Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Building an AI Chief of Staff: Ambient by Lawrence Coburn

Transcript

Building an AI Chief of Staff: Ambient by Lawrence Coburn · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
All right, if you're on Spotify or YouTube, you can see I'm
0:02
going with the white shirt. And I know it looks like I
0:04
should be bringing you breadsticks, but I like
0:07
breadsticks. So here we are.
0:09
Welcome back to AI for founders. I'm your host, Ryan Estes, and
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today's guest is Silicon Valley legend Lawrence Coburn.
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He's built and exited multiple startups, raised over 90
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million, and now he's tackling something every founder wishes
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they had, an extra set of hands and maybe a second brain.
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Lawrence is CEO and Co founder of Ambient, an AI chief of staff
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designed to give founders and CEOs up to 10 to 15 hours of
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their week back in this conversation, you'll hear how we
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went from leading double Dutch's rocket ship rise to interviewing
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400 chiefs of staff to build ambience model to why he
0:44
believes AI assistance are the next great executive hire.
0:48
If you're a founder, operator or chief of staff obsessed with
0:51
productivity, leadership, and the future of work, this episode
0:55
is your playbook. You'll learn how to scale
0:57
decision quality, not just headcount, and why the CEO
1:00
calendar might just be the most valuable data set in your
1:03
company. Let's get into it.
1:05
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2:15
Lawrence, How are you Sir? Hey, Ryan, how's it going?
2:17
Thanks for having me on. Absolutely.
2:20
It's a it's a pleasure. You're one of my favorite kind
2:23
of founders. And that's somebody who keeps
2:26
coming back to the plot. You know, I know I've done a
2:29
bunch of research on you. I know you've had several exits.
2:33
You've had some, some companies explode.
2:35
You've got the, the, the scars and the receipts to prove it.
2:39
So I'm really excited to, to talk about your entrepreneurial
2:43
journey and I wanted to frame it with your current company,
2:46
ambient. So give us an introduction to
2:49
ambient dot US. Yeah, So Ambien is an AI chief
2:54
of staff. I'm building the AI assistant
2:57
that I've always wanted as a founder to help increase my
3:01
bandwidth. And there's kind of kind of a
3:03
cool founding story. I'll tell you about it.
3:06
So I was the CEO and and founder of a company called Double
3:09
Dutch, which was a it was a rocket ship.
3:12
It was completely out of control.
3:14
We hit product market fit without expecting it.
3:17
Company just went like this. We raised $93 million.
3:20
I, it was, we had offices all over the world.
3:23
We had apartments all over the world.
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I was on a plane every like 2 out of every three days.
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And I would not have survived it without my chief of staff.
3:31
His name was Matt. If my board recommended he, they
3:34
saw me drowning and like, you should hire chief of staff.
3:37
I said, what's that? Turns out this guy who had
3:40
interned with us, he was, he was at HBS, He had been at Bain.
3:44
So like kind of quick on his feet, able to kind of get to
3:47
decisions with incomplete information.
3:50
And so he became my chief of staff and that was such a kind
3:52
of eye opening experience for me.
3:54
Like every founder should have this.
3:56
So in the age of AI, we're trying to build the AI version
3:59
of that. So that's the back story.
4:02
Incredible. OK.
4:02
So let's talk about the roles and responsibilities of a chief
4:06
of staff and then how you're starting to chisel off those
4:09
things to complement it with AI. Yeah, we, we interviewed 400
4:14
chiefs of staff. And like I'm, and I'll say this
4:17
up front, we're not trying to replace the chief of staff.
4:19
Many of our customers are chiefs of staff.
4:22
We're looking at the 4.2 million companies that don't have a
4:25
chief of staff that probably should.
4:27
So we kind of supercharged chief of staff plus CEO or if his CEO
4:31
doesn't have one. And so we, we interviewed 400 of
4:34
them and the role can vary quite a bit.
4:37
Like some chiefs of staff are really just very expensive.
4:41
EAS and other chiefs of staff are true extensions of the CEO.
4:47
And so the, the, the workflows that we identified as being
4:50
repeatable. The first is daily prep.
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So like getting ready to crush the board meeting, the investor
4:59
pitch, the customer escalation, the closing call with a
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customer, the partnership meeting.
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So doing all the things we can control.
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And I remember Matt would like like some of his, the slides
5:11
that he built for fundraising pitches.
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I think we're directly responsible for us to getting
5:15
the round done because he was able to sort of express the
5:19
position of the business in such an eloquent way.
5:22
And so it's that kind of stuff. It's like getting you ready for
5:24
the day. That's the worst.
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The first workflow that we think is already really good at.
5:30
The second one is we call it rhythm of business, but it's
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really like secure note taking for leadership team meetings.
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So when you have your exec staff meeting, it's the most expensive
5:41
time of the week. These are your highest paid
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people getting in the room, sharing all of their insights
5:46
about the state of the business. That stuff needs to get
5:48
recorded, needs to get recorded in a secure way.
5:51
It needs to, we need to know who's doing what.
5:54
We need to be able to follow up to drive execution.
5:56
We need to be able to detect signs of misalignment.
6:00
So imagine like an Otter or Fathom, but purpose built for
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leadership team meetings. And then the third workflow is
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like as I roll into Monday, there's probably only three or
6:11
four things that really matter, like the projects that are make
6:14
or break. I need to know how those
6:17
projects are doing in the sea of other noise.
6:20
So we think there's an opportunity for like red,
6:23
yellow, green detection on the on the make or break initiatives
6:26
in front of every CEO. So those are the three daily
6:29
prep meeting, note taking, but secure and then kind of tracking
6:33
key initiatives. All right, all right, coffee is
6:37
great. But coffee won't prep your
6:39
meetings for you. It'll just keep you awake while
6:41
you panic, hastily scrolling through LinkedIn at 6:59 AM.
6:46
Ambient, however, will prep your meetings.
6:48
Each morning you get a founder tuned briefing sourced overnight
6:52
from your calendar, your meeting history, and the web.
6:55
It's like walking to every call with a CHEAT SHEET that you
6:57
didn't have to write. No more scrambling, no more
7:00
guessing. Just context, confidence, and
7:03
focus. And if you're raising money,
7:05
ambient investor dossiers are an absolute must have.
7:09
You'll know the investor's portfolio, their interests and
7:13
their latest moves before you even step into the room.
7:15
You'll even get a heads up on red flags.
7:18
Think of it as the caffeine upgrade that your calendar
7:20
actually needs. Prep while you sleep, perform
7:24
while you're awake. Sign up for free at ambient dot
7:27
US. Go check it out at ambient dot
7:29
US. That's ambient dot US.
7:32
Well, so many things to go into here.
7:34
I'm curious about the last one. So red, yellow and green.
7:38
How are how are you going to differentiate those kind of
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status levels within kind of burgeoning tasks or or
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responsibilities? Yeah, and we're, we're talking
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about AI agents here, right? So you're, you're, you're
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pointing to the goal. You're, you're writing system
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prompts from the founder perspective like this is make or
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break stuff. If we don't hit this, the the
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repercussions will be significant.
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And I want you, AI agent, to look around the following
8:06
systems. We want you to look at meetings,
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transcripts, We want you to look at Slack, We want you to look at
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inbox. We want you to look at any other
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context that's out there. And we want you to pull together
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your best view of it. Are these things on track or
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not? And so it's as simple as that.
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I think the great promise of this tech is that any little
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startup can do these kinds of things if you earn access to
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this context. And that's the hard part.
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It's like, how do you earn the trust to get access to these
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systems? Because there's, there's
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probably 500 start-ups saying right now, if you just give us
8:42
access to your systems, we'll tell you all this cool stuff.
8:44
And like, we don't think that's good enough.
8:46
We think we you have to earn the right.
8:49
Yeah, and it needs to be contextual.
8:50
You know, I, I think you're right.
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It's like, you know, there's an executive assistant, there's
8:55
chief of staff. I would love to hear your
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opinion on the differentiation there, because the idea of an AI
9:01
chief of staff is, is really interesting because to me feels
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like the chief of staff is doing more generative tasks.
9:08
You know, it's actually putting the deck together.
9:10
It's actually doing a little bit of analysis about the
9:12
information in front of you. You know, I think probably all
9:16
founders can relate and you can go from zero to Elon, you know,
9:21
as far as like the number of tasks.
9:23
But you know, you're at your best if you can kind of commit,
9:26
compartmentalize time and space to be 100% present with where
9:31
you are. Because, you know, I'm sure it
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happens to you. You get on back-to-back.
9:35
So you might have six hours straight of 15 minute calls and
9:37
you're, it's like the, the, the whirlwind of that is it's
9:41
intoxicating, but it's also really hard to be present
9:44
because you don't want to have to feel like I need to prepare
9:47
for this thing in three hours, but like I really need to sit
9:49
with these people right now. So kind of supplementing that
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with AI that can like have all of your notes handy, like
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everything's ready, everything's pulled all the, the contextual
9:59
analysis. Maybe we've got now red, yellow,
10:01
green lights about certain, so certain context with the
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meetings. I think it's really smart.
10:07
So I guess the question would be like, when you're thinking about
10:10
roles, what's the difference between an executive assistant
10:13
and a chief of staff? Yeah.
10:14
Let me start with the commonalities that that I see.
10:17
So and I'm going to add a third. So you've got you've got EA,
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you've got chief of Staff and then you've got AI agent, right.
10:25
These are the three sort of entities that are around the CEO
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trying to extend the bandwidth of the CEO.
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So practically speaking, and I'll start with kind of like EA
10:36
versus chief of staff, the time frames are a tell.
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So EAS are often focused on the day-to-day stuff, the
10:47
calendaring, the inbox, management, scheduling.
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Sometimes it pushes out to weekly like we've got a board
10:55
meeting coming up, we need to prep and then you get to the
10:59
chiefs of staff and it's offer often a slightly longer time
11:03
frame that you're talking about. It's an M&A opportunity.
11:06
It's it could be getting ready for kind of a like a, a BC pitch
11:12
like building a data room like these kinds of things.
11:15
But the similarity between both of those people is that if you
11:19
give them full context, they're going to be better than at their
11:23
job. So if they have inbox access, if
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they have calendar access, if they are in the room where
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decisions are being made, if you give smart people context,
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they're going to make better decisions and they're going to
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execute better. And it's exactly the same with
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the AI agent in the room as well.
11:40
So for AI to function well as an extension of you, it needs to
11:44
get your full context. So I think that's how I think
11:47
about kind of differences between those two roles.
11:49
It tends to be time frame. I have very specific things that
11:53
I ask to find out if I'm dealing with a, a chief of staff or a
11:57
chief of staff in name only. And it's do you run your
12:01
strategic planning process? Well, first of all, do you have
12:03
a strategic planning process? And if so, who runs it?
12:06
And two, are you creating the agenda for the executive staff
12:11
meeting? Those are my 2 tells and someone
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tells me now, but I'm taking the notes or no, it's our head of
12:16
finance or it's somebody else that's doing the strategic
12:19
planning. Like, OK, probably not a true
12:22
chief of staff. Yeah, yeah, that's important
12:25
differentiation because some are operators, which are great, you
12:28
know, maybe managing your inbox, managing your schedule, managing
12:31
your travel. And then there's some folks that
12:33
I've met, chief of staff, that are some of the most brilliant,
12:36
unbelievable people in business that I've ever seen.
12:39
Just that the, the ability to, you know, get shit done honestly
12:43
is incredible. Yeah.
12:44
I. Think that CEO I'm training, but
12:46
I do want to say one more thing about executive assistance.
12:48
I I've met some powerhouses and so I was just at this event.
12:53
It's called EA mafia. It's some of the most formidable
12:57
EAS in the world. I think Michelle Obama's EA like
12:59
that level of people, of people that we're talking about and
13:02
these people they present as public company executives, like
13:07
they, I mean, it's so I definitely don't want a
13:11
pigeonhole. I, I have incredible respect for
13:13
the EA role in general. It's just that the, the, the
13:17
description of responsibility is just a little bit different.
13:20
And like I know from experience, if you had taken away my EA at
13:26
some of the most high stressed moments at at double Dutch it, I
13:30
wouldn't have been able to function.
13:31
So it's mission critical. And I actually think I'm going
13:34
to rant a little bit here as we think about the age of AI, like
13:38
what roles are at risk? I've come out and publicly said
13:41
that I think that senior EA chief of staff will be the last
13:44
women and men standing in the age of AI because they can just
13:47
flex up. If you take away note taking
13:49
from them, they're going to work on something more important.
13:52
And if you take everything away, they're still going to be the
13:55
trusted person in the foxhole with it with it, with the exact.
13:58
So yeah, I think there's. Yeah, you know, and that's kind
14:02
of the the point that I was leading to is that these people
14:05
that are unbelievably talented and skilled and, you know, if if
14:09
part of the portion of their responsibility is getting, you
14:11
know, just the day together, what's the docket?
14:14
You know, that is probably not a good utilization of their skills
14:17
and talents, you know what I mean?
14:18
So this really truly becomes like their their best friend,
14:21
you know, and, and a way that they can provide context and
14:24
things like that. So now, now that's to say for
14:26
the the people that are incredibly skilled that have
14:28
these roles, but honestly, to your point, there's millions of
14:32
founders that don't have either, you know, and so they're just
14:35
winging it. They're showing up to their
14:37
inbox just raw dog in their field or they're they're their
14:42
inbox trying to be like, dude, what's going on today, you know,
14:45
and trying to like decipher everything it both with
14:48
breakfast. And so they really need this
14:50
opportunity to like gather some clarity, like focus and then go.
14:55
Now. It seems like it's a very
14:56
intentional decision that there's not like a a dashboard
15:00
per SE or this or that. Rather it comes to your inbox as
15:04
an e-mail that you can read and digest in a place that you
15:07
already are. Talk us through kind of like the
15:09
UIUX and how you made some of these decisions.
15:12
We think like big picture, we think in the age of generative
15:16
AI that UIUX is like it's going away.
15:19
Like we're not talking about like SAS products here.
15:21
We're talking about intelligence that you can communicate with,
15:25
like you're communicating with a human.
15:27
So we're not all the way there yet, but like I think there's a
15:29
couple things going on. I think historically CE OS don't
15:33
learn new tools like maybe your CEO early stage founders are
15:37
different because CE OS tend to be builders, but you get to
15:40
later stage companies and like maybe your CEO is in their
15:43
inbox, maybe they're in Google Docs, maybe they know how to
15:48
look up something in the CRM. But these are not the people
15:51
that are playing around with the new tools being launched on
15:53
product. So we believe to get to the CEO,
15:56
you have to meet them where they are.
15:59
So this, this daily briefing project that you mentioned,
16:01
product that you mentioned, it's, it's an AI agent that
16:04
connects to your calendar and it looks at all the people on your
16:08
CE OS calendar and it goes out while you sleep and does
16:11
research and pulls together these like briefing dossiers on
16:15
each of the people that your exec is meeting with.
16:18
And that's delivered to the inbox because we can't expect
16:22
ACEO to even log in to a new tool like it has to go to them.
16:27
Yeah, no, I love that. It's, it's factually and
16:31
instinctively correct. You know, if you look at, you
16:34
know, President Trump, he's notorious because if you send
16:37
him an e-mail and it actually gets to him, somebody has
16:39
printed it out and handed it to him.
16:41
He's not doing emails. You know, and I, I always
16:44
thought that I was pretty like, you know, tip of the spear as
16:47
far as new tools go till I moved into my current house and the
16:50
sprinkling system had to have an app And I'm like, man, I just
16:54
want to turn a dial. Like I got to have an app.
16:57
Like I just hoot and hawed, you know, for weeks about it until I
17:02
figured out like, oh wow, it's kind of cool.
17:03
It'll like read the weather report and I fix it for me.
17:06
It's cool technology. But like, I think we're so
17:09
inundated with like apps and two factor authentications and this
17:13
and that, I think it's very smart to start thinking about
17:16
like the UX of the future, which, you know, kind of adheres
17:19
to a couple of rules. It's like, it's like, you don't
17:22
need to slap me over the face with AII just want something to
17:24
work like magic every time I need it and it's right where I
17:27
want it. You know, this whole concept of
17:31
push, not pull like insights finding me as opposed to me
17:35
having to go dig them out of a database.
17:37
I think that's a very interesting dynamic of the, of
17:41
the, of the current generations of, of, of AI applications that
17:44
are getting built. You even see open AI
17:46
experimenting with these things with a product called Pulse.
17:50
How do they get the stuff that they sense is interesting to you
17:52
in front without you having to ask for a search or, or a
17:56
prompt? So that's a whole area because
17:58
the clues are there. The clue that we're locked into
18:02
is the calendar. We think the CEO calendar is a
18:04
lens into what's important to the whole company.
18:07
And so that's that's the sort of surface that we're most excited
18:10
about. Yeah, I mean, the calendar is
18:13
ultimately the gospel truth. Yeah, it is.
18:16
It's where the company's investing the time of their most
18:20
important person 100%. OK, fantastic.
18:25
Walk us from Double Dutch. Now Double Dutch was acquired
18:29
and you had an exit. And then walk us from that
18:32
moment all the way until Ambien. What happened between there and
18:36
here? Yeah.
18:38
So left double. Dutch and that was that's a
18:40
whole journey in itself. It was one of the fastest
18:43
growing companies of its era, you know, raised a ton of money,
18:46
rocket ship market leader, hard times hanging in there, get to
18:51
break even, acquired by our biggest competitors, event
18:54
backed by Vista private equity. And then I basically just got
18:59
together with some of my favorite double Dutchers and
19:01
said let's go work on new stuff. We worked on a remote work
19:07
inspired product called Twine that was about building
19:11
connectivity, almost like event style networking for distributed
19:14
teams. And we noticed that every time
19:17
the pandemic flared up, like business would be great.
19:20
And every time the pandemic sort of subsided, business would go
19:23
down and kind of one day we're like, this is no way to live our
19:26
lives. It's very hard to build a
19:27
business being so dependent on macro.
19:29
And we got into this weird situation where what was best
19:33
for the business was not best for humanity, which is the virus
19:37
like coming back hard. So it was just a weird place to
19:40
be. So we built a cool product.
19:42
We had a bunch of customers. But when the starting gun of
19:46
Chachi BT went off, we we knew like I've been in Silicon Valley
19:50
long enough to know like these waves only come along once in a
19:54
while. And like we knew from the
19:55
beginning this was going to be the big one.
19:56
Like I was there for mobile, I was there for social, I was
19:59
there at the beginning for the Internet, like the Internet
20:02
wave. But this is the big one.
20:04
This is the big one. And on that, I've had several
20:08
people talk about that we are in this like very interesting
20:12
moment where there is all the upside potential you can even
20:15
dream of, but we're kind of delicately walking into a dark
20:19
that we don't know what it is. What's the atmosphere like in
20:22
San Francisco right now? Yeah, it's, it's it's crazy,
20:26
like real estate prices are going like this.
20:29
The, the San Francisco came back very slowly after COVID.
20:33
The neighborhood that I live in, the Mission District has been
20:35
one of the slowest to come back, but man, it's back now.
20:38
You can, you can feel it. My wife and I walked by the
20:42
startup just the other day, like we're not in a super nice part
20:46
of the town. And they had cut a hole in
20:50
there, the ceiling of their, of their office and they had put a
20:53
Redwood tree in there going out through the top.
20:56
And like, you know, part of me is like, why are they spending
20:59
their investor money on a Redwood tree and like putting in
21:02
architectural changes to their office?
21:04
But part of me is like, we are so back.
21:07
So it's that kind of energy. There's giant amounts getting
21:10
done. There was a house listed for 1.8
21:13
million. They just got sold for 3.2
21:15
million like within two weeks. And so we haven't seen those
21:19
days in a while here. It's been pretty bleak in SF
21:23
Everybody who moved back, who moved to Miami has all come
21:25
back. Anybody working on AI is just
21:28
flocking here right now. So it's, it's, it's exciting,
21:31
man. Like This is why I moved out
21:33
here to begin with. So it's like these waves are,
21:35
they're special and they're out of control.
21:38
And and this one, I think the one that's the thing that's
21:40
crazy with this wave is the accessibility of the software.
21:45
The software doesn't feel like software like everybody we know
21:48
in the world is probably using ChatGPT every single day.
21:52
There are 800 million users already.
21:54
So the accessibility is crazy. But the production side of this,
21:59
which is anybody can now build apps using English as a
22:03
programming language. This is the true sort of like,
22:07
moment that, you know, ever since Yahoo Pipes, I was been
22:10
waiting for this moment that anybody could build the apps on
22:12
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22:15
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22:18
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22:23
I think everyone is going to be using software throughout all
22:26
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22:29
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22:31
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22:33
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Trust me, your existing network is worth way more than you
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think. So fun, though I share that
24:39
enthusiasm. I think the listeners of this
24:40
podcast do too. Like there was, you know, until,
24:45
until, you know, chat showed or open AI showed that chat is
24:49
going to be a blockbuster product to launch AI to like all
24:53
these new applications for that is like iPhone 27 and we got
24:59
Facebook buying WhatsApp. It's just it was it was kind of
25:02
stagnant, you know, and it was like tech kind of got a little
25:04
bit slow, but now you just see like, boy is it on.
25:08
It's so interesting in Denver. There's like, I think the
25:11
world's first AI vibe coding Co workspace exists now, you know,
25:17
we meet every a couple of weeks on a Wednesday and it, it has
25:20
this just incredible energy of like senior developers and, you
25:24
know, venture backed startup founders with new designers and
25:27
musicians. Like it's like, it feels like a
25:30
cultural phenomenon where everyone's like, how do we find
25:34
or suss out the edges of what's capable here?
25:36
Because nobody really knows, you know?
25:39
And it's still really enough to hit anybody with the anybody
25:44
with the persistence can dive in.
25:46
All of the knowledge is out there.
25:49
And it's we're still early enough in the wave that you can
25:53
be, you can be the most knowledgeable person at your
25:55
company, in your town, in your village, in your country just by
26:00
leaning into this. And those are those are the fun
26:01
times. Everything gets kind of turned
26:03
upside down. So is that what brought you
26:06
back? So, you know, from what I could
26:07
see, you know, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Double Dutch is
26:10
acquired for about $13 million, which is enough money to retire
26:14
to Idaho, write a novel and raise cattle.
26:18
You know what I'm saying? You could get a a nice, nice
26:20
cowboy hat and some boots, you know.
26:23
So is it is it the excitement of the game that brought you back
26:26
for another project? I just don't know what else I
26:30
would be doing. I mean, I know you have a
26:31
community of founders around you.
26:33
Like we don't really, we're not really qualified to do other
26:36
stuff. Like I haven't had AI mean I've
26:38
had a few bosses growing up, but like, I haven't had a boss in a
26:40
long, long time. So yeah, I just don't know what
26:44
else I'd be doing. It's just fun to work with
26:45
really smart people on new exciting canvases and
26:50
opportunities in ways like the one that we're in.
26:52
So yeah, it keeps young man. Well, and I, I truly relate to
26:57
like creating products for founders, you know, I can't help
27:00
myself, you know, that's, those are the people that I relate to,
27:03
the people that I understand, the people that I want to serve,
27:06
you know, and, and what I love kind of about the founder
27:08
community, when it works, right, there's always a hand helping
27:11
you when you need to come up and you always have a hand down
27:13
helping the next person up, you know, so you're looking to.
27:19
Yeah, I think you ask any founder, everybody has that
27:22
person that bet on you early before anybody knew who you were
27:26
and then do you want to pay that back?
27:28
It's just that, and I don't think that's geographic
27:30
specific. I think that's, I think that's
27:32
founder specific. I've heard that from European
27:34
founders. I've heard that from Austin
27:36
founders that there's a there's a founder code and I hope that
27:39
never goes away. Yeah, You know where I see it
27:42
the most prevalent in beer culture, you know, there's like
27:46
a hierarchy of distribution for like micro brews and they all
27:50
help each other out. I, I had little glimpses into
27:52
that have buddies that have had breweries and it's like it's the
27:56
most communal cool kind of culture.
27:58
I I think in business, you know, and that's, you know, tech,
28:02
yeah, tech gets like kind of a bad name sometimes for being a
28:05
little cutthroat, you know, particularly from the, the, our
28:08
forebears in the 80s and 90s. But from what I've seen, it's
28:12
like there's always this warmth and, and like excitement of idea
28:17
exchange because, you know, it's like it, it always comes down to
28:20
execution in the end. So it's like, how much
28:23
competition do I have? Well, you have to beat me.
28:25
And so I like that kind of comp competitive, but it's also a
28:27
collaborative spirit. Yeah.
28:30
And even let me comment on that because I think that's an
28:32
important point. I think nothing drives me
28:36
crazier than two tiny little startups that nobody has ever
28:40
heard of competing with each other, trying to kill each other
28:43
because like you're missing the plot.
28:46
The the plot is no one knows who either of these companies are.
28:50
You should collaborate where you can.
28:52
There's plenty of market share available for everyone.
28:55
And I think that's like, I think first time founders sometime
28:59
make that mistake where you realize that there's a whole, it
29:03
takes a while to realize that you're not really competing with
29:05
that other tiny little startup. You're competing with apathy,
29:09
the apathy of the world. Oh, I love that.
29:13
You know, I, when I was teenager, I worked at Guitar
29:17
Center dream job, you know what I mean?
29:18
And I remember I had this great sales manager and he was like,
29:22
he's like, you know, the, the you're not competing with
29:26
another guitar store, you're competing with a vacation or a
29:30
stereo, you know what I mean? It's like it's, and I see that a
29:35
lot in business. It's like like you got to zoom
29:38
out a little bit. Anyway, where you're zooming is
29:41
to give founders back 10 to 15 hours per week.
29:45
Now if we look into the future a little bit about ambient, maybe
29:48
you can talk a little bit about your product road map and where
29:50
you're headed. But how many hours do you think
29:53
you can get back to CE OS when if this is all fully fleshed
29:56
out? No, it's the right question.
30:00
So I, I think right now the ceiling that I can see is a
30:04
truly talented human chief of staff.
30:08
What sort of throughput capacity did that give me?
30:12
And I have experience with that. And I think Matt at the top of
30:18
his game was probably giving me another 80%.
30:22
So not quite doubling me. There's probably some things
30:25
that the old Gray hair CEO knows that just instinctually.
30:29
And there's like kind of relationships that you've built
30:32
over time that can't easily be replicated, even if the person
30:35
is smarter than you. So I, I think, I think if we can
30:39
get you to 1.8 throughput, I think that's pretty good.
30:44
I, I think the ceiling should be a lot higher for engineers
30:46
because it's just a different, different workflows.
30:49
It's more repeatable. Like I'm already hearing from
30:51
our CTO that he's, he's at 5X using cursor.
30:56
So yeah, but I, but I think for an AI chief of staff, I think if
30:59
you can get to 1.8, I think that's a that that's the goal.
31:04
Love that, I love that. And you know, I, I think about
31:08
this a lot, you know, because when you get time back, it's not
31:14
really what happens for founders, is it?
31:17
If you're, if you're 5X in your output, that doesn't mean you're
31:20
doing 1/5 of the work. Rather, it means you're stacking
31:23
yourself with more and more capacity.
31:26
Because ultimately what we want to do is like, if I'm going to
31:28
give you 10 hours a day, boy, I want to be firing on all
31:31
cylinders for all 10 hours and have greater output.
31:35
Not necessarily less work, you know, so which which also kind
31:40
of presents a question of like, how much is enough?
31:43
How much is too much? What do you do to recover?
31:46
So like for you, you work at a very high level, like how do you
31:49
kind of balance, you know, the, the, the desire and the ambition
31:53
with the actual human need to like rest and recover.
31:57
I'm going to add one thing to that 1.8 discussion that we just
32:00
had. I think CE OS are a little bit
32:04
different in that it's not just about throughput, like how much
32:07
stuff can I crank out myself? It's about the quality.
32:11
So you know, we're talking about throughput, we're talking about
32:14
velocity, all those things are kind of related to time back.
32:18
But quality of decisions like can you make better decisions
32:22
because you understand the myriad of options better?
32:27
Because AI has done a good job of pulling together all the
32:31
relevant contacts and and and game playing out.
32:34
What happens if you choose door A versus door B versus door C?
32:39
My ex chief of staff used to say things like this feels
32:42
directionally correct. Like it feels like we have
32:45
enough information to make a reasonable decision.
32:48
Well, I think in the age of AI, our standards should be higher
32:51
than directionally correct. I think there's a good
32:54
opportunity to pull together all of the relevant context and get
32:58
to what a chief of staff would call a high quality decision.
33:01
So I think there's time back and there's like quality of
33:04
execution. But anyway, let's let's talk
33:06
about recovery. Like I, you know, I know what I
33:09
need to bounce back and feel strong.
33:11
I need to exercise just about every day.
33:14
I need to get at least 6 1/2 hours of sleep.
33:17
I need to spend time with my wife and daughter.
33:19
And that's pretty much it for me right now.
33:21
Like if I if I get my exercise in and I'm spending time with my
33:24
family and, and I get a little bit of sleep, I'm, I'm good to
33:28
go. Yeah, that's big.
33:30
I saw that in your bio. It says Dad, an entrepreneur.
33:33
Why is it important that you identify as that?
33:36
Yeah, I, I don't know. I, I think, yeah, I, it's just
33:41
like when you have your kid, like that's the thing that
33:43
matters the most. So I think that's just, we
33:47
talked about AI as the big wave. Like I, I remember a friend of
33:50
mine, we're my wife and I were debating whether to have kids,
33:54
right? Because we are very happy with
33:56
our lives. We're both entrepreneurs.
33:57
And one of my friends from high school said to me, it's like if
34:02
you're at the amusement park, having the kid is the big roller
34:05
coaster. That's, that's the one, that's
34:07
the ride that you can't miss. And it kind of stuck with me.
34:11
It wasn't the only reason we decided to have a kid, but you
34:14
know, it stuck with me. So it's the big ride in the
34:16
road, big ride the amusement park.
34:19
Yeah, it's important to talk about because I, I think we're
34:21
coming out of kind of like a a time where people are
34:24
apprehensive, people aren't thinking about kids.
34:26
So I I like to like talk about the positive attributes of half
34:28
and children. How old's your daughter?
34:30
She's 15. 15 OK cool my my daughter is 18 and we just
34:36
dropped her off for a freshman year of college and it's brutal
34:39
man I, I was not expecting like to have this kind of like
34:45
reflection and just I, I mean I'm so excited for her I talk to
34:49
her all the time it's great she's wonderful I'm sure she's
34:51
listening to this shout out, but also God man, it really hurts
34:54
you know I miss her so much I'm. Dreading it, I I'm it's a slow,
34:58
it's a slow motion train crash that I'm dreading, yeah.
35:03
Yeah, dude, you got to get, you got to make sure she stays
35:05
locally. You know, I was like, I had she,
35:08
she was all accepted. Was going to Leeds in Boulder.
35:10
I was like, oh sweetheart, it's going to be awesome.
35:12
You know, you're just right over there.
35:13
I can come up, get a sandwich, whatever.
35:15
But now they, they pulled her away from me.
35:19
But yeah, it's, it's wonderful, you know, and it's often times I
35:22
think like it's not to be overstated how important family
35:26
is, particularly for business, which probably comes back to
35:28
that idea of quality versus quantity time.
35:32
You know, for me, I, I, I'm the same way.
35:35
You know, people have diagnosed me with various letters and I'm
35:39
like, dude, I know I just have extra energy.
35:42
I have to sweat every single day.
35:44
Ideally I want to do that in the morning, you know, But then I
35:47
also like perform really well when I have a moment to walk,
35:52
you know, I like a three mile walk, you know, to they say
35:55
clear your head or whatever. But ultimately I feel like the
35:58
quality of kind of decisions I'm going to make is just influenced
36:01
by the rhythm of that, that pattern, you know, So if I'm
36:05
thinking about like, I'm going to 1.88 X my output with, with a
36:10
tool or I'm taking another tool of 5X, really what I want to do
36:14
is create the, the ritual of those moments.
36:18
Because to your point, if you're a founder, you're CEO, you're on
36:21
top of that org chart. Like the quality of those
36:24
decisions, especially when you're like in freak scale mode
36:28
needs to be on point, you know, because you might have like 4 or
36:31
five like critical decisions you're making every single day.
36:34
A friend of mine used to say, like ACEO makes hundreds of
36:37
decisions over the course of a month and one or two of them
36:41
could kill you. And that the problem is you
36:44
don't know which ones those are. So you have to do your best to
36:48
make chiefs of staff have this, have this expression, a high
36:51
quality decision where it might not be the right decision, but
36:54
it's high quality because you properly gathered the
36:57
information and weighed both sides.
36:59
So because you don't know which decision is going to kill you,
37:02
you have to do your best to make good decisions.
37:05
Always 100. Percent now I also love this
37:08
story of validating ambient dot US, which is you talked to 400
37:15
chiefs of staff. It's incredible like that is the
37:19
kind of information that you hope will overcome any bias you
37:23
had. What were some some unexpected
37:26
things you learned during the the course of that validation?
37:29
You know, one of the most interesting parts of the role,
37:31
and I probably knew this, but it's it's incredibly low ego.
37:38
I remember I met the chief of staff at, I want to say
37:42
Walgreens for a giant division of Walgreens whose role prior to
37:49
that was running a $10 billion organization and then a general
37:54
manager from another division, Walgreens.
37:57
Like I need this guy as my chief of staff.
37:59
So the scale, like the scale of like I know chiefs of staff at
38:04
public companies that seem like public company CE OS themselves.
38:07
So that the talent level we're talking about for chief of staff
38:11
is like to the moon, but it's also a very low ego role.
38:15
And, and I'll give you something this Walgreens guy said to me.
38:19
He's like one of the hardest transitions is like, you will
38:22
not see my name in the in the press release anymore.
38:25
Like my success is tied to the success of my principal, the
38:30
exec and to the company and that's it.
38:33
And I think this is one of the purest things about the chief of
38:36
staff roles. They don't have budget, they
38:39
don't have headcount. So if the chief of staff is
38:42
telling you, the CEO, the the founder something you can trust
38:46
them. They are not lobbying for
38:48
anything. Their only success is your
38:50
success. Their only success is the
38:52
company's success. And that makes for a real, it
38:54
takes a special kind of person to kind of check ego at the
38:58
door, not have their name in the press release because we're
39:01
talking about very talented people.
39:02
So that was the most surprising. You think about these sort of
39:05
high profile folks that are in the room where it happens, but
39:08
they the best ones are tremendously like low ego.
39:12
Yeah, I love that. And they're they are truly the
39:15
just the right hand. It reminds me of you familiar
39:18
with that Coen Brothers movie, Miller's Crossing.
39:21
Yeah. You know, Tommy, he's the guy.
39:25
He's the guy who's in the guy's ear, you know?
39:27
Yeah, I also like. Game of Thrones like Hand of the
39:30
King like is another one the. Hand of the King?
39:32
Sure, yeah. Although that's kind of a
39:35
treacherous role. Yes, it is.
39:38
Yeah. Amazing, but but also, you know,
39:40
there's a lot of, you know, potential competition if you
39:44
think about no takers, if you think about this, but nobody, I
39:47
I've never seen someone going specifically for this role,
39:51
which really sets it apart, right.
39:53
Is that kind of the Moat you sought to build was like, you
39:56
know, we, we don't want to be, you know, the, you know, the I
40:00
think you said like fathom for some other thing.
40:03
We're not trying to try and be this really, we want to be this
40:06
particular role. And I also further like how you
40:08
kind of specify too for people that are raising.
40:11
You know, I'd say at least 1/3 of this audience is venture
40:14
backed or in some kind of raising process where, you know,
40:18
being prepared. It is the difference, you know,
40:21
do you stutter in that in, in your, your presentation, do you
40:25
know a certain anecdote about your audience?
40:27
This can be the difference between the deal getting done,
40:30
you know. So was that specific as you kind
40:32
of designed this? Yeah, there's a lot there.
40:35
So yes, building for a very specific ICP, there are no modes
40:40
in the age of generative AI, there just are no modes.
40:43
Everybody has access to the same, the same tech.
40:46
So the only way to find protection in my mind is to go
40:50
narrow, narrow, narrow on an ICP.
40:51
And we want the ICP that I know the best, which is the founder.
40:56
This, this concept of fundraising mode.
40:58
So we, we built this thing for the folks listening, we built
41:00
this thing called fundraising mode within our briefing
41:03
product. And the way the way it works is
41:05
we have a, we call it a qualifier, an AI agent that's a
41:09
qualifier. And it looks at a calendar event
41:12
on your calendar and it decides what kind of meeting is this?
41:16
Is it a recruiting meeting? Is it a customer call?
41:20
Is it a customer escalation or is it a fundraising call?
41:23
If it's a fundraising call, we give it very special treatment.
41:28
And what I mean by that is the dossier that we generate, if we
41:31
see a VC on your calendar, it's going to follow a specific
41:35
pattern. It's going to start with things
41:38
in common because if you have 30 minutes to pitch an investor,
41:42
you'd better make a personal connection with that person.
41:44
You've got about 180 seconds at the beginning of the call to
41:47
make that personal connection. And I'll give you a funny
41:50
example. Just from today, we had a call
41:52
with a investor and I'm reading through the ambient dossier on
41:56
this investor and the first thing that said about him for
41:58
Ice Breakers is like this guy is an American, was an America's
42:02
Cup sailor, which is a big deal. It's like the big leagues of
42:05
sailing. So I see this, one of my Co
42:08
founders is a competitive sailor.
42:09
I'm like Taylor's got to be on this call.
42:11
Like we like this is a chance to make a connection with this guy.
42:14
So that's just one small example.
42:16
The fundraising mode also goes into similar investments.
42:20
Any red flags, any lawsuits, any founder squabbles publicly
42:25
stated, any public theses, any people you know in common?
42:31
So we try and do everything we can to control the things that
42:34
you can control, which is the prep work.
42:39
It's amazing. A buddy of mine kind of vibe
42:41
coded a tool for calendars that basically just takes your Google
42:46
Calendar and allows you to pull all the emails out from your
42:49
calendar. And I was like, wow, it was the
42:50
first time I'd really thought about calendar, you know, but I,
42:53
I can see that ambient, you know, if I have, if I'm getting
42:58
my dossier about my calls tomorrow, you know, let's say
43:02
I'm in, you know, series B or whatever, it's like, well, I
43:05
probably have 5 or 6 years worth of these investor meetings that
43:10
I can go back and pull from. And especially if you could use
43:14
a tool, you could use your AI chief of staff to give you tips
43:19
of like who might be like really interested now, depending on
43:22
like the how the conversation went.
43:23
Then, you know, this idea that we're creating kind of a second
43:27
memory that is fully searchable. You know, it's happening in real
43:32
time. You know, we're we're gaining
43:33
all these powers that like focusing on the founder
43:38
calendar, I think is absolutely brilliant.
43:40
I think it's unbelievable. I love that.
43:42
Calendar to CRM to personal CRM jump because the relationships
43:46
that matter are on your calendar.
43:49
And you can imagine reminder pings like, oh, you haven't
43:51
talked to Ryan in about 6 months.
43:53
Probably should give him it like all that kind of stuff.
43:55
Or like I need to find a designer or an engineer.
43:58
Like, I need to raise money like Series B, and I'm looking for
44:01
this thesis. Like all that stuff is hidden
44:04
probably in your calendar, yeah. All the way and it could say,
44:08
you know, hey, you met with Ryan six months ago.
44:10
It looks like one of his companies, his portfolio has
44:13
sold. That might be a good time to see
44:15
if he's interested in a new project.
44:17
You know what I mean? Like all of these insights just
44:20
happening automatically in the background that you don't have
44:23
to worry about because you're just getting an e-mail on the
44:25
morning to be like, hey, maybe you should check in on this.
44:28
Because I mean, folks are probably like me where, you
44:30
know, I got 12 different like HubSpot meeting links, you know,
44:35
1 investor meeting, one sales meeting, one podcast meeting,
44:38
all that stuff. You know, it's just, there's
44:40
such a, an incredible wealth of information because you know,
44:44
we've all trained ourselves that like the calendars, the gospel,
44:48
and if it's not on the calendar, it's not happening.
44:51
You know that that's the notes. You know it's all in the
44:54
calendar. Yeah, I think that's right.
44:58
Couple of questions about kind of the business model, economics
45:02
of ambient in general. So I know you guys just had a
45:07
gigantic launch on Product Hunt. Congratulations on that.
45:10
How have you financed ambient and how big's the team?
45:13
Yeah. The team is 3 so small team.
45:18
We financed it through professional investors.
45:21
So our most recent raise, we just raised 1.5 million led by
45:27
Co founder of Superhuman Hustle Fund, Coelius Capital, a bunch
45:32
of other great investors who we've got a great team around
45:34
the table and we're looking to get to escape velocity.
45:38
So like it's AI mean the in in in the olden days, like triple,
45:42
triple, double, double, double used to be the way to go, but
45:45
now that's not fast enough. So like you got to get you got
45:48
to get going fast. So everything is on that.
45:50
Like how do we reduce friction? Get the daily Briefing in
45:53
people's hands as a gateway into all the other analysis that
45:57
Ambient AI Chief of Staff can do.
46:00
You bet would Superhuman be like?
46:03
Would it being acquired by Superhuman?
46:05
Is that like an ideal kind of outcome?
46:07
Are you looking to then maybe perhaps acquire customers
46:10
yourself? What?
46:10
How do you see kind of like the future for Ambien?
46:14
You know, I feel like my, my last one was a near miss and
46:18
like a we've still got the competitive juices flowing.
46:21
So we want to we want to build something great.
46:23
We want to work with great people.
46:24
We want to work with great customers who want to work with
46:26
great investors and we want to build a company for the ages.
46:30
And like, if you're not setting your sights on that, like, what
46:32
are we even doing, right? Yeah, 100%.
46:36
I love it. I'll mention this.
46:38
I want to talk about how you decided on pricing and it's what
46:42
it's October 8th and I'm going to publish this the next couple
46:45
days. So I don't mind saying it, but
46:46
it looks like, you know, the, the price through October 30th
46:49
is 50% off at 50 bucks a month. How did you kind of what are you
46:53
thinking about pricing? How do you start to figure out
46:56
like what's the right spot per seat or I know a lot with AI is
47:01
kind of expend experimenting with kind of outcome type
47:05
pricing. How do you approach it?
47:07
Yeah, pricing is like, for me historically has been one of the
47:11
hardest domains to understand. You always feel like you're
47:15
doing it wrong. You always feel like you're
47:17
doing it wrong. And I think the big trends in AI
47:22
forward pricing or like pricing for outcome.
47:24
So trying to get away for this price per license because it
47:27
caps your caps, your Tam and and get to outcome.
47:31
It's a little bit harder when you're talking about kind of a
47:34
chief of staff persona because the chief of staff's just not
47:38
cranking out widgets like like they do a lot of different
47:41
things. So it's it's harder to get to
47:42
outcome based pricing. The other trend is to have some
47:46
usage based component in your pricing.
47:48
So if you're running 100 dossiers a day, should you
47:51
really be paying the same as if you're running two dossiers a
47:54
day? Probably not.
47:56
But I worry a lot about introducing complexity and the
48:00
pricing. So making people like, OK, if
48:02
I'm paying for X, you know, amount of storage, like what
48:06
does that even mean? How does that translate into my
48:09
day-to-day? So at this stage company, my
48:12
instincts are to try and keep it really simple and to do the
48:15
optimization later. Like right now, it's not about
48:18
squeezing the most profit margin out of every customer.
48:22
It's about getting something the world wants and getting it to go
48:24
like this. So that's how we're thinking
48:26
about pricing. I love it.
48:28
Yeah, the usage type it like bakes anxiety into your thing.
48:32
You know, I'm a big, I have too many like vibe coding
48:35
subscriptions, but I love lovable.
48:37
But you're like always like, oh, I only have 17 more credits and
48:40
I don't really know how those credits are distributed.
48:43
Yeah, You know, I don't know if I like that.
48:46
It seems like it's fair, but you know, I don't know.
48:49
Engineers like it. I don't know about.
48:51
Yeah, I don't know about business people, if they've
48:53
gotten their heads around it yet.
48:56
Yeah, I, you know, open AI had a kind of cool.
48:58
I was just playing around with their agent kit stuff and like,
49:02
they allow you to put caps in there.
49:04
I thought it was actually pretty well done.
49:07
So because that's the fear, right?
49:08
Like you're going to accidentally use the product too
49:10
much and then suddenly owe like $13,000 at the end of the month.
49:14
But yeah, I we're watching carefully because we know we're
49:18
not doing it right. Yeah, interesting.
49:21
Cool, but we got a couple of minutes left here.
49:24
You mind if we go to the lightning round?
49:25
Are you ready for that? Sure, right?
49:29
If your mission, if your only mission, was to earn 1,000,000
49:32
bucks in annual recurring revenue aside from ambient, what
49:36
business would you create? Recurring.
49:39
So if you, I think if I wanted to get rich right now, it would
49:44
be about AI transformation for big companies.
49:48
I think it would be helping companies reinvent themselves
49:51
for the for the age of AII know people doing this and there's an
49:54
incredible thirst for those services.
49:57
So I think that's the fastest way to get rich right now.
50:00
Love it. Let's Speaking of rich, I know
50:03
you love the game, but is there a dollar amount that would
50:07
retire you to Idaho and I don't know why it's Idaho on a cattle
50:10
ranch. For some reason I just I'm
50:11
seeing cattle in your future or do you think you're a life for
50:15
you in this forever? For me, it's about chapters of
50:19
history. So let's get back to the
50:21
daughters, right? Like my, my daughter's in 9th
50:23
grade. I think she's going to one day
50:26
she'll graduate from high school four years from now, presumably.
50:29
And I think that's the moment that a chapter shift might make
50:33
sense for my wife and I. So, you know, what does that
50:37
mean? I can see a day where the, the
50:40
pressure on the grind is like, maybe not what I I want that day
50:45
is not now. And I think that side hustles
50:48
have always been interesting and exciting for me.
50:51
So there's a, there's probably a, a fall back plan to, to get
50:55
out of SF and go somewhere else for a little while.
50:59
But yeah, but I, I don't think about the, it's not about the
51:02
number. It's about, it's about chapters
51:05
and like what's right for the family at any given point in
51:08
time. Yeah, well, you know, if she, if
51:13
she decides to go to see you, Boulder, you know, it'd be weird
51:16
if you moved out there while she's in college.
51:18
But I'm just saying you could come stay with me.
51:20
Amazing. Visit her any problem you want.
51:23
Like, yeah, sweetheart, I'm here to see Ryan.
51:24
It's all. Yeah, no, I, we might.
51:28
We talked about moving closer to wherever she goes.
51:30
Like we we look in a UCSB Santa Barbara, nice place.
51:34
It's got some boulder to do it. And I like, oh, I could live
51:37
here. 100% cool. Speaking of college, if you're
51:41
entering college today, knowing what you know now as a college
51:45
freshman, what would you study? Oh my gosh, I think that's an
51:48
impossible question. I, I don't know this whole like
51:51
what does education mean in the age of AII know there's a
51:54
school. If you were to the school Alpha,
51:56
they're out of Austin and it's like AI LED education.
52:01
And I'll give you the my, my pitch is going to be terrible
52:03
for them. I know one of our investors just
52:05
pulled these three kids out of their very fancy school and put
52:08
them in alpha after doing summer camp with them in Austin.
52:11
They just opened up Alpha just opened up in SF 2, but it's like
52:15
AI LED education. Two hours of AI teachers with
52:19
human guides to make sure they're connecting with the
52:22
students. And then the core education is
52:24
like 5 human skills, like 1 is like leadership, one is public
52:29
speaking, 1 is like financial fluency.
52:34
And so they're, they're trying to bring the education to the
52:36
human, the very human skills and using like consistent AI based
52:42
educators for the for the, for the building blocks.
52:46
So I mean, everything is in play right now, but I so as, as we
52:50
think about like what, what to teach our daughter and like,
52:54
what do you even study? Like what my wife's an engineer.
52:57
Like should it doesn't even make sense to, to study engineering
53:00
anymore. I would argue yes, just in terms
53:03
of being taught how to think about problems.
53:06
But I, I think the, the only instinct that I have is
53:09
communicating clearly. Communicating context clearly is
53:14
going to matter. So English major, this is the
53:17
rise of the English majors. That's what I think.
53:20
OK, it's so cool. Yeah.
53:22
You know, there's very little data to support, you know, the
53:27
the need for technical education for improving.
53:30
So like if you're talking about mathematics, you're talking
53:32
about science, you talk about raw brain compute.
53:35
The only thing that there are studies to show that helps that
53:38
is one-on-one instruction, you know, and you just can't do that
53:42
at scale. So with AI, you can not only
53:46
that, but you're the teacher doesn't get frustrated with you.
53:49
You know, I remember Miss Lettingham shout out Miss
53:51
Lettingham in 10th grade. And I was like, Miss Lettingham,
53:55
I don't, I can't understand these Spanish questions.
53:57
I just can't do it. And she's like, Ryan, maybe
53:59
you're just too stupid to know how to speak Spanish.
54:02
And I was like, Dang, that was mean.
54:05
You know, AI is never going to give you that kind of feedback.
54:07
Now, of course, we were also gambling pesos in the corner for
54:10
extra credit dollars, you know what I'm saying?
54:11
But so it's I don't blame her. But like with AI, the
54:15
opportunity for education is personalized instruction.
54:18
I'm going to check out this thing because if it's two hours
54:20
of hyper personalized instruction, right where the
54:23
kids at with AI and then you can use the teachers for, you know,
54:26
the humanities. It sounds wonderful.
54:28
You know, then you can reintroduce the arts back into
54:30
school in some kind of way. So yeah, I agree.
54:33
It's really hard to understand right now with with our kiddos
54:36
because they're kind of in there this transition period where
54:40
they're still going to college. But the reason people used to go
54:43
to college is because that's where the books were.
54:46
Like, you had to go to the library where the books were to
54:49
find it, you know? So now they're trying to
54:51
redefine it. So it's really interesting.
54:53
Lawrence, this has been an awesome conversation.
54:55
I really appreciate it. Awesome, Ryan.
54:57
Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it 100%.
55:00
Couple of things before we get out of here, we're talking about
55:03
our daughters. I know you're really passionate
55:05
about girls sports, so I want to give a shout out to
55:07
girlsontherun.org and I believe I'm looking at the one girls on
55:13
the run rockies.org, which I think is a Colorado era.
55:16
They help promote girls sports. I want to give them a shout out.
55:21
I want to give ambient dot USA shout out.
55:24
I want everybody to go check that out and an experiment, you
55:27
know, see how an AI chief of staff is going to benefit your
55:31
week. You don't get 1010 hours back.
55:33
Go on a walk, go sweat, go work out, go do yoga, go do jiu jitsu
55:37
work. Out more work.
55:38
Go work on more stuff, yeah? Go start another side project.
55:42
We know what you guys are going to do.
55:44
Lawrence, for you personally online, where can people find
55:48
you? What's the best place for them
55:49
to connect with you? Personally, yeah, LinkedIn or
55:50
Twitter, just Lawrence Coburn on both of them.
55:53
You'll you'll be able to find me.
55:56
Thanks so much, Lawrence. Awesome.
55:58
Thanks, Ryan. See you.
56:02
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