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Dax's Viral AI App, Being a Role Model, Clerk Raising $$, and Hacker News Fears

/ 01:12:12/E76
Dax:

How come I can hear your keyboard so well?

Adam:

How about now? Oh, wait. I'm not typing. Yeah. I think.

Dax:

The thing you're doing with the snapping, I have no I have no idea what that is. It just sounds the same in both situations.

Adam:

It's funny.

Dax:

How was your cold plunge?

Adam:

It was good. There's a rule with cold plunging where you can't cold plunge without telling somebody because it's so hard. And if you're gonna do it, you gotta tell everybody.

Dax:

I feel like everything in life that's in that category, you just do.

Adam:

Oh, do I? I just talk about all the things.

Dax:

Now I'm

Adam:

just I'm thinking, by the way.

Dax:

The b j the b j j, you know.

Adam:

Yeah. Oh, jiu jitsu. Oh, man. Sorry. Yeah.

Adam:

I'm just very passionate. I'm a very Passionate individual. When I get into something, I get very excited.

Dax:

Talk about it.

Adam:

Yeah. I will.

Dax:

And I and I'm and I'm free to make fun of you. You know? It's a

Adam:

message. Yeah. You're you're very passionate about making fun of people. Oh, we are. We're live on Twitch.

Adam:

You didn't even tell me.

Dax:

Oh, I've been live For

Adam:

Twitch chat.

Dax:

I've been talking to them. Yeah.

Adam:

Are you kidding me?

Dax:

Been talking to chat.

Adam:

I've been warming up the crowd. I wasn't invited?

Dax:

You're literally the other person on the podcast. Like, how are you complaining?

Adam:

I just feel like I missed precious time with our friends on Twitch. And all this chat, I'm scrolling back and reading it all. Jack Don't even guess what. I was like Can relate.

Dax:

Oh, I told them to guess what. I'm weird. What I was doing? Yeah.

Adam:

I was like, wait. Owetsie was peeing too. Why is everybody peeing? Cold plunge.

Dax:

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because she's got it.

Adam:

Oh, it's awesome.

Dax:

Or Yoast. I always forget how to pronounce the name.

Adam:

It's Yoast.

Dax:

Yoast. Getting beaten up, that was not a yes.

Adam:

Too predictable.

Dax:

Okay. Alan's at my house right now.

Adam:

Oh, for real? Yeah. Can we get Alan on the pod? Can we have a little guest appearance from Alan. Do you have 2 microphones?

Adam:

Do that. You're staring off into the abyss, like And

Dax:

then I was like, technically, how do I do that? I now have him come sit next to me and speak into the mic. Yeah.

Adam:

You guys can just snuggle a little bit. Just get real cozy next to the mic.

Dax:

Now I don't want to do it.

Adam:

Well, now yeah. That made it weird. Sorry. How long is he in town?

Dax:

Till Sunday. Till Sunday. You got kinda screwed. They so this keeps happening. People keep having plans to come visit.

Dax:

And I wake up in the morning of the day that's supposed to come after, like, us, like, getting the house clean and, like, you know

Adam:

Yeah.

Dax:

Prepping for their arrival. Look at my phone, and I see a message from that person who's supposed to come being, like, disaster, flight canceled.

Adam:

And, like, it

Dax:

just completely yeah. So they actually figured it out. So they, they're coming in from Maine, and it's snowy as Maine often is. Yeah. And their flight got canceled, and then just everybody started to panic and try to, like, book other flights.

Dax:

And they they made it. It just took them, Like, 16 hours to get from Maine to Florida. That's

Adam:

awful. They could have driven.

Dax:

Yeah. They're saying that. Yeah. Like, if they just drove straight, it's, like, you know, 22, 23 hours, something like that. Yeah.

Dax:

But they made it.

Adam:

Jeez. They made it. Alan is a He's a great memer. He's part of a a little a little crew on Twitter that's they're just great memers. And he would be from Maine.

Adam:

Like, I feel like Montana, Maine, like, all these random states where the best memebers are. Is it just they have nothing else to do? They just live in these places? Yeah.

Dax:

So I I That burst your bubble though, because Alan is from San Francisco, then lived in New York for the last 10 years, and now is in Maine.

Adam:

Okay. So So never mind.

Dax:

The past is not

Adam:

even out. In Maine because

Dax:

it's nice to say. So I, you know, focus more on meme ing, I guess.

Adam:

Yeah. Is is Alan coming to React Miami?

Dax:

He might. He say he, asked his work, and if they approve it, and it seems like they will, then he'll come. Which How about

Adam:

React Miami? It's gonna be so good.

Dax:

I know. I just see more and more every single week, I see more and more people.

Adam:

I know.

Dax:

Did you see that there's a React, Like an official React conference going on too that they randomly announced?

Adam:

What? Like, the Facebook team is throwing a conference? Like,

Dax:

I think I think so. It it's just called React conf. It's not like, you know, React Miami.

Adam:

Is this the first time they've done this? No. No.

Dax:

No. They've they've done it a bunch of times. Yeah. But I I think it I don't think it's been around for a last few years. At least I haven't heard of it.

Dax:

But, yeah, no one it's funny because, like, Very few like you said, you you didn't hear about this. Like, very few people heard about this. But it's, like, the official one. It's in, like, Henderson, Nevada. What?

Dax:

Which is like, what is that? Where's that? Where's that? Yeah. It's just like the south part.

Dax:

Like, if you go south of Las Vegas, directly south. Oh, it's like the suburban area that's next to Las Vegas. But, yeah. So so many people in the, the Kramer, the the, the Century CEO, he was like, What the fuck is that is Henderson, Nevada? He was like, I don't wanna go there.

Dax:

Like, make it somewhere better. I said, why there?

Adam:

I was like, oh, it's Vegas. Still, somewhere better, please.

Dax:

Yeah.

Adam:

Just not Vegas. Can we stop at the Vegas conferences? Oh, my goodness.

Dax:

Yeah. And the person he was replying to was, like, Trying to just be, like, political and be, like, it'll be fun. Like, it's a bunch of nerds, and it's a very good setting. Like, you know, like, a bunch of like minded nerds, and it's a very good setting. And he's, like, No.

Dax:

Give me a better city.

Adam:

I I guess I've not been to a lot of tech conferences, but suburban setting has not Been the norm for what I've experienced. That like, what do you you go to the mall? Like, what do you do? No.

Dax:

You're just in, like, a hotel slash commerce center the whole time, and then You go back to the airport, and you leave. Yeah. That is most of the experience

Adam:

I've had in tech conferences. We're just at the venue.

Dax:

Really? Even for render? Like, you didn't go, like, around Atlanta?

Adam:

We went to, like, Concert in Atlanta that was, like, an outdoor thing. They rented out or something. That was cool.

Dax:

So for me, a conference is just an excuse to travel. I'm not trying to travel to Henderson, Nevada.

Adam:

Yeah. I know. So You don't like to travel, do you? And that's why you don't go to conferences.

Dax:

Well, it's not that I don't like to travel. It's just We haven't, like, figured since we moved to Miami, we haven't figured out, like, oh, this is what we do when we travel. So every time it's, like, what do we do at Zuko? Like, we gotta It's a month. It's a month.

Dax:

It's a month. It was like a scramble. So, we seem to, like, get better at our routine and Yeah.

Adam:

Get better, Dax. Get better. You need to travel more. There's stuff going on.

Dax:

Well, speaking of traveling. So here's here's a little funny thing that happened. So you know we posted the AI demo, like, I guess maybe a week ago, last week?

Adam:

Yeah. Oh, the movies thing. I wanna talk to you.

Dax:

So that ended up going pretty viral. My DMs We're, like, insane. I was getting so many questions from people about, like no. Not VCs. Many

Adam:

of you?

Dax:

Oh, okay. No. No. No. Not VCs, unfortunately.

Dax:

Just from people that are, like, 10 times further into AI than I am asking me, like, really obscure questions. Like, I was, like, Someone was like, I spent the last 6 months trying to optimize this, but with all these techniques. And, like, do you have any suggestions for how I could get better results? And I'm just like, I have no idea what I'm doing. We put together this demo in 1 week, and that was it.

Dax:

But it got to the point where someone from, I I didn't reply to them, and I should and I will. I haven't decided yet. The one from Cascadia JS. I don't know if you heard about this. It's like the Seattle one.

Dax:

Yeah. They were like, we loved your demo. We'd love to have you do a talk in, at our conference. And I'm like, you guys know I don't know shit about it.

Adam:

Yeah. Well, how how did you guys, like you stood up like this you got this construct for vector storage.

Dax:

Yeah.

Adam:

In terms of, like, What what off the shelf stuff are you using to to take a movie plot and vectorize it, first of all? And then what are you storing it in? Like, I have questions about the whole thing. Just Maybe layout what you built.

Dax:

Yeah. So it's actually really simple. So, so there's really just 2 components. There's The vector database which just stores, like, you know, like a vectorized version of a plot, and there's, like, the thing that can take a plot and turn it into a vector. So we started with just using all the Bedrock stuff.

Dax:

So their model is our Titan embedding model. Mhmm. And all we did was we crawled, I found some lists on IMDB, like, top 700 movies or something. And then I went to the synopsis page, took each paragraph f as a synopsis of the synopsis and ran it through the Titan embedding thing. And that gave me back a vector.

Dax:

So for a given movie, if it had 10 paragraphs In the plot synopsis, there were 10 entries in the database. And then when you queried it, whatever you typed in as your search, we would turn that into a vector, Find the closest matching vectors and then, like, group by movie and then, like, add up this The scores. And then, like, that giga gives you a ranking of the top movies that match your query. So we started with the Titan one. Man, it sucks.

Dax:

It was, like, not very good. It was We got okay results, and we, like, tried so many different combinations, like, chunking it by paragraph is one approach. You'd also like a rolling thing where you, like, Put paragraphs 123 together, then 234 together, then 345. There's, like, all these techniques. We tried combination that we could think of.

Dax:

And actually, the simplest one ended up being the best, like, just chunking by paragraph.

Adam:

Mhmm.

Dax:

And, like, kind of scoring by which paragraphs match and by how much they match. So then we swapped it to OpenAI for generating the vectors. And our contract lets you swap between models. So, like, can use the Titan models.

Adam:

Nice.

Dax:

You can switch to the OpenAI 1, and then you just need to put in an OpenAI key as a secret. Yep. And the yeah. The OpenAI ones were just, like, way better. I don't think this is a permanent situation.

Dax:

Like, I don't see why all the models wouldn't at least get as good as OpenAI is today? Yeah. But, yeah, we did have to switch them. We got better results. And the the search results aren't, like, amazing.

Dax:

Like, I think there's potential there, but

Adam:

There's some funny stuff. Yeah.

Dax:

Yeah. There's some funny results if you, like, played around with it. The similar movies one worked pretty well though.

Adam:

The the vectorization Step. It's pretty fast. Right? Because when you're typing, if I remember, is it not it's not like a type ahead. Is it like It

Dax:

it's a single call to OpenAI, and it's A really fast call and it's a really cheap call. I think Frank was trying to compute the difference between this versus, like, actual generative AI. And I think it's, like, almost like a 100 x Price difference. Wow. So it's very cheap to run up a model like this.

Dax:

I think I posted some of the cost, like, after we were done going viral. I think it was like $4 Open now. Yeah.

Adam:

Did you guys make it on, like, Hacker News or anything?

Dax:

No. We didn't post it there. I don't think anyone posted it there. I'll send you off Twitter.

Adam:

Seems like the kind of thing that Hacker News would get a hold of. I don't know.

Dax:

At this point, I have to be completely honest. I'm, like, afraid Of being on hacker news. To be

Adam:

on hacker news? Why? You're a YC founder.

Dax:

There was yeah.

Adam:

There was a special color there.

Dax:

Textion at all. It doesn't matter who you are. The okay. So someone once wrote an article about and they called it a magical serverless Experience. And they wrote about how, like, they're using SSD, and it was like a long article about the little details.

Dax:

And they posted on Hacker News, demolished. The comment just ripped it apart.

Adam:

Oh, no.

Dax:

Again, by people that have no idea what the hell they're talking about, but it was just like they just, like, were not even giving it a shot. And it's very painful when people misinterpret Your work? It's like the hardest part about doing things in public? Yep. And no one will do that more than the Hacker News.

Dax:

The Hacker News.

Adam:

It's really true. Like, I mean, you hang out on Hackney. Oh, it all makes sense now. Yeah. It all makes I was gonna say, like, I mean, you're a nice guy.

Adam:

Wait. You're not. You're the kind of people.

Dax:

I don't comment on Hacker News. I really comment on Hacker News. I at least read.

Adam:

But, like, who are all the people on Edit and Hacker News are so angry in the developer community. Like, are they not on Twitter as much? Is Twitter angry? Not as much. No.

Adam:

Not as much. Happy about everything. Like, toxic positivity, all that stuff.

Dax:

You're right. That actually is true. What is worse?

Adam:

LinkedIn's like that, Professional. Twitter is like that, but shitposting. And then Hacker News and Reddit are just angry. They're just angry about everything. Bitter and angry.

Adam:

Why?

Dax:

It's tough because the best comments I read anywhere are on Hacker News. Like, the most useful ones that I see are on Hacker News Amid, like, a mountain of garbage. So

Adam:

It's diamonds in the rough.

Dax:

Yeah. Exactly. You gotta

Adam:

get all the rough stuff with it, I guess.

Dax:

Yeah. So at this point, I'm, like, Hacker News gives you crazy reach. We're in the dev tool space that, like, basically targets a large percent of our audience. But I'm, like, so afraid of it that I'm willing to just give that

Adam:

So that that's interesting. Like, Hacker News is, like, the milestone that everybody's like, oh, we made it to the front page of Hacker News. Our site got hammered. It it like, you said it's such a big reach. Do you know, like, numbers?

Adam:

Like, what is being on the first page of Hacker News compared to, like, A tweet that blows up. How many retweets does it take to

Dax:

be the equivalent? Yeah. It's a good question. I to me, I don't think it's about pure numbers. I think it's about Accessing a niche of people that might not really consume anything else.

Adam:

Interesting. So people who are on Hacker News don't really Consume other things? They're just straight to Hacker News every day?

Dax:

Yeah. Like, I think there's, like, the set of developers that are on Twitter. And I think it's just there's, like, a type of person that would Be a developer and also be on Twitter. And there's a type of person that'll be a developer and be on Hacker News. And I know that there's not, like, a crazy amount of overlap.

Adam:

So So interesting.

Dax:

Our reach on Twitter is great, but, like, we're missing out all these people that are not on Twitter.

Adam:

And then what about Twitch? What's the overlap with people who get Twitch? It's so fragmented. You think we'd all just hang out in the same places, But it's really it's all over the place.

Dax:

I wish. And then there's a whole LinkedIn mystery.

Adam:

Yeah.

Dax:

And the fact like, how do you crack LinkedIn? That's like

Adam:

a whole Yeah. Have you been still doing the LinkedIn thing? Did you fall off yet?

Dax:

I lost I kinda, like, I kinda forgot about LinkedIn stuff, but I'm a get back to it. I don't know. Did you

Adam:

feel like it was resonating? Your your style? Because you were just being yourself.

Dax:

It was actually it was actually doing pretty well, and I was, like, growing inside.

Adam:

Just like it's a breath of fresh air to hear, like, something honest And actually based in something. Not just, like, what you wanna hear.

Dax:

The tough thing for me though is I feel And maybe I'll get over this at some point. Like, I've gotten over a lot of other things. I don't want to just post the same I feel weird when I post the same content on both. Yeah. Where I, like, post a tweet and I post the same thing on LinkedIn.

Dax:

Definitely. Yeah. And I'm, like but I'm not, like, smart enough to have enough contact Good. Yeah. Content for both.

Adam:

Just imagine how I feel. You actually have smart things to say on Twitter. I don't know what to say.

Dax:

Well, then then there's just a whole, like, game of, like, okay. I thought something really good. Do I spend it on Twitter where, like, it's gonna maximize Who sees it or do I, like, invest it into LinkedIn Yeah. To, like, grow? You know, it's it's just a lot.

Dax:

Yeah. It's tough. That's why I don't think any platform will Well, like, dethrone any existing platform because, like, if you're someone that's, like, established there, it's so hard to adopt yet another one.

Adam:

Yeah. It really is. I I do feel like SSC could have a lot of potential users on LinkedIn. Right?

Dax:

I know. Again, it's it's tough because

Adam:

It's tough.

Dax:

Yeah. These are places that Have people we wanna reach, but my what I'm hoping is that if you're not on Twitter, you at least are friends with one person that is. So

Adam:

Oh, that's interesting.

Dax:

If we make so, I mean but that's the whole thing with making viral products. Right? Like, You need to put out something where someone tries it, even if the product's not for them, like, they don't have a specific problem or, like, it's not painful enough or, like, whatever. As long as they walk away from it being, like, oh, this product is competent or, like, the people behind this are competent. When they run to someone that has that problem more than they do, They'll know.

Dax:

They'll be, like, oh, I tried out this product. You should check it out. Even if they're not a user.

Adam:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a long way to

Dax:

optimize for. Yeah. Exactly. If you if you can achieve that, like, you will you will hit that, like, viral coefficient or whatever they call it, and you will grow a ton.

Adam:

Yeah. Interesting. Can I shift gears? Yeah. Why do I even ask?

Adam:

So I should just do it. I'm just gonna shift gears when I want to from from now on. Okay?

Dax:

Okay. Take me on a ride, Adam.

Adam:

I'll take you on a ride. Do you feel like you're a role model?

Dax:

Do I feel like I'm a role model? Yeah. Do you

Adam:

think people look up to you?

Dax:

They should. I'm pretty great.

Adam:

Okay. That's funny.

Dax:

It's weird to think of it in that terms because one, it's it feels like embarrassing to think of yourself in that way. Yeah. Like, I think there's resistance to doing that. But I think yeah. I think you reach a certain point in your life where I can remember when I was where I was 10 years ago and, like, the type of people I was, like, Looking at and was like, I would love to be more like them one day or like to have a similar life.

Dax:

Yeah. And those people kinda look like where I am today. So I think I'm sure this is happening To some degree.

Adam:

Yeah. Yeah. Do you I guess, when you are a role model, do you know it? Do do you get like, do people tell you? Like, I look up to you.

Adam:

I didn't tell anybody I looked up to, I guess.

Dax:

I do get some messages. Not super frequently, but I can say that there have been some. Sure you get them too. I feel like you're more of that than I am because you're, like, more established in your life. But you must get them.

Dax:

What? Yeah. Say

Adam:

that again. I'm more established in my life. Oh, I'm older. You just mean I'm older.

Dax:

I feel like you're you're at a phase in your life where you're, like, okay, like, I've I've figured it out. Like, I have kids. They're not, like, tiny kids.

Adam:

My beard.

Dax:

Yeah. Like, you have, like, a family home that you're probably gonna live in for a very long time. You know? Yeah.

Adam:

That's true. Okay.

Dax:

You know, it's, like, transient phase. So I can see how for a lot of people I mean, even for myself, like, I kinda look at your situation. I'm like, oh, that's that's, like, where I wanna be at some point.

Adam:

Okay. I'm putting it in my Twitter bio. Yeah. I'm putting more established than DAX.

Dax:

More more roots. More roots.

Adam:

More rooted. More grounded. I'll put grounded on LinkedIn. That sounds like that would go well on LinkedIn.

Dax:

So how do you feel about the role model thing?

Adam:

Well, somebody said something to us. Right?

Dax:

Oh, yeah.

Adam:

About how, like, maybe maybe we could be a role model to younger men, Specifically, younger men. And I I hadn't thought of it. Just hadn't thought of, like, younger men looking up to me or you About anything.

Dax:

Yeah.

Adam:

But it's interesting because I'm at an age it it just made me realize how much I deny that I'm getting older. Like, I'm almost 40. Of course, Like, I'm at the age where I should start thinking about the influence I have on people younger than me. I should. Right?

Adam:

If Mhmm. If about now, then when? Like, I feel like that's the age. I don't know. I'm 37.

Dax:

You're not, like, you're not too old to be able to touch. It's like a nice window.

Adam:

Yeah. Because, yeah, once you're 65, it's, like, I don't know. You lose some of that. Like, it's a different kind of wisdom you have at that point.

Dax:

Yeah. Yeah.

Adam:

I don't know. I've never thought of my I think, like, I'm just frozen at 22 or whatever when I became an adult. Like, I just feel like I'm that age, and I will perpetually. Like, I just see everybody

Dax:

Yeah. That's I feel

Adam:

like a kid.

Dax:

I'm just like, I'm a kid.

Adam:

Wait. Wait. Wait.

Dax:

Like And my friends are kids?

Adam:

Years old or, like No.

Dax:

No. Like, I I feel like like, when I when I hear the fact that I'm technically a man, I'm just like, Holy shit. Like, a man? I'm like a man

Adam:

walking around?

Dax:

No. No. No. The people I see around me, those like, those those are men walking around. I'm just like a

Adam:

Yeah. I'm just like a

Dax:

I'm just like a boy, you know?

Adam:

Yeah. No. I I hear you. Yeah. Just like being an adult is is kinda surprising sometimes If you really think about it.

Dax:

And you only notice that when I think I've told this story before, but I remember getting into an elevator, and there was, like, there's a woman in the little kit. And the woman was, like, say hi to the man. And I was, like, Man, what the what man?

Adam:

How about me? I'm the man. There's a man here with us?

Dax:

Yeah. That's funny. So but but I was like, does this go away when you have kids? Because how can you feel like a kid when you have kids? But you're saying you still kinda

Adam:

feel like

Dax:

a child.

Adam:

No. For sure. Like, it's very hard to imagine I'm I'm trying to think, like, how much older my dad is than me. Like, my memories of my dad are when he was, like, my age or younger.

Dax:

Younger, for sure.

Adam:

That's wild.

Dax:

Yeah. It's so weird.

Adam:

Oh, I don't like that one bit. Why don't I like that? What is it about that I don't like?

Dax:

When my dad was my age, I think I was, like, 6 or 7 already. I don't even have kids yet.

Adam:

Yeah. Wow.

Dax:

Yeah. My mom is even crazier. I think I was, like, 10 by now For her.

Adam:

Is this just feelings of mortality? Is that what I'm feeling? Like, I don't like to think about being older because it's like a reminder that

Dax:

Yeah. I think the thing that really messes with me is when I realized my dad's only, like, 25 years older than me, and my mom is only, like, 20 2 years older than me? Which is really, really weird because you're, like, at least in America, I think that's not These are people I've been around. Their parents have been a lot older. Yeah.

Dax:

And it's weird to think when my parents die, I'm gonna die in 20 years. Oh, Wow. That seems, like, really short. You know?

Adam:

That's wild. Yeah. Yeah. No. I guess, like, my parents are probably a little bit older than I think I think they're, like, 30 years older than me.

Adam:

Yeah. My wife's dad is 40 years older than her. He's a lot older. Yeah. He's, Like like, a lot older than her.

Adam:

So it's very different.

Dax:

Yeah. Exactly.

Adam:

20 years. Yeah. Wow. That's that's nuts. I don't I don't like any of this.

Adam:

I decided I don't like this conversation.

Dax:

Let's let's go back

Adam:

to the

Dax:

role model one.

Adam:

Oh, yeah. Role model. Yes. So I guess people probably do look up to us. And I I know you mean I've gotten those messages, The the kind of messages that are like, oh, I was thinking about doing this, and I decided to go for it and that kind of stuff.

Adam:

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I I don't I feel like I should be doing something different if people are looking up to me than what I'm currently doing. Do you ever feel like that?

Adam:

Like, if you start thinking about younger people wanting to to look like us, does it make you wanna look different? It makes me all look different.

Dax:

I think we're a little bit different in that my whole life, I've just been very used to telling other people, here's how you should be.

Adam:

Yeah. You're you're not short on advice. You're constantly throwing it out there. So I always say

Dax:

make everyone more like myself. So it's a little bit more natural for me,

Adam:

I think. You love yourself. You love So if you love money, you love yourself.

Dax:

I love money, you love myself. Yeah.

Adam:

Yeah. You're simple, man.

Dax:

That's a whole philosophy too. If you like it, follow me. Your role model. If you love money and you wanna love yourself, you like the sound of that, I'll show you how to live.

Adam:

Feel like Huberman And cold water? Follow me.

Dax:

No Paul Huberman.

Adam:

Well, I guess, yeah, Paul

Dax:

Huberman. Yeah.

Adam:

Good point. I have no original thoughts. I am just a a puppet, and I only am a puppet for so long before I switch to something else, and then I'm a puppet with that thing.

Dax:

To anyone listening, if that sounds good to you if if being a puppet sounds good to you, follow Yeah. Follow Adam.

Adam:

There you go. I'm I'm your guy. I'm an adult man, and I have lots of things to look up to, probably. Alright. Enough of the role model stuff.

Adam:

I don't know where I was planning on that going, but it went into mortality.

Dax:

We have one other thing.

Adam:

Do we?

Dax:

We have a couple other things, I think. I think you mentioned something to me.

Adam:

Oh, I want to talk about, what was it? You had a tweet that that made me think of this.

Dax:

Oh, the career thing. The career advice. Oh, this is great because we're just talking about role models.

Adam:

Oh, yeah. We're Yeah. Role model's career advice. Look at that. That was so smooth.

Adam:

If you're really interested in in having a podcast someday with smooth transitions, look up to me. I'm pretty

Dax:

good at this stuff. Or look away.

Adam:

Or yeah. Probably. So you had a tweet. Could you remind me exactly what the tweet said? Something about, like, if you had followed all these dummies on Twitter.

Dax:

Yeah. Yeah. I love my career. Like, I like where it is. I like The opportunities that I have that I'm not taking advantage of, like, I'm excited to, like, see what I could do.

Dax:

I love what I'm doing right now. I think my day to day is Super unique. I I think it's, like, not what most people get to do. I get to, like, do fun stuff like this podcast, like, Making stupid videos, like, having fun on Twitter. That's, like, part of my job.

Dax:

All my work is public. I can kinda talk about it. I can interact with, You know, people like like, a large number of developers. I have, like, a pretty good way to talk to anyone legit in our field doing something interesting. Like, I'm able to, like, you know My work tends to overlap with theirs.

Dax:

And, like, when you're like

Adam:

When your wife has friends over, you get to explain how your awesome office It's set up like this because of your awesome job? Or that's a perk? Sorry.

Dax:

Keep going. Well, my wife's friends think have no idea what the hell I do. And I think it's really weird. But, yeah. It it is weird, but it's it's great.

Dax:

And it's and I would have never predicted it, and I couldn't have drawn, like, A direct step by step plan to getting here. Yeah. But I know for sure that every step of my life, and no. You know, times change, and what people say change. But when I think back to what people were saying when I was earlier in my career, I very much did not do Any of that.

Dax:

Like, I remember people telling me that I was doing the wrong thing or, like, I should care about these other things, and I didn't. And it worked out. I'm sure, like, whatever their advice was, like, there's a flavor of that working out too, but it wouldn't have been this. It wouldn't have been where I got to now. Yeah.

Dax:

And I think where I got to now is a lot more unique than where you could get to otherwise. So, yeah, it's like The advice could be good, but if I followed it, I wouldn't have this. So it's like this weird, like, kind of paradox thing.

Adam:

So I I've had similar Experiences in life, like, not had a normal job in terms of I've never applied for a job, never had a resume, that whole thing. We've talked about that. And I loved my career. I love everything it's meant for my family. I love all of it.

Adam:

It's all fantastic. My question to you is, like, Does that work for everybody? Do do do we need, like, a large swath of people that are just doing the normal thing? Is that, like, inherent In society that only some of us can have this very unique weird path, but, like, everybody can't have it? Yeah.

Adam:

What are your thoughts?

Dax:

Yeah. I think it's I think you have to be honest with yourself because there kind of is, like, an objective cultural thing where when we describe this having your own path thing, It's automatically placed as, like, oh, yeah. That sounds amazing, and I should do that too. But you have to know yourself. Like, not everyone Really wants that.

Dax:

Culturally, it's set up in a way where it feels everyone should want that, but not everyone does want that. On the flip side though, I think there is this other dynamic going on where the normal path to me Has gotten, like, less and less attractive and, like, maybe even, like, more chaotic. And it's it's also never been easier to have a weirder path. So I still think it's, like, yes, a small it's really like a minority of people that get to do the weird path thing. But I also, like if I look around, I just, like I see so much more of that than I ever have.

Dax:

I saw a post the other day. Someone was, like, the Internet has made, like, so many of these types of businesses possible. And it's a screenshot of Reddit being, like I forgot what he was, like I don't know what the number was, but it was something like, I make $20,000 a month by making these mini cinder blocks And selling them online. What? He just makes these, like, miniature cinder blocks, and and that's just his job and his career.

Dax:

Like, no There's no path for that. It was, like, a lot of

Adam:

years ago. Yeah. Right.

Dax:

Yeah. Like, you did this completely made up job that this person completely invented. And I think there's way more ability to do that now than ever. I think there's a lot of pressure to, like, maybe do that given how, like, commoditized, like, Normal jobs have become. Yeah.

Dax:

But, yeah, I agree. Like, it's not for everyone, and I'd I would say the average person probably won't succeed Doing that. So yeah. Yeah.

Adam:

It it's like, how do you you can't sell advice to the, like, Chart your own path, people. Because there's really no is there any advice that could have helped either of us get to where we are in our career? Like, Maybe life advice, just general, like, I don't know, eat your veggies, get a lot of sleep, whatever. But, like, there's no path there there's no way I could have charted where my career, the twists and turns, what worked, what didn't. There's no way I could have read a tweet that would have been like, ah, That's that's what I'm doing.

Adam:

I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna take those steps.

Dax:

I think for me, the most That could have happened and maybe that this is kind of what did happen was there were enough people that had made it Through that? Not this I don't care about specific details of what they did, but, like Yeah. They had a similar mindset, and they were kind of rejecting the same things, and they, like, made it through. And seeing that and, like, knowing that people think the same way and ended up successful, like, that's kinda what you need because everyone else around you is kinda telling you the opposite. Like, I'm not bold enough to go do something where, like, there's zero signal that it can work.

Adam:

Yeah.

Dax:

Yeah. So seeing the people where it did work out for them, like, that's That, like, keeps you in the game I think, because there's a lot of doubt on the weirder path. Like, some days you wake up and you feel great. Other days you're like, oh, I've just, like, burned My twenties, because this was completely the wrong thing to focus on. Yeah.

Dax:

But, yeah, just motivation, I think. Whatever people can do to keep me motivated, and that this is all gonna be worth it. Probably the most that I can do.

Adam:

The signal part was important for me. I guess, like, if I think of my whole career, I never felt like I was taking any risks. Like, every step of the way, there was, like, a reason I'm doing this, and somebody's paying me to do it. Or, like, there's there's Very clear need for me to get better at this so I can, you know, level up in this project or whatever. Like Yeah.

Adam:

I always had I mean, I guess, with the exception of of starting STANMUSE, that was

Dax:

Mhmm.

Adam:

But that was only after, like, having enough success to be able to say, like, Let's take a risk. We've got savings, whatever. Yeah. I guess, like, it never did if I look back on my 15 years of all the random things I've done, There was never, like, some moment where I felt like I'm putting my family at risk. Like, my wife is depending on me.

Adam:

Like, I've never felt like, I don't know. This might not pan out. It was always, like, I I got more work to do than I could possibly do. I don't know what yeah. I don't know what that like, how to Distill that and hand it to somebody else and be, like, make your own path.

Adam:

I don't know.

Dax:

I can think of some, like, specific situations, and they're not that dramatic, but To some degree, it did it does fall under this. So one of the first steps for me that was a little bit counter was going fully remote. And, again, it sounds ridiculous now because everyone's remote. But Yeah. I I lived in New York City.

Dax:

I lived in Manhattan Where, like, there's a lot of employers and a lot of in person jobs. And, well, all my friends that lived there at the time, They were, like, that sounds like a bad idea. Then they they just gave me, like, a whole list of reasons why it was bad. And it did seem kinda crazy that I was, like I would, like, live 10 minutes away from work, and I wouldn't consider it. But, yeah, it it did work out.

Dax:

And, again, I didn't bet on this. I just, like, make this up, and I was, like, I'm gonna be the 1st person to do this. I saw some people doing it, and I saw how it worked, and I saw the life they had, and it worked great. This is when DHH and, you know, 37 signals was really, like, vocal about this was, like, the topic they were vocal on. They wrote that remote okay book.

Dax:

And I was, like, okay, there's People out there that in the world that are like minded and believe that this version of the world is possible.

Adam:

Yeah.

Dax:

So I can There's something for me to, like, tap into when I go look for work. Like, there's there has to be some small percentage of people that think this way. And it was hard, but I saw enough people that were doing it where I'm like, okay. At least it's not, like Probably not gonna pan out to nothing. But now it felt like a giant risk, but, given that there are people that have validated it for me.

Dax:

But I would say, like, the people around me were probably saying the opposite.

Adam:

It's crazy that, like, similar timelines, I would have been going to the same thing, but With no awareness whatsoever. Like, you were actually thoughtful about it, and you I just lived in a place where there weren't tech jobs, so I had to when

Dax:

you don't have a choice.

Adam:

Yeah. I never even considered, like, I'm gonna find a job where I work at a place. It was, like, I'm on Elance, and I'm finding people who will pay me money to do programming related things.

Dax:

Yeah.

Adam:

And that just kind of snowballed into other stuff. But, yeah, I I was never aware of the book. I mean, I am now, but I didn't know that remote work was, like, this niche thing. It was just a necessity when you live in the woods.

Dax:

Live in the woods. Well, so the what about going So the other step, which we both have is, like and you I think you were always like this where you were a freelance and you weren't, like, You know, being a company person and, like, working up in a company. Did people feel any like, people in your life, did anyone feel like, Oh, that's, like, too risky or, like

Adam:

Yeah. All the mortgage lenders.

Dax:

They they felt that way. Oh my god. Yeah.

Adam:

All the mortgage lenders. I so my our first home, we we rented For the 1st 2 years after we got married, and then bought our first home, had to get a loan from my mother-in-law because we couldn't get one from the bank. Didn't have enough history, and it was self employment. And it's like, well, that doesn't really count. It's like, I've made enough money this year to pay off the house.

Adam:

Can I have it? Can I can I get a loan? No. No. You can't do that.

Adam:

We paid off the house. So we paid off my mother-in-law in 2 years. I mean, we it's like, I'm making a lot of money. Look. I promise.

Adam:

But it it wasn't a w two, so it doesn't matter. Yeah. I that was, like Ridiculous. That was the main thing. I don't think friends I don't think family, friends, anybody cared.

Adam:

I mean, in the Ozarks, like, this was magic. This is like this guy sits at a computer, and he has All these screens, and he makes a lot of money. What is going on? Like, they wanted it too. And that honestly, I've had a lot of that in the Ozarks, like, people around me But have wanted to understand and get into this because they've just seen it worked for me.

Adam:

Not so much online. I've not felt like a role model there. But in person, There's definitely a lot of that, just in this area.

Dax:

Yeah. So for me, it was it was quite different because everyone that I again, I was I was in, like, an area that was, like, Quote, unquote, high achieving. Like, lot of like, a really good school district.

Adam:

That about New York.

Dax:

Yeah. No. I mean, even in in New Jersey where I was prior.

Adam:

Oh, New Jersey. Gotcha.

Dax:

Like, everyone was, like, shooting for the top schools. And if that's, like, your mindset, when you come out of school, shooting for the top employers, like, the quote unquote top employers, and, like, that's how your life gets made and you, like, you know, work your way up. So even, like, my my mom even to this day, I think she still feels a little weird about it. Despite how, like, far my life has progressed, she still thinks I should, like, Go work at a company with a name that she recognizes instead of, like, every week her being, like, what are you doing?

Adam:

Did she see the Next. She has video. It's free next day.

Dax:

Yeah. She has. And she's like, is this a job? But, like, all our friends' kids are, like, working at place. Like, they can communicate it easily.

Dax:

They're like, my son works at Google. Okay. We all know who Google is. We might know what that is. And she can't really explain it.

Dax:

So not that she cares about not being able to explain it, but, like, I see why it feels weird because it's so, like, outside the box of everything else. Yeah. But yeah. So, like, To in a lot of ways, it feels like I think they have the perception I think a lot of people have this perception, and maybe it's changing now. She was, like, oh, if you work at a company, it's, like, stable or, like, you'll have, like Yeah.

Dax:

A predictable stable life. And I think that's true, but it's, like, the exact Thing that Black Swan is all about. Like, anything that's that stable is trading off, something, And that's something will blow you up randomly one day with 0 prediction. So that's what happened in people's layoffs. Right?

Dax:

So I've never had That crazy of a disruption in my life where, like, boom, you're laid off during a time where getting a job is super hard. Yeah. And, like, you're, like, totally out in the wind trying to figure out what the hell to do. Like, I've never had that crazy a disruption. I've had constant mini disruptions, like, every week of my entire waking life.

Dax:

But

Adam:

But that builds some resilience. Right? Like, that actually it makes you kind of, like, immune to To the the small ones. I'm sure the big ones would still hurt.

Dax:

But Yeah. Like, you, like, learn to, like, have, like, several layers of fall bags. You kinda always have, like, opportunities, like, in the works. And,

Adam:

Yeah.

Dax:

So I I think net, it's more stable to not be on that, like, traditional company path and In net less stressful. But yeah. Again, it just comes on your personality. You might get people to describe, like

Adam:

like, if you're if you're doing freelance work, which I've done a lot in my career, You might have 3, 4 clients that you're working on stuff for off and on over a few months. Whereas, you know, you work at a single job, you have one client. And Yeah. I know it seems more stable, but they can end that relationship so quickly, and then you have zero Sources of income. So it it is, like it feels stable.

Adam:

Something about it, psychologically, when you don't have, like, somebody who Signs your your payroll check every week. It does feel scary, like, you don't know where it's gonna come from next, but I've always made more money. Yeah. Like, always made more money Yeah. When it was the most uncertain.

Adam:

Like, when there was completely, like, no cap, But also no minimum on what I could bring in month to month, that was that was always the most lucrative.

Dax:

Yeah. Once you figure it out, it's, like, It's it's amazing. And you also get this mental freedom, which it's so hard to explain until you have it. When you're when you're an employee of a company and let's say there's, like, something that you don't like that happens. You, like, go to your friends and you rant about it, and then you go back the next day and you do your job.

Dax:

But when that kind of thing happens when you're A freelancer? You just drop the client or, like, you found you, like, you you you're, like, okay. This is not the exact type of thing and, like, you work you use your way out of it after a couple months or whatever it is. And you just stop putting up like, your own value, like, your own self value, I think, rises and, like, you, like, really learn What you're gonna put up with. And the stuff that you'll put up with, like, the bar keeps going up as you Yeah.

Dax:

Get better at at freelancing in general. So That, like, just kinda changes your whole relationship with the work. I think it makes you a better worker too because you're, like, I'm you're not distracted by feeling like I'm so committed to this, and every little thing that goes wrong means, like, I'm stuck in this thing forever, and that kinda makes you like a resentful worker. It's just it's just, like, Mentally, it's totally different kind of work.

Adam:

Yeah. Something as we've been talking about this, it occurred to me that I always thought, like, when people ask me what I do, And I hated the question. I hated answering that question or trying to answer that question. Yeah. I always thought it was because of technology, and I live in a place where there's not a lot of Technology jobs.

Adam:

I always thought it was that, but I think it's actually it's the it's the freelance. It's the kinda chart your own path thing. So I guess if you want your life To look like me and Dax where it's this very unique career path. You'll know your head in the right direction when you hate when people ask you what you do. Because if you just work at Google, it's like, what do you do?

Adam:

I work at Google.

Dax:

Yeah. And then they know.

Adam:

Simple. I would love when people ask me that. Like, I'd be excited for people. I'd go places, and I don't go places, but I would go places just so people would ask me what I do. Like, people I don't know.

Adam:

I work at Google. You know, the thing where you ask all the questions, you know, Google.

Dax:

Yeah. Yeah. I hate it. Like, whenever I meet people at some social event, they're like, oh, what do you do? I I wish I was trying to, like That's the worst.

Dax:

Work or I always trying to, like, avoid that topic because I'm just I don't I don't really wanna get into this. I'm like, what do you do? Let's talk about

Adam:

Yeah. Let's talk about you. People like to talk about themselves. Let's talk about you. Yeah.

Dax:

I mean,

Adam:

you don't say that part. You don't say the part where they're, like, diving. I've I've had various, like, strategies for answering that question because it does seem like That question comes up a lot. Is that just all we know to ask each other when you meet a new adult or another human being that you've never met? Like, what do you do?

Dax:

This is America. This is America. We're all about what we do.

Adam:

Is that what it is? In, like, Europe, are they like, what do you enjoy on the weekends?

Dax:

Or what

Adam:

do they say? What what do you do what do you do in the afternoons when you have your break from that thing we have to do called work?

Dax:

What do you enjoy? Answer is work.

Adam:

What brings your life fulfillment? That's probably what they ask in Europe. And we're like, so what do you do for work?

Dax:

Yeah.

Adam:

For people?

Dax:

Yeah.

Adam:

How do you make money? Yeah. I guess that's all I have to say about career. I mean, I think your tweet was good. It, it just made me think about, like, in the beginning of my career, if I were on Twitter, How would that have shaped me?

Adam:

Like, I wasn't on Twitter until well into maybe like, I don't know, 10 years into my career. I I was on like, I had a Twitter account. I created it in college, but didn't really use it until the last few years. So I think, like, the people who were junior Not like junior developer. Just, like, early in their career, the 20 year olds, the 22 year olds that are on Twitter and that are seeing us Just write stupid stuff.

Adam:

I mean, you write good stuff, I guess. You you give advice. But, like, the people who are in this developer community on Twitter, Do do they take any of this as advice? I hope not. I hope they don't take stuff from Twitter and actually make decisions in their career based on it because none of it is worth Basing anything on.

Dax:

The other funny thing is, like, I think you might relate to this. I feel like only recently have I even had the luxury of making career decisions Because I impose a bunch of constraints. Right? I was I'm gonna be, freelance, so I can't work at any place I want an employee. I'm gonna be remote, so I can't work any place that needs me to come in.

Dax:

I'm not making a lot of decisions there. I'm just taking whatever the hell, Like, floats my way and, like, happens to work out. Like, for most of my career, I was just, like I had one option. And I was I said, yes, and I took it. And another option came up.

Dax:

I said, yes, and I took it.

Adam:

Just following the signal. Yeah.

Dax:

And then, really, it wasn't until me working, like, doing SST. That was, like, my first real career decision. Up until that point, I was just, like, grabbing whatever I could, ejecting out One failed situation trying to grab the next thing. But at that point, I was like, okay. I have, like, a really good job.

Dax:

I could literally work here for the next 10 years if I wanted to. I finally have the option to, like, decide what to do. And that was my first decision. That was, like

Adam:

Yeah.

Dax:

You know, 6 or 7 years into my career.

Adam:

That's a really good observation. Like, I feel like people on Twitter who are giving advice is make it sound like people are looking for advice because they have, like, Decisions to make. But I don't I'm I'm with you. I don't remember making decisions until pretty late in my career. It was just people will pay me money to learn and Get better at this thing, I'm gonna do that wherever it comes from, and taking every single thing I had every opportunity I had to do it.

Adam:

Yeah. There wasn't, like, big life choices sitting there with my wife, like, oh, should we go this way or that? No. It was just like, this is the thing that's gonna pay me to do this. I'm gonna keep doing it.

Adam:

Yeah. And then, yeah, recently, maybe there's you've got more opportunities later in your career to kinda think about opportunity costs or whatever. Yeah. It's it's interesting. I I just I don't know.

Adam:

It's I don't talk to a lot of younger people early in their careers. I would love to hear from him if you if somebody's listening to his podcast and you're in your early twenties and, you wanna share, I don't know, on Discord or Twitter somewhere, find us. We're on the Internet a lot. I would love to hear, like, what is life like for you in 2024, especially in technology, specifically in technology.

Dax:

Yeah. And things are so different now too. Like, I yeah. It just seems I can't even wrap my head around what it's like to be early now. Okay.

Dax:

I don't have any I don't think I have any advice for that.

Adam:

Yeah. No. Same.

Dax:

So weird and different.

Adam:

If we talked about the layoffs and all the current situation like, Is it a good cycle? Is it a bad cycle? What's going on? I feel like we did talk about this, but

Dax:

I already forgot. There's still another I mean, every time we talk about it, it's because there's there's, like, another round. And they're, like, Yeah. It's still kinda going on. I this is a random guess, like, don't take any faith in it.

Dax:

But, like, I feel like it had it, like, is tapering off. I know there's a bunch of things that are happening.

Adam:

Wait. Good is tapering off or bad is tapering

Dax:

off? Like, there's I feel like it's, like, the last the companies are getting in their last Layoffs.

Adam:

Oh, okay. Like, getting it out of their system.

Dax:

Yeah. Like, whatever last ones they can get out there, they're doing Shaking it off. Yeah. And I'm sure that, like, there'll be more. Like, Not every company is the same, but I like the big employers where it doesn't really matter whether they have, like, 50,000 or a 100,000 employees.

Dax:

Like, it's not gonna, like, turn them profitable or nonprofitable. Like, of that category where they're just, like, kind of trimming stuff, Yeah. I feel like they must be close to done. And I don't know if they'll go back to hiring like crazy, but I was saying this before you got on, All these companies have attrition. Like, 10% of your people quit or retire or whatever.

Dax:

So at minimum, they'll be hiring at least for, like, a at a replacement rate. Oh, interesting. So as long as they're not laying when they're done laying off, at least go back to hiring in that way, and that will kind of Free stuff up. I'm always just looking for, like, some amount of thing I got looking for stuff to settle because right now So many people are flooding the market because they've been laid off. And all these people need to, like, land somewhere, and things will need to shift around.

Dax:

And that's gonna have impacts on what, like, Demand for this stuff is and what salaries look like. So, yeah, once things settle, we'll know, like, okay, like, what is reasonable in terms of, like, what people will be making, Yeah. In this new state of things?

Adam:

That's where my mind goes when I hear, like, Meta lays off 1% of its developer workforce. It's, like, that's tough if you're trying to get into YC, and all these Facebook engineers just got laid off, and they're like, I'm just gonna go start a company. I mean, that it has ripple effects all over. Right? Like

Dax:

People say that, but I'm, like, I don't know how often that happens.

Adam:

I guess, maybe they're not the kind of people if they went and worked at Meta, maybe they're not the kind of people start companies. No. No. No.

Dax:

It does. It has happened, and I'm sure there's gonna be a bunch of companies that come out of these layoffs, but I don't think it's, like, That relevant. Like, these are the people that, like, post on blind where they're, like, I don't know. Like, my my t c is 800 k. Is that good enough?

Dax:

Like, should I it's just, like, Just people in in that, like, mindset. So

Adam:

Yeah. Not a good point. And if you're you shouldn't be trying to get to YC anyway. Remember, chart your own That's the dumb startup way. Oh, wait.

Adam:

You're a YC fender. I'm sorry. Never mind.

Dax:

Never mind. Did you see that, There was a post today by someone okay. So there's a company called Porter. You know who have you heard of them before?

Adam:

No. Porter? Like porterhouse? Like, steaks? No.

Adam:

Porter I

Dax:

think Porter, like, someone who takes stuff from one place to another, like a transporter.

Adam:

Oh, Okay.

Dax:

I think. So what their company they're another one of those, like, services that deploy into your AWS account. So they have, like, you know, simplified interface for some concepts and they deploy into your AWS account. There was someone took a picture of a bus stop ad For them, it's like says, Porter blah blah blah blah. Yeah.

Dax:

And at the bottom, it says, YC founders don't waste Your time on DevOps, QR code for discount for YC founders. And the sign was, like, near, Like YC's HQ. Yeah. And I'm, like, did they build did they, like, get an ad Just to target YC founders who they already have access to because I'm aren't they are, like okay. If they're not a YC company, maybe this is, like, the only way for them to access them.

Dax:

But How many people do you that's like a dedicated bus ad to hit, like, a 100 people.

Adam:

You know? That's kinda weird.

Dax:

Yeah. It's like, isn't there

Adam:

a better way? Doing circles around their building. Maybe it pays off. But, like

Dax:

It's just like the the that seems off. And I get the whole thing is, like, do things that don't scale. But The funny thing about that is, totally agree with the idea of do things that don't scale. But sometimes you see a company you think is really far along, But then they do something that doesn't scale and you're, like, oh, shit. Like, they're still pretty early.

Adam:

They're still trying to figure it out.

Dax:

Yeah. They kinda lose the fact that they're, like You know, that's still worth it for them to capture a 100 YC founders with businesses that are even earlier than theirs I probably can't pay that much money. You know, it just this doesn't make any sense. I

Adam:

feel like that whole story probably makes more sense to you being a YC founder. I didn't even know there's only a 100 what, how many? There's not the room?

Dax:

Not really a YC company. I work

Adam:

It's like there's a 1000 YC companies everywhere.

Dax:

At a company where I joined When the founders were leaving YC. Okay.

Adam:

That's still I

Dax:

didn't do the YC thing.

Adam:

On y Combinator, do you have a nice orange name?

Dax:

I don't have an orange name.

Adam:

Wait. I thought you did. I thought you had, like, perks. You don't? You really don't?

Dax:

Nope. Nope. But what I

Adam:

mean by Why?

Dax:

I just I get access to those stuff. Because that's like like Liz is looking for, like, for work. So I can ask Jay to go post stuff in the YC thing. Oh, I see. Proxy, but no.

Dax:

Not directly.

Adam:

I gotcha. I got well, we all have it by proxy. I have it by proxy through you who has a good day.

Dax:

Well, it

Adam:

gets done by the way. For work. I'll let

Dax:

you know. No. But I why do you think it's so funny? Because do you remember my tweet from a while ago where I was like, every time I tell people we're a YC company, they're always like, What? You guys are YC coming?

Dax:

It's just like nobody everyone's so shocked, and I feel, like, vaguely offended where they're like, Why are you so surprised? Like, why is it surprising that we're oh, I see. Like, what? Really?

Adam:

I think you seem what's the word? I don't I don't wanna offend you or YC Fenders here. You don't seem like, a person who would align with Y Combinator. I don't know.

Dax:

You know what's ironic? I actually think if you drill down to it, we're actually the most, like, prototypical YC company ever.

Adam:

Oh, really?

Dax:

Not ever. But, like, you know, I feel like if you really get the ethos, we actually align with it perfectly. It's just like anything else. Like, all sorts of people go through that program and some people go in with a mindset and then come out with the same mindset just with a bunch of New rationalizations for the mindset they already had. Yes.

Dax:

And other people, like, actually, like, you know, absorb it more and adopt it more. But Yeah. Like, we are always just doing random shit and always trying to, like, just try to do stuff that people want. Yeah. And, like, we don't, like, narrow our scope.

Dax:

If we don't have, like, some grand vision we're trying to do. Like, we're, like, very scrappy, and I think Yeah. In a lot of ways, like, we kind of follow a lot of stuff today.

Adam:

I think I don't know the YC ethos. I think I don't really know. I just it to me, on the outside, as a A boy from the Ozarks. Like, I just the y c thing. I think anytime there's, like, a club

Dax:

What's your perception of it? Like, can you describe what yeah.

Adam:

Just like like a good old boys club. I don't know. I just don't like it. I just I see something like that and, like, everybody trying to get in and it's, like, exclusive and, like, weed. Oh, yeah.

Adam:

I just don't like it. Something about it just rubs me wrong.

Dax:

Yeah. I think what yes. There's definitely that aspect of it. And with every kind of exclusive thing, like, you have that dimension. If you look at what the actual value is, their whole thing is they tend to, like, radically simplify everything that people convince themselves that Needs to be way more complicated.

Dax:

Like, their whole thing, like, what do you have to do? You said to build something people want. There's no other strategy, nothing else. Like, just figure out how to build something people want. And and every dimension of it, like fundraising, every size, like, they help you, like, not overcomplicate things.

Dax:

I know that, like, all lines up with how Me, Jay, and Frank will work. But yeah. I mean, like I said, I see a lot of YC companies that do the opposite of all Of that. So

Adam:

Yeah. No. I probably agree. I mean, if it's if it's if it's like you, if you actually fit the ethos, you and Jay and Frank, Then I probably like YC and their ethos. I just don't like the outside perception.

Adam:

The thing I built up in my my head about it.

Dax:

No. It no. It's It's it's there. And there's definitely, like, a whole name dropping inner club.

Adam:

Yeah. I just have a call like Silicon Valley, San Francisco, the whole thing. Yeah. I just like the traditional startup mold. I just don't it rubs me wrong.

Adam:

I don't

Dax:

know. Speaking of traditional startup mold, let's talk about the Clerk fundraise.

Adam:

Oh, Clerk raised A bunch of money. Yeah. 30,000,000? Series b?

Dax:

Series b. Yeah.

Adam:

Okay. I I I when I saw this, I immediately sent you messages. Because I don't know anybody who pays for Clerk. I'm sure people lots of people, I'm sure. They must be making money.

Adam:

Right? Wait. They must be. Right? It's not an environment where you raise $30,000,000 on pre revenue.

Dax:

Well, I'm gonna flat out say this fundraise bewildered me. I was actually very I continue to be very confused by it.

Adam:

If this was 3 years ago, I'd be like, yeah. Sure. Of course.

Dax:

Yeah. What's fun about A lot of DevTool companies is our metrics are open source. You can go look to see exactly how we're doing. We can't bullshit. We can post all the charts we want missing a y axis, but you can just go look up what the y axis is because our stats are public.

Dax:

And I I was looking at I I, like, tried to find, the NPM package of theirs that all the other ones depend on. So, like, the one that would have been installed the most. And they're growing, but they're, like it's not it's actually the same rate as SSD. Like, they're they're doing, like, a little bit better. But, like, if you look at our chart, we pretty much started growing at the same time and, like, roughly at the same rate.

Dax:

And and their pitch is, like, a lot smaller than SSD rate. So, like, just an off thing you can drop into any framework whereas We have, like, a harder pitch. So I'm, like, these numbers aren't numbers where I'm, like, damn. They're, like, breaking out and, like, you gotta they're they're, like, growing like crazy. And then you also put in the other dimension of how much they've spent so far.

Dax:

Like, they spent a lot of money. Did they raise, like, what, 20,000,000 or something last year for a series a or something like that. Maybe, like, 15. I don't know I don't know what the number was. Yeah.

Dax:

And they they have, like, a huge team. And I'm, like, this doesn't really make sense. So, like, in terms of the literal growth numbers, I'm not seeing it there. Again, I'm not this is all speculation. I can be wrong about a bunch of things, and the series b.

Dax:

Series b's are, like, serious. Yeah. They're not like

Adam:

I thought so.

Dax:

Yeah. Me too. That's what I thought too. Like, you're not, like, selling an idea or selling potential. Like Right.

Dax:

You had to have landed Some big enterprise customers that tell a story that you're gonna land a lot more. I think to do a series b like that traditionally is where you need to have gotten to. So I guess even though they don't have giant numbers, maybe they could have landed Some enterprise companies and, like, the VCs are convinced that, okay, that's, like, the start of something bigger. But even then, I'm just like Then the other explanation is in a world where things are, like, really uncertain, are they attracted to the idea that this is a very Established market, and there's been Auth0, which had a giant exit.

Adam:

That's true.

Dax:

And they just seem Is Okta

Adam:

in the same bucket, or is it more like SSO?

Dax:

Okta bought Auth0. Right? Isn't that how

Adam:

Did they? Is that what it was? Okay.

Dax:

Yeah. Yeah.

Adam:

Auth0 is basically the same model. Right? Like

Dax:

Auth0 is exactly the same model. Yeah. It's it's like a SaaS model, user. Yeah. And there was there was a lot of problems with Auth0, and I'm sure Clerk's vision and you can see some in their in their release.

Dax:

Like, they're thinking about it as Every SaaS product has a concept of a user. And given that, there's, like, all this undifferentiated stuff that exists. Off is, like, 1. But, like, managing their payment, managing their subscriptions, like, managing their permissions. Like, you can see how they're trying to expand way more than 0 did.

Dax:

And it's good. It's, like, it's a good way to progress in terms of what they're trying to do. Yeah. But I'm not yeah. This is it just, like, doesn't Fully makes sense.

Dax:

Like, maybe you can get away series b with, like, a story still, but This is very surprising.

Adam:

So I I have a million thoughts, and I'm gonna just I'm gonna shotgun them at you. First of all, I guess, just to, like, Scientifically, look at the the the thing you're kind of proposing here, which is the, like, NPM downloads, basically, right, of their package. Is there any scenario Where that's decoupled from their how they're making money. I guess, like, everyone that pays for Clerk has to download the package. Right?

Dax:

Yes.

Adam:

Is that a given?

Dax:

Yeah. But but it's possible you have, like, 3 companies that, like, are paying a shit ton.

Adam:

Okay. So it could be Few downloads, but lots of dollars per Yeah. People downloading it. Yeah. I I think this is part of the Twitter bubble for me.

Adam:

It's so hard to escape What I see on Twitter, which is, like sure. Like, every person building little hobby projects is using Vercel and Clerk because it's real fast to stand it up. But, like, real companies with lots of users, it's very hard to imagine paying for something like this. And even, like It would have to be new things. Right?

Adam:

Like, if you have an existing user, there's no way you're like, you've already built it.

Dax:

It's already built off.

Adam:

You're not gonna go, like, port to clerk. Right? There's no story there. Right?

Dax:

Exactly. And that's why I'm very confused. So, like, if if it is the case, okay, they landed some enterprise customers, like, who in the world Moved all their

Adam:

Yeah. What enterprise is, like, we're gonna pay you a lot of money because we have all these users, and it's just it's too much. We can't manage it anymore.

Dax:

Overhaul our auth system at this, but that's the

Adam:

best thing we can do. Work

Dax:

that you're

Adam:

now having to do to I don't I don't understand it.

Dax:

The other side of that is do you see my other tweet about how I feel like SaaS is, like, kind of gonna implode? Because Here's the other side here's the other problem. I don't think Clerk is self hostable. I don't think you can deploy Clerk into your own AWS account. From, like, the way they've built stuff, like, very few companies have, in the last couple years, have architected with that in mind.

Dax:

Because It is a painful thing to, like, architect in a way where you can host it and other people can host it. You you, like, give up you give up having some fancier features and stuff. And I am really skeptical that big enterprises are, like, oh, yeah. We'll use a third party hosted auth. Like, we So quickly runs we have we, like, hit that ceiling very quickly, like, with our products.

Dax:

There's a whole category of companies, small to medium companies that'll use our hosted version. Any enterprise company is, like, of course, no. Like, of course, we're not gonna use the hosted version. Like, deploys into our AWS account. This is infrastructure.

Dax:

And all this infrastructure.

Adam:

Especially something like auth and all of your user data. Like, that just I don't get it. I still have a million thoughts. I love so many people at Clerk. It sucks.

Adam:

I feel like I'm always just, like, trashing Clerk. But, like, there's a lot of people. They've hired a

Dax:

lot of people. Okay?

Adam:

There's a lot of people that work at Clerk, Which is also part of the problem, I mean, that we're talking about here, which in terms of SaaS and imploding and all of this feeling like the zero interest rate era. Like, how do so many people work at Clerk? How do they raise $30,000,000? All these questions I have, and it sucks because I like a lot of the people. So I'm sorry.

Adam:

People that I like, you know who you are. I just feel like I've done a lot of clerk bashing, but I have no I have no motive To, like, bash Enclerc. If anything, I have a motive to not bash Enclerc because I like them. They're my friends.

Dax:

Yeah. I don't I don't I don't feel this is bashing. I'm just, like, trying to Analyze what's going on. It's fine. And and full disclosure, I actually messaged their CEO yesterday asking if they're hiring.

Dax:

Not for myself because, like, you know, Liz is looking for work. So

Adam:

That would have been a twist. Like, actually, I'm going to work.

Dax:

Yeah. But I was like, it'd be so funny if she ended up working there because, like, I'm always, like, you know, Playing with

Adam:

them? Yeah. Yeah. Playing. That's the word.

Adam:

Yeah. Playing with them.

Dax:

I'm always I'm always playing with them. But, yeah, like, I don't I think So I'm convinced that I am told I must be totally wrong on this. I'm, like, missing something. Like, I'm missing some key thing. Yeah.

Dax:

The other thing is that

Adam:

That's how I feel.

Dax:

They did say that they have they did put out some public numbers that we wouldn't be able to clean publicly. They said they're they're 16,000,000 users on Clerk. Not, like, Clerk users, but, like, users of their users.

Adam:

Not paying customers. 16,000,000 users registered. Because that's what they do is they they handle your user registration and

Dax:

all that. But 60,000,000 is not that many. Like, you guys you guys have problems.

Adam:

We have that many. It's yeah. I mean, more than that monthly active.

Dax:

And that that that's just you on your own. That's just us. Yeah. If you add up all of Clerks and I don't think that's 16,000,000 monthly active. I think that's, like, 16,000,000 in the history.

Dax:

Ever. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like yeah. I don't know.

Dax:

Something is weird. Good for them because they pulled off this crazy raise.

Adam:

No. It's just it's it does, like, challenge everything I understand about software And about, the current landscape of fundraising. Like, it just it it wracked my brain really hard. I'm glad we had the same reaction.

Dax:

So I

Adam:

feel a little less crazy, because it did. It made me feel like just as a person who builds software, trying to understand, Like, who their customers are and who who's paying the bills. I don't know. It all hurts my head. And I do feel like I'm missing Some fundamental something about it.

Adam:

Similar feelings about Vercel, but I get that, like, there's ecom companies, I guess, But I've never interacted with that use Versal. I don't know.

Dax:

Yeah. I mean, the Versal case I have I think that one is less complicated in a lot of ways because I I just think they're it's obvious they're not doing well. They're doing just okay. The Clark one, it's weird for someone to, like, put in $30,000,000 and make a giant bet. And also the leads changed?

Dax:

Like, the the different lead investor every round?

Adam:

Is that Is that weird, though?

Dax:

You don't normally see that, really.

Adam:

I guess, like, in in dev tools or just in startups in general?

Dax:

I personally generally Don't see that much. Usually, like, you have a lead in every round if you're doing well. They, like, continue to why would they give up?

Adam:

Well, yeah. I don't I'm not, like, Hanging out on AngelList and or wherever Crunchbase. I don't look a lot around. But I know in my own experience fundraising, we've had different, like, at different stages. So, like, the people who led our a, it's like the they participate in the next round, but the lead was, like, different types of funds that do Series b.

Adam:

It's like a lot of funds, like, have these hyper specific

Dax:

Yeah.

Adam:

You know, focus, and it's like we do series b for Farm companies. It's like random stuff like that. But I'm sure the bigger names, they probably lead all kinds of rounds.

Dax:

Yeah. So that that so I I think TJ TJ just said, source graph had different leads for each round. But in this case, their initial leads We're giant VC firms that typically

Adam:

They do lead other types arounds. Yeah. I gotcha.

Dax:

Wasn't Andreessen Horowitz one of their leads at one point? I forgot what. I forgot.

Adam:

Oh, I didn't know.

Dax:

The names are all recognizable across the board. They're not, like, smaller funds or anything.

Adam:

I mean, surely. Like, I've never even looked, I'm sure he's surely an investor. Right?

Dax:

He must be,

Adam:

I'm looking it up. There's just like a vibe you get, and it's like, this is definitely a Vercel company. And by that, I mean Guillermo personally invested.

Dax:

No. I I think I think he definitely is definitely, for sure. But, like, it it's actually not weird in a negative way. It's actually Weirdly positive. Like What is weirdly positive?

Dax:

That the deal was so competitive that their old

Adam:

Oh, that they got a new

Dax:

They got, like, new leads. Like, I don't think their previous leads are, like, fuck this. We're out. Like, they're not it's not like they're doing badly. Yeah.

Dax:

So yeah. So, again, just a lot of weird stuff with this one. But in a lot of ways, it's just they really feel like like they're, like, in, like, a time bubble. That's how I feel with them.

Adam:

Yeah. Like, they escaped Everything collapsing and, like, they're still living in 2019.

Dax:

Operating the way everyone operated. Yeah. They're, like, sponsoring all the conferences and, like,

Adam:

Yeah.

Dax:

I have a giant DevRel team.

Adam:

And And there's no one competing with them anymore. It's like Clerk is sponsoring all the things. There's nobody still living in that time

Dax:

Yeah.

Adam:

I know. Timeline.

Dax:

And what's but what's interesting is did you see what Work OS did?

Adam:

What is Work OS? Is that an Apple app? What is that? Work OS is Apple part of the app.

Dax:

SST's auth is actually modeled off of WorkOS. There was a time where I spent I went and tried every single hosted managed auth solution. And I was, like, oh, I like WorkOS's model where they just proxy forward to, like, real OAuth providers. And they have focused very much on, like, SAML integrations, like, kinda like the enterprise y stuff. And that's their core business where they make their money.

Dax:

Then they launched auth kit. Do you remember they bought Radix? Do you remember Radix? Radix?

Adam:

Radix. Wait. The Component library. The component library of Radix? Yeah.

Adam:

Do I remember Radix? I love Radix.

Dax:

Yeah. So they were

Adam:

Me and Radix, we go way back. Sorry. Same.

Dax:

Back when I used to use React. But they joined Work OS. And at the time, I was, like, this is really random. Like, Workhorse is like an API product. Like, what this seems like a weird fit.

Dax:

Yeah. And they launched AuthKit, which is basically a 1 to 1 competitor with Clerk. Has, like, really amazing front end components that were built on you know, everyone loves Radix. Now, like, these are, like, so integrated with them. Insanely free.

Dax:

It's, It's like free for your first million users or something.

Adam:

Insanely free?

Dax:

Yeah. Insanely free. How can you

Adam:

be insanely free? If you're free, it's Free.

Dax:

Like, everyone's free. Everyone's got a free tier.

Adam:

Insanely $0. I don't understand how you can be insanely free.

Dax:

Okay. Think about there's different sizes of infinity. Right? It's kinda like that.

Adam:

No, there's not. What? There's different sizes of infinity?

Dax:

Okay. Let's say you have a house with infinity rooms. Okay?

Adam:

Oh, no. This is gonna hurt my brain and okay.

Dax:

Let's say in Each room, you put 2 chairs.

Adam:

Okay.

Dax:

And compare the number of chairs to the number of rooms

Adam:

you have. No. You you can't. It's not like a number that you can do that with. This is like my son being, like, infinity plus 1.

Dax:

Yeah. I think I'm wrong about this, but

Adam:

I think you are too.

Dax:

This this mental model that I came up with is

Adam:

Do you mean, like, insanely free in the sense, like, everything has a free tier, but they have, like, an insanely generous

Dax:

free It's very generous. Yes. I think it's, like, free for the first 1000000 users or something. And I can see I'm sure, like, Clerk is a little bit ahead in terms of the maturity of the product, of course, but That's that's some hot competition now.

Adam:

Yeah.

Dax:

That's, like, some real like, they're going the same angle of deep integration with frameworks, UI components that people really like. And just and it's like, what let me look up

Adam:

the actual thing. Amplify too. I mean sorry.

Dax:

That's punchline. The point I just amplified other than all you said.

Adam:

That's all I had to say. Radix is good. I saw Sam Selakoff just had a he put out, like, a Radix course. Radix is one of those things I never know if I'm saying it right.

Dax:

Radix? Radix. Radix. Well, okay.

Adam:

Let's see. Radix.

Dax:

Radix. Say it Radix? I don't I don't know about that one. Say it slowly, and you're probably gonna regret saying it.

Adam:

There's an invisible u. You know how sometimes there's, like, a silent e? Well, there's an invisible u, and

Dax:

it's products. You. I don't like you saying that. I think you need to, like, really reflect on the sounds coming out

Adam:

of Does it sound like a bad word or something? Roddics? What does it sound like? You don't like the sound of that?

Dax:

Okay. How many syllables are in that word? The way you pronounce there's 2. Say each syllable separately.

Adam:

Why doesn't it do that with the other ones, though? Radix? It's the same. Oh, the the the first word is different. Yeah.

Adam:

I gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Dax:

Got it. Free for up to 1,000,000 users free.

Adam:

That's crazy. Users. Not a

Dax:

great 1,000,000 users. None of you will ever

Adam:

have Nobody's gonna have a 1000000 users. None of you will ever have I think about that a lot. Like, All this talk on Twitter and, like, nobody has any they don't have any experience doing anything. Just feel like there's there's so much talk

Dax:

about stuff that anything.

Adam:

You know what I mean? Like, it's just like, what do you know about any of this stuff? I don't know.

Dax:

I'm glad I worked at one consumer facing company, so I can say, like, I know how to deal with millions of users. Yeah. But, like, that was, like, a small percentage of my overall experience. But I can technically say I'm not one of those people.

Adam:

That's the thing. There's a lot of people, I'm sure, on Twitter talking that have success in b to b situations. It's just so different from consumer facing stuff. Like, consumer facing stuff, a Lot of technical challenges. Not that there aren't technical challenges building a spreadsheet replacement for b to b.

Adam:

It's just like, are there? But are there really? Like, you're gonna, at most, have, like, a 1,000 users and, like, you're killing it because they're all paying you a lot of money, but, like, it's just a different Different things.

Dax:

Working on, like, their their data is completely separate. So, really, you have, like, one user a 1000 times, you know?

Adam:

Right. Yeah. It's just I don't know. Like, there are times Where I can submit a piece of code and and then see tweets immediately from people who are angry that we broke something. This happened yesterday.

Adam:

Like, it's just a different animal when you got lots and lots of people using your stuff.

Dax:

And the the the cardest part is they just don't give a shit about you at all.

Adam:

No. Yeah.

Dax:

They're like, you're like trying to get them to use your thing, and they just don't care. They can just go about their lives and not give a shit.

Adam:

Yeah. It's true.

Dax:

Do not care.

Adam:

Alright. I gotta pee.

Dax:

Okay.

Adam:

Like, really, like, not just like one of those

Dax:

It lasted an hour and 13 minutes without having to pee.

Adam:

That's pretty good for me. I feel like I've not been having to pee in the night. I know if anyone out there is a doctor that listens to our show and they're concerned about my my urinary tract. I think it's getting better. Just saying You

Dax:

know there's some stories. I I I'll look it up. I'll try to find it because I don't really remember it.

Adam:

Is it like a long story? Like No. It's it's just a

Dax:

quick concept.

Adam:

Okay. Yeah. There have been

Dax:

doctors that have diagnosed, like, public people from, like, problems they've But, like, very serious issues that they've, like, saved their lives because, like Wow. They've, like, put together what's going on with them.

Adam:

Okay. Now, new motivation to grow the podcast. We gotta get out there. Yeah. I need a doctor to start listening.

Adam:

If anybody knows one, just maybe point him in this direction. Alright. It's been good, Dex. Thanks again. See you.

Adam:

Yep.

Creators and Guests

Adam Elmore
Host
Adam Elmore
AWS DevTools Hero and co-founder @statmuse. Husband. Father. Brother. Sister?? Pet?!?
Twitter Website Link
Dax Raad
Host
Dax Raad
building @SST_dev and @withbumi
Twitter Website Link
Chris Enns
Editor
Chris Enns
I edit podcasts so you don't have to.
Twitter LinkedIn Mastodon Instagram Website Link
Dax's Viral AI App, Being a Role Model, Clerk Raising $$, and Hacker News Fears

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