Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / AI storytelling for families

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AI storytelling for families · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Welcome back to AI for founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:02
Now what happens when a former founding member of Spotify
0:05
decides that bedtime stories aren't personal enough.
0:08
You get Dream stories dot AI, a company turning your kid into
0:12
the hero of their own beautifully illustrated
0:15
adventure. But here's the twist.
0:17
Ricardo vice Santos didn't just build another AI startup.
0:21
He's building what he calls an agentic content studio, where
0:24
creativity itself becomes intelligent, adaptive, and
0:28
deeply human. And while most of Silicon Valley
0:30
is chasing scale, Ricardo is chasing something rare, intimacy
0:35
at scale. In today's episode, we unpack
0:37
how dream stories dot AI went from a wild idea about AI, made
0:42
bedtime stories to selling nearly 100,000 physical books, a
0:46
category defining bridge between storytelling, AI, and the future
0:50
of personalized media. You'll learn how Ricardo thinks
0:53
about creating an infinite content machine, what Spotify
0:57
taught him about building for global audiences, and why the
1:00
next billion dollar opportunity might be hiding in stories small
1:04
enough to fit in a child's hand. This episode is for founders who
1:07
believe AI isn't replacing creativity, it's amplifying it.
1:11
If you've ever dreamed of building products that feel
1:14
one-on-one, this conversation is your blueprint.
1:17
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That's ambient dot US. I just want to say, Ricardo,
3:44
thank you so much for coming on the show.
3:45
How are you? Thank you for having me, I'm
3:47
doing great. Yeah, fantastic.
3:49
So to get us started with context, please give us a a
3:53
quick description of your company dream stories dot AI.
3:58
Yeah, so dream stars dot AI or a dream stars dot AI, we're
4:02
building what is best described as a genetic content studio,
4:06
starting with with children's books.
4:10
We started the company a little over a year ago.
4:15
You know, offer an idea I've had for many, many years of, you
4:19
know, have this idea of, of that one day content would, would
4:23
wall of father be personalized for you, sort of made made
4:27
personally for you. And so we started playing with
4:30
started playing with physically building the platform to to
4:32
build out right then we decided to, to start with the with
4:35
children's content, in part because I have a have a young
4:37
child and I noticed how, you know, how basically we have all
4:41
these moments of reading bedtime stories to him.
4:43
And, and I started not playing with the with the idea of
4:45
focusing on that as a, as the first product that we could,
4:48
that we could do. Incredible.
4:51
So I go to dream stories dot AII, upload a picture of my kid.
4:56
Do I actually do I create the story or are there like kind of
5:01
templates available? That's a great question.
5:04
So with a, with a little bit of a lengthy answer, which I'll
5:08
give it to you. So today we're, you know, with
5:10
the way I like to tell the stories that there's the sort of
5:14
the range of of what is maybe described as agency, right?
5:17
There's there's people that, you know, there's people that on the
5:20
one hand, really just want to, you know, see it at ATV, for
5:25
instance, and watch whatever is playing.
5:26
And then there's people that, let's say, have so high intent
5:29
in the skill and their money to do it that they'll make deal
5:31
with their own content. Let's in in this case, if we're
5:33
talking about video or something like that, right.
5:35
And so there and there's this like Long Branch in between.
5:37
And so we in the context of, I give an example for some war of,
5:42
I don't know, making games or something like that.
5:43
There's a small set of people that can actually for make
5:45
games. Most people play them.
5:47
And then there's this like emergent platforms like Roblox
5:50
where, where people would sort of can create games, right,
5:55
without, without having to be a professional game developer,
5:58
right? And so in our case, we decided
6:00
to focus first on, on this upset of people that would create,
6:04
create the story if it would be made very easy for them.
6:07
And, and does, you know, we focus first on those that come
6:10
in and pick a, pick an existing template.
6:13
But of course, we're, we're evolving the platform as we, as
6:15
we grow to, to essentially cover more, you know, more creative
6:18
tools. So people can we know we already
6:20
let people edit the text, you know, and eventually create
6:24
their own, their own narratives for, you know, we, we certainly
6:26
have a lot of demand, demand for it, right?
6:29
Yeah, and I've got to say the the video on your website is one
6:33
of the most adorable things I have ever seen.
6:36
I couldn't imagine a better sales tool.
6:38
So I go to, I go to dream stories dot AI upload a picture
6:42
of my kid. It puts my kid as the hero in
6:46
the story. And then you print the book and
6:48
you get the book and your your child gets to be like, Oh my
6:51
gosh, it's me and every single page.
6:54
What a brilliant idea. Yeah, and but you know, what's
6:57
actually the funniest part was that when, when we first build
7:00
the prototype. So, you know, you also asked me
7:02
about, OK, can I create the story, right.
7:04
And then the, the stories that I wanted to create a story is in
7:07
me, right? I, I grew up like visit reading
7:09
Tintin, you know, Tintin in French, you know, I was obsessed
7:13
with it. And so in a sense, I, the first
7:15
story was one I wanted to create for my child where essentially,
7:18
you know, and where he was Tintin, right?
7:20
He was going on in the venture and he was going to different
7:22
places, which is kind of what I grew up with.
7:25
And, and so that that was a story.
7:27
I, I, I envisioned and it was quite hard to put together, you
7:31
know, but as we built tools when we started launching, watching a
7:34
few more and so forth. And, and like I said, now we're
7:36
getting to a point where where other people will be able to
7:38
soon to start creating their own right in the same way that I
7:41
created mine, because in my case, that's the express how to
7:44
give to my child. But you know, we got people that
7:46
what you know that have, you know, other things, right, and
7:49
even other, I don't know, valley systems or religions or
7:53
somethings that they want to put into a story.
7:55
And that's a bit of it, right, That you can empower people to
7:57
do that and explore, you know what for them, what they would
8:00
like to, where they would like to see their kids, right in the
8:02
valleys they would like to. Propel yeah, 100%.
8:06
I mean, so let's talk big picture here.
8:09
This is an incredible product and we'll get into the economics
8:12
of the business a little bit, but where do you see dream
8:15
stories landing in five years? Yeah, that, that is a great, a
8:19
great, a great question, right. So I the, the way I usually like
8:24
to tell people to so to you know, there's as you know,
8:28
there's a lot of there's a lot of people coming to the AI now
8:30
and the you know, and sorry, well, I've been in in the space
8:33
for a while, but you know, more intensively.
8:36
No, but the way I like to to kind of say is that this is
8:39
action idea I had many, many years ago.
8:41
I, I used to, you know, I, I suppose my first claim to fame,
8:46
if you will, was leading growth, new markets at Spotify.
8:49
But when I joined Spotify, really in the early days, I was
8:52
in the content team and on the content team as a now dealing
8:57
with essentially with the content and that came from
8:59
labels and artists. I, I, I started noticing like a
9:03
lot of content that was, that was personalized for people.
9:06
And this is like birthday songs or, you know, love songs with a
9:09
certain name. So you'd have let you know,
9:11
happy birthday Ryan or Ryan, you look good today.
9:14
This type of things. And if you look, if you
9:15
literally look up your name on Spotify, you'll find like a
9:18
myriad of songs that include you in the, in the, in the name, in
9:22
the name of the song in the content.
9:24
So back in 2009 or so, when I, when I first noticed it, I had
9:27
this like thought experiment of, I wonder if one day you can
9:30
have, let's say, Beyoncé sing a song for you, you know, for you
9:33
specifically. And, and I want to highlight
9:35
this was way before, you know, I, I wouldn't have told you this
9:38
was AI back then. It was just a thought
9:40
experiment, you know, and, and this was way before nowadays,
9:42
technically that's possible with, with platforms like Suno
9:45
where you could, you could literally get Beyoncé or
9:47
Beyoncé's voice to sing a song for you.
9:49
But it, but that's actually where the seed of this, this
9:52
idea of like personalized content on top first came to me.
9:55
And, and there was the idea I had in back of my mind.
9:58
Now, of course, with Spotify, personalization is a massive
10:01
thing for us, you know, or he was, was in and continue to be,
10:05
you know, we, we basically knowing, getting to know you
10:07
very good and delivering the right content for you.
10:10
All my businesses since Spotify, I left in at the end of 2014,
10:16
all, all my, all my business done have had some hint of
10:19
personalization with them. And so, and that's, I think one
10:22
of the beautiful things I think with, with technology is, is, is
10:26
actually enabling to do that in in fact, I, I, I just helped
10:31
launch a few years ago, I helped launch NECO health, which is,
10:34
you know, a health scanner. And I usually tell people that's
10:37
basically the same thing in, in reverse, which is your, we're
10:41
taking healthcare, which is something that is a bit bit of
10:43
an artisan good. You go there and the doctor,
10:45
like, you know, performs for you a service that is one O 1.
10:49
And we're trying to scale it with technology in the, with the
10:51
eye, that's NECO Health. But that's kind of the common
10:53
teases of all my businesses have been like, can I deliver
10:56
something that feels end of 1 at skill?
10:59
I've done anything notation as well.
11:02
Sorry for a different day or maybe later in our conversation.
11:04
And so and this session now makes I'm exploring that in
11:07
content and not going back to my idea.
11:09
So anyway, so sorry, long answer, but you know,
11:12
essentially that's why that's why I believe media is going as
11:17
well. We already see it in advertising
11:18
where essentially ads get get decided tweaked upon by
11:23
platforms like like Meta at the point of impression.
11:27
So they're already end of one in a way.
11:29
And I think the rest of content will will will sort of follow
11:32
suit in in a way. Unbelievable.
11:37
OK. And your founding member of
11:39
Spotify That's that's that's I was.
11:42
Very. I was very, yes, I was very
11:44
early on in the team, yeah. Incredible.
11:47
OK, so a couple of things kind of come up for me when I hear
11:50
you talk about that. One is the the books that I
11:52
really resonated when I was a kid, you know, in the 90s we had
11:56
choose your own adventure books. You ever heard of this and.
11:59
Yes, Yeah, I have. I have a few here actually, yes.
12:03
They were so fun. That's what I like to read.
12:05
And then you go back and be like, oh, I went down the wrong
12:07
path, got eaten by the dragon, you know?
12:09
So I was already like felt like I was putting myself.
12:12
You mean this one? Amazing.
12:14
Yeah. Cool.
12:16
Yeah. You're, you're putting yourself
12:18
in the story. You have agency because you can
12:21
choose different outcomes. It was great, you know, and I
12:24
think they've experimented with that a little bit on Netflix of
12:27
different and alternate endings and things.
12:28
But I think to your point, people have always wanted this
12:32
kind of ability and agency to to craft their own fantasies.
12:37
You know, now it's an interesting way to enter with
12:40
kids because kids get really jazzed when they see themselves
12:44
now. Do you see this personalization
12:46
of like in the future I'll put I'll be James Bond and I can
12:50
watch myself be James Bond on AR goggles or something like that?
12:54
Or alternately, will you choose people that are familiar to you?
12:58
So one thing that I saw from generative AI early on is I kind
13:02
of mourned the the death of art because I could just see it.
13:06
I'd be like, oh, why would I find a new musician when I can
13:09
just tell AI to make me a new Bob Marley album, you know, Or
13:13
why would I find a new actress? Because I just want to see Salma
13:17
Hayek and everything you could put, you know, I want to see a
13:20
whole football game of Salma Hayek's playing each other.
13:23
You know what I'm saying? But maybe that's just me.
13:24
I'm a weirdo. So how do you see kind of the
13:27
the future of generative AI as people start to have, you know,
13:30
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code AIFF. Yeah, I think I think it's a bit
15:39
more than worse than that, right.
15:41
I don't know if it lenses the best analogy, but it's kind of
15:43
as you spoke, I kind of think about the classical sort of, you
15:46
know, sort of Pepsi sort of testing.
15:49
You know, if you if you taste like, you know, Pepsi or cola,
15:52
you know, in a blind test, you would like Pepsi better, or at
15:54
least that's the same right deals, but you like Coke better
15:56
because of the brand association with it.
15:59
And I think that the, I, I think we underestimate how much these
16:02
things have impacts in, in, in our lives, like essentially
16:05
what, what, what our friends like and so and and so forth.
16:09
And then, and then push on us. It's actually interesting at
16:11
Spotify, we, we, we had hints of both where people sometimes
16:15
really wanted to know the, what their friends were listening to.
16:17
Others like practically flocked to a certain sort of music
16:21
friend, if you will, like some person that was actually a
16:23
trendsetter. And I think those things are
16:25
actually not, not going away. And, and, and I think also the,
16:30
I understand your thought process right now in terms of
16:31
the depth of artists of what we do.
16:33
I actually think so, right, Because I think that at the end
16:36
of the day, I do think that AI is a very powerful tool, but,
16:40
but it's still a tool. And I still, I still think
16:42
whoever yields it still yields, still gets to ask the question
16:46
of what, what they want, what sort of what they want to see
16:48
or, or how they want to sort of manifest something.
16:52
So, for instance, in the, in the case of her, one thing I feel
16:56
actually validates my, my, my view of the world is actually
16:58
the world we've witnessed now with France, with Sauder coming
17:01
out where you see that, you know, that the thing that people
17:04
actually quite liked about it was was that they got to create
17:06
content around, around people. Like you said, you mentioned
17:09
Salmaea, right? For instance, you could create
17:10
content. It's not that certain.
17:12
It's just you. And one thing I we didn't
17:14
mention is that almost almost no, I wouldn't call it
17:18
accidental, but my Co founder actually in the company.
17:20
One thing you did very early on that was a happy surprise is
17:23
that in one of our first prototypes, which I have laying
17:26
here somewhere, he actually put myself and my wife in it as well
17:30
as in addition to them to to the child.
17:33
And in a way that actually was more both harder to pull off for
17:38
technical reasons, but also one year in the way and we come.
17:42
That's actually why I realized, Oh shit, it's actually a social
17:45
experiment, a social experience, right.
17:47
So it's not actually just a kid seeing themselves.
17:49
It's obviously now that we we launch and we have a lot of
17:52
customers. You know, people have, I don't
17:53
know, they have their pets, they have their cousins, you know,
17:55
grandparents. We've had a lot of people that
17:58
from us. You kind of, you know, both is
18:00
both heart, you know, it both breaks my heart.
18:03
And it's also a very beautiful thing people putting, you know,
18:05
this is the relatives. Sometimes this is children there
18:08
as a way to remember them. You know, again, depending on
18:11
where you stand is a beautiful thing.
18:13
You know, it also means that we I feel like we have a lot of
18:16
responsibility to get it right. You know, when when they do
18:18
that, the for sure, I feel the the weight of it.
18:21
So it's not necessarily just this, you could almost say
18:24
narcissistic kind of seeing yourself, right.
18:26
It's about seeing the things and the people that you care about.
18:29
You know, you know, in that representative reality, right.
18:33
And like you said, it's you were saying your premier self in the
18:35
story. One of my favorite books is
18:37
never ending story, you know, which, which likewise is kind of
18:40
this hybrid though, that you're reading a story, but you kind of
18:43
take part in it and your mind flocks to it and, and there's
18:46
the, the lines blur, right? And so I, I, I think that's a
18:49
beautiful thing, actually. Yeah, that's incredible.
18:51
And to your point, I mean by actually printing a a book, it
18:55
becomes different than ATV show or or a music.
18:59
It doesn't. It's not a glowing screen.
19:02
You know, it is an experience and especially with the kid,
19:04
it's experience you're going to have every single night,
19:07
probably, you know, at bedtime. So you know, and you know, it's,
19:12
it's fair time because I tell you what, I, I can only read
19:15
Goodnight Moon 200 times at 201. I'm like kid, anything else
19:20
please, I can't read Goodnight Moon one more time.
19:23
Yeah, it's, it's actually interesting that that, you know,
19:27
the retention is great in that sense, right?
19:28
You know, because kids do do do like repetition for for sure,
19:32
right? Yeah, 100% cool.
19:35
Let's talk a little bit about the tech stack of of the, the
19:38
company kind of what you're using to, to produce the the
19:41
images and then you know how you financed and actually kind of
19:45
built structure around the business.
19:48
Yeah, so, so, OK, let's start first with the with the tech
19:51
stack. So we, we spent a lot of time
19:53
building the, you know, I guess what best describes as an
19:55
orchestration pipeline to sort of get it done.
19:58
It's actually, you know, as you know, things and they are moving
20:02
so fast that things get, you know, the, the field evolves
20:05
quickly. So if I were to start again
20:07
today, probably be somewhat easier.
20:09
And we obviously we keep up with it, trying to keep updating it.
20:12
But but we actually in the beginning, a lot of it was just
20:16
as I told you, we wanted to focus on this segment of people
20:19
that had no technical skills. Of course, if you have, if you
20:22
have some of the best skills you can, you know you can go you
20:24
can. You can use majority somebody
20:26
that if you're really good at prompting, you can get the
20:28
really good images out of it. Actually consistent characters
20:31
is a problematic area is something that even now there's
20:33
a lot of companies coming up that literally their model
20:35
announcement is that finally we got character consistency.
20:38
It's actually hard to do, you know, across images to remain
20:43
consistent. If you've tried it, you probably
20:45
know it's. Extremely hard, especially in
20:47
video, but even in in pictures to like background changes.
20:52
You know, just like having consistency within the face.
20:55
And and then there's things that are think people don't would,
20:59
unless you're a domain expert, you probably would not give it
21:02
credit. For instance, when you know,
21:04
it's, it's, it's not that difficult for you to, to ask an
21:07
AI model to produce, I don't know, a woman or a child
21:10
describe to them and they produce it because they will
21:13
base off of the training data. But if you actually wanted to
21:15
look like your child and your child or your, you know, your
21:18
partner, somebody, someone in your life, there's other
21:20
specific things about them, like their smiles are very specific.
21:23
That's when I can tell you that usually I can show you something
21:26
that looks exactly like you and then, OK, make it smile.
21:29
And you say, well, that's not me because you recognize it.
21:31
That so, so there's these details that actually are hard
21:33
to pull off. I'll be honest with you.
21:36
It has gotten easier as in, you know, which we benefited from it
21:39
actually, but we spent a lot of time, you know, building that
21:42
through a combination of models, some open open source models,
21:45
some proprietary stuff we built and, and trained on.
21:49
So that's essentially the, the where we spend most of the time,
21:52
frankly, building, building the what I would call the precise
21:55
position pipeline. And as that became more stable,
21:59
we've evolved more to the started to, I guess you could
22:02
say, the creative tools to create the, the tiles
22:04
themselves. And that's why I'm telling you
22:05
that now we're going to close to a point where they're becoming
22:08
so easy that we can actually give that to customers
22:11
themselves. Let's say if you actually want
22:13
to create your own story, you'll be able to do it right without
22:16
requiring, you know, a lot of effort on your behalf for it.
22:19
Absolutely. You know, and when I'm thinking
22:21
about the, the business model, you know, the, the big money in
22:26
publishing is in licensing and distribution and sales, right?
22:30
You know it with this, there's not necessarily IP.
22:34
How do you, how do you protect the business?
22:36
If you could say, you know, with Nano Banana and Lovable put
22:40
together something comparable, it's not going to look as good
22:42
as this. This looks absolutely
22:43
incredible, but you might be able to get it 80% there.
22:47
You know, how do you kind of protect the business model?
22:50
Yeah, Yeah. Like I said, I think it's, I
22:53
mean obviously I wouldn't want to invite competition, you know
22:55
and as an entrepreneur would, but it is, it is harder to scale
23:01
then put them again and again it will be, you'll be easier as
23:05
time goes, but it's actually harder than than you think to
23:07
actually do it again consistently.
23:09
Again. I have no doubt if you have a
23:10
lot of agency, you'd be able to grab none of banana and level
23:13
and put together something for yourself again to get it for for
23:16
a lot of other people, it's a very different story.
23:19
But in terms of like of IP, that's the other thing.
23:22
I actually don't think that that that IP per SE will go away.
23:26
I mean, one of the one of the requests you get is a lot is
23:30
like, you know, people want to create stories with their
23:31
favorite characters, you know, whether this be spider man or,
23:34
or or Barbie or or something like that, right?
23:36
They would they would like to have those, those scarves.
23:38
Now we don't allow that today, but it is something that that,
23:43
you know, that's conceivable that you would that you'd say,
23:46
hey, you know, wouldn't it be great for you to create stories?
23:49
We do. I'll give you another example.
23:50
Actually, I think is more practical as well, which is
23:52
let's say that you have an audience.
23:54
So let's say you Ryan, and then you could tell your entirely
23:56
loose things that, hey, you could create a book with me and
23:59
and you right now, what would you want to do with that?
24:02
Well, you probably would want to set up a set of rules like
24:05
things that, you know, that you can get the right character to
24:07
do and do not and how we should behave.
24:09
But it's entirely doable, right? And a lot of people sort of
24:12
remix it, which again, is kind of what's what Sara is doing
24:14
with the camels, right, You know?
24:16
Yeah, 100%. And I mean, you know, a lot of
24:19
things there's like, oh, you could do it.
24:21
You know, I've got a buddy who put together a website called
24:25
Post Malone yourself and you can upload a picture and it gives
24:29
you like, face tats and like a grill and then ridiculous.
24:34
I love it though, but but but people aren't going to do it.
24:38
So a lot of I think this game is like seeing where media is
24:42
evolving and then being there first, you know, So is that
24:46
really important to you that like people start to think
24:49
about, Oh, I can customize my a book about myself, which again
24:53
is like a a great and already established business model where
24:56
people will take their their childhood pics and they print
25:00
them out for mom for Mother's Day and you get a little book
25:02
and it's awesome. This is introducing like it's
25:04
creating kind of a a Pixar almost look and aesthetic to to
25:10
your kids photos, enough that they recognize themself, but
25:12
also enough that it's stylized that it's entertainment and it's
25:15
not. Just, and it's also the thing,
25:17
right, which is like, there's, there's the reason why I like
25:20
the category, you know, and again, I, I, we'll get into,
25:23
into funding and all these things, but when people ask me
25:25
like, OK, recordable, why do you focus on books, right?
25:27
You're a guy from technology, right?
25:29
To know you should be doing digital so far.
25:31
Why'd you focus on books? Well, I actually chose it
25:33
because it was an established category.
25:35
I mean, you can search like personalized books and there
25:37
there is they're they're all, you know, not all some some are
25:40
emerging, but most of them are pre AI.
25:42
So they're a bit, you could say outdated if you will, but the
25:46
category exists like people buy them and to your point, they'll
25:49
buy them and you know, and you know, a special holidays, so on
25:51
and so forth, right? But they can't, that tends to be
25:55
it, right? You'll buy it once maybe every
25:57
other year, you know, at best, right?
25:59
But there's a difference between, but this is actually
26:02
where my experience comes, comes into play, where being someone
26:05
that comes from, you know, building services and
26:07
subscription services in particular, which is, well, can
26:10
we turn that into a repeat behavior, right?
26:12
Be beyond the going beyond being a novelty and something that you
26:15
actually do it. That's actually why you'll
26:17
notice that the, the books that we have right now are AP Zodiac,
26:20
right? And so, and we have a lot of a
26:23
lot of our customers. I, I would, I very transparent
26:26
to tell people, none of our customers, you know, woke up
26:29
that morning thinking I'm going to sign up for them stories and,
26:32
you know, and, and create like a bunch of different books to
26:34
subscribe to, to, to books. However, what they do is that
26:37
they want to get a book for right now for a gift, as you
26:40
mentioned, but then you know, but then they say, OK, Oh, wow,
26:44
this is actually a service is not a print.
26:46
It's not a one time product. It's actually a service that I
26:48
can get, I can get a continuation on, you know,
26:50
because as you know, the use case is there.
26:52
The kid will want to read every night, right?
26:54
Then actually the parent has it. You actually give me another
26:56
hint. She's the parent.
26:57
Actually, he is the one that wants to buy another one.
26:59
So he doesn't have to read the same one over and over again,
27:01
right. And so I think that there's a
27:03
lot of, there's a lot of like, like a better word skill and
27:07
process that comes a bit from my experience in trying building a
27:10
service that not a product, but a service.
27:13
Interesting. And and so if it's it's
27:15
serialized, then it can also kind of grow with your kid
27:18
because as I was kind of walking onboarding, which onboarding for
27:22
the product is so elegant and so simple.
27:24
It says like, well, how old are you?
27:26
You know, so you're like, I'm 7 and then the next year you're
27:29
like, I'm 8, you know, and so the, the, the series can grow
27:32
much, much. I, it's just making me think of
27:34
like stranger Things, which is, you know, the, the new seasons
27:36
about to come out. And so they have to change and
27:38
adapt because the kids got older, you know?
27:41
Correct. Yeah, Yeah, exactly.
27:42
That's a good point, right? You know, and that's actually
27:44
one of the things once, once people get caught on to that,
27:47
you know, they ask us a lot about this, right.
27:49
So sometimes they, they want us to, to, to, we have had, you
27:53
know, we renew our company, new company, but we had actually, to
27:56
be honest, it surprised me how much people want to do that even
27:59
a few months apart because, you know, particularly children,
28:01
they're very young, they grow very quickly and basically aged
28:04
the child accordingly. And and I want to have the
28:07
topics like evolve the reading language, all these other
28:09
things, right? Yeah, 100%.
28:13
OK, great. So you start the company.
28:15
How did you finance the company? Yeah.
28:18
So we, you know, we raised from from a few friends.
28:21
I mean I've friends that, you know, investors, but I've, I've
28:24
like I said, I saw a number of companies, most of them venture
28:27
backed. I've also, I've also had the
28:30
prior exit. So you know, I put it in a bit a
28:32
little bit of my money. I've raised a few from others.
28:35
So we're, we're, we're well capitalized.
28:38
There you go, you go to your go to your investor cohort.
28:43
You're like, hey, you know me, the the music guy.
28:46
I did a a food company. I'm thinking about getting into
28:50
children's books where they like, where is my checkbook?
28:53
Let me let me sign on the bottom line.
28:55
Did it take much convincing? What was the pitch?
28:58
Yeah. And so I'm, I'm glad you asked
29:00
actually, because it's interesting like that.
29:01
And literally one of my investors said, said something,
29:04
we came to what you're So what you're hinting at, which is
29:06
like, I would not think this is the thing you were going to do
29:09
or, or that or, or, or I would not invest in this if it
29:12
wouldn't be for you being attached with because I, but,
29:16
but to be honest, you, that's kind of what attracts me to it
29:18
as well. I, I like to say, you know,
29:20
things generally look great in hindsight.
29:22
Things that become great look great in hindsight.
29:24
I kind of like the, the sort of the odd topic that people be
29:28
like, you know, for a lot of time, a lot of time frizzy with
29:31
Kinko, my food company mentioned that was the juice guy.
29:33
He was like, why is he doing juices?
29:35
Like this guy helped build Spotify and now he's doing
29:37
juices again. We can get into it later, but I,
29:41
I kind of like that. I like that it's too in a sense,
29:44
you could say a little bitty a little bit under a dog in a way,
29:46
or pretty myself in that position and, and trying to
29:48
capture something that I believe I see that other people don't,
29:52
because generally I think that, you know, if something's very
29:54
obvious is also extremely competitive and which sends the
29:58
dollar the opportunity down is all right.
30:00
So, so, so yes, so I do take some convincing in that regard,
30:03
right, Because I, I had to kind of explain why, why I believe
30:07
this. And then after I, after I showed
30:09
and explained to people like my vision, my strategic vision for
30:12
what I believe contest going to go, the follow up question was
30:15
that one, OK, but why start with children's books?
30:17
And that of course, takes some convincing, right?
30:19
But, but, but I'll be completely convinced that's the, the right
30:23
approach for us. And then I certainly would not
30:25
do it do it differently. And strategically, it seems
30:28
smart. I mean, children's books has to
30:30
be greater than 50% of the book purchases, right?
30:34
Yeah, no, of course. And there's also something which
30:37
is that the in, in products, we we also live in a, in a if, if
30:41
you're in media, right, you're, you're playing the, in the
30:44
attention economy, right? And and so anyone that there's
30:46
an attention economy is competing with, you know, the
30:49
Netflix is the Tik Toks and all these other things, right?
30:51
And so it's so it's it's actually a brutal industry.
30:54
I mean, as you know, you know, try to grow a like a media
30:56
property is very difficult to to fight for some attention.
31:00
And it's also becoming harder, particularly with companies
31:03
again like soda, we know, which are basically giving away
31:05
tremendous amount of of frankly compute and value to people for
31:09
free, right? So, so it's actually quite nuts
31:12
to try to compete there to a point where even being a great
31:15
product is not sufficient. So you have to kind of figure
31:18
out a way to make distribution work for you.
31:21
So of course, if you, if you go with, with, but, but again,
31:24
because of his products in the marketplace, people are starting
31:26
to expect the digital products to be free, at least extremely
31:30
generous, which requires an extreme amounts of capital to
31:34
do. And again, and it's almost a
31:36
fight to the deaf, you know, in terms of like, you know, lower
31:38
margins and so on and so forth. And so, so in my case, you know,
31:42
the, I, I wanted to set up something where I knew that we,
31:46
we could have good economics from day one, because I just
31:50
knew that that essentially just meant that we, we were just more
31:53
resilient to competition, right? And and so on, so forth.
31:56
And I actually had one, you asked me about investors
31:59
skepticism in the way, but one, actually investors in the sense
32:02
something I, he said it, I didn't, which was, no, I
32:06
actually love it because I think people will come to expect
32:09
digital goods to be free, 100% free, and they will only come to
32:12
pay for physical goods, right? So he actually thought he was
32:14
genius, right? And and I was like, OK, he's
32:17
decided not I right. But that's a good way of putting
32:19
it. Yeah, I know it makes a lot of
32:21
sense. And like you said, it's an
32:22
experience. You know, reading a book to your
32:25
kid is is an event, you know, it's not really a thing, you
32:29
know, Or if you they talk about like human or like humans.
32:33
Interaction with AI is largely going to be dictated by taste,
32:37
so that there's always going to be a human in the loop.
32:39
And in this case, the human in the loop is a kid, you know?
32:43
Yeah, I mean it. Actually, actually the the
32:44
gardening as well, right, which is, which is also another
32:47
interesting dynamic, right, which is the the you know, one
32:50
of one of the biggest version points for me is has has it's
32:54
kind of PR friendly for me to say Walt Disney, right?
32:57
But one thing the story specific are to tell about Walt Disney
33:00
is, is that when you have the epiphany for Disneyland was he
33:04
was at the merry go round with his daughters and and he had
33:07
this idea that there should be a place where the entire family
33:10
can have fun together, not just the kids going around and you're
33:12
just there and basically literally just keeping guard,
33:14
right. And so that's actually a built
33:18
Disneyland on that premise, right, something for the entire
33:20
family, right. And so one thing that that was
33:22
very important for me with dream stories is that can we make
33:26
something that is, that is, is a family thing, You know, and you
33:30
mentioned the reading part, but also the creation part, right?
33:32
Because the, the, the parent or the garden that is actually
33:36
creating often with the kid next to them, but often often
33:39
otherwise as a gift, they're spending time doing that.
33:42
And that's also in itself an enjoyable activity for that,
33:45
right? You also have to think so it's
33:46
not even just a final product. The creation is part of the,
33:49
it's kind of like, as they say, you shouldn't just make the
33:52
elevator journey shorter. You should make it enjoyable,
33:54
right? You should.
33:54
You should make it something that actually they want to do it
33:57
right. Cool.
33:59
I love it. You know, and I'm convinced just
34:02
from your track record, I mean, you've got a lot of projects and
34:05
a lot of big wins in a lot of really kind of category divine
34:09
defining type brands. So, you know, we're Speaking of
34:12
like Disney. It's it seems totally plausible
34:15
in five to 10 years that your Disney Plus subscription, you
34:18
could just turn yourself into Luke Skywalker if you want to
34:21
and watch, watch the movie, you know, and everyone will be doing
34:25
that for sure. So book seems like a natural
34:27
place because not only is it experienced, not is it not only
34:30
is it time with your kids, but also becomes kind of a place
34:33
marker in time. And you're like, Oh yeah, that
34:36
was kindergarten year. I'm getting sentimental now
34:38
because my kids are a little bit older, you know, but, but I can,
34:42
I can definitely see that. And, and the, the position for
34:45
this is perfect. Now how many people are on the
34:47
team? And so our team currently 7
34:50
people, so a fairly small team, yeah, most of that is
34:54
engineering, so very engineering for company.
34:58
And then we have we have some people helping with the customer
35:01
support and so forth. Fantastic.
35:03
And so you, you raise some money, you got the team
35:06
together, you get the MVP and you launch.
35:09
Where did you get your first customers?
35:11
Yeah. So the, you know, the I'm
35:14
actually someone has a lot of experience in paid acquisition,
35:17
which is usually a a response that actually investors don't
35:19
like to hear because they like to, they like to sort of the,
35:21
you know, the viral hit that that that hit.
35:24
But I'm someone who's actually very methodological about these
35:27
things. You know, of course there's a
35:28
lot of this one hit wonder things that, you know, you did
35:32
this thing, it went viral, but there's of course, like, you
35:34
know, thousands of them to try the exact same thing.
35:35
It didn't work out. So as I told you before, it was
35:38
very important to me to have this sort of the end of
35:40
economics that I knew I could, I could actually do this in a very
35:44
slow and steady if needed. And does it, you know, I could
35:47
actually spend, you know, spend marketing dollars and make the
35:50
economics work for for that. So I actually did get it off of
35:53
paid to pay channels, right, which I, I did quite a lot at
35:55
Spotify as well. It was a different time.
35:58
You know, I can tell you was a lot cheaper back then.
36:00
You know, we were, we were, you know, Spotify at, at at one
36:04
point was a, was a top spender on many of the of the networks
36:08
right back then. So now it's a different,
36:10
different game. But but, but again, but if
36:12
you're, if you're have experience in the area, you can
36:15
probably pull, pull it off. But then that, but that's part
36:18
of the puzzle, right? Then you start getting
36:19
referrals, you start getting, you know, start getting people,
36:22
sure, you know, people taking the book to school, to
36:25
kindergarten, reading, you know, so you get a lot of organic lift
36:27
out of that. So it's a combination of things.
36:31
Yeah. What was the most productive
36:33
channel for you with the biggest return?
36:36
Most productive it generally tends to be tends to be Facebook
36:40
that if we're going to talk about 1 channel, you know, and
36:44
then there's pockets of others that you know that at times
36:47
perform but usually not as not as sudden state, not as stable
36:51
as Facebook. Yeah, 100%.
36:54
And then the the website seems kind of intentional, you can't
36:56
find pricing anywhere so speak on that, that point and then
37:01
kind of what's the the price per book?
37:03
Yeah, it's actually interesting. You know, that's one one of the
37:05
things I'm thinking about right now.
37:06
So it's funny, funny you'd ask. Yeah, no, the, the price
37:10
generally $60.00 per book. We, we do give, do give, you
37:15
know, the part of the reason why it's not shown is because
37:18
depending on how many books you have, you know, you decide to
37:20
purchase, you get discounts and so forth on, on it.
37:24
Yeah, I'm actually trying to have a so it's not intentional
37:26
though. I know it's not like I'm trying
37:27
to hide it or anything like that, but I'm actually trying to
37:29
think and I'm actually running some EV tests to, to figure out
37:32
what's, what's the right point to put it right.
37:36
And, and generally I actually want to be very forthcoming with
37:40
it because you know, we, we if anything we actually want to
37:44
make a quality product. So we it comes with the price.
37:47
Yeah, 100%. How many books you sold?
37:51
Oh man, it's been, it's been quite a lot.
37:53
We I, I wouldn't know top of my mind but it's getting closer to
37:58
100,000 at this point probably. My gosh, 100,000 books dude.
38:02
Congrats, that's incredible. Now you're based in Stockholm,
38:06
correct? Yes, I, you know, you may know,
38:11
this is the whole of Spotify, right?
38:12
So I'm actually not Swedish, I'm actually Portuguese, but I've, I
38:17
lived here, you know, in the beginning with Spotify.
38:19
Then I moved to the West and I was living in New York for for
38:23
about 8 years and then and my wife and I moved back to, to to
38:26
Europe, you know, to especially start our family.
38:29
Amazing. It's to Stockholm, incredible.
38:32
So is are most of your sales coming from Europe or are you in
38:36
the American markets as well? So mostly, mostly US it's, it's
38:40
also happens to be the market I know the best.
38:42
You know, even though, even though I'm based, I'm based in
38:44
Europe. So most of most of US, we do, we
38:48
do a sell, you know, everywhere. We actually just, you know, we
38:54
actually just added also non Latin script, you know, meaning
38:57
that you can have in, you know, in, in Hebrew or Arabic and so
39:00
on so forth. And so we're actually opening up
39:03
a few more markets with that, but but primarily my marketing
39:07
efforts are focused on the US. Credible.
39:10
That's awesome. What's something you know now
39:14
about your company or your market or your your audience
39:18
that you wish you knew in the beginning?
39:21
Great question. I, I think that the, I was
39:26
surprised to the degree that, so I'll tell you, it's almost the
39:32
same answer for good and bad, right?
39:33
In a, in a way, I'm surprised the, the, the amount of people
39:36
of particularly, you know, parents and most of our, most of
39:41
our customers seem to be, you know, parents in the age group.
39:44
But we have a large segment of also grandparents and older,
39:47
older people that that I'm surprised how how well they're
39:51
being able to use the platform. So we're able to build something
39:53
that's simple enough to tend to use, but it came at a lot of
39:57
cost, right then a lot of engineering in in that and
39:59
trying to make things extremely simple for them to use.
40:01
So it's in a sense, it's both both, you know, so I'm very
40:04
happy that we're able to do it in another one.
40:05
You took it took a lot of it took a lot of work.
40:08
Yeah. It's, and it's also that last
40:11
thing I'll tell you is that AI, you know, for anyone working AI,
40:14
you know, AI is not deterministic, right?
40:16
It's stochastic. And we, you know, I used to, I,
40:18
you know, I've been working technology for a long time.
40:21
Generally when you fix something, it's all fixed for
40:23
good. With AI, as you know, there's a
40:25
lot of like hallucinations. In our case, it's not a problem
40:28
because we are a creative platform to begin with.
40:30
So it's not. But there's a lot of things that
40:33
things go wrong that it takes a lot of time to fine tune things
40:36
to get consistent because it's a good result, right?
40:39
So it's it's quite hard lesson. Yeah, when you're thinking of
40:43
paid media on a $60.00 product, what are you, what are you
40:46
comfortable for customer acquisition cost?
40:50
What I usually advise people when I, when I, when I, when I,
40:54
when I, you know, I don't generally advise unofficial,
40:58
right? I don't actually do it
40:59
professional, right. But I have people ask me this
41:01
question. I say that, well, agencies in
41:03
paid media tend to generally do this arbitrage around the rows
41:08
of 1, you know, sort of return that spend of 1.
41:11
It's a bit of a bizarre thing in e-commerce because of course
41:13
you're going to be losing money if you do that, you know,
41:15
because you're not covering for margins so forth.
41:17
So, you know, you'd have to ask them why they think it's a good
41:19
thing. But there's this weird
41:21
advertised around 1. So, so I can't usually tell
41:23
people that if, if you have not spent anything, you should
41:26
expect your cock to be roughly the same as your AOV.
41:29
So if it's $60.00, you're probably going to be around AOV.
41:32
But but then, you know, and that's actually at the point if
41:35
it goes above it, that's the point where you know, paid media
41:38
is a is a bid is an option, right?
41:40
And so how do you win while doing an auction?
41:42
Well, we have to out beat people, right?
41:43
And so if no one's willing to bid above above the above rows
41:47
of one, that means, you know, if you bid 61, you tell you're
41:50
going to win. So the question is, can you?
41:52
So that's why so many companies folk try to do subscriptions,
41:55
right? Because they will probably lose
41:56
money on 1st purchase, but then recover, recoup it later, right?
42:00
And like I said, in our category, it tends to be one
42:02
time purchases, you know, because it's a novelty gift.
42:06
So it's why if you can build a service rather than than than
42:09
the novelty, then then you're starting business, right?
42:12
Yeah. What what percentage of your
42:14
sales you think are are repeat buyers?
42:17
It's a very, it's a very high percentage.
42:19
Actually, we it could be higher. You know, generally I don't show
42:22
the number not to mislead people just because there's another
42:25
question, DNSP, which is like, OK, how many templates do you
42:28
have? Right?
42:28
And I think the right that the only answer for that is it's
42:32
actually very simple to understand, right?
42:33
She is don't I can tell the actual answer and I can tell
42:37
them the right answer. The actual answer is that we
42:39
have 6 templates. The right answer would be
42:41
infinite, right? And and it's and why?
42:44
Because, you know, if you think about this as a funnel, you
42:47
know, you can think that, OK, I like episode 1 amazing, right?
42:50
But then I don't like episode 2. I may like episode 3, but if I
42:53
show them in two, I'll never get to episode 3, right?
42:55
So it becomes too linear of a path for you to for you to have
42:58
like sustainable retention. So we do have a very high
43:01
potential of, of them that, that, that, that by, by the
43:06
whole series. In fact, you'd be surprised at
43:09
how many people buy it by the multiple times because they, you
43:11
know, they buy for different, different, different family
43:14
members and so on so forth. So I'm actually, you know,
43:18
astonished at it to be completely awesome to do at at
43:20
the at the at sometimes the current values we get, you know
43:24
what I'd call off the street, you know, without straight off
43:27
bid acquisition, presumably no brand knowledge, you know, and
43:30
then and then it jumps to to to a huge a used purchase.
43:36
But I think it could be a lot better, right?
43:37
And it could be a lot better if you But for that you need to
43:40
build the infinite constant machine, which like I explained
43:42
to you earlier, to do it well with the proper guardrails and
43:46
for both quality and and prevent abuse and also things you know
43:49
it takes, it takes some time to build rent.
43:51
Readable. Very cool.
43:53
All right. I'm ready to get into the
43:55
lightning round. Are you ready for the Lightning
43:57
Round? I think so I'll I'll find out
44:00
soon. Prepare yourself, you might need
44:02
a juice. OK, so you're an ideas guy.
44:06
What what other ideas do you have sitting around that you
44:09
think what what particularly this audience likes is
44:13
$1,000,000 annual run rate. So do you have any business
44:16
ideas you think that could quickly get to A1 milli arr?
44:22
I I I I well, yes, quickly, the quick is the trick part, right
44:26
That I think I have I have a lot of ideas in the particular in
44:29
healthcare. You know, it's a space where
44:30
where have the like I said, that helps grew Necco health in the
44:34
beginning. And I think it's it's one area
44:37
that has tremendous potential, particularly because, you know,
44:41
pardon my French would be the incumbent suck.
44:43
I actually when when I was building, when I was building
44:46
NECCO, I kind of said to myself, and this sounds a bit arrogant
44:49
of me to say, but I was like, well, it it's not that that hard
44:53
when the competition is so bad, right?
44:54
So it's like the the Barry so low that the that is actually
44:58
doesn't take too much to do now. It takes so much.
45:00
This is a bit of obviously an oversimplification.
45:03
It's still a lot of hard work to do it, but there's certainly a
45:05
lot of opportunity there. And and if I trust me, if I had,
45:09
if I could call myself, that's what I'll be doing, right.
45:12
I'm very personal about what I'm building now.
45:13
If I could do something else would probably be be in
45:16
healthcare. Interesting.
45:18
Maybe that ties into this one. If let's say you you sell dream
45:22
stories for a billion dollars, what's your next project?
45:25
Are you or is there a project? What do you do?
45:30
Yeah, obviously I would probably be the healthcare that would be
45:32
the next one, right? Because, like I said, Healthcare
45:35
is something that is already ease a bit artisan not skilled
45:38
and that you could you could certainly skilled, you know,
45:41
building a better experience there a. 100% Is there a
45:45
entrepreneur CEO that you admire or follow closely?
45:51
Yeah, I mean there's a few that I deal with personally, right.
45:54
That or that I was lucky to work with.
45:56
You know, obviously one is Daniel of of Spotify, right,
45:58
Tweeter who who I learned a lot from on a day-to-day basis.
46:02
So that's probably the one that I, that I really with the most.
46:07
There's a few that I found very interesting.
46:08
I, I really, one I like to tell is the top Turner of CNMI think
46:12
it's, I really, I really like the guy generally like, I like
46:15
his, his persona, his attitude. But one thing I also found very
46:19
interesting is that he, you know, in consumer, sometimes
46:24
there's this, there's this thought about, you know, it's
46:27
hard to sometimes be precise about what problem you're
46:29
solving because things only look like problems in hindsight.
46:33
And so for me, it's fascinating the idea of frankly starting CNN
46:37
because it was something that no one asked for.
46:39
And yet, you know, the, the sort of the world was ripe for,
46:41
right? And, and the only looks obvious
46:43
in hindsight that of course people want to watch news at
46:45
more convenient times. So, so it's one that I find is,
46:48
is thought process interesting how we came, how we came to it.
46:51
And, and I just think it's just energy is really important in
46:54
what we do being building companies.
46:56
It seems like extremely like a high energy guy.
46:58
I should never met him. He'll probably be one one I
47:01
would actually like to like to meet.
47:04
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defining together. Yeah, You know, Ted Turner, I, I
49:27
really admire him too, you know, because I'm always keeping an
49:30
eye out for kind of like conservationalists, you know,
49:33
people that are doing good in the world but create a
49:36
successful business model around it.
49:38
I think that's ultimately what's going to save humanity is you
49:41
got to make doing things right profitable.
49:43
And he just about single handedly saved the North
49:47
American Buffalo, you know, and created an incredible like food
49:55
franchise around it. And I mean, Buffalo is
49:57
delicious. So, you know, it's like it there
50:00
was incentive to to save this beautiful animal that's kind of
50:03
iconic for the American West. And being a Colorado boy, you
50:07
know, he gets points in my book for that.
50:10
And of course he's he imagine Fonda too, so.
50:14
Not bad. Not a bad run on that guy.
50:17
They're pretty incredible, OK. And one day America's Cup is
50:21
also also like, you know, so yeah, yeah.
50:23
The fun, fun life here. Yeah, 100%.
50:27
What's something Spotify did wrong?
50:30
Oh, at least it's long, man. I mean, that's the thing like
50:34
when when when you're inside when you're inside the company,
50:37
right? You do a lot of a lot of things
50:39
that don't work out. I mean, some you can call
50:42
experiments, you know that you have to run them to do it.
50:44
Others, I think we're, you know, you, you think about 9 * 2 three
50:48
I've gotten into in the in the 1st place and, and there's a
50:51
list, there's a there's a long list of those.
50:54
I think the, there's obviously a lot of them that I'm probably
50:58
shouldn't share. One.
50:59
I think I can share that, that, that, that we did because I
51:03
think, you know, it's so old that I think no one will come
51:05
after me. Is that in the beginning, very
51:08
early on, we we built a download store.
51:13
Many people don't know we had this, but this was actually
51:15
something that we had to build, you know, our requirement with
51:18
with labels and you know, it made no sense in the context of
51:21
Spotify, right? The USO again, depending if you
51:24
think it was a mistake or not, because you know, no one at
51:27
Spotify really believed that was going to be the future of
51:29
Spotify. We have to build it to please
51:31
sort of labels and then on lo and behold, no one used it right
51:36
here we pull the plug. So was it a failure?
51:39
I don't know. Maybe we had to do it to prove
51:41
them that no one wanted it, right?
51:42
But it was just a bit of a bizarre thing in the context of
51:45
of Spotify. Why would you want it, right?
51:47
It's kind of it, it's, it's, it doesn't make sense in the
51:49
context Spotify, right? You have access to the world's
51:51
music, but you also want to buy an MP-2 for some reason in the
51:55
same place. So.
51:57
Go figure that one out. Yeah, they, I mean, it seems
52:03
like one of their biggest innovations and most viral hits
52:06
had nothing to do with music, which was just the year end
52:08
recap when they started doing that a couple years back.
52:11
And it's I mean, everybody adopted that.
52:12
It was such a a brilliant product.
52:15
So you're you're a stories guy, which I love, and you live
52:19
probably in kind of a fantastic world mentally at least.
52:23
If you could live in any historical era, in any place,
52:27
when and where would it be? I think that's a very, it's a
52:33
very good question. I, you know, I often, to be
52:35
honest, I think I'll give you fun answer, right?
52:37
But I often think that we actually, I, I, I feel lucky to
52:40
live where we live right now because I think we are in our
52:43
lifetime, You know, we're seeing so much transformation, such as
52:45
celebrating extremely fast. I mean, the dawn of VI is an
52:48
incredible thing. So I, I'll, I'll, when I was a
52:51
little bit younger, I crave for the 20s or something.
52:54
Now actually, I'm happy to live in this, in this age, But more
52:57
recently I've, I've, you know, don't ask me why.
53:01
I think I actually know why, you know, you know, that Lynyrd
53:04
Skynyrd put out the video for free burn, right?
53:06
And I don't know if you've seen this like 52 years after launch,
53:09
right? And now.
53:10
And I was watching the video, which is incredibly beautiful
53:13
video and, and, and I was listening to it and I was, and I
53:18
was like, frankly, just thinking that to sort of the, the late
53:20
60s, early 70s was such a special time that that I kind of
53:25
got, and I've been talking a lot to my wife about this also from,
53:28
you know, I also read recently is then in the art of motorcycle
53:30
maintenance, right? And I was thinking about it was
53:33
probably such a special time to be alive, right?
53:35
To have this, this feeling of, well, freedom of, of the
53:40
discovery of joy for the future. And I think right now we
53:43
actually leaving the time where a lot of people are very, very
53:45
dark and then they have a very dark, you know, view of the, of
53:48
the future. And so, so I'll probably say
53:51
that right it, it isn't, I'm happy to be alive now, but I
53:55
would have liked to experience a bit that that societal agreement
54:00
that times are good, you know? Anyway, being Portuguese or any
54:06
fondness around the Conquistadors era, go back and
54:10
hang out with Vasco da Gama and those guys.
54:12
Oh, man, yeah, That was that was the right answer, right.
54:14
I should have. I should have gone for that.
54:17
Yeah, it's it's. I suppose so, right.
54:20
I mean, that's the, you know, the the other one.
54:25
Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm also a big
54:28
lover of this sort of Arctic expeditions sort of age, you
54:31
know, when sort of circle turns and so forth.
54:33
Went went down there. Actually my favorite, my
54:36
favorite one is rolled and Winston, the the Norwegian one,
54:38
the one that actually got to South Pole.
54:40
If you, if you have a chance to, to read about this or if you're
54:43
interested the IT it paints his picture of rolled.
54:46
The Norwegian is a probe. The other ones are amateurs,
54:49
right. So it's, you know, we went
54:50
there. We, you know, it was a bit cold.
54:53
You know, we too took a coffee and then we went there and we
54:55
came back. So it's, it's not, it's not as
54:57
daunting as the as the as the Brits for some reason.
55:00
But so in the sense I, I think, yes, probably that that was an
55:03
incredible age, right. I mean, this sense of like of
55:05
there's things to discover fun. You mentioned that because
55:08
because actually in in Zen and our motorcycle mantis, he talks
55:13
about that since those times there had since actually the
55:16
discoverer of America that we haven't lived in the time where
55:19
people were, were and literally you had to change your frame of
55:21
thinking how you think about the world.
55:23
Like we went to the moon, but we knew the moon was there.
55:26
Like he was not a surprise that the moon was there.
55:28
Well, he was of course, amazing that we got there, but he was
55:31
not a surprise. Whereas discovering America no
55:33
challenges all your, you know, all your conceptions of what I
55:36
mean. He literally creates A
55:37
Protestant church, right. So I think that but, but so why
55:40
am I interested about living right now?
55:42
Because, you know, in the age of AIA, lot of people would
55:45
describe it as an alien, right, That we're creating an alien
55:47
entity in here on Earth. So I think it's kind of similar
55:51
in the, in that page. We will need new ways of, of
55:54
thinking about the future. And of course that's scary for
55:56
many people, but it shakes you at your core, right?
55:59
Like I, my previous view of the world may no longer apply based
56:03
on these things. And so in the in that way, we
56:05
live in that era, right? Yeah, you know that there's a
56:09
spirit of that of like the explorer that reawoke it feels
56:13
like a couple years ago with AI where you're like, oh, it not
56:17
all the big players are so secure in their positions.
56:20
We haven't seen the best of what innovation can really do.
56:23
It does feel like we're on the the the the beginning of a big
56:27
explorer phase, doesn't it? Yeah, correct.
56:29
Yeah, Because again, a lot of things can shake your world, of
56:32
course, right now, right. But if you'd wake up tomorrow
56:34
and tell, OK, there's an alien spaceship, you'd question a lot
56:37
of the things you thought about the world of reality, right.
56:40
And I think in this way is, is is akin to that, right?
56:42
And it's akin to the to the conquistadors area, like you
56:45
mentioned, because, you know, it was a real possibility that
56:48
you're going to find something that just no one had the clue
56:50
was there. And again, why did it lead to
56:53
the Protestant church? Because, well, because there was
56:55
literally things that were now patently, you know, false in the
57:00
way that we believe the world was, you know, because now
57:02
there's evidence because it's there.
57:03
Like you can't, you can't deny it, right?
57:05
So I, I think that's fascinating, right?
57:07
Then that's not to say anyone's right or wrong.
57:08
It's just that it forces you to think differently, right?
57:11
You, you'll, you'll, you won't have a choice.
57:13
You can't. You can't not see it.
57:15
You know, the Vatican learned that lesson, too, because when
57:18
the Pope started releasing memos, that was like, hey, you
57:21
know, what if there are aliens, God created those two, and it's
57:25
all good. It fits underneath our people.
57:29
Like, wait, wait, is the Pope telling me there's aliens?
57:32
What's happening right now? Yeah, yeah.
57:34
It's so they made it more broad. Yeah.
57:36
But you know, but again, it's, it's, it's a fascinating time,
57:38
right, to be alive right then. And that's, that's why I would
57:41
recommend that book is old as an inductive motorcycle measurement
57:44
because he talks about that, right.
57:45
He talks about. And that is something that
57:47
before reading, I hadn't thought about that while I was
57:50
mentioning the sixes being such an interesting time, we knew
57:52
them when was there No, no surprise that the one was there,
57:55
right? And the and that the difference
57:57
is that you know this is so different that you know it just
58:00
will change the way you think. We we don't know what's there.
58:04
Yeah, yes, it's so exciting. Ricardo, this has been awesome.
58:07
Everybody please check out dream stories dot AI.
58:09
You can start. You can upload pictures right
58:12
there from from the the the first page and start to really
58:15
interact with the technology. The whole presentation is
58:17
beautiful. Congratulations to you, Sir.
58:19
I I know you're a big supporter of the World Wildlife
58:22
Foundation, so I want to give them a shout out real quick.
58:25
This is wild.org with nearly 50 years global experience
58:29
mobilizing international coalitions for the protection of
58:32
wilderness, working in over 40 countrywide.
58:35
A substantial reach and don't we all know it.
58:39
So shout out to them, Ricardo, what's a good place for people
58:42
to connect with you online? So I'm I'm so much I'm a bit of
58:48
social media, but it can find me a LinkedIn Ricardo Vicentos or
58:52
you can send me an e-mail as well.
58:54
Our letter R at at the dreamstars dot AI.
58:58
Thanks so much for coming on the show.
59:01
Right. Thank you.