that's the piece of this that always gets left out, right? It almost seems like every success story starts with an entrepreneur that like had this brilliant brainstorming session with a whiteboard and they mapped out exactly how everything goes. But the truth is far from that, right? This is um, you know, completely like walking by faith. Like, you know, I think about the the verse, the proverb that says the mind of man um uh directs his way, but the Lord uh the mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps, right? It's this idea that like you know, God is directing steps, but you gotta be taking those steps, right? And so um, and then I think the other piece of this that is is really uh great just for everyone to be able to hear is that like there are just some unsexy aspects of being an entrepreneur. Like, yes, there's risks, I'm gonna get a one-way ticket to California, and then I'm gonna pound the phones. Like, this is this is not the glorious aspects of it. And I think that's a piece that often is gets overlooked.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Well, and people get, okay, maybe maybe you had to just get yourself out there and you happen to get this right connection. But they don't get that the time selling hats online, which is a really difficult business, terrible business to be in, to be very clear. That was really important in order to get the next step to the next step. And so uh one thing I like to encourage people is that if you want to be an entrepreneur, don't wait till you're out of college and you've got student loans to pay back, and you you know, uh you got deeper relationships, or or or you go and you get married and you got start early, start in high school, start in in college so you can get your reps in and you can go do your hat business equivalent. Uh get that out of your system right before you go and graduate. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Great advice. So fast forward, you continue, you go through that process you just described, you eventually uh saying you take Antrus Private, you build it back up, you sell it for you know almost a billion dollars, round and error, right? Like I like the round of corn. Round of corn.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

It wasn't a unicorn, but it was a round of corn.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Right, around the corn like that. Uh, which is obviously uh a huge feat, right? Again, I used the analogy earlier, that's the equivalent of like winning three in a row, right? From that standpoint. So I'm curious. So you get this, and you know, we don't have to go into specifics, but when you sell a business for that amount, there is uh life-changing impacts of that portion of it. And so when all the dust settles, the funds are in the bank, and you know, you've uh the excitement sort of is worn off. Like walk me through like where how how are you feeling about life in general at that point?

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yeah. So after selling answers, taking some time off, I it was actually one of the kind of dark nights of the soul. Um I had done well financially, I was happy about that. You know, obviously no, no complaints. Like I, you know, if I never worked another day, I lived a full career sort of thing. But I realized a couple things. One, uh my time at home, my only the only Michael Jordan comparison I will cop to is that my time at home was about as successful as his baseball career. Because my wife was like, David, with your at home, you have all these ideas for how the home should be run. And they conflicted her ideas, and we all know who was gonna win there. Um, so that was one thing. But the second thing though, something I I learned about myself that I didn't I didn't quite realize was that I I played team sports in high school, but I started late. I didn't start playing basketball until late eighth grade. I didn't start uh playing volleyball until freshman year. And so um I didn't have the all the reps to be a great athlete and probably didn't have the uh the the full discipline uh to do it either. But I realized why I liked team sports so much. Is that I liked being on a team, I liked competing, I liked having goals, I liked working as a group to toward trying to accomplish something. And for the first time in a long time, after 10 plus years at answers, I was kind of teamless. I didn't have a team, I didn't have a goal, I didn't have a uh a ring to chase or uh playoffs to to work through. And I I I didn't want to make that the number one or the most important thing, because that I don't think that's good either. But I realized like I like to be on a team, I like to be competing. And so when I was thinking about, you know, do I retire or do I do I go and and build something? I'm like, no, I think I think I've got another run in me. And I want to be uh building a team. The other thing is that I have a real passion to see people use their gifts and their talents. Um you had had sent sent over some questions earlier and asked me like what what really matters? And for me, I love to see people like you know working out of their best. Um I don't really even care what the field is. I don't care if it's music, I don't care if it's art, sports, business. I mean, people love to see people working at the top of their game, like whatever it is. And so I kind of had that seed of like, okay, what if for my next company it could be something that really helps people do their best work? So that was kind of kind of floating around. Then I had my long laundry list of ideas, and you know, I probably had 50 ideas, 47 of them were terrible, a couple of them were decent, but this was like um it's like a rock in my shoe. Like I couldn't, I just couldn't keep walking and leave it in there. Like I had to like, I had to get it out. Um another kind of organizing framework I saw from Jeff Bezos is they asked him early on, they were like, Jeff, why'd you start Amazon? And he goes through this whole thing on how he's like, if he starts Amazon and this e-commerce thing takes off, he's like, I think we got a real shot, build something. If he starts Amazon and his e-commerce thing fails as a category, well, he's gonna learn something, he's gonna get by pretty well. If he doesn't start Amazon and e-commerce never goes anywhere, well, it's kind of the null case, right? But if he doesn't start Amazon and e-commerce takes off like he thinks it will, he's gonna regret it the rest of his life. And so I looked at this very similarly where I was like, if I don't start capacity and this AI category takes off, man, I'm gonna regret it because I think it's gonna be a like a not just a page turn or a chapter turn, but a fundamental rewriting of our entire economy. And so between this wanting to do something in the software space, desire to see teams do their best work, this kind of regret minimization, and then a my wife wanted me to get out of the house and a lot of prayer. That was kind of all those things combined to say, hey, let's go get back in the game.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes perfect sense. So that's that I love hearing that that story. I remember uh you and I actually having some conversations uh during that point. I remember sitting by by your pool and having some conversations, just checking in on you, seeing how you were doing. Um, and what I remember was um, and this again, I I wish I could remember how long ago this was, but I remember you mentioning like you got a couple different uh couple ideas, but that you were um specifically like I'm thinking about a few things, but whatever it is, it's gonna be in this AI space, right? Yeah, and this was long before it's the the talk of the town as it is right now. So I'm curious about what were you seeing back then that had you so convinced and like I gotta figure this out, but this is the lane that I want to swim in.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Yeah. Uh one thing that I've learned is that if you can get into a space early, you can make a ton of mistakes and still probably do okay. You get to a space late, you have to execute flawlessly in order for something to work out. And so I like, I like to be in spaces on the on the earlier side. Um the Christmas time of 2016, the top selling item on Amazon wasn't a book or video game or a toy. It was Amazon's Alexa. And so it was the first time in the world where the top selling product wasn't AI. And so I kind of looked at that and I was like, wow, this AI is not even that good yet. But I think this is indicative of where we're going to go. Um, usually things start in the consumer world, then they go to the business world, then they go to education and nonprofits, and then they go to government. Typically, it goes through that, those four cycles. And so I was like, if this is the top-selling consumer product, I think this is this technology is gonna have an even bigger impact on the world of work. The other thing that I liked about it too was that uh specifically for automating, because we're in the world of automating support, is that you don't have to back to my my my sports analogy, you don't have to bat a thousand to have a real impact. So I talk a lot about how there are projects that are salad projects and brownie projects. So salad projects, I make a homemade Caesar style salad, and it's it's really good. I don't know if you guys, I don't know you and Sabrina have had it yet, but you next time you come over, I will make the salad for you guys. Sound good. So I I I've you know cut the fresh garlic, I do uh anchovies, I do have like stone ground mustard, I do like a uh a fresh cracked pepper, got my own cheese, make my own croutons. It is amazing. Change your life salad. Croutons, okay. Change your life salad. That's commitment. It's it's the real deal. But you could take any one ingredient out of that salad, and it's it's still pretty good. You obviously can't take out the lettuce, but excluding the lettuce, take out pretty much anything is still gonna be pretty good. Maybe not 100%, maybe it's 80 or 90%. I think a lot of projects are like salad projects where you can deliver 80 or 90% and get 80 or 90% of the value. But then there are some projects that are more like when my kids make brownies, where if they miss one ingredient, it's not like 90% is good. Right. The brownies are in the trash. Right. Like it's literally inedible. Yeah, right. And so the thing I liked about using AI for automating support was that it was a category where I think it could be kind of a salad project rather than a brownie project. Because even if we could help automate 30, 40, 50 percent early on, and then eventually 70, 80, 90 percent over time, you can still get a lot of value out of that.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Yeah, that makes sense. So when you when you think about like where AI is right now, like what are you most excited about and what are you most concerned about?

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Yeah, um I think the if I look at 99% of people's interactions with AI today, it's starting with a person putting in some kind of inquiry into a prompt and it coming back with some kind of information. And I I don't think that's going away. But I think when the AI comes back to you proactively before you ask it to do anything, that's where we're going to get a big unlock. And so um, in the same way that if you think of if you think of all technology as a proxy for labor, you think of automation as a proxy for um kind of physical labor, you think of AI as a proxy for cognitive labor, you think of generative AI as a proxy for creative labor. If you put physical labor, cognitive labor, creative labor together, you start to get a proxy for labor. Uh up until now, most AI interactions are still human-initiated. I think when uh when we get to the point where, and we're starting to get there now, where the the AI systems are coming back to you proactively, it's gonna completely unlock and change the way that we work.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Yeah, that makes sense. And and what about anything in that process is like concerning for you, if anything?

SPEAKER_01 36:03

Um I think we're gonna have an explosion of software. There's gonna be more software than ever. And at the same time, uh security is gonna be a big, a big deal. Um, I've already had people try to clone my voice and do phishing attack uh attacks over over uh WhatsApp. Um so we acquired a company out of Spain, and then they're like, hey David, did you want us to spend money on this conference? I was like, what conference? What conference, right? They played me back the the WhatsApp message. It sounded exactly like me. I actually played it for my wife. She actually liked the digital version better than the real thing, but that's that's yeah, neither here nor there. And so like there's gonna be a big security, uh security aspect of this new world. Uh, I also think they're gonna be people kind of caught in the middle in between the human-centric labor force to a yeah, agent-centric labor force that are gonna have to rescale pretty quickly. Yeah. So how we deal with that as a society is is probably one of gonna be one of the biggest pressing issues of the next 10, 20 years.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

Yeah, and you're you're right. I mean, some of this is asking you to answer a question that everyone is trying to answer, right? We're we've never been at this place before. And even if there were other uh proxies that we could use to try to help us forecast more of this, even those estimates are always off. And so that's that that's a that's a question that is it's a tough one to answer. Um, but we have a lot of folks that that listen to the podcast and they sort of range in age. Like we have everything from you know, parents of players or uh, you know, folks that are in their their 40s and their mid-careers, all the way down to young Gen Z athletes and and folks of that like who are um you know at different stages. And so um so everyone is some of us are thinking about AI and the impact at different different levels. I guess I would love to start with like uh the younger uh generation. So if I am a 20-year-old and I am in college, right, and you know, there was this sort of this traditional path that everyone that that everyone sort of aspouse to, not for everyone, but for a lot of people where you go to high school, go to college, so on and so forth, you get a uh degree from a prestigious university, and you can kind of sort of like chart your path in some particular ways. I guess my question would be for you, um, giving given what AI is rapidly learning, like what do you think are the what advice would you give to a 20-year-old? What should they be learning? What should they be spending their time doing to be prepared for the world to come?

SPEAKER_01 38:40

Yeah, so when I think about the history of computing, I think about it in terms of uh abstraction layers away from zeros and ones. So, David, what do you mean? So my dad was an electrical engineer. I can remember he actually had physical switches on machines, and then that got replaced by binary code, and then that got replaced by assembly code. And assembly code, I have a computer science degree, but if you gave me assembly code, uh you might as well give me Greek. Like it's really hard to read, but it was orders of magnitude uh easier than binary code. And then people came up with higher order languages like C, which again is not the easiest to deal with, but order of magnitude easier than assembly code. And then you get to higher order languages like JavaScript and HTML, where now a lot more people can code and build things. Now with AI in the forefront, the language is kind of irrelevant. It's just can you tell the AI what you want it to build? Right. And so there is an order of magnitude number of people uh merging who can now build software. And so the first thing I would say is in a world where anyone has the tools and capabilities to build software, and a world where more and more of our world is becoming digital, if you're young, you have to learn how to use this technology to go build things, not just answer questions. I'm not saying everyone needs to be a card-carrying software developer all the time, but if you've got uh if you're on a corporate development team and you want to go look at a thousand documents, you should be able to tell the AI how to go build and process that. Um, if you're trying to launch my my handyman built an entire website with an AI. My handyman is like, hey, I figured I have to learn how to do this. And he's like, he's like, the AI built the whole website, helped me with marketing plan, et cetera. And so um the people who don't learn how to use this technology are most at risk to be replaced by this technology if the work you do is digital. Now, I think we're still a long way off before AI is going to replace a plumber or a carpenter or a uh HVAC guy or gal. Um, so those I think that will take a much longer time. But if your work is primarily digital, knowledge economy work, if you're not working with AIs to help improve what you do, you're you're probably gonna get replaced.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Yeah. And so, and practically for uh an 18 or a 20-year-old, when you say learning to work with AIs, what is what does that mean? Flesh that out a little bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

So uh I have a nonprofit I help start called Create a Loop, where we help teach computer science and AI to kids. And one of the courses that we have is like AI for kids. And it starts out where if you want to go uh build your first AI-driven website, what does that look like? Or you want to go build a game, what does that look like? Um, I'll use an example in my own life. Um I am very worried that my wife is gonna click on one of these phishing attack links. And so I had an AI build a little Chrome plugin called Fish Fry, where it goes through every page and it looks at each link to see if it's a typosquatting or some kind of uh bad ombre. And like so you can't click on it. And I had the AI build the whole thing in you know a couple days, and uh, I don't know if I'll turn it into a business or what, but like being able to create with this technology, don't wait till you're out in the workplace. Like start right now. I have a guy I work with who had an AI build all of his travel planning, like they do all their vacation planning and it's all in an AI app now that they built. Um, so it doesn't mean you have to go build some like life-changing over-the-top thing, but if you can use this technology to start building solutions for everyday problems, you're gonna be in much better shape as this technology evolves.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

And for someone who is, we have people who are like deep down the the rabbit trail with open claw and all those wonderful things that are happening there, and other people that are like, I've heard about this AI stuff, and you know, I'm you've convinced me now, David, I need to actually like look into this. So what so what are some of the ways they can actually get started? You just saying, like, hey, download an app, start asking some questions. Like, how would you encourage people to get started?

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Yeah, depending on your technical uh capability, some of it, some people are gonna do better with courses. They're like, hey, I just want, give me an easy course. There are all sorts, there's one for business people, there's one for technical people, there are one for people want to code, people don't want to just start like learning this stuff. Um, I'm an experiential learner, so I like to learn by doing. So that that um fish fry app I made entirely with OpenClaw, downloaded it, installed it, just kept hacking away at it. Um, I would I would recommend one thing that was nice about that project is that it's pretty simple and contained, and I could have a useful, workable product in. In a day or two. So pick something that has those features. Don't like if you're like, hey, I'm going to come in, I want to train an AI to rebuild the entire Microsoft Office Suite. Like that's probably not going to happen in a day or two. But go find a small W Win you can go do in your own life. It might be uh building a budget app. It might be making a Chrome plugin. It might be building a website. But go find a small W-win area that this technology can go build in and you're going to really open your eyes to what's possible.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

Yeah. And what I love about this technology from just personal experience, you and I are wired similar. I started as an electrical engineer. You made it through the engineering school. I switched to the B-school. But I'm I love to learn by doing as well. But it really sort of accelerates the process you described earlier. When you described about answers like we did this, and then that led to this, and that led to this. This, from my experience, allows people to do the very same thing. Like you start asking some questions and unlock something else, and the next thing you know, you're like off in some other things. But there's a lot of learning that actually happens as a result of it. And so uh I appreciate you answering that question because I know for some of the some of the listeners who are like brand new to this, they're like, I don't even know how to get started. And it sounds like in some ways, you know, they could download Chat GPT or Claude and just ask questions to start with and kind of get going from there.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

Well, and on the other side, it's like you know, I don't come to me for investment advice, but personally, I you know, I'm putting a significant amount of my own net worth investing in AI-related items because it's one of the fastest growing areas of the economy. Like the same way I got in an online advertising space when it was like this and it was going like this, AI, like we're in the second inning of AI. This is the dial up. This is like a 28k modem for those who were around long enough to know what that is, dial up phase of AI. We're not in high-speed internet here. And so um they're gonna this is gonna in the same way we look back and we're like, remember when modems used to make funny noises and it took you know four hours to download a 40-second dunk video from from the 90s? We're we're very much in that place today.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I think this is the this is an important conversation to have, and there's a lot of people talking about this as well. But I think also a unique perspective that you bring is that you are like you know, like uh immersed in all things AI, automation, business, and in doing so at the highest level. Uh, but also something that makes you different is that you bring a faith element, a faith component uh to this. And I I hesitate to describe it as a component because for those of us that are actually in the faith, we know it's much larger, it's really who we are. It's bedrock. Yeah, right, exactly. Uh, and so I'm curious about like how does when you think about decision making or caring for people, like, where does your your beliefs, your faith, where do those show up in a way that that changes how you maybe process or decide something that might be different than somebody who doesn't take the same uh espouse to the same beliefs?

SPEAKER_01 47:08

Yeah. Um so I'm doing a study this year on the Sermon on the Mount. And the thing about the Sermon on the Mount that was yeah, you know, I think we kind of we kind of lose sight of this today, but it was a radical reimagining of what the best and highest moral standards were at that time. So best and highest moral standards was eye for an eye, instead of go and burn down your enemy's village. And Jesus is like, uh love your enemy, or uh don't commit adultery was the highest standard, and he's like, don't look at a woman lustfully, or uh, you know, you go you can go on, right? And and so I've been asking myself, what does it look like to live out this ethos that goes well beyond you know following a couple of rules or trying to do the right thing here or there? And I'll give an example that uh I'm not at all perfect in, but I can tell a difference between. So I can go into a sales meeting, confident, competitive, pushing to try to land that client. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, by the way. Like I think people are wired to do that and we should do that. But I can also go into that same meeting kind of open-handed and say, Lord, how can I help this company? Like, please show me, open up to me how I can help, how I can be a help, how how I can uh actually help them accomplish their goals. And if I'm not the right person or we're not the right company to do that, don't treat that as a closed loss on the Salesforce list, although it might be, right? But say, hey, you know what? They're gonna find somebody who can actually help them and help me focus my time on the people that I can actually help. And so you might get the same result, or you might get a very similar result, but there's a very different heart attitude toward I'm here just to land the sale and move on, versus I'm here to truly help this team go do its best work. And so in my best of days, I'm in this category. On my average days, I'm I'm you know, competitive, competitive sports player. So I think that's just a good, like a really practical example of um same situation. What is the heart posture toward what you're trying to go accomplish?

SPEAKER_00 49:46

Yeah. I think that's so powerful because you're you're absolutely right. That that perspective can can mean all the difference, right? I mean, it doesn't mean that you have to shrink back from being how he wired you to be, right? Um, you know, competitive, confident. In some ways, I think when we're in that best of the scenario, like I can make the argument that we're actually even should be even more confident, right? Because when you walk in, that like if God is for me, who can be against me? What he actually has for me is for me, that gives you sort of the freedom to be able to like serve and care about the other participant and not trying to force something that you know. And so I think that's pretty powerful to be able to hear that. Um given the fact that the stakes are real high, right? It's still still very high, right? Because you're you're in a competitive space, right? Like, um, you know, it's it's funny, I meant to mention this earlier. Like, of all the places that you could have come back to, it seems like you are a glutton for choosing some of the toughest areas to yeah, I I apparently really like hard mode, right?

SPEAKER_01 50:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

Hard mode uh because you know, again, when you're in and you're having that sales call, you know real numbers you have, you got investors, you know all the implications of that portion of it, and to be able to, you know, to not lean into the fear or anything else that actually could drive that, but to say in pause and like you mentioned, and say, like, okay, Lloyd, what's for you, what you have for me is for me, and I'm gonna operate that way, I think is is pretty powerful. So thank you. That's great, great to hear, man. So a couple other questions. Let me get you out of here. So so you've had a lot of success, right? Um, and uh, but I see you kind of walk throughout life in in a way where it's not like, hey, come look at me, look at all the wonderful things that I've done. And I gotta tell you, um, that is not very common for people who have actually accomplished the things that you've accomplished. And so for you, like what given that there are people who may look to your story and say, Man, I I I I am I I you know, I look up to him. There's a lot of uh attention that comes. Like, what do you think have been the things that have kept you grounded from from not becoming the person who it's all about money, it's all about David, it's all about you know me taking the next hill. Um, I'm gonna step on whoever I need to step on to ultimately get there to being a person who actually is approaching life and business the way you are.

SPEAKER_01 51:54

Yeah. Um I think I think a couple of things. I I really try to be the same person everywhere. So, like for better or for worse, I'm what you see is what you get. So I'm not gonna have one conversation with you and then go talk with somebody else and have a completely separate separate uh view or completely separate uh approach to things. And and so I think there is a um you know, people talk about integrity in terms of like not lying or not cheating or not stealing, and I think that's that's all true. But there's this um there's this integrity of being the same person in all scenarios. Um so I think that I think that's part of it. Um I also think the older I get, the like I just don't need to impress anyone. Like it's just uh it's not my not my thing. Like I don't know. Um I have a couple people, my wife, my best friend, my kids, whose opinions I really care about. And then after that, it's kind of like it's kind of up for take it or leave it. Take it or leave it. So um so I think that's I think that's part of it too. Um and then like you said, I you know, I I think 98% is a lot of what's been what you've been given, and then two percent is is how you play the poker hand. And so it would um people talk about people born on third base. I think there are people born a couple feet away from the from the home plate. From home plate. And so uh I I can't I can't puff myself up in any of those types of situations.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. So this is the Make It Matter podcast. Like when you hear the phrase uh make it matter, uh, what does that mean to you and life and the way that you you build and and and lead?

SPEAKER_01 54:09

When I think about the word matter, I think about things that have substance, I think about things that have weight, I think about things that are important. It's an interesting word because it uh has a physical connotation, everything is made of matter, you can measure matter. But there's also a more of an abstract. Oh, does this matter? Does this idea matter? Does this concept matter? Uh so it's a it's a very good word. Uh for me, I think if you look at the purpose of anything, the purpose of any one thing is to live out however that thing was designed by whoever designed it. So I can sit in a kitchen chair, and the purpose of the chair is to be sat in. I could stand on it, I could put it at a bar stool or bar height, but it's not gonna write it's meant to be sat at at a kitchen table. Conversely, I could take the bar stool and I could bring it over the kitchen table and I could sit in it, but it's not gonna be the right height. Um, and those things were designed. Um, bar stool didn't just you know jump out of the furniture store arranged in a certain way, like it was it was specifically made for a certain type of activity. Um I think there's a you know a passage in the New Testament about um believers being part of a body, and there's like different roles in the body, and you don't want the hand to be like an eye or a foot to think it's a liver or something. This is my interpretation here. But um I think when people are using their gifts and their talents and their longings and their desires and their hopes and their dreams and the way that they're wired, uh, in a way that aligns with their design, they tend to do really well. And so I think part of what matters is seeing people unlock how they were designed. And some of the design might be how they were, you know, how they came out of the womb, some of it's their uh their life circumstances, some of the stuff they're choosing, some of it's um the environment and society that they're in. But I love to see people do their best work, I love to see people use their gifts and talents to kind of Steve Jobs put it, put a dent in the universe. And so I think what matters is um setting up people to be able to do that in the best way possible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:51

Listen, I I agree uh 100%. I think that's a beautiful definition of what it means to make it matter. And it's clear, man, that God has used you in a mighty way uh to create spaces for people to be able to do that. Uh in a lot of places, man. So I thank you for making time today, man, and and uh be praying that God continues to use you in a in a great way to make it matter. Thanks for having me here.