KID COMPANY & UARE.AI: WHY YOU ARE THE BEST AI WITH ROBERT LOCASCIO

E106 KID COMPANY & UARE.AI_ WHY YOU ARE THE BEST AI WITH ROBERT LOCASCIO

Transcript

Dalton Anderson (00:01.029) Welcome to VentureStep podcast, we discuss entrepreneurship, industry trends, and the occasional book of view. Today, I'm joined by a true pioneer of the internet age, Rob Licascio. Rob is a 3X founder and a former CEO of LivePerson, a company he led from empathy to over 500 million in global revenue and accessible IPO. He was the first to build a real-time customer chair, KRChat, changing the way that every business on earth interacts with its customers. Today, he's focused on the intersection of humanity and AI through his new endeavors.

You are.ai and KidCompany. Rob, welcome to the show.

Robert LoCascio (00:35.202) Thanks, Todd. Thanks for having me.

Dalton Anderson (00:38.173) So just for the listeners, we're going to jump through the agenda. The agenda is really going to be talking through the kid company and the kid company. And Rob's got some, some stuff that he'd like to share live. And we're going to talk through kid company, which just in a one-liner is a company specialized in this AI native kids safe device, which we'll learn more about in the show. We'll talk about some guard rails and like some non-negotiables and

this era of AI, especially when it deals with kids. And then talking about the future of AI where there's two clear paths. There's this like world model that we're seeing from these larger companies like Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google that are going to require these nuclear power plants to power their compute. But then there is this other approach where you'd want more safety and personalization of what

the model can and won't do within your household. there's like the freedom aspect to the, Hey, we're like the world government type of thing. And then just talking through the Odyssey of what it was to start these two new endeavors and live person.

Robert LoCascio (01:54.542) Cool. Sounds good.

Dalton Anderson (01:55.941) All right, so KidCompany, maybe just provide a quick overview of KidCompany, the thought process on starting it and what you're really trying to solve for so people get a good idea of the ground.

Robert LoCascio (02:09.262) Yeah, I have three young kids, 10, 7, and 5. And, you know, when you have kids in your life and devices and everything else, you get a front row seat to the horror that you hear about. You know, when I didn't have kids, was like, yeah, that's kind of interesting. But then when you have kids, you see them with this behavior.

when they're interacting with their devices. And what it comes down to is there's a ton of people on one side that are making content that doesn't really fit to normal family values. Like don't harm your kids and don't put bad words in front of them and bad pictures. And there's people on the other side just trying to get clicks and scrolls. And we're fighting that every day. And then obviously the device itself has its own addictive behavior, doom scrolling and everything else. So from all that emotional, it's really an emotional thing.

parent because in one way I like my device, you know, it does good things for me. But when I hand it to my kids, you feel like a pain. So I felt like it'd be great to create a device that would allow us to safely provide content in the form of AI generated content that could allow children to be their best creators and not just like zombies, you know, scrolling stuff. So that really was what I set out to

a little over a year ago and we just launched the kid device during Christmas, so during the holidays.

Dalton Anderson (03:39.358) That's awesome. And I know we talked about this in the pre-interview and the antithesis of using AI is to have a kid's imagination, like to dream up whatever you can and to have freedom and operation and the thought process of which the things that you want to create. But then we also talked about like, it's okay for a kid to use AI, but then there's certain things that just kids just won't understand and they shouldn't be exposed to. And there needs to be clear guidelines on that never being.

part of what is the output of those models. And we've seen news articles come out, especially recently with some of these AI native toys that are pushing sexually explicit content or self harm. And like, just to be frank, that's disgusting. Like these things should have been and never been released to the market. And the fact that they were is, a really bad look on like the person who created it.

I'm not pointing fingers or anything, but like that stuff should have never happened. And that's, that's a problem, especially not only just toys, but with these chat bots, some of these chat bots are now curated for kids, but you can jailbreak it pretty easily. And there is a strong emotional, I guess, pull from the chat bot to like start some kind of weird friendship or relationship. And it's just,

Robert LoCascio (05:06.691) Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (05:08.367) It's just an odd thing. It doesn't seem like it's your buddy. seems like it's like trying to emotionally manipulate your child.

Robert LoCascio (05:15.778) Yes. Yeah, this is the conundrum is that general models like a chat GPT and everything like that were set up to also create engagement. So, you know, they're always like, hey, great. You're awesome. You're wonderful. And like when you in our case, we made models just for four to 12 year olds. They're just kid models. So we didn't have this corpus of like adult land. And we're trying to now like

play around with it and kind of make it kid. We started with, you know, for kids, safe for kids. So one of the big things we wanted to make sure is when a child is having a discussion with one of these, like we have little buddies we call them, that they are able to off ramp to a parent quickly when it comes to something like, hey, someone hit me today, or I don't feel great or whatever. It's not like, really, let me just get into it. It's like, really, that's good.

Okay, why don't you go talk to mom and dad? And if you said, mom and dad, don't feel safe. Great, then talk to someone at school. But you got to off ramp them pretty quick versus trying to create this weird relationship with them when they're vulnerable. And we're one of the first COPA certified, which is this certifications by the federal communications.

for AI because we started with the idea of being certified. We didn't build something and then throw AI into it. We're an AI native device. A lot of these other devices were teddy bears and they decided in order to sell a lot of them during the holidays, would put an API in there and a to an AI model like like one of the Chinese models or one of the US models. And they just tossed it in the market and you're to have problems.

Dalton Anderson (07:01.373) curious about the requirements to be certified. Like you said, Copa certified. Is that Copa? What is the requirements to do that just out of curiosity?

Robert LoCascio (07:12.726) So there's really, I'd say there's the two biggies are a child can't create or be exposed to content that can be harmful to the child.

And the second was you're not allowed to use the data set to do anything to understand the child and target them with advertising or manipulate them. So these are two, the two big fundamental things that, you know, the people who put it together, which was the government lawyers, and then the like people in the industry of child products. Obviously like YouTube kids will never be Gopa certified, you know, it's like, and they don't want to be. So it's, it's a small group of us that get the certification cause it's hard to get.

get and they really go through your stuff and they have to certify and they run all different scenarios and they look at your services, they look at the platform architecture and then it gets approved.

Dalton Anderson (08:06.438) The second one seemed like a no brainer, like, Hey, like we're not going to be pushing advertisements to like four year olds and like using their whatever they talk about to, to market them. But the first one seems difficult, like with all the, the scrutiny that you'd be behind, like I know that they, they'd really pull back the curtain and ask a lot of uncomfortable questions. And you wouldn't be able to do, maybe the last part of my point is like you, you'd have a really tough time doing that if you weren't set up originally.

Robert LoCascio (08:25.433) That's right.

Dalton Anderson (08:35.036) to achieve the certification.

Robert LoCascio (08:36.899) That's it. And that's what makes it different. When I started to build the product, before we even got started, I brought a company called Prevo.

Privo is one of the companies in world that certifies for COPA compliance. And we said, like, what do need to do? Like, it wasn't like we built it, then they came in and they're like, because you're right, if you already built it, like trying to undo a bunch of stuff is going to be very costly. In our case, we built the models, the infrastructure, everything from day one. And the most important part is the engineers understand it because they were part of the process. So for instance, we'll look at data on the device and we'll do things, but like there's a line where even the engineers say,

we're not allowed to look at that data. We're not allowed to use that data. And we understand that. So if everyone in the org understands what it is to be certified, we want to maintain the certification. But in this case, other people, they just came late to the party. Like I said, they're not getting certified. They don't want to be certified. It's expensive. It's time consuming. But we want to do that to set a precedent.

Dalton Anderson (09:38.399) Yeah, no, I agree. And then also maybe the other point about being certified is it allows you the ability. Like if you already meet the gold standard to deregulate is much easier. I'm not saying that you want to be right, but like operate in a deregulated market. So like if you wanted to go somewhere else where like the the regulations for kids toys aren't as strigland, Strigent, then then you could do that. But if if you're trying to.

Harden your product when it comes to regulations, when it wasn't built to do that, you've got to redo the architecture. You've got to redo the whole culture of the company. But if you start out with, hey, this is the goal, this is what we're doing, this is the mission, and part of that mission is being certified and this is what it's going to take, then everyone, everybody's on board. It's quite easy to operate in a different marketplace if you've already made the gold standard.

Robert LoCascio (10:29.325) Yeah, and I look, I'm authentic to the brand because I got three young kids and I don't want to expose to junk. And when you saw there was a, during Christmas, there was a bunch of products that came in predominantly from China. There's one from India, but they dropped in these bad products. then the actual, there's four senators right now.

Dalton Anderson (10:33.459) Mm.

Robert LoCascio (10:51.535) who basically were like, you know, they want to create, now they're trying to pass legislation to put a moratorium on chat bodies and chat bots for the next couple of years on toys. And because of these couple of companies that came in the market, matter of fact, there was Toy Fair was last week, was this past week. And these specific companies, were two or three that were banned from the Toy Fair. Like Toy Fair didn't want, so I know the toy, they also, the Toy Association is pro-legislation.

Dalton Anderson (11:15.038) Hmm.

Robert LoCascio (11:21.489) which I think is the bad idea. Like putting a ban on this stuff. For instance, ours will educate kids. Like there's so much you can do with these things. And we're not just about chatbots. You also can create music and create images and stories with our products. Not just talk with a buddy, but like banning it is such a, it's, what are we doing? You know, like we're better off certifying it. And then the consumers know, mom and dad know this is okay. This thing's safe.

And copa compliance to me is it's like it needs to be more refined for AI. I think they can do better at like defining more AI, more AI use cases, but it's it's there already. It's got it. It has a precedent in the market.

Dalton Anderson (12:03.016) Yeah, that makes sense. was not too familiar with the pending legislation on toys, but I mean, given what you said, my preference is to be more outcome based. Like, hey, if you're going to make a toy and it's going to have AI in it, it can't do these things. And other than that, like do it, do what you want. Versus like, hey, we're going to we don't really understand it. We're going to ban it or we're just not going to do it anymore. I think that.

Robert LoCascio (12:21.828) Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (12:31.504) opens up the opportunity for a different marketplace to or a different, a different company in a different country to dominate and then just move over to the U S or vice versa. Whereas if you have outcome based and then if you don't really understand what's going on, we'll bring in experts, bring in people that are, that are passionate about it. Like certify with the marketplace, what is the standard and then move from there.

Robert LoCascio (12:56.185) Yeah, I feel like there's a bigger problem. We know kids and devices and social media and all that is the problem.

Obviously what that's doing now is that's that's then it creates a reaction to anything new in the technology space. But we didn't solve the bigger problem. And I think it's the same thing Dalton, which is we didn't create a competitive framework. I think the best thing is they didn't want to ban social media, obviously. Like they did it in Australia recently where it's 13 below. You can't have access to social media. By the way, which I heard is a joke because kids, what they do is they put makeup on stuff or they make themselves look older because it's a facial

shot to see if you're below the age of 30. are like literally, I heard, just making themselves look older. Kids are kids, like you know what saying? Like there's a candy store, a kid's gonna get to a candy store whether you like it or not.

Dalton Anderson (13:41.31) Really?

You

Dalton Anderson (13:48.125) Yeah.

Robert LoCascio (13:53.271) I just think the best frameworks are to create frameworks that allow competition to happen in a way that potentially could allow the market to choose a winner or a series of winners that align to what the market would ultimately want. why do parents, the question is, why do we as parents allow our children to be in front of a device and be hurt, be harmed potentially?

And the answer in many cases is that parents want to break in their day. They want to keep their kids entertained. There's always so much entertainment we can do when we have to play with them personally. So we get to hand them a device and we're willing to trade off whatever that does to our children for our own freedom. And that's really what it's coming down to. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm a parent. I'm not judging anyone. I'm a parent. But like...

This is what's happened. So somehow we have to bring something else into a family's life that can make it as entertaining, exciting, but safe, you know, which is hard. So.

Dalton Anderson (15:03.551) Yeah, that's exactly what you're working on. Do you, do you want to, do you want to just show a quick, a quick little snippet of it or do you, you know, are you comfortable doing that live on the show?

Robert LoCascio (15:12.516) Yeah.

Yeah, here's a little so this is kid device. On the bottom, it's got some buddies and then in the middle here you've got you can make images and stories and music and can make buddies and then there's a whole educational area where you can get content. The education content is really cool. Like there are books in here, but so you can see there's different books in here and I can talk to a book say here and I can listen to a book.

Okay.

Robert LoCascio (15:50.283) And so I can listen to this book. you can read. There's also that book can be imagery. And then I can talk to the character. I am Elsa. For a long time I was afraid. I'm here to share what I've discovered. Yeah, I wanted to ask you a question about you and your sister. How close are you guys?

Dalton Anderson (16:03.935) Mmm.

Robert LoCascio (16:24.099) a second. Anna and I, we were very close when we were little, but for a long time, my fear made me keep her at a distance. It was hard for both of us. So think of that, you're talking to this book. Princess Elsa and Princess Anna of Arendelle.

Dalton Anderson (16:40.671) Yeah, and interactive and you could ask a lot of questions. mean, as a kid, you can just you could you could spend hours asking random questions about shoes, environment, family. And then I know that there's like board games, books you can you can make music. You can do you can create stories like you write your own stories. I think you can make images.

Robert LoCascio (16:51.16) Yeah.

Robert LoCascio (17:01.155) Yes, let's make a story of Rob and Dalton. They both have brown hair. One's hair is a little curly than Rob's. But they're going to they're flying up to like Mars and they're going to go to this. They're out there trying to find the secret treasure that's in Mars. But then this is like evil doer Zorhan and they need to defeat him. And so that's what they're going to do. OK, so so the device. Well, we can keep talking. It'll go ahead and then.

make the story and that's what does. So it's really cool stuff, know, it's like it allows the child to really have this very interactive experience, create their own stories or anything like that. So we really created it for something, you know, very unique and different, you know what saying? So it's...

Dalton Anderson (17:47.187) Yeah, no. And also you made a device that has sensors and a screen and it's touch screen. There's a whole bunch of complexity just on that one aspect besides all the other stuff that you accomplished currently with the launch.

Robert LoCascio (18:02.063) And the reason we did this is that it all starts with a device because the front door is the device. if a child can take the device into their, instead of renting a device from their parent all time, they take it back most of the time. Here they can have their own device, they can go in their room. And all that you know as a parent that everything's cool, it's safe.

Dalton Anderson (18:22.559) Yeah, you don't have to worry about it, which is great. And then the pre interview, we don't have to show it on here because we're doing the story, but I did. I did appreciate on the pre interview when you showed me that you could ask it a question like, you know, someone is hurting me or like something like that. And it's like, hey, like you, like you should, you should talk to your mom and dad about that. Like this is a subject that is best suited to talk with them, whatever it said. But it off ramped immediately to either

a supervisor or very close family member, like the first option was your mom or your dad, which was great.

Robert LoCascio (18:57.837) Yes, that's correct. that's just, we programmed it. Most people won't do that. They'll start creating a creepy, like a weird relationship with the child, which is not our case. want to... I don't want them to get any advice from the AI when they're getting something that's tough in their life. I want them to talk to me or they can talk to someone else, but at least they are given the route and they'll follow that route.

Dalton Anderson (19:09.087) Not your MO, huh?

Dalton Anderson (19:24.607) Yeah, because then the kid doesn't know. It's hard to comprehend when you're an adult, but like as a kid, you don't really know what is good and what is like completely bad. So like there's there could be stuff that's in between them, like morality and good and bad. And you don't necessarily know. And so if you're talking to some AI device, like some bad stuff could be happening to you, but you don't really realize that it's bad because like.

AI is like, like that's bad. That's happening. But like it is what it is or whatever it may be. And then you don't necessarily know as a kid that like these things are happening to you and it's horrible. And you just don't know because like you haven't spoken with an adult about it and you're you feel like you're expressing yourself and you're getting it off your chest talking to your AI friend. But they don't really comprehend that what is happening is not good.

Robert LoCascio (20:16.207) That's correct. And by the way, it goes back to social media. Like I saw it with my kids and even like my five year old. I remember when he said the F one day, just like he said the F word and was laughing hysterically. And I was like, what, where'd he get that from? Cause I'm not saying that to him. He literally is watching YouTube or YouTube kids and they go, they go, that's F and funny. And they laugh.

Dalton Anderson (20:39.711) Mm.

Robert LoCascio (20:40.271) They do on these shows by the way, they have kids hitting each other. They have a lot of abusive stuff. They do a lot of cursing, but they wrap it around comedy. And a child, my final thing is like, if someone says the F word in a little show on YouTube and everyone's laughing hysterically, my kid thinks it was a joke. He thinks, oh, that's a punchline to a joke. Like that's the end of a joke. You say the F word. So when he said it and he saw the reaction of myself and my wife, he all of a sudden was like, whoa, what do mean? Like he was laughing. He thought we were going to laugh. I'm like,

Dalton Anderson (21:01.033) Mm-hmm.

Robert LoCascio (21:10.225) What are you doing? And we we golden him for like you can't say that you know that's a bad word And he was like his mind for a second I could see it was like what are you talking about like it's funny Everyone laughs when people say that especially by the way if a five-year-old or he was four at the time says the f-word It's kind of funny. It is funny to see a little child say the f-word for a second You have to laugh because you're like how did that happen? You know it's like a

Dalton Anderson (21:35.812) And yeah, it's like a what if moment, like what, what, what's going on?

Robert LoCascio (21:40.067) What? You're like, yeah. And then you're like, wait, this is bad. so, yeah, it's just, yeah, the whole thing. So same thing with the design. It's the continuation of the thinking by these same companies to continue the thought about how do we get people engaged? How do we create an ad unit? How do we create this? Now, Jav GPT just came out with their adult version, of course. Of course, you could sell porn and advertising. It's like,

I mean we can do better like ai to me is a revolution like we can do better We can come up with new ways to make money that don't have to be so basic, you know You try. Yeah

Dalton Anderson (22:19.805) Yeah, it is definitely going to be a fundamental shift in society. I that's not the episode. This is not that episode, but like, yeah, just everything is going to be changing from like the fundamentals of a SaaS company to like income to just like what you do on your day to day. Like just the whole thing has got to be rethought about like in a continue or like under 10 years, we have to rewire this and yeah, I agree with you a hundred percent. And then another thing about the

the kids and the kid exposure. Like when I was an undergrad, it was a long time ago, but I wrote a paper about how kids are, kids get a lot of their, I guess, knowledge base of like what is good and what is bad from like what they watch on TV. And in there are certain areas of like the country or in the world where kids are watching like 60 hours a week of TV and whatever they're consuming, this like, what's kind of

becomes normal for them. And you don't necessarily know as because you're your parent, you're working, you're doing your thing, you're in your, your kid's kind of just doing whatever. And then before you know it, they're, they've consumed, you know, 5,000 hours of whatever show and it's not necessarily lovey-dovey. It's whatever. so it just kind of just changes your perceptions of like what is good and what is bad without you really knowing. But I got like a C on the paper because I didn't like my prescriptive, but I thought it was, I thought it was warranted, but whatever.

Robert LoCascio (23:25.199) Yeah, you know what's going on.

Dalton Anderson (23:48.041) Just thought that was an interesting point.

Robert LoCascio (23:50.925) Yeah, it's like, look, the world, like you said, we're in massive change right now.

opportunity here to change things massively. That's all I can say. And it's going to take a group of companies that have a different vision and a different understanding of how to use this technology and break the mold. Like we have the opportunity to break the mold of what kind of hurt us. There's also some amazing things we learned by having the Internet. But there's a lot of stuff that we need to break the mold on and change. know, guys like me, there people like me out there with startups that like have the will, skill

to go do it. We're gonna try it. May not work, but we sure as gonna try it.

Dalton Anderson (24:34.495) Yeah, that's all you can do. Leave every stone unturned. And if you can't get it done, then it is what it is. But at least you gave it shot.

Robert LoCascio (24:38.041) That's it.

And I gave it a shot.

Dalton Anderson (24:45.811) transitioning over, is the story done or is it still working? It's done. you turned it off. Don't even worry about it then. Let's talk about the two different approaches that models will be taking in like the near future. know that Microsoft has purchased rights to think three mile Island and, and the Google has invested into power, nuclear power plants.

Robert LoCascio (24:50.019) Yeah. I turned it off. Sorry. Okay, sorry. Let's see.

Robert LoCascio (25:14.756) Sure.

Dalton Anderson (25:15.133) So is is open AI. Like every every AI company is trying to get their source on or maybe their thumb on the power source of the next generation of models, which is going to be powered by nuclear power plants, which is just a massive amount of compute and power and resources that are going to be devoted towards just running these models on a day to day and train the new big model, like whatever that turns into. It seems like every every time it's like a new thing, but we don't.

I think you had a funny analogy. like, I don't think necessarily everybody wants a, the Manhattan, the Manhattan data center in their, in their house. Like it's just, it's probably doesn't, doesn't, doesn't rub everybody the right way. And probably people want to take probably the other approach where they have more flexibility and maybe just talk through that and your thought process behind it.

Robert LoCascio (26:04.228) Yes.

Robert LoCascio (26:08.365) Yeah, I mean, I, when I left my previous role at LivePerson, you know, the company I built is a big company eventually in public. I left and I thought, you know, the alternative, was saying the alternative to AI and the current construct is large language models, large data sets that are basically stolen from us. mean,

you know, it's deaf. They've taken our data sets off the internet, never asked our permission because it's public, used it to train their models. They need a lot of power to do that. So we know they need like giant data centers to do that because it's the world, it's aggregated global world knowledge of billions of people and they need power to power all that. So that set up a game of

10 companies in the world could play in that game. If you don't have $50 billion to invest, then you're not in the game, right? So you got to be building these because these models need that much compute because they're taking that much knowledge. My sense was that there could be a world where we have these small models that represent each of us that instead of aggregating the knowledge on runtime that

we could allow everyone to have hundreds of millions of people could have their own individual AIs, their own individual models. And if we need to aggregate a couple of them, so let's say I need scientific knowledge, so I need 50 of the best scientists coming together with their AIs working as a group, fine. But it's you owning your data, you owning the way to share your data, you owning the way to monetize your data. And that's the platform that we're building.

at URAI. And it's just an alternative. You don't need large data centers and, you know, energy.

Robert LoCascio (27:58.687) you just need your small data sets, small models, and reasonable compute. And eventually, it will go on to a device. That's why I made the KID device. It will eventually go on to small devices that we can run our entire model, our personal model, our personal data sets on small devices, even our current mobile devices. So that's the world I kind of see versus this giant world of large language models and stuff.

Dalton Anderson (28:26.121) Just thinking about the statement of everybody having their own individualized models and working together, how would that work? mean, what would your vision be on, like, are they gonna interact on some kind of like API based platform to where they would communicate with each other and collaborate?

Robert LoCascio (28:45.359) Yeah. Yeah. Think of them like they're today. Everything's a chat bot. So even open claw that we've all seen recently that was like, you know, you these independent chat bots or they can work together and stuff. There you can, you know, once you get the data set in place and these, uh, the AI has, uh, that knowledge, then it's about, can bring them together. We call them round tables on our platform, but there's like round tables or independent. The most interesting thing is that I can chat with my AI.

And it can help me, my own AI can help me, but then I can bring in someone else's brain into my AI for a second and maybe I'm asking, I want a collaboration with my AI and someone else's. So this is not by way of science fiction, this is what we're gonna be releasing shortly into the world. this is the world I see that, it answers the existential threat question.

Everyone's about like AI is an existential threat to humanity. It's going to take our jobs, it's taking our identity, it's going to do all these things. And I just think if we control our data sets and our models, we can answer all the questions about why AI can be something that can help us be our best selves, not take our jobs. Everything's about job taking right now. Take my job, take my life, robots. I was at a conference the other day and there was a

Dalton Anderson (29:57.961) Mm-hmm.

Robert LoCascio (30:05.903) Peter Diamantis was speaking at this conference and he was talking about Elon Musk he just did an interview with and they were talking about that doctors will be gone in the next three years. Elon Musk, asked, when do think a surgeon will be gone? Because he's got his robots and he said, oh, in the next three years there's no need for a surgeon. And then they cut away to a robot doing surgery. They had the first robot doing some surgery on someone at work. So, and then they asked how many people in the audience are doctors? And like, you know, this 400 people, 50 people put their hands up there.

So was like, my gosh, like, come on, like, what are we doing? You know, like, so I raised my hand, I had my hand up and finally Peter stopped his speech and he came down. I said, I turned to everyone, I said, all of you have the data sets that they're stealing from us. Every doctor in this room, if you're online and you're putting your stuff to the chat, GPT, they're taking that data and they're learning your business. They're learning your intellectual property. And

you are the guys who have the power. Stop putting the data in the models and the rest will be okay. And you'll own your data, own your model, and you can own your own AI. And you can continue doing surgery. And it's like people are like, yeah, right, I forgot. So, it's dystopian what the Silicon Valley crowd, and although I live here now, is thinking about. It's very dystopian.

Dalton Anderson (31:30.408) Yeah, no, I definitely definitely get that kind of vibe where it's like, it's going to take over. We're not going to have anything to do. Like, what are we going to like people? It's going to be a mass crime. And there's just like, there's going to be so many like the whole story is like, you know, throughout history, when there is men without purpose, what happens? And it's just like there's there's war, there's riot, there's there's like, relax. What are you talking?

Robert LoCascio (31:39.951) Thank

Robert LoCascio (31:58.159) gosh. You know what they went to? No, they actually went to, of course, that's where it went. then Peter said, you know, then there's going to be universal income where everyone gets.

Dalton Anderson (31:59.265) What are you talking about?

Robert LoCascio (32:08.419) a certain amount of money and then everyone who's born gets to pick their purpose. I want to build a company. He's actually doing this. They're to have a video contest of living your purpose and I believe in living your purpose. really do. But it's so like it's like, yeah, you're not valuable at anything. So go find your purpose. Well, my purpose is to be a surgeon. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, That's not the good purpose. Go pick another one. Like be an artist. Like he's basically a guy that everyone's painting watercolors and all the real works being done.

machines like where in the world is where the world do we live?

Dalton Anderson (32:39.146) but in the robots like.

Yeah, and human interaction and there's things that are also important just to be us. So can you double click a little bit into and that was great. I like I like what you had to say about the conference and just the interaction of like just bringing everybody back to reality. Wondering, I think people listening would be wondering this as well. How do you create your own person? You don't have to go super detailed, but you're talking about your

Robert LoCascio (32:49.838) Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (33:12.742) you have your own AI that's like you and there's some kind of like hype isn't there like a high fidelity clone of yourself as well?

Robert LoCascio (33:20.675) That's what we're doing. So basically you do two things. There's two models. There's a voice model today and video. So it's like you as you're talking and you're...

We can, voice is more important than video, by the way. The voice is where all the emotion is. So we want to capture the emotional range of a voice. So there's a model for that that we have. The second one is we call it the human life model. So when you upload data into the system, we look at it and we basically break it into many different pieces. We actually show you now like all the, your value system, what you get excited about, like your emotional state. So when you put data in, even if it's factual data about some work that you're doing,

It'll still try to break it up. But as you put more and more personal data in, it really gets to know you as an individual. And then that basically, we put the data set together with the voice and now we do video. So we output video so you can look at videos of yourself and you can create out of your data set ways to engage people in your life, including yourself. You can engage it by chat, talking, video, all of that imagery. So we're abstracting all the knowledge in the brain.

And as you put it on the platform, we create ways in which you can share it with others. And if you're a professional doctor or lawyer, accountant, we have people like this, writers, you can then share that with others so that they can engage you and you get your time back. So they can ask you questions while you're sleeping. They can ask you questions that they normally would call you about or email you about. And all of that is personalized to the user. So whoever's using your AI, they get a very personal response based on who they are.

Dalton Anderson (35:02.144) There's a lot, there's a lot going on. What you just said there. So we just break it up into little pieces. So you provide a lot of audio content to this AI system that will then piece it up, take, take out all of your emotional range of your voice, what you get excited about, what, what displeases you, your tone, tonality, your, I guess, speech pattern, all that stuff.

And also I was thinking when you were saying that was, I guess this is going in the AI, this podcast episode, the audio. So, so then this, like the next step of that, the next evolution is this video, like the video piece. And then from there, people can interact with like an, I would call like an, personalized AI agent or something like.

Robert LoCascio (35:39.843) Yes.

Dalton Anderson (36:00.545) I don't know what the right terminology is for that.

Robert LoCascio (36:01.103) Yes and no because the traditional stuff is that it's like an avatar like we're talking here and what we do is we actually put you in scenes.

So you can create the imagery, the movie you have in your head. can provide that. That gets created by AI based on the story. you can, sometimes you're in that story. Sometimes you're not. It's just imagery of people or places. And then you can interact with that or you can share that with someone. They can interact with that story.

with that, and we call it a thought. What I've done is I've broken everything down to thoughts because that's how we work. Like we have small pieces of data that we collected and we keep collecting and they sit in our brain and then we aggregate it sometimes to get a full, you know, reply to a question to ourselves and to others. Well, we kind of, we make that so that you can take a thought and bring it out of your brain and show it to others. And then you can show that through videos and imagery.

people can chat with that and get a deeper dive on that thought. So like I have thoughts about like raising money when you're an entrepreneur and how to raise money. I've raised money. So I can put that thought out and you can see a little video of me like doing something and then you can flip it over and then you can chat with me and say, well, I'm trying to raise money myself and I'm doing this and I actually have a fintech and I live in New York. What would you recommend? I would recommend for you how to raise money based on my thoughts.

Dalton Anderson (37:08.96) Eugh.

Robert LoCascio (37:31.311) because there's a big data set behind the thought.

Dalton Anderson (37:34.442) Yeah, there's just a lot there. Like just the aspect of being able to interact with somebody without them being there. But they're also doing stuff like you could. You could also ask yourself a big question that you may not want to think about at that moment. You offload it, go to sleep, wake up and it's like, well, Rob, I Rob told me this and that makes sense. Like it's me. So I agree with what the other Rob said.

Robert LoCascio (38:03.171) Yeah, I talk to my AI because my AI, interesting enough, my AI has my data set, but it's not my brain. Like my brain is my brain. I don't, we don't copy a person's brain.

So, but my AI then will have a different perspective. Let's say I've got a highly tuned brain that I think doesn't have bias, hasn't gone through all the things I have, but has my data set. It's good to get that opinion. Or if I could drop my entire life into Dalton's head for a second into your brain, and you tell me and advise based, but you have all my historical knowledge, the emotions maybe beyond, you won't have as much as the emotions, but the knowledge. You'll maybe give a different perspective. So are you, are people on our platform talk to themselves? And that's,

That's what I found out. That's why we call it you are AI. You are the AI. It's not Siri, Alexa, it's you. You are AI. That's what we found. You are the best AI.

Dalton Anderson (38:58.505) So if you were to interact with, you interact yourself, I get that, but then you were talking about people interacting with multiple AIs at once. So like if I had an AI, you had an AI and then somebody is asking a question, maybe this person's name is Jessica. Jessica's asking a question, whatever the topic is. Maybe it's cooking and.

maybe you're great cook and I'm horrible. So I probably get bad advice and then you provide good advice. like, how does that, how does that work? Like how does the user like Jessica like figure out, all right, well I want to talk to Rob and Dalton about this topic. Does the system already categorize the person and then do they pay? Do they pay like the AI? I guess that do they pay for the services of the AI person that then gets

sent back to like the individual or do they just like pay like the compute so then your AI that if you have a popular AI and everybody asks questions does it just give you like compute credits so then you can do more stuff with your own AI.

Robert LoCascio (40:06.191) That's just, so there's two, one is we, we charge, we have a freemium model we're coming with, so you can just play with it. There's a model where someone invites you to talk to their AIs that can be free. There's when you create your own AI as a creator and that's $200, it's like a very high end AI that you're a prosumer, doctor, a lawyer, and you're trying to get a lot of content, a lot of interaction. And then there's individual where you just want your own personal AI where you can put your data set in. You own your data set, you can delete it, you can manage it. We don't touch it. don't, so you know there's

private place for your data to create AIs for you to work with yourself. That's $25 a month. And then as people want to get others to use their AI, they may want to charge for it. So we have a way where you can set up your own monetization and say, look, to talk to me is...

$10 a month extra and you can charge people and on our platform we split the revenue 70 30 you get 70 we get 30 and basically you're Building your own business like a Shopify for your own AI on our platform So yeah

Dalton Anderson (41:10.585) I could definitely see that being the future for just, it's, I think it's hard for people to really comprehend. Like it's, it's a couple of years ahead of where, of where we're, we're going to be going where like it's going to be all, why didn't I think about that type of situation?

Robert LoCascio (41:26.105) What we have today, we have a bunch of customers, like we have a lot and there's a lot because it's really the, we're starting really with the professionals where when you're a professional, let's get doctor, lawyer, account, whatever you're

Like people are constantly asking you the same questions. They send you, you know, they want stuff from you and you don't have limited time. And so a lot of these doctors and a of these professionals create like webinars, seminars, they try to aggregate people to give them knowledge. We have a neurosurgeon on the platform who teaches about concussions, treating concussions. The guy is flying around the world and now we created AI of him where he can teach doctors about how to detect a concussion and how to treat it versus doing webinars and seminars.

all the time or answering emails or taking phone calls. So it's really the ability to scale your time as a professional. That's really the first group. The second group that we have is writers. Writers are now like, like, like as one writer told me two days ago, he's very well known. said, we're like hobos now.

We're like hobos walking around with our ideas and our stories on our shoulder trying to find someone to buy them for five cents. He said, it's getting bad. You know, they laid off 40 % of the Washington Post. I mean, these people are under assault, but they have great content that they want to make uniquely through AI into something that can be engaged with. They want to be in the game, but they're being told by like the big guys, just publish your stuff. Like open AI, we'll take it and put it on our model for free. Thank you.

and you move on. We're not going pay you. In our case, create something unique, create a unique AI story where people can interact with it. But you're still a great storyteller. Like, AIs perform great when they have great storytelling data. So we're giving them an opportunity to create a whole new revenue stream for themselves on the platform.

Dalton Anderson (43:22.069) professional aspect of the doctors and freeing up time.

I think is interesting. How, how is it received on the other end? Cause I can understand like, all right, well, I don't necessarily want to respond to these questions. And I've got, you know, some research that I'm trying to work on or something I'm trying to get out. So I'm going to have my AI respond via video or via voice or whatever. But how did the other people, did the people care? Do they know, or is it disclosed? I guess, or how does it all work?

Robert LoCascio (43:58.233) Yeah, they like to the patients or the clients on the other side. They like it because they're getting access to this person.

their AI and they're able to get answers to all people want as answers to questions. You know what saying? They want high quality answers to questions. Then there's tactical AI stuff like we have someone on our, the old platform before we built URAI, it's called Eternos and they give advice around for salespeople. So they're a sales coach. A lot of times their clients wanted to write emails. Can you write me an email that I'm going to write to someone? I'd rather you write it than chat GPT. So they're writing emails. So the ability that

their AI can write an email, do a PowerPoint presentation or create something for someone. That's where the real action I think will be. Also, there's advice and then there's the actions I can do for you to help you with your work.

Dalton Anderson (44:53.003) Wait, so currently it does take actions besides like it. So it does the audio response, but it could also make decks and these other things for clients.

Robert LoCascio (45:01.933) In the new platform, we're putting all the MCP services in it so it can take actions on emails, creations of proposals. PowerPoint's tough, by the way. It's like almost impossible still, to be honest. Like, no, we're not doing that yet. But it can create like PDFs and things like that.

so that it can give output so that somebody could then send that to someone that they're, let's say, in a sales process. There's a lot you can do there. And what it comes down to is, would you rather chat GPT do that, or would you rather someone who was a professional salesperson who's been successful help you write that email? And that's where it's gonna come down to. And people are starting to catch on. If you send an email to someone that's written in chat GPT, you know, like maybe they're gonna know

I didn't write it. You know. Because of the dashes, because of the dashes, you gotta take them down.

Dalton Anderson (45:50.37) So funny with the dashes and I'm for the podcast, not the two my own horn, but it gets like, I don't know, 50 or so in requests to join the show a week. And a lot of the emails are just these like AI slop. Like it's just AI. Like it's, it's, it's almost so funny cause then they have these marketing firms that are reaching out to me beyond like somebody's behalf. And it's just like,

Hello, our hi, Dalton. And then it goes into whatever the the full episode name, like somebody is going to type out the full episode name. And then they they have like a small snippet summary of what they liked about it. And then they just then they talk about whoever whoever they're introing and why they should be on the show. And it's just like copy, paste, copy paste. And they're all the emails are the same. I'm like, this is literally AI. And like, it's just like I'm talking to like you're you're having a quest on the show. That's fine.

And I don't mind using AI, like it doesn't seem like, it seems like there's some kind of automated system and the, the, emails that really stick out now are the emails that are just, they're created by a human. Yeah.

Robert LoCascio (46:56.793) Handwritten. That's the same thing. If you're a salesperson, you're writing emails with JetGPT, you know, you're like afraid to send them. You know, you're like, did they get three other ones like this? So when I'm pitching. So the idea that an individual AI can write this for me is quite, you know, that's quite the powerful thing.

Dalton Anderson (47:16.384) like just, all right, so just your email, like you said, Hey, darling, something like that. And then you reference the episode, but you reference like just like the first couple of words, like you didn't type out like the full like 50 character title because normal people don't do that. It's just like, no one really cares. Like I understand that you understand that. I understand what you're talking about. Like there's no need to type out the whole thing. And I could have wrote that email. I don't know, but there was at least a like effort to

like reduce the information or to humanize it to the point where.

Robert LoCascio (47:47.565) Well, to be transparent, there are platforms that allow me to target who out there I should be talking to. Then they write it even, but I'm going to edit it look at it. Like I don't like I need to look at it because I don't want to be on the show. Second, I want to look at what you're doing. Third, I want to know that we have some connection. You know what saying? then you're like, cool. But you're right. These these there are platforms that do the identification. They'll do everything and auto auto do everything.

Dalton Anderson (47:58.914) Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (48:05.483) Yeah, yeah,

Robert LoCascio (48:13.551) I don't know, just think people know that. Like you know that on the other side. I know when I'm an email. I'm getting an email today from somebody trying to pitch me something like, you even take a shot at writing something here? know what saying? Give me like, a little effort, you know, so.

Dalton Anderson (48:16.96) Yeah, for sure. For sure. Especially like somebody who runs an AI podcast like I'm going to know that as a.

Dalton Anderson (48:32.64) I like to use it to do like a first wrong answer, but I don't necessarily take exactly what it says. Like I like to get like 70%. And then I like to do my own thing and like, like spend the rest of the time read formatting and retyping what it says, like whatever I'm working on. But like just to take it a hundred percent from like copy paste doesn't, doesn't really work. And I think that's what's going to stick out in the future. And

Robert LoCascio (48:48.111) Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (48:58.758) wanted to bring it back over to what we were talking about and like the personalization of these little AI agents or like AI people that you can rent. I kind of think about the thought process of not having to create.

individualized instructions for different situations. So for the audience that are listening for the pod, I'll just use the podcast example. It's not proprietary. It's not, no, I'm not doing any special, but so a guest comes on the show. But before that, the guests, I need to email them back and then I'll set up an intro call. So me and Rob had an intro call. And then after that, I like to take the AI transcription of that meeting and then put that through my

podcast outline, right? So I have, I have instructions built. So I, the outline's the same every time and it takes all the information that we talked about and creates an outline. Okay. So then there's that part, but then there's other stuff that's a little more complicated. Like I like to create an article. I like to have an article for my notes, but I had to personalize that to myself, figure out what was good, what was not good. And then the article that I'm putting on the internet is really built for geo or

like generative search optimization, whatever people are calling it nowadays. And so it's not necessarily built for humans to read, it's built for AI. And I'm not a search engine optimization expert, but if Rob, like on the, the URAI platform had someone on there that was some kind of search engine optimization expert, I wouldn't have to necessarily train and tinker with this individualized thing. I could just use whoever on that platform.

Robert LoCascio (50:32.846) Yes.

Dalton Anderson (50:45.772) Yes, yeah, like they already know their stuff. I don't have to ask. I don't have to make it all up or research it. I had to do the research to figure out what's going on. But in this instance, I can get my own time back by just asking somebody that already has like 10 years of knowledge on this and knows what to do. Like, OK, like what do I need to do here? And then it's like, OK.

Robert LoCascio (50:45.999) This is

Robert LoCascio (51:04.345) Right, imagine you can take their model. Imagine, I say everyone has these models. If you have a model of, I look at it like from, you create this model that I can take the first interview, put it in, it's gonna generate questions for my podcast. That's a model. It's a structure, it's a framework. It's in here like we're working on right now that you could give your business.

tell them what your business is and everything. have a guy who's like an expert in generating AI videos for like Instagram and all that. He has a big business. He has a million followers that follow him on how do you create the video to get clicks and everything. Well, there's a model that he has and we're working on. I don't know if we're going to get there by the way I'm trying and we'll just start working on it. But that framework where you could say generate the best quality video, the type of content to get the most clicks. So that's really what you want. But he developed it. It's not in chat GPT.

developed that and he won't put his data set. He's very wary. He's not putting his framework inside of chat GPT because he doesn't want that stolen. You know, it's like, we're all individuals. Like you can't give up your individual self.

Dalton Anderson (52:03.883) Either aggregate or individualize, right?

Robert LoCascio (52:10.231) and your business ideas and your frameworks of living and working to a machine. Like you can't do that. You know, you just can't do it. So, so what I think about is right now you Dalton, like you said, I want something that will help me and has that framework. Well, now imagine you can get that and millions of people could get that. Where in the past you would have to call this person, send an email, hopefully talk to him, maybe find them in the world to help you. But now you get them in a marketplace.

Dalton Anderson (52:38.241) Yeah, you can navigate. guess you can. I think it I'm trying to phrase how I want to talk about this. I think it's a different way to navigate the world's knowledge, whereas prior you might have to I might have to talk to Rob that Rob knows somebody to do an intro about funding or how do you raise money or whatever it may be. Or if I had a question about how do I do my DIY, I do it yourself.

project at home, like am I asked like some trades person or hire somebody? But like now I think it's what you're talking about and what kind of is the future is like, you don't necessarily have to go through all these web pages to ask questions. Like you could ask AI or you could also like go through a corpus of these AI, like individualized models of people who have knowledge and you could ask questions. And that's basically a different version of the internet, like where each person is like,

put together their own model and all of their, I would say, industrial knowledge. And then you can kind of surf across it like a book and like go to different chapters and open it up.

Robert LoCascio (53:49.635) That's right. Imagine a brand like I can go. think like I have a whole world in my head of where I'd like to go with this, but there's a foundational there. Imagine a brand like Nike or a company having their own model and then they're on the platform and people interacting with it and they can buy. But every one of these, every company, every person, every, you you have a model in which you run your world.

business, your personal life. So our idea is abstract that, understand it, give access to it if you want to, monetize it. And that is, that to me is a new internet. That's what it'll be. Like I don't want, for instance, I was in the customer service, I led that, you know, Chad and all that.

You have to go find a chat window and make a phone call to call. I need help and some customer support. It should be I type to myself. I'm having an issue that brand that they come into my AI. They helped me there. I'm done. I don't need to go find and go to go out in the world and hunt. And that's what the world of Web 2 is search hunt. Fine. Okay. Google organized that. Great. Awesome. But still there's a layer. Even when I find myself to a website or to an endpoint.

I feel like get there and get connected versus it should just be I get the knowledge, I get the understanding instantly. It's connected to my personal needs and I get an output. Make me an email for sales. Make me a video for marketing. you, you know what saying? Help me with my health. Help me with I got a problem with my health. But I don't want to give you my health information. That's the difference. I don't want to upload my entire blood scan to someone.

I'll keep that you look at it with your AI give me advice on in my little AI my world and I'll I'm good with that but everything is like send something to me upload something to me this case it's like you know you get access to someone's knowledge but you still have your way in your business your ideas they don't they never get shared like that if you know what mean

Dalton Anderson (55:42.636) Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Like, so you can have other AI expertise come in and look at your, like, I guess you open up your house, they come in your house and they're able to look around, maybe help you cook, but they don't take any ingredients back home with them. They, they're like, Hey, I, I gotta go now. And somebody pats them down. Like, okay, you don't have anything of value. You have exactly what you came with. It will, enter the door with you're leaving with, and they go on their own end, but

Robert LoCascio (55:58.255) Thanks.

Dalton Anderson (56:10.987) Now you've got the help that you wanted, but you didn't necessarily have to sacrifice or share something that was personal to yourself.

Robert LoCascio (56:17.785) That's it. And you don't get their model. You rented it and they got it, but it's still unique to them. You didn't uncover it and steal it. But like you got access to them. They got access to it and then you do your work and then you part ways and all the best. You pay for that action. So that's kind of the world I see in AI and a lot of things will change then.

You know, and once again, that I don't see a world with everything aggregated to some giant God model and we're all praying it. It was my God is opening. I, you know, these are trillion dollar companies. And I just like, it's so weird to me the whole concept like versus the world. I said is that you Dalton have something to give to me and I want it from Dalton and I'll pay you Dalton and get access to your brain at two o'clock in the morning. You know, because I'm working on something.

And that's good. Their world is a different world. We're all trillionaires. We all deserve to be trillionaires. Not just like 10 people on Earth.

Dalton Anderson (57:19.179) It's a funny concept. I think it's similar to, I would say it's a client to Ivy League schools or something like that. If you went to Ivy League, then you have great opportunity. But it's the other way around. It's the person makes the Ivy League school. This podcast, people might find the podcast super interesting and intellectually stimulating.

but that's not me. It's the guests on the show. The guests that are on the show is what makes the show interesting. It's not because I have a podcast that it's interesting. It's the people who make the podcast. It's the same way as if you aggregate the world's knowledge and you make an incredible model, it's not the model itself that is incredible. It's the, the knowledge that was aggregated, which was humanity, which is like it, it's a different way to think about it.

Robert LoCascio (58:10.767) Humanity, yeah. But it's true, but it's the truth. It's the facts. And the thing is, every time that ChachiPT or whoever puts out a model, you know what they always do is they do that, it's a PhD level five. Well, I never was a PhD. So like, oh, it's PhD number five. And I'm like, so.

But it's only a PhD number five because there's a bunch of PhDs who put all their knowledge in to make it a PhD number five. like, it's, it's, it, that's why I say humanity is always first and then the machine is always second.

It's been that way since beginning of time. Without humans thinking up things, there's no machines. And in this case, this one's a whole other level because without us, unlike a car or a real physical machine or an airplane, it needed our knowledge to create it. But in the end, didn't need our knowledge to be cool. Like a plane doesn't have my... I don't know anything about a jet plane, but it keeps rolling. But in the case of Chachiput, if it doesn't have our knowledge, it doesn't roll.

It doesn't fly and but they're perpetuating this very bad story that there's a thing called a GI by the way a GI is a it's a effing lie. It's a fucking lie I mean I hate to say it's a lie. It's a total lie and These models are getting smarter because we keep putting more information into them if we all took a year off So we're not gonna put anything in chat you've T that thing will look like an idiot But we they're they're perpetuating this whole talk track because it's powerful a GI

self-learning. Now everyone's got to be scared. Yeah, stop putting your data in and see how scared you are. know, let the courts go ahead and say that they can't steal the rights of books, which the courts did not do that. Let it say that they cannot take a writer's works for free. They have to pay a writer. Then change that whole concept. It's just, it's ridiculous what they're perpetuating, personally. It's like a whole, you know,

Dalton Anderson (01:00:13.475) Yeah, they're running away with they're running away with a lot they're getting away with a lot and and and it is it's like pretty much unchallenged in a lot of regards and it's just cuz like

Robert LoCascio (01:00:18.444) a lot.

Robert LoCascio (01:00:26.831) Which is all I'll tell you now. I saw Ray Dalios because an investor conference, you know, Ray is like one of the biggest financial guys in the world. Ray is amazing, but the recent one about how governments fall, right? And how they end up, right? So he was talking about all this stuff and he's very connected to governments, obviously. This guy's like the top of the food chain of thinking on finance. So someone asked him, like, the US has this debt problem.

Dalton Anderson (01:00:34.083) You're a great book by the way too. Principles.

Robert LoCascio (01:00:56.271) We got a trillion in interest payments and it's a real mess. And he's been saying that for years. So they said, when you talk to the US government, both, you know, legislative executive branch, it's like, what do you hear? And he's like, well, first of all, they're not gonna cut, they're not gonna raise taxes and we're not gonna cut benefits. So we don't have a way to get more money to pay our debts and get out of this thing. We are gonna keep spending. But it's interesting, he said something very profound. He said,

They are using AI. They think they can grow their way out of the debt.

They can grow their way out of all of it because it's either you grow your way out or you cut. They think they can grow their way out because AI they think it'd be very, very big. So why do you think that the government, you see these guys with the government? it's not, I'm not here like I don't, I'm on neither side or my conspiracy theories, but the government is, is all this infrastructure billions to build stuff in the middle of nowhere that creates jobs. It's creating a lot of things. And the concept.

is that it's a little bit of a Hail Mary is that AI is going to do something around the job markets and wealth and growth. it's a Hail Mary as part of the way to get out of the problem of like, you know, like Ray's book is that we're at the end of America, we're at the beginning of China, and we're going to go down. There's a little bit of a Hail Mary in this country, well, AI can save us. That's why you see.

Dalton Anderson (01:02:24.771) Yeah, maybe like a recent centralized centralization of wealth like where because there's there's going to be this big shift. But like the bet is there's going to be a big shift on how SAS and these other companies are going to be evaluated. And if everybody can create a whole bunch of cool stuff, then really the value is when the creation machine and the compute and if all that stuff is in the United States, because we were a AI friendly state.

and a lot of the innovation was coming from here, then well, lot of the wealth would have to be centered in that area, which is good. And I get the concept of growing out of it. think that makes sense.

Robert LoCascio (01:03:03.715) Yeah, think we'll look at the in the past governments have used, we've used energy, right? You can have energy to generate revenues. You could use wars to generate growth. we need to anytime there's like investment, government has to invest in things that are aggregated. And then the assumption is those big companies then pay smaller companies and that's what creates an economy.

And so right now there's a sense it isn't about energy. not going to like, yeah, we are trying to, but that's kind of passed. And we're not going to, guess we, we sell a lot of arms around the world, but this AI is a whole new world that could be worth trillions and trillions of value into the economy of the United States. So that's why I think you see this for the first time in history, there's real marriage between government and the tech world. It never happened before. And it wasn't like it couldn't happen in the last couple of administrations, but

I think they're thinking this is the way out. This is the way we can get America to not sunset like Ray Dalio thinks. So that's kind of struck me when Ray was talking. It's like, it's a little bit of a Hail Mary because it could take 10 years for this to happen and we don't have 10 years on the death cycle. So he's a little bit like, yeah, okay, you know, like this is going to be a problem. So.

Dalton Anderson (01:04:20.107) I I hope for the best. I mean, I'm not necessarily trying, yeah, I'm trying to stick around and have a good time in New York City. So we'll see how it all plays out. I I wanna build some stuff too. So give me some opportunity to reap some rewards with AI, so.

Robert LoCascio (01:04:23.725) Bye, gold. Bye,

Robert LoCascio (01:04:38.499) Exactly, just get into AI, there's a lot of money, know, so.

Dalton Anderson (01:04:41.059) you're an AI. Well, here's a check.

man. Speaking of that, just maybe just a quick, a quick overview on like scaling, like from zero to 3000 employees. I, there's something I like to think about is one is just like the sheer, I don't think we'll understand like the sheer scale of like how much you have to change as a person in that timeline. Like how many, how many big chapters that you have to

to and challenges you have to stand up against. And if not, like you're kind of you're out. Like if you can't scale with the company, then the company needs to find like the company's a steward of the board is a steward of the company. And if you can't scale with the company's growth, then they have to find a replacement. And that is a tough thing. You've seen you've seen that play out with certain certain high level founders or that they're kicked out of the company. Maybe they're brought back later on. It was a mistake, but it

Robert LoCascio (01:05:18.084) Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (01:05:46.949) it is something that happens. And so I was just curious and I like to think about it when I see somebody or hear about someone that that had grown a company to quite a big size is like, what was like the biggest challenge or like, what was the moment where you're like, huh? Like, I don't know, man. Like this is, this might, this might be, this might be a little bit over my head here. Cause this was just a background. You had your first company was like some kind of like camera thing. And then

Robert LoCascio (01:06:15.523) Yes.

Dalton Anderson (01:06:16.388) you only did it for a certain amount of time and that was right out of college, like fresh out of college. The first thing you did, you're like, I don't need, I don't necessarily need a job. I can just do this thing and I could figure it out. My rent's cheap, whatever. And then you go into live person and like that was your second, like that was your second thing. So you went from like college kid to like a couple months, maybe a year at this camera business. You closed that and then live person was your second gig. And so it,

Robert LoCascio (01:06:18.829) and whatnot. Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (01:06:45.058) It's not like you had 10 years. You're not some 10 year corporate vet. Like you were just, you were just doing stuff.

Robert LoCascio (01:06:48.687) No, I had nothing. Yeah, I had nothing. mean, was, I was 20 when I started LifeVersus 27 years old, I was, I was negative. I own $50,000 in credit cards. So I had debt on credit cards. My first company went under and then I'm sleeping on a couch for two years in New York City living on $5,000 a year total. Yeah. When we went public, the auditors looked at the books and were like, there's something wrong with your first two years of business. I said, what is it? goes,

Dalton Anderson (01:07:09.913) Wow.

Robert LoCascio (01:07:16.623) It seems like you took out $5,000 personally. Where's the other money? Where'd you live on? I said, I lived on $5,000. I was eating ramen noodles and sleeping on the couch. didn't have rent. I had an office space. It was like $100 a month because I was subleasing it from guy making t-shirts. yeah, I think...

When you look at everything I went through to build this company, I went public at 33 years old. It was a dream of mine in 2000, and then built it to being this leading company, you know, in the conversation on high space. there's, you know, there's so many things that, you know, there are times where you think you're, you're not the person. And I used to say those are the days you have to fire yourself and come back.

So you like fire yourself and you on a Friday, I used to tell people and then on Monday come back as a new person. And then literally you come in with fresh eyes like the board would do with you if they didn't think you were broke. And you look at everyone you're working with, look at the strategy of the business and start to do a different pattern. So I think I made it 28 years because so many times when we needed to shift.

Dalton Anderson (01:08:13.924) Mmm.

Robert LoCascio (01:08:30.217) I need to grow. would literally it would take a little take many months. It wasn't a day. It would be months of me thinking about the company that I wasn't happy. I knew we were going someplace that wasn't right. And I would have to get to a place finally where I knew where I wanted to go.

I would do this very, this thing where I would fire myself and come back on a Monday and I would look at my team and be like, this is the strategy of the business and this type of people we need. And if you're up for it, you're invited in. If you're not, then this is probably a time to leave. But we definitely had like three or four definitive breaks in the business over 28 years where I changed my management team. had to change as a person. And some of those were driven by macro events, things in the world that were affecting everybody.

like the dot com, the financial crisis. Some things were, you know, related to the market itself and where things were going. And but as an entrepreneur, it's a personal journey. You know, it's always about your personal growth, your ability to grow as a person.

Dalton Anderson (01:09:37.766) Well said. I like the saying and the thought of like, you've got to fire yourself. That resonates with me. And I was just thinking about it, like where you said that you'd spent months thinking about the problem and trying to figure out the most optimal direction. And I'd recently just went through that kind of the thing on much smaller scale for, course, but, and I was just thinking about it because I'd recently

got to that point, that bliss. I feel that you're just, once you get there, can you describe like the energy that you have after you figure out the right approach? Like, do you feel like reignited and lively?

Robert LoCascio (01:10:18.669) Yeah, yeah, feel like you're back, you're on the journey and you feel like, because there's a time where you have a lot of doubt, you have a lot of questions about the business, you don't know if the business will survive, especially in tech, it's very competitive, but every market segment's competitive.

So yeah, you then have clarity. know, all, you know, there was this great, this great story I heard and it's about certainty. And I remember there was this great general called General Schwarzkopf and he was the guy who led the first Iraq war, you know, the first one. He was amazing, just general, but he was, he tells a story. I remember seeing this at some, I was at some public event and he said,

He was the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. he was chosen to do this, I think under Clinton. He comes into the Pentagon on his first day, sits down, and he tells a story like first week or whatever. And these two guys want to see him. They've been working on a missile project, missile defense project for like five years. No decision or 10 years.

They sit in front of him and he tells the story. He sits in front of he goes, he goes, look, we know where to start talking. We have this decision. I've got my plan. He's got his plan. we're, everyone's debating our two plans. And he goes, I choose yours. He goes, you do nothing about it. He said, I choose your plan. He points to a guy there. And they said, but we haven't, know nothing about this because it doesn't matter. He goes, the most important is we made a decision.

We need to make decisions. I made a decision. And if it's the wrong decision, we're going to make it right. But at least I'm making a decision because this project is important. I know that. And no one's making a decision. So I'll just make a decision. So what's important in all of this is to make a series of decisions, move forward. You can think about them, but you can't overthink them. And eventually you got to realize if they are, if they're bad, you're going to fix them.

Robert LoCascio (01:12:30.753) As Jeff Bezos said, there's like the two-way door. Most decisions are two-way doors. That's the only thing you have to be careful of. The one-way door is the cash running out of money. I came close to that with live person.

But that's a one way door. A two way door is you made a decision on a person, on a strategy, on a product, on whatever, and you got to back it out and go somewhere else. That's called a pivot. So, but if you don't make the decision, you'll never get forward. And if you're not forward, you're backwards. And if you're backwards, you don't have momentum. If you don't have momentum, you basically don't have anything. Without momentum, you get zero. You need momentum. Whatever the momentum is, that was the one thing I always made, just like, first is we will have momentum. Even when we have nothing going

going on. Like there was a time after the dot com from 2001, 2003, there was nothing going on the internet. Matter of fact, people thought the internet was a fake. I remember this specifically like it'll never survive. Such a joke. We were alive. We were profitable. I fired 90 % of the company. got profitable. I remember I had people doing all sorts of things. I had a lot of vision. We're going to take over this, take over that, do this, go after that. We were going after all sorts of things because I need to keep everyone in state. We are a

Dalton Anderson (01:13:16.634) Hahaha

Robert LoCascio (01:13:46.097) forward momentum business. need to make more money today and we made yesterday. I don't care how we do it. Got to sell another customer. Get out there. But if you're just hanging out and go backwards, you're screwed.

Dalton Anderson (01:14:01.023) I think a lovely story to close out the statement of what it means to scale, I think, momentum and making decisions and getting stuff done is how somebody described it earlier. had a pre-interview earlier today and they're like, the biggest difference is getting stuff done. That's probably the...

You just got to get stuff done. It might be wrong. It might be right. You'll able to figure it out. You'll be able to make it right. But if you're not making any decisions, you're not getting anything done. And as you said, if you're going backwards, if you're not going forwards, you're going backwards because you're fighting against a lot of different forces. So you're, you're, you're going uphill against the stream and in bad weather. So if you're not moving forward just a little bit at a time, you're not, you're not going, you're not staying still. You're actually just falling.

Robert LoCascio (01:14:33.294) Yeah.

Robert LoCascio (01:14:51.971) Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (01:14:52.064) And then I liked your, I think the two door, one door is big. think that I think that's going to come in commonplace with the business, but I think it's typically wrongly applied, incorrectly applied.

Robert LoCascio (01:15:01.934) Yeah, I know.

I don't want one story to maybe end on. I know you want to end on that one. But we pivoted from a Chad company to an AI company. And that was from 2015 to 18 at LivePerson. And it was all. And we re-platformed. And we weren't growing as a company. And it was like, but I knew internally, even though the company wasn't growing the revenues, but I knew we need to do this. I remember every quarter I'd put up a slide of Mount Everest. And I would show where we are.

on ascending and I showed at one point, I remember we were at the death, that death zone. There's this death zone, you know, you, got to go up and you got to come down. You got to descend, got to ascend and descend immediately. And I said, we are at the death zone. And it was, it was migration. We need to migrate thousands of customers onto the new platform. If we do not migrate, we will not be moving into the next version of this company. And therefore we will probably.

Dalton Anderson (01:15:40.966) Mm-hmm.

Robert LoCascio (01:16:03.185) die as a company because we took 80 % of our engineering resources on the new platform. We can't go back. I burned the bridges. It's like, you know, I always felt got to burn the bridges to move forward. Anyway, I would show that. I would show that we're in the death zone. And eventually we got out of the death zone because we converted everyone. And eventually I didn't convert everyone and we just said, look, then we're shutting the platform down. And we told our shareholders we're going to lose about, I think it was about 25 million in revenues. And it's just the way it is because we need to move forward. And we were, we

not staying in the death zone anymore. We're gone.

Dalton Anderson (01:16:39.286) This is yeah, just the whole thing that you're talking about just the stories that you brought up and then the Everest That you'd handled the company the pivot and the multiple pivots with the dot-com and then the economy bust out of like the eight Especially the Everest thing reminds me of the hard things about hard things Like the the secret the secret pivot were like maybe it's not necessarily secret on your end, but the story where

Robert LoCascio (01:16:59.383) Yes, yeah, then.

Dalton Anderson (01:17:07.192) they had to pivot, but they couldn't necessarily tell the whole company. there's engineers working on the current product and you had to do this kind of other product and then you had to migrate it and then you had to make the decision. And it's like, it's just a massive shift in like ideology and like just the whole thing is just it's massive. Like investors are not going to be super thrilled. You got to it's like that saying in the book that's one of my favorite is like if you're going to eat shit, don't nibble.

And it was like, was when they, when they messed up the forecast for like the Q1 and they were going to just bottom out on their absolute and wouldn't meet their, their Q1 revenues. And it's basically like three months later after what you said you were going to do for like a whole year, you're not making the first quarter. Like what's going on. And it's like, like the, the chief financial officer was like, I think his name is Andy. don't remember his last name, but he was like, yeah, if you're going to bring in shit, just let's not nibble.

Robert LoCascio (01:18:00.931) Yeah, that's eventually you get tired. I think Tony Robb, like you get tired of being tired. You get what I'm saying? You get tired of being, right.

And you get to a place, especially when you're publicly every quarter, the atlas were beating us up. I remember they didn't know what we were doing, by the way. I didn't tell them what we were doing because I didn't want to tell our competitors where we're going. So it was kind of like we looked like a focac company. And then finally one quarter, you know, we lost like we lost big customers along the way. was terrible. One quarter I planted the flag and said, you know, we're on the other side and we're going to be an AI company. You'll see this was 2018, 2019. was, I was on.

Kramer talking about it. This one AI wasn't even there yet. I was like, we're going to be the biggest AI company. that was my goal. And it was interesting because then they were like, oh my god. The stock went from like $3 to $60. Oh my god. Revisionary. Amazing. I'm like, six months ago, you were basically calling from my head and how I'm a total idiot and everything. that's why I was always like,

Dalton Anderson (01:18:53.21) Visionary.

Dalton Anderson (01:18:58.022) Yeah.

Robert LoCascio (01:19:07.5) You know, whatever. It's like, gotta, in the end, you gotta wake up with yourself, go to bed with yourself. You're not going to bed and waking up with these people. You know what saying? They don't mean anything to you. You gotta build a company. You gotta do what you gotta do. And you gotta keep everyone forward momentum, you know? Especially the people. Never stop.

Dalton Anderson (01:19:15.632) Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (01:19:24.198) Forward momentum, that's a good way to end it on that. If people want to get in contact with you Rob, what way do you suggest them to do that? Or if they want to learn more about your companies or what you're working on.

Robert LoCascio (01:19:32.216) Yes.

So yeah, can, the two websites are kidco.ai is the kids device and you with the letter U R.ai. And then if you want to get me personally, just message me on LinkedIn. check it every day. And especially for entrepreneurs, it sucks. Like I know how hard it is, like I'm with you. Like if you just need someone to talk to or whatever, literally I will. It's not like I'm in some ether. I love talking to entrepreneurs and helping people because it just, sucks. Like it's, should just, if you don't like sucky.

don't get into being an entrepreneur. So like, yeah, some hero days, but even after those days, it still sucks. So like, needle, pull, pick me up. I'm here for you. So.

Dalton Anderson (01:20:15.835) All right, well wherever you are in this world, good evening, good afternoon, good morning. Thanks for listening in and listen in next week. I'm gonna end the recording.

Robert LoCascio (01:20:23.321) Thanks, Tom.