Latest / Giant Ideas / Scribd & Created By Humans Co-Founder, Trip Adler: How Can Creativity Thrive in the AI Era?

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Scribd & Created By Humans Co-Founder, Trip Adler: How Can Creativity Thrive in the AI Era? · Giant Ideas

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to be in a world where every single piece of media you consume is created by robots?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think any of us want that world.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think it's great if robots are creating media, but I think we also want to have humans creating media, and that's what we're trying to figure out.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: We want to we want to create that world.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, and welcome to Giant Ideas with me, Cameron McLean, and me, Tommy Stadlin.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: We're co-founders of Giant Ventures, which builds and backs purpose-driven companies.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: At Giant, we're lucky to meet extraordinary people with giant ideas that are changing the world.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: This podcast brings you behind-the-scenes access to those ideas and the inspiring stories of the people behind them.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: We explore how one giant idea can kickstart a billion-dollar company, shape culture, and transform life as we know it.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to Giant Ideas.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: Today we're joined by Tripp Adler, co-founder of Scribd, a company he founded with Jared Freeman, who's now a partner at Y Combinator.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Scribd is a digital document library that hosts over 195 million documents with billions of views a year.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: But today, we talk about Tripp's next act, Created by Humans, where he is the co-founder and CEO on a huge mission to champion AI rights for authors.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Giant proudly led the seed round of Created by Humans, and we invited Tripp to talk about this giant idea that affects so many people.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: How can creativity thrive in the AI era?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: In this episode, we talk about what happens if we live in a world where only machines create art.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: Are we in the pirate Napster era for creativity work, soon to be structured like Spotify?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: And his early days pivoting at YC, why persistence matters and the unusual way he earned his first revenue.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Tripp, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: So good to have you here.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna just dive right in it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: So you've now created a new company.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's called Created by Humans.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us about that.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so Created by Humans is a company that's aiming to solve copyright in the AI era and get, you know, a good balance between AI and human-generated works.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um we're doing this by building a marketplace for what we call AI rights, where creators can license their works to AI companies and AI companies can get the high quality data they need.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: So do you think creatives are kind of being ripped off at the moment?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that it's a tricky situation right now where a lot of creative works are being used without the permission of rights holders.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we think there needs to be a new model built where rights holders can have control over how their work is used and get compensated for it.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just it's just a tricky problem to solve.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think AI took a lot of people by surprise, and I think it's just a problem that we need to we need to solve.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe just taking a step back for our listeners, how do the LLMs currently work?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, how are they using the the work of creatives in things like OpenAI and Chat GPT?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, these LLMs need a lot of uh a lot of data to learn from and to train on.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they need they need lots of data, and it's just very complicated to license it all.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: So so they've basically just taken the approach of just you know trading on everything for free.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I think long term we need a new model that works for the AI companies and works for creators, and that's what we're trying to put in place.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe a stupid question, Trip, but how does it actually work?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I wrote a book in 2013 put out by WH Allen, a publisher.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Where would say OpenAI have got that book from?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, these companies don't talk a lot about where they get their data.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of uh it's something that they they sort of uh yeah, they just don't talk about too much.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of these uh various like pirate sites and and various places where books get out there.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I I mean I can't even really say.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: But but what you know, what we believe created by humans, there just needs to be like a really easy, simple, legitimate way to get it.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons these companies haven't been able to get them easily is just the rights are really complicated.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the publishing contracts for the last 70 years have not mentioned AI rights.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not clear who has the AI rights.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the general consensus is that they're they're conned by the authors and the publishers.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: So in order to unlock the AI rights for a book, we need to clear that with the author, the publisher, sometimes multiple authors.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's often a literary agent involved, an illustrator.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: It gets really complicated.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of the work we do is just clearing the AI rights so that AI companies don't have to worry about that.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, there's quite a lot to unpack there.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: So let me start with the first part of what you said.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's not clear where the AI companies actually get this work.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: That that to me sounds quite strange.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: You think about these companies, you know, the Google is one of them, right?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: OpenAI is another.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: You think of these as incredibly shiny professional companies.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds almost Napster-est that they have been what, kind of using pirate sites to get PDFs of books and it sounds very kind of Wild West.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I think Silicon Valley is very wild west, and I think the world of AI is very wild west.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, I think everyone's just figuring this this out as it goes along.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just I don't I don't work at one of the big foundation models and I just can't comment and it's a it's a legally sensitive situation, so I don't I don't want to spread rumors.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but there's various rumors in the media where like what where they get the data.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, I mean, we we just think that sure it started as a wild west, but I think longer term we need a legitimate model that that protects the creative industries and gets these AI companies the right books.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because I I don't think they want to use pirated versions.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think they want legitimate copies.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: They they want to make sure they're getting the highest quality data, they want to make sure they're getting it f directly from rights holders.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I think everyone wants to do the right thing.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a tricky problem that we need to solve.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe one way to frame what you're doing is you're trying to move, particularly, I guess, the uh the written industry, books, from the Napster era where it's sort of currently now, where it's a bit of a wild west.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: They're using these, these, these works without sort of proper authority and without compensating people.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: Move that more to a Spotify kind of model where people are generally getting compensated for the work that's being used and listened to.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's well said.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're kind of in the Napster era of AI and we need to move to the Spotify era.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, this has played out in in music and other media types before, and it's just playing out again in in AI, and there's just new nuances that need to be solved and addressed, and that's what we're doing at Created by Humans.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: So let's explain the rights that you were talking about there a little bit more.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: So as a writer, you write a novel, and traditionally with a publisher, they'll buy the rights, and then it'll be really clear who owns the rights to the book.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: If there's a movie made about it, for example, maybe that's involved in the contract.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: But you're saying there's basically never been anything in these contracts between an author and a publisher, which says if uh an LLM wants to use it, if it wants to be used for AI, this is who owns it.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's completely unclear whether that's the publisher or the author.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's um if AI rights were never mentioned in the contract, generally the default is those rights go to the author.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but in some cases you can argue it's a split, right, where the publisher and the author both co-own it.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we've built a system where authors and publishers can kind of together work this out.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because there's just so many permutations of authors and publishers, and asking every single deal to be negotiated is just really complicated.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So our platform just makes this really simple.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we can kind of solve these AI rights in a in a in a scalable way.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: How have you found that bit?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, clearly, you know, publishers and authors on one side of this argument and the LLMs are on the other side, but within the publishers and authors, is that also complicated where you've got to kind of individually barter between them?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's really complicated.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're we're we have to we're solving sort of uh disagreements between content owners and LMs and also within the publishing industry.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's really complicated, but we're we're making very good progress.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're pleased with the progress and we think we're on track here.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh history doesn't repeat, but it certainly rhymes.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: This sounds like a similar paradigm for technology.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it does.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a lot to learn from the past year, but also the past gives us a lot of confidence that we're gonna figure this out this time.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: Taking a step back, why do you think this is such an important problem to solve as society?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: Why is this a giant idea?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's important that we create a world where humans are creating, are creating things.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think it's great that AI is gonna start creating more and more media, more books, more videos, more music.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's just AI creating things, not not humans, that's kind of a terrifying future.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to create a world where there's still an incentive model for humans to create things.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if humans are creating things and AI are creating things, and these two kind of coexist and enforce each other, um, I think that's just a it's gonna be a great world.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's our that's our joint idea.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I wanted to pick up on the trip, actually, fundamentally today was it's really important to compensate existing creators for their work, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not fair that they've been ripped off and that they need to be compensated, clearly.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: But do you think there is actually a future for future creatives to be compensated?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Or because we get into a world very closely now of super intelligence, we were we were together at an event uh of ours earlier this week, and the Deep Mind founder was there, and he was saying, Look, yeah, of course, artificial general intelligence is coming very soon to the human level, but actually it's going way beyond that.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that applies to creatives too.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you think there will be any creatives who are needed and therefore needed to be compensated?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well, I'd ask you guys, I mean, do you want to be in a world where every single piece of media you consume is created by robots?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think any of us want that world.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think it's great if robots are creating media, but I think we also want to have humans creating media, and that's what we're trying to figure out.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: We want to we want to create that world.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I I hope that for hundreds and thousands of years, humans are still creating things, and you know, we're trying to build the the system that will allow that to keep keep happening.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: My view is that of course um we want humans to continue to be creative, and I think as more and more of the content gets generated by machines, I personally believe that originality and true human insight will be the differentiator.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because if we're training these models on what's come before, then by default it's gonna produce a median of what's been produced before.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not although all art is derivative in some way, I think all art that really captures the attention of people typically is novel in some way and original in some way.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I think just by default, if you're training on what's come before, you're gonna produce something that's the average.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: But perhaps that's me being idealistic and hopeful.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: I I did hear some stat the other day that sort of shocked me as a musician where that was 18% of the music on Spotify, it's now AI generated.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: And apparently Daniel Eck was saying I heard on sort of good authority that he thinks he it could be much more, but that sort of human society is not quite willing to kind of accept that yet.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Which I I made me a bit depressed to be honest.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: I really hope that's not the future.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: I I think also, Cam, you know, you were talking there about everything reverse to the meme with AI.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: A couple of months ago, you know, we all saw that uh the internet was flooded with these studio Ghibli type images, right?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: From the OpenAI's image generator.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: And there was this big outcry about, oh my goodness, this is terrible.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Studio Ghibli spent literally hundreds of hours creating one of those images, and now it's been ripped off.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, what I felt looking at that was this is so boring.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: The whole world is creating the same type of art, and actually, is an example of why individual real human creativity will always be somewhat more interesting than the mean.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do you do you agree with that?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I I agree.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Human creativity is there's something invaluable about it, and it needs to be protected at all costs.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and yeah, I think it would be it would be terrible if the world just sort of humans stop creating and AI just builds off of you know human creations until now.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I hope humans keep creating things for decades and centuries in the future, and then I hope that AI keeps learning from that for decades and centuries in the future.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if we if we know we build the build the pipelines to make that happen, it's gonna be a great, a great world for everyone.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe in the world in which AI does more and more, the things like human creativity, like uh compassion, like intelligence, like core human qualities that at least today can't be replicated in the same way by machines, perhaps they will become even more valuable.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: That is one one one sort of counter counter-reality we could imagine, right?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think that's that's totally possible.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I think that as AI gets more abundant, you know, human creativity will likely be yeah, more valuable the time.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe um if it's okay, just maybe taking uh kind of a step back into your journey, what led you to to build created by humans?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a when we when we heard the pitch, we're proud investors, we thought it was a fantastically original idea and hugely needed.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: So what took you on your journey to launch this company?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I I just saw the saw the problem very clearly.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: I saw that all the the the content owners were were suing the i companies and the i companies didn't seem to have a clear, clear answer to this besides just responding to the lawsuits.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um in particular, I I knew a lot of people involved.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, I know uh from my previous company, I knew a lot of people in the book world and they were coming to me asking me for for advice on what to do about the situation.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then the people getting sued were people I knew in Silicon Valley.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I just thought like I wanted to solve this problem.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I saw it as like an interpersonal problem.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was just like, well, if we can just end the lawsuits, get people talking to each other, we'll figure this out.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I just started talking to to, you know, my folks I knew in the book industry, folks I knew in the the tech industry, and then just started going down the path of solving the problem and then pretty soon set up a company, raised funding, and here we are today.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Who have you got on the platform so far from the creative side?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we have a large number of great authors.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some of the the the uh big ones we work with are like Walter Isaacson and Doug Preston.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they've been uh two of the two of the ones we've been working with most closely, but we've got a long list of folks you can see on our website.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, Tripp, just explain to us how these different types of rights work, all the way from just being able to train the models on some content all the way through to writing a poem in the style of Cameron McLean.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good style.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we should we should definitely license that style for sure.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, so when we got started, we were really focused on on training and um uh you know solving the problem around training data, but we realized the idea is bigger than that.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we've uh we've developed a whole new system of AI rights.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um we have three categories of AI rights.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the first is getting content for AI model training.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the second is what we call reference rights, which is making content available for for RAG.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third is what we call transformative rights.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this is for taking a copyright work and transforming it into something new.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so this could be turning a book into a video using AI.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: It could be chatting with a character in a book, it could be writing a new book in the style of an author's voice.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we're creating all these different rights frameworks that haven't really been, you know, needed before.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we're creating them for this new AI world.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and this will just kind of unlock a whole new range of possibilities, what can be done with cop red content.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: And just for listeners, RAG, you mentioned in the middle there.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, RAG stands for retrieval augmented generation.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's it's it's um uh it's kind of a buzzword in Silicon Valley right now because a lot of people are using it.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's like imagine if you ask a question and the answer is on you know page 152 of a book, um, Rag will allow it to kind of get that that answer directly versus having to train on it in advance.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um just a it's a new it's a new technology, and they they need your AI companies need data to power Rag, and and we just are another data source for that.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe if we compare it back to Spotify, and we were using that analogy earlier on, I guess Spotify had this incredibly positive on the music industry overall, where NASDAQ came along and was ripping off music and the whole industry was declining, CD sales went through the floor, and there was kind of complete panic in the industry.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Enormous boom since then because of Spotify and other streaming platforms, giving those rights.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I guess if you dig a little deeper, it's been brilliant for the mega artists, not so great for the smaller artists who struggled to monetize through through Spotify as much.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: How do you see that playing out in the world of creatives?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got some really big name authors, you mentioned Walter Isaacson and so on.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Will they get the lion's share of revenue?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And how will it work for kind of smaller creatives who might be more at risk from AI?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's a tricky problem.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't say we have the answer, but I we're you know, we're dedicated to trying to make this work for all kinds of creators.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make it work for the big, big authors, we want to make it work for small authors.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually we want to make it work for you know anyone who writes a poem.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's what we're trying to do.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I wouldn't say we've like solved it yet, but I mean that's a core part we want to do is to make this really you know widely available to creators of all kinds.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: And perhaps the way that creators engage with their audience will evolve.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Spotify uh in terms of royalties hasn't been great for smaller creators, but it has unlocked a new sort of large avenues for Torian in particular.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's hard to kind of predict where this this heads in a couple years.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: I I agree.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And given that the alternative is piracy, I mean it's just better to get a paid model going where creatives have some control versus just having this happen without control, without compensation.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we think really any baby steps in this direction is hugely valuable.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And as an author, is there any sense of how much of their overall income this is gonna make up?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got your book deal and you're getting paid for that, and maybe as I said, there's some TV rights that might come.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: What percentage of your overall revenue as a creator is gonna come from AI rights?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, we really don't know, but but we believe this is the next big model for the book industry.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at like the history of the book industry, they're keeping new models that or new ways for authors to reach audiences.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: So first it was print books, and then it was ebooks, and then it was audiobooks, and there's been things like movie rights and podcast rights.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we think AI rights are gonna be like the next big, the big thing.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's gonna take time to build it, build it out, build the model, but we think long term it's gonna be the model of the future.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: And tell us a bit about that.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: I know created by humans has kind of a specific meaning, particularly kind of with with how copyright can evolve.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: And how could you see this model and this technology being applied to other forms of of creativity outside of uh books?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, think it'd be applied to everything really well.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we just want to solve it for one vertical before we expand.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's hard enough to solve this for one thing.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we're trying to focus on books, solve it for books, and then from there we can expand this to film, to journalism, to music.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really to any kind of human data.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk a little bit about policy.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're here in London with us, and uh you we were at an event with Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology here in the UK.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Elton John has been rather rude about our friend Peter and called him a moron because they're so upset with the, I guess, the imbalance that the creative industry here in the UK sees between the creators and AI platforms and perceive the government as you know favoring the AI uh companies because the government really wants to supercharge AI.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a big battle going on there, the government's sort of stuck in the middle.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think government should be doing, if anything, on updating copyright laws for the problem you're solving?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's yeah, there's a few approaches to solving this.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: One is on the policy side, another is by you know with these lawsuits and seeing where that resolves.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're focused on solving this on like the the product side.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're just talking to customers and we're building products that solve the solution.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that the the government could certainly play a role in setting some policy here.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: We are, you know, we're putting together our our kind of proposal.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna share with the world soon.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I don't think that the government needs to do a lot.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think mostly the government just needs to let market forces play out here.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but there's probably a few things government can do to sort of like unstick the situation and just kind of get this, get this new framework.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: I I think looking at history, I would say that government will not be the thing that moves the needle here.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Spotify, we've referred to a few times, is when you give both sides a great product that's a win-win situation that also works for consumers.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's what we'll move it forward, I think.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what we believe, and that's how we're we're trying to solve it.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I mean, yeah, we're solving it by building a product.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I I mean, I think there's probably some things the the government could do in terms of uh both protecting creators, but also in terms of protecting AI companies and making it easier for AI companies.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: So there's like a few a few policies that can put in place.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's a whole long conversation about what they could or could not do.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Every startup and founder needs to run through a few brick walls to kind of see their vision come to life.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: What are some of the walls that you're having to run through with created by humans to make this vision come to be?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think we're running through brick walls constantly, right?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, I think it starts out where you go talk to authors, and you know, some authors are really enthusiastic about AI, and some are just don't even want to talk about AI, right?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: So like we have those kinds of problems.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then you have AI companies, some of them are into this idea, some of them just want to let the lawsuits play out, right?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So there's just like there's just a whole range of opinions here.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we just need to kind of address each of these concerns one at a time.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think by building a product that that is there if you if you love AI, if you don't like AI, if you're in between, it just gives control to each of the different parties given their different preferences.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's how we how we solve this.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's just, I mean, that's what it feels like building a company is just one brick wall after another, and we just kind of clear one at a time, and eventually it all comes together and things move forward.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Trip, let's go back in your journey a little bit.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: This is not your first rodeo.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: You were the founder and CEO of Scribd, the digital publishing platform, created that from scratch uh in your apartment, right in San Francisco.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us about the founding story of that.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: We started in the uh in the Y scraper with all the other Yorkshire, you guys know the Y scraper?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us about listeners, yeah.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in the early days of Y Combinator, a bunch of Y Combinator companies all moved into one apartment building and we launched or built our companies out there.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like other companies there were like like Dropbox and Weebly.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'd ask you guys, I mean, do you want to be in a world where every single piece of media you consume is created by robots?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think any of us want that world.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think it's great if robots are creating media, but I think we also want to have humans creating media, and that's what we're trying to figure out.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: We want to we want to create that world.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: That was you remember Justin.tv?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, of course.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Before it became Twitch?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so they were in the yeah, so so Justin.tv was in the apartment.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, everywhere you go, there was Justin with a camera on.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: So there's like the whole the whole thing was being live streamed.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: It was like a YC version of Big Brother, everyone's on TV.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was a lot like that, yeah.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: Does that footage survive?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh nothing dies on the internet, so it's somewhere.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: I yeah, I don't know where it is.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was it was an interesting time.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I mean, there was always like venture capitalists coming by the coming by the the the uh the building and just your media coming by.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was yeah, it was a really interesting time.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: How old were you at that time?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was like early 20s, just out of college.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing, amazing.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so tell us about the the idea and and you had a conversation with your father, uh is that right?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Which was part of the inspiration?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh we're at Harvard, me and my co-founder Jared.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we uh senior year at Harvard, we just started like playing with ideas for companies.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we tried a few different ideas.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: We um applied to uh YC back in 06 with a totally different idea.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh yeah, we applied with one idea.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Paul Graham told us that he would only invest if we did a different idea.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we changed the idea and then we changed it again.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually one of the first companies to like rapidly pivot a lot before we launch anything, and we we probably tried like 10 ideas.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: What was the first idea?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you applied to YC.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: The idea we applied to YC with it was going to be this sort of like transportation search super app sort of thing.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no, you ended up.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was a lot like it was actually we described Uber perfectly.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but this was pre iPhone, pre like easy payments.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we were just way ahead of our time.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I think from that I learned like you can't be too early with an idea.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Being early is as bad as you know, just being totally wrong.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that was the original idea we applied to YC with, and then PG said, Do you have any other ideas?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ideas.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then we said, well, we're going to build Craigslist for colleges.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then PG said, Well, that's a great idea.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then he uh he funded that idea.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then we launched at Harvard and we called it Who List.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was Craigslist for Who List uh for Harvard.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, we got some moderate traction, but just didn't really take it.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds a bit like Facebook.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is like this was right around the Facebook era.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: So this idea of starting something in colleges was like uh, you know, just a like everyone was that sort of idea.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was also it was in Zuckerberg's class at Harvard, so I was kind of like among that first group of people to get Facebook.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that was interesting inspiration too.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And just for listeners, Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, and your co-founder, Jared, uh, was is now one of the senior partners at Y Combinator, right?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: We um we did Y Combinator back in 06, the second class, and now he's one of the big partners there.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we're very connected to YC.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And tell us how you made your first revenue.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, I guess the uh the first uh the first revenue we we we shared publicly was um yeah, the first year we actually we didn't make any revenue.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and around Christmas time of our uh the first year, I played Sax Phone on the Street Corner and made$17.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we put that in the company's bank account.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then we we put on the on the website, it said, How do you how do you make money?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we said Trip plays sax on the street corner sometimes.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh that that was our first$70.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: But then I think the next the next year we got an ad model going and we started making decent revenue and um we got pretty pretty quick after that first year.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Trip, tell us what are your main lessons that you learned from the very long and successful journey you have with Scrib?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, I think like over yeah, yeah, I was I ran that company for 17 years, and I think like I've just learned so many lessons that I just I think the lesson is like the more the more you do this, the more you learn and the better you get it.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think entrepreneurship is a learned skill and it isn't just one thing, it's a lot of things.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I think if you just spend time working on it, you get better and better with time.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what are specific lessons?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, I think things that we've done really well created by humans that I may learn from Scrib, like one is we've we've started with like trying to solve a really big idea.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I think if you start your company with like a very meaningful purpose, um, everything else kind of falls out of that very naturally.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think we've we've started with a really big idea.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think at Scrib we were too much of this mindset of just like, well, like how do we grow traffic?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: How do we grow revenue without starting with like a really meaningful, uh, really meaningful problem?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that was a a key lesson is start with a really big idea.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another another thing is I think just like getting the team right is extremely important.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: The team and the culture.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like if you get that right, everything else just sort of like flows naturally.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I mean, we have like you know, we've been really deliberate in saying the team, saying the culture.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I mean, we defined our cultural values in like the first month of the company with the new company.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we're very deliberate in building the culture.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um just yeah, have a big, big idea, have a good team and culture, and and yeah, have a just a really high bar for excellence, right?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh it really does make a the you know, the difference between an A plus product and an A minus product is a huge difference in terms of how successful you're gonna be.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: So just you know, really focus on building a great high-quality product.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: When you and I first met, we really bonded over a love of music and a love of surfing.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: You're a saxophone player.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: How do you think your the creative side of who you are plays a role in what you're doing at created by humans?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I think as a founder and CEO, you you have to be really creative, right?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's a little bit like being an artist, right?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're constantly creating and you're your your storytelling and your um yeah, it's a little bit like an art project.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I think like um there's a creative element to it.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean I've never been like a professional creative, I've never actually made money off my creative works except except the$17.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Except the$17.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's good point.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Except the$17.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh but but I've gotten to know uh creatives just really well through through you know all my work, especially at Scribed.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've just gotten to know the industry and the importance of building a business model around creativity.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, there's there's a I mean the reason why we have a lot of creative output in in the world is in large part there's like these creative industries that have been built out over the last, like in the book, in the case of books, it's been around 600 years.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a whole industry for supporting, you know, storytelling and writing and creating books.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I've just learned the importance of having uh those industries in place and those business models in place.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we just we don't want to see those those go away.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and just because AI is such a big moment doesn't mean we should throw out these these systems that have produced so much creativity over time.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're trying to do is is uh build a system where we can protect these creative industries, but also help them kind of get to the new, help help them, you know, find their role in this new AI era.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: Love that.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: And tell me a bit about the name created by humans and how you think about you know what copyright could look like in 10 years from now.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we called it Created by Humans because we want to be the company that that sticks up for human creative creative work and just human creativity in general.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, it sounds kind of like a silly name for an AI company because um, you know, everyone, yeah, I told I told me I told uh Paul Graham about the idea recently, and he was like, Oh, that's really retro.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh um and uh um, but that's kind of the point, right?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's created by humans.ai.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're the AI company that cares about human creative works, and we're um we're you know, we we want to stand out in being that company that's sticking up for human creativity.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um and um, yeah, our logo, we we designed this little this little face uh um that's part of the logo, and um, you know, we envision it being the new copyright symbol.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: We we envision this being something that that humans put on their creative work to indicate it was created by humans and not by AI.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, we we think human creativity needs to be protected at all costs.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but we also don't want it siloed off from the world of AI.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: We want to bring these two worlds together.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and um, yeah, that's why we've created this this logo.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, hopefully one day you'll you'll open a book and you'll see the created by humans symbol on there to know it was uh human-created work.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: No doubt.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: Excited to see that.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: We uh we end every podcast by asking our guests what it is about them that's allowed them to achieve what they've achieved.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: And in your case, what do you think it is?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, I think I'm really just persistent and committed.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just really stick stick with things.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, at Scrib, there were like a lot of a lot of moments where it looked like you know, it like it was not looking good, and um I just kind of stuck with it and powered powered through it.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I think like having had a lot a lot of those like near death company experiences just really really teach you a lot.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um and nowadays when we hit we hit a road bump, I'm just like you know, much more comfortable kind of handling those moments just given I've been through um through a lot of those kinds of experiences.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean I think I'm pretty flexible in my thinking.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, I'm pretty like committed to the to the vision and to a certain you know uh problem we're solving, but like I mean, our you know, we're we're very flexible in our thinking and we're we're constantly evolving our our our model.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: So um so I think it's just you know sticking with it and being being nimble and um and just uh learning as you go.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: What about the team around you, Trip?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: What what are you looking for for others, which they are brilliant at, which might be stuff you're not good at or not interested in yourself as a CEO?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well I think you want to build a team that balances out your skill set.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and um I I started the company with two co-founders.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: So one is um Edward, who's our CTO, who's uh just you know, builds really great, really great products, hires really good engineers, really in the weeds and um all over the the the technical details, everything.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then our other co-founder is um is Jen, who is kind of marketing operations.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um she uh worked with me at Scrib for eight years.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we just have a lot of experience working together.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: So uh between the three of us, like we just kind of round out all the different the different skills.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't it's hard hard to explain exactly how it works, but we've got a good we we've kind of got the the all the key buckets checked.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean I think um I think getting your founding team right is is extremely important.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think a lot like one of the main reasons I think companies fail is like the co-founders get into a fight and it doesn't work out.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think if you get that that co-founder dynamic right, I mean that can carry the company that that can carry the company very far.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do you is that something you work on with your co-founders?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: How do you because you work with these people for a long time now, how do you maintain that relationship?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have any kind of methods in terms of talking about stuff, being open with each other about how things are going in terms of your relationship, not the company?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Or things you do together.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I mean, I I like to just be really open and honest about about everything.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: So um you know, you you want to constantly be very just open about what the challenges are, what needs to be solved.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like if if you're you know, if there's a problem, it's a lot better to just service that problem for everyone to know right away.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and just be completely transparent so everyone can really be uh true thought partners on what you're building.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so thank you so much, Tripp.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: We are so proud to be backers of your company created by humans, and uh think you're doing something very important for the world.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you for sharing your giant idea with us today.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm proud to be a giant company, and thanks for having me here.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Tripp.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you like the episode, don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow the show, and you can find many more giant ideas wherever you get your podcasts.