Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
01:02:29 · Noah Shinn, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
We have a files feature that enables Instinct to be able to send effectively entire sites, like, full web applications to show much more, whether it's like a trip itinerary or a wedding plan or something like that. I don't know. Something that just requires more and more creativity and surface area. It can generate those on the fly and be able to show that to you. And I think that there's something interesting there where you'd look at the last twenty years of application building or product building where anytime that you needed a new interface to be able to showcase some piece of information, you needed to build an application for it. And it's this long software development life cycle to be able to produce application and ship it out to people, and then you find some feedback like, hey. I wish it looked like this. And then take it and you make the improvement, and you ship out a new version. Right? And this is on the order of, like, months. And then over time over the last twenty years, there have been all these applications built for so many different purposes, so many different things. And now the consumer is just fatigued. Right? It's like, every time we need something, like, is there an app that does that? I think that all of that collapses down in the future. I think that all of software is going to collapse down into a single, very easy to use interface. Don't get that confused with capability being limited. I think capability is going to expand. [01:03:38] S1: What's the craziest thing you can imagine capabilities wise?
01:03:41 · Noah Shinn
[01:03:41] S2: When we move away from daily tasks, like, I want to do this. Can you do it? And that friction is going to go down to zero. I think that it will start towards pursuing higher level objectives that are aligned with teaser where the user is able to describe not just, hey. Can you track this workout for me? I did this and I performed here and this is how I did. But more about over the next three or four months, can you work with me to make sure that I hit these certain goals? And actually, lot of people are starting to discover that today of you want to gain this many pounds or you wanna lose this many pounds or you want to hit this certain mile time. Being able to specify objectives and goals and then be able to work with it to then achieve those goals and objectives. I see small businesses being run now that are native to instinct itself, meaning the entire business is not run on instinct. The entire back office is now completely functioning on top of instinct, and even parts of it are fully autonomous too where talk about high level objectives. It's in this certain area. Make sure that this inventory level doesn't drop below this and doesn't go above this. And so now it's not saying, hey. Please order this thing. Static. Yeah. It's pursue this higher level objective and use the tools and devices that you have available to be able to accomplish that. There are so many cases of objectives that you could state and have it pursue for an unbound amount of time that we could brainstorm here. But I think that's the meta level picture is moving away from individual use cases over to higher level objectives is going to be where interaction will will progress.
01:05:12 · S0, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[01:05:12] S0: Do you want [01:05:13] S1: it to have a personality that's distinctive for each person? Like, I'm thinking now of the movie Her where there's this relationship that forms between this omniscient, omnicapable agent and the user. I think of instinct as this seamless, almost quiet, extremely capable, reliable thing, but not as having a cheeky personality or something. How do you think about that component of the product?
01:05:37 · Noah Shinn, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[01:05:37] S2: Well, you mentioned her, I guess, comically relationship building or anything in that area is not something that we want instinct to do or to pursue or to develop with users. If I describe more about what it should act like and feel like and represent within the person's life, It's almost like that socially aware operator that knows no matter what room that they're in, what is the best for different people and what is the best interaction pattern, and it learns that over time. So if you even call this an app, it's one of the most customizable apps ever because we're not just able to serve different versions of it. It's able to evolve over time. That's why we put so much care into the softer pieces. Right? Pick up on when the user didn't like it being said in this certain way, or if there's a lower response rate in this certain way because it's just too much text or it's... They don't want to look into a huge file to be able to know what you're talking about, it's going to learn those over time and just become easier and more delightful for the user to use. We're not trying to impose certain experiences onto users. We want to solve this more from a higher level. It's just ability to adapt to exactly what is the best communication style and task execution style. [01:06:43] S1: Why is it called instinct?
01:06:43 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Noah Shinn
[01:06:43] S1: Why is it called instinct? [01:06:44] S2: Instinct, liked as a name for so many different reasons. I think the main thing is that instinct should not be this playful thing that you might bully once in a while and that you, like, think downwards on and that it's like this thing that only takes the dirty work off your plate. And it's this new creative, exciting, confident actor that there's, like, mutual respect and trust, and they feel safe, and they trust that it has their back, that it's intelligent, that it's competent, that it's socially aware to know how to act in certain situations. And it's a bet. But I like that instinct is not named someone's name or something like that to try to personify it into, like, a human. I don't even know what an instinct is. I develop my feel for what it is and for what the brand is through just using it. And, again, towards really thinking about this feeling of what it should be like, it's a benefit that every user is able to come into it with a fresh slate. There's no prior in their mind about what looks like or what it's named or anything like that. It's purely through the product experience itself. [01:07:41] S1: Who are your enemies and allies? Like, I can imagine in WhatsApp or something, you could get shut off. That's a Facebook product, and it's a key channel for you. IMessage is an Apple controlled product. Like, who are your friends? Who are your enemies? How do you think about some inevitable competitive realities here?
01:07:41 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Noah Shinn
[01:07:41] S1: Who are your enemies and allies? Like, I can imagine in WhatsApp or something, you could get shut off. That's a Facebook product, and it's a key channel for you. IMessage is an Apple controlled product. Like, who are your friends? Who are your enemies? How do you think about some inevitable competitive realities here? [01:07:57] S2: I would focus less on Instinct is an iMessage app or Instinct is a WhatsApp app or something like that And more about... Just very grounded from first principles. What are the interfaces that users trust today that they're familiar with interacting with today, and how can we deliver the experience of Instinct through the channels that they already interact with every day? We're not pinned to iMessage. Actually, more than 50% of our traffic doesn't actually run on iMessage itself, but certainly users that are comfortable with iMessage are very familiar with it. I think it's just more about thinking about what is most practical for the user, and we're going to shape shift as we see towards just delivering, again, that very simple, easily accessible, zero friction experience that it is today. [01:08:40] S1: I know your latest round is something like a billion dollars at roughly a $10,000,000,000 valuation. Some of the best investors in the world, Sequoia, Benchmark, Kotu as the leaders of the round. How do think about the future capital needs of the business alongside this, and how did you pick the partners that you picked?