From A Coding Startup to AI Development in the Enterprise // Ryan Carson // MLOps Podcast #231

Key Takeaways

all right I am Ryan Carson and uh I am helping Intel build a global community of AI developers and I love coffee black as often as I can drink it which is at least like six times a day welcome back to another ml OBS Community podcast I am your host demitrios and this episode was very special for me I got to interview someone who made an impact on my life so long ago and it turns out they are a listener of the show and because of Twitter SLX we got in touch and we are here talking with Ryan Carson the one and only Ryan Carson who created Treehouse which is how I started Dibble dabbling in the tech world I saw him on the interview series foundation with Kevin Rose and I was literally just scrolling through all the different interviews that Kevin Rose did back in the day on his foundation series it is incredible he was talking with Ben Horowitz he also talked with bis Stone and there was another one so wild how early he was and everything he was talking with the coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong om mik and each one of these different episodes that I would watch and I would see when they come out I would go down the abbit hole of the person cuz I felt like oh well if Kevin's interviewing them then there's probably something worthwhile there and I should check out what these people are doing so om Malik comes on and I started reading Giga oh the first one ever was with Jack dorsy and then they did another one with Chad Hurley the YouTube founder so I would just go down the rabbit hole like who are these guys what do they do because I would listen to them for an hour or half hour this was the first time that I saw an interview with Elon Musk they're on the factory floor of Tesla back in like 2012 2011 and Kevin's asking him about the hyperloop that he put out drawings for so needless to say this had a big impact on my life especially when I was in my 20s living in Spain playing a lot of guitar and I got to talk with Ryan who was on there and he talked about what he did with Treehouse and in that time he was in the thick of it creating treeh house he ended up staying with treeh house until as he says in this episode until 2021 he sold it and he since recently joined Intel because he's so passionate about AI development and empowering people to leverage AI this conversation took all kinds of fun and quirky turns and twist but I will say there were two pieces that I took away from it one being that he gave a lot of sound advice on if you're just playing with stuff if you have these skills there's never been a better time to ship something the speed at which you can ship a product and a company has never been easier and that is very cool to see how he has that entrepreneur in his DNA and it was almost contagious and the second thing was now he's at this big company he is living the life of an Intel employee and he just said something that is said in many ways the the truth is one expressed in many ways the wise know it in different words that proverb and it's tie yourself to the top level okrs that the company has and figure out how your okrs can affect those so we've heard it said a million different times it is find a number that the company cares about and see if you can move the needle on that number let's get into it with Ryan Carson again this is very special for me and as always if you enjoyed it you like it give us a like give us a share subscribe or just give us some feedback on Spotify because I've been reading all the feedback that comes through see you on the other side [Music] I have to come out the gates and come clean with everyone and say that this is a bit of a I had to pinch myself being on here talking to you because 12 years ago I was really into this podcast I was one of those weird ones that liked podcast 12 years ago I still absolutely devour podcast were early as always yep I was very early and you were even earlier because you were the guest on the podcast that I was listening to I guess so and so it was it was the foundation series by Kevin Rose and you had been running Treehouse the it's like a website or a coding learning institution I watched that episode and I went and I immediately was like I think I should learn how to code it seems like you know Ryan's making it sound like it's possible it's a thing you know all the blocks in my head of like oh yeah that's for really smart people and I don't know if I could do it then I saw some of the preview stuff that you had on Treehouse and I just dove in and now I get to actually talk with you so it's full circle man this is amazing Demetrios like and it's so you are the reason why I started the company folks IQ to open that door to say maybe I could do this like maybe I don't need to be a super computer nerd or a super you know electrical engineering guy or um or or really good at math like my whole goal is say you know what anybody can do this and so I got Goosebump he told me that and it's it's so fun to be on the show I listen to it all the time while I'm working out and sweating your guests strong are way smarter than me so I'm a little nervous but I'm G try to offer value exactly exactly I will tell you what the I remember the thoughts that were going through my head like that were impeding me from thinking that I could code and it was almost like this idea cuz I had when I was in Middle School some friends that would they knew how to build websites ah and so I would watch them yeah exactly the middle school kids that and this was like I remember in middle school we were using like ask jees that was the cool thing that was going on and we thought it was amazing with the little logo the jees guy that was the first cat that was the original ask G gbt somebody should bring that back actually that would be classic so so I saw them doing that and I was like well I guess I missed the boat I can't code I don't know how to put together websites since middle school like I'm not going to be able to do it and it just so happened I was in Spain and I had a lot to do I my fingers were sore from playing too much guitar and I was like well let's see if I can actually do this coding stuff I love it and ironically because you are musical it probably was actually easier than you thought there's a lot of beautiful connections between math and coding and and I actually think it bleeds into like the beauty of the universe that there is like this uner universal language of of math that connects you know everything and it ends up you know and then this is why I love like AI like I just can't believe you can teach machines to to think with math like it's just it gives me useum it's super to abstract it from math to language yeah that is very special yeah that well another thing that I loved about tree house and then we can we can move on and I can ask you what you've been up to since then but the uh the thing about it was that I was always appreciative at how highly produced and like how serious you took the online course because this was I don't know this was probably like 2012 around that around 2011 yep 2011 and there weren't people that were like I'm going to put a lot of time and effort into these videos that I'm putting on the internet yep yeah we so I want to give massive credit to Nick and Jim who are our first teachers I funly believed in video as a way to learn I I just love watching video it helps me connect all the dots and I and I struggle with reading you know just walls of text and I I thought a video would be wonderful um but it needs to be taught by really engaging teachers and it we really wanted to hold our students hand and say we're going to walk you from video to video so that you have a coherent experience and I tweeted out hey is anybody out there that loves front end and back end and is really good on camera and Nick and Jim were like us and they literally had like a a show that they ran and they were just wonderful and they they wrote the content they shot the content they edited the content that's really how we booted up Treehouse and I just want it to be a source of Education that you could trust that you felt was friendly and welcoming and that was really the way we approach the product for a decade so you know and you could always go to YouTube and get videos for free you could dig around but everything was kind of disconnected and there was different qualities so we wanted just one great place to learn how to code exactly that value prop still is very strong like can I go to someone who I trust and I know it's going to be quality every time or am I going to spend the time to dig through the internet and try and find something that is going to take me down the path that I need to go down yeah and the the reason why I ended up there was actually I'll tell you the quick story that leads to it so it was 1987 and my dad 1987 it's going to be the quick story this it's like a medium story okay I'm just going to be real so the year I was born exactly let's keep going so I was 10 at that point and my dad brought home an Apple 2 e and I was like what is that and and sort of messed around with it and fell in love with it and then I went into high school and my calculus teacher grabed me in the hallway and said Ryan you should take our computer programming class and I I was like I don't even know what programming is what is that Miss Bruce she said it's where you tell the computer what to do and it doesn't I was like what I want to do that so learned Pascal and and then I ended up in computer science right and I was very privileged like very like at the top of the privilege chain right had a dad who brought home a computer I had a teacher who said I should learn how to code you know my parents could afford College I chose computer science like and then but I didn't get all that like at the time really and then I walked into my first job interview as a for a web developer job and they said do you know cold fusion and I was like what what do you what do you mean and they said it's a programming language and I was like no like I know C++ and and they said ah it doesn't matter we're going to hire you just read a book and I'm like what I thought I got this job because you know I could code for you and it turns out the computer science degree was the thing that got me the job it really threw me because I thought wait a minute the world isn't working like I thought it should work like I thought you get a job because you earned the skills to do the job and you worked hard but it turns out I'm in this secret little club called computer science and you assume I can do the job and you let me in and I deci thought the world like shouldn't work like that and I feel like there's millions of people that are never going to figure out what computer science is and get this job and this is this job is where you make all the money and you create all the value and and so that moment was when that seed was planted and that was in 2001 10 years later grew into Treehouse wow and I realized everybody should learn how to code at a fraction of the cost of a computer science degree so they can get a job that then will change their life and change their family's life but it took me 10 years to get get from there to starting the company so well and more topical the stuff I still remember you saying on that interview like we can have a react component a video up like a day after a a new release of react tell me a computer science course or degree that does that it just doesn't happen right and so that is I I think you can you can look at it in many different ways like you can go to full you don't actually need any formal education you can just get everything you need from the internet these days which is great or you can kind of do hybrid and you can supplement it and still have those experiences of the University or whatever and and get that because it is good some people still value it when they're looking at a resume yeah or just yeah I think those are the two I was going to say just do nothing but I don't think you're getting many jobs that's probably not going to work I mean I would say to everybody now if if you're going to go to university you know just go all in and try to get at the the huge Brands like a Stanford or Harvard or a carnegy melon like just go for that because that is truly valuable that's only because it's a brand like the computer science you learn there is probably no better but then you get connected to the community there like so that great if you can do that awesome but I went to col state University and no one cares about that like you know so you might as well avoid all that and just go straight into building ship something real impress people with something that you built with your creativity and work your way into a job that way but you know everything has changed since Treehouse was acquired in 2021 though I mean you know large language models just mean education now will forever be different and so that's a whole bag of cats that we could open up at some point if you want all right real quick some words from our sponsors elz and then we'll be right back into the program are you struggling with building your retrieval augmented generation AKA rag applications you're not alone we all know tracking unstructured data conversion and retrieval is no small feat but there's a solution available now introducing ziz Cloud pipelines from the team behind the open source Vector database milis this robust tool transforms unstructured data into searchable vectors in an easy manner it's designed for performance ziz Cloud platforms pipelines ziz Cloud pipelines also offer scalability and reliability they simplify your workflow eliminating the need for complex customizations or infrastructure changes elevate your rag with high quality Vector Pipelines triy zcloud pipelines for free zz.com you can find the link in the description let's get back into this podcast and are you thinking about getting back into the education space like where's your head at right now I spent a number of months relearning how to code so I essentially missed it I missed building like from the ground up you know because I was fortunate to hire engineers and then hire you know engineering managers and then VP of Engineers and CTO and and I got abstracted away from you know the coal face of actually writing code and I missed it badly so I you know after trios was acquired and and I had some time to think llms appeared and I just thought whoa like and and then when I started to you know ask I I basically paid for cat gbt plus and then I started asking it questions like well how would I you know know write a python app that could use the open AI API and I was like oh my goodness this is this is amazing you know this is like better than anything we could have built a treehouse and and so then I retaught myself and you know front to back engineering and I taught myself typescript and I taught myself nextjs and how to deploy in versell and I shipped an app built on open Ai apis and I was like what happened I did that in like a month and so I think once I I realized that wow this is everything we hoped and dreamed for a treeh house times 10 and it's 20 bucks a month you know for a chat gbt Plus account wow it's all different so I constantly think about education it's like in my blood but I ended up realizing you know what compute is going to be the world's most valuable resource and there's really only a couple companies that actually can create compute which will create intelligence and I realized Intel is one of them so I was at a point where I was like you know what I want to join the company that I think is going to be creating intelligence in the future and be inside of that and and inside of that I want to empower developers to use AI to build the world's most amazing things so I chose to join Intel um and sort of I'm doing educational on devell and all sorts of exciting things in inside of that framework um so it's just what a time to be alive can you believe it like we're we're the ones that are going through this we could have been born at you know hundreds of thousands of different point in history right but here we are yep or not made it could all yeah yeah that's another little bit more pessimistic or different spin on it that I was going to take but it is good to think about and be appreciative brings that gratitude towards it 100% And we get to see you know like I yeah I often think about how my daughters like I have two daughters right now and how their world will look and especially now you've probably seen just as much as I have on the internet and out there how there's a lot of companies making plays towards wearables yeah right now it seems like not going so well right now though is it they've unanimously flopped poor folks out there but but they're taking some swings which is cool it's give me a break like B10 it'll be in your eyeballs or in your brain so yeah yeah so so it it is fascinating to think about that and that brings me back to this other piece that I was really reflecting on today about me feeling like we're in the AI phase of like the Field of Dreams and I say it's like the Field of Dreams because anybody that's seen that movie knows probably the most famous quote from that movie is that if you build it they will come and so it kind of feels like a lot of the stuff that were doing with models whether that is talking about oh well we we're going to make like this big model but smaller and then you can put it on the phone and it's like great but what am I going to do with it on the phone and it's like well then you've got agents that are going to be able to book out a flight for you and I'm like but I have Google flights so what do I need these agents for like please I'm really struggling I'm trying and and there's probably somebody out there that's just like this dude has no vision what is going on with this guy he cannot see the future at all and I I like to think that like I do but maybe I'm about to get I'm so deep in it and I might just get like you know blindsided by the whole revolution of Agents coming and what they're able to do and I hope so but a part of me is a little bit like are we over engineering a problem that nobody has right are we trying to hammer everything because we think it's all nail yeah but first of all let's go back to that movie and you have to whisper it if you build it they will come and by the way if anybody hasn't seen field dreams like please watch it it's like Kevin C so I I think I think you're absolutely right and absolutely wrong at the same time so absolutely right you know there's just a bunch of of solutions that everyone is building including me with Maple which was just my you know stab it a fun quick AI app you know is a solution to not really a problem and you know a lot of a lot of we're all seeing are that but but I want to back up and say that is part of the startup Journey I mean it is trying to figure out what is the problem that people really have and that's just the nature of of startups so I think it's natural and good for everybody to be going through that process that's Thing One and Thing Two is it's never been so unbelievably cheap to ship something I mean it's mindboggling like you can do it yourself like this is a whole another category of excitement right and and obviously you know we we all heard Sam Alman say yep we're going to see the rise of the billion dollar one person company and we all believe it but you know once you experience the fact you can ship a company by yourself it it's mindblowing right so and I want that's kind of why I built Maple I was like I want to like proof a concept I'm going to start an LLC and I'm going to write the code from front to back and I'm going to ship it and I'm going to maintain it and I'm going to Market it right and you know I am a a basically a beginner Dev let's just be blood like yeah you know when you look at my skill set and I and I did it so there's that now where is this all going I think the thing I'm most excited about is is is a pretty practically use case that I think we're getting close to so if you look at a limitless AI which is a pendant I think this genre is going to change the world so think about you know the the you know the iPhone what are we on now is it the 16 that's next yeah like 15 or 16 I lost like that fancy pants iPhone that's coming out you know it looks like it's going to have a local model that's really good right you know I find it fascinating as well that Apple's now open sourcing some of the stuff yeah what yeah apple of all people that's because they're very known for how they love open source and letting other people tamper with what they've created are are you are you being are you being honest yeah it's just shocking right so they really said so we're going to see an amazing model on your iPhone right and now that thing will be able to listen to you if you let it and uh it will either fine tune or use rag on everything you say all the time and then you actually can start to live this augmented life you're like hey you know when I was talking to my kids today I feel like they didn't go very well cuz I have a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old two boys so two girls you said yeah yeah so sometime we should compare notes yeah but you know I'm I sometimes many days I'm like I wish I did that better you know I had a conversation that I lost my temper or I feel like I wasn't kind enough or I feel like I wasn't firm enough so I'd love to say to my phone you know just like give me some coaching on on how I could have done that differently today because the amount of tokens that I say today or or that I listen to are probably pretty small per day very ingestible for for rag or fine tuning so I think that wow that's a really long answer I think that's a cool idea I want to see that that is a very cool idea well especially if it's funny because last week we had one of the founders of fed ML on here and he was talking about how we're not there yet for Federated learning on your phones and that type of thing that still needs we still need like a few iteration Cycles but you're what you're talking about feels like yeah then that's when we're coming of age and we're getting into that phase is where I say yeah I I love Dr Becky and I want you to coach me in the style of Dr Becky you know like give me that wouldn't that be great like yeah yeah tell me how I could be better in that regard and then we're living yeah but then we're living and then it's it's becoming dangerously close to an episode of black mirr yeah but that's just like what we all like to say because it freaks us out like yeah I'm a technological optimist so like I tend to think yeah of course this would go really sideways but I can't really control that like and what is is going to be what is so I choose to believe that you know everybody could benefit from you know their own health professional that's customized to you and everything you say and think and do is recorded and that's just kind of where we're going I you know and so why not see how that could be great instead of terrible yeah I appreciate that Viewpoint too like let's explore the potential for upside yeah not this potential for that it needs to be bad all the time right this is the power of everybody listening to the show you can create like you can change the future like that's amazing right and now you can change it for Less Capital than has ever been possible in human history and and you're live right now listening to this that means you have the opportunity and I'm just so excited about that like when when have we ever had a being by our side that was available 100% that was wanted us to win that had more IQ than the average person and more knowledge than than 85 of us for $20 like so I just can't wait to see what gets built you know I am nervous you hear again alt men say things like you know if if if you're trying to build you know rappers you know around an LM we're going to steamroll you nobody wants to hear that and you know maybe that's why the the devell team and things seem to be weird around open AI right now it's yeah because I was a part of we actually produced Twitter's one and only Dev conference it's called chirp oh and everyone was like Yay we're going to build on Twitter's apis and then like at the show they're like never mind we're actually we're going to like cut off all the monetization and you know we're gonna we're gonna win and everyone's like oh that that's a bummer yeah like thanks for getting us here and making us pay for that news yeah and this kind of goes into this whole fun conversation on open source closed source and and why I think all of us are so bullish on what's happening with open source models and and meta basically you know just like putting billions of dollars into you know giving us all access to really good foundational models yeah and setting the tone right because then you've got Microsoft saying all right well these small models will open source those and and like you said even Apple if they're coming out of the woodwork and open sourcing models right something just feels weird about that yeah it feels weirdly good I'd say yeah yeah it's like I like it it weird I'm confused I love that very true but and you said something earlier where you were like yeah I'm a junior Dev at best I'm paraphrasing here uh but do you feel like your developer skills are one thing but then as you mentioned you you basically took everything you packaged it up and you were able to ship something you're a seasoned entrepreneur so all of that those pieces that aren't the code really were playing into like your ease at being able to [ __ ] absolutely yeah I I'm Not Afraid right to try and be wrong you know I have enough you know fin Financial sort of understanding and and capital understanding to you know kind of move these needles around I I don't think it's as hard as folks think like if there's going to be this this going to show that hasn't you know shipped a company just try it like use Stripes product Atlas create an LLC with a couple clicks um and ship something real you know I it sounds like I'm being paid by stripe I'm not but and then stripe does all the billing and all the all the uh reporting on churn and retention like there's all these things that just didn't exist when we we built Treehouse that is like literally one click just try it and it'll probably be dumb and probably won't work for your first thing but you got your rep in and then you're like okay now I'm in the ring like it's not so scary here that's all you got to do is just get over that first one and start trying and being out there and putting a price on a product that you create is so valuable too having to go and and sell something maybe it's not necessarily like you get people on the phone and you're selling but saying hey this thing has value and let's see if other people feel that same way absolutely and one thing is well you know folks listening probably have wildly different skill sets or Specialties I I think there is a tendency to think everybody now needs to be an ml engineer to to win and that's absolutely not the case I believe I think no you can take your domain expertise you can teach yourself to be a junior Dev and then you build on Amazing infrastructure like for cell right right like an API from either a closed or open source or use Gro like you can now take your domain expertise and use very beginner skills to then build a solution on top of that so I I you know I was just talking to my friend who is this amazing musician and he understands the science of music and he can take that deep deep deep deep knowledge and then think about okay how could I use AI to solve problems I have or offer Solutions and and I think that's where that kind of thought process should work it goes back to your question of like are people just building a bunch of stuff that's kind of dumb yeah I think they might be if they're not building on their own domain expertise yeah some of the coolest stuff that I've seen is not complicated at all and it's just it's exactly what you're talking about it's scratching the edch of recognizing someone has a lot of pain when they do this and for example I was talking to this guy who started this at well company I would say called feathery I don't know if you've seen that but they help people fill out forms it's like typescript but with like on steroids right and so you as a company you can create a form but then they have these capabilities where and it's a lot of these really in-depth forms let's imagine you have a gigantic tax document and you're going to do your taxes but then there's one form that you need to fill out and you need to add like three different tax documents to that form and all of the information that you need to fill out in the new form is actually contained in the old form so they just grab everything they fill it out for you they like pre-populate it and then you get to say yeah that looks good that's great see that I think that's a good product like I don't know how they're doing financially or or but that is a pain point so why not try to solve it and see if you build a little business out of it or maybe it's a huge business yeah yeah I I think they're doing really well from when I yeah shout out to them that's awesome what they're doing and they came from you know the complicated like financial institutions just imagine the last time that you had to like do stuff with your bank fill out those kind of forms or if you're a professional investor and you need to do all those types of forms I think we also had someone on here from Angel list a while back and it was similar type of thing where they were they were kind of bringing up these resources that you would need and helping you fill in the gaps of okay I'm going to make this investment but pretty much everything in the investment is already buttoned up right you don't have to have questions about it oh love it FEA sponsor the show if you're listening yeah this is not sponsored by them but I would love it yeah they were they were awesome so but but you know like one thing I want to talk I want to continue along this road of starting stuff and you being someone who has started multiple different projects and Ventures and companies all different stages of Life how do you feel like people out there can learn from what you've learned I would say you have a unique advantage in large language models and I would I would use it so you know the mental battle I think is the hardest part to solve on all this and and I think just having a a being that you can bounce things off of as you're thinking about startup starting something is a huge unlock so I would say just you know grab your favorite model and start talking to it about what you're thinking what you're afraid of what you're not sure about and it will progress you right so I would say that's the number one thing because I didn't have that and so I was I tended to be a solo founder or solo founder plus my wife and you know I'm super fortunate to have an amazing wife who've been married 20 years now and and she has really like been the the supporting through everything I've done but on but I I I I was always out in front kind of alone and you know at some point you just can't talk to your friends anymore about your idea or your your your parents or you know your kids or your partner they just I don't know at some point they like get tired of it or they don't have expertise in it and so you need that so I would say that's thing one which you have access to now which is a major major unlock and of course the LM is going to you know not be the perfect thought partner on that but I think it gets you you know a long way through that's thing one I think thing two now that you can ship companies so much faster and cheaper you know building on things like stripe on things like for sale it's it's good just get it out see what happens you know if you work for a company do it on your own laptop don't do it on your work laptop everybody you know there's these lines you got to draw in your life you know another tip you should talk to your your company if you work for them and let them know you've got a side project like it'll be terrible if you don't because then they'll just say we own that thank you very much it's things to know about that so couple couple things like that I think the other thing is this and I think you've done a very good job of this so I'll don't give you credit build a community and and and in a non- egotistical way put yourself in the middle of that Community here's why so and this is I didn't know I was executing this Playbook but it turned out to work very well for Treehouse so I started off by doing these fun meetups it was called by designers for designers we would meet at a bar we would talk about web design and this is like 200000 I mean this is early and pre-social networks and so people would show up we had fun and like we should do another one so we did one in London then we did one in Manchester and then well that was cool a bunch of people came and then and then well let's make a website and and and a community and and do news wow okay well let's do a conference and I'll be on stage being the MC and and what happens is you end up being the connector right and and you get to know everybody and then you can eventually leverage that uh you know as needed to tell people what you're doing or ask for help or get connections and so that that's so you you saw me on Kevin's show the reason why I know Kevin is because I invited him to speak at uh my conference in in San Francisco and we became friends and then he was like well what's this thing you're you're doing and I was like it's called Treehouse and it's working he's like I want to invest I'm like you do you know and and then he's like I'll pull on my friends to invest and and it all came about because I had started this little community in a bar called by designers for designers in 2000 and you know so build a community and and offer value and grind at that and don't expect a return but you but you will get a wild return on it eventually if you you put in the time and you're doing a fabulous job of this and everybody you need to go to the AI quality conference for real like it's going to be a good show I'm not being paid to say that but Community IRL and then wrapping it you know with an online community a podcast like it's a genius Playbook and if you if you can you should yeah and it is it's funny you mentioned that first of all thank you for saying that because it makes me feel good about where we're at and what I'm doing with my life smart that like you like you were saying sometimes you're out and being the person who is at in the company or the founder of the company like my wife has heard too much of it my daughter just goes my god well if you don't have money just like go get more I'm like brilliant advice I love that you are hitting yeah like exactly hired and helped me hire more people like you so but the the thing that I was going to say is starting a community is incredibly hard right and you have to really focus a lot of time and attention and effort into it and even then I kind of liken it to catching lightning in a bottle because you can do everything the exact same way that I did it where you can do everything like Follow The Playbook on how to do it but sometimes it just doesn't catch and I know because I've told people that I'm going to help them start their communities and it's a lot of effort and a lot of time and you need yeah you got to put that work in and what I was thinking is that if you are someone who already has the idea and the product and you're already like well I've got this code and I've got this piece of whatever shipped you also go into existing communities or go into existing like I I recommend quite a bit if there are influencers in the space that you're trying to get into just go hang out in their comments section or in their replies section 100% you put in the time and connect yeah exactly because that's where it's all happening and that's where you're going to hear if there are these problems that you're you think people have you get to see what language people are using you get to actually like be empathetic to other people not just like if you're building to scratch your own itch that's one thing but then when you want to bring it onto the market then you if you are out there adding value people notice that yeah that's great advice gosh I'm gonna I'm just gonna 2x that and say yeah just do what demo says everybody especially especially the AI quality conference that we I mean like we we just got back from an offsite with our team at Intel and and the the the value get from IRL connection you just can never you can never replace that with online connection online connection is important and good but you yeah the quality relationships you build is is just Next Level IRL and now speaking of Intel I think that's a perfect segue into like you being an Intel first of all can you explain a little bit about I know there they launched some CPUs and what is it it's uh sure gouty 3 yeah is that what it is can you break that down because I I saw that and it looked super fast it looked really cool I want to know more this again like not I did not uh expect to talk to you about this on here there's no you did not pay me to have you talk about this I think it's just perfect timing that it came out like a week ago yeah so I we we talked a little bit about this you know why did I join Intel it's a you know we have 125,000 employees it's a huge huge company right and the reason why is because I believe that compute is going to be the most valuable resource if if if it isn't already and there's very few companies that actually create compute that actually know how to make the semiconductors right cuz it is wildly hard to do like I just don't think anybody understands how actually hard it is to to make chips and so there's only a few and I wanted to join a company that was going to create compute because I believe it it's going to literally create intelligence in the future so it's like all right I want to be in the middle of that and then the thing that I'm deeply passionate about is community and and and empowering people to become developers and become better developers because I I believe that developers are going to continue to change the world I know everyone's afraid that davs are going to be replaced by Devon um or insert another one that didn't age well coding your agent you know Source but but I absolutely don't think that's true I think using it like knowing how to use tools is going to mean you can make better things like not you should not learn how to use the tool and then pretend you don't need to build anything so but that's my rant for the day so I was like gosh if I could be at Intel which is literally creating compute which is creating intelligence and I can Empower people globally to either become AI devs or become better AI devs like what a dream job and so I joined I'm like let's go I want to help you create a global AI developer community and I want to empower them and and so that's why I'm there now and and I'm never going to promote our products over other products or or or hyper own stuff I think the most important thing is to tell people what's out there like hey here's here's the the tools available to you here's what works here's what doesn't work obviously everybody wants h100 so they can train their models right and obviously everybody does not want just one company to create compute you know the more competitors we have in this space the better for AI devs the better for humans right so and I'll mention it briefly because I really don't want your listeners think I'm here to talk about Intel but uh we did release a a brand new as6 now it's not a GPU which is interesting it's it's designed for one workload which is AI workloads and it's called gouty and we just released the the latest one called gy 3 and it is faster than an h100 and uh I'm just really excited that people have more options now to to to train because I think every company every country eventually every family every every city every village is going to be either training models fine-tuning models running inference this is the way that intelligence is going to work and so we need massive access to compute and the price needs to come down and uh I'm super excited uh that we can be a part of that so that vision is also really compelling the idea of it is going to be just as decentralized as us all having phones right it's it's all needs this yeah right and and so we can't have one organization you know creating compute and really dominating we need many and there's a lot of it's exciting to see the competition heat up I think it's good for Humanity yeah yeah because as you mentioned it'll drive the price down yep you've been through the startups you've been on one side of the table at startups you basically like boss man and taking that to uh to selling a startup yeah that was your official title I think on LinkedIn and everything and then you come to a company where there's thousands of people how do you think about adding value and bringing your best self to that company everyone if you're in a startup or in a company you're probably if you're at a good one you have okrs or you have kpis if you don't H white red flag right okay so or exciting opportunity right so so here's the way I I would if if you're at a company and you're thinking about advancing your career and becoming more valuable and more helpful and winning in general I would the first thing you do should do is figure out what is the top level okr for the entire company or a set of okrs and how does it flow down to me and then how can I impact that number right because you need to align yourself to the strategy of the CEO and the company right so that's thing one if if you are trying to work really hard and do something but it's not a part of the company's core okr is like you're never going to really add value you're never going to be appreciated you're never going to get a a race like you're never going to get more power so so so that should be thing one and if the company doesn't have clear okay KS or kpis then you should you should be the one to say I would love to align our work to a top level strategy you know there's a framework called okrs it's pretty simple you know let's figure that out and it's beautiful because it goes from the top down it's like okay what is if you look 12 months out what is the one thing that we need to say we got done and you can sort of imagine it being announcement like what if there was a press announcement what would it say and then you work backwards okay well if if if you say that then what are the five things that need to happen in order to do that okay and then you break each one of those down into what are the five things that need to do that and then it ends up being oh I need to do XYZ today so that I can move my number and there's a bunch of great tools like I love Assa I'm not being paid to say that but Assa has okrs that break down into tasks and it's just ux is great wait I'm just laughing because we got to we got to count how many times we've said we are not getting paid because one of these times we better be getting paid I yeah said we're not getting paid so much that's right everyone we're trying to offer you value here and tell you about tools that actually work affiliate links in the description in case anybody's wondering oh my god I've never done affiliate links that's one of those things I'm like that's maybe I should but it feels bad I don't know so that I think that you know I think often technical folks we think you know we just need to ship this thing that we care about but if that thing doesn't align to an okr somehow you just can't really advance and you can't really offer value or change in the deal so I would say that's thing one thing two this is kind of a a very simple thing is buy a good mic and a good camera because you're probably remote and you know I know we both have good mics and good cameras but I feel like I'm the 1% of people in meetings that actually sound good I'm like makes such a difference I mean so this pod mic from Road I think it's like a 100 bucks right this stand what was it maybe like 200 bucks yeah I don't know Max and then I've got a roadter pro which is I think like maybe three 400 bucks so that kind of you sound amazing forever package is maybe 500 bucks and your work will probably pay for it so just like do that it's very true that you do get respected and I could see how being in a big company you can get more respect especially if all of your car calls are online and you're hardly seeing people I mean off of Intel I'm I'm you know often the only person with a good mic in these meetings you know and that's just cuz people are kind of normal and they don't have this stuff and they're like wow do you have a podcast and I go I do actually but you don't need a mic like this uh you know you don't have to have a podcast to have a mic like this you too and we're not being sponsored by Road either people um but I I do feel like I I think most of the conversation is around like modern Cutting Edge AI development is happening on X like I maybe I'm in my own bubble but it feels like it's all happening there and I don't know how you know so and this is yeah one of the things I'm working on is is bringing you know our conversation you know to X and so you I host a a space onx three times a week you know and but it's not sponsored by Intel but it's like hey yeah we're we want to be here because I think it's important to cover the news and be a part of the conversation you know so exactly there there was one last thing I wanted to mention on the okr's piece because I really appreciate that view of understanding the top level KRS and then how you can affect that right like how that comes down to me right and what things can I contribute to those top level or that are going to help those top level okrs do you you feel like you're always going to be in a position where you understand or you know what those top level okrs are is that another red flag if you don't know what those are it is red flag you you everybody in the whole company should know the top level cares absolutely um and and so what's what I love about Intel is it's very transparent you know I was literally we were at an event where Pat rco was speaking and so you know and he just pounds this home like these are the top jobs and everybody body knows it and then you flow down from that now coordina that among 125,000 people is not perfect right but but it's very clear so yeah you should know and the Beautiful Thing is gosh if you go ask your CEO sh'll and you say I I want to know what the top level okrs what is the one thing that you need us to get done the next 12 months she'll say I love that you're ask me that you know and let's talk about it um because that's their whole job is trying to Drive the entire team to do that thing and as soon as you care about it and you work on it then you number one make an impact by number two you become more valuable at the company and and the the other thing is you know it's it's like if you can always be the person that's that's like offering Solutions you know not problems people just will like you better right you you'll be more successful so if you're like hey I know this is a tough challenge but here's an idea I have to solve it you know I always tell my kids this like people want to work with people they like you know yes just not that you need to be pushover or be nice all the time but but if you are helpful have integrity you're you're trying to help other people win like generally people are going to going to want to work for you my kids never listen to me or care what I say but if they did they could be more successful life exactly they wouldn't know how good they they could have it yeah that's how old are your girls one's five and the other's one oh my gosh okay good you have plenty of time for them not to listen to you so right exactly oh that's so fun so but it it's fascinating what you're saying about the relationships piece because and just like how we like to work with other people that we like I feel that so much and we had soul rashidi on here about a week two weeks ago and one of the things that I asked her was like oh yeah so you get the you can go out there and you can be learning about the data foundations or you can be learning about the newest thing with AI or you can be how do you balance what is more important because then you can also be doing the you know the Democracy thing or the relationship building thing and or diplomacy I shouldn't say democracy diplomacy be Democratic if you like I good yeah I think you got to do both right so and I think you can be disciplined about it for instance by saying making it Tod do for yourself once a week Reach Out build your relationships right and and then that just reminds you yeah I should do that one thing this week I'm G to I'm going to reach out to that new person I haven't met the company yet or I'm going to make time to to connect and then you know over 50 weeks of the working year you'll have made 50 you know actions that will advance your your networking your relationship building your helpfulness right and then and it I hope it doesn't sound like cold to say well I should make a to-do to to build my network but I I do think you know if you don't make a to-do then then maybe it doesn't matter to you right s