Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Your API Keys Are Killing Your Productivity: Mitchell Jones of Lava.so
Transcript
- 0:00Your AI tools aren't making you tired because you're working too
- 0:03hard, they're making you tired because you just got promoted
- 0:05and nobody told you. You went from an individual
- 0:08contributor to manager overnight.
- 0:10You're not writing code anymore, you're managing instances.
- 0:13You're hovering over clawed code with four terminal windows open,
- 0:16thinking which one do I run first?
- 0:18And all that mental load, that constant contact switching in
- 0:21your own brain. This is the new work.
- 0:24The exhaustion is just the job now, and most founders are
- 0:27burning out trying to plug in API keys, case subscriptions,
- 0:30and copy paste secret keys into tools that are already behind a
- 0:33pay wall. By the time Claude even finishes
- 0:36its sentence, you're spending more energy on the plumbing than
- 0:39on the building, and the plumbing is leaking.
- 0:42The real unlock isn't working harder inside your AI stack,
- 0:45it's removing every single point of friction between your idea
- 0:49and execution, so the only thing standing between you and the
- 0:52output is the quality of your thinking.
- 0:54So if all the friction disappeared tomorrow and your
- 0:56tools just worked, would your ideas be good enough to fill
- 0:59that silence? Welcome to AI for founders.
- 1:02I'm Ryan Estes. My guest today is Mitchell
- 1:04Jones, founder of Lava, a Yale grad, Forbes 30 under 30
- 1:08honoree, and the guy building an invisible payment layer that
- 1:11powers the AI web. This one's for founders who are
- 1:14shipping AI products and want to stop leaving money on the table
- 1:17or stop spending money they shouldn't have to.
- 1:20The AI for foundersnewsletter@aiforfounders.co
- 1:23is where founders go when they're tired of being the last
- 1:25to know. Every week I'm dropping tools,
- 1:28frameworks, and conversations like this one.
- 1:30So you walk in already warmed up.
- 1:32Go get it at AI for founders.co before your competitor does.
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- 2:05All right, Mitchell, welcome to the show.
- 2:06Thank you so much for joining me.
- 2:08Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I'm excited to talk to
- 2:11you. You, your product is really on
- 2:13the cutting edge of what people are looking for right now and
- 2:16very germane to the conversations we have.
- 2:19Pricing is always a topic of consideration, you know, the
- 2:23different models, whether it's token base, if it's outcome
- 2:25basis, is it subscription, is it a classic SAS play.
- 2:29So I think this is going to be very relevant and probably very
- 2:32useful for a lot of folks. So give us a breakdown real
- 2:35quick of lava. Yeah, well, hello everyone.
- 2:39My name is Mitchell. I'm the founder of Lava.
- 2:41And what we do at a very, very high simple level is make it
- 2:44easy for two groups of people to work very well together.
- 2:48We make it easy for end users of AI apps to be able to call any
- 2:52service or provider, whether that's a model provider or an
- 2:56API, be able to use it on a usage basis.
- 3:00So imagine you want to use Notion or Slack or GPT or
- 3:05whatever tool you want. You can add our AI gateway to
- 3:09your Cloud Code instance, your GPT instance, and no connecting
- 3:13MCPS, no secret keys, no things like that.
- 3:16You can use it immediately. On the flip side, for merchants
- 3:19or for folks who are selling services and providing, we make
- 3:22it very, very easy for you to get paid by agents and other AI
- 3:27services and other users of your services.
- 3:31No need for wallets, no need for simple things.
- 3:35As long as you have AP is we help you monetize those.
- 3:38AP is you can set any pricing you'd like, whether that's token
- 3:42markups, whether it's usage based, outcomes based, and it
- 3:45works existing with your existing stack, no new tools.
- 3:49Our goal is to just make it so that agents that are already
- 3:52trying to access your service can access your service, but
- 3:55also so that you can get paid for it.
- 3:57And so we're just trying to help you convert new users and new
- 3:59traffic. Amazing.
- 4:01I love it. OK, so 2 use cases.
- 4:03Let's go to the first one first, which is basically I want usage
- 4:08base payments. Lava takes care of that.
- 4:12Is that to say then? But like my Claude Pro
- 4:14subscription, I don't need that anymore.
- 4:16Does it kind of bypass the the monthly service cost that
- 4:20they're getting you to subscribe to?
- 4:22The real thing is that's actually they're complimentary.
- 4:25So the way most people use AI these days is Claude Code Codex
- 4:31Cursor. It's actually becoming your
- 4:33command center. So that is your base agent, and
- 4:36from that agent you can do a lot of things.
- 4:39You can write code, you can read emails, you can send Slack
- 4:43requests, you can look at financial data, you can access
- 4:46information. But if you want to be able to
- 4:48use it to do all of those things, most of those things are
- 4:51behind a paywall. What we do is you can add our
- 4:55Lava MCP and you can have access to all of those paid services.
- 5:00You don't have to have all of these like complex things that
- 5:03usually engineers are familiar with, like secret keys and
- 5:06signing up for new subscriptions and all those things.
- 5:09You just download our MCP, put money into your Lava wallet, and
- 5:12you access all of those services.
- 5:14So for that use case, you can almost think about us like an AI
- 5:16service provider. Why that's valuable for the
- 5:20other side is be a a legacy existing company.
- 5:24You have this valuable data and this service.
- 5:27You don't really know a thing or two about AI or AI payments or
- 5:30how do you make it so that agents can pay you and all this
- 5:32stuff. But you need to be able to make
- 5:34sure you're getting rightfully paid for the products that
- 5:38you've built that people can access.
- 5:40We make it easy for them to access your product through us,
- 5:44and then we just remit you exactly what you're owed.
- 5:47So we just help everybody make this stuff simple.
- 5:50No new requirements, no new understanding.
- 5:53If you have AP is you can work with Lava.
- 5:56Love it. So, OK, so on the one side, if
- 5:58I'm building and this is me everyday, I'm trying out all
- 6:01kinds of AI products and I'll push them to the absolute limit
- 6:04until they're like, oh, you know, you're going to need, this
- 6:07requires a pro package. So in this case, I could, I
- 6:10could actually go in through lava where I could just kind of
- 6:12Max it out for like two or three days, see what's going on
- 6:15without actually having to commit to the subscription and
- 6:17then canceling it. Correct.
- 6:19Exactly. And because you get lava credits
- 6:22to just access services, we're effectively subsidizing your
- 6:25first few. So if you sign up on Lava's
- 6:26website, you'll get $10.00 of credits to just access models,
- 6:30API services and all those things.
- 6:31And so we're footing the bill on those.
- 6:33And then I think that's where the magic is.
- 6:35You didn't see like, wait, Claude code is great, but if you
- 6:38have an agentic gateway with it or an agentic service that gives
- 6:41you access to all these tools, you can do so much more, right?
- 6:45So you know, one of the things that we, for example, one of the
- 6:48things that people like to use for is like for finance, right?
- 6:51You can look at different filings, like Edgar filings and
- 6:53you can just immediately call them from our gateway.
- 6:56No context needed, no understanding needed.
- 6:58You just go in the cloud and say use the Lava MCP to find this
- 7:02information. Or for folks who are on the
- 7:04blockchain, you can just immediately query it by just
- 7:07saying use Lava to find what is the price of Solana and we will
- 7:12do it for you using whatever tools are available.
- 7:15Most of those tools are oftentimes paid.
- 7:18And usually what ends up happening is then Claude spits
- 7:20back to something to you like, you need to go sign up for this
- 7:22tool. And then once you sign up, you
- 7:24need to choose a plan. And then once you choose a plan,
- 7:26you need to copy the secret key. And then you need to add this
- 7:28key back to me. But make sure you do it securely
- 7:31and you don't waste a bunch of time and don't expose it.
- 7:34And then it's you're somebody who doesn't even know what
- 7:36exposing it means. You're like, what is all this
- 7:38stuff? So we've just gotten rid of all
- 7:40of that and said, hey, you want to use this to do your best
- 7:44work. And it is very powerful because
- 7:46it can connect all your sources in one, understand how to use
- 7:49them and get the job done. But you can't do all of the
- 7:53plumbing. So we do the plumbing for you,
- 7:55but we also make sure the person who is offering the service gets
- 7:59what they're rightfully earned. We're helping them convert free
- 8:01traffic into paid traffic. I love it.
- 8:05You know it's it's, but you obviously could see this coming
- 8:09before me because it was probably January where I was
- 8:11like everything's AP is and I need a folder where I'm storing
- 8:15all my freaking keys because it's like it's getting insane.
- 8:18So in this case, like all the the API keys, it's actually it's
- 8:23pulling from lava. So you don't have to worry about
- 8:24it. Rather you're just like kind of
- 8:26in straight workflow, you're just like, hey lava, go check
- 8:29out XYZ 'cause I'm putting together this thing and it's
- 8:31like, correct. And it's only pulling in kind of
- 8:34what usage you need on a in on a unique per basis.
- 8:38Correct. And the, the thing that's really
- 8:40powerful about it is there's versions where let's just say
- 8:43you have your own instance or your own keys that you want to
- 8:47use. You can securely pass them to us
- 8:50and then we store them securely. So then you never have to fumble
- 8:53around with them ever again. So then you can go to any single
- 8:55service, call that service and connect it and you just call it
- 8:59through lava and we'll do it all for you.
- 9:01No passing keys. No, no, no, anything like that.
- 9:04And so that's actually one of the things that a lot of people
- 9:06who like open claw actually like about our product is they can
- 9:09give our gateway to open claw and an open claw never needs to
- 9:12manage keys anymore. It just it just uses lava to
- 9:15call things and manage that manage the keys.
- 9:18And it also kind of, it limits your exposure to like dropping a
- 9:21mint through open claw because that's kind of the, the scary
- 9:24thing, you know, that like lava is kind of your budget.
- 9:26You're like, once you hit that $100 threshold, like I, I can't
- 9:30do it anymore. Yep, exactly.
- 9:32And that's like one of the big things that also folks used us
- 9:34for was like, oh, wait, not only do you guys enable my open
- 9:38collage to call every single service in the world, it's it's
- 9:42a literal natural budget. It's like what's in the wallet,
- 9:45right? And that is that was always the
- 9:47primitive that we thought was really important was like, you
- 9:50know, a lot of services right now are trying to make you learn
- 9:52new things and new ideas, right? Like they want humans to now
- 9:56learn what secret keys are. That makes sense for everybody
- 9:59in the engineering world. But Claude is spanning beyond
- 10:01that. Open claw is spanning beyond
- 10:02that. These are things that like
- 10:04humans don't naturally enjoy learning new things.
- 10:07So the more we can make it where it's like, no, I just, I got
- 10:10into Claude. I asked it to set something up.
- 10:12I only had to do one thing and set up one thing and it it had
- 10:16access to all the main tools I use.
- 10:18That's the powerful thing that we're trying to get to and make
- 10:20sure it's easy for folks to to be able to do.
- 10:23It just removes all the friction because I mean, what's important
- 10:26now, it's not engineering thinking.
- 10:28So anything that's like engineering and structure, it's
- 10:31it's I, I want to be thinking like a scientist.
- 10:33I want to be able to iterate and do experiments rapidly and very
- 10:37quickly. And I don't want to be limited
- 10:39by like, man, I got to sign up and I get a password and like go
- 10:43find API key. It's it's awful.
- 10:46Like truly like it slows you down.
- 10:48And one thing I've been talking, talking about a lot, and I
- 10:50wonder if you can relate to this, is that a part of like,
- 10:53you know, AI augmented engineering, There's kind of a
- 10:56depleting feeling to it. Like when I, when I would spend
- 11:00my days designing, it was like kind of like stimulating and
- 11:03like building and fulfilling. But like after a day of like
- 11:07sitting in Claude code, I'm like drained.
- 11:10And I, I, I've really, and, and it's not because of lack of
- 11:14enthusiasm. I mean, it's incredible.
- 11:16You know, it's like, it's so fun, but there's something about
- 11:19it. And so I've been trying to kind
- 11:20of figure out, and I think this might be a part of it that that,
- 11:23you know, Claude code's moving so fast that when you have to
- 11:27stop and like, like break flow and then go do this thing.
- 11:30And now it's a, it's a whole nother authorization and an
- 11:33e-mail blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
- 11:35Maybe that's contributing to it. Yeah, and like, I'll, I'll,
- 11:38there's two parts of that and I'll break them both down. 1 is
- 11:40like you're talking about something that's actually bigger
- 11:42than just managing keys, which is why am I technically doing
- 11:46less work but feel more exhausted?
- 11:49And then there's another thing here, which is like, why am I
- 11:52doing so much work managing these things?
- 11:54And like, let's go back to the scientific example you talked
- 11:56about and like using it like a researcher, right?
- 11:58Well, you know, oftentimes you want to research something where
- 12:01you need to figure out like what are the sources Claude can
- 12:03actually access, right? And so, you know, with a gateway
- 12:07like Lava, you can already access things like Pubchem,
- 12:10right? And that's all of the chemical
- 12:11compounded database in the NIH. You can just call it directly
- 12:15from our gateway. No new things to add, no keys to
- 12:18add. You can just call it right?
- 12:20Or like open library, right? Like a library catalog of every
- 12:23single scientifically researched work is right there.
- 12:28And so our goal is to take away that one fatigue for you where
- 12:32it's like we're just trying to give your agent super your
- 12:35powers, right? How do we give your agent access
- 12:37to all the things it needs? And then on the other side, make
- 12:40sure people are getting rightfully paid for that.
- 12:43The second piece is, why do we feel like we're still using up
- 12:48so much energy? And it's because you went from a
- 12:52really like an individual contributor to a manager.
- 12:57And that is actually a different type of stress.
- 13:01You know, if you think about it, one of the things that Claude
- 13:03empowers you to do is you can use actually you can.
- 13:06You can have multiple instances running and you can go do all of
- 13:11those instances in one sitting. You just have multiple terminal
- 13:13windows for it. But the problem with that is now
- 13:17you're not the the energy isn't doing the work.
- 13:20The energy is now understanding the context yourself.
- 13:23It's the mental energy of trying to make sure it's doing the
- 13:25right thing. It's in thinking through those
- 13:28problems like a manager as opposed to now like an IC.
- 13:31And that is the kind of step up of what worked.
- 13:34Looks like you're now a manager of instances as opposed to an IC
- 13:39working on one specific narrow project at a time.
- 13:42And I think that's a lot of why we kind of feel that exhaustion
- 13:45sometimes at the end of a day of working with these tools.
- 13:47Technically, they did so much work for us.
- 13:50And you know, we're still like, Oh my God, why am I so tired
- 13:53after hitting inter all day or, or, or or those things?
- 13:56And I think you're, I think. You're completely right.
- 13:59Dude one and two, which one do I do?
- 14:01And then for some people, they already have dangerously skip
- 14:03on, so they're not even doing that part.
- 14:07This episode is brought to you by a dangerous idea.
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- 15:01Now back to the show. Oh, and a, a part of it too is
- 15:04just like, I, I, I totally agree with you.
- 15:08You know, it's like, OK, I can do so much.
- 15:10So a lot more needs to go into like, what am I going to do?
- 15:13Because I'm going to get deep and then be like, ah, there's
- 15:16some elements. So there's kind of like this
- 15:18like feeling of like, Are you sure all the time kind of
- 15:21holding it with you, you know, similarly, it's kind of like
- 15:24using whisper flow. So like if I'm composing an
- 15:26e-mail, it's so fun, you know, but it's also, there's kind of
- 15:30like a, a ramp up. So I'm used to like kind of
- 15:33hunting and pecking, which means that I can kind of formulate my
- 15:36thought and my sentences as I'm moving, as opposed to like when
- 15:39you just hit the function key and I'm like, OK, now I'm
- 15:42talking. And it's like, you know, so it,
- 15:46it, it's a little bit different to like be like, OK, I'm, this
- 15:49is a little bit more spontaneous and I can, I just need to start
- 15:51talking. So I think there's like
- 15:54something similar that when I'm working on a project, I'm like,
- 15:56OK, this is going to take me 6 weeks.
- 15:58So I know I can kind of move the, the ship slowly and kind of
- 16:02massage it as we're going as opposed to six weeks now it's 6
- 16:06minutes. And it's like, OK, we got to
- 16:08have this point in the right direction right now.
- 16:10So a part of that might also be kind of like reverse spotlight
- 16:14bias, you know, where I also have a feeling of like I'm the
- 16:19last to know everything. So I'm like, Oh my gosh, lava.
- 16:23This is so cool. But everybody already knows
- 16:25about lava except me. Yeah, well, that's actually an
- 16:28interesting thing. Like you're there's this FOMO
- 16:31like that people feel right now and like to anybody listening,
- 16:35like if you're just trying to figure this stuff out for the
- 16:37first time, you're not behind. Like truly, if you're listening
- 16:40to this podcast, you're not behind.
- 16:42And you got to remember, social media is excellent at putting
- 16:47the thing in front of you that feels like it's like everyone
- 16:50knows that's just because it's gotten 100 likes.
- 16:53But like, if we zoom out here and there's hundreds of millions
- 16:57of people in the United States and billions of people in the
- 16:59world, you're not behind. And so, you know, I think
- 17:03there's a lot of like, Ryan, to your point, like a lot of panic
- 17:06around, like, am I behind? Do I not know these things?
- 17:08And it's like, you know, you can, you can get up and running
- 17:13so quickly. And like people forget that most
- 17:16institutions still have not implemented some form of actual
- 17:21like when people say their organization is using AI, they
- 17:25literally just mean right now that they just they've asked
- 17:27questions to ChatGPT or Claude. Like they don't mean a lot of
- 17:31these deeper things that we've been talking about on the
- 17:32podcast about how do I like actually stop running my
- 17:36day-to-day from like all these different app points like Slack
- 17:39and Notion and Gmail and just do it all from Claude code.
- 17:42No one's talking about like that's not most people.
- 17:46And so, you know, I think you're completely right, which is like,
- 17:48there's this like impending feeling of like, if you don't
- 17:51know the latest cutting edge thing, you're behind.
- 17:55And the answer is you're not. And the, but the big thing is,
- 17:58is how do you make sure you approach this stuff in a way
- 18:01that doesn't feel so daunting? And our that's that's what we're
- 18:06obsessed with is like there's just two very obvious big
- 18:10problems at the same time, which is that existing solutions need
- 18:15to figure out how to make their products very easy to use from
- 18:19what is a now a new interface to do it, which is like clawed
- 18:22code, clawed Co work, clawed desktop, all of those things.
- 18:25And secondly, how do they make it so that they still are
- 18:28getting the value out of it? But from the reverse side, how
- 18:32do you make it approachable, right?
- 18:33It's so powerful, but how do you slim it down and make it
- 18:36approachable for you? And that's really what we're on
- 18:39a mission to do. And a lot of that is just like
- 18:42even knowing how to ask the first question, like I'm, you
- 18:45know, I'm curious for you, how did you get into all like, how
- 18:47did you actually build your work flows?
- 18:49Like how did you get into it? Well, through curiosity,
- 18:56experimentation, and through this paralyzing feeling that I'm
- 18:59behind, you know, it, it's actually really encouraging to
- 19:03hear you say that. You know, I think the, the tone
- 19:06of the country as far as, you know, our corner of the nerd
- 19:10universe is I feel like I'm behind.
- 19:13And you know, I, I feel very fortunate that I get to talk to
- 19:17Mitchell and guys like you every single day and have great
- 19:20conversations and figure out what's going on.
- 19:22And I still need to be reminded that like, it's not too late.
- 19:25You're not behind it. You're like, just just keep
- 19:27moving. And I, you know, I have 4
- 19:29terminal instances open and I'm just ripping all day long, you
- 19:32know, now, no, so that's for me. Now I also because I'm putting
- 19:36out tons and tons of content, like a, a lot of friends and
- 19:39people reach out to me and they're like, hey man, I like
- 19:42what you're doing. This is what I'm doing.
- 19:44I feel behind. That is the tone.
- 19:47So for you, I know that like you on the cutting edge of this
- 19:50stuff and I know for a fact you feel like you're behind.
- 19:53So what do you do to kind of remedy that feeling inside
- 19:56yourself? Do you take deep breaths?
- 19:58Are you doing push ups in between phone calls?
- 20:00What's going on? Yeah, man.
- 20:02Well, I, I do. I try to work out every day at
- 20:04at night, you know, me and a couple teammates, we just go to
- 20:08the gym at 8:00 PM every day. We get a sweat in and then we
- 20:11come back to the office. So that's one, your health is
- 20:14important. Two, sometimes just just hop off
- 20:17the keys. Like take a day off of social
- 20:20media is usually one of the really good ones.
- 20:23And then you recognize, wait a minute, like life is good.
- 20:26And then the third one is, you know, it's, it's really one of
- 20:30the systems that we've built up here as an organization is it is
- 20:35a, an, an expectation for us to share what we are like what has
- 20:41helped us use tools better. So I think the best teams and
- 20:45organizations, they don't really set goals, they set systems.
- 20:49And the biggest system right now is actually knowledge share.
- 20:53We're in the early stage and tools change so much.
- 20:57They do change often, but like, you don't want to just
- 21:01necessarily always use the thing that is the newest piece because
- 21:04per everything in the world, it might have bugs, it might be
- 21:08broken. And also when you're building
- 21:10something, especially something that we'd call production ready,
- 21:14you, you can't really afford for it to break for your users.
- 21:17You can't expose their data in an unsecure way.
- 21:20There's things you actually have to do properly, but what we do
- 21:24oftentimes is as teammates are experimenting and are encouraged
- 21:27to experiment and do new things, they share their winnings back
- 21:31and they share their learnings back.
- 21:32And then what we do is effectively, you know, once a
- 21:35week we are like, well, what have we learned?
- 21:37What have we changed? How do we add that to core files
- 21:40and memory pieces that allow our whole organization to by default
- 21:44use something. So it's not AO you can choose to
- 21:48use something or not. It's like you, we have now
- 21:51implemented this into the defaults.
- 21:52So whether that's the MD files, whether that's like, hey, we
- 21:56actually don't use, you know, for example, like here at Lava,
- 22:00everyone works from command line.
- 22:01Like if you're someone who's like, no, no, no, like I want to
- 22:04write my messages in Slack and I want to type my Notion docs by
- 22:06hand. And like, I want to like do my
- 22:08emails by hand and I want to do all these things not in like the
- 22:12central terminal. We're like, hey, like that's not
- 22:14actually how we we do things here and we know that's going to
- 22:17be a learning curve up front, but it's also because we want
- 22:19you to use our own product. And so that's like a, a very
- 22:23important thing is you got to set a system and that system
- 22:26makes it less daunting because you didn't get this like hive
- 22:28mind of thing. For folks who are hobbyists or
- 22:30working on their own, though, the biggest thing I would say is
- 22:33like find a couple folks who you actually think are very
- 22:37interesting. Follow them on X or LinkedIn or
- 22:39whatever, whatever they're on, and just like follow those
- 22:42people. Like get a knowledgeable like
- 22:44reference that you think is pretty good at this stuff.
- 22:47And then just try to try out the things that they they suggest is
- 22:50probably the simplest way to do it.
- 22:52You're hearing that. Sign up for the newsletter at AI
- 22:54for founders.co because you'll find products like Lava every
- 22:58single week. Exactly.
- 23:00Coming to you hot off the presses.
- 23:04Amazing. OK, I love this.
- 23:06Now a part of, you know, feeling like you're the last to know it
- 23:10is largely the, the, the terrible thing about that is
- 23:13that there is so much to know and that when you're trying to
- 23:16think about products and solutions and you're, you're
- 23:20tackling different things. If you don't know what you don't
- 23:22know, then you can't even expand your consciousness to, to have
- 23:26that kind of information. So let's just not say
- 23:29consciousness, but let's just say data points.
- 23:31Now you mentioned some really cool APIs that you can query.
- 23:34So what are some other ones? Like what are what are some data
- 23:36sources that maybe I've never even thought about that with
- 23:39lava are now available to? Yeah.
- 23:42I mean like there's so many, like we think about it almost by
- 23:44use cases internally and you know many, many different ones.
- 23:49Like if you're doing go to market work, you can enrich data
- 23:52with Apollo. If you are needing to do neural
- 23:56web searches, we have exasearch that's native.
- 23:59If you need to obviously access LMS and models, every single LM
- 24:04and model is now accessible to your agents.
- 24:07So like, let's say you want to use use Claude code as your base
- 24:10coding agent, but you want to quickly consult with GT 5.4, but
- 24:15you don't have any setup. You can now say, hey, Claude,
- 24:19actually ask this question to GPT 5.4 and you guys can
- 24:23deliberate on it. You can do all of that directly
- 24:24from our product. So we really think about it by
- 24:28use cases, right? Go to market is one of the
- 24:30really, really big ones that a lot of people like to use our
- 24:32product for. So how do I use this product to
- 24:35send emails, draft like follow-ups, enriched contacts,
- 24:41do pipelines and store them? A lot of people do that through
- 24:44our gateway Finance is another pretty popular one right now.
- 24:48We have a lot of different financial tools and I think
- 24:52that's one that we've we've seen kind of continue to grow and
- 24:55it's because we have a lot of different like data sources.
- 24:57So I think I mentioned like Edgar before, we have like the
- 25:02BLSBLS data, a lot of the things that like you're often times
- 25:06going to be using as a as an investor, we can have prediction
- 25:09markets. Pardon me.
- 25:10Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so it's like those are the
- 25:14things that we really like to do.
- 25:16And even even tools like Frankfurter where you can get
- 25:18currency rates in real time and exchange rates in real time.
- 25:20Like we have a lot of different things like that.
- 25:23And one of the things that's pretty clean is you can
- 25:26literally just download the Lava MCP and literally just ask the
- 25:30question, what are all the tools you have for finance?
- 25:33And it will literally spit them out, right?
- 25:34Oh, we have Alchemy and Dune for crypto slash blockchain.
- 25:38We have polymarket, we have Kaushi, we have, you know, all
- 25:41of these different places where you can get data.
- 25:43Yahoo Finance like we try to, we have all of those pieces of
- 25:46information. So now instead of you having to
- 25:48fetch and do things, you can just call them directly from
- 25:51your cloud code agent. And you know, the value on the
- 25:54other side is we're just trying to help you.
- 25:56And as we see more and more of that traffic, what we do is, you
- 26:00know, we just work with the provider to say, hey, like these
- 26:03are your APIs and your services. If you want me to help you
- 26:06monetize on top of those, right? We're, you know, we can, we can,
- 26:10we can do that on your behalf, right?
- 26:11Like we can do all of that through our gateway.
- 26:14And so that is the the big thing we do.
- 26:17And like, that's what we enable you to do.
- 26:18It's because it's already priced in and because all of these
- 26:21folks who are using our product already have wallets, it's
- 26:24actually very, very easy to do that for our our customers, both
- 26:28end users and the merchants and service providers that are
- 26:31sharing their services. Amazing.
- 26:33OK, so something like this. I got the terminal open.
- 26:37I hit whisper flow. I'm like, OK, what I want you to
- 26:40do is pull Mitchell's headshot from Crunchbase.
- 26:44I want you to do iterations of of a sketch design.
- 26:49Give me one from I'll ChatGPT. Give me one.
- 26:52Give me two from Gemini. I want you to go into the
- 26:54script, add 20% compression to his voice.
- 26:57I want you to check pitchbook for his his leading investor.
- 27:01Give a little summary of that when you're doing the show notes
- 27:03and incorporate that from the transcription from the script.
- 27:06Exactly. And So what, and what really
- 27:09actually happens there on the back end is like, you know, we
- 27:12take your query, we look at that query and we say, OK, so he
- 27:15mentioned Crunchbase, he said voice notes that's probably
- 27:18going to need to use retail or 11 labs.
- 27:20We got that covered. And then it breaks down all of
- 27:23the pieces of that, then actually then sequences it for
- 27:26you and says, well, the order we need to do this in is AB and
- 27:29C&D. And then it says, OK, all of
- 27:31these services we have, let's just say we already have in
- 27:35memory that you prefer to use 11 labs for, for voice services.
- 27:40We'll do that and we'll break it down or you use retail for, for
- 27:44translation, we'll break that down.
- 27:45And then it does that automatically for you.
- 27:47So instead of you having to say, Oh, well, I don't have a, an 11
- 27:51labs account or a retail account or, or all of those pieces, it
- 27:54actually just goes into end. You were able to one shot that
- 27:56thing that you weren't able to do before because of the fact
- 28:00that, oh, I didn't have all the keys.
- 28:03I need to go sign up for the service.
- 28:04Claude got blocked because it's a paid thing, right?
- 28:07Well, you already have a wallet through lava.
- 28:09You've already have your credits.
- 28:11You can always recharge and add more.
- 28:13And then we also, you know, we're handling the API payments
- 28:16for you, right? Because for the service
- 28:18provider, we're already paying, they're, they're already
- 28:21charging us for what you're doing.
- 28:22So it's clean because it essentially allows both parties
- 28:27to both list their services and other people to use their
- 28:30services. It's that simple.
- 28:33So cool, man, it's so cool. It's and it's basically, you
- 28:36know, and even if you have accounts, you don't have to log
- 28:37in and toggle tabs and go back and forth and copy paste and
- 28:41blah, blah, blah. One shot the whole thing to your
- 28:43whole tech stack and then it delivers it back in one place,
- 28:47you know, and. And like, and if you think about
- 28:49it like what, what are we doing? Like, what are we?
- 28:50What is the point of like, you know, we're trying to move up a
- 28:54level of abstraction, right? Like natural language is the
- 28:57best form of coding. Natural language is the best
- 29:00form of working, right? Like when I feel connected to
- 29:03you, it's probably because we have some ability to connect
- 29:06through language. Oh, I learned a little bit about
- 29:09what you care about. I learned about what you
- 29:10understand. And the more we move towards
- 29:14that as the just the purest thing and not having to workshop
- 29:17and move tools around and do all those things, that is where we
- 29:20need to get. And our job is to make sure that
- 29:22for the average person who kind of like we were talking about
- 29:25feels behind, it's like, no, no, no, no, you're not behind.
- 29:28And actually, we actually now have the version.
- 29:30It's probably the cleanest for you all to use these services.
- 29:34And it's like, so actually you, you, you get a second mover
- 29:37advantage here. Other everyone like, you know,
- 29:40Ryan and and Mitchell ran in were like had to do all this
- 29:42annoying, annoying stuff. And then, you know, now there's
- 29:46all these services that make this easier for you.
- 29:49Like we have curious actually for you, I was wanting to say
- 29:52what's one of the most annoying things you've ever had to set up
- 29:54with with AI? Boy, the most annoying I, I
- 30:00think it's really probably just the daily toggle back and forth.
- 30:04I'm always looking for tools. That's like predictively telling
- 30:07me it's like, dude, I know you're going back to the
- 30:08spreadsheet. Do you just want me to automate
- 30:10that? Like predictive automations and
- 30:12all the toggle swapping. So like I'm already thinking
- 30:15about lava just just simply for for podcast production because,
- 30:19you know, all the tools make it very fast.
- 30:20But if I could just have my prompt that is just like, oh,
- 30:24it's a skills to be like I every time I stop hit recording, it
- 30:28just automatically produces everything.
- 30:30And then, you know, in an hour, I come back, I'm like, that's
- 30:33beautiful commit, you know, I mean.
- 30:37What? So I need to ask you then like
- 30:38what are all the tools you're using so we can make sure
- 30:40they're in a gateway so you're ready to go?
- 30:42Yeah. You know the big one for the
- 30:44podcast production is descript. Do you guys use have descript?
- 30:48We don't yet, but that's actually a huge one, like, and
- 30:51then the other thing too is I think the, the thing that's
- 30:53pretty valuable is so long as there's an API, we can do it,
- 30:56right? I think that's the, I think
- 30:58that's like the powerful thing. I think right now we're in a
- 31:00very interesting world where a lot of people are trying to
- 31:02figure out how to give agents money and cards and all of these
- 31:06things in order to enable them to pay for things.
- 31:08And we actually have a different approach.
- 31:10We're like, you know, usually people don't want to do all that
- 31:12stuff. If you just make it really easy
- 31:14where it's like I handle the payment and like, yes, I'm
- 31:17getting billed by descriptor, whoever that is.
- 31:20Everybody else gets to just keep doing what they're doing.
- 31:23We're the ones who help you use your APIs and make them agent
- 31:26friendly. And then we can do the rest.
- 31:28And then Ryan gets to then just say I created a skill and the
- 31:31skill already understands that it uses lava to call Descript.
- 31:35And then it's it's it's it's that pretty, it's that easy.
- 31:37So, so the answer is, yeah, we'll be on it.
- 31:40We'll have it by the end of the day.
- 31:44It's such a good point. You know, I mean, a couple of
- 31:46things come to mind. One, this is also very
- 31:48encouraging for people that feel like they're behind because to
- 31:50that point, you know, I had to bunt to get on first base.
- 31:53I had to steal second base and somehow it threw an air.
- 31:56I'm on 3rd. You can enter the game on third
- 31:58base right now, you know, So that's really exciting.
- 32:03That's a great way to put it. It's like, yeah, we we had to
- 32:06fight and claw. We still haven't even gotten a
- 32:07run in, but we had to fight and claw to get to 3rd and like now
- 32:10you just hit a triple and it was it was easy, right?
- 32:13It's. No problem.
- 32:14So, so that's that's cool. And I really like your point
- 32:17too. And I've spoke to folks that are
- 32:19building kind of like, you know, blockchain enabled, like
- 32:22wallets. So, and the use case is always
- 32:24like, oh, if you want to book your travel thing, it can pay
- 32:27for you or if you want to order DoorDash, it could pay for you.
- 32:31But for me, I'm like, well, one, I cook and two, I'm the only
- 32:34travel I do is hunting and fishing and you're not buying me
- 32:36tickets to that. It's like, that's not going to
- 32:38really help me. But if it removes barriers in my
- 32:41workflow and makes everything much easier, you know, so like
- 32:45literally I stopped recording and all the assets are ready to
- 32:48go. I mean, that is incredible.
- 32:51Like truly like that is that's the, that's the world I'm
- 32:54waiting to exist with AI, you know, it's like, it just, it
- 32:58understands me and then I can subtly move and change things
- 33:02with different skills and it's butter.
- 33:04Yeah, and like you're, you're, you're bringing out a good point
- 33:07too, is like, in some ways it, although people forget this,
- 33:10we're still in the toy face. Like people are still trying to
- 33:14like, build stuff for problems that don't really exist yet.
- 33:18Like, I still really don't need an agent to buy me a shirt.
- 33:22Like I still need to look at the shirt and see if I like the
- 33:25shirt. And then by the time I see that
- 33:27I like the shirt, I'm on Shopify's web page or I'm on the
- 33:31merchant's web page. And guess what?
- 33:32They probably already have my card saved on file.
- 33:35Like, so a lot of these things we're still, but people are
- 33:39still trying to like add new things that we don't necessarily
- 33:43need yet. And again, like, I think, you
- 33:46know, if, if people take away anything from this podcast, it's
- 33:49number one, just just dive in like it's you're, you're and
- 33:53you're not as behind as you think.
- 33:54And then #2 is just you're at the end of the day, you know,
- 33:58Ryan, I think you maybe made the most golden point.
- 34:01Screw having me on the podcast. I think you made the most golden
- 34:03point, which is that the beauty of AI is that companies are
- 34:07trying to make it easier and more accessible to use.
- 34:11So long as you're just staying abreast of like what's making it
- 34:13easier to use, that's probably the most important thing you can
- 34:17do, right? And and that's, that's really
- 34:20it. It's like, how are AI teams
- 34:23trying to make this actually fit back on the way people work
- 34:27today is going to probably be the the real unlock.
- 34:30And you know, I think that's AI think it's a very astute point.
- 34:33I think that's that's probably how this is going to end up
- 34:35looking. You know, let's, let's take this
- 34:38to the, the other side of this marketplace too, because where I
- 34:42see everything going is people are creating agents and there's
- 34:45going to be a, a marketplace for agents.
- 34:47Now, the use case I'm really excited about right now is
- 34:50podcast production, right? So it's like this, I feel like
- 34:53Lava could really, really help and speed me up.
- 34:55Now the, I have a, an advantage if I'm developing a agent for
- 35:00podcast production because I made 500 podcast episodes.
- 35:04So it's like I know what I want and what what Spotify wants and
- 35:08what YouTube wants and what Apple wants there.
- 35:11All these things go into that, such as to say I have domain
- 35:14expertise. So when I create this agent,
- 35:16it's going to be sick. And so once I have it kind of
- 35:19polished into place, it's like, OK, this is working great for
- 35:21me. Why not bring this to the
- 35:23market? So let's say, OK, now my podcast
- 35:26production agent I want to bring and give to other people like
- 35:29here's here's the stack, blah, blah, blah.
- 35:30I license it through lava. So now with Lava I can basically
- 35:35if it's API enabled then I can sell it to other people for a
- 35:39per use basis. The way that I was using all the
- 35:42lava tools as well. Is that kind of how it works?
- 35:44Correct. And you can also, if you want
- 35:46to. So think about it like this,
- 35:48let's just say you have a model where somebody can call your
- 35:52like. Let's actually really break this
- 35:54down to what agents really are. They're just chained calls on
- 35:58top of a APIs, right? And then like, you know, we then
- 36:02expose them to an end user in the form of a CLI or an MCP.
- 36:08But really all it is is there's APIs.
- 36:10We build layers to help people understand those AP is and then
- 36:15we sell them that that is. And then agents then use that
- 36:18understanding layer to call AP is that is really what is
- 36:23headless SAS. That's really what all of that
- 36:25is effectively doing. And so Ryan, you're, you're
- 36:28making this, this agent that is literally doing that.
- 36:31Then you're selling it off as this package of your your API
- 36:34calls that someone else can use in their day-to-day from Claude
- 36:37code. And let's just say you want to
- 36:41enable them to do 10 actions before they then have to pay you
- 36:46a subscription, right? And so those 10 actions are
- 36:49just, at the end of the day, API calls that are getting counted
- 36:53on a counter. And then after a certain amount
- 36:56of them, then you want to actually have a what is
- 36:59effectively a paywall of some sort, whether that's an e-mail,
- 37:02whether that's a hard block, like whatever you want to do.
- 37:05What Lava does to make that very easy for you is we've already
- 37:09tracked all of that usage per person.
- 37:13And then when they hit that paywall, we make it easy for you
- 37:16to monetize on top of that. And we can do that by just
- 37:21blocking the traffic. Now, one of the things that make
- 37:24that's very powerful is there's a trillion ways to do this
- 37:27already in the more traditional human billing sense.
- 37:30You can go use Stripe and set up a plan and count things and do
- 37:34all that for an agent that is actually your new pie, which you
- 37:38would love to monetize. Somebody finds you through an A
- 37:41clawed code agent and they start doing this.
- 37:44Well, there's a whole freemium problem, right?
- 37:47How are you now? You're gonna, they have to now
- 37:49go to your website, sign up, start integrating from there.
- 37:52Or were they able to just the agent be able to just
- 37:55autonomously do what it needed to do without interrupting a
- 37:58human? Because it notices.
- 37:59Wait, you already have access to this service in Lava?
- 38:03And then once you hit the limit, we just ask you, well, if you
- 38:07want to keep using Ryan's service, you have to actually
- 38:10pay $20.00 a month for it. And then because you already
- 38:13have a wallet, you add $20 into your wallet and we just remit
- 38:16that back to you Ryan. That's it.
- 38:18And so now you didn't have to learn how to make agents pay on
- 38:21the blockchain. You didn't have to learn any new
- 38:25primitives. You just built an you built AP
- 38:28is you didn't expose those AP is to agents or actually in matter
- 38:32of fact, you didn't even need to do it.
- 38:33We did it for you and now people are using your product.
- 38:36That is the magic of how we we build lava and the real pinch
- 38:40there isn't just for the AI forward companies like yours.
- 38:44It's it's for the legacy company.
- 38:46If you're a legacy company and you're trying to figure out
- 38:48right now how the hell do I monetize my service and how do I
- 38:52start converting all these agents who are using all my
- 38:54data? Well, the way you do that is you
- 38:57put your data on a service like ours where we can securely
- 39:01manage the flow of that traffic and also convert those those
- 39:05usage into payments. And that's what we do.
- 39:10So cool. And there's like an arbitrage
- 39:12play here too. I could see is your user and
- 39:15like a seller. If you're on both sides of the
- 39:17table, then basically you've got your, your lava balance and
- 39:20like, OK, I'm spending 10 bucks a month on lava, but I'm earning
- 39:2430 bucks from lava on the backside.
- 39:27You know, So as you're spinning up tools, then you're not kind
- 39:30of like reconciling like, Dang, I'm spending 500 bucks a month
- 39:33on all these AI tools. Like what's the return on that?
- 39:35It's almost. It's right there in the lava.
- 39:37Right there and you see exactly how much it's costing you.
- 39:40So the whole thing is the whole point of this is just like we're
- 39:43trying to turn what was your cost center into your revenue
- 39:46center. And we do that by on both sides.
- 39:49If you're just a user of tools, you now don't, it doesn't cost
- 39:53you to get up and running. If you're building a product,
- 39:56you can track everything that's happening in your product.
- 39:59You can label it so you can understand the cost of it and
- 40:02then you can serve it out. You can then charge whatever
- 40:04price you want to on top of it. And we do all of that for you in
- 40:07one fell swoop. And you can do all of that
- 40:10directly from Claude code. You can also do it if you want
- 40:13to. The old fashioned way you can go
- 40:14to. Www.lava.sosignup and like do
- 40:18all that lava dot. So I shouldn't say lava dot so
- 40:21and you can do all of that, but our goal is just to make this
- 40:24very simple for you. And like, we understand how
- 40:26people are building things these days, and we just want to make
- 40:28sure we're aligned with that. Yeah.
- 40:31Well, it sounds like, you know my assumption that there's going
- 40:34to be an agent's marketplace. I was behind and you, you were
- 40:39on top of it. But like, yeah, this is, this is
- 40:41exactly what is the necessary step as people are getting, you
- 40:45know, more and more nuanced with kind of their agent builds and
- 40:49they, you know, you, you can find very specific use cases.
- 40:52And I think that, you know, a year ago people were kind of
- 40:54talking about that, that like, hey, man, if you've got siloed
- 40:57data and you have like domain expertise around a very tiny
- 41:00thing like this is where it's going to be the, the solutions
- 41:03are going to arise. Because you, you know, even if
- 41:06you have 1000 customers, like the, the value of what you're
- 41:08providing is going to be huge. And if you just tee it up for
- 41:11them, you're like, boom, there you go.
- 41:12And again, you're, you already have the in, in that aspect, you
- 41:16already have the vault, you already have the walled vault.
- 41:18What you just need to do is you're just trying to figure out
- 41:20how do I expose this to an agent and get paid for it.
- 41:24And you know, the answer to that is like, well, there's, there's
- 41:27two parts of that. And we, we, we solve both of
- 41:29those for you as a, as a, as a, as a company, it's like 1, you
- 41:33need to make sure it's metered and measured so that they only
- 41:35get a certain amount. And two, they need to pay for
- 41:38every amount that they get, whether that's me paying on
- 41:41their behalf for you or that's them paying me.
- 41:44And I'm remitting it back to you.
- 41:45However you want that to happen. You need to get paid for what
- 41:48you're what's rightfully going through.
- 41:49And you need to be able to see how much usage is happening and
- 41:52how much is happening in real time.
- 41:54And that's what we really saw for the, for the service
- 41:56provider or the OR the OR the startup or the company, whoever
- 41:58that is that wants to list services.
- 42:02But, you know, we just see, we see that there's two things.
- 42:04And there's a is a very clean way to make this work for both
- 42:07parties without having to learn a bunch of new stuff.
- 42:10Cool. How's the remittance paid out?
- 42:12Is that AAPI call to my bank? We do old fashioned.
- 42:16We just we, we, we, we, we get a connection to your bank and then
- 42:19we, we have a Ledger for you because everyone's just got a
- 42:22wallet and then you can just cash out your wallet like you
- 42:25would with any other service. So very, very simple, I look
- 42:29like you're, you, you have a Venmo balance or a cash app
- 42:31balance. And that's somebody, imagine it
- 42:33like this, someone's Venmoing you.
- 42:35Over time, that balance is getting bigger and bigger and
- 42:37bigger. We have a saying, it's called
- 42:39being Venmo rich. And now you're Venmo rich.
- 42:41And then you say, you know what, let me cash this out to my
- 42:43actual bank. It's the same thing.
- 42:44And then of course for like, you know, for merchants, we have a
- 42:48pretty really, really, really ironclad record of payment,
- 42:52which makes it actually easy for you to do just like any types of
- 42:57financial operation to understand and do all your
- 43:00accounting and all those pieces as well.
- 43:01So like that's the, that's the other big thing there is that
- 43:04like a lot of tools weren't really built for like how to
- 43:07like do Rev rec on like usage based pricing and like more of
- 43:11this incremental based pricing. And you know, that's, that's
- 43:13another thing that we we try to nail for our customers.
- 43:16Yeah, man. I mean, it's worth the the price
- 43:18of payment if I just never have to touch Stripe again, you know
- 43:21what I mean? Yeah, Yeah.
- 43:22Tell me about it. And like this is, I think that's
- 43:24the thing that we love about this is it doesn't actually
- 43:25compete with Stripe. Like if you want to keep billing
- 43:28humans, great. Like that's the way to do it.
- 43:31I think the big thing we're saying is, hey, there's an agent
- 43:34that's trying to use your site right now.
- 43:36You have no ability to convert that agent who's currently right
- 43:39now trying to use your crap traffic into revenue.
- 43:42That's what our goal is. So that's actually just an
- 43:44additional revenue stream for you.
- 43:46It's not necessarily competing with your existing customer
- 43:48base. It doesn't have to like if you
- 43:50want to use us, of course you can use us for that as well.
- 43:52We'd love to work with you, but we also can help you just with
- 43:55converting more users and who doesn't want more money on their
- 43:57product. And that's really what we try to
- 44:00focus on on for that as well. It's like our goal is to try to
- 44:03turn what it's been like your biggest problem and to your
- 44:05biggest advantage. Right now, a lot of companies,
- 44:08especially legacy companies, are like, my biggest problem is that
- 44:11people are scraping my stuff and then they're like trying to
- 44:13resell it. And I have no ability to fight
- 44:16back. And what we try to do is say,
- 44:18hey, like, you know, well, a lot of that is because you're trying
- 44:21to bolt this off and like, you're doing that because you
- 44:24have no way to make the agent pay for the thing.
- 44:27And so if you actually put it in a secure store, right, agents
- 44:31are going to access information a lot.
- 44:33You didn't have actually a very secure pipeline for them to be
- 44:35able to go and pay you for it. And then we make sure you're
- 44:39getting paid every single time they're taking a piece of
- 44:41information. And what are the pricing rules
- 44:43around that? They're the same as what they
- 44:45are for your AP is. And that's really what we've
- 44:47been able to build and we make it very easy for you to to be
- 44:49able to adopt. Sounds like you might be talking
- 44:52about Apollo. I wonder, I wonder if if you
- 44:56have the capability to say like, OK, I don't want the
- 44:58subscription and all the things from Apollo.
- 45:00What I want to be able to do is filter Apollo's database and
- 45:03just get the top 12 examples on that query from that thing and
- 45:07bring that in and only pay for that.
- 45:08Is that a possibility? So the big thing with tools like
- 45:12Apollo is the one thing you have to make sure you want to do is
- 45:15we, there's a lot of like, you know, a lot of people right now
- 45:18who are very, we'll just scrape all these other tools and then
- 45:22we'll resell all their information.
- 45:24I think that that like can get you a lot of usage right now.
- 45:27I think that that in the long run, it's not very on the side
- 45:30of making a marketplace that's fair for both sides.
- 45:32So what we do is it just it's like per provider.
- 45:36So what we do is we will always make sure we're kind of doing
- 45:40the things that we know are like already use its base and pay as
- 45:43you go. And we'll make sure those are
- 45:45available in our existing product.
- 45:46And then like if you if like a service provider like Apollo
- 45:50then wants us to also be able to give people access or convert
- 45:54them to their like paid tiers and things like that, We'll just
- 45:56try to, we just try to make sure we work with them and make that
- 45:58very clean and easy. And so then it's like the other
- 46:01thing too is like we actually have a like, if you go to our,
- 46:05our website, you can actually go and request us to do your AP is
- 46:08for you. So it's like, let's say you just
- 46:10want to like make your AP is agent agentic.
- 46:12You can just go to lava dot. So log into your dashboard, go
- 46:17to storefront and you can just request us to do your AP is for
- 46:19you. It's that simple.
- 46:20And then we'll go and do them for you.
- 46:21We'll let them know when they're ready and then you claim your
- 46:24records and then you can see all of the data that's flowing
- 46:26through and you can start getting paid on it.
- 46:28So. Man, you said Venmo rich.
- 46:32You know I always keep 100 bucks in my Venmo wallet.
- 46:34You know why the? Venmo Rich.
- 46:38Well, it it's also to rub it into my son because we have $5
- 46:42bets that go back and forth all the time.
- 46:43And honestly, I probably owe. We never really pay out.
- 46:46It's just I bet you 5 bucks. I'm usually losing that bet
- 46:48these days. But he bet me 5 bucks that I
- 46:52couldn't run a 12 minute mile. And I was like, I was like,
- 46:56dude, 12 minutes. I was like, I was like, bro, I
- 46:59do yoga like everyday. He's like this not cardio.
- 47:01I'm like, dude, OK, OK, that, that that's insulting.
- 47:04I'm not, I'm not doing it for a bet.
- 47:06He's like, I'll bet you 100 bucks.
- 47:08And I was like, let's go to the track right now.
- 47:10Went to the track, I I did a 7 1/2 minute mile and almost died,
- 47:16but I made him pay me. Now, typically I wouldn't make
- 47:18him like pay on the bet, but I was like, no man, you need to
- 47:21learn a lesson that you could never count your dad out.
- 47:24OK, yeah. So now whenever like he's like
- 47:26questioning me on some stuff, I'll pull up that Venmo balance
- 47:28and be like, oh, need a stable. Wait, question for you.
- 47:31So did you like, rub salt in the wound by taking him out and get
- 47:34him like a burger at like, I don't know, like Shake Shack or
- 47:37something afterwards? Yeah, man, I still have money
- 47:39leftover. From I think for me, I think we
- 47:42got like a smoothie or something.
- 47:44But yeah, you know, Mrs. Estes was there too, so I want to make
- 47:47sure she witnessed this. And it was funny because he was
- 47:49like, I'll run with you. So he was on the inside of the
- 47:51track as I'm running. And he's like, you're not going
- 47:53to make it. You're not going to make it
- 47:54after like the first lap. He's like looked at the pace.
- 47:57He's like I'm. Let me, let me get that.
- 48:01Let me get, let me fire up the keys on that Venmo request.
- 48:04You know, it's funny, my dad always, he's his, his I never
- 48:07bet my dad. And the reason why is I remember
- 48:10when I was young, I bet him once and I absolutely lost.
- 48:14And he's like, I, I don't, I only bet on things I know I'm
- 48:16going to win and what, and that was a lesson I learned from him.
- 48:21He never. So then that was it.
- 48:23That was it for me and betting my pops.
- 48:24It was just like, I can't. And it's just it's not it's
- 48:27often not a a winning battle. I think it's it's actually so
- 48:30funny too. It's like, you know, it like not
- 48:33like outside of just all this AI stuff, it's like it's just so
- 48:36cool and interesting to see so many spaces take off, you know,
- 48:40like I think one of the things it's been interesting to see and
- 48:41it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out.
- 48:43You know, there's a lot of regulation things are going to
- 48:45still come down the pipe with AI, but you know, it's going to
- 48:47be interesting to see what happens also in this like, you
- 48:50know, prediction market space as well.
- 48:51When we're, when you're talking about betting, it's one of the,
- 48:54the, it's one of the things that people call from our gateway, a
- 48:56lot like they call Kaushi and Polymarket and pieces like that.
- 49:00And like, you know, it's, it's, it's going to get into an
- 49:04interesting point of like spirit of the law versus letter of the
- 49:07law and like, what are these things allowed to do?
- 49:11But I, it's going to be an interesting to see how that
- 49:12shapes out in the next couple of years when it comes to things
- 49:15like, you know, bets and, or predictions and, and, and things
- 49:18of that nature. Like the the the prediction on
- 49:22polymarket, you know that they took off, I think it was last
- 49:25week, which was the probability of nuclear war.
- 49:30Let's take that one off. Well man, you're bumming me out.
- 49:34Yeah, I know, But I guess isn't that what the Doomsday Clock is?
- 49:37Yeah, that's true. That's always, that's always
- 49:40ticking. So why?
- 49:41Why not, you know, you know, be like you just can.
- 49:44You can you can go out in the mushroom cloud with a big grin
- 49:47on your face. Oh, I made 100 bucks.
- 49:49Yeah, I've been made 100 bucks, but you know, let's, you know,
- 49:53we're on the side. We're we're on the side.
- 49:55I'll take the I'll take the under.
- 49:57It's not going to happen. We're going to we're going to be
- 49:59able to learn a lot of new stuff.
- 50:00Abundance, abundance, abundance. And you know, we humans, humans
- 50:06figure stuff out all the time. So we'll, I'll, I'll, I'll root
- 50:09for that side of humanity on that one.
- 50:11Me too Mitchell, this has been such a fun conversation.
- 50:14I really appreciate it. Congratulations on your awesome
- 50:16business. Thank you so much and Ryan,
- 50:19thank you so much for having me on the pod and everyone
- 50:21listening. Remember you're not that behind.
- 50:24If you do want to try to learn how to catch up a little bit on
- 50:26the end user side, just go to Lava dot SO and get signed up
- 50:30and you can install our MCP and and get running and give your
- 50:34claw code codex instant superpowers.
- 50:37And if you're a merchant or a business service provider
- 50:40wanting to make sure you can actually capitalize on agentic
- 50:44traffic and upsell that into the existing APIs and services you
- 50:47already have, you can also get signed up on Lava dot SO or you
- 50:51can always reach out to me on LinkedIn.
- 50:52All right, thank you guys so much.
- 50:54That's enough of my my pitch there.
- 50:56The big take away. Take a breather, get a workout
- 51:00in, get back on claw code, learn some new stuff.
- 51:04You're not that behind. Words of wisdom that I needed to
- 51:08hear today, Mitchell. I appreciate it.
- 51:10Before we get out of here, I want to give a quick shout out
- 51:12to Saint Jude's Children's Hospital, which I know is near
- 51:14and dear to your heart. I'll link to them in the show
- 51:17notes. I'll have the link to your
- 51:18LinkedIn and Lava, of course, in the show notes as well.
- 51:21Thank you so much, Sir. Awesome.
- 51:23Take care. You are about to spend anywhere
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- 52:13Go to ainativestudent.com because a diploma is a starting
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