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Searchable personal memory, now · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Your journal is lying to you. Every sentence you write has
0:03
already been edited 30 times in your head before it hits the
0:06
page. You're not capturing your
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thoughts, you're performing them.
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And as a founder, that performance is costing you the
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most valuable data you will ever own.
0:15
Your actual, unfiltered mind. What if the most honest version
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of you only shows up on camera? What if the bags under your eyes
0:21
after a brutal VC rejection? The way your posture shifts when
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you're burned out? The slight hesitation before you
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describe a decision you regret are worth more than any note you
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have ever typed. Your polished second brain isn't
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your second brain, it's your highlight reel.
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There's an iOS app in beta right now that captures your raw video
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thoughts like a journal, runs them through AI, and hands you
0:43
back monthly reports on who you actually are as a founder.
0:46
No performance, no template. Just you, the camera, and the
0:49
truth. What if the person most in the
0:51
dark about your own performance has always been you?
0:54
Welcome to AI for founders. I'm Ryan Estes, and Josh Gilmer,
0:57
founder of Historic, is going to show you how video journaling
1:00
plus AI can become the unfair advantage founders never knew
1:04
they were missing. This one is for founders who are
1:06
building hard but flying blind on self-awareness.
1:09
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1:13
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1:57
Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining me.
2:00
Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Heck yeah.
2:03
So you are the founder of Historic dot app, which looks
2:09
really, really interesting, largely because it's kind of a
2:12
category of products that I would call an AI memory, which
2:16
is basically creating a different database that we can
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store our thoughts, our writing moments, work documents and put
2:26
them in a special place. I, I, I love this category.
2:29
I think it's only going to grow. And I'm particularly interested
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to talk to you because you're really in kind of build mode,
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you know, still figuring out kind of like where is going to
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be the place for traction. So I wanted to welcome you to
2:42
the to the conversation and also see if you could give us kind of
2:45
flesh out what historic is and what's the vision of the
2:48
product? Yeah, I'd love to.
2:52
So Historic is an AI video journal, and you've probably
2:58
heard it preached, you know, often that you really need to be
3:02
journaling if you're a founder. Like it is a serious unlock.
3:06
And I'm not saying just like copy pasta a bunch of little
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things and meeting notes into a notes app or Notion and have
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this, you know, scattered mess of your ideas and thoughts.
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It needs to be a concerted effort.
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So I have used a few of these tools that exist from Notion,
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Obsidian, Reflect. And what I noticed, especially
3:30
as AI started to take off, is that a lot of these thoughts
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weren't my own anymore. They were things that I pasted
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in from a conversation that I had with ChatGPT or the notes
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that I had followed a very specific formula day in and day
3:46
out. I had a template and as long as
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I checked all those boxes, I felt like I had journaled for
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that day and I really had not journaled.
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I had, you know, met those those minimum requirements of saying
3:58
that I did AB and C and that wasn't helping me grow as a
4:03
founder. So I created historic as a video
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journal because video gets you closer to your thought processes
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and the things behind your thinking.
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If you look at a journal, you're looking at polished thoughts and
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you may not even realize it. How fast your mind moves that
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you have probably done 30 takes in your mind for every sentence
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that you get in your journal at the end of the process.
4:29
So historic is nice because it's it's just like what we're doing
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right now. We're in a podcast, we're
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talking, we're riffing. The same thing is happening with
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your video journal. You have to look at yourself.
4:40
You can't, you know, lie yourself because you're right
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there in the camera. It's just not as effective.
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I have found that audio is close to the same experience, just
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like audio recordings, except you kind of get distracted by
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your own voice and you really lose a little bit of that extra
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context that can be very helpful.
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So for a founder, if I'm meeting a lot of VCs, it's nice to know
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what I wore the last time I saw that VC.
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And I'm not writing that down in my journal, right?
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But if I can go back and see the thumbnail or ask my AI agent
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what did I wear the last time I saw them, what did we talk about
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that? That's very helpful information.
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So yeah, we want to get from, you know, just these finished
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thoughts that aren't really your second brain.
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And and, you know, I hear that term very often.
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As you know, we're building our second brain and now AI is
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helping. Well, that second brain is just
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your polished thoughts. And if all you're going to do is
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recall and Polish thoughts, that's really not your second
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brain. If you can get down to your
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analytical thinking, how you came up with these processes,
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how you, how you're thinking, that information can be valuable
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as you know you build out this agent or as you build out
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something that helps you in the future when you do startup #2 or
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#3. Oh, OK.
6:02
So we're talking about video journaling and the, and I like
6:07
that you have some pretty interesting frameworks around
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what that is and particularly where it's been helpful for you
6:12
is kind of as a founder. So are you positioning then
6:15
historic as being kind of a founder video journal?
6:20
Absolutely. So you know, there's other
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people that will get a lot of value out of it.
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I have had a few early users that are content creators and
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it's nice for them to have a camera on that isn't going
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straight to YouTube or to TikTok that they can have a moment to
6:38
like talk about their thoughts about the day and then have that
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returned back to them later. So one of the features that we
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have is that after the transcription process, AI is
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looking for, what did you say that might be shareable?
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So the the goal is not performance.
6:57
I don't want your video journals to turn into a performance, but
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if you say something that's very interesting, wouldn't it be nice
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to have that and have a little backlog of things that you can
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do to have your personal brand growing alongside your company?
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So, yeah, so it, it seems like people are kind of right now
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I've spoke to a lot of people that are like, OK, my personal
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life is in GPT and then my professional life is in Claude.
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Now what's, what's the advantage?
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I could create a GPT project and basically record and and
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document things there. What's what's the advantage to
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having another application? Yeah.
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So this is an application, one where you really do have your
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own thoughts. You don't have a mix of a
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conversation which had GPT, You don't have things that you can't
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really align to. Like what was I thinking when I
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said that? What was the context?
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So what we're offering is, you know, being closer to the metal,
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I guess like, like I like I said, if you can get just your
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words out unfiltered, that is some powerful data that nobody
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else has. And so, yeah, it's, it's nice to
8:08
have a conversation with ChatGPT, but that kind of molds
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your conversation back and forth.
8:12
That's more of an interview style.
8:14
It's more like what we're doing right now versus you just
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sitting in front of a camera for 5 minutes in the morning, 5
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minutes in the evening, maybe ad hoc throughout the day, like,
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hey, I just accomplished this and this is how I'm feeling
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about it. Those are those are good things
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to have and especially good for a a founder.
8:32
Yeah, no, it's interesting. It reminds me of what was that
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McConaughey movie where he's an astronaut and he's recording all
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the video journals and then his daughter sees them like 30 years
8:41
later. Yeah, yeah, Interstellar I
8:44
think. Right.
8:45
Interstellar. Yeah, great movie.
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Now, back to the show. Great movie.
9:46
OK, I told totally get it now. So it's not an interview style,
9:50
rather it's it's 5 minutes in the morning, 5 minutes in the
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evening. You sit down, you just brained
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up. You just hey, this is what's
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coming up for me right now. A little bit spontaneous.
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Here's what my day look like. Here's maybe what my challenges
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were, you know, and I'd love to hear from you because I'm not a
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journaler, you know, I do write non-stop.
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You know, I published personal blogs, I write music, my my
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written journals. If you look at them, it looks
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like, I don't know, the, a diary from a schizophrenic kind of,
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and honestly, I think there's actually a, a, a schizophrenic
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spectrum. And yeah, I think, I think that
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there is a, a range in there. And I, I would say that I might
10:32
be on that spectrum in some capacity only because, you know,
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I remember seeing artwork from schizophrenics all respect.
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And I was like, boy, that looks familiar.
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Anyway, that's neither here nor there.
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We won't talk about the schizophrenic spectrum, but I
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would love to hear like what is kind of the recommended session.
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I got 5 minutes in the morning, 5 minutes in the evening.
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Me as a founder. Like what would be important
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things that I can go come into historic and document?
11:02
Yeah, yeah, I will. I'll circle back for just a
11:04
second and say, you know, you'd have to be crazy to think you're
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perfectly sane. And so, yeah, it it definitely
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helps to get these thoughts out. And I think a lot of people have
11:15
trouble just expressing themselves and then they feel
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really bad when they don't know themselves.
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And the reason why is because they're not expressing it
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through any channel. And so any channel, even written
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journals are just great, you know?
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But yeah, what we do is we have kind of this morning focus.
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So the morning focus session, we hope that you get in there.
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And you say I'm planning to do AB and C this, you know, this
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afternoon I'm having this meeting.
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Here's how I'm feeling about it. And then we have moments
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throughout the day. So we hooked it up to the action
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button on the iPhone. So you can hit that button and
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then it starts to countdown immediately 321 you're
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recording. So quickly getting to capture is
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what we want. And if you can capture those,
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you know, quick wins something that just happened.
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You just left a meeting and you want to like remember a certain
12:08
thing that happened in that meeting.
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I hooked up agents to, you know, zoom meetings and Google
12:14
meetings. And then that just became my
12:16
graveyard for like a bunch of content that didn't really help
12:19
me. What I really want to do is just
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distill those quick thoughts or this thing that I did.
12:25
I find that with Claude, I come in and I accomplished so much so
12:30
fast that I don't even I can't even begin to like keep track of
12:34
what all I did in a day. So for me to just be able to
12:37
record real quick and say, Hey, I showed up a little bug in
12:40
authentication today. I did AB and C and then have
12:44
that as a report at the end of the month that that contents
12:46
really, really valuable for me. And finally, we end the day with
12:50
evening reflection. So if you can start the day with
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a little bit of focus and it was a reflection, what went well,
12:56
what didn't go well? You know, if you had a a goal to
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to call, you know, 15 VCs like what happened with all that?
13:04
You know, don't let it just be that I have goals and no
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measurement at the end of it. Yeah, no, I get it, man.
13:11
Super cool. I love this.
13:13
You know, what's interesting too is like if you're recording
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audio and video, you have your intended transmissions, you
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know, which have a lot of cool applications.
13:21
You know, maybe like McConaughey, you know, in in 30
13:24
years, you can sit with your grandson and be like, look at I
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got the same problems as you, man.
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It just cycles back and forth, you know, but you also have the
13:33
unintended signals that you don't know you're emitting.
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And what I mean is I've interviewed several founders in
13:40
the AI kind of medical field on the podcast, one who does
13:45
interesting diagnosis through audio.
13:48
So it can detect Parkinson's, it can detect dementia, it can
13:52
detect depression, anxiety, all through your voice.
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So he has kind of like an Alexa type device that can sit there
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and I don't know, it beeps when you when you're too tired or
14:04
something. I'm not exactly sure the end
14:06
result, but but ultimately it's for a diagnosis tool.
14:10
And then another one that does the same thing with video, which
14:12
is to say these tools from AI medically are coming very, very
14:16
quickly. But basically all of the input
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that they're going to have is when you begin using them.
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Now, if you have a backlog, let's say a year, two year of
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daily journals that it could access in some, you know,
14:30
obviously opting in, but it can access and, and see like, OK,
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actually we know from your voice, your posture, your
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hairstyle, your beard length, that we can make some of these
14:43
assumptions and, and diagnose certain things.
14:45
You know, so if it is, it's like, well, Ryan, you were
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talking about being on the, the, the spectrum in, in 2026.
14:52
You know, we've actually seen evidence of this.
14:54
It's actually, yes, you are, but it's also been improving and
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you're like, oh great, I'm doing awesome.
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So there is an interesting documentation that could be used
15:02
potentially in the future for diagnosis.
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Yeah, I, I have been thinking along the same lines, which is
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if I can just get this capture out now, the AI is only going to
15:12
get better. The things that we can do with
15:15
visual AI and, and being able to see like your mood change and
15:21
maybe track that against your productivity.
15:24
It might be able to detect burnout early.
15:27
Might be, you know, right now, I know it can detect some really
15:29
great things. Like I get a monthly report on
15:31
everything that I've said. And you know, I need to kind of
15:36
gauge this around personality types and how people receive
15:40
feedback because the feedback I got was just brutally honest the
15:43
first time around. I was like, wow, that that cut
15:46
really, really to the quick. And I was like, oh, I don't
15:51
disagree at all. This is really good information.
15:56
But if I gave this to every user that I had, I feel like some of
16:00
them would just run run screaming the other direction
16:03
like that was a little too too real for me.
16:06
Yeah. But, you know, like founders,
16:09
being a founder in particular is exceptionally difficult.
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The work is hard. The emotional toll is really
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hard. And so for me, thinking about
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how do you optimize to give your best performance so that you can
16:23
kind of stand up to the challenge of like all the
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different things that are hitting you all day long, You
16:28
know, and for me, the, the mental emotional component is a,
16:33
a piece of it. But I, I don't like to be like,
16:35
oh, I'm having a bad day because this deal didn't come through or
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I'm having a great day because I closed 3 deals or Bob, you know,
16:44
basically there's something intrinsically uncomfortable with
16:48
me for like having the, the outcome of my day dictate my, my
16:53
mental emotional state, you know, which is maybe it's just
16:56
an aspirational desire from my years spent studying Buddhism,
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you know, that you're like, oh man, you should exist on a
17:03
higher plane. Of course, we're not, we are
17:04
influenced by those things. But it's also to say that it's
17:07
not just work or relationships that's dictating some of that
17:11
stuff. A lot of times for me, it's
17:13
physical exercise. You know, I feel 100 times
17:16
better if I wake up at 6, go do yoga, then hit the desk.
17:19
You know, it's caffeine intake. Once I hit my fourth cup of
17:22
coffee, I, I'm not going to be performing as well as if I hit
17:26
my 2 1/2, you know, So you know, I, I'm getting used to
17:30
documenting like my behaviors and all of these different
17:33
things, you know, so it's like you got the Apple Watch for your
17:36
blood pressure and your heart rate variability.
17:39
And it's, it's got more and more sensors all the time.
17:42
You've got like Cal AI where I'm documenting all my food, the
17:46
timing, the, the amounts, all of that stuff.
17:49
So we are building like this massive database.
17:52
Now what's interesting how historic might fit into that is
17:55
that this does give you a little bit of sense of, you know,
17:59
mental emotional states. Now, because I'm a natural
18:02
salesman, I'm going to get on historic everyday and be like,
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hey, great day did this, this and this.
18:07
Everything was great. Good, good to see you and I'm
18:09
out and I I mean, it's I'm not going to divulge information.
18:12
I just know I won't because I won't want to watch that.
18:16
But what's interesting with AI is that it can, it can detect
18:21
maybe the bags under my eyes that are a little bit bigger
18:24
that day. And these are shadows also, like
18:26
I, I kind of get obsessed with like, do I have terrible bags
18:29
under my eyes? But it's a shadow from the brim
18:31
of my glasses or it'll say it'll, it'll detect a, a slight,
18:36
a subtleness in my posture. Like he can see my, my physical
18:40
tells of my mental emotional state.
18:43
So then you start to aggregate all that data and it's like, OK,
18:45
Ryan, here's what we know. A frozen burrito at 1130 + 2
18:50
cups of coffee is your sweet zone.
18:53
We want you to do yoga at 6:30 because we can tell the
18:56
beginning end of the day. Here's what we can kind of
19:00
breakdown for you, which is just kind of pointing to the fact
19:03
that we're this kind of optimized life into kind of like
19:07
accentuate the good feelings and human flourishing.
19:11
We're just at the very beginning of it.
19:15
Absolutely. That's really well put.
19:17
I, I feel like, yeah, there's a lot of different disparate
19:20
pieces of information out there, but there is a gap there.
19:24
There is something missing, which is these conversations and
19:30
after doing, after doing them for as, as long as I've been
19:32
doing them, the veil kind of comes off after a little while.
19:36
You, you may be like all everything's great and
19:39
everything's awesome, but if you get into the habit of just doing
19:43
it, the camera kind of becomes invisible.
19:46
And you, you do just say like, here's what's going on.
19:49
Here's like, I'm giving it six months and then I'm out.
19:52
You know, I feel like defeated and deflated today.
19:55
And you feel less, less apprehensive about being
20:00
vulnerable with yourself, which is a great place to be.
20:04
So yeah, if you can, if you can get to that spot, I think it's
20:06
very helpful. I'm, I'm talking to other
20:09
companies that are kind of building like.
20:11
I think Pacific is one of them. They're trying to bring all that
20:14
information together because you're right, some of it exists
20:17
in ChatGPT, some of it exists in Claude, some of it exists on my
20:21
Apple Watch. It's like, how can I give AI
20:25
enough information, enough context to really help me out?
20:30
And, and we will get there at some point.
20:32
And having this backlog through historic, I think we'll fill a
20:37
very big void in that, in that content area that you you just
20:41
don't have today. Yeah, I mean bridging the gap.
20:44
Give me 4 Mac Mini as an open claw.
20:46
I'll have it to you in two weeks.
20:48
Yeah, right. Yeah, and A and a $2000 bill
20:53
from all the API usage. Per day.
20:56
Yeah, tokens just went absolutely bananas.
20:59
Nice. OK, cool.
21:01
Love the idea. Now tell me where you are right
21:03
now because there's a join the wait list on the application.
21:06
How far have you built this up? Yeah, it it exists as an iOS
21:11
app, So I would love to get new users on.
21:16
So we're approved in test flight beta.
21:18
So it's really easy to onboard users and have them check us
21:23
out. And yeah, but it's very new.
21:26
It's an info at thing is still being built.
21:30
But what what I really wanted to get right, right off the bat was
21:33
that we could not lose any of this information because there's
21:38
nothing worse than like recording, putting your thoughts
21:42
out in the world and losing it. So I've seen, you know, some
21:45
other people that do this kind of stuff.
21:47
Not for this, you know, specific, not for founders, not
21:50
AI, not as much content as we're doing.
21:53
I think we're at an inflection point now where we can actually
21:56
record a lot more than we ever have from our phones.
21:59
They're powerful enough. So yeah, I'm, I'm looking for,
22:03
you know, about 100 users to come on and burn through my
22:06
tokens and use up my storage credits and cost me probably a
22:11
good $25 a year just to learn with me and make sure that we're
22:16
doing this right and that we're providing value.
22:19
And I'll happily reward that with free use for, you know,
22:24
like I said, at least 100 users. I can't scale up to thousands
22:28
because I'm bootstrapped right now, but yeah I would love to
22:31
have people giving me feedback about how this is helping them
22:35
month to month. Great.
22:37
How did you build it? Was your tech stack to build it
22:39
and how did you push it through iOS store?
22:41
So, you know, Claude is just taking the Netflix model, you
22:46
know, like wherever people are, we need to be in that system.
22:50
Like Netflix used to be on the Xbox and the Apple TV and
22:52
everywhere. I feel like Claude is like,
22:54
yeah, you open up Excel, we're here.
22:56
You open up X code, we're here. So I, I, I worked with Claude
23:01
really well, my tech stack was swift for a lot of it, but yeah,
23:06
Super Bass using that for an off and DB and there's there's not a
23:13
lot to it next JS for a marketing site and some of the
23:18
API calls we're doing, but it's, it's pretty modern stack.
23:22
And yeah, looks, looks good on, you know, the latest and
23:26
greatest version of iOS with all that liquid glass.
23:29
And I don't know where you land on that, but it looks like it
23:34
belongs on your phone today. Cool.
23:37
Yeah. You know, liquid glass, it's
23:39
just like Apple just hasn't surprised me in some time, you
23:43
know? Yeah.
23:44
Which is, I guess, OK It's consistent.
23:45
It's a good product, obviously. But the glass, I'm like, OK.
23:50
Yeah, take it a little bit. Did any snags getting it through
23:54
the iOS store? Just just through test flight,
24:00
they're not as burdensome as they could be.
24:03
So I anticipate that I'll probably have to change a good
24:06
deal when we actually launch live to everybody.
24:10
But I can have 10,000 users and test flight before we get to
24:13
that point. And so I'm building for founders
24:16
and founders are typically somewhat technical.
24:19
And so if you're ACTO, you're not going to feel apprehensive
24:23
about, you know, getting test flight and and trying the app
24:26
before it's officially released. But I anticipate, yeah, they'll,
24:30
you know, especially first, first version getting that first
24:33
launch, you're going to go back and forth with Apple a few times
24:36
before that before that happens. Yeah, 100% amazing.
24:42
OK, I just signed up on the website.
24:44
I want to be one of those first 100 users.
24:46
I'm going to see if we can push this and, and get you some good
24:49
feedback because I love this idea.
24:50
I think it's great. You know, I also like that it's
24:54
kind of private by nature and free.
24:58
So those are two of my favorite things.
25:00
I mean, one, one thing also is that you know it, how how honest
25:04
and vulnerable am I going to be if I'm writing it down on a
25:06
piece of paper and I don't want my wife coming in here and
25:09
knowing all my secrets. She's like, oh, you're feeling
25:12
so sad. Like we you should have told me.
25:14
Like stop. Yeah, yeah, that's but.
25:18
There is something about, like there is something scary about
25:21
leaving a a paper trail. You could ask Al Capone, you
25:24
know what I mean. Yeah, I, I have to go to a room
25:28
in my house where my wife isn't and where my kids aren't coming
25:31
in and out because I want to create that space where I can be
25:34
vulnerable. But yeah, I mean, the, the nice
25:36
thing is, you know, we've got biometrics on the phone and
25:39
we've and listed them. So like, I can't go into your
25:43
library and you can't go into my library.
25:44
You'd have to have my biometrics to look at anything.
25:49
But really it's just getting that information out there.
25:52
I don't even really watch the videos at first.
25:54
I would kind of go back and watch the videos.
25:56
I don't really watch them. It's transcribed, summarized,
25:59
pulls out the topics. Now it's, you know, just there
26:05
for posterity, right? Just so that my kids can watch
26:08
it someday. Just so AI can get more from
26:14
that higher fidelity of capture that you wouldn't get from audio
26:18
or just journaling or typing things down.
26:22
Amazing. All right, we're ready to enter
26:25
the quantum round. Josh, Are you ready?
26:27
Sure. 1st is a a challenge question.
26:32
The founder challenge question from kitcaster.com.
26:35
If you could search every decision you've ever made, what
26:38
would you want to know first about it?
26:42
I could search every decision I've ever made.
26:46
Oh man, I can I go back. So I would actually just say I
26:50
don't want to search every decision I made.
26:52
I just want to be coached in the present accurately.
26:56
I wanted to know all the mistakes I made and all the
26:58
victories and just coach me in the present.
27:02
Love that. So.
27:06
The future of productivity, you know, is it going to be about
27:10
doing more and more or actually remembering more about what
27:14
you've already done? I suppose this is a a bigger
27:17
question, which is kind of what I've been kind of thinking
27:20
about, which is, you know, the Productivity Tools were meant to
27:24
take work off our plate. But boy, I'm working 10 hours a
27:27
day. Yeah.
27:30
You know, yeah, maybe how can this, how could this influence
27:34
kind of the the future of productivity?
27:37
Yeah, I I go back to Alan Watts. So if you go all the way back to
27:42
before AI really exploded before the movie her came out and look
27:51
at where I was in life. I was, I was reading a little
27:54
bit watching videos of old archives of Alan Watts talking
27:59
about metaphysics and, and all kinds of things.
28:04
And one of the things he talked about that struck me was
28:08
productivity. Money.
28:09
What is money? What is productivity?
28:13
Why do we need to do the things that we do?
28:15
And they were talking in the, you know, sixties, 70s, they
28:18
were talking about the computers and things that were coming
28:21
around that, oh, it's just going to be great.
28:23
You'll have more free time to spend with your lady friend.
28:26
You'll, you'll go to, you know, more shows you'll have a a more
28:30
fulfilled life. And yet, because we're
28:34
competitive, we say, cool, I've got this new free time that I
28:37
can dedicated to doing more, more of.
28:41
And so, yeah, but The thing is you can't compete with 100,000
28:46
AI agents working. And once, you know, it reaches
28:51
Intellichy, once it's like perfected, I think, yeah.
28:56
Then there is this moment where we think about, well, what do I
28:59
do with my time? What is the most valuable use of
29:02
my time? So as a parent, you know, I want
29:04
to save as much as I can for my kids and enjoying their
29:07
childhood because by the time my kids are 12, I've spent like 80%
29:11
of my time with them or something crazy.
29:13
It's just like, wow, that's that went by really fast.
29:16
So I don't want to have any regret from that stance.
29:19
I just want there to be not just fruit to my labor, but the most
29:22
fruit possible. So I think we'll be using AI to
29:27
question whether or not we're even doing the right thing in
29:30
the 1st place. Is this going to matter in in a
29:33
year, five years, yes or no? Like and and taking a lot of low
29:37
hanging stuff off, but whether or not we overcome the wiring of
29:43
the last three decades and say, I'm going to actually use this
29:46
time for something that is more beneficial to me than just more
29:52
output, you know, that's going to be up to us collectively to
29:56
decide how we're going to compete with each other.
30:00
Yeah, Matt, I totally agree. My kids are teenagers, you know,
30:03
and I was thinking about that, that same exact model of like,
30:06
they're 17 and 18. My daughter's already out at
30:08
college. You know, when she left, it hit
30:10
me hard. It was really, really hard for
30:13
me, you know, and my son's 17. So it's like we're, I'm thinking
30:15
about this summer. I'm like, well, we got, you
30:17
know, 2-3 trips this summer. If, you know, if we can do that
30:21
before football season starts. And then after that, you
30:23
graduate high school and that summer you're working and then
30:25
boom, there, you know, that that time is very scarce.
30:28
So when I think about like saving, it is time, you know,
30:32
like spending time with my kids, you know, and I'm very fortunate
30:37
that I spend a lot of time with my kids, you know, and my
30:40
favorite time that I spend with my kids is what I call garbage
30:44
time, which is just like, you know, it's 11:00 at night and
30:47
you're just talking trash about sports, eating a frozen pizza.
30:51
That's my favorite thing. But but you know, there there is
30:54
also like, oh, you know, but you also want to have those
30:56
significant moments, which to me is like fly fishing on some like
30:59
Alpine lake, you know, with my kids.
31:01
And we're just chopping it up. We're doing something cool,
31:03
creating memories that that I'm looking towards these tools to
31:07
facilitate or facilitate it. So, you know, the other thing I
31:11
want to save is money. So I'm looking at historic.
31:15
It's free. How?
31:16
What's the business model? How are you going to basically
31:18
get this thing to start pumping out the cheddar?
31:21
Yeah. So it, it won't be free forever,
31:24
obviously, but I do want to reward early users with like
31:28
loyalty discounts and, and whatever I can because I'm a,
31:33
I'm a big proponent of paying back the people that are your
31:38
first loyal people. So after that, you know, the
31:43
unit economics, they're always changing as far as like how much
31:46
it costs to store and how much it costs for us to get AI to
31:50
give back. You know, good advice, good
31:52
feedback, good transcription. But we're looking at nothing
31:58
astronomical like 10-15 dollars a month and give you a TB of
32:02
space. And then it'll kind of look like
32:04
your Apple iCloud, you know, like, oh, we used up that TB,
32:07
you need another TB, it'll go up another few dollars.
32:11
Yeah, which means, you know, $10 product on a monthly basis, you
32:14
got to have, you know, massive traction and adoption to to make
32:20
to make a good margin. So what's kind of like your go
32:22
to market? How are you thinking about
32:24
positioning this? Once you get you feel validated,
32:26
you got 100 people on there, they're using it, you're getting
32:28
feedback, you're tweaking the app, you're like, I think I got
32:31
the product. How are you going to bring it to
32:33
market? Yeah, I hope that we provide so
32:37
much value. We get some good testimonials
32:40
and then it's really easy to go to VC firms, not for capital,
32:44
but to say, hey, how many people in your portfolio are using this
32:48
because some of the most successful founders are.
32:52
Would you like to just blanket this out to every founder in
32:54
your portfolio? Same thing for innovation hubs,
32:58
accelerators. There's just, you know, a lot of
33:01
places where founders exist and they don't have the tools that
33:03
they need and, and we try to give them what they need.
33:07
Like here's a here's a Internet and coffee maker and here's some
33:11
things that you can have for, you know, $50.00 a month, $100 a
33:14
month, whatever it is. Here's a Co working desk.
33:16
I think this is one of those tools that would be a no brainer
33:19
to put alongside all those other perks.
33:23
I'm thinking of like other kind of market share.
33:25
I think founders a great opportunity because founders
33:28
naturally want to track progress, so they'll use it.
33:32
Also they're in a high stress kind of position.
33:34
So like they, they want to be able to document that.
33:37
I also see there's kind of an emotional release associated
33:40
with then you have kind of like a great feeling associated with
33:43
the app. But I'm wondering if there's
33:45
other kind of like people that could benefit, you know, like
33:48
mothers, you know, like we when mothers get pregnant and they
33:52
they can document their entire journey of the pregnancy and
33:55
then the child. But it's like their story, you
33:57
know, one thing about moms is they get eclipsed really quick
34:00
by the baby. You know, all the attention's
34:02
now on the baby. And this is something they can
34:04
do for themself. You know, I don't know, just
34:05
kind of spitballing ideas. It seems like there's a lot of
34:07
people that could benefit. Yeah, it could definitely grow.
34:15
You know, to a hammer, everything looks like a a nail.
34:18
And so I see as a founder, I'm using it as a founder and others
34:22
could definitely benefit. But you're right.
34:25
Like I love the the idea of moms being able to use this because
34:28
you get that, that book that they give you at the baby shower
34:32
where you fill in all the memories and things that your
34:33
kid did in the first year. And you look back at it and
34:35
you're like, oh, I did good the 1st 5 weeks and then nothing.
34:41
So I need to go back and say, oh, yeah, my baby says this cute
34:44
little thing over and over again.
34:46
And this is when they took their first steps.
34:48
Like, you know, it really is about speed to capture because
34:52
as a parent, yeah, you're, you're just inundated very
34:55
quickly. And it's so nice to be able to
34:59
just turn on your camera and start recording what they do.
35:02
But I think you should flip that camera back around on yourself
35:05
and say, my kids did great. My kid hit his first home run
35:08
today in baseball. Here's how I'm doing, you know?
35:12
Yeah. Personal use is just great too,
35:14
because, you know, we read a Harvard Business Review article
35:18
every other week that says AI hasn't added any productivity to
35:23
any of the Fortune 5 hundreds and AI isn't doing anything for
35:26
anyone creating more apps, but nobody's actually using them.
35:29
And I'm like, that can't be completely true.
35:33
On the one hand, it's it's a little bit hyperbolic to say
35:36
that. But then on the other hand, I
35:38
know everybody can agree personal use, like, Oh yeah, I
35:42
was having a fight the other day and ChatGPT, you know, was a
35:46
good impartial, like third party and wasn't biased and helped me
35:50
see, yeah, I'm being a bit of an ass right now and I need to go
35:53
back and apologize and or yeah, my wife's in the hospital and
35:59
the doctors aren't talking to us.
36:00
So I'm asking ChatGPT everything about, you know, the personal
36:04
use is there. So I know that there's
36:06
absolutely a feature for AI and, you know, as far as where it
36:10
where it fits in the corporate world, that will be figured out
36:13
at some point too. But yeah, it's it's definitely
36:16
being used heavily in my personal life.
36:20
Yeah, I want to hover on the the parenting thing a little bit and
36:22
maybe speak a little philosophical about where we're
36:24
going. So, you know, one thing we know
36:27
about parents is they'll do absolutely everything to protect
36:30
their kids. We're going to enter a new level
36:32
of hover parenting the world has never seen before, which we
36:36
could just say like right now, this year, there's going to be a
36:39
product. I don't know this for sure, but
36:40
I would build it if I could, where you give your newborn baby
36:44
it's first stuffed animal and it's a little giraffe and that
36:48
baby loves the giraffe. And inside it is a camera,
36:50
microphone, all the sensory apparatus that you can record
36:54
and keep tabs on the vitals of your baby 24/7.
36:58
And the baby's going to have that little giraffe for 5-6
37:02
years. And it's going to be like, OK,
37:03
now I like this monkey. And it's, you're going to take
37:05
the brain out of the giraffe and put it into the monkey.
37:07
And then it that's going to graduate until they get their
37:09
phone. And now they're locked in.
37:11
So now if you flash forward, let's say 20 years, now every
37:16
single moment of that child's life and only with increasing
37:19
inputs do you have documented in this second brain, they're 20
37:24
years old. It knows everything.
37:26
It has everything. Which do you think would be more
37:29
valuable to that kid, Their actual memory or their
37:33
structured data? Second brain.
37:36
Yeah. So you start to get into
37:40
implanted memory and you get into a lot of things, like
37:43
obviously our our own memory is faulty.
37:46
If you look back in an early childhood memory and you picture
37:49
it, you close your eyes and you get it right now and you see
37:53
what's happening. If you're in the memory, if it's
37:56
a third person and you're somewhere in it that's obviously
37:59
architected, that is a reconstruction of the experience
38:03
in your mind. It is not what actually
38:05
happened. So yeah, you could capture a lot
38:08
more, a lot better by by building this up.
38:15
Where it worries me a little bit is every technological turn.
38:21
We get these big turns every 10-15 years and they happen more
38:24
often. We become less reliant on each
38:27
other. So if you think back to before
38:32
the Internet, you got everything.
38:33
You bought things from your grocery store, you bought things
38:36
from your RadioShack, you bought things from everything that was
38:39
around you. There is a place called Circuit
38:41
City and Blockbuster and all those places are gone and you
38:44
have no relationship. You just have an interface.
38:48
And so all that changed and then we got social media and became
38:51
way less social. We got our smartphones and we
38:54
just get these new levels of autonomy where we can do more
39:00
without having to have all the relationships that we used to
39:04
have. So my biggest worry as a parent
39:07
is how can I ensure that AI is helping build relationships and
39:14
build a little bit more reliance and, and, and less insulation,
39:18
less time with an AI companion. AI companionship scares me more
39:23
than anything else. Like I, that's not what I want
39:25
for, for my kids is to have this relationship with ones and
39:28
zeros, no matter how good it gets.
39:30
I, I really want them to, to really be in a community.
39:35
That's one of the, you know, if you look at blue zones, you look
39:38
at people that live to be 100. They have that.
39:42
And I, I know at nursing homes they have little pet seals that
39:44
you can pet and they feel like a dog and don't go bathroom
39:48
everywhere. So that's, you know, that that's
39:50
two sides of the spectrum. You can, you can have, you know,
39:54
AI that is with you at the end because nobody else is, or you
39:58
can have community and live, you know, to be 100.
40:02
So that kind of speaks to a little bit.
40:04
My, my other company, my, the company that I'm building that
40:08
created the need for historic, which is called Luau, and that
40:12
is using AI to orchestrate your social life and prevent
40:16
relationships from drifting apart because you got a job.
40:19
Or kids or whatever it is in adult life that, you know, makes
40:23
it harder for us to, to get together on, you know, a healthy
40:27
cadence. Yeah, well, I think our our
40:30
natural proclivities, proclivities, proclivities as
40:35
humans is to have tribes and to spend time with them all the
40:40
time, you know, so we are siloed.
40:42
But I wonder if it's to do with, you know, the, the technology
40:48
that we're experiencing or if it's just the the boomers being
40:52
so susceptible to advertising that they bought that hood lot
40:55
hook line and singer or sinker and the greatest generation.
40:59
You know what I mean? Now I don't blame them, but the
41:02
advertising companies back then, it's like, oh, you're 18, kick
41:05
the kids out of the house because we need to sell 2 lawn
41:08
mowers, 2 vacuum cleaners, 2 cans of Campbell soup.
41:11
So the, all the parenting instincts were like not
41:14
nurturing. It was like the tough love and
41:16
they're like my way or the highway kind of stuff that that
41:20
we grew up that I grew up with, You know, that now maybe you're
41:24
seeing this technology. We can see the kind of errors in
41:27
that ways, which is like no man. And I talked to my kids about
41:29
that. It's like, look, dude, there's
41:30
no pressure. There's no pressure to go out
41:33
and do everything by yourself. You always have home here like
41:36
the we could we could move to a big compound together with your
41:39
family and our family. You see I'm trying to strategize
41:42
here. Yeah, but like.
41:45
How can I do that? Yeah, through these tools, it's
41:47
like, you know, I, I think that's folly.
41:49
I think you're right. I think people have been
41:51
isolated and it's it the, the technology will bring us back to
41:54
what like our, but we should have clans and kinship and, and,
41:59
and tribes and being dispersed all over the place where there's
42:02
four mortgages instead of 1 and there's, you know, 5 car
42:06
payments and instead of three. Like there's a way to kind of
42:09
like pull things together and create like, you know, little
42:12
micro communities that I think may actually appeal to humans
42:16
biology a lot better. Yeah, yeah, we're not supposed
42:20
to do it alone for sure. And yeah, the you kind of look
42:25
at cultural differences and you see other cultures that value,
42:29
you know, the elderly a lot more than we do here.
42:32
And it's just like, oh, well, that's a different mindset.
42:36
And then but you see, like, oh, that's cool.
42:37
Because the grandparents living with the grandkids under the
42:40
same roof, they're able to tell their stories and connect them
42:44
to their history a lot better. And here is just, yeah, you, you
42:49
don't realize what's been normalized.
42:52
And I don't even realize what's been normalized over my own
42:55
lifetime. Like, you know, I was born in
42:57
84. So I since then I've seen all of
43:00
it. But it's just, yeah, every,
43:05
every technological advance, you can either use it to become more
43:09
insulated, or you can try to use it for something better.
43:12
So I, I feel like AI, as powerful as it is, you really
43:17
need to put in the effort to make sure that it's for the
43:19
better. Yeah, the only downside is you
43:23
can't. I can't.
43:25
When I was growing or when my kids are growing up, I did a lot
43:28
to accentuate the legend of Dad. And it wasn't until last summer
43:32
they figured out that I didn't hit six home runs my senior
43:34
year, you know, because they saw some old clippings from a high
43:37
school newspaper and I could just see the over their face,
43:40
just like the aura of Dad was diminished greatly.
43:44
They're like, oh, you're a liar. But.
43:45
But it was great. You know, for 17 years I was
43:48
like, Oh yeah, I had 4 interceptions, six home runs.
43:51
I was absolutely killing it. And now, you know, now kids
43:56
would just be like, now I rewind my second brain.
43:59
I see you're, you're lying. You don't want a four year old
44:01
checking you like that. Be like, you don't know anything
44:03
with your second brain. We didn't have second brains
44:05
back then. Yeah, the kids are, maybe
44:08
they're second guessing their parents a lot earlier in life
44:11
usually had to wait for them to become a teenager to say you
44:14
don't know anything bad. But I don't know.
44:16
I've got a six year old that says it pretty often already.
44:19
Yeah, exactly. They're like, you love my
44:21
pancakes. What's wrong with this?
44:22
They they like rewind. They're like, Nope.
44:24
January 14th. I told you these were too wet.
44:27
Yeah. Oh Josh, this has been so much
44:31
fun buddy. Thank you so much.
44:33
Please, everybody go check out historic dot app sign up for the
44:37
wait list, get get the a link to the the iOS in in in practice.
44:44
Help Josh out make this like a really, really cool product
44:47
because I, I really feel like it's going to be Josh.
44:50
What's the best place for people to connect with you online?
44:55
LinkedIn. I know that sounds sad, but it's
44:57
just the best place. Yeah.
45:00
Joshua dot Gilmer. GILMER.
45:04
Cool. And that will be in the show
45:05
notes down in below that you're listening or watching the video.
45:09
So appreciate everybody watching the show.
45:10
Josh, thanks for coming on. Yeah.
45:12
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
45:17
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uses cutting edge tools to analyze user behavior, adapt
45:55
creative in real time, and uncover hidden growth
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opportunities. The result?
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Marketing that's faster, smarter, and built to convert
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from early stage start-ups to global brands.
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We've helped hundreds of companies overcome complex
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challenges, unlock new audiences, and optimize every
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metric that matters. At MO Burst, we believe that
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creative thinking, advanced technology, and data are the
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core drivers of success at scale.
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If you're serious about scaling your business with precision and
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purpose, it's time to talk to MO Burst.
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Visit moburst.com and Let's build something category
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defining together.