At the heart of an industrial revolution is an innovation that changes everything. Building AI Boston sees artificial intelligence as a renaissance. From the heart of innovation and the mecca of tech learning, we bring you AI for real people, a conversation for everyone. Hi, welcome to Building AI Boston where we are broadcasting live from Startup Boston Week and today we have Brendan Wich are joining us coming back for the second time. Hey Brendan. Hey nice to see you again. Nice to see you. How you doing? Doing good. Doing good. Nice to get downtown. Yeah it is. You know it's funny back in the day I used to work in this building and I have to say I miss downtown crossing. Yeah I really do. Boston downtown is such a fun place to be. It's a great place to spend the day hang out and this is a beautiful building. It's a great conference we're at here today so really enjoying it. That's great and have you had a chance to go to any sessions today? Yeah I popped into a few of them taking a look at what was going on, what people were talking about. Obviously AI is the big you know a theme of Startup these days. No shortage of those conversations but of course the conference focuses on leadership and other things of that nature which is really nice as well. So yeah it's a nice mix here and you know if you missed it this year I suggest people come down next. Yeah definitely and it does seem to be pretty much you can wake up every morning and go to an AI event right now in Boston and it feels that way. Like we know we have sort of Boston Week and then in a few weeks we have AI week. Boston AI week but this is the first time ever they've done that in Boston. Yeah no shortage. No shortage. No shortage of conversations about technology innovations in AI here in Boston these days but you know expect it right with Harvard and MIT and all these colleges plus you've got you know all these big already already you know baked in AI companies already out here. Yeah you know I robots out here as an example right then you got Boston Dynamics is out here so you know it's a it's a town it's a it's a town built for for AI innovation. It is and you know we definitely are trying to make sure we're on the map and not you know not being forgot between the other sort of coastal cities out there right so when you think about AI and you think about AI in Boston in particular and we think about our ecosystem and what makes this special. So aside from the sort of the universities and things like that do you think that we're doing anything unique here in terms of how we approach AI in terms of how we're building. I think one of the things I would say let me start with the younger generation first on this topic which I think is really important. I mean with the schooling that we have and the schools that we have I mean when you're going to attend one of these universities that's really at the forefront of some of this you have to be someone who loves to think. You know you have to be someone who has intellectual curiosity that is baked into your DNA right 24-7 you want to know what's going on you want to understand new innovations excite you right this is this is different than the older generations where it's like you know I don't want things to change because I make a lot of money because of the way things are and I got to learn something new then I don't really want to do that so you know the natural state of of Boston's great very vibrant college communities really is a nice sort of bedrock for innovation and things that are going on here and this is why you see companies opening up you know locations here even if they're not headquartered here because we have so much of that curiosity that intellectual curiosity that's either here already or that's coming in transferring in as as you know students both graduate and undergraduate and so I think it's a great place to find that talent and especially that talent that is is born with AI and then I wouldn't say born obviously because they're they're not born in the sense of coming into the world that way but they're coming into their their their continuing education with AI are being part of the conversation right which is a little different you know like if you if you grow up I mean example if you grow up in a household where they speak both Spanish and English you don't think twice about the idea of speaking Spanish and English and swapping off back and forth and like you know it's a very natural thing for you if you are if you are you know in your fourth year of college your school or even in a in a continuing graduate program you you would have needed to adjust your thinking right throughout your education about how AI is going to impact some things right which is this generation now coming in already has a very sort of there's been a much there's a fairly mature in the world of tech a fairly mature conversation already going on about AI and so I think they're coming into the education with it as part of the story arc and that just gives them quite frankly an advantage and so I think companies recognize that and say well where are these people going to get their education and a lot of times it's it's right here it's awesome right and we had some pretty big news in Boston about a global company relocating here as Hasbro yeah mr. Mrs. Potato Head yeah they're coming to Boston yeah you know I see Mr. and Mrs. Potato head being very AI driven in the future I see you know just I I have nightmares about mr. Potato head coming in my room and talking to me like it's an Alexa device but hey you know two-weeked zone hey you know if it could happen we'll build it here right that's right exactly but it's it's interesting what you say about thinking right because in our last episode you made the great observation that people pay you to think like that's your job right and so so I know we dug it that into that in the last episode but that's that's a pretty cool job right to to think so tell us more about that and and how how the heck do you keep one step ahead of this stuff when everything's changing so fast yeah you know quite frankly the secret sauce to this is access to great industry professionals that are out there like I you know I like to say I don't have an original thought I don't have an opinion there is no bread and stuff no no I'm telling you like the the reality is is that as an analyst and I and I I mean if you went to Brennan Witcher.com you would see this on posted on my website is that I don't have an opinion about things like my job is to communicate in truth without a Brendan sort of filter on it what is it that's going on what's the truth that's going on like if everybody was dropping AI and going back to analog things I would say everyone's going back to analog because that's my job so the data would be telling you that's what's happening you would tell us what the data told you whether or not we thought that was what we wanted it's one of the reasons I like being an industry analyst and being a industry pro is that or someone who is you know is paid to create thought leadership right the reason I like it and it's the reason I got out of the industries I was in is that I can put my head down on pillow at night and say I told the truth all day today right I told people the truth I allowed them now whether they accepted that truth or not that's up to them right like I don't own whether or not people listen to what I have to say and then do it like that's up to them where it's a free country it's a free world and do whatever you want but my job is to communicate truth and that is that comes from the people that are out there doing it day in and day out so you know I think that there's some there are some people that believe you know because I'm well known then what I say is important and I'm not of that mindset I'm more of the mindset like because I'm well known I have the I had the luxury and the benefit and the privilege of communicating from a huge network of people industry leaders you know Fortune 500 companies I've worked with you know over the last 12 years I've worked with 59 out of the top Fortune 100 companies you know on their strategies and eight eight of the top 10 and that is that is something that drives what I tell other people and what is going on out there in the industry it's not you know I saw something on CNBC and now I'm just parroting that out to the market it's you know a CEO at a top 10 Fortune 10 company told me these are my real struggles and this is how I'm addressing it and this is that right now I'm under and DA with everyone on the planet so you can't be like I'm not gossip central that's for sure yeah but it's nice because you know I don't know that some people love that I say this but you know I'm kind of like legalized espionage I'm writing you know it's like I know what everyone's when I walk through malls or like downtown or whatever I'm like oh I know what they're doing I know what they're doing I know they're doing I can't even tell my wife what it is that they're working on right because I'm under and DA with everyone yeah but it's it's nice because I can communicate in an aggregated fashion right like what comes on on my mouth or what I write on paper is the aggregate conversations of the people that I'm talking to right day in and day out who are living it not people who've written books on it and you know thought about it or tried to teach it in a school but actually the people doing it day in and day out and that's so important so refreshing in this environment where so much of the information we get is just biased right so it's and we know like we're seeped in that like from a minute we wake up to the minute we go to bed at night and so to have that kind of interpretation of just truth they're not even interpretation that reporting of truth is like so rare and why you know companies like Forster are so valuable right to people because they help them understand and the minute you stop being independent and you read those tea leaves wrong like that's the end of it right because you have to build that credibility and we all know how how easy it is to misinterpret data right what it's telling you oh yeah it's so simple and the thing of it is like if you're going to be a trusted asset I like you know I I went through an exercise a few years ago where I where I kind of said you know who am I to the people that I serve and I want to be a trusted asset and both of those words mean a lot to me right and acid is something you value and acid is something that's a benefit to you it is a it is something that creates you know sort of equity for you right but trusted is a big word right what do you do not only to create trusted assets you have to build that trust you have to keep that trust right right and so trust ed is an ongoing word it's an ongoing sort of thing and so to maintain that you really do have to have some level of integrity and you can't just say whatever you feel like saying you know I sometimes I'm known to say like I think this is really interesting because the truth of the matter is is life is interesting enough right yeah you don't actually have to make stuff up to make it interesting right I think what people happens is people will say oh look at this headline you know that's in the news and da da da and it's that's good but that's for generating clicks right that's for that's for distracting you from the next headline that's going to be just as dramatic or have a bunch of hyperbole attached to it or whatever it is right so that to me is where I'm not competing with that right my job is to help companies actually get business outcomes right my job is to help them not make poor business decisions especially in a world where the headlines might be suggesting that you should make certain decisions right a number of years ago in the retail industry as an example there was a lot of talk about you know these companies like JC Penny and others were closing their stores and they're like there was this huge sort of retail apocalypse story about like stores are dead blah blah blah that was absolutely not the truth the truth was we were stopping in stores more than we like like 75% of our sales that were in physical stores the companies that were shutting down were brands that had brand problems right right they were the the radio shacks the JC pennies the K-Mart's the Sears these are brands that had launched touch with customers and had nothing to do with physical stores right it's just physical stores is where you can save the most money so they were shutting down stores and the media picked it up as this story now the danger of that of course is that other people who were in retail they go oh look stores are irrelevant and we saw a huge slowdown in investments in physical stores simply because of the media story right not because of the truth right and so you know it's it's it's it's really quite quite something to be in the spot that I'm in because I'm lucky in that way because I get to say what it is and it may sound contrary in at times but that's because the point of why I say things which is for helping clients get to the truth and to make smart business decisions is different than me trying to get as many likes or views or clicks right you're not on my story you're not just trying to be this like you know talking head getting you know all the attention for that it's like you want your what your day so it's back to the data right so now one thing you said last time we talked was um really stuck with me was how we have now a whole new trove of data that was useless before and I think it was at the Oracle person yeah yeah yeah Markard Markard so thinking about what do we do now and who's gonna win and lose not that it has to be that black and white but when we open up now access to all this data that we didn't use to be able to understand or mine or use or whatever uh what is what is what is that change and where are the smartest sort of like people who are thinking about this in the right way sort of grasping that opportunity I think the very tip top the very smartest people that I know in industry are starting to realize that in a world where AI I think you know what are the other guests that you've talked to in the past talked about how we don't know the real impact of AI to the extent right could be everything could be nothing could be somewhere in between I think what's her statement yeah and I like that statement because I don't think we do know that fact yet but I think that one of the things that the smartest companies I know um are doing is that they are absolutely rethinking what I would call their data strategy a data strategy is not data sharing it's not data sourcing it's not data security it's not data storage it's a lot of alliterations I know but um you know a data strategy is this idea of understanding you know if we knew x we could do y right like just that basic understanding of saying you know if I had a certain knowledge of certain pieces of information then I could do certain things for the people I'm trying to serve and that's going to be to be your B2C scenario tech buying tech tech tech tech purchasing test selling whatever it is um you know the the idea is that if I if I can learn more than I can do more company city are not getting beat because they have better products better sormant better services and this is a huge thing that's different from what was 10 years ago I kind of caution people that are just getting into business now like your elders lived in a different world yeah they lived in a world where if I wanted a screwdriver you know like a screwdriver or hammer my options were people that were in a few miles from me in this world I can get anything I want anywhere right a sormant used to be how you win consumers as consumers today don't say I can get a hammer at five places they say I can get it at 50 places right and so that becomes something that's not good for business strategies thinking we'll win with great products everybody's got great products right that's that's not a that's not a it's not a thing that's going to win right what's going to win is your ability to understand those customers better right and that's where I'm seeing the best of the best out there is they're thinking about an unstructured data strategy that's the one thing that I see a commonality across all these companies is they're not just using AI for the data that they have and they're certainly not just using an unstructured data they're using it on unstructured data to create those net new capabilities those net new experiences that may consumers go or even companies are trying to serve go that was different that served my needs that was something that created convenience simplicity ease cost savings whatever it is yeah I have a benefit by having a relationship with you and in fact not only do I see you as a supplier of something for me I see you as someone that's it makes strategic sense for me to to have a relationship with you and I and it sounds like I'm talking about business but I'm also talking about life right people's personal lives like I don't mean to like turn life into this soulless sort of entity you know I'm going to sound that way for it's like I'm going to I'm going to sound like a soulless human being here for a minute but you need a strategy for life right if you're really going to get through it without having to be medicated constantly you need to have some kind of strategy for life and it's about finding the companies that help you get through life the way you want and that can that can do this so you've got all these people at startup Boston right and when I'm listening to their pitches or I'm listening to what they have to say I'm wondering to myself okay but are you actually creating something that people would say I really couldn't live without that right like I really need that I'm going to share something with your audience that I haven't shared broadly okay and it's this a big one all right okay now I'm under NDA with Amazon I'm about I'm under like seven of them okay so I but I work with them constantly yeah and when I ask people you know what is it what do you think Amazon's primary mission statement is this is a couple years ago so maybe they've changed it but I don't think they have you know what is their mission statement and I'm getting answers all the time like oh supply chain or you know customer experience for all these kinds of things and it's none of those things I was at their offices in 2017 and they asked me to come out and bang on their Amazon ghost store okay right which was that yeah the automated checkout right and they were just launching it to the public they had had their employees be able to use it but they were launching the public so they have me come out and try to like steal from it and what my thoughts were on okay that sounds like a fun job yeah that was that was fun they flew me out to stay out it was a lot of fun to shop lifting to go shop lifting yeah you know this job is very interesting yeah so but but anyway we were upstairs in the office is talking and they made a statement that I couldn't believe they said but I asked them I said please please please will you give me permission to save that out loud someday and they did they said it would be okay so so here's what Amazon's primary mission is and I would say to anybody that's doing a B2C business this is what you're competing against Amazon's mission is to get you to say the word Amazon every day of your life wow that is the scariest mission statement I've ever said because this is like written down like they're written out no no this is just this was their goal this is what they communicated to me they said our goal is to get the consumer to say Amazon every day of their life now think about what's not think about what's not in that statement the word buy that's a big difference and this is why like sure you've got millions and I mean millions of Alexa devices out there and maybe nobody is buying on them but so what right people are saying the word Amazon every day right when they're talking to their device when they're watching Amazon Prime when they're storing their photos and videos when they're using audible when they're using their ring doorbell when they're you know when they're buying actually on Amazon.com or going to a fresh store or going to a whole foods right like they they wanted to at the time and I think they've kind of accomplished it so maybe it's not their mission anymore they wanted customers they wanted to be seen as a utility I'm using their words right as a utility in people's lives utility like your water and your electric like you can't live with that like you something you wouldn't even think twice about taking out of your life hmm that's what you're up against. Okay so that's amazing and also intimidating right so we're at an event with for startups so people are either wanting to start something they want to fund something they're interested in the space right so what lesson can someone all the way on the other side of the scale where Amazon take from that right because you're not going to go be Amazon. Oh but what can you what can you learn from that kind of mindset as an entrepreneur. Yeah the mistake would be to focus on the monetary requirements for doing something like that because Amazon has the balance sheet of a small country right and and most people here do not have that right I mean you know there's some money here but they're you know I don't know maybe not a small country medium medium size country that competes in the Olympics right okay um I think that I think though what to take away from that is that what is your mission statement how you know like is it to solve a problem or is it to be a strategic partner in people's lives right even in a niche sort of way right something that is like I have to have this in my life if you're a beat of seething right if you're beat of be it be more of like do I fit into the ecosystem of what they're trying to accomplish right as a business in a way that again they can't really live without me sort of thing yeah the thing that I find most people starting businesses today miss is they fail to understand that if they don't create this sort of strategic level partnership with their with their customers or their with their buyers or whoever it is then they are wildly replaceable right easily replaceable right you know and it's not just like people are going to love our product people fall in and out of love with products like look at Furby's Rubies Cues people fall in love with products all the time all the time and then what was super hot was super cold like you know you were in restaurants that's in powers that's what happened yeah yeah I got it called the next day yeah exactly so you know um I you know I I still think about like how Facebook um what was that company before Facebook that uh my space my space yeah right I still have my I still have my my space for dummies you know book that's probably the way back right but like think about it like like we move from my space to Facebook very quickly we moved from blockbuster to Netflix very quickly right and that's not just consumers that's just that those same consumers are in the beat of b seats buying tech and buying things and so they bring that with them to the office and they have that same sort of short-term mindset and it's not a it's not a memory problem it's more of just like I I have permission to move on I have permission to change brands I have permission to not be the Kmart shopper or whatever right like like back in the day we used to build those like I'm a lucky strike guy right like for those cigarette companies right yeah like these were the the elements of creating loyalty and that's just not present anymore because consumers are like I don't have the luxury of being inconvenienced to shop with you or buy from you I don't have that luxury because my kids in 17 different sports they're now taking after school activities you know um my wife and I are both working blah blah blah you know to make ends meet and all this kind of stuff right our lives are just they're not designed for us to have a lot of time to do things right this is why people use you know dating apps because no one's got time to go to a bar and he done someone for three hours to try to get a date now you got to go to Tinder and Swipe less white right for 10 minutes so I get a few dates right exactly it's transactional right but it's all short and everything's like you know condensed and that's that and I love that idea of like the the closing well not necessarily closing window but the shrinking sort of space so think about these things right and so when we take that back like your decision is faster everything's faster you get stuff faster you know you're gonna you're gonna move brands faster yeah all that but when you think about it from like the entrepreneurial side again straight up yes or no do entrepreneurs no matter what they're doing no matter what field they're interested in do they have a choice about using AI or not yes they have a choice okay so tell me why they do have a choice um because I think that it has to mix I was just having this conversation with our producer here Dan just a minute ago about this you know I think what what you need to do when you're starting a business is you have to understand where to use automation versus human humanization so and I think I'm making that word up but I like it let's put it in the picture all right I'm gonna coin it so here's the thing what what I see start up doing that's a mistake is they automate touch points or automate moments in the journey for the customer that would be better served by having a human being involved right they try to go all in on AI on every single moment and that's a mistake it's over swinging on the pendulum right okay so what I would say is like evaluate that thing so what I'm seeing existing small businesses do like I had a small business owner come up to me the other day we were talking about his strategy and he said I call 10 customers a day I don't want to lose that by having AI do it for me and I go I would tell you that it would if you did that it would be the biggest mistake of your career to do that you should not have AI call 10 customers but are there other parts of the way you do business that AI could reduce the amount of time you spend there so now you can call 20 customers a day I see yes this is the mistake people make as they start to say I can apply AI to this thing check no you need to first do an evaluative statement to say but is this what's keeping people buying from me is this the thing that a customer say I need this to be a human being or else it's not going to work for me sort of thing right or I need this to be more personalized let's sterile let's automate it let's sort of shall we say in authentic sort of way right um can I create that sort of experience and then looking at the customer journey and whether it's a journey for customers or buyers right if it's a B2B world if we're looking at that buyer journey and saying well you know like at this moment is it they can go to the website in self-serve or are they talking to an outside sales rep or they're talking to me the founder of the company right is it like who's the right person to have that moment because if you're gonna if there is a moment in the buying journey when someone is absolutely going to make the decision whether or not to buy from you it should be the highest quality touchpoint the mistake would be let's make it as easy and convenient and simple as possible so they can they can do this within two seconds that would be that's like that's a UX mindset right rather than a business strategy mindset right it's better to take five minutes and make a person feel like this is special than it is to have it take five seconds and they're like eh I'll drop this next week if I don't feel like doing this right and I'll give you a great example of this in the real world if you ever sign up for uh stitch fix no okay but I know it okay you know stitch fix right so has anybody is anybody here ever sign up for stitch fix can you hear me do you know stitch fix yeah okay you do right okay there's a person here in the audience it's it's it's listening to us good if you sign up for stitch fix that's like a 20-minute sign-up process right yeah right you need to bring a sandwich to this sign-up process to get through it I'm telling you right but you know that 80% of people finish that process why because they know there's going to be value at the end of it for it and that tells you all you need to do about consumers today no they don't want to spend a lot of time doing things unless they believe they're going to get a lot of value out of something but what they don't want to do is look at your advertisements for 20 minutes which are in your best interest right not in the consumers best interest right if I'm getting value out of something I will absolutely spend more time doing it right and that's the mistake I think a lot of startups make is they try to make everything too short they try to say we're going to simplify everything to the point where it becomes like indistinguishable from what my customers do and it feels like it's just a robot and I have there's no law of reciprocity that people feel towards AI machines yet right and for those that don't know what the law of reciprocity is if you're old enough you remember that there was a company and I forget what it's called March of Dimes or somebody that used Ziggy which is the old cartoon character and they used to say you those return mailing labels right when we did mail yeah I remember Ziggy from the cartoons yeah and they used to send you these return labels in the mail and the law of reciprocity says I felt guilty about you giving me these five cents worth of things so I'm going to give you a dollar right right sort of thing that's a law of reciprocity right you do not create any reciprocity with a consumer when they feel like something on the other end took no effort for someone to do oh that's super interesting when when you are dealing with a company and it seems like they didn't really make any effort to add value to your life then I may sign up with you buy from you whatever but my commitment to you is is way low right and the next thing that comes along I'm totally willing to move on to it right so think about what MySpace did right MySpace was doing all these things which were great but how did Facebook really exceed MySpace the way that it did it was what Facebook did is is it took that process of me having to take photos print them out at wallegreens put them in an envelope set them to my my family members sort of my friends right it took all that and said simplify right it still gave me value and it looked like somebody worked on making that work for me right right not in their best interest but in my best interest right and it created real value and so this is why you saw this huge shift over to Facebook because it really did help someone in their lives take and the majority people already did this anyway right whether it's friends or family or whatever it was it allowed the consumer to say I don't have to do this in my life anymore great check I'm going to move on to this right and then we move on to the next thing all right now I got to get a taxi am I going to stand on the corner get a taxi am I going to use Uber right and so like whether it's doctor's appointments dating yoga classes doesn't matter what it is if we can find something in our lives that can be replaced then with digital as long as it looks like that there's two things accomplished one I'll adopt it two I'll stay with it because it looks like somebody built it for me right right and so when the budding ontopreneurs you know they're here today like what they should be looking for then is more the problem not starting with AI is the solution trying to fight a problem to fit to it well well said well said I would think that more more people um I think what people forget is that there are perceivable problems in people's lives and there are un perceivable problems and so what I mean is that there are there's I think what entrepreneurs fail at sometimes is they fail to understand that pain points live on a scale right this is a customer pain point yeah but it's a pain point no one really cares about yeah you know what I mean it's like yeah that's interesting like think of dash buttons okay dash buttons remember Amazon dash buttons no okay dash buttons were I you could buy a dash button and you put it like be for a specific item like tide oh okay I got it and you put it around your house and when you needed tide you'd push the button and tide would come to your house oh wow I missed that whole thing right sounds cool right sounds cool here's the problem it didn't really solve a consumer problem because I have to walk right by tide when I go to the grocery store oh right like all you did was save me from bending down you know like that was the big solve that was the big solve the the technology they must have a lot of money in the building not to sure but they you know like I don't remember the numbers but the numbers for Amazon were very low as far sales right and so what people forget is that there are scales of those business problems right the consumer problems or even business problems right where it's like you can you can call something a pain point but if the customer is like yeah but that's not that big of a deal bending down to pick up tide from the bottom shelf or getting reaching over to grab chlorox and put it in my cart while I'm at the grocery store really not a big problem really building build this build a startup round right right well that makes sense but the technology was there the capabilities were there the broad you know the be able to have mobile devices that could be powered you know lightweight powered lightly powered that can stick anywhere that could have branding on them that could be digitally connected to the to the Wi-Fi blah blah blah all this stuff the tech was all there yeah what was missing was the real consumer problem right right you know and it's like you know I know when you're a startup founder you're like I want to call this a consumer problem yeah it doesn't mean it is though and do you think there's a risk I mean you can't talk about AI without talking about bubbles right we know how this goes so do you think that there's an over correction or an over I don't know pendulum going too far that way that we're just trying to solve every problem with AI people are inventing problems that aren't really problems in solving them or do you think we're kind of being rational my thoughts on that are going to be much different than most people you'd probably speak to that's good I want to hear it so my my answer to that is no I think we're we're not in a bubble we're in a stage where people have opportunities and God bless them yeah for trying yeah like I'm a big fan of that like I think to get to 10 great ideas you need to develop a thousand right right hey so good I'm glad we're doing a foul I'm glad everybody's working on AI I'm glad everyone thinks AI is going to like you've got this like over abundance of people working on AI because what it will result in is 10 great ideas if we had you know if the if if you could control the world of the snap of your fingers right and make it so that only 100 companies are working on AI then maybe you get one great idea out of it so scale so there's there's nothing wrong with it right so this is what I mean by my statement to that would be a lot of people would say yes we're in a bubble we're over correcting we're doing blah we're doing this right sort of thing but I think people forget about the process of innovation has a certain framework to it right and it is about learning and trying and understanding right I mean yes the Wright brothers was one that created the plane but there were hundreds of other people trying to create ways of flying at the same time that we don't know about anymore right because they didn't work out but the Wright brothers you know was one of those hundreds right and and what people forget is if the Wright brothers had made the decision go like oh there's a hundred other people already working on that we're not going to bother then maybe I've been sure at some point we would have gotten off the ground but maybe not as soon as we did that's right right and we built and we built upon the shoulders of the past like even Leonardo Davinci was like designing things of life I don't think they ever did right so I would say like if you're if you're a startup and working on AI be proud of the community I would even call it the collective yeah that you're a part of that's working on advancing this for humanity because I think that it takes you you're part of something very special and you may not be the solution right that people end up using but you're going to gain so much experience you're going to learn so much about AI that even if your company goes belly up and you got to give up on it you're way more prepared to work for the companies that actually do become successful then somebody who didn't do right so I think that you have to just extend the timeline of success yeah failure and success is to determine whether or not your company makes it they are successful determined by what you do with it after you hit one of those points wow right yeah and I think that that is where I love entrepreneurship and this is why I believe that entrepreneurs are the heart and soul of this country because of the fact that they are the ones who build the collective that allow us to have the great ideas and then they are the people that are experienced that go into those companies that succeed and even create faster innovation right because they're already experienced in that technology right so check your data make sure you're getting your information from a neutral source right that has that has a sense of what's going on and is that called I'm on LinkedIn okay there you go fine fine Brendan now going to be asked you right not gonna not gonna spin it and then jump in jump in jump in jump in I'm a huge fan of jumping in and learn about it and understand it and find people who are excited about it like you are like I said if you're if you're an individual that's intellectually curious by your nature and I think I used the word DNA earlier if it's in your DNA to be intellectually curious then then it would be a crime for you never try to open your own business yeah and a crime to not try to do something innovative with the amazing things that are going on with AI right now and I am not one of these sort of like analysts the people that very quickly say words like that I'm usually people usually say I'm the most like boring practical analyst on the planet right seems like a good thing to be I normally am yeah but I just have to say like what's going on right now as I think you know and you and I could talk for hours about just the examples yeah of what's going on out there as far as the way people are replacing just very mundane things I just saw an example of a solution where you could hold up an avocado to a device and it could tell you if it's ready to eat or not okay I'm like I'm like I'm ready that thank you right it's like seriously right that's a pain point for some people right for avocado eaters I guess it's a pain point if you like I'm right but but like that to me it's like this is what I mean like I just took the stupidest little thing yeah and said this is what's happening now blow that out to everything yeah right and that to to me is such a fun space to be in right now. It's almost like the world is your playground. Yeah. And so the other thing I would say is, after working with a lot of startup people and a lot of investors and a lot of people who've done this, I would say, just do not, I'm gonna kinda quote Stephen King here, be willing to kill your darlings. Yeah. And be willing to say, this was a good idea at the time, but actually, I'm gonna let it mature what it needs to be. And without defining it and forcing it to be something that I wanted to be when I first wrote that business plan. Oh God, it's changes like every day, right? When you're really building something, you have to be open-minded because it could change. It could change. It not only could change, it probably will change. Because you don't know enough yet. Yeah. You don't know enough to do what it is you wanna do. Exactly. And so, this is what I see, an example of what I see in people that are doing things in the fractional world, right? We talked about this earlier. Is like I see more and more people are building fractional careers because it gives them access to so much more than working for one company. That's right. And you don't have to necessarily build your own thing. You can be a fractional and you can go in and learn that way and just really kind of get deep into it. Yeah, you're probably making more money doing it too. But the reality is that- Get more sleep. Get more sleep, right? I think the fractional world is something that's kind of blowing up too. And that's helpful with AI because a lot of people can self-serve on these AI tools to help them do the fractional work. To have the amount of productivity time that allows you to work for one, two, three companies, plus be on a board here or a board there or a nonprofit or whatever, right? Or run a podcast, right? Or something like that. The ability to do all those things, they're not going to take as much time because all AI can be applied to all the elements of doing those things. Exactly. And you're going to gain more experience generally by doing more things for more people. And I think that what I like what entrepreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs that I've talked to have actually crafted their career to not just work for one company for 10 years, but to work for a sortment of them and pick up things along the way that help them start a business collectively, in aggregate. Fail on someone else's time. Yeah. Fail on someone else's time. Right. Good. Well, that's a great place to end. My clients are not a little like, be saying that, but let's leave it at that. Let's leave it at that. But yeah, so it's so great to see you again. It's always a pleasure. And we know we're going to have you back because you're part of the crew. So thank you so much for coming down to the topic today. And it was really fun chatting. Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Thanks, Freddin. Thank you for joining us on Building AI Boston. Stay tuned for more enlightening episodes that put you at the forefront of the conversations, shaping our future.
