Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / World’s Smartest Podcast App

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World’s Smartest Podcast App · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Welcome to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:02
Today's episode starts with a simple question.
0:04
What happens when the world's smartest podcast app is built in
0:08
a country obsessed with precision, craftsmanship and
0:11
self responsibility, and then shipped to founders who
0:14
desperately need to learn faster?
0:16
Because here's the tension. Podcasts have become the biggest
0:19
knowledge library on earth, yet most people forget everything
0:22
they hear. Our guest today, Kevin Smith,
0:25
founder of Snipped, decided that was unacceptable, so he built
0:29
the world's greatest AI powered podcast app from Zurich, one of
0:33
the top AI hubs on the planet surrounded by Google, Apple,
0:38
Meta, Open AI and ETH talent. In this conversation, Kevin
0:42
breaks down why Zurich gives founders an unfair talent
0:45
advantage, why 74% of podcast listeners use podcasts to learn
0:50
how to build an AI native product, not an AI add on in the
0:54
future of audio chat with episodes discoverability and AI
0:58
driven learning loop. If you're a founder who listens
1:01
to learn, builds with AI, or wants to extract every hidden
1:04
insight from every episode you hear, this episode is absolutely
1:08
for you. And if this episode electrifies
1:11
your brain like it did mine, go join the 27,000 founders reading
1:15
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1:20
Subscribe to the newsletter and your future self.
1:22
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1:24
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1:37
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That's Kickcaster by MO Burst. All right, Kevin, welcome to the
2:55
show. Thanks so much for coming on.
2:57
Thanks. Thanks for having me, Ryan.
2:59
Absolutely. My pleasure.
3:01
Today we're talking to Kevin. He is the founder of the world's
3:05
greatest podcast app named Snipped.
3:08
I absolutely love it. And I want to talk all about
3:10
podcasts and the app and all that.
3:12
But first I'm very interested because you guys are based in
3:15
Switzerland, Zurich to be precise.
3:18
And it, this is one of the few places outside of Colorado that
3:21
I actually have been to. So do you think there's a
3:24
competitive or unfair advantage you have headquartering a
3:29
company in Zurich, Switzerland? Actually, I do, yes.
3:33
So I mean, Zurich is very interesting outside of the USI
3:36
would say Zurich is one of the top AI centers of the world.
3:40
It's all thanks to the university there, ETH, which you
3:44
know it, it's famous for. Albert Einstein once studied
3:48
there. Now the this university has
3:52
pulled in so much tech talent over the years.
3:54
It's actually the largest tech hub of Google outside of the US.
3:59
Apple is here, Facebook is here doing a lot of AI things and
4:03
Reality Labs, Open AI and Swapic have also opened up locations.
4:09
So this actually makes Zurich a really nice location to get
4:13
great talent. But at the same time, you have,
4:18
it's not Silicon Valley, so you're not competing as much
4:20
with all of these other start-ups that are around and
4:24
you can actually stand out a bit.
4:25
And finally, the third one is, of course, you have nature.
4:29
You have the Alps just around the corner, which is an
4:32
unbeatable perk if you're into nature and love, like on the
4:36
weekend, you know, going for a hike, going skiing or anything
4:39
in that direction. Yeah.
4:41
I mean, I was in Zurich a lifetime ago, but it was
4:45
absolutely eye opening, like how technologically advanced it was
4:50
even then. We're talking about like the
4:51
90s, late 90s. I mean, it it in comparison to
4:55
Denver, which is my hometown. I mean, if you walked past the
5:00
recycling bin, all of the wine bottles are stacked neatly in
5:05
the the recycling, you know? Yes, yes, that is Switzerland.
5:09
Immaculately clean everywhere. You know, when you go to the
5:13
countryside and you see the the cows in the countryside, they're
5:16
all brushed and they have like a beautiful leather collar with a,
5:22
a beautiful brass bell. You like, everything is like
5:26
really touched and placed. And you know, when I was there,
5:30
I was a teenager and I met all these other teenagers.
5:34
They're kind of the rejects that got kicked out of school.
5:36
It's pretty amazing because they learned English from watching
5:39
like Goodfellas and The Godfather.
5:41
So they all had just these unbelievable potty mouths.
5:44
It was incredible. But running around with them was
5:47
an absolute blast. I mean it, it was so fun.
5:50
And what was interesting to me is that they all had different
5:54
internships. So you know, one was becoming a
5:57
florist and at the time, you know, a florist is a six figure
6:00
job. One was becoming a, a Carpenter
6:03
and this is like a six year apprenticeship.
6:04
So it's just an interesting culture because they pay
6:08
attention to craft in in a large way, which I always really
6:12
appreciate. There seems like there's kind of
6:14
a tension between art and craft, and in the recent years I've
6:18
become a little disillusioned and bored with art, but I always
6:22
find a pleasure in in craft. Do you think that rubs off a
6:27
little bit being in Switzerland? 100% So the, the way I love to
6:34
let's say characterize Switzerland is it's a country
6:37
where everyone living here has this.
6:41
There's actually German word for it.
6:42
It's there's not the best English word, but basically it
6:45
means you have self responsibility.
6:48
So instead of what that means is instead of you have instead of
6:53
creating rules and forbidding all of the different things,
6:56
people have a certain sense of, no, I should do the right thing.
7:01
And you know, you were talked about these wine bottles that
7:04
that were stacked neatly next to the container.
7:07
That is sort of a cultural thing.
7:09
We're growing up here. People just learn like, no,
7:12
that's you should do that. And then people do it.
7:15
But thanks to that culture being there, that actually creates a
7:20
quite liberal society where you do not have to create too many
7:24
rules, like you do not have to forbid everything.
7:26
And that was actually something that was quite became quite
7:29
evident during the COVID years, because Switzerland, for those
7:34
people who are not as familiar with like European geographies,
7:37
Switzerland is just neighboring Germany.
7:40
And in Germany, the COVID rules were much, much stricter, very,
7:43
very, very strict. And like Germans, they didn't
7:47
understand like, why? Why is Switzerland being so like
7:51
relaxed about these rules? But the reason is because the
7:53
culture is actually that that people do not like they they
7:57
realize the situation, then, OK, maybe you shouldn't go to the
7:59
next like big party and then visit your grandmother the next
8:03
day. And if you have that, then you
8:05
do not need as many rules, which which creates more freedom,
8:08
which which I really love. So that's like the number one
8:11
thing that I like how to to characterize Switzerland as
8:13
second one is you called it craft.
8:15
For me, it's something, it's a society that values quality.
8:22
And this is actually for me, like at the, the, the, the
8:25
upstream where everything else is, is downstream of that.
8:29
You can sell a product here which is higher quality.
8:34
You can sell that at a higher price and people will be willing
8:38
to pay that higher price because they get the quality.
8:41
And that creates a market where higher quality goods will be
8:45
created. And I, I see like my impression
8:49
when for example, when I go to the UK and to be honest, also
8:53
when I go to the US, sometimes there are certain things where I
8:57
have the impression not too many people value a certain a certain
9:04
quality. And that's why it doesn't exist
9:06
in the market. Because of course they're
9:07
creating that quality costs more.
9:10
But if you don't get the price for it, if, if the the customer
9:13
in a way is not willing to pay the money for it, then you're
9:17
just losing money. So the market to converges
9:21
towards the, the more, the cheaper and then less, less,
9:26
less high quality. Good.
9:30
So yeah, that's that's what I really like about Switzerland.
9:33
Yeah, I mean, the value just compounds over centuries
9:36
ultimately. Like there there has to be a
9:38
kind of a standard and then people follow that and it just
9:41
elevates and elevates, you know, I mean truly like pushing the
9:45
boundaries on on all the kind of major social issues of our time.
9:49
I remember like cannabis was legalized.
9:51
It wasn't legalized, but you could go buy cannabis and it'd
9:55
say aromatherapy. That's like, OK, yeah, I I guess
9:59
so. You know, I mean, when when
10:02
people would come to a stop at a traffic light, they would turn
10:05
their cars off because they didn't want the exhaust to,
10:07
like, pollute the neighborhood. You know, I I mean, the kind of
10:11
conscientiousness is just unbelievable when you flash
10:14
forward to any major city in the United States, you know, when
10:17
people have their pants off, smoke and fentanyl off foil with
10:20
a syringe sticking out of their neck, throwing Slurpees at each
10:23
other. You know, the states have a long
10:25
way to go before we reach that. Yeah.
10:30
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defining together. I'd love to trash United States
13:05
when I can. I love it here though.
13:07
I mean, one thing that I do do like to mention here is for, you
13:12
know, I, I know also had a little bit of a criticism of the
13:15
US when it comes to this quality thing.
13:18
But as an outsider, like someone who lives in, in Europe and, you
13:23
know, have spent a lot of like I grew up in Germany and obviously
13:27
I spend a lot of time in different countries here because
13:29
it's just like everything is so close.
13:32
The one thing that the, that I would say the US has, and it
13:36
just has it so much more than Europe is this culture of
13:41
entrepreneurship or like entrepreneurial thinking.
13:46
And I, I think often people living in the US, they, they
13:50
take it for granted. And so I like to like point that
13:54
out like, hey, this is something extremely valuable that you have
13:58
that is not easy to create. Like especially again, I grew up
14:02
in Germany, in Germany that is, that is like that is my biggest
14:06
criticism actually of Germany. Like the entrepreneurial
14:09
thinking is just not there. People think of these, OK, you
14:13
have these big companies like Volkswagen and you know, you go
14:17
work there, but like being innovative and disrupting this
14:22
and creating a start up. It's it's, it's just missing in
14:25
in the culture. And, and I think that's a big,
14:27
it's a big problem there. So, yeah, never forget that you
14:32
have that and that's that's incredible.
14:34
Yeah, thank you. I now what do you attribute that
14:37
to? You know, like Germany's kind of
14:39
maybe a not excelling at entrepreneurship as much.
14:42
I mean, and also maybe it's just because the edge of the mean for
14:46
entrepreneurship in America is so dramatic.
14:48
You know, the ability to like become a billionaire here is, is
14:52
real, You know, it's, it's not likely.
14:53
But like you see like a lot of billionaire class now, you know,
14:58
so they're very visible. So it maybe that contributes to
15:01
the feeling of the entrepreneurship.
15:04
Now I know I'm biased because I've met thousands of
15:07
entrepreneurs, you know, so I see it for sure.
15:09
There's a creative spark that exists here.
15:12
Why do you think it it's lacking in in Germany?
15:16
So my description of it would be I find German culture has does
15:23
not look kindly upon people who are in a way trying to stand out
15:29
or trying to be too like going for pure excellence in the sense
15:35
of thinking big, like having a big vision, vision.
15:39
That is just not something that German culture takes kindly to,
15:45
at least these days. I mean, I, I can't tell you
15:47
exactly where this is coming from.
15:48
My, I wouldn't be surprised if this is something that has to do
15:52
with the aftermath after World War 2, where of course a lot of
15:56
cultural change had to happen. And before that you sort of had
16:00
this, you know, like this crazy guy who was thinking in two big
16:04
terms and, and, and created all of this evil.
16:10
Maybe that is where it comes from.
16:11
It's difficult for me to say, but you can feel that there's a
16:15
really great example like when while I was growing up, so this
16:18
is now already, I don't know, 20 years ago or something like
16:20
that. A very popular former chancellor
16:25
gave an interview like he was already 7080 or something like
16:30
that. And the interview asked him
16:32
about like, what's your like, what kind of vision is there for
16:37
Germany? And his response was, if you
16:40
have visions, you should go to the doctor.
16:45
So basically like in Germany, it's the same word basically for
16:49
hallucinations, vision and, and like, yeah, so and, and, and
16:53
that is like a very representative thing.
16:55
How like, that was an edge with a lot of people.
16:59
And there has to be a cultural shift towards no, we, we, we
17:05
have to allow people who might be then also sometimes a bit
17:07
crazy, you know, like they think differently, but they go for
17:12
something and they have this big vision and, you know, sometimes
17:14
you don't reach it. And then that's OK because
17:17
that's in the next thing. Like failure is, is not as
17:20
culturally accepted. It's more like, you know, if you
17:22
do a company and phase like, you know, that guy didn't I, I
17:26
always knew that guy had had no clue about this whole thing like
17:29
this, this whole big, big vision.
17:31
And he, I don't know, he wanted to go to Mars.
17:33
How stupid was he? And yeah, that's a bit where,
17:38
where where it comes from. Or like it's Brit, my take out.
17:41
Crabs in a bucket. We all have to deal with that
17:44
for sure. I I kind of like metaphor,
17:46
though, you know, if you have a vision or a hallucination, you
17:49
should go see the doctor. And it's like that, it's
17:51
insinuating that there's something wrong with you.
17:53
But really, you should go see the shaman because they'll have
17:56
to. They'll have you enact that,
17:57
that vision. You know what I mean?
17:59
Yeah. That's.
18:02
Yeah, like I grew up with the Lakotas, you know, and if you
18:05
have a vision, then they're, they're like, congratulations,
18:08
that's exactly what you're going to do, you know?
18:10
So there's there's that. Asking.
18:12
Culturally, you know, medicine is rising, but this kind of new
18:15
shamanism is rising too. So we'll see.
18:17
Maybe there there's chance. So were you born in Germany?
18:22
Yes, I was actually born in Germany and then we moved back
18:25
to to England. So my, my father's English, my
18:27
mother's German, then first spent the first couple of years
18:31
of my life in Germany until moving back to, to Germany.
18:35
And then grew up like my formidable years, as you would
18:38
say, like my youth, spent that in Germany.
18:41
Yeah. Until, until coming to
18:43
Switzerland, yeah, like 13 years ago now.
18:46
Nice. I could tell largely because you
18:48
were two minutes late for this podcast and I, I feel like I
18:52
need to report you to the Swiss, the Swiss overlords.
18:56
Yes, yes, for sure, for sure. Yeah, like the that would not
19:00
happen with the Swiss trains here.
19:02
I'd be fired for sure. Yeah, I went to like Zuri Fest
19:06
or something like that and it was, it was amazing because like
19:09
they, they had a big beautiful like fireworks display and it
19:13
started at 10:00 PM on the dot and ended at 10:30 on the dot.
19:18
I was like, oh, it's great. I love it.
19:20
Set set your watch to the fireworks display.
19:23
You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
19:24
I mean, one, one thing that often when I have visitors here
19:27
from who are not as familiar with Switzerland, like we're
19:30
we're standing on the train platform and at some point the
19:34
announcer says, we're very sorry, the train is delayed by
19:38
two minutes. And they're like what?
19:42
Like why was there an announcement like 2 minutes
19:45
late? That's that's not late.
19:47
That's just that's early. That's a rounding margin, like
19:51
what are we talking about? Yeah, I appreciate it though.
19:54
It's great. Awesome, man.
19:55
OK, let's get into it. I'm really excited about your
19:58
your product. Snipped is a podcast player and
20:03
I, I encourage everybody to go pause the podcast.
20:06
Whatever you're listening to it or you're on Spotify or you're
20:09
on Apple, whatever, pause, go to the App Store, go get Snipped
20:13
and listen to the rest of this album or this this podcast
20:17
episode. Also subscribe, like and follow
20:20
over there. Can use it for the algorithm.
20:23
But it's extraordinary and you're going to love it.
20:24
So Kevin Breakdown snipped for us exactly what it does and who
20:29
it's for. Yeah, so Snipped is an AI
20:31
powered podcast app for people who listen to podcasts to learn,
20:35
to follow their curiosity, to become more knowledgeable and
20:38
the like. The, the feature that we're most
20:40
known for, where also the name comes from SNPT, is that
20:43
whenever you hear an incredible insight that you want to
20:46
remember, you can just tap your headphones and the AI saves what
20:52
you just heard as a clip and creates a summary of that
20:55
insight. And this created object, we call
20:59
it a snip. So the clip together with the
21:01
transcript with this AI generated summary and the SNP is
21:05
now saved in your knowledge library.
21:06
You can come back to it at any time.
21:08
You can share it with friends, you can post it on social media,
21:11
or if you're into note taking, you can even even connect it
21:14
with your notes app. So this is what we're most known
21:18
for. But our like over, over the
21:21
days, our, our vision has become bigger and bigger.
21:24
Like basically what we want to do is we want to build the, the
21:27
number one spoken audio platform for people who listen, to learn,
21:32
follow their curiosity, become more knowledgeable as as I
21:35
mentioned earlier. So we've built and we keep
21:38
building all of these AI features that help you on this
21:41
journey. So for example, in on snip, you
21:44
can chat with a podcast episode the same as you can chat with
21:48
ChatGPT in order to look something up, which we've
21:51
something, get a custom summary and like get get some notes out
21:55
of it for, for afterwards. We identify all of the books
22:00
that get recommended on an episode.
22:02
So in case we get back, we, we get around to books later, we,
22:06
we identify all of the books. We show them to you in a nice
22:09
way with one tab. You can, you can go to a
22:12
platform where you can buy them. We identify all of the guests.
22:15
We create a mini bio around the guests.
22:17
You can see all of the the, the episodes that that the guests
22:20
have been on. You can find similar guests in
22:23
order to discover more. If you, if you see, Oh, this is
22:26
an expert on sleep, like who other, what other experts on
22:29
sleep have been, have been out there on and on podcasts.
22:32
Yeah. And we, we, we have a lot more
22:34
ideas for the future, which maybe we can talk about later.
22:38
But it's all driven towards if you are someone who again sees
22:44
as us sees podcast actually as one of the largest sources of
22:47
knowledge out there. And that's one of the big
22:49
reasons why you listen. Yeah, that's the that's who
22:53
we're building snip for. You know, and I feel like you
22:57
built this app for me and for listeners of this podcast
23:02
because the way you're talking about it and the way it's being
23:04
presented and marketed as podcast being a place you go to
23:07
learn. I mean, if you're on the home
23:09
page, you know, you've got Huberman, you've got Lex, you
23:12
got Lenny's podcast on there. These, you know, acquired, these
23:15
are in steady rotation for me. And this idea of going to
23:19
podcast is a source of learning. And you, you can use the snip
23:23
to, to, to remember to share it, like you said, But it's an
23:27
interesting position, largely because people that go to
23:30
podcasts to learn are probably maybe 110th of like the, the
23:33
greater podcast market. You know, I mean, if you, you
23:36
think about the biggest podcasts or the biggest podcast category,
23:39
it's like true crime. It's like, you know, kind of C
23:43
list celebrities just having fun comedy podcasts.
23:47
Why specifically go after folks that want to learn with
23:51
podcasts? Yeah, so I mean, the Y is
23:55
actually quite simple because at the end of the day, I'm building
23:58
this product also for myself. So I'm the number one, the
24:02
number one customer, the number one target audience.
24:06
Like my, my journey came a bit from I, I was always someone who
24:11
growing up, I looked at all of these books, like non fiction
24:13
books that sounded super interesting and I like, I wanted
24:16
to get that knowledge out of these books and into my brain.
24:20
But I had one big problem. And that was I really, really
24:23
did not enjoy the physical act of reading.
24:27
I enjoyed gaining that knowledge and thinking about it.
24:30
But like this reading, I, I just did not enjoy it.
24:33
And at some point I discovered audiobooks and podcasts and
24:38
actually my, really my, my game changer moment was before I
24:42
started Snap. I joined an early stage startup
24:46
here in Zurich and that was my first experience in the start up
24:49
world I had. I had no idea.
24:52
So the founder recommended this podcast to me called How to
24:55
Start a Start Up, which was done by Sam Altman long before he was
24:59
at Open AI actually. He was at YC.
25:02
Yeah, exactly. He was the CEO of Y Combinator
25:05
and every single episode, it was basically his course that he
25:08
taught at Stanford and turned into a podcast.
25:10
Every single episode was, you know, one of the biggest
25:13
entrepreneurs at the time talking about one particular
25:17
aspect. And, and here I was, you know,
25:20
in, in, in, in Switzerland and Zurich on the other side of the
25:23
planet. I was riding my bike to work
25:25
every day and then just learning from these incredible people,
25:29
these incredible people that I would never get the chance or I
25:32
never dreamt of getting the chance of like being in the same
25:35
room with them and, and hearing like their, their, all of their
25:38
secrets and, and, and inputs. But here I was and I'm not even
25:42
wasting time because I'm like, I was going to ride my bike to
25:45
work anyway, right? And now I could do that at the
25:47
same time and, and, and learning.
25:49
So this was really this moment when I realized, wow, wow.
25:52
Like I, I realized the power of, of audio, spoken audio, and in
25:56
particular podcasts and, and, and the culture around podcasts
26:00
where people come on and they share what they've, what they've
26:02
learned. But it was then also when I
26:06
started running into the issues where I realized the audio has a
26:10
lot of benefits. Like, for example, you can do it
26:12
while riding your bike, but it also comes with some drawbacks,
26:16
which you know that this goes back to the snipping.
26:19
You hear something amazing like, Oh my God, I need to remember
26:22
this, but I'm on my bike. So you need to get off the bike.
26:25
You take out your phone, you know, you open up the notes app,
26:28
you write it down and then you get back on your bike and you
26:31
ride again. You do that like two or three
26:33
times until you think like, Oh my God, like if I continue like
26:36
this, I'm never going to make it to work.
26:38
So you stop doing that. And then at work, you want to
26:41
tell your friends, like your colleagues about it.
26:43
You've forgotten it again. So then you try to find the
26:46
moment in, in like the episode or you try to explain it to
26:49
them. It's like, ah, no, that like
26:50
that's not that. That's like, I can't communicate
26:53
the the same way as as actually the guest said it, you know,
26:56
like, ah, Peter Thiel has this way of formulating it directly.
26:58
Let me, let me find it. So then you try to find it in
27:01
the episode. Like you hit that, you know,
27:02
there's like the the skip 22nd button, you know, like you hit
27:05
that like 50 times. Yeah.
27:09
And then you actually do share, share an episode with, I don't
27:13
know, your partner. Like I've, I've had these
27:15
situations where I listened to an episode, it changed my life.
27:19
And then I sent it to to a friend, like, hey, you really
27:22
have to listen to it. And a week later I asked them
27:25
like, hey, did you listen to it? And look, of course they didn't.
27:29
You know, these are your best friends.
27:30
And like, oh, yeah, I thought about it.
27:32
Like it like, like the way that I like to describe it is
27:36
recommending a podcast episode. It is very similar to
27:39
recommending a book. Like people love getting these
27:42
recommendations, but it's like, yeah, I have this long list of
27:46
books that I want to read to and it's like now on on the the
27:51
130th recommendation. I get to it at some point in the
27:54
next 20 years. So yeah, this this, these are
27:58
all issues that that I ran into. And given that my background and
28:02
also one of my Co founders background is in is in AI, we
28:06
actually thought, hey, we can we can solve these some of these
28:10
issues. We can stop looking at podcasts
28:12
and like stop looking at a podcast player as just a
28:15
repurposed music player that has a pause and play button.
28:20
But really look at it as you're interacting with this incredible
28:25
knowledge library and you want to get the most out of it and
28:29
you want to share what you've learned with others.
28:33
And yeah, that that was sort of the the starting point.
28:38
And since then, you know, you mentioned, you said a bit like,
28:42
oh, isn't it, Isn't it just like 110th of people that listen to
28:44
podcasts that, that want to learn?
28:47
So actually it is, it is actually much larger than that.
28:52
The, there are some, some incredible statistics.
28:55
So there's this company called Edison Research.
28:57
They, they bring out statistics around podcasts.
29:00
I think almost every year. They actually asked podcast
29:04
business, what is the main reason why you listen to
29:06
podcasts. Like the the people
29:10
participating painting in the survey were able to select
29:13
multiple reasons, but actually 74% selected as one of the main
29:18
reasons why they listen to podcasts is to learn something
29:20
new. So we do actually see that it is
29:24
a large market where yeah, that's that listen to to spoken
29:30
audio to learn. And I would even take, you know,
29:32
audio books in there in there as well.
29:35
Yeah, yeah. Well, you, you've been in
29:37
Switzerland too long. No, I'm just kidding.
29:42
No. And I want to point out like a
29:43
really important feature that you included in the app that I
29:46
think is amazing. You're talking about listening
29:48
on on your bike. I mean, nothing like on your
29:51
bike or a long walk with a good audio book or a podcast.
29:54
It's extraordinary. But there's a feature where you
29:56
can triple tap your Airpods and it will automatically snip
29:59
something so you don't have to like use your hands at all,
30:02
which is, I think absolutely brilliant.
30:04
So you can come back to it because so many times you're
30:07
away from your desk when you listen to a good podcast and
30:09
you're like, oh, actually this is going to be perfect for my
30:11
team. Like they need to hear this
30:13
because they, they said it in a, in a very, in a, in a good way.
30:17
I'm also very interested in this kind of light bulb moment.
30:21
You know, there's like a phenomenological kind of moment
30:24
that happens for people with podcasts and audiobooks.
30:27
Maybe it's just like when you find a medium that fits you like
30:30
a glove. You know, my first experience
30:34
with kind of like kind of this like sudden enlightenment of a
30:37
phenomenon would be like at the Grand Canyon.
30:40
And I saw that and I was just overwhelmed with like awe and
30:43
like, Oh my God, like just the size of it.
30:45
And I remember pulling, you know, my girlfriend over and I
30:48
was like, look at this. And she's like, yeah, it's cool.
30:52
I'm like, no, but but look at this.
30:54
And she's like, yeah, it's cool. You know, it, it wasn't the same
30:57
thing. So I think everybody has this
30:59
entry point, particularly with podcasts where they find that
31:02
one that resonates with you. You know that that Sam Altman
31:06
podcast is an absolute legendary YouTube series too.
31:10
I definitely recommend people check that out.
31:12
What were some other early kind of audio books and and podcasts
31:18
that had that light bulb moment for you?
31:23
So one of the audio books that I remember was the Lean Startup.
31:29
It's called The Lean Startup, right?
31:32
That was one of the that was around the same time when I got
31:37
into startups. And again, I, I listened to it,
31:42
I didn't read it. Absolutely love that one.
31:46
Another one if we're now just thinking about like, OK, things
31:48
that I read or well, listened to around that time.
31:52
Now the audio book that came to mind is Arnold Schwarzenegger's
32:00
autobiography. Very different style, but for
32:04
me, every time I like also I watched the Netflix documentary.
32:09
There's there is maybe it's similar to your Grand Canyon
32:11
experience where I think a lot of people can just watch that
32:17
and be like, Oh yeah, that's that's quite a crazy story.
32:20
But for me, every time I I get away from it, as in like
32:24
anything's possible, it's just like this, this realization, I
32:28
know this, it's it's this guy who lives in the middle of
32:31
nowhere in Austria and, you know, ends up becoming the the
32:34
governor of California and, and all of the crazy things in
32:37
between. A certain attitude of yeah, just
32:42
going for it that that I absolutely love.
32:46
And with respect to podcast, so I mean some of my all time
32:49
favorite podcast episodes, I can tell you my like my top 3IN no
32:54
particular order if you're interested.
32:57
These. So one of them is definitely
33:01
Naval Ravikant at the Knowledge Project.
33:04
I think it's from 2018. It's absolutely incredible.
33:09
There's also for, for those people who who know, there's
33:12
this book called the The Almanac of Naval written by Eric
33:17
Jorgensen. I've, I've, I actually got the
33:21
pleasure to, to speak with, with Eric who wrote that book and he
33:24
said the book got inspired by this podcast episode.
33:29
So that that was one that I recommend to everyone.
33:33
Second one is a podcast with Jim Deathmer.
33:42
Jim Deathmer. He's AI would describe him.
33:45
I, I hope, I hope I'm not describing it incorrectly, but
33:48
a, a leadership coach. He's written a book called the
33:51
15 commitments of Conscious Leadership.
33:55
And again, it's a podcast episode where he's on again the
33:58
knowledge Project. And that podcast I truly believe
34:03
has has changed my life. He introduces a simple concept
34:08
of being above the line or below the line, which in a way just
34:13
means like, are you feeling like you are in a good place right
34:17
now? Or are you acting and reacting
34:20
as a, from a, from a place of maybe fear or you're, you're
34:25
unhappy with something, you know, or envy or anything of
34:28
like these negative feelings? Is that what, what's happening
34:31
right now? And just the realization of why
34:33
you're above that line or below that line and communicating that
34:37
with others? Has, has it has changed my life?
34:39
It has changed all of my relationships.
34:41
My wife. I forced my wife to listen to it
34:44
back then. She was not yet my wife, but I
34:48
think that's like that has been one of the keys of our that our
34:51
relationship works. And the third one, the third
34:55
podcast episode is Yoshua Bach. He's an AI researcher.
35:01
Yoshua Bach on on the Lex Friedman podcast episode 101.
35:06
I recently, I just recently listened to it again where he
35:09
talks about consciousness intelligence and what it all
35:15
means, theories of, of how it could be created.
35:20
And it's it's just completely mind boggling.
35:24
Like I usually listen to podcast at 1.8 speed with Yoshua Bach.
35:29
I'm like, I listen at 1.8 speed and every two minutes I pause
35:33
and think about what he said. Which episode was this on Lex?
35:39
I think it's 101. Yoshua Bach All.
35:42
Right put that on the playlist. That sounds amazing, you know,
35:48
you know, and I think like we're so spoiled, you know, that with
35:53
Snipped, totally free, you know, by the way, there's there's
35:58
we're going to get into the AI application on Snipped, which is
36:00
really interesting, but it's totally free.
36:01
People just can use that as their primary podcast player.
36:05
But the fact it's free, it's just unbelievable.
36:08
You know, I mean, I remember the way I got into podcasts was
36:13
actually when I was a kid, you know, it was before podcasts.
36:17
Podcasts hadn't been invented yet, but I was a music guy, you
36:20
know what I mean? I would go to the record store
36:21
every Tuesday and whatever came out, you know, I'm getting
36:24
Doctor Dre, The Chronic, I'm getting Doggy Style, I'm getting
36:26
Diggable Planets, I'm getting Tribe Called Quest, like I was
36:29
living. And then I would look at the
36:30
liner notes and I would see the samples and then I'd go to the
36:33
jazz section and go buy the records that they were sampling.
36:35
And it's like it was this whole amazing experience of buying
36:38
music that we don't have any more as much with Spotify and
36:41
whatever. But I also spent every single
36:44
cent I had on music. And I was broke as a kid because
36:47
I spent all my money on music. But there was one time went to a
36:50
used bookstore and I found a a used Alan Watts audiobook set.
36:57
It was 8 CDs and I had read The Way of Zen and I was like, oh
37:01
this is cool. And so I got that and I stopped
37:04
listening to music for like a year and all I did was obsess on
37:07
this, on these lectures from Alan Watts.
37:10
And and I mean his books are great, but that guy is an
37:13
orator. I mean he is the Charlie Parker
37:15
of like Zen Talks, you know what I mean?
37:18
Like he is extraordinary and a great entertainer, you know, So
37:22
I became obsessed with that. And then ironically enough, that
37:25
my first podcast was a podcast called Field of Weeds.
37:30
And it was this white dude from California that was an expat,
37:33
went to Korea and was a Zen, was in a lived in a Zen monastery
37:37
for 15 years, was a Zen monk. And then he came back to LA and
37:41
he was working construction and he did this whole series of
37:44
essays about like his experience, you know, as kind of
37:48
like coming back to the United States.
37:49
It was amazing. I don't know if it's still out
37:51
there. Shout to Henry Grabenberg after.
37:54
You know, this is another great thing about podcasts.
37:56
It's like you like a show boy, you can reach out and meet them.
37:59
It's it's it's not like they're in ivory tower somewhere.
38:02
So that was the first podcast I really got into that gave me
38:05
that same Alan Watts feeling where I was like, OK, wait,
38:08
there's a podcast about everything like it, whatever I
38:11
need to understand, like I need to go get it.
38:14
And, and for me, I'm a lot like you that I want to consume in
38:18
solitude when I'm doing something else, you know what I
38:20
mean? If I'm washing the dishes, I got
38:22
the headphones in, you know, if I'm riding my bike, I got the
38:25
headphones in, you know, and I'm listening to podcasts and it,
38:28
it's, it's amazing. I, I think also it lends itself
38:31
to this kind of phenomenological experience because they describe
38:34
audio as being a warm format. You know, video's cold.
38:38
You look at video and people are watching this on YouTube, shout
38:41
out, I need the followers over there on YouTube.
38:43
But man, you start looking at my face and you're like, why is
38:46
Ryan wearing that weird Roche shirt?
38:47
Like what's going on? Whereas audio you, all you're
38:50
hearing is the inflection and your, your brain can be creative
38:53
and fill in the dots and it can pull the, the the insights and
38:56
apply it while you're listening to it.
38:59
It's it's amazing. Now let's talk a little bit
39:02
about the very novel and unique UR or AI applications for
39:08
Snipped because you really describe this as being AI
39:11
native. It's not like this was like
39:13
tacked on, you know, like now with AI, like really you built
39:17
it from the ground up with AI in mind.
39:19
So talk about some of the features that are are AI native
39:23
in Snipped. Yeah, I mean the, I think the,
39:28
the best example is actually the snipping because if you look, I
39:34
I would say like one of the criticisms of attaching AI to an
39:40
existing product is often it's just like, ah, let's put a chat
39:46
bot like a, like a chat, a chat field there.
39:49
And now you can chat with it. But it doesn't necessarily it's
39:54
not natively integrated into the actual experience what it does.
39:59
And of course, you know, we're still early in this journey with
40:02
AI and the biggest AI product on the planet is Chatchi BT and you
40:06
know, like the plot and all of these, these variants of it.
40:09
So it is currently a text native.
40:13
The AI is currently mostly text native, even though some other
40:17
experiences are coming along. But the way that we thought
40:21
about it is it has to be. Natively integrated into what
40:27
the user is doing and for us that they are listening to
40:30
podcasts right they they are not interested in taking out their
40:34
phone and then writing something down and then putting your phone
40:39
away again. Often you know again if you're
40:41
riding your bike or like driving is even a better example.
40:44
You just cannot do that. So instead of forcing the user
40:50
to change like what they're doing, how they're doing it, we
40:55
actually thought, how can we bring AI to the user, which
40:59
which then, you know, comes with, Hey, you can just tap your
41:02
headphones. And now the difficult part,
41:06
which was a you writing down, Hey, what, what, what they just
41:09
said, you know, what was that quote?
41:10
What was, what was that idea? That's now the thing that AI can
41:14
do for you. So this this I think is is one
41:20
example of where we put but we saw it in an AI native way, but
41:24
not by not by not by starting with the AI, but by starting
41:29
with the the user problem. Does that make sense?
41:34
Absolutely. I love that.
41:36
And there's a lot of applications here that I think
41:40
lend itself to AI in a way that I'm interested in it because
41:43
you're right, like chat blew up because it's it's a chat, you
41:47
know, it's easy to use, you talk to it, but you have to type into
41:50
it. But typing sucks.
41:52
I want to be out of typing. And also, if I have to ask AIA
41:55
question, I already know I'm too dumb and I'm asking the wrong
41:58
question. I want the AI telling me what I
42:01
need to know. And this ties into what hundreds
42:03
of podcasters I've talked to a big problem they have, which is
42:07
finding new listeners. You know, there is no good kind
42:10
of like search directory for podcasts, you know, so I'm
42:14
everybody's listening to Huberman, everyone's listening
42:16
to Lex, everyone's listening to these giant podcasts, But
42:18
there's going to be at least 50 that I know that are just as
42:22
good, you know, that don't have the audience, you know, So what
42:25
you've kind of created with these guests and by linking BIOS
42:28
and other things is kind of Wikipedia it, you know, I, I
42:31
mean another light bulb moment when you had you Wikipedia and
42:34
you can learn about Kevin and then it like has a link to
42:36
Zurich. You're like, oh, I'll bounce
42:37
over there and learn about Zurich, and then I'll bounce
42:39
over here. You know, having that ability is
42:43
extraordinary, especially if now you have kind of user base
42:46
that's doing snips all over the place.
42:48
So you can just bounce to all these different snips and see,
42:51
you know, kind of what's resonating and kind of discover
42:53
and explore podcasting. I think that's extraordinary.
42:57
The other thing that people have tried many times is to put a
43:00
social layer on top of podcasting.
43:02
And that's also kind of largely been unsuccessful.
43:05
But if you look at like TikTok, you know, which people aren't
43:09
going there to learn why, but they, they do this extraordinary
43:14
thing where they'll, they kind of like they lip sync like
43:18
podcasts, a lot of Theo Von, like lip syncing where they're
43:21
just like, kind of like moving their mouth to Theo Von's words,
43:24
which I think could be an interesting layer, you know,
43:26
which again, coming from snips and you find a snip and you're
43:29
like, Oh, I'm going to lip sync over this and put it on TikTok.
43:32
And now you're starting to develop shareability and like
43:35
the the whole network effect, which I think could be really
43:37
powerful. Yeah, so we, we do think about
43:41
the shareability a lot. We one of the things that I
43:47
mentioned earlier, you know, when back in the day when I
43:50
shared an an episode with a friend and then you'd ask them
43:53
like, hey, have you listened to it?
43:55
And then they they haven't. That is one of the powers of, of
43:58
the snips, right? Because you have this one
44:00
particular moment, which was like the light bulb moment in
44:03
the the guest said it in a very particular way.
44:07
And now you can snip that and you can just send that snip,
44:10
right? It might just be a minute.
44:11
It might just be two minutes. And now it's much more
44:14
lightweight to consume for, for the for the other side.
44:18
But the thing that's then even more interesting for like the
44:21
creators is usually doesn't stop there, right?
44:24
Like often if you then see a short clip and you found that
44:28
interesting, then that's what hooks you into like, OK, what,
44:31
what, what, what is the whole episode about?
44:33
I might need to queue this up and then and and and listen to
44:36
it from, from the Snip platform in and of itself.
44:40
What we've where we've landed in at least where we are today.
44:45
You know, things are things always change.
44:47
But where we are today is that we, we want to enable the
44:51
sharing. We currently don't see snipped
44:54
as the, as the platform where the sharing happens, but we are
44:59
actually leaving the sharing to happen on the messenger apps or
45:05
the existing social media platforms.
45:08
We also like talking to our users.
45:11
The, the, the larger majority of users are they want to share,
45:18
but the, you know, they want to share with their team, They want
45:20
to share with their partner, with a friend.
45:22
Like they, it's really, it's, it's very intentional sharing.
45:26
It's not just, oh, this was an outrageous moment.
45:29
I'm sure I'm going to get 100 likes on my Instagram profile if
45:33
I post this. But it's like, Oh my God, this
45:36
is exactly the, the growth challenge that we're having at
45:39
the start of right now. And he is the founder of
45:41
Grammarly telling us like, Hey, we, they went through the exact
45:46
same thing And, and this is what they changed.
45:48
Hey, let's let's try this out as well.
45:52
Yeah, that's amazing. So I mean, like it, it learns
45:55
again, like this is a degenerative aspect of AI where
45:58
it's like, OK, I have 25 snips. It's going to get to know me
46:01
pretty well, and then it can start recommending other snips.
46:03
It's like, oh, you need to hear this.
46:05
You need to hear this, you know? And then you're like, you have
46:07
this discovery moment. The light bulb keeps turning on.
46:11
Exactly, Yeah, yeah. And then in that, in that
46:15
direction, we have that. That's one of the directions
46:17
where we have a lot of ideas and, and want to do a lot more
46:20
experiments in bringing. Yeah, I did like one of the
46:24
incredible things. Like I, I, I remember that one
46:27
moment when I met a snip user out in the wild and he says to
46:36
me like, hey, do you actually realize what you've built?
46:40
Like, yeah, of course, like, you know, podcast app and all of
46:43
the, the stuff that I just mentioned.
46:44
He's like, no, no, no, no, no. Like you've now you've created a
46:49
way where basically you're crowdsourcing where are the best
46:54
insights? And they know if they, if they
46:57
come across a new podcast show, they actually go to snipped and
47:02
you can see which episodes have been snipped the most often.
47:06
And that's actually the, the episodes that they will start to
47:08
dive into because they know, OK, this is, this is actually where
47:11
most of the insights are. I need to, I need to look at
47:13
this. So this I, I still think there's
47:18
like, we have so much more potential to like we have this,
47:21
this data and information and there's so much more potential
47:24
for us to bring this to, to all of the users in, in, in the most
47:28
optimal way. Incredible.
47:32
I want to give a couple of features and shout outs to Snip
47:35
because we we're not going to be able to get to everything but
47:38
the the monthly on an annual plan is very reasonable. 699 per
47:42
month. You get unlimited listening to
47:44
all podcasts, unlimited core features.
47:47
You have unlimited AI features for 1,000,000 plus episodes.
47:51
You can chat with the episode, which is super cool, import
47:55
audio files and YouTube in there.
47:57
So if you get into snips, you want to have all your snips in
47:59
one place. You can do that.
48:00
You can do custom AI promptic and AI processing, which is
48:04
extraordinary. Now, you have also been very
48:06
generous that you're going to give away 12 annual free annual
48:11
plans. And mind you, that means he's
48:13
eating the cost for AI. It ain't cheap and it ain't
48:16
free, you know, but I think the listeners of this podcast are
48:19
going to benefit so greatly from this app.
48:22
It's absolutely extraordinary. So here's what you got to do to
48:25
be in contest to get the free year of premium is go to
48:30
Twitter, follow me at go Ryan Estes, follow snipped app, which
48:34
is snipd under score app and follow Kevin Ben Smith on
48:40
Twitter. Do those three things and we're
48:42
going to put into like a a randomizer and we're giving away
48:45
12 free, 12 free annual subscriptions to snapped
48:51
premium. Now that being said, it is also
48:53
totally free and the best UI experience on a podcast player
48:58
I've ever seen. I love it.
49:00
Thank you for doing that for our listeners, Kevin.
49:02
Now we got a couple minutes left.
49:03
I wanted to take it to the lightning round.
49:05
Are you ready for that as many? As I'm going to be.
49:11
OK I see here you've raised 700,000 pre seed.
49:14
How big is the team? We have four people.
49:18
Four people. Incredible.
49:19
Is there a plan to to do another race?
49:23
At some point, yes, at some point, yes, we are in the
49:28
fortunate position that we are break even.
49:31
So currently we are not reliant on external investment.
49:35
So basically our plan right now is to really improve what we're
49:38
doing. And once we, once we hit that
49:41
really that sweet inflection point where we see, oh, this is
49:46
now something where we should really like put a lot of money
49:49
behind it. That will be the moment when
49:51
we'll we'll go out and and raise our next round.
49:55
What's that inflection point? Is it a number of users?
49:57
What is it I? Mean that's the thing with
50:00
inflection point. It's always a bit difficult to
50:02
like. It's the definition.
50:04
It is I when I see it, I know it.
50:08
What was that like? The, the, the, the Supreme Court
50:12
Justice, I, I forget his name now.
50:17
The so we, we have a lot of ideas in the direction of
50:21
discovery in interacting with podcasts in a new way.
50:25
And we sort of feel like one of these things, if we're quite
50:30
optimistic that one of these things will really be be a big
50:32
game changer. So it's sort of and it and we
50:35
have nothing now holding us back to try these out.
50:39
So the best thing to do is like, hey, let's, let's try them out.
50:43
And if we see what we're hoping, we will see that that will be
50:48
the inflection point to then go, go much bigger.
50:51
It's been the best customer acquisition, acquisition
50:56
channel. A word of mouth word.
51:00
Of mouth. Yeah, yeah.
51:02
I mean that that is how we how we're growing.
51:04
So our word of mouth, I would say I, I separated in two camps.
51:08
So the first one is the classical word of mouth.
51:11
You like the product, you tell your friend.
51:14
The second one is the sharing of snips.
51:17
So we talked about that earlier. It's a natural thing.
51:19
You hear an amazing insight. If it's in a hard moment,
51:23
there's usually someone you want to share it with.
51:25
So you send them a snip and by the 3rd snip, you know, people
51:28
are like, what, what the heck are you sending me here?
51:31
Like where's this coming from? And that that helps as well.
51:36
We're not going to have time to get to the model trains.
51:38
That's a cliffhanger for everybody.
51:39
We're going to have to have you back so we can talk about model
51:42
trains. It dies in, believe me, the the
51:46
app you can get in the App Store.
51:48
Otherwise go to snipped.com, SNSN, ipd.com.
51:54
You can get more information. You can get the app there.
51:57
Kevin, what's the best best place for people to connect with
51:59
you online? Now the best place is on X,
52:03
formerly known as Twitter. My handle is Kevin Ben Smith.
52:08
Amazing. Kevin, thanks so much for
52:10
joining us. Thank you.
52:12
Thank you for having me. Hey founders, let me ask you
52:16
this. Are you building with AI or
52:19
getting left behind by it? If you're serious about scaling
52:23
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Now back to the show.