Latest / Startup Dad / I Quit My 7-Figure Job To Take Back My Time | Peter Yang (Dad of 2, Behind The Craft)

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I Quit My 7-Figure Job To Take Back My Time | Peter Yang (Dad of 2, Behind The Craft) · Startup Dad

• [00:00:00] Peter Yang: When you're in the middle of like, doing some sort of career thing, you're like, "Oh, this sh*t is like so important. I'm changing the world." But I think after you're retired, maybe I'm wrong in this, but from what I hear from my parents, like nobody really gives a sh*t about where you worked or like what you actually did, the people who actually only give a sh*t are like your kids and your family, don't take them for granted and kind of treat them well. [00:00:19] Adam Fishman: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep in the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. What does it take to walk away from a seven-figure tech career? Not because something went wrong, but because it felt wrong on the inside. [00:00:39] Adam Fishman: Today, I'm joined by Peter Yang, creator, product leader, and host of Behind the Craft on YouTube, an amazing product builder channel with over 100,000 subscribers. Peter spent years climbing the ladder through consulting, banking, and eventually into senior product roles in tech, most recently at Roblox. [00:00:59] Adam Fishman: He's an immigrant from Canada with Ivy League credentials and an MBA to match, and he left all of it to bet on himself. He and his wife, an engineer at Microsoft, are raising two daughters, ages eight and four. Today, we talked about the moment Peter realized that doing two things at once was quietly breaking him. [00:01:18] Adam Fishman: Why walking his eight-year-old daughter to school 20 minutes each way became one of the most important decisions he's made as a dad. Using AI to code with his daughter and how she started building her own games by talking to Codex. How growing up as an Asian immigrant shaped a script he followed for decades before finally starting to question it. [00:01:37] Adam Fishman: The scarcity mindset that kept him job hopping even when his savings could have carried him for 10 years, and what it means to find your zone of genius by following curiosity instead of society's expectations. We ended with a heartfelt section on how his new career path has given him time to spend more of that time with his aging parents and turn their stories into lifelong memories for his daughters. [00:02:02] Adam Fishman: If you like what you hear, please subscribe to Startup Dad on YouTube or Spotify so you never miss an episode. You'll find it everywhere you get your podcasts. I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Peter Yang. [00:02:15] Adam Fishman: Welcome Peter Yang to "Startup Dad." Peter, it's my pleasure to finally have you on the show. So fun to hang out with you in the Creator Country Club WhatsApp group too, but, this is gonna be even better. [00:02:27] Peter Yang: Yeah, great to be here. I, I guess I finally qualify as a startup dad, so I'm glad to be here. [00:02:31] Adam Fishman: Well, you finally now have the time to do it, right? So we're gonna talk a bit about how you gave yourself that time. but I did wanna do a shout-out to Ben Erez of the, Creator Country Club community who brought us together. it's a who's who of, internet creators, who saw the light from, uh, being a product manager or what have you. [00:02:53] Adam Fishman: And, uh, it's a fun group. So thanks, Ben, for introducing me and Peter, so. [00:02:58] Adam Fishman: last year you made a boatload of money at your product job at Roblox. I think you wrote a post about this. You said, "I made seven figures at Roblox." and then you left. I don't wanna talk about money yet. [00:03:10] Adam Fishman: we'll come back to the money piece. but in the months before you quit, a thing that you wrote about was that you weren't having breakfast with your two daughters anymore, and you've got two girls, ages eight and four. so take me back to that time that sort of nudged you towards leaving your full-time job. [00:03:28] Peter Yang: well, first of all, I have to admit that I'm still not having breakfast with, with them. I'm, I'm kind of just doing my own thing now, but, uh-- 'cause in the morning, like, you know this as a dad, in the morning your, your head's the most clear. In the afternoon I become brain dead. So, like, I have to do my most important work in the morning, [00:03:43] Peter Yang: So unfortunately, I sacrifice the breakfast. But yeah, I mean, when I had the job and I was trying to do the same at the same time, it was just crazy, I wake up at 6:00 AM, try to get stuff done, try to get a workout in, and then I have to, you know, make their lunch and then drive them to school and then drive myself to work, and then just try to balance everything. [00:04:00] Peter Yang: It, it was just too much. So I did it for a long time. Did it for, I think two years or so. But it got to a point where if I kept on doing both things, it was hurting both the job and also my own business. So I had to make a choice [00:04:14] Adam Fishman: And you mentioned when you left that one of the highlights of your day now is that you get to walk your oldest daughter, your eight-year-old, to school. And that's like a 20-minute thing each way, as opposed to driving and like fighting traffic and probably not having high-quality conversations. [00:04:32] Adam Fishman: What do the two of you talk about on your walk to school? [00:04:35] Peter Yang: Yeah, I find that kids open up more when you're walking with them they have no distractions. They can't look at the iPad or anything. They have to just like talk, talk to you. so she tells me about her friends and her day at school. I basically learn about her life at school and, you know, the kind of like dramas maybe like some of her friend-friends have, and also what she wants to share with her friends. [00:04:55] Peter Yang: She's like a very caring kid. Like my, my second one is, is the opposite, but like my older one is very nice and caring. Like all her friends really love her and just kind of learning from that when I walk her to school, seeing her friends waiting for her at the door and giving her a hug is just like really great. [00:05:10] Peter Yang: You know? It kinda shows that my daughter is not socially awkward like me. She's actually pretty popular and she seems to be having a good life. [00:05:17] Adam Fishman: How long do you think she's gonna let you continue walking her to school? [00:05:22] Peter Yang: there was a few times where she was like complaining of like, "Hey, can we just drive to school? 'Cause like the walking takes forever." But I'm kinda like making her do it. I have to get my step sync too, so you know, we have to do it. [00:05:32] Adam Fishman: Gotta get your steps in. [00:05:34] Adam Fishman: so before you left, Roblox, you made your wife a promise. So your wife is also a very hardworking woman, not only a mom, but an engineer at Microsoft, which, you know, I've heard of. I've heard of that company. and sh- you made her a promise about being present, more present with your kids. [00:05:53] Adam Fishman: So aside from breakfast, how's that promise going? [00:05:56] Peter Yang: So I think the number one thing being present actually is the time that you spend with them, you have to focus on, on them, right? And I think both me and my wife had this problem where, you have your phone with you, it's just very hard to just not check your phone. Just check Twitter or check something, or check how your agents are doing. [00:06:14] Peter Yang: so recently or like, you know, like a few weeks ago, I decided to just like put my phone away. I actually bought this thing to lock it away. I think Len, you bought it too. It's like a box where like you set a timer and then you can't open it anymore. And, and that has really helped. [00:06:27] Peter Yang: So, so then I can like spend time reading with, with them. I can, you know, play Lego with, them, go out with them. And now my attention feels like focused and not distracted. [00:06:36] Adam Fishman: Yeah, you're not being pulled back to this device. Isn't it amazing that we have to literally buy a time-lapse safe in order to keep ourselves off of our phones? Like, that's how addictive these things are [00:06:46] Peter Yang: I think it's like really bad. And I think it got worse with like all the AI agents doing work for you. So you can... Like before, it was just using my phone to like browse social media, right? Which is like not productive. But now I can like justify to myself that like, I'm just getting my agents to work for me. [00:07:00] Peter Yang: So like I'm actually being productive." But, but like I, I think it's just bad. It's equally bad [00:07:05] Adam Fishman: has the phone and like putting away the pull of the phone, has that been like the hardest transition or the hardest part of your transition from the old, you know, Roblox guy to the current creator life? [00:07:19] Peter Yang: I think so because, uh, you know, you have a product job, you gotta be responsive on Slack, you gotta like look at your emails, look at the Google Doc comments and that kind of stuff, right? [00:07:28] Peter Yang: but now I'm just making YouTube videos, so like there's nothing like super urgent, you know, that I have to take care of. [00:07:34] Peter Yang: So it doesn't really make sense to have the phone with me at all times. [00:07:37] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Do you ever feel like you have like, "Oh, if I'm not on my phone, I have to like respond to somebody in the community that's commenting on my stuff or anything like that"? Like do you feel the real-time pull of that sort of thing too or no? [00:07:52] Peter Yang: no. I mean, I, care about my community, but I don't care about them as much as my kids. So no, I, I, I, [00:07:57] Peter Yang: don't feel that [00:07:58] Adam Fishman: That's a great answer. [00:08:02] Adam Fishman: I did not-- That was not a planted question, by the way, so, okay, I wanna go back in time, to your childhood. So let's go back, like, three decades. and there's a kid in Canada, and he's sitting, at an early Mac computer. by the way, I also had an early Mac. [00:08:16] Adam Fishman: I had an Apple II, uh, when I was a kid. he's building text-based RPG games in HyperCard. I don't even know what HyperCard is. I had to look that up. so that kid is you. tell me about that kid. Like, what were you building? [00:08:29] Peter Yang: yeah, I was building, you know, like those really old text-based RPGs where it's like multiple choice, and then you can kind of go in different directions. And HyperCard is basically just like, like each card is like some text, and there's like if-then statements for where you want to go. And I remember I was building some sort of dungeon crawler, like, 'cause I was also reading these like choose your own adventure storybooks, and I found them really interesting. [00:08:50] Peter Yang: So I would just spend my free time building, these kind of things at, school. but I guess I wasn't courageous enough to turn it into an actual career, you know? [00:08:58] Adam Fishman: Yeah, [00:08:59] Peter Yang: kind of like my regret, you know? but I guess it's not too late. But, um, if there's any kids listening to this podcast, you know, just like pursue your curiosity, do more of what you enjoy doing, and you'll probably make money from it at some point. [00:09:11] Adam Fishman: Well, and you also had like some added friction. You had somebody in your life that was telling you that building games wasn't a career. So who said that to you? [00:09:19] Peter Yang: I think gaming is a big part of my childhood. even in high school, I remember, like, I was obsessed with StarCraft, I actually remember hiding in the closet after my parents went to bed to, like, come out and then play StarCraft StarCraft all night. so yeah. So, like, my parents were like: "Wait, why are you playing video games all the time? Like, why aren't you going to class?" Oh, this, this is after I'd gone to col-college. It got, it got a lot worse after I got in college. I was like: "Okay, I'll just sit at home and play video games all, all day." [00:09:44] Peter Yang: and yeah, they were like: "This, this stuff is, like, very not productive." but you know, gaming is like the largest entertainment industry now. So it's like it actually is productive, I think. I have very good memories from doing [00:09:53] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [00:09:54] Adam Fishman: you're a kid and people are telling you, like, you can't make a career out of, gaming or building video games or playing them or whatever. So then you, follow this path. You go to the Ivy League school, and then you get an MBA, and you go into consulting and banking, like very not gaming careers, right? [00:10:14] Adam Fishman: Was there always this sort of like pull back to gaming? And were-- I guess, were you doing that stuff to satisfy somebody else or to satisfy yourself? [00:10:24] Peter Yang: I think very much to satisfy society's expectations of me, right? Like [00:10:29] Adam Fishman: Hmm. [00:10:30] Peter Yang: you know, uh, 'cause I don't actually enjoy doing banking or consulting, you know? [00:10:34] Adam Fishman: I don't know [00:10:35] Peter Yang: I, yeah, I don't actually enjoy doing any of the stuff. And the Ivy League stuff was fun, but, like, it cost a lot of money. It cost my parents a lot of money. [00:10:42] Peter Yang: so I think it's mostly because I was a little bit lost. I was trying to figure out, you know, people telling me like I'm a smart kid, you know, I got good grades, I should, like, do something productive. And then I was looking around at what, uh, the other college kids were doing, and they were all going to consulting and banking. [00:10:55] Peter Yang: I was like, "Oh, I sh- I should do that too." like I don't want to stereotype, but especially for Asian people. Like, Asian people are just used to, like, getting good grades and kind of like hitting that next level. And and, like it's just like another thing to aim for without reflecting on if you actually want it or not. [00:11:09] Peter Yang: actually extends all the way into like the tech career. Like, you know, it's like another thing to aim for to try to climb the ladder or get into FAANG or something without reflecting on do you actually want this or not. [00:11:21] Adam Fishman: Yeah. I wanna talk about that career ladder in a second, but I have one other question before we get to there, which is in your post, and you've written about this before, you mentioned that like, okay, so you went to work, then you went to work at, Roblox, and you have all this sort of job security. [00:11:38] Adam Fishman: like from the outside, you have arguably an in-incredible career, right? And a lot of people would be like, "Oh, consulting, banking," like great jobs. Like he's got everything he needs. [00:11:49] Adam Fishman: But one of the things that you mentioned is that, having job security can become a scarcity mindset. and I was reflecting on that and I wanted to ask you what, that statement means. [00:11:59] Peter Yang: I think a scarcity mindset is like always imagining the worst case outcome. I feel like my dad has some of that too. He always imagined the worst case outcome. So as, as a result, I've always kind of like went from one job to another job without any real breaks in between. because I, I figured, you know, hey, as the head of the household I need to make income, right? I need to provide for my family, and I don't want to get deported back to Canada [00:12:24] Peter Yang: like for a while I had like H-1B and other, other stuff too. so yeah, that's the scarcity mindset. [00:12:29] Peter Yang: but actually like when I really thought about it, like from a financial point of view, I was already like, like if I didn't have a job, I can like survive on my savings for like 10 plus years. So it's not actually a financial risk. So if it's not a financial risk, then what kind of risk is it? [00:12:43] Peter Yang: It's kind of like a mental psychological thing, [00:12:45] Peter Yang: it's not a real risk. [00:12:46] Adam Fishman: Yeah, back to that career ladder thing. You described growing up, you thought that there were basically like two endings to a career. One was you climb the ladder until you get to the very tippy top, and you're the CEO of the company. Or the other side of that is that you found a company, you raise money, and you build a generational company, [00:13:10] Adam Fishman: And at some point, you probably came to the realization that there's more possibilities than that because you're doing something other than those two things. So when did that realization like come to you? [00:13:22] Peter Yang: I think it's actually came from spending a lot of time on Twitter and, and [00:13:26] Adam Fishman: That, that may be the first time anyone has ever said that. [00:13:33] Peter Yang: came from, from Twitter and getting to know these like indie hackers and builders that kind of just like-- like look at Peter Steinberger, right? he's just some random guy from Europe and just built a bunch of these tools and like took off, OpenCall took off, and then he just got hired by, you know, OpenAI and like now he's having a great, great life. [00:13:50] Peter Yang: And I feel like, no one told me as a kid... Like when I was a kid, my parents were like, "Hey, you gotta get into a good school, you gotta find a good job," blah, blah, blah. But no one said, "Hey, why don't just go build a profitable business and then you can skip all that bullshit in between." [00:14:03] Peter Yang: You can just skip it, right? Right? You just build a profitable business. I mean, it's not easy to build a profitable business. It's not easy to sustain it. But if you can figure out how to do that, and as part of doing that, I, I really do believe that you build like real skills to like build and to sell that will like help you throughout your life. [00:14:18] Peter Yang: So like that's kind of what I tell my kids these days. I mean, I don't think they listen, but I'm like, "Hey, I don't actually care if you get straight A's or whatever. I, I just want you to put yourself out there, maybe put like a lemonade stand out there or something. [00:14:29] Peter Yang: like learn to, you know, sell stuff, learn to fail, and like kind of learn what building something useful actually means." [00:14:36] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Oh, that's good foundational advice for kids. [00:14:40] Adam Fishman: So when you left, Roblox, you-- I think it was maybe, what, June or so, you published, this piece and video about betting on yourself. and one of the things that you talked about, you sort of walked through five principles principles that you used to make the decision to leave Roblox and, and to go bet on yourself. [00:14:57] Adam Fishman: So can you tell me and o- and the listeners, like, what were those five principles? [00:15:02] Peter Yang: Okay. I, I need to-- I remember three of them. I [00:15:05] Adam Fishman: We'll [00:15:06] Peter Yang: I need to look up-- I need to look... Okay. and for principles, just like when building a product, I like principles that actually help you make daily decisions, right? Not much like pie in the sky stuff. [00:15:16] Peter Yang: So the first one is just like, it's pretty cliché, but it's like go where work feels like play. It's like the mistake I made when I was a kid. I didn't follow my game development dreams. But like kind of just do more of what you actually enjoy doing, And I feel like there's like, as a creator, as like s-a semi-successful, like, you know, D-tier creator, I feel like there's like a lot of things pulling at my attention, dude. [00:15:37] Peter Yang: Like I can go off and teach a live course. I can, like do enterprise training. I, I think we talked about this. And stuff that I might actually not enjoy doing is kind of like having meetings all over again. So I have to kind of remind myself, hey, just like go where work feels like play. [00:15:50] Peter Yang: Go do more of what you actually enjoy doing. second one is keep the main thing the main thing, which is like very similar. right now I have this YouTube, and I have a newsletter, it's better focus on my attention to make both more valuable than to spin up like a third or fourth thing, [00:16:05] Peter Yang: and also I think, thinking about the business as like compounding loops. Like how can the YouTube help the newsletter? Like the YouTube is like top of funnel to get people to subscribe to your newsletter, and a newsletter is maybe something to build trust to get people to eventually pay for something that I produce, right? [00:16:21] Peter Yang: Or, like even for sponsorships, how can I find brands that build products that I actually really enjoy using so that it doesn't make me uncomfortable to pro-promote them? Like it kind of just feels na-natural to promote those brands. So I think about like as like a bunch of reinforcing loops is the way [00:16:37] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [00:16:38] Adam Fishman: I wanted to ask you about that piece on brands because, you probably much like me, probably even more so you, must get pitched by brands all the time that are like, "Hey, can you talk about my product? Can you use this product?" Like whatever. And I imagine you have to continue to maintain like a pretty high bar for what brands do I actually feel comfortable talking about. [00:16:58] Adam Fishman: I'm sure it's rooted in like something that you would use and find valuable. And so is that like one of your criteria there around like brand sponsorship? [00:17:07] Peter Yang: yeah, I kind of came to this journey the hard way. So like at first I was working at an agency, which is a great agency, but I just ha- I was promoting like a lot of brands that, I didn't really believe in. Like, like there's literally, I mean, maybe kind of cuts out, but there's literally a brand called Bland. [00:17:21] Peter Yang: Like the, the company name is Bland. Bland. And I was like, "Okay, go check out Bland, guys. Check out Bland." and it just kind of feel wrong, So now I only promote a few brands. I try to sign long-term deals with, with them and like, you know, brands like Granola, like for mini notes that I use a lot, Linear, right, that I use with my, video editors to manage everything. [00:17:42] Peter Yang: So like yeah, brands that I actually use and also have like a similar, taste and craft el- element [00:17:48] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Yeah. [00:17:50] Adam Fishman: [00:17:50] Adam Fishman: speaking of the opposite of craft, you've used a term that I love because I too have used a similar term, which is product management theater, and you used it in that essay that you wrote about leaving your, your job. I absolutely love that term. for folks who have not heard of that term before, can you describe it and I guess tell me about your first performance of product management theater? [00:18:14] Peter Yang: I hope it's getting a lot better now because with all the AI stuff, people wanna move fast. But like a few examples of, of product management theater, right? Like, I literally got the feedback in one of my performance reviews that like, "Hey, Peter, you're doing a great job, but you need to have more meetings. [00:18:27] Peter Yang: You need to have more meetings, and you need to like meet these other teams and like, you know, have lunch with them, build relationships so that, uh, when you ask them for something, they'll be like, 'Okay, I'll, I'll do it for free.'" Right? Which is probably good advice, but like, I just didn't feel right, like, you know, have more meetings. [00:18:41] Peter Yang: Like the whole theater around, different layers of review. Like you put together this like Google document for like the grand strategy, and then you gotta review your director, and then get some feedback, and the VP get some feedback. And just like trying to guess what the CEO wants is, in my opinion, product management theater. [00:18:57] Peter Yang: and like we'll get to this example, but like, you know, I was working at a company where we had like a four-hour OKR alignment meeting. that was kind of my breaking point. That was, that was my breaking point. And that meeting actually started the whole creator journey that I was on because I, left that room with just like, like just super depressed I'm like I just literally wasted four hours of my life. [00:19:14] Peter Yang: I need to find some agency back in what I do. [00:19:17] Peter Yang: Yeah. [00:19:19] Adam Fishman: Yeah. And you left that room and went and wrote one of your first newsletter articles, I think, right? 'Cause you're just like, "I gotta ship something." [00:19:24] Peter Yang: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I, I wrote some newsletter article about the creator economy I just need to get something out there 'cause like, just trying to negotiate with other PMs about 2% versus 3% is, is just too much. [00:19:34] Adam Fishman: No. I would have my head in my hands in the, at the end of that meeting. Like, that would be, that would be rough. [00:19:40] Adam Fishman: okay, so I wanna play devil's advocate a little bit with you on going out on your own. so let's say there's a listener who's got a mortgage and a bunch of expenses, and they're listening to this conversation and they're hearing the two of us talk, and they're yelling at the screen and they're like, "Oh, Peter, it's easy for you to say this because, you know, you didn't leave your company until your own solo thing was, paying you enough money, and it took you years of 6:00 AM mornings to get there." [00:20:08] Adam Fishman: Like, what do you tell that person to give them confidence? they're probably jealous, but what do you tell them to give them confidence that, like, this is a path that you too can pursue? [00:20:20] Peter Yang: I think number one, you gotta again go work where it feels like play. I don't think everybody enjoys wasting time posting on Twitter all day, but I, I enjoy it so you gotta do that. number two, I'm gonna give you some like counterintuitive advice. Well, maybe it's not counter-- like number two I think is you really have to talk to your spouse, you know? [00:20:34] Adam Fishman: Yeah [00:20:35] Peter Yang: my wife is my real boss, in a relationship. maybe she won't say it that way. and she kind of gave me a number, like some sort of, total cop number to hit in my business before I could just leave. Because, [00:20:46] Peter Yang: you know, I have mortgages to pay too, So that's number two. [00:20:49] Peter Yang: And number three, I would say is, I think it's really important to live within your means. I think a lot of people in big tech, they got the fancy title and they got the million dollar or couple million dollar pay, and they're like, "Okay, let me go buy a $4 million house," or like, "Let me go send my kids to private school," like both kids. [00:21:06] Peter Yang: And then if the economy turns and like the AI stuff comes, then you're kind of screwed, right? Because then you kind of have to-- If you lose your job, then you're screwed. You don't have any flexibility, So like I think live within your means. Like I'm, I'm like super cheap just like not signing yourself up to have a lot of expenditures will give you more flexibility in what you want to do. [00:21:23] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Okay, I want to end this section actually not with a question, but I just want to give you some thanks because in the video and the newsletter that you wrote and published when you left Roblox, you wrote a thing about betting on yourself and that the line was that nobody wants their tombstone to read that they got divorced and neglected their family, but at least they made VP at Meta. [00:21:47] Adam Fishman: and so I'm really glad. One, I laughed out loud when I read that and when I saw that in the video. So I just want to say thank you for putting that out there because it captures so much of what I think people lose sight of, these days because it is easy to climb the ladder, and it is very rewarding and oftentimes like the family stuff can be really hard, and not always that rewarding, at least in the moment. [00:22:11] Adam Fishman: So you said the quiet part out loud, so I, I appreciate you saying that. So, [00:22:16] Adam Fishman: uh, All right. [00:22:19] Adam Fishman: I want to talk about something that's really fun. I want to talk about teaching your kids to build. So you yourself are a builder. You're constantly building stuff with AI. You and I have traded notes on things that we built. [00:22:28] Adam Fishman: we're both sort of building health trackers and things like that, which is fun. and you and your eight-year-old daughter built an animal multiplication game together with Codex, and then she built her own makeup game all by herself just talking to the computer because obviously she's eight. [00:22:44] Adam Fishman: She probably doesn't really know how to type on a QWERTY keyboard or anything yet. I want to show the makeup game that she built, but first I wanted to ask you a very growth PM thing, which is which one of those two games has the better retention curve? [00:22:57] Peter Yang: Uh, well, I think the players are just me and my daughter, so I don't, I don't know which game has the retention curve. I guess both have a hundred percent retention, so [00:23:04] Adam Fishman: Amazing. Amazing. You should definitely IPO now. how proud was your daughter that she built that makeup game? [00:23:11] Peter Yang: she was pretty proud. So I gave her like my own laptop with Codex installed and my account. I'm like, "Hey, go do whatever you want and go build whatever you want." And yeah, she came over with her laptop and showed me the game she complained like some of the graphics weren't quite right and she wanted to improve stuff. [00:23:26] Peter Yang: But, uh, yeah, she was pretty proud and I was even prouder that she was able to build this all by herself from [00:23:30] Adam Fishman: Okay. Do you have the game handy? Do you wanna pull it up and show it in a, in a screen share? [00:23:35] Adam Fishman: And just to preface this before you share it or while you're in the process of pulling it up, this is an eight-year-old, doing this with Codex, with like an incredibly powerful AI tool, and she's just talking to Codex using like the ChatGPT voice mode basically. [00:23:51] Adam Fishman: This is her makeup game. So what are we looking at here? [00:23:54] Peter Yang: so this is a game to do a makeup and nail makeover, right? [00:24:00] Peter Yang: think she got ChatGPT images to generate some pictures for her. And the first thing you gotta do is work up a lather. so I guess you gotta shampoo your hair. Okay, so there we go. Gotta shampoo your hair. [00:24:10] Peter Yang: And then next you gotta shower. [00:24:12] Peter Yang: Okay, let's shower her hair [00:24:14] Adam Fishman: By the way, I'm noticing there's a progress bar. There's like a progress circle at the top, so she's built in the gamification and the like goals and stuff [00:24:21] Adam Fishman: into this. [00:24:22] Peter Yang: if she built this or Cody's built this, but yeah, it, it looks great. [00:24:25] Adam Fishman: it happened. Yeah. [00:24:27] Peter Yang: Uh, yeah, you got comb, comb out the tangles. did it actually work? I don't know if it worked, but [00:24:32] Peter Yang: yeah, comb the tangles. Make the hair silky straight. Oh yeah, now it [00:24:35] Peter Yang: looks a lot be- better. a lot better. And then, and then, uh, hair waver. I don't even know what that is. What's a hair waver? [00:24:41] Peter Yang: Oh, okay. [00:24:42] Peter Yang: Make it, make it-- Give it some volume. Okay, got it. And then, uh, let's see. Hair color. Okay, so we can pick hair [00:24:48] Adam Fishman: We got to do, what do you even think? Pink, purple? [00:24:51] Peter Yang: Uh, I don't know. Okay, so now we have to clean her face. So something happened to her face. She got like pimples everywhere. So put some bubbles on her face, [00:25:01] Adam Fishman: Oh my God. [00:25:03] Peter Yang: Yeah. Uh, [00:25:04] Adam Fishman: is an eight-year-old. [00:25:06] Peter Yang: Okay, this is not working, so I don't know. There might be a bug. Um, and then-- Oh, oh my God, now there's like all kinds of stuff. [00:25:11] Adam Fishman: Oh, we don't have to do all of this, but [00:25:13] Peter Yang: like f-- [00:25:14] Adam Fishman: some makeup. Okay, cool. [00:25:16] Adam Fishman: some [00:25:16] Adam Fishman: foundation. Yep. Yep. Oh yeah, there it is. [00:25:21] Adam Fishman: Yep. [00:25:21] Peter Yang: yeah, there's like a progress bar. Oh yeah, okay, I can, I can, [00:25:23] Peter Yang: see it happen. [00:25:25] Peter Yang: And then there's nails, Wow this is like pretty fancy. [00:25:29] Peter Yang: Um, [00:25:30] Adam Fishman: pick a [00:25:30] Adam Fishman: color? Yep [00:25:31] Peter Yang: and, and she was complaining to me how... Oh, I think she fixed this, actually. She was complaining to me how ChatGPT just added some sort of like a rectangle on top of this thing, and she [00:25:39] Peter Yang: didn't like that. So she gave it some feedback, and now it looks like it actually changes the color of the nails. [00:25:43] Peter Yang: I actually don't know how she did this. Maybe it's like [00:25:45] Peter Yang: a new image. Yeah, that's pretty fan- pretty fan- fancy. Add [00:25:49] Peter Yang: some [00:25:49] Peter Yang: glit- glitter. [00:25:50] Adam Fishman: Yep. [00:25:51] Peter Yang: Okay. And then, [00:25:52] Peter Yang: And [00:25:52] Adam Fishman: you're done. [00:25:54] Peter Yang: and then you're [00:25:54] Adam Fishman: Wow. Wow. Amazing. Now if she just builds in some viral sharing, it'll be the number one app in the App Store. [00:26:02] Adam Fishman: well, cool. Thank you for demoing that. that was in-incredible. And I'll just remind people, like, that is better than a bunch of games in the iOS App Store, and your daughter is eight years old and doesn't know how to type. [00:26:13] Peter Yang: Yeah, yeah. I think the trick is to give them a laptop. Don't give them the iPad. The iPad's terrible. [00:26:17] Adam Fishman: Yes [00:26:18] Peter Yang: give them a laptop, uh, and they can actually use it to build, build [00:26:20] Adam Fishman: Yeah. And so you build a lot of, of stuff with your, daughter. when did the weekend game building become like your thing that you two do together? [00:26:31] Peter Yang: is good at teaching her like, actual grade school stuff like math and, uh, [00:26:37] Peter Yang: learning how to read and stuff. Yeah. [00:26:40] Peter Yang: Yeah. [00:26:40] Peter Yang: So like that kind of stuff. But you know, like I'm like AI pilled. I'm like doing stuff all the time. And I think one of the most practical skills, almost as important as reading and doing math, is just learning how to use the stuff, [00:26:50] Peter Yang: I don't think it's actually that difficult to learn. It's just like talk to the AI and it does stuff and you give it feedback, So I want her to get exposed to this stuff early Cause, 'cause then she can express her creativity kind of like build stuff and like make, make it fun. [00:27:02] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [00:27:04] Adam Fishman: So I wanna ask you, this is a funny lead into this next question, because when you told me this story, I, I laughed about it. But then I thought about it and I, it formed a question for me. so your daughter's a very critical, product manager. the most critical product review that I've heard from someone was your daughter talking about Codex, and she said, "What do you mean it can't build a pet dragon-raising game instantly?" [00:27:26] Adam Fishman: So, okay, cool. That's a high bar. And then she followed up and said, like, she was bored, right? So, like, couldn't do the pet dragon game right away, so she's bored now. the serious question in this, after I laughed about the pet dragon game, because by the way, that every kid will probably say that same thing at some point. [00:27:43] Adam Fishman: What do you think it says about the expectations that people are gonna have with AI or maybe already have with AI today and [00:27:51] Peter Yang: Yeah [00:27:52] Adam Fishman: going forward? [00:27:53] Peter Yang: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think the explanation is that this stuff responds instantly. Like, it kind of creates stuff out of magic, like thin air, what they want. people like us are debating whether they should read the code or like do code reviews. [00:28:05] Peter Yang: I don't think the next generation cares. Like, I think this whole stuff is abstract away, and they just wanna get the result that they want in-instantly. [00:28:12] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Yeah [00:28:14] Peter Yang: kind of like the instant gratification of like the YouTube Shorts and stuff, but like, for building. [00:28:18] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [00:28:19] Adam Fishman: You, think very particularly that talking to computers, learning to create and code with AI specifically, those are some of the only few areas of education that are actually gonna matter very much in the future. So what makes you believe that? [00:28:37] Peter Yang: that's actually a really good question. So I do think you have to understand the fundamentals. Like, uh, you can't just ask AI, "Hey, what's three times three?" You gotta understand like how this stuff works behind the scenes a little bit, right? So you gotta do some of the manual stuff. But I think very much just like using a calculator and everything else, like the manual stuff is gonna be abshed away. [00:28:55] Peter Yang: And it's just about like figuring out how to give directions to AI. Or maybe when she grows up, who knows what's gonna happen? Maybe AI will be giving directions to us. [00:29:03] Peter Yang: Like, I have [00:29:03] Adam Fishman: be. [00:29:04] Peter Yang: what's gonna happen, dude. [00:29:05] Adam Fishman: It's very Black Mirror of you. We'll see. [00:29:07] Peter Yang: Yeah. [00:29:08] Peter Yang: I think the ideal outcome is there's like prosperity everywhere because of AI and, I can keep making my Hypercard games, and my daughter can keep making her Makecard games and just doing whatever we want for fun, [00:29:18] Adam Fishman: Yeah. and the money just comes in. Just maybe we don't even need money anymore. Who knows? [00:29:22] Adam Fishman: so when an agent is writing all of the code and you're just talking to it, what do you notice that your daughter is actually learning in that moment? So she's not learning how to code because the agent's doing that piece, but what-- She's definitely learning something there. [00:29:42] Adam Fishman: So what are the things that she's learning when she's doing that? [00:29:45] Peter Yang: I think she's learning how to communicate, maybe not with a human, but with an agent and kind of like, as PMs we always, give feedback about like, be very specific, use specific numbers, be very clear, be very concise, And I think my daughter is learning how to express herself in a very similar way just with the agent. [00:30:04] Peter Yang: but she's also learning about patience, right? Because the agent takes longer than she wants. yeah, just like learning how to give feedback and learning how to communicate. [00:30:11] Adam Fishman: Does she say please and thank you to the AI? have you heard that happen or is that a thing that i-is a [00:30:18] Peter Yang: Yeah. Yeah. [00:30:19] Peter Yang: yeah. No, she, she is very polite, so yeah, she always says please and thank you. uh, she's Trisha as her friend for [00:30:26] Adam Fishman: Oh, okay. [00:30:27] Adam Fishman: Awesome. now has your four-year-old gotten involved yet with any of the Codex experiments? [00:30:32] Peter Yang: Uh, no. I, I think my four-year-old has a different personality. She's more headstrong and, if I give her a laptop, she might just like split it in half. So I, I think, I, I think I'm gonna hold it off, ho-ho-hold it off for, for now. Yeah. [00:30:44] Adam Fishman: I love that. Oh, I love that. She would definitely be impatient and just slam it. okay. [00:30:51] Adam Fishman: I would love to talk to you about values. and one of the things you told me is that there's gonna be a set of values that are required to be successful after we realize AGI. And I am curious to hear, like I'll give you the floor here, what do you think those values are? [00:31:13] Peter Yang: Well, I don't even know what AI actually really means, but I think one value that I've come to recognize as, like, getting older is... I mean, it's kind of a cliché again, but I think agency really does matter, I think the most stress situations I'm in are not necessarily when, doing poorly or something. [00:31:31] Peter Yang: It is when I feel like I don't have any kind of agency over the outcome, having choice like, really important. and I think that's something you should, like, learn how to have agency, learn how to be resourceful. Like, if you're given two options, maybe try to find a third option. [00:31:46] Peter Yang: I think another value is just... Maybe this will change with AI, but I think all good things come with repetition and discipline, [00:31:53] Peter Yang: I'm able to, like, sit at home and talk, talk to you today because I just kind of was pretty disciplined about publishing a newsletter post every week, [00:32:00] Peter Yang: so I think just like learning about discipline, learning about failure, just kind of having that resiliency is, like, really important. [00:32:06] Adam Fishman: [00:32:06] Adam Fishman: there's another piece of this, which is that idea of resilience, teaching resilience and teaching failure is kind of one of your core frameworks for parenting. you know, there's an argument to be made that AI is gonna make things incredibly easy to do, so it'll be harder to simulate the kind of difficulty that requires resilience and failure and things like that. [00:32:31] Adam Fishman: How do you think you teach those things in an AI-enabled world? [00:32:36] Peter Yang: my answer is like, I think if you talk to other people, they're gonna, they're gonna teach you resilience. Like, They might ignore you or make fun of you or something. the reason I think this is kind of weird is because like nowadays I spend almost as much time talking to AI as other people. [00:32:49] Adam Fishman: Yeah [00:32:50] Peter Yang: least the AI right now, like the dumb AI that we have right now is like very much wants to suck up to you [00:32:54] Peter Yang: no matter what. They just wanna like make you feel good, but hopefully what-- by the time she grows up, the AI will be smarter and will have more agency itself, [00:33:02] Adam Fishman: Yeah [00:33:03] Peter Yang: it, it will give her the cold hard truth about things. [00:33:06] Adam Fishman: We can only hope. [00:33:09] Peter Yang: Yeah. [00:33:09] Adam Fishman: be a mode that you can toggle on that will do that, you know? [00:33:12] Peter Yang: Yeah. [00:33:16] Peter Yang: I mean, I, you know, it's kind of a digression, but like... Okay, it's kind of a super digression. But like, I feel like, I don't know if the body is gonna live forever, but I feel like we're at a point now where you and I can upload, like all the stuff we publish online into AI, and basically have a virtual AI that sticks around permanently and can kind of communicate our values and, you know, kind of be there for our kids even when we're, you know, put to the pasture. [00:33:37] Adam Fishman: The singularity, it's upon us. I mean, I've definitely seen movies where this happens. I don't think we're that far away. The context window would need to be larger, I think. But, [00:33:47] Adam Fishman: yeah, I don't see why not. [00:33:48] Peter Yang: It'll kind of be like a ghost in a shell because it won't be, it won't actually be us. It's not like we continue as AI or maybe not right now, but it's, it'll be like a copy of us, [00:33:56] Adam Fishman: Right, 'cause it can't, like, generate new memories or things like that. I mean, I guess it could through conversation, but it's not gonna do independent thinking maybe? I don't know. [00:34:07] Adam Fishman: We'll see. Wow. Well, maybe we've got the plot of a new movie. [00:34:11] Adam Fishman: okay, there's another framework, that you have, which is the zone of genius framework. [00:34:17] Adam Fishman: can you describe the zone of genius and then tell me how one can apply that in your parenting or in, one's parenting? [00:34:27] Peter Yang: Oh, in parenting. [00:34:28] Adam Fishman: Interesting. Let's see if we can do that. [00:34:31] Peter Yang: Yeah. Well, zone of genius is like two by two thing. I, I think it's from Matt Mc-McCurry or someone. and basically it's like, it's gotta be work that you both enjoy doing and, you're at, right? and I think it's kind of funny because usually the work that you end up enjoying doing, you become good at. [00:34:48] Peter Yang: So it's kind of like the enjoy doing comes first, [00:34:51] Adam Fishman: Yep. [00:34:52] Peter Yang: and I think the whole point of the framework is like just something else called zone of excellence, which is work you're good at but actually don't enjoy doing. And like so many people are just like in that trap because of their mortgage or because like they lie to themselves, [00:35:03] Peter Yang: So for parenting, because I really believe in kind of like following your curiosity and stuff, my radical parenting is, Okay, so, so my wife's parents, hopefully they don't hear this. They're like, "Hey, you know, you have an Asian girl. [00:35:16] Peter Yang: She's gotta learn the piano. You gotta learn the piano." "Let's go buy her a piano. She's gotta get into piano class." like some of these parents, like they make their kids learn piano for like an hour or two every day. [00:35:26] Peter Yang: for me, like I don't actually care if like she becomes good at piano or not. I, I think she can keep learning if she enjoys it. So I told her like, "Hey, um, if you get to like grade three level and then you don't enjoy it, you can just quit. You can just quit. But like [00:35:37] Peter Yang: you have to get to grade three. [00:35:38] Peter Yang: You have to get to like some basic So I think giving people choice, giving my kids choice about what they actually enjoy doing. Like some of the kids that have among my parent like peer group that have-- are doing really well, it's just like they're not doing all the things that their, their parents them to do. [00:35:53] Peter Yang: Like there, there's one kid who is like very into climbing, and like now her dad just takes her around like every weekend to like climb new moun-mountains and stuff. [00:36:03] Adam Fishman: yeah, you just gotta find what you actually enjoy doing and do more of that, [00:36:05] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [00:36:06] Peter Yang: you'll naturally succeed. [00:36:07] Adam Fishman: [00:36:07] Adam Fishman: what's in your daughters' zones of genius right now? I mean, they're obviously four and eight, so it's a little early, [00:36:14] Peter Yang: Hmm [00:36:14] Adam Fishman: what is in their upper right quadrant? [00:36:16] Peter Yang: so my eight-year-old, has, uh, I think pretty high EQ. [00:36:21] Peter Yang: if we take her to meet some, random friend of ours, like she'll give them a hug and then that friend's like, "Oh, she's like so nice." Right? So she's pretty high EQ. she's pretty good at like, creative stuff like drawing and other stuff. [00:36:32] Peter Yang: she's all pretty smart, but I think she's a little bit lazy, lazy. That's the problem. But we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll fix that. We'll fix that. [00:36:38] Peter Yang: Yeah. [00:36:39] Adam Fishman: what about the four-year-old? [00:36:40] Peter Yang: The four-year-old? I think the four-year-old can, is probably has more potential to be a founder 'cause like she doesn't give a sh*t and she just wants to do what she do- she wants. [00:36:48] Peter Yang: Um, so I, I'm gonna encourage her to follow the entrepreneurship path. [00:36:53] Adam Fishman: Okay. Does that mean your four-year-old takes m- off more like you than your wife? You strike me as the kind of person that just doesn't give a sh*t. [00:37:02] Peter Yang: think my wife was actually pretty headstrong when she was younger. [00:37:05] Adam Fishman: Okay. Okay. [00:37:07] Peter Yang: don't know what happened, but yeah, she was pretty headstrong when she was younger. [00:37:09] Peter Yang: Yeah. [00:37:11] Adam Fishman: I want to bring this back to a couple interviews that you did. so you've interviewed a ton of very people. you interviewed the Codex team at OpenAI this spring, so not that long ago. on that episode, one of them argued that the traditional career ladder doesn't make sense anymore. [00:37:28] Adam Fishman: Just gone. If you think back to the argument that that person made, like what do you think does make sense now if the traditional car- ladder is dead, and how do you prepare your daughters for a world where like climbing the ladder isn't a thing that you do? [00:37:45] Peter Yang: I think there's like evergreen skills for better or for worse, like, building, selling, communicating, like those things you should just become good at. I do think a lot of like this, PM career ladder stuff and these titles are kind of just like stuff that we made up because there's too many people trying to fight for the same spots. [00:38:01] Adam Fishman: Yep [00:38:01] Peter Yang: you know what? You know something I really don't like and I, and I hope it dies in a fire, is it's just like, this best practice of like, "Hey, you know, if, if you're a PM, like at some point you got to stop building. You got to stop building, and then you got to just like manage people. [00:38:14] Peter Yang: You got to think about a strategy, and then stop being a PM. Like [00:38:17] Peter Yang: go be a manager instead." that sh*t just doesn't make any sense, sense to me. I hope it dies soon. but I also think, it depends on, you know, people are saying like nowadays you don't really need that many people to start a really good company, right? [00:38:29] Peter Yang: But then you see all these big labs now they have like thousands of people, and now they actually do have to put some sort of career ladder in place. so [00:38:35] Adam Fishman: Yeah [00:38:36] Peter Yang: it's just like a circle of life thing. Like maybe it has to happen at some point, [00:38:39] Adam Fishman: It could be. So the guy that's saying the traditional career ladder is dead, that may be true when his company is much smaller, but once it gets big, [00:38:46] Peter Yang: Yeah [00:38:47] Adam Fishman: inertia comes for us all, I guess. [00:38:49] Adam Fishman: Um, reviews and they have all that other stuff that [00:38:52] Adam Fishman: yep. Yep. all right. Well, that's interesting. We'll see how this all plays out, I suppose. [00:38:57] Adam Fishman: [00:38:57] Adam Fishman: I want to talk about screen time rules, with you because, I think one of the things that you mentioned is that you're okay with screen time in your household as long as it's quality screen time. [00:39:08] Adam Fishman: How do you define quality screen time? [00:39:12] Peter Yang: I think it's like screen time, actually creating stuff versus consuming stuff. [00:39:16] Peter Yang: that-that's kind of like the broad definition. I guess if you're consuming like, reading Harry Potter or something, that's pretty useful. [00:39:22] Peter Yang: I think the problem is like there's too many things engineered to just like capture kids' attention. [00:39:27] Peter Yang: you know, I'm a YouTuber, but YouTube's the worst at this. Like it literally pumps out shorts, put it in my kids' fa-faces, [00:39:33] Peter Yang: and all this like AI slop stuff to try to like brainwash them. [00:39:36] Peter Yang: and it doesn't give any controls to like actually say like, "Hey, I don't actually want shorts." [00:39:40] Peter Yang: So I just have to kill the whole thing entirely. [00:39:43] Peter Yang: think creative time is, quality screen time. [00:39:45] Adam Fishman: Okay. So when you think about the makeup game, so your daughter built it, and then I assume she plays it. is that creation time, consumption time? is it both? Is it like a loop and then she creates more and different stuff because she's learning the corners and the way she wants to change it? [00:40:05] Adam Fishman: Like how would you think about that? [00:40:07] Peter Yang: I think it's primarily creation time. Yeah. And I think it's like a product development loop. Like she plays it, she doesn't like it, and she wants to make it better. It's like with the nails, right? so I think it's very much... It's, it's very useful time. Like if she wants to build this game for 12 hours a day, I'll, I'll let her do it. [00:40:19] Peter Yang: I [00:40:20] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Yeah. [00:40:22] Adam Fishman: when you mention the, product development, I was thinking about what you said about the nails, that she, like, didn't like how the nails were done, so she's, like, talked to Codex and made an improvement and then shipped another version of the product. She's probably not... [00:40:34] Adam Fishman: I don't know, is she doing, uh, pull requests on GitHub, or are these things just merging directly to main or, or what? probably the latter, I would [00:40:40] Adam Fishman: imagine. [00:40:41] Peter Yang: takes after her dad, just merge to prod directly. I, I don't, we don't, we don't do pull requests. [00:40:44] Peter Yang: to [00:40:45] Peter Yang: prod. hit YOLO mode, right? Like, dangerously skip permissions. [00:40:49] Adam Fishman: Um, Yeah, Yeah. Okay. [00:40:52] Adam Fishman: So you, spent a lot of years building creator tools at Roblox. Roblox is sort of often at the center of the screen time fights in our household. You probably heard this from a million parents. [00:41:02] Adam Fishman: Like, I simultaneously think Roblox is incredible. I also sometimes am irritated by Roblox and how, like, hooked my son is on it, at least, at least my 11-year-old. do your daughters play Roblox? [00:41:15] Peter Yang: she hasn't... I guess she's kind of right around the age where she could be playing Roblox. [00:41:19] Peter Yang: but, uh, she has not discovered the app yet and installed it, and her friends so far at least have not started playing it. I think Roblox as a platform, I, I guess now that I left, I can like, you know, kind of like have some real, real talk. [00:41:31] Peter Yang: I would say historically, the algo of Roblox has been kind of like, you know, sensitive towards just like the more playtime you have, the higher your game will rank, But the company's actually prioritizing the right things, which is like not only just playtime, but also like, is this actually useful playtime? [00:41:47] Peter Yang: Is this actually fun? Like, do people actually come back and play stuff long term, so hopefully the quality of the games will improve and there's gonna be less games that are just like pure kind of like trying to, capture attention kind of games. [00:41:58] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Do you think when your daughters maybe eventually onboard onto Roblox, you'll kind of steer them towards the creator tools and like building things within Roblox? Maybe less consumption, more, more building? [00:42:10] Peter Yang: Yeah, 'cause I, I spent my career just building, tools for developers, and I think building is actually super fun. Like, I, I think Game is probably like the most fun thing you can build with AI, right? 'Cause you can build stuff and then your friends can, can play it. [00:42:23] Peter Yang: I think as part of building, there's naturally like some sort of playtime as part of it, but you wanna have that feedback loop again and kind of e-experience that. [00:42:30] Adam Fishman: do you and your wife see eye to eye on screen time and consumption, or is that a place where the two of you don't fully agree? [00:42:40] Peter Yang: think we both agree that, too much YouTube Shorts time is ter- terrible for the ki- but I do think, like, some parents are, like, super, like, strict about this stuff. I think sometimes it's just reality, like you both have to work and, like, literally, like, there's nothing to occupy your kid time other than just give them some YouTube Shorts time. [00:42:55] Peter Yang: You know? [00:42:56] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [00:42:57] Peter Yang: sometimes you have to do it. [00:42:58] Adam Fishman: I agree. Sometimes you just gotta do it, And the kids will be all right if that's not their 100% of their media diet, so. [00:43:06] Adam Fishman: [00:43:06] Adam Fishman: all right, speaking of YouTube, you have interviewed like, I think, over 100 people on your YouTube channel. a lot of them from frontier companies or people sort of operating at the cutting edge of technology. [00:43:20] Adam Fishman: is there a common thread-- I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit on this. Is there a common, like, thread of advice across what you're hearing from all of those folks recently? either something around AI or building or the way that work is changing. I just don't know if you're able to kind of pull a thread across all of them. [00:43:40] Peter Yang: I think the common thread, maybe this is kind of, lame, is like they're just talking to AI all day long. That's the common thread. Yeah, that's the common thread. I do think some of the common reframes are kind of bull-bullshit. Like, the common reframes like, "Oh, now you can go build anything. [00:43:53] Peter Yang: Go build." [00:43:54] Adam Fishman: Right [00:43:55] Peter Yang: and I think, vibe coding a bunch of random apps is not gonna be very u-useful. Like the core skills around like who is the customer, what do they want, that kind of stuff is still really important. [00:44:04] Peter Yang: I think talking to AI all day, I'm sure there'll be a future psychological study about is this good for humanity or bad for hum-humanity? [00:44:10] Peter Yang: 'cause I can see the pros and cons of doing all of this, you know? [00:44:13] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [00:44:13] Adam Fishman: you recently became the hero of the internet because you open-sourced a no AI slop skill, that's gotten pretty popular. It's got like thousands of stars on GitHub. People are downloading it, forking it. Like, oh, I myself pulled stuff from it to build into my own kind of no slop, version. [00:44:33] Peter Yang: [00:44:33] Adam Fishman: what inspired you to build the no AI slop skill? [00:44:37] Peter Yang: because, uh, the reality is we're all getting AI to edit our writing, right? Like, it's just way easier to do it than manually. for some reason, these models are just trained to produce slop. Like Claude is the worst offender, to be honest with you. I, had to say it, but Claude's the worst o-offender. [00:44:52] Peter Yang: It's like, "Oh, here's the thing. Here's the honest truth." You know, like all, all this crap It kind of hurts, hurts my stomach to read, read all this sh*t. So like, uh, at some point I got super sick of it and I'm like, "Okay. let me go research and find all the slop terms that Claude and these other models like to use, and let me just make a list and kind of like build a skill to get rid of it." [00:45:10] Adam Fishman: Have you gotten to a point where, like, you can instantly detect AI writing, like pretty quickly? 'Cause I, I've gotten there for sure. and I now can't unsee it. Like, this is a problem for me. I'm like, "Oh, AI wrote that thing for sure [00:45:23] Peter Yang: Yeah, 'cause, uh, you kind of read it and then halfway through you're like, "Oh, this sh*t is written by AI." And then, instantly you're like, "If this guy doesn't spend time writing this stuff, why am I spending time read- reading it?" It kind of [00:45:32] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [00:45:33] Adam Fishman: yeah. [00:45:38] Adam Fishman: So you followed up your no AI slop skill with another one, something called human review. And I didn't know about human review until I was looking at your AI slop skill more closely and getting us ready for this episode. But what's human review? What's that skill? [00:45:48] Peter Yang: human review honestly should probably just be a feature within like Codex and Claude Code. But right now, another thing is like you get the AI to make these changes. You're like, "Hey, you know, this skill isn't good enough or this output isn't good enough. Here's some feedback." And then, and then AI's like, "Oh, I, I made like 500 lines, lines of changes, and now it works great." [00:46:05] Peter Yang: and then at some point, if you don't review the stuff carefully, you have no idea like it will basically slopify your entire codebase. You know? [00:46:11] Peter Yang: Just like the whole thing will be slop. that's why I have human review. Human review is literally like human review. Like it will load the page for me to review with my human eyes and then give AI some feedback and also make direct changes if I want to. [00:46:24] Peter Yang: and then it will like send the feedback to AI, and then it will make a bunch of changes, and it will refresh the page for me too. It's like a Google Doc comments and direct edits, but it works with like HTML and Markdown files. [00:46:34] Adam Fishman: Ooh, awesome. [00:46:35] Adam Fishman: I [00:46:35] Adam Fishman: really should probably get that set up on my machine, so I'm gonna do that maybe this afternoon right after this. [00:46:40] Adam Fishman: Um, very cool. Very cool. did you also build aisloppedia.com? Is that your project or was that somebody else? [00:46:49] Peter Yang: No, that's not me. That's [00:46:51] Adam Fishman: Okay. [00:46:52] Peter Yang: Yeah [00:46:52] Adam Fishman: 'Cause in my research, I came across this website. I think it was because somebody was writing about your no AI slop skill, and it's basically-- I'm gonna link to it in the show notes. [00:47:04] Adam Fishman: It's a website that just like goes through all different forms of AI slop, and it's really funny. [00:47:10] Peter Yang: Yeah [00:47:10] Adam Fishman: submit the best and worst and stuff like that. it's pretty awesome. [00:47:13] Peter Yang: Yeah, you can, you can, um, you just like reverse my skill, tell it to reverse it and like your wife tells you to go buy some milk or something, you just reply with some slop text and see what the reaction is. It'll, it'll be fun. [00:47:26] Adam Fishman: Yeah, yeah. Do the opposite of what the skill tells you to do. [00:47:29] Adam Fishman: I wanted to ask one more thing, which is, I thought this was really interesting, and you were on the "Super Insider" podcast with Ben, who I mentioned at the top of this, and Mark. and you have this publishing test that you talked to them about, and your publishing test for, like, when I put something out into the world is, would my kids see this? [00:47:48] Adam Fishman: that's, like, pretty useful heuristic. So can you explain that, like, would my kids see this kind of publishing test or benchmark that you have? [00:47:58] Peter Yang: yeah, I mean, I think just like, uh, like the whole thing's called Behind the Craft, so I got to live up to its name and to make it high quality. and I don't want to stuff out there that's like embarrassing for my kids to see, like slop or just like super hype stuff that, is very easy for AI to kind of go in that direction, [00:48:13] Peter Yang: my eight-year-old actually is very knowledgeable You-YouTube. like I got the YouTube silver plaque thing for 100,000 subscribers, [00:48:21] Peter Yang: and she's like, "Oh, you got the plaque. You got the plaque." I'm like, "What? How, how do you know about this?" [00:48:26] Peter Yang: I think the biggest legacy we can all leave is just for our kids, man. Like I, I think sure we can build a product that millions of users use or like you can bring about AGI, but ul-ultimately it's gonna be our kids that care the most about the impact that we, we have. [00:48:38] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [00:48:39] Adam Fishman: Okay, that's a really good segue to one of the final things that I wanted to talk to you about. [00:48:43] Adam Fishman: and that is y- role as a kid, 'cause you have two parents. you once talked to Deb Liu or learned about this from Deb Liu, the concept of the sandwich generation. what is the sandwich generation for people who don't know? [00:48:56] Peter Yang: it's kind of like you're in the middle of young kids and aging parents, [00:49:00] Peter Yang: and then you have this demanding job and all the other sh*t going on in your life. [00:49:03] Peter Yang: I feel like the 40s are like kind of some of the busiest moments of your life, [00:49:07] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Yeah. I talked to a, mom in the neighborhood today who has three kids, and she said that her son, who's the middle child, refers to himself as the sandwich kid because he's sandwiched between two sisters apparently, which I thought was hilarious that a, like, third grader has that concept. okay. [00:49:24] Adam Fishman: About your parents, the most important guest that you said you've never interviewed for your show or just generally, and now that's starting to change, are your own parents. But you've started recording them and recording conversations with them. Why are you doing that? [00:49:43] Peter Yang: we all grew up with our parents. And when you grow up with your parents, you assume that time with them is unlimited, And in fact, they're kind of an- annoying, like you just want to hang out with your friends. But I think, after you go to college and you move out, and if you don't live close to them, there's this essay called The Tail End from Waypa Y, and really, like you really don't have that much time left with them. [00:50:01] Peter Yang: You know? Like maybe like a couple summers left, and that's it. it's great to interview these impressive builders and CEOs, but like, if you actually get to know your parents, I think they're pretty impressive too. Or at, at least I feel like mine are pretty impressive. they're immigrants. [00:50:15] Peter Yang: They came to this new country without any money, and then, uh, they went through a bunch of health crisis and everything and kind of like built this life me. I don't want to be one of those people who regrets not getting to know them well, and I also want to pass on what their stories to my kids, [00:50:32] Peter Yang: and I think with AI, a- again, like, you don't have to force your kids to watch like 10 hours of re- recordings. Like they can just get the insights or like they, they can just like talk talk to some, some version of this [00:50:41] Adam Fishman: Yeah, the synopsis. Yeah. [00:50:43] Adam Fishman: How do your parents feel or how did your parents feel back in June when you walked away from Roblox, which is a thing that they could understand, like a company, whatever, and is a great job on paper, to pursue the creator life full-time? Like did they understand that or was that a thing you had to prepare them for or how did that go? [00:51:05] Peter Yang: I was talking to them like for a couple of months before that. I don't think they're fully on board with it because they're like, you know, "Why are you giving up like this income to do whatever the hell you're doing?" [00:51:15] Peter Yang: but I think they appreciate it now because now I have flexibility to actually go see them whenever I want, [00:51:19] Peter Yang: If I had a job, I would not be able to do that. I think, um, now they understand more. [00:51:24] Adam Fishman: Yeah, yeah. You've shared some things, recently with me about your mom's health, and you mentioned that Wait But Why, article, which is also one of my absolute favorite... it's a life-changing article for me. We'll link to it in the show notes. But the article really talks about the preciousness of time, you've learned a lot about this. [00:51:44] Adam Fishman: How have the conversations you're having with your parents changed more recently as you've, one, had more time to spend with them, and two, are kind of going through some health, like your mom's health stuff with her? [00:52:00] Peter Yang: I think as PMs we naturally want to be problem solvers and like kind of solve the problem, But some of this health stuff is like not super solvable. I think our parents more just want us to kind of like spend time with them than to solve the problem [00:52:12] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [00:52:13] Peter Yang: It's really true that like life is really short. [00:52:15] Peter Yang: when you're in your 20s, 30s and 40s, you don't really think about this. I also started reading this book called Becoming Immortal, [00:52:21] Peter Yang: is this book about the tail end of life. basically when, when you get old, it's, very hard to even have fun anymore like, because you know, you have pains and aches and stuff. [00:52:29] Peter Yang: So I think I've realized that, uh, now's the time to actually live your life [00:52:34] Adam Fishman: Ja [00:52:34] Peter Yang: that's how you live your life. Now it's like go on trips with your kids. you know, to my parents' credit, they went on a ton of cruises and stuff around the world, they had a ton of fun. [00:52:44] Peter Yang: 'Cause like some people are just like, "Oh, you know, I'll have fun when I'm retired," you know? Or like, Let me make the money now. Let me get the VP job , [00:52:52] Peter Yang: and then, you know, at some point I can retire." but I think life, you never know what to expect from life, man. [00:52:58] Peter Yang: There's gonna be a lot of surprises, both good and bad. [00:53:00] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [00:53:01] Peter Yang: So you can't, you can't wait. [00:53:02] Adam Fishman: Yeah. in spending time with your parents now and kind of like interviewing them and recording the conversations, you told me that you wanted to make a book for your daughters someday, like a book of the stories of your, your parents tell. what is something that you want your daughters to know about their grandparents that there's really no other way for them to get, or it's something that they might not yet appreciate given how old your kids are? [00:53:31] Peter Yang: there's a lot of stories, man. So for example, my dad moved to Canada you know, we were all living in the basement of someone's house, right? We were like renting the basement of someone's house. it was just like money was super tight and we kind of like a li- li- living, right? [00:53:45] Peter Yang: my kids are spoiled, so they don't, they don't they don't understand what not having money feels like, right? my daughters don't know that like, you know, my mom had, three or four battles with breast cancer, [00:53:55] Peter Yang: I think the best way to build resiliency other than having them experience it is just to learn how other family members have gone through this stuff. [00:54:03] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Oh, that's really, really good. And you're right that the only way to appreciate that is to hear it as told by your parents, their grandparents. So, [00:54:13] Peter Yang: it's like, for example, I know that my grandma, like, left her family age seven- 17 to go fight the war [00:54:21] Adam Fishman: Whoa. [00:54:22] Peter Yang: You know? these kind of stories like randomly pop up in your head when you're facing like, adversity yourself, [00:54:27] Peter Yang: So the more stories you have, the more ammunition you have. [00:54:29] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [00:54:30] Adam Fishman: [00:54:30] Adam Fishman: if you think about zooming out for a little bit, if you think about, somebody who's a younger version of you or they're working the grind, climbing the ladder, they have a fam- young family, and they're thinking they're about to step into your shoes. They're gonna go bet on themselves. [00:54:51] Adam Fishman: What's one piece of advice that you would give to that person? [00:54:56] Peter Yang: I think you should try to de-risk it as much as possible, So make sure you're able to, like, pay your bills and stuff. you should not take your family for granted. I think when you're in the middle of like, you know, working at OpenAI or like doing some sort of career thing, like PM thing, right? [00:55:11] Peter Yang: Then you're like, "Oh, this sh*t is like so important. I'm changing the world." But I think after you're retired, maybe I'm wrong in this, but from what I hear from my parents, like nobody really gives a sh*t about where you worked or like what you actually did, you know? [00:55:23] Peter Yang: It's, it's all about the people who actually only give a sh*t are like your kids and your family, [00:55:28] Peter Yang: don't take them for granted and kind of treat them well. Even if you go do your own thing, And maybe this is for, for my own advice. It's not an excuse to like just ignore them [00:55:38] Adam Fishman: Yeah [00:55:38] Peter Yang: and, and make your YouTube vi-vi-videos. [00:55:40] Peter Yang: Yeah. Although that's still pretty fun. okay. I wanna flip this around on you. So let's say your daughters are eventually gonna start writing a book about you, or rather they're gonna interview you and AI is gonna write the book about you, because that's probably what's gonna happen. they get to the chapter on 2026, the year that you walked away from your seven-figure job, very sort of predictable thing, [00:56:05] Peter Yang: Mm. [00:56:06] Adam Fishman: bet on yourself. [00:56:07] Adam Fishman: do you hope that they write about you in that chapter? [00:56:12] Peter Yang: you know, just like their dad made more time for taking walks with them kind of show them that you can kind of, you know, make your own destiny. You, you don't have to kind of like, at the beck and call of other people to judge you. You can kind of let the market judge your worth. [00:56:27] Adam Fishman: All right. Well, that is a wonderful place to wrap up. I hope that that is what happens when your daughters write the book about you, Peter. So, to end, how can people follow along or be helpful to you when-- after they listen to this podcast? [00:56:41] Peter Yang: you know, you can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn, but, uh, I think number one thing to remember if you listen to this is a startup dad, the dad part is more important than the startup part, you know? [00:56:51] Adam Fishman: [00:56:51] Peter Yang: present with, uh, your kids is more important than, in my opinion, than whatever startup thing you're trying to do. [00:56:58] Adam Fishman: Okay. Thank you for saying that. [00:57:00] Adam Fishman: That is a wonderful note to end on and transition to our lightning round, which I hope you have a few minutes for. [00:57:07] Adam Fishman: I kept it very short for you. what is the most indispensable parenting product that you've ever purchased? [00:57:13] Peter Yang: parenting product. I think my advice is, when you buy toys for your kids, number one trait that you should look for in a toy is how easy is it to clean up, you know? That's number one trait. So like, so like for example, on one end you have Magna-Tiles that are easy to clean up 'cause you can just like hook them all together, [00:57:29] Adam Fishman: Yep [00:57:29] Peter Yang: on the other end you have like Play-Doh and kinetic sand, this kind of crap that just like gets everywhere, you know? [00:57:35] Peter Yang: So like never buy that kind of stuff. Just buy the easy to clean up [00:57:37] Adam Fishman: When you said how easy it is to clean up, I immediately went to kinetic sand and thought [00:57:42] Adam Fishman: that is an out- that's an outside toy. [00:57:44] Peter Yang: No, no. It's, it's, it's [00:57:46] Peter Yang: bad. [00:57:46] Adam Fishman: What is the mo- maybe this is the same thing. What is the most useless parenting product that you've ever purchased? [00:57:52] Peter Yang: Okay. So I don't have a specific product, but I [00:57:54] Peter Yang: have another tip that I [00:57:55] Peter Yang: do, which is, um, which is when my wife and kids are not paying attention, the garbage truck comes on Thursday right? So [00:58:02] Peter Yang: maybe I should not be sharing this. I might get in trouble. [00:58:04] Peter Yang: But the garbage truck comes Thursday morning. [00:58:06] Adam Fishman: to it. Yeah [00:58:08] Peter Yang: So Wednesday night I go around the house and I pick up the toys that they don't actually play with-- they haven't played with for like a month [00:58:14] Peter Yang: or like longer, you know? And then you just toss them in the trash, dude. Just toss them in the trash. And then that's how you [00:58:21] Adam Fishman: do they ever ask you about them? [00:58:22] Peter Yang: No, they never ask me for it 'cause they have way too many toys. Just toss them in trash. And that-that's how you like permanently clean up your house. 'Cause like [00:58:28] Adam Fishman: Oh [00:58:29] Peter Yang: the toy from point A to point B and you're not actually cleaning the house, [00:58:32] Adam Fishman: Yes. You're just [00:58:33] Peter Yang: Yeah [00:58:33] Adam Fishman: more toys. okay, true or false, there's only one correct way to load a dishwasher [00:58:39] Peter Yang: I don't know the correct way, but yeah, I just put the place in. I mean, is there a correct way? I, I, I don't know. Yeah [00:58:45] Adam Fishman: I guess the answer is no. [00:58:47] Adam Fishman: okay, if your daughters had to describe you in one word, what would it be? [00:58:51] Peter Yang: I like to think that they think I'm pretty funny. [00:58:54] Adam Fishman: Okay. [00:58:54] Peter Yang: a trait that I want. Yeah. [00:58:56] Peter Yang: Mm-hmm. [00:58:57] Adam Fishman: Now this is probably your four-year-old saying something, but what is the funniest thing that your, one of your kids has ever said in public? [00:59:05] Peter Yang: Oh, that's a really good one. Oh my God. Okay. I, I should have prepped for this. I should have prepped for this. [00:59:09] Peter Yang: Uh, [00:59:10] Adam Fishman: why it's lightning round. It's unpreppable [00:59:13] Peter Yang: Wow. Okay. My four-year-old, what did she say?one day 'Cause we had these, like, face painting things in the house. and then one day she, like, painted herself and, and she said it's like a rainbow unicorn, but it just looked like brown smudge everywhere on her face. [00:59:27] Peter Yang: So that was, like, pretty embarrassing. It's pretty embarrassing. [00:59:30] Peter Yang: Yeah. [00:59:30] Adam Fishman: that. [00:59:31] Peter Yang: Yeah [00:59:31] Adam Fishman: like I've only ever seen you in a black T-shirt, but what is your go-to dad wardrobe? [00:59:36] Peter Yang: I basically replaced my entire wardrobe with Lululemon [00:59:39] Peter Yang: because it's just, like, very comfortable. [00:59:41] Peter Yang: even though I don't do yoga or anything, but like, [00:59:43] Peter Yang: you know, my entire wardrobe is like Lululemon. [00:59:45] Peter Yang: Mm-hmm. [00:59:45] Adam Fishman: to pitch you on the 10,000 brand and you were like, "I don't know. That's an expensive shirt, man. [00:59:50] Adam Fishman: [00:59:50] Peter Yang: Lululemon's, already pretty expensive, but [00:59:52] Peter Yang: I think you're more posh than me. Yeah. [00:59:54] Adam Fishman: How many dad jokes do you tell on average each day? [00:59:58] Peter Yang: I try to tell a lot. Yeah, I, I try to make it as cringe as possible. [01:00:02] Peter Yang: So [01:00:02] Adam Fishman: Are you [01:00:03] Peter Yang: yeah [01:00:03] Adam Fishman: telling them to your wife? Your daughters probably think they're hilarious, so [01:00:06] Peter Yang: yeah, when we play board games [01:00:08] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [01:00:08] Peter Yang: you know, with families together, [01:00:10] Peter Yang: I try to tell dad jokes. [01:00:11] Peter Yang: Yeah. Mm-hmm. [01:00:13] Adam Fishman: is, the most difficult kids TV show that you've ever had to sit through? [01:00:17] Peter Yang: Oh my God, there's so many terrible ones. Like all the ones that my four-year-old watches are terrible. Cocomelon is definitely terrible. [01:00:24] Peter Yang: there's this thing called like Sherriff Labrador or something. It's like a YouTube thing. [01:00:28] Peter Yang: It's, it's terrible. and all the shorts, man, all, all the AI-generated [01:00:32] Adam Fishman: of them [01:00:33] Peter Yang: like all the K-pop demand shorts are terrible. [01:00:35] Peter Yang: Like [01:00:35] Peter Yang: the ones where you put makeup, like sprinkles and stuff. Yeah, terrible. [01:00:39] Adam Fishman: your favorite kids movie? [01:00:41] Peter Yang: Oh, that's a good one. Okay, I have some pretty good ones. So I really like The Iron Giant. [01:00:45] Peter Yang: it's kind of a little bit sad in the end, but it kind of tells a really good story. [01:00:49] Peter Yang: I think Toy Story 3 is amazing. The ending is amazing. [01:00:52] Adam Fishman: Yep [01:00:53] Peter Yang: kids movie, I think,Kiki's Delivery Service. [01:00:56] Peter Yang: a Miyazaki film. It's like kind of like Totoro, but like [01:00:58] Adam Fishman: Oh, okay. Cool. Well, I do like Totoro, so that's good. is there a nostalgic movie that you can't wait to force your daughters to watch with you when they're old enough? [01:01:10] Peter Yang: I really like, [01:01:11] Peter Yang: Rocky [01:01:12] Adam Fishman: Okay. Okay. ' [01:01:14] Peter Yang: Cause, 'cause I think it's very inspi- I think it's a very good lesson that you don't have to win to, you [01:01:17] Adam Fishman: Yep. [01:01:18] Peter Yang: I don't, I don't think they're gonna enjoy it 'cause, like, people, like, a bunch of dudes beating up each other up. [01:01:22] Peter Yang: But, but at some point I'll make them watch it. [01:01:24] Adam Fishman: Yeah. [01:01:25] Adam Fishman: Maybe they'll like the training montage when he's, like, trying to chase the chicken or something. Who knows? [01:01:29] Peter Yang: yeah. yeah. [01:01:30] Adam Fishman: often do you tell your daughters back in my day stories? [01:01:33] Peter Yang: Not very often, dude. Like I find out my, my dad, like their grandpa tells them [01:01:38] Peter Yang: embarrassing stuff about me when I was a kid and like they keep repeating to me, which is pretty annoying. So it's like, you know, Peter poo-pooped his pants or something. It's like they keep saying this stuff. [01:01:48] Adam Fishman: That's [01:01:49] Peter Yang: Yeah. Yeah. [01:01:50] Adam Fishman: question for you. [01:01:52] Adam Fishman: What is your take on minivans? [01:01:55] Peter Yang: Minivan. Oh my God. Yeah. I try to avoid buy them at all costs. Yeah. [01:02:00] Peter Yang: Yeah. [01:02:00] Adam Fishman: So that's a hard, hard no on the minivan [01:02:03] Peter Yang: yeah. So, I think my wife's dad was gonna buy a minivan. I was like, "Hey, no, you should buy..." I think he bought like some sort of a Toyota Highlander thing or [01:02:10] Adam Fishman: Okay. Yep. Yep. [01:02:12] Peter Yang: it's not a minivan. [01:02:13] Adam Fishman: It's a popular alternative to the minivan, so [01:02:16] Adam Fishman: all right. [01:02:20] Adam Fishman: Well, Peter, thank you so much for joining me today on "Startup Dad." this was a really fun conversation. I'm glad we finally got to connect on the topic of fatherhood. [01:02:25] Adam Fishman: I wish you and your family all the best. Best to you betting on yourself, and I will see you around the Creator Country Club [01:02:33] Peter Yang: Yeah. Thanks so much, man. This was super fun. [01:02:34] Adam Fishman: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Peter Yang. You can subscribe and watch the show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. [01:02:42] Adam Fishman: Visit www.startupdadpod.com to learn more and browse past episodes. Thanks for listening and see you next week.