Latest / The Scene Projects / Tom Capone on AI Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Community Growth

Transcript

Tom Capone on AI Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Community Growth · The Scene Projects

• 0:22
  Welcome in to an exciting episode of Real Biz.
• 0:25
  I am your host, Bubba Starts, and with me today from Lens dot ai, Tom Capone.
• 0:30
  Tom, welcome to the show.
• 0:32
  Thanks, man.
• 0:33
  Thanks for having me.
• 0:34
  Yeah.
• 0:35
  My pleasure.
• 0:36
  I think what you guys are building over there is absolutely incredible, and we're gonna get
• 0:40
  to all of that throughout the conversation.
• 0:42
  But always like to start with just getting a little bit of your backstory and what kinda
• 0:46
  brought us up to this point.
• 0:47
  So the floor is yours.
• 0:50
  Yeah.
• 0:51
  I'm Tom Capone.
• 0:53
  I'm the cofounder and CEO of LendCI.
• 0:55
  For the past five years, I've run an AI marketing agency called LendSuite.
• 1:01
  And over there, I was able to work with over 200 brands, generate $54,000,000 in profits for
• 1:08
  companies like L'Oreal, Uber, TripAdvisor, Havayanas.
• 1:13
  List goes on.
• 1:13
  But, essentially, what we did for them was we started implementing AI into the, you know,
• 1:21
  very well known marketing channels and strategies like ads, influencers, content,
• 1:28
  email, SEO, etcetera.
• 1:31
  And it turned out that, actually, AI systems make less errors, do things a lot quicker, and,
• 1:40
  they're really good at iterating all the way to optimizing for revenue and sales on any type of
• 1:47
  product.
• 1:48
  So this goes from physical products, again, in, for example, taking L'Oreal in the beauty space
• 1:54
  to even fashion products, consumer electronics, like phones, whatever it might be, all the way
• 2:00
  to software products like mobile, iOS apps, you know, kind of browser apps, and even info
• 2:07
  products.
• 2:07
  So information based products usually sold through, some form of community subscription
• 2:12
  like WAP or school.
• 2:14
  Like, AI is able to run marketing automatically and iterate to the point where you've launched
• 2:19
  your product, you've distributed it to the market, and you're getting traction and a lot
• 2:24
  of users in a very short amount of time.
• 2:26
  And that's what we did, with the agency and what we're building into Lens AI today.
• 2:31
  Essentially, it's it's an app that can take your product and and kind of distribute it
• 2:36
  without any knowledge on how to market it.
• 2:39
  Yeah.
• 2:39
  It's incredible.
• 2:40
  And I it's going to be a very valuable tool for a lot of small, operators and and businesses
• 2:47
  that are coming out.
• 2:48
  That next big idea often falls on its face in the marketing phase because people who are
• 2:53
  creating and developing are not often great marketers.
• 2:57
  And with the price of, you know, working with an agency often out of reach for those small
• 3:02
  companies that you don't have that experience.
• 3:05
  And what you end up doing is you end up throwing a lot of money away trying to do ads
• 3:10
  yourself or or hiring people who are inexperienced in it.
• 3:14
  What the AI will do is I I'm sure cut out the guesswork.
• 3:17
  Right?
• 3:18
  You're gonna be using analytics and being able to actually decipher those analytics and maybe
• 3:23
  able to identify trends that even a human who was experienced wouldn't be able to do.
• 3:29
  Absolutely.
• 3:29
  I think as a base principle, you have to you have to see AI interpreting data better than
• 3:38
  than humans because it's simply a matter of analyzing dashboards, analyzing data, and
• 3:44
  correlating it with, you know, the actions that the humans take.
• 3:49
  So, like, is this ad, you know, created with these different variables?
• 3:54
  It's like, maybe the ad is longer or the ad is shorter.
• 3:57
  The hook is slightly more, punchy, and it has more controversial phrases in it.
• 4:04
  Or, maybe the ad has is more bright in terms of colors.
• 4:08
  All these different variables can be correlated with stats.
• 4:12
  And once the AI is able to to do that, he's gonna do that at a way quicker speed than a
• 4:18
  human ever would.
• 4:19
  And so this is what people have to grasp their mind around is that agencies and marketers,
• 4:26
  like, usually try and correlate data that they receive with the actions that they take to
• 4:33
  improve the those those results, but, the AI is always gonna be able it's getting to a point
• 4:39
  where the capabilities of generating these ads and and taking these actions are so high that
• 4:46
  reading the data is not a problem, and, like, changing their actions to improve that data is
• 4:53
  now the the winning formula.
• 4:56
  And and, you know, who adopts this is gonna stay ahead and who doesn't, unfortunately, is
• 5:01
  gonna stay behind.
• 5:03
  Well, and no doubt agencies are using it and then upcharging you for them using the program
• 5:08
  when you have access to it yourself.
• 5:10
  So what what you're allowing, small businesses to do is to avoid that upcharge of working with
• 5:17
  an agency.
• 5:17
  And I think that that's just the nature of business in this day and age
• 5:22
  is to
• 5:23
  be able to do everything or as much as you possibly can in house and and having your full
• 5:29
  stack under one roof and not outsourcing, you know, vital parts of your business to other
• 5:35
  agencies or really anyone else.
• 5:38
  Yeah.
• 5:39
  We're in a really interesting period where, I guess it happens with, like, kind of every,
• 5:46
  technological revolution.
• 5:47
  But, as soon as, something comes along, there's a period of kind of arbitrage where, the people
• 5:54
  who don't adopt the technologies can still, profit from traditional margins in the sense
• 6:02
  that, agencies can still charge those 5 k, 10 k, maybe even 20 k retainer per month while
• 6:09
  while completely drastically reducing their margins, thanks to AI and and and because they
• 6:15
  don't have to pay, you know, the end to end full stack marketing team to execute the
• 6:20
  service.
• 6:21
  But, you know, I'd say this is kind of a a temporary shift.
• 6:27
  And, also, what we're seeing today is that a lot of, you know, early stage founders, which
• 6:33
  are literally at idea stage, can you know, the they can build their app with, you know, an AI
• 6:40
  coding agent, and then they can distribute it with an AI marketing agent.
• 6:45
  And that becomes so powerful because in a matter of days, you can actually get from a
• 6:51
  built product from an idea to a built product and an actual distributed product, which, you
• 6:57
  know, sells maybe thousands of units.
• 6:59
  And that that to me is crazy just, you know, thinking about my my entrepreneurial journey
• 7:04
  five, ten years back.
• 7:05
  This wouldn't have been possible in any way.
• 7:08
  And so, I'm super excited for all all of the users that we interact with and and in general,
• 7:15
  like, AI enthusiasts because you have to be in in that mindset to look out for these
• 7:20
  opportunities.
• 7:21
  Yeah.
• 7:21
  What used to take people years of development and and the coding and and everything just to
• 7:28
  build a product and not necessarily have it ready to really go to market just to get a
• 7:33
  first iteration done now is being done inside of the span of thirty days and out onto the
• 7:39
  market and and gaining traction.
• 7:42
  That's pretty incredible.
• 7:43
  And and it speaks to how fast the world moves now and and how important getting to know AI
• 7:50
  and how it can help your business using that and the agents that we have now like Lens AI,
• 7:57
  to be able to do specific task, in an automated way.
• 8:01
  And it's only going to improve.
• 8:03
  And I think that's the real exciting part is, you know, you guys will have this out and and,
• 8:08
  you know, I know it's in beta now and people are using it currently, but it's going to
• 8:13
  continue to get better and better and better.
• 8:15
  And I think that's the most exciting part is even if you aren't an an early adopter, which I
• 8:20
  think everyone should be, you you're already kind of behind the boat on that.
• 8:24
  Right?
• 8:24
  The the time for early adoption of AI and and tools to help you was probably five years ago,
• 8:30
  but now you you can benefit from the technology just being better than it's ever been.
• 8:38
  Yeah.
• 8:39
  Absolutely.
• 8:39
  I I mean, it's I see the whole AI industry as kind of a unified force working towards you
• 8:49
  know, I I I'd say in terms of the b to b, so, like like, producing tools for businesses, it's
• 8:57
  it pretty much comes down to, like, gamifying entrepreneurship.
• 9:00
  Like, what what we're trying to do is, like, make entrepreneurship so easy that you can
• 9:06
  click a few buttons and make it play it like a video game and essentially get through the
• 9:13
  different phases and different bottlenecks that you'll encounter when when building business.
• 9:19
  And so it is very important to acknowledge that, you know, I think the anthropics of the
• 9:26
  world, the the open AIs, they're not like they're not necessarily taking, specific market
• 9:34
  segments, but they're simply empowering all these apps which are being built on top to
• 9:40
  provide specific, specialized agents.
• 9:43
  Like, AI marketing agents wouldn't be real if it wasn't for them.
• 9:48
  AI coding agents wouldn't be real if it wasn't for them.
• 9:52
  And and so but on on their side, they wouldn't be real if there wasn't, you know, NVIDIA,
• 9:58
  like, manufacturing ships, and NVIDIA wouldn't be real if there wasn't TSMC.
• 10:04
  And and and so there's kind of a whole up upstream and downstream of this industry.
• 10:10
  And everyone's kind of working together to, I'd say, in terms of, the business business aspect
• 10:17
  to actually make entrepreneurship feel like a video game so that more people can enter it.
• 10:24
  And, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to leave your your job today.
• 10:28
  I mean, there is predictions here and there, but we we haven't seen, like, exact proof of, I
• 10:34
  mean, there's been layoffs, but there's there there hasn't the shift hasn't come yet.
• 10:39
  I would say in preparation for a potential AI unemployment, I think the most logical solution
• 10:48
  is for people to start building and distributing products with AI.
• 10:53
  I think it's it's the most sensible things because if the risk barrier goes drastically
• 10:59
  down, if it you know, if if someone asks you, would you start a business for free today?
• 11:04
  Right?
• 11:05
  You didn't have to pay marketing cost.
• 11:07
  You didn't have to pay, you know, kind of software building costs or maybe manufacturing
• 11:13
  costs, would you do it?
• 11:14
  Of course, you would do it.
• 11:15
  And I think that that's kind of direction we're going into.
• 11:19
  As robotics and digital intelligence develops and and grows in scale, then cost drastically
• 11:27
  goes down, and then people can benefit from that, if they wish to.
• 11:32
  Well and it is the inventors and the entrepreneurs that change this world.
• 11:37
  And I think we we often forget that most of these biggest corporations that we see in the
• 11:43
  planet today started out as one or a few people inside of a room trying to solve, you know, the
• 11:51
  the simple problems that are ahead of us.
• 11:54
  You know?
• 11:54
  And Apple, a Amazon, a Google, all of these started as very small companies with an idea.
• 12:02
  And now you're empowering anyone who has an idea to be able to bring that to fruition into
• 12:07
  market for much less than the billions of dollars that it was, you know, spent to to
• 12:12
  create these corporations.
• 12:14
  And not to say that every idea is a billion dollar core.
• 12:17
  Right?
• 12:18
  But it can be a living and it could be freedom for those people, and knowing being a business
• 12:25
  owner myself, the freedom that it is to not go out to have to work for someone else and to
• 12:30
  have your own something that you created, the pride in knowing that and, the the satisfaction
• 12:36
  from knowing that you're solving other humans' everyday problems.
• 12:40
  I think that's a very gratifying thing to be in and why you guys must be so proud with what
• 12:45
  you're building now because you are boots on the ground with these people creating that and
• 12:50
  getting to not just share your own success story, but, hopefully, millions of success
• 12:55
  stories over the course of Lens AI.
• 12:57
  Absolutely.
• 12:58
  Yeah.
• 12:59
  I I'd say that's what we're doing.
• 13:00
  And what we're tracking, specifically is I mean, in the early stages, it's more around,
• 13:08
  how many people can progress from their current growth stage.
• 13:13
  So if your product is zero users, we wanna be able to see, how many lens.ai users can benefit
• 13:25
  from going from zero to a thousand users on their product?
• 13:28
  How many can go from a thousand to 10,000 users on their product?
• 13:32
  10,000 to a 100,000, a 100,000 to a million users.
• 13:35
  So, essentially, what we're tracking is can Lens AI contribute to, you know, business
• 13:43
  growth overall by automating AI marketing for you and generating sales?
• 13:49
  And can you actually progress using, these AI tools even though you don't have maybe a
• 13:56
  marketing agency or marketing team, holding your back, and, you can do it by yourself with
• 14:02
  simply an AI marketing agent?
• 14:04
  I think that's super important.
• 14:05
  In the future, I think a metric that's gonna be super important is how many, new founders are
• 14:12
  created thanks to such an app.
• 14:14
  Because you you wanna actually be able to track if maybe, a thousand new entrepreneurs, which
• 14:21
  maybe were working a nine to five, maybe there were students start using the tool and become
• 14:27
  entrepreneurs because of the tool because the tool allows them to easily distribute their
• 14:31
  product idea.
• 14:33
  And so you wanna be able to track that into the future where you can actually see entrepreneur
• 14:39
  entrepreneurship growth correlated to these AI apps, which are making it simpler and easier to
• 14:44
  use.
• 14:44
  And, again, to your point, it doesn't mean everyone has to become the next Steve Jobs or
• 14:50
  Elon Musk.
• 14:51
  But what it means is at a base level, because all of these AI apps are derisking
• 15:00
  entrepreneurship, for a little cost, you could gain absolute freedom over, you know, having to
• 15:08
  work the job, or actually maybe, having the choice to work the job if you wanted to because
• 15:15
  you have a product selling online.
• 15:18
  And so that's the the fundamental difference.
• 15:20
  And then I'm sure out of those new entrepreneurs, which are gonna be created in
• 15:25
  the next five years, some of them are gonna build incredibly revolutionary tools and and
• 15:32
  even physical products that everyone can benefit from.
• 15:35
  So that's kind of a, I'd say, a north star to to aim towards as the AI industry together.
• 15:43
  Well and and I think that something that get missed in that is that, and being someone who
• 15:48
  works with a five zero one c three operation combating veteran suicide, those entrepreneurs
• 15:53
  end up becoming philanthropists over time as well where working their nine to five, they
• 15:57
  maybe weren't able to give the charitable foundations like ours or great many others.
• 16:02
  And and I think that's something that gets overlooked in that that the entrepreneurs and
• 16:07
  small business owners end up sponsoring the kids baseball teams.
• 16:12
  Right?
• 16:12
  Or or whatever it is.
• 16:14
  They they end up being people that contribute to the community beyond just their business and
• 16:19
  maybe providing jobs inside of the community, but they are able to give back that people who
• 16:25
  are working in nine to five and barely clawing at life and surviving are unable to do.
• 16:30
  And I think that's something that we need to focus on.
• 16:33
  And I think creating more entrepreneurs and giving people more access to tools and the
• 16:39
  ability to overcome problems and to solve other problems is incredibly powerful.
• 16:44
  And I think that's I think that gets lost, especially in, you know, the the capitalist
• 16:50
  society in which we live in where it's just about the dollar and making money to maybe
• 16:55
  provide a better life for yourself that you can also provide a much better life for those
• 17:00
  around you and build a better community.
• 17:02
  Yeah.
• 17:03
  I I think, there's a couple, probably, objections or limiting beliefs around
• 17:09
  entrepreneurship.
• 17:10
  One is that this new, capitalistic era, which is gonna get built thanks to AI, somehow is
• 17:19
  gonna diminish the economy.
• 17:22
  And and so that that that is the first limiting belief, I'd say, because, I mean, just simple
• 17:29
  market signals, that we've seen over the past five years tell us that the economy is on a
• 17:36
  trend to multiply, actually.
• 17:38
  And so with that assumption, you should actually be open to thinking that maybe this
• 17:46
  new capitalist world will actually provide more abundance than what we can imagine.
• 17:52
  And so a lot more people can take action and take take a stance in building products.
• 17:59
  And I think, ultimately, it's gonna get to a point where if everyone can become a builder,
• 18:07
  we could eventually go back to exchanging products and services rather than exchanging
• 18:12
  money.
• 18:12
  I think that's where it could go because the the abundance level is gonna be so large in
• 18:18
  terms of robotics being able to produce and manufacture products, physical ones, and then
• 18:23
  digital intelligence to to manufacture digital ones as as it's already doing.
• 18:28
  And so I I think there is a second limiting belief around, especially mentality.
• 18:34
  I think, like, an everyday person today thinks they have to be this kind of media projected
• 18:41
  personality of what an entrepreneur is to actually be one.
• 18:45
  Well, it doesn't really take like, there's lots of people behind the scenes which are
• 18:50
  entrepreneurs, which make their living, and they're simply normal people.
• 18:55
  And you could be one of those people, if simply you open yourself to the possibility of AI
• 19:01
  completely making things simpler for you and taking that path.
• 19:05
  And so I I think there's kind of we're we'll get to a point where, the tools all the tools
• 19:11
  we need will be there, but then it will just be a matter of whether, culture decides to commit,
• 19:18
  and and whether people decide to take that leap forward or instead move into kind of a a
• 19:25
  secondary path, which would be potentially leading us to maybe a universal basic income
• 19:31
  scenario, which I'm not particularly passionate about.
• 19:36
  But, yeah, I think if if we go in in that direction, then it just removes freedom.
• 19:42
  It removes choice around what we can do as in individuals rather than unlocking that for
• 19:51
  everyone else.
• 19:52
  I think that that's it kinda becomes the the paradigm shift there, really.
• 19:59
  Yep.
• 19:59
  Really incredible stuff.
• 20:01
  The world is surely going to change drastically over the course of the next next decade.
• 20:06
  I think even the next five years are going to tell us a lot about what that next decade or
• 20:11
  several, the rest of my lifetime for sure, will come with massive change.
• 20:16
  And, I find it to be exciting.
• 20:18
  I find it to be thrilling.
• 20:20
  And as someone who is, you know, an entrepreneur and really saw the tide shifting,
• 20:26
  especially in this media as it continues to fracture.
• 20:30
  And I think that, there's a fracturing going on inside of the business world as well that no
• 20:35
  longer will we be dominated by these massive corporations and they can own everything and to
• 20:41
  dominate attention and all of that.
• 20:43
  I think what you have is what you guys are building is that, there will be more
• 20:48
  entrepreneurs solving very specific problems, and those will be available and will provide a,
• 20:54
  you know, financial income for, you know, individuals, but but also growing into small
• 21:01
  businesses.
• 21:01
  And you're going to see a lot more of that rather than new, tech giants coming out of this
• 21:07
  era.
• 21:08
  100%.
• 21:09
  And, yeah.
• 21:11
  I mean, I haven't got much else to say around that other than just, like, AI is gonna is it's
• 21:17
  a horizontal phenomenon, so it's gonna impact every industry.
• 21:21
  Like, the the AI industry is kind of a let's say, it's a symbiote to, like, every single
• 21:27
  vertical.
• 21:28
  Doesn't matter.
• 21:29
  It could be agriculture.
• 21:31
  It could be fashion.
• 21:32
  It could be software.
• 21:34
  The what matters is that you can ultimately, like, reduce the amount of, things that you
• 21:42
  have to do to actually run that business.
• 21:44
  And so, it becomes so much easier for everyone else to do it, and it becomes, such a kind of a
• 21:53
  I'd say if you take it in the right way, it becomes such an inspiration even for people who
• 21:57
  are working for someone else today because you you you can all of a sudden say, oh, it's
• 22:03
  actually not that hard to run that that business if I implement tool one, two, and
• 22:08
  three.
• 22:09
  Right?
• 22:09
  And and so why go work for someone else if kind of the the the the systems of the complexity is
• 22:16
  reduced to, you know, almost zero?
• 22:19
  I I think it's, it becomes a no brainer, and the only bottleneck I see is culture getting in
• 22:25
  the way.
• 22:26
  And so with culture being dictated by media, my advice would be to be as first principle
• 22:34
  thinking and skeptical as possible around everything that you consume.
• 22:39
  If it's if it takes you in kind of a negative, nonconstructive, nonproductive direction, this
• 22:46
  is usually, I would say, some form of, manipulation away from what AI can actually do
• 22:53
  for you rather than, you know, just going around and saying, oh, we're gonna lose our
• 22:57
  jobs.
• 22:57
  I I don't think that's construct constructive.
• 23:00
  I think it's important for people to research, to experiment actually, and not just consume
• 23:06
  information, to to try stuff out.
• 23:09
  And if it works, you'll be shocked.
• 23:11
  How many moments do we have with AI tools on a day to day being like, working in this industry
• 23:18
  is crazy.
• 23:19
  I I I don't see why regular people can't have them.
• 23:22
  I actually am in contact with normal people who start businesses every day, and they didn't
• 23:29
  think it was possible to, completely run this very complex, advertising algorithm on their
• 23:37
  own.
• 23:38
  And and all of a sudden, they they can launch ads and actually make these ads profitable and
• 23:43
  drive revenue to to their brand and their product.
• 23:45
  And so it it is quite mind shifting, but but you have to be in a state of, kind of builder
• 23:51
  mentality and kind of open to, what what's possible, what's new.
• 23:56
  I think that's the divide, really.
• 23:59
  Yeah.
• 24:00
  The same people who are complaining, could be using AI in their you know, right now to build
• 24:07
  their business and to solve problems for others and to break away from that.
• 24:12
  And it really just stems from fear and, you know, believing the wrong people and giving
• 24:18
  into that fear rather than coming to things with an open mind and really getting in and
• 24:23
  just seeing how it can improve your life beyond a candy cane picture.
• 24:29
  100%.
• 24:30
  Awesome, Tom.
• 24:31
  Well, I appreciate you spending some time with me today.
• 24:33
  Why you go ahead and tell everybody how they can get involved and can check out lens.ai for
• 24:37
  themselves?
• 24:38
  Yeah.
• 24:39
  So lfreens.ai is a website domain.
• 24:43
  And, what you'll find on there is basically, you'll be able to preorder, the Lens AI
• 24:50
  product.
• 24:51
  It will come out later this year, around q three, q four.
• 24:56
  And what this product allows you to do is, basically, even if you're thinking of building
• 25:01
  a product, it will tell you based on real time market analytics which product's built, like,
• 25:08
  which product actually has demand into the market, the customers are looking for, if
• 25:14
  you're at a early stage.
• 25:15
  If you're at at a later stage, and you already have a product that's selling and you're
• 25:22
  figuring out ways of how AI can augment that, then it will literally scan your brand and
• 25:28
  figure out the next marketing channel that's gonna unlock your growth, or it will find a way
• 25:33
  to extend your current marketing channel.
• 25:35
  And so, you know, you can basically go to the website.
• 25:39
  You can preorder.
• 25:40
  And, out of the preorders, we'll also actively let in, brands into our closed beta, which
• 25:47
  we're currently running today.
• 25:49
  So you have also a chance of applying for that once you preorder the product and actually
• 25:54
  access, LendCI today and spend some tokens and start, you know, distributing brands and and
• 26:01
  becoming a a legacy building entrepreneur.
• 26:05
  Incredible stuff, Tom.
• 26:07
  I I think it's great what you guys are doing.
• 26:09
  I think it's incredibly helpful to the small business owners and and people who don't even
• 26:16
  know that they're going to be small business owners yet.
• 26:18
  But but they have an idea, and they're going to be able to bring those ideas to fruition and
• 26:23
  then to go from zero to a million users using Lens AI.
• 26:27
  I think it's absolutely incredible, and I can't wait to follow you guys on the journey.
• 26:32
  I got my preorder already, and and I'm looking forward to hopefully being accepted into the
• 26:37
  beta so I can get to using it as soon as possible as well.
• 26:40
  So, Tom, thank you again for spending some time with me today, and thank you for being part of
• 26:44
  the scene.
• 26:45
  Thank you so much.
• 26:47
  It's been great.