This Week in Startups - Pioneering AI Wearables: Avi Schiffmann and Tab AI | E1868

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Starting point is 00:01:24 Pratech.com slash twist and get $5,000 off. All right, everybody. We have been focused on wearable computing for many years here on this week in startups. And it's working. It's getting better. And people are actually getting value from these products. Ten years ago when Fitbit came out, yeah, it counted your steps.

Starting point is 00:01:44 It was accurate plus or minus 50%. But since that time, we had Tom from ORA, you know, the ring. He was on episode 1812 back in September. We had Will from Woop. People are crazy about that. Episode 1786. And we recently had Dan from Rewind AI. He's building that AI pendant. And of course, I've said it over and over again. The Apple Watch was complete trash until, I don't know, whatever this ultra pro one I have is. And that's acceptable. So now wearables are here, and they're here at a very interesting moment in time. And all the components work, battery life's

Starting point is 00:02:17 gotten better. It's cheaper to make these things. But AI is here. And chat-based interfaces are here. voice-based computing is actually working. So after a couple of decades of grinding it out on voice recognition, on AI, on wearables, on the sub-components of variables, it's all starting to come together. And we're going to have a very interesting moment, like the communicator on Star Trek. We just press a button and you talk to a computer.

Starting point is 00:02:45 And today's guest, Avi Schiffman, has been working on a wearable AI interface called Tab, like the old Diet Soda. and if you haven't seen the demo, pretty great. It went viral on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter back in October. Avi, welcome to the show. Thank you, Jason. I think there's a lot to talk about.

Starting point is 00:03:05 There's a lot to talk about. So let's talk about what you've built. What does the tab do? Is it in market yet? Are people playing with it? Because you did this viral demo. Just generally tell me, where's the company at? What's the origin story here?

Starting point is 00:03:19 Yeah, yeah. So I've been working on this since about April. So it's been about like seven, eight months, something like that. A lot of what we're trying to do is like no one has really done much of this before. So things are definitely still in like different stages of development. What I posted on Twitter a few months ago is definitely more of like an assistant type thing. And I think I've gone a lot deeper since then. I think, you know, you have this primitive of like 15 hours of audio a day now.

Starting point is 00:03:42 And, you know, you can just feed these into systems that can not only transcribe it, but also do emotional sentiment analysis. And you can start to really like, you know, really build like a. mental model of who you are through all that data. And I think, like, again, you could build some kind of assistant where you speak to this and I don't know, obviously book you flights for sending emails or whatever that type of shit is. Personally, I don't think anyone is going to be like Apple or Open AI with some type of like Jarvis productivity AI. I think that whole industry, I think there's a lot of like low hanging fruit people are grabbing right now. There's a lot

Starting point is 00:04:13 of interesting products built in that space, probably some other wearables too. But like, ultimately, I think there's a far more interesting use case that I also don't think encumbrance are going to work on, which is kind of this like, what was kind of taboo right now, but I really think is not going to be so taboo going forward, which is just like talking to an AI about things in your life. AI companionship is by far like the biggest winner in AI so far. Products like replica, character AI, etc. These things have hundreds of millions of users.

Starting point is 00:04:41 Character is raising what, like at 5 billion right now, right? These things are doing really well. I think though, whenever there's a new industry. like this, there's always, you know, porn and gaming slash entertainment that always leads new technology, right? But like, something that appeals to more of a mainstream consumer, something that's, like, more useful for the average person. Like, personally, I don't really need an, I don't want an AI girlfriend. I don't really need to, like, do little roleplay with some kind of little AI friend in my day. But some kind of companion that, like, actually understands me,

Starting point is 00:05:10 because it's with me throughout my day. And can kind of, like, help me with much more deeper aspects of my life, such as like, just kind of how am I coming off to other people, a lot of just kind of more deeper emotional support or just kind of helping me understand who I am, kind of act as like a sounding board too. I mean, if you think about like what you may be, like you become the people you surround yourself, right? You're the average of your five friends, but most people don't surround themselves with the greatest people or, you know, they're not always available. They're just kind of like low agency, not that intelligent, can't maintain that much context, not really with them, etc. But when you build like a wearable like this that's literally with you and ingesting all

Starting point is 00:05:49 this context of your life and you can talk to it and it can maintain all this context and it's far more intelligent, you know, it can act as like that that amazing sounding board, that amazing emotional support, et cetera. And it's going to be lower taboo. So explain what it does and what the hardware profile is here, the size of it, what's in it, microphone, camera, processor, or what's not in it and why? And then what is it do? I've got a simple prototype. type you can see you're on my neck right now. So it's just kind of, well, we'll make it smaller over time, but it's kind of just like a little, little amulet pendant type shape. And it has just a simple microphone on it, Bluetooth's to your iPhone, your iPhone, your iPhones

Starting point is 00:06:26 sends it off to the server all in background mode. That's it on the kind of hardware side. On your phone, you have like a mobile interface on an application that acts as like, you know, the syncing for the Bluetooth, and you can also kind of communicate with this companion. I'm trying to like distill the interface down to be as simple as possible. I very much like a pie from inflection. I've got just like a very, very clean UI. There's there's really no other distractions. I'm trying to think about like, how would you actually build the UI of something like her? That's kind of where we're at right now. So when you talk to it, it's just picking up any human voices, it hears 24 hours a day,

Starting point is 00:07:01 seven days a week, and then transcribing everything and then creating a language model where you can ask you questions about the voices in your life and every conversation you've had. Yeah? Yeah, I actually think the far more interesting, use case or kind of like user interface paradigm that I'm trying to explore right now is how it can be proactive because it's like always listening. How can it like hear something and then take action and just save me time without me having to do anything? I just want to put an emphasis on and make my life easier.

Starting point is 00:07:29 So I don't know. For example, maybe we're in a conversation like this and it ends and maybe Tab knows that usually after meetings I like to know maybe my action items or I'm trying to work on my communication skills recently and just kind of starts the conversation with me. I feel like a big issue with chat as a UX right now is that it's so open-ended. You don't even know what question I ask in the first place. I'm basically building you, like, you know, your own personal god, right? But like, you still just don't know what question to ask it.

Starting point is 00:07:55 But something that just learns how you use it, what you need right now. It's kind of just like reading your mind in a sense because, again, it's building up this mental image of who you are. It understands your daily routines. It, you know, has an emotional baseline. So it knows when you're kind of spiking or kind of going off track. You know, here's maybe a more specific example. It was like the other day, one of my engineers here, he was on the phone with his mom.

Starting point is 00:08:16 And his mom suggested, oh, it's your birthday coming up. You know, go ride a bike around like the Golden Gate Park or across the bridge, whatever, things like that. And he's like, okay, thanks, Mom. Tap sends him a text and he's like, and you know, got that. That's a great idea. A few days later, it's his birthday. He's kind of near the area.

Starting point is 00:08:33 He's mentioning something about like, oh, it's his birthday, et cetera, wondering what he should do, talking about. That's this with a friend. Tab then also sends him a text and he's like, oh, remember, like your mom wanted you to go across the Golden Gate Bridge, et cetera. Right. And it's like, oh, yeah, you know, it goes and does that. You don't have to do anything. It just makes your life easier. I think that's, if we were in a conversation, you know, over dinner and you mentioned a book and I said, oh, I'll definitely read that. It could then, I don't know, the next day, say, hey, here's an action item. You should buy this book or something.

Starting point is 00:08:59 Yeah. Maybe I had a book sort of. I think one thing that's interesting, right, is there's a lot of action items that are presented to you that aren't necessarily like very direct. Like, oh, I need to do this. It's more like, oh, maybe, you know, you mentioned you're running low on milk, like, at the fridge and you, like, completely forget about it. Maybe you're at a grocery store, right? You can have this like location-based reminder that that uses that context. Just things like that, passively making your life easier. I think that's what wearables are all about. Not new interaction paradigms like Humane, et cetera, is trying to focus on. Right. And so Humane obviously is a pin. It's buy some Apple people. Sam Maltman, I think, backed it or amongst the backers of it. Have you played with it yet? Have you seen it in person and what your initial impression of this new model where it projects? It uses a. but it also projects, I guess, onto your hand. So if you think of it like maybe a, it's a little bit smaller than maybe a pack of cigarettes. So if you had a pack of cigarettes or a half a pack of cigarettes clip to your shirt, you can put your hand down. It projects onto it. And then you can kind of interface with it that way or audio.

Starting point is 00:10:00 So have you play with it. What do you think? I have a lot of thoughts on Humane. I haven't personally played with it. But, you know, I've been doing, I've made similar prototypes of like a pin form factor for what I'm working on. So I have a lot of experience there. One note, I think is kind of interesting because you mentioned Sam Altman. He actually owns more equity in Humane than both the founders do, which, you know,

Starting point is 00:10:19 think about that. That's wow. I mean, that's what happens when you raise hundreds of millions of dollars before you get a product in the market. You got to have some tradeoffs there. So I think to me, the big issues with Humane is that it is not always on, but it is a wearable. And so for a wearable to actually, you know, take consumer hold, it needs to just be not just 10x better, 100x better. Wearables are a really tricky thing to, like, actually get to work, right? You have to charge it, you have to put it on every day.

Starting point is 00:10:42 It has to maintain with your outfits, et cetera. That's really tricky. So it's not always on. Only lasts about like four hours, right? And you have to fiddle with these battery packs. I just don't think that is ultimately what wearables are supposed to be. If you think about other wearables, let's say Fitbit, et cetera, oras, right? Like, these are not things you interact with.

Starting point is 00:10:57 You just put them on and you're passively obtaining context that you feed into just like maybe your phone and now. Much better system, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And again, like I think they're trying to go down a little different route by trying to completely replace your phone, build a new thing there. Personally, I'm very interested in also having like an LTE module, et cetera, on this product down the line. I just think to get this into the market and for initial adoption, it's, you need like a halfway step. I kind of

Starting point is 00:11:21 pip it for your life before you fully replace your phone. Also, again, no one is going to be Apple or opening eye with the Jarvis. And that seems to be what the, what direction are going in. Are you running late on holiday gifts for your customers or employees? If you are, I have a perfect solution for you. Nuts.com is your one-stop shop for the highest quality foods for business. They offer delicious office snacks, corporate gifts, and wholesale ingredients. And when you go to the nuts.com site, you're not just going to find their nuts. Their nuts are perfect. But you can also get dried fruit, which I love. Frail mix, which I love. I go skiing, I put someone out of my pocket. And then chocolates. Mmm, that's where I do my damage. I love

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Starting point is 00:13:14 People do that. There are spy pens that do that. But this is an entire category. Right. Which, you know, the iPhone has many other uses. And if you had a spy pen on you and people found out, they would be pretty appalled. So this is a new concept. This is a behavior change.

Starting point is 00:13:27 How do you think about it? Right. So, I mean, like, I just don't view tab as a recording device. I would more so view the microphones as like the ear for your personal AI. I don't have. have access to your transcripts. You don't have access to your transcripts. We're not storing audio or anything like that. I think the great part about LLMs is just, you know, it's just artificial intelligence. To make a product like this work, you need to have some intelligence go and parse all this

Starting point is 00:13:48 data. And now it's just that can be done securely because no human needs to be involved. There was like a whole, a whole like industry of products called like life logging. I'm sure you've seen things like the narrative to etc. back in the day. And like those to me are weird, right? because you actually have like a 12-hour recording of your life. I can't even do anything with that much. But I think you more so just have to look at the incentives, not what I'd say. I personally am much more interested in making money with this startup by selling you like a monthly subscription to use it rather than selling your user data.

Starting point is 00:14:18 I think there's far more money to be made in allowing other people to build off your data and making this kind of like your secure personal knowledge base that feeds into companions, allows other applications to be contextually aware about you, things like that, rather than selling your user data and letting you have access to it. So when it's recording, if you and I were co-founders of the startup, we got in a blowout argument, we set all kinds of reprehensible things to each other, it transcribes it, puts it into the language model, but then it deletes the transcript and there's no audio file ever. Am I correct there?

Starting point is 00:14:51 I'm playing around with more of a rolling window, I think, for the transcripts. I think the big issue people have with a product like this is worrying about maybe being subpoenaed, maybe if they say something. I think that's a big issue. I'm definitely trying to think about. Overall, though, I think it is private. And the last major project I worked on before this was like an online housing platform for Ukrainian refugees where I had to deal with like the user data of like refugees in an active war zone. We never had any data leaks.

Starting point is 00:15:18 That's an absolute priority for me. It's an absolute priority for this product as well. But again, like consumers want their lives to be easier. I do think if it provides you enough utility, these things that appear taboo now will become very popular. Apple just put a camera and a microphone on your face. You've got Amazon Echoes and all of our houses. This is just where the trend is going. And I think a lot of people in tech look at this and they're like, that's never going to catch on. But then the consumers I talk to and the people, and I present this of like the core problems people have in their lives and how this can make better, that's all they care about. They just want their life to be easier.

Starting point is 00:15:47 I think the reason why things like this have not really caught on in the past is just the like the value just did not exceed the tabooness and the weirdness of having like an always on recording device. But again, it's like it's not really recording. You're just kind of feeding data into some model. There will definitely be a lot of new legislation built around this over the next decade. I generally agree. Privacy concerns can go down when value goes up. So, you know, having find my iPhone, it's a pretty great feature, having Uber and seeing cabs come, you know, to you and knowing the distance, you have to give you a location, but you get something. But this is kind of different in this situation where you and I with the co-founders, we have this

Starting point is 00:16:22 crazy argument, and then maybe it becomes litigious or something we all make claims. I could ask it in the current model, hey, summarize my conversation with J-Cal and we got in that blowout fight, leave the last part out, but summarize my last conversation with J-CAL. Or give me every time J-Cal talked about his stock options and summarize it. And you'd have a whole history of all the times we talked about our stock options and you and I got an argument about it. I don't know. Maybe that is in the best interest of the person who got the oral arrangement and the other person denying it. But it also feels like a road to insane amounts of discovery and litigation. Maybe. I mean, that might just be, think about your iPhone, you have a lot of stuff in your notes, et cetera, that gets used in court cases all the time. I think that there will be a lot of, not just doubt, just all kinds of second order effects, maybe affecting people's relationships, et cetera, with a product like this. Ultimately, though, I feel like that's probably for the best. And again, it's not like anyone's forcing you to wear the product like this. I think if you look at a surveillance state like China, you have no say in that you're kind of always being recorded. But in the U.S., these are ran by private companies. You don't have, you're not forced to use this product. You don't have to be around other people that use it if you don't want to. Ultimately, though, this is just where we're headed. I think there will be a lot of people that are going to, oh, I don't want to work on this, things like that. And then there will be people like me that will work on it. And we will build

Starting point is 00:17:35 the future that your family uses. When you use a VHS camera, there's a little red light on the front. People can know that it's recording. Yeah. So have you considered something like that. So the pendant, I'll let people know it's recording. And in fact, in public spaces, when you do have cameras, depending on location in geo, you have to let people know you're recording. And I think you also have to let people know you're recording at the workplace as well. So this is a very controversial topic. Cameras at workplaces, microphones at workplaces. You could do it, but I think employees have to be informed.

Starting point is 00:18:05 So how do you think about consent and informing people with the device? And again, the device isn't out yet. People aren't using it. You're just beta testing it on yourself, correct? Yeah, and just kind of people around me. So I actually have thought a lot about this. I'm definitely subject to change this, but I feel that because a device is always on, It kind of just acts as the indicator itself.

Starting point is 00:18:25 I think people just kind of become familiar with this concept. I don't think you necessarily, I think by adding an LED on it, it kind of makes it feel more weird. And I also think the reason why those have it is because you can selectively choose when to record and when not to record. And that makes it be like, oh, when is you doing it? Whereas with a product like this, it is kind of always on. I think, you know, with products like Google Glass, people always compare things like this to that. Look, I mean, the reason why Google Glass never caught on was not even because of the recording issues. It was just, it was not that useful.

Starting point is 00:18:51 It's just, it was never that useful. I'm very bearer from air, but it wasn't useful. I agree with that. Yeah. But anyways, one thing I wanted to say was kind of cool, Tapp sent me a text. I'm playing around with one aspect of how it can be like maybe supportive or kind of these positive affirmations in a way. I think a lot of people struggle with just being seen and like feeling this momentum.

Starting point is 00:19:11 It was like, you can see I got a text here. It's like insightful AI perspectives. I notice your thoughts on AI companionship and the mainstream appeal of practical AI applications. It's a refreshing perspective that aligns with your vision for tab. Keep pushing the boundaries, Avi. Very simple, but just having this thing of like, I noticed, you know, keep doing this. Great job.

Starting point is 00:19:29 I'm playing around with that. It doesn't mean that's going to be in the final product. But like, there's, you know, people, people want to feel seen. It definitely helps you with your, just kind of just keep things going. I think this is a lot of what like some of my best friends in life have done for me, but they're not always there. Yeah. So if you were having a tough day and you got into an argument, it could say afterwards,

Starting point is 00:19:46 hey, that sounds like a really tough interaction you had with your coworker. Here's some strategies for, you know, maybe coming down from that intensity. You might want to consider, you know, sending a follow-up note or doing, you know, doing some meditation or whatever. Right. One, one, like, thing I noticed, like, I did an interview, like, a few weeks ago with the Crimson. And I talk a lot about, like, conquering.

Starting point is 00:20:09 I literally have a poster of Caesar right about this desk of him crossing the Rubcon. I've got a statue of Caesar in my house. I can talk about this all the time. But I'm also trying to kind of build you, like, your best friend in a way. this super intelligent sidekick. So I'm having to like market and pitch friendship, right? Then I talk about conquering. And so I did this interview and Tats sent me a text right after I said something.

Starting point is 00:20:28 And because the interviewer was like by conquering, do you mean raping and pillaging villages? And I was like, oh, no, no, no, not like that. It's like, look, here's a specific instance of like how this negatively affects your pitch and how these things kind of juxtapose together, friendship and, you know, conquering. These don't really match. You should probably not talk about it that often. So when I pitch to investors, et cetera, I don't hit on the conquering stuff at all anymore. I pitch a lot more friendship. Just a little bit of awareness to things really changes your behavior.

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Starting point is 00:21:35 plus state fees. They're going to form your LLC, your corporation, or your nonprofit, and you'll be able to launch your business in just minutes. Visit northwest registered agent.com slash twist today. That is Northwest registered agent.com slash TWIST today. So you, you saw and you had a little interaction with Dan, the founder of Rewind AI. I had them on. I asked them the same hard questions I'm asking you, but it was kind of interesting. He's recording the desktop and trying to build a similar model, which is like a DVR, you know, of your entire desktop, which in some ways would be your entire life. We had some good discussions about, hey, well, of signals on your desktop and the expectation is that's private, are you sucking that?

Starting point is 00:22:20 And he's like, yeah, currently we are. We could make that a user setting. And I said, well, maybe that shouldn't be a user setting. You as the creator of this should know that that's used for that purpose and not put it in, just like an incognito window might be used for having privacy. Why would you record something that the person has explicitly turned on for privacy? But you had an interesting interaction with him. You went viral and then what happened next?

Starting point is 00:22:43 Yeah, so I posted my demo. The first one I've seen of any kind of always on AI wearable and the necklace form factor, the next day, I see a whole shitty post from Dan of just kind of like a shitty version that's copying this. And like, I think you can tell that he hasn't thought it through that much, even based off your interview with them. Of course, it was very rushed. I'd love to be a fly on the wall on their Slack channel when they posted that. But, I mean, personally, I think here's the thing is, like, Jason, how much today did you really need to pluck out of detail from an earlier conversation? It's not really some.

Starting point is 00:23:14 I think it's maybe cool, maybe cool. Yeah, no, I happened. I was going to say, I was thinking, I was actually thinking about the question. I was like, no, I haven't. Right. Perfect memory is a cool primitive that I think feeds into something like a companion that uses that to make your life better in its interactions. I think it's more so like it takes all these details and facts that it kind of learns about

Starting point is 00:23:32 you from previous conversations and uses that to like answer your questions properly. It's just all that context, just more constraints to get you a more specific answer later on. I think perfect memory. is cool, but ultimately that's like much higher up on the Mazel's hierarchy of needs that I've got over here. It's cool. It helps you with a few productivity-focused things. But again, like, I think a companion that can help you find clarity will be a far bigger boost to your productivity and happiness than any kind of Jarvis utility, send emails a bit faster type of thing, which seems to be the direction they're going on. I think I'm sure they'll release a great product. I'm sure it'll be, though,

Starting point is 00:24:05 a lot more focused on the prosumer, that kind of angle, people that want their screen recorded, things like that. Personally, if it's on my screen, I'm kind of already keeping track of it. I don't really like have a huge need for that. I'm not going to be sending an email in five years, but I'm probably still going to be having conversations. I think consumers don't want all these integrations, putting weird things on their screen. It feels weird. I also think there's far more sensitive data that is on your screen, such as your signal chats or, you know, my bank information things like that. Bank routing numbers, all that stuff is in there. It's going to be a mess if it gets hacked. Right. Like a huge mess. And then I guess the question.

Starting point is 00:24:39 question is, is it actually storing the recordings or just digitizing them, making knowledge out of them and burning them? That I think is like one of the key things you have to think about. If this does become a thing in the world, if it has the knowledge of it but doesn't have the transcript, I guess that feels like a little bit of a buffer, but yeah, it's, it's a new category. Why a pendant, I'm curious, like I suppose to a clip, watch or other type of wearable. What does the pendant do for you? give you a few reasons, because I prototyped, I prototyped necklaces, clips, pins, ear things, wrist things, everything, right? So, core functions, right?

Starting point is 00:25:17 It needs to be close to your voice and other skills of voices. It needs to not be obstructed. It needs to be intuitive to kind of wear and kind of fit into your stylistic choices throughout the day. The big issue with a pin, you can even see this in Imron, like, Humane's demo. He's wearing a heavyweight shirt. It's still sagging his shirt. Think about this. I'm wearing like a little T-shirt.

Starting point is 00:25:33 I'm putting something like that. I'm going to look like that. It's going to look weird. I tried that. It's weird. I would often forget it on my clothing. I'm always putting on jackets, taking them off. It's going to go right in the watch. That's what happened with everybody with Fitbits. Fitbits used to clip onto your belt. And yeah, they all went through the wash. Clips, I literally did that to myself. I put it in the wash by accident. I was like, fuck.

Starting point is 00:25:52 You know, the big issue with Clips, too, you're always having to think about wear on your body to place it. Virtually every culture on this planet knows how to wear a necklace. Look, I can easily just put it underneath my shirt. You know, if it's raining outside or something like that, it's intuitive to wear. Also, it is a great opportunity for more context sensors in the future. I do plan on adding a camera down the line. And it is facing outwards, right? Which is a great addition. Pendance two, I think, are just sticking out a lot more. I think this will become a status symbol in a way that, like, if you have a product like this, you're taking your life far more seriously. I'm using Tab to build Tab, right? That demo you mentioned, Tab came up with the entire outline

Starting point is 00:26:27 for that. I practiced my pitch with it. I worked on all the context with it. I'm using a product like this to build the future. And I think you'll see other people wearing a product like this, and you'll think the same. That's why I plan to market this also to other founders and people like that initially. It's actually an interesting idea. If you put a camera on it, you probably wouldn't want to go through the expense and complexity of putting a camera on both sides of the pendant. And so, a interesting concept might be if the camera's out, it has like something like a recording light. And if you flip it over, it's off. So then if the cultural phenomenon was, hey, can we tab this if it became a verb and oh hey can we tab this can you mind if i take notes during this

Starting point is 00:27:05 i flip it over and if not you flip it the other way and it has some kind of notification that it's off or it's dormit personally though i really want it to just be you set it and forget it you don't even have to think about this i think this is why a lot of people say oh like you use your phone record conversations i'm i really conversations happen spontaneously you're not thinking about it i'm not going to hold up my phone and press an audio recording app and record everything that way i just want to make your life easier what you having to do is least amount of mental effort as possible. Also, another big thing about wrist things, look, I'm wearing long sleeves. It's just not going to pick up the audio. My hands are in my pockets. They're behind my back.

Starting point is 00:27:38 You're moving them around so much. It just doesn't work. So when will the product be widely available? Yeah. And how are you thinking about your go-to market strategy? Yeah, I mean, I'm hoping to get this into the market. Like, my target is summer. I hope we'll get it they're done. Our hardware is going to be complete December 22nd, at least for like an Apple One version of this. So like, I've got an earlier prototype here, a few others on my desk back here. But The new version is going to be ready to mass produce tens of thousands of people. Again, I've been working on this for about like seven months now. Software-wise, again, like, I have built, I have tried every user experience possible with something like this.

Starting point is 00:28:12 Originally, I made much more of like an auto AI for your life. Here's all your conversations, here's your action items, references, etc. I hate the word like insights and things like that. You know, I wanted to be much more actionable and directly useful. And that's why I'm playing around a lot more of the software being more like this proactive thing and kind of helping you a lot more. great insight because with AI, the tyranny of the chat interfaces, I have to ask a question, I have to form a question. And people are putting some prompts in there to try to get people over that tyranny of it. But it would be really nice if when you took out your app and your interface,

Starting point is 00:28:46 it said, hey, when you talk to Jason, he mentioned these two books. And you're near a grocery store, and I heard your partner asked you to pick up milk. There's one, two blocks away. You know, And just like you're saying, they have context. And, oh, hey, looks like you had a really talkative day. And, you know, your stress and the cadence of your voice became strained at the end of the day. Like, it's actually, there's a lot you can tell people's voices. And there are people who are experts at reading tone of voice. And so the AI is going to know you're stressed out.

Starting point is 00:29:18 It's going to know you're happy. You had a bunch of, hey, you didn't laugh at all today. Imagine that. Like, hey, you haven't laughed in three days. You know, here are three. Can I tell you a joke? Or would you like to watch a funny movie? It's kind of like mind-blowing when you think about it on a psychological or companionship basis.

Starting point is 00:29:33 I'm kind of coming around to your concept here. It's kind of just like your mom or your friend knows when you're slightly off, right? And AI is only that on steroids. There's a few other things I want to hit on there. It's like something I think is far more actionable in a way is maybe a week ago I talked about, oh, I'm going to go on this podcast. I wanted to reference a specific thing. Tab, I'm here in my room, you know, a few minutes before.

Starting point is 00:29:53 I talked to my friend here about to prepare for the podcast. It knows, oh, shit, you know, obvious about it had this podcast again. sends me a text again, proactively reminding me of something I wanted to say. I think there are things like that. Like, the idea of analyzing your communication patterns and skills, too, I think, is a really big one. For example, I had a meeting the other day with like a design firm, and I guess I was too harsh, I felt. I was talking to about it.

Starting point is 00:30:17 I felt like I was mean. And so after I'm talking to it, like, you know, was I mean, things like that? And it was like, yeah, maybe you kind of went off a bit too much on this one thing. And not only that, though, is a thing. It like came up with this thing. Apparently there's a whole concept called the sandwich method where you start with something nice. Then you say your critique and then you say something nice again and gave me specifically how I could have reworded what I talked about to be like that. And you could have it, you know, mentioned that.

Starting point is 00:30:40 And then the next time I have a meeting with them, remind me of that again. Things like this, I think are are far deeper and more what I want to take it to. You're referencing, of course, the ish sandwich, as we say. Whenever you're going to deliver bad news. Yeah. Hey, I know you've been trying really hard and I appreciate that. God, you did a horrible job or your sales numbers are way off. We have to fix them.

Starting point is 00:31:03 And I listened to a couple calls. You didn't do a great job if I'm being candid. But I know you're committed to doing better and we have a training person. See how nice it is? I learned this over years. When I was your age, when I was in my 20s, I was a brutal, insane samurai with everybody. I just cutting arms off and as a lunatic. And you do have to learn over time that fear or being super critical, which when you become

Starting point is 00:31:26 a leader, you know, the challenge of you is everybody comes to you with big problems and everybody comes to you with the problem child. Everybody comes to you with, you know, the bad news, these three people aren't doing a great job. And you have to be the one who focuses on all the problems and your entire day becomes problem, problem, problem, problem. Everybody else works on all the wins and all success. And they bring you all the remnants of the chores they can't get done. And so of course, it sounds like you're being critical. And then also you have to maintain the standards. So you have to be able to say, hey, this interface, this hardware, the fit and finish of this is not good enough. It doesn't hit our standard. And you can even see the language I'm saying, hey, this doesn't

Starting point is 00:32:03 hit our standards. So you kind of learn over time as you grow up and you become a better leader, how to phrase these things for, you know, both making people feel good, but also, you know, lighting a fire, right? And it's a balance. And you get there over time and nobody's, nobody's perfect, I think. And it's also a culture thing. Some companies have a culture of candidness. Other people have a culture of nonsense and microaggressions and everything. Fantastic if most people on this planet happens. And you see how hitting on these things is far more deeper than like a perfect memory recording device type of thing. I think this, this form of utility, I need this. I want other people to have this. I struggle far more with just understanding

Starting point is 00:32:43 like just my deeper purpose, finding these patterns and connections in my life, just having like this kind of thing to talk to. I think you'll see there's a new kind of relationship that will be formed with products like this, which is like radical transparency without the risk of judgment. I think that'll be, it's kind of like going to a priest maybe or like, you know, in the confessions booth. Yeah, you go to your rabbi, you take confidence, psychologist. Right. Okay, you've seen Sunday night demo a ton of AI tools and we've learned that these tools are going to help you do so much more with less. That means more revenue and less overhead. Here's the hard part for a lot of companies. How do you actually integrate your AI into your daily work flow? Well, you got to check

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Starting point is 00:34:10 a comprehensive breakdown of these opportunities, and a technical roadmap to make the solution. a reality. So go check out curatech.com slash twist and get $5,000 off. That's c-U-R-O-T-E-C.com slash twist. C-U-R-O-T-E-C dot com slash twist. I think a big issue with coaches and therapists and all those things out there is it's what you say you do. It's not what you actually do, but something that's there at the source and that is available

Starting point is 00:34:38 24-7 and that you feel super comfortable talking to. I think that'll be a big hit. And I think you can see products like Pi kind of. to start to wedge into this and see that there is, of course, PMF for a product like this. But to build something like Pi, you need context. Tell everybody about Pi. Yeah. Pie is a great, like, simple chatbot.

Starting point is 00:34:56 I think focuses, if you think about an end of like productivity, Jarvis stuff on this end and like companionship stuff that I've been talking about on this end, pie is definitely on that other end completely. You know, you don't really use this to like really learn things or anything like that. You go to it saying, I'm stressed. Here's a thing. You know, if I send a message to Pi being like, I'm stressed, it's going to give me some bullshit answer like, oh, take a deep breath, whatever, whereas something like Tab

Starting point is 00:35:18 can literally, like, it thinks to itself, like, why might obviously be stressed, analyzes holistically my recent conversations, who I am, the projects of my life, the issues I'm having recently, my concerns, et cetera, and can bring up things. Like, you'll never see another companion like Tab that can say things like I noticed or I've seen you doing this, things like that. And hitting on those personalized, like, core instances makes you actually, like, it's real. It feels like you're actually finding awareness of these things in your life. Another thing I wanted to say earlier, too, but other companions, I think you were hitting on something. It's not only that proactive makes it easier and whatnot.

Starting point is 00:35:52 It's just a struggle to write all this context to an AI that'll know everything about you, only what you say to it. It's just too much manual friction. I don't think people realize in their conversations how much you say, oh, I like that, oh, I don't like that. Oh, I'm struggling with this, things like that. That an AI can just passively pick up if it's with you all day every day. A therapist once a week, or even if you went twice a week or three times a week, is going to get your version of the truth, Roshamon style, you know, and you're going to, you know, give three hours. Let's say you were a lunatic, like Howard Stern and going to three hours or four hours of therapy a week, double sessions, whatever. It's still your version of reality, as opposed to actually ground truth. And so, and, you know, we're seeing sentiment analysis and percentage speaking as a, there's a service gong and some other services that, record salespeople's phone calls and then tell them and then you just correlate that with actual sales and you're like they found out it was very interesting the empathetic people who ask

Starting point is 00:36:52 really good questions close the sales so if you want to close sales it turns out in many cases asking really probing questions and listening and being thoughtful and letting the other person speak increases the chances of closing a sale and in fact if you go to this week in startups dot com a company called podcast AI now shows the percentage I talk versus the guests. And so you'll see in a news program, I'm 80%. And then in a, you know, the newsreader might cue stuff up for me. And then in a conversation with you, you can see that I might be, you know, a third of it or half of it, which is really where I should be for my podcast.

Starting point is 00:37:27 Other people's podcast, they might be 20%. Like Lex Freeman asks very short questions. And he just lets people meander. And this, I like to have it be a little more interactive. but it does help to have these tools to give you feedback. And so continued success with this. If people want to learn more, where can they go, Avi? Just follow me on Twitter at AviShift.

Starting point is 00:37:45 Put a link up there. There's no, you know, I haven't focused on building a website or Twitter handles or any of that type of stuff out. We've raised our funding. It's just a team of three of us right now. But, you know, we'll be growing over time. It'll be dope. Right.

Starting point is 00:37:57 Awesome. And, yeah, your full contact on Twitter. You're a full contact Twitter, which is great. Candid. And you're mixing it up out there. So great job. Thank you. And we'll see you all next time on this week in startups.

Starting point is 00:38:11 Bye-bye.

This Week in Startups - Pioneering AI Wearables: Avi Schiffmann and Tab AI | E1868

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