Speaker unverified: belief

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…ind culture or something. And no, like I think about like the fog, um, and just like the gorgeous view over the bridge and just the fact that there is this like massive amount of optimism in the city. And it's the backdrop of that optimism is the most beautiful countryside in all of the world. And so anytime we talk about SF, you will see like, or like we have a billboard somewhere that's just like local friendly supercomputer or whatever. And then the backdrop is like beautiful and amazing. And that's because to some extent we're pitching the city and the people here. And I think that people in the city here are actually really amazing. And so you get to earn the brand. Um, cause the expectations are met. Whereas I think on our own product, I'm typically want it to be better. And so I set the brand a lot lower. Um, and then the expectations are higher. Um, and you still meet the expectations, but you, you set them a little lower. I know. Are you the designer? I know you have an artistic side. Um, so, uh, I was in the beginning, so, uh, I'm like a figurative artist, so I draw people. Um, but we've worked with a design firm. Airfoil was really excellent with us. And then, um, nowadays though, John Pham, um, had a design from Vercel. Yeah. John is unbelievably amazing. Yeah. Um, I think the amount of care and craft and attention to detail that he puts into just everything is so cool. Yeah. Um, like if you go on our buy page right now, you go to sfcompute.com slash buy. There is an Easter egg there that will, you should find. I almost don't want to spoil it, but you should go find that Easter egg. If you just like hover the mouse around the thing in the top right hand corner, um, you will, you'll find it. Yeah, tweet at Evan if you find it. And then the, um, other person is, um, Ethan Anderson, our COO, who, um, has this really, really cool design. He has a RISD design background. And so, uh, his, like, uh, he used to be sort of industrial designery. I'm probably going to say that wrong. He's probably not an actual industrial designer, but design background, same. So I think between me and John and, uh, Ethan, um, I think we. The source of the vibes. The source of the vibes. I had to ask. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to zoom out a little bit. One of the last things I wanted to ask you was actually like, I remember, I think the first time that you was in like kind of cello and you were working on your email. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I have a favorite pet topic of mine. We were here with Dharmesh yesterday talking about someone, build an agent that reads my emails. Yeah. And you did. And I think I actually paid for the first one. You were, you were so excited in the early GPT three days. I was like, you were like, uh, I'm building the most expensive startup ever. Yeah. It's so expensive. Anyway. So the point being what I'm trying to get to is you are a very smart guy. You built email. You, you didn't like it. You pivoted away. I've seen other, like every year there's someone who is like, I will crack email. Yeah. And I'll, and then, and then they give up. Yeah. What is so hard about email? I didn't pivot away because the product or the idea was bad. y year there's someone who is like, I will crack email. Yeah. And I'll, and then, and then they give up. Yeah. What is so hard about email? I didn't pivot away because the product or the idea was bad. I pivoted away because I was super burnt out. I did a startup for like four years. And the first thing didn't work out. Is this room service? Yeah, this is room service. So my startup before this originally started as Quirk, which was like a mental health app, but then Quirk had the same problems that basically every mental health app has, which is like your retention goes to zero if you work at in any capacity. And so switched and then said, okay, well I will do something that's closer to my actual background was like a distributed systems company called Room Service. Room Service went for about nine months and then sort of had the same problem that I think every other competitor Room Service has, which is mostly people building a house. And so then I went back to our investors at the time, which was Nat and Daniel and specifically Daniel told me that I should go stare at the ocean. And you know, I will find something else to do and just throw shit at the wall. And then I think, I think it was Gustav at YC. Maybe it was probably actually Dalton Caldwell. Dalton Caldwell, like just said, don't die. Like you can just keep doing things and don't die. And so I think I just got it in my head that you should just like keep trying things and not die. And I really, really, really did not want to die and didn't really know what to do. And so I just threw out like 40 products with the assumption that if you just keep trying things, you won't die. This is actually not the most ideal thing to do. You actually should totally just pick a thing and go with it. But my brain wasn't set on like, oh, I should do this particular thing. It was set on not die. And so I just kept going for a very long time for like four years. And by the end of it, I think I was just super burnt out. And I was going to do the email thing with one co-founder and then they quit. And then I was going to do an email thing with another co-founder. And then they fell in love and decided to go get married and you know all that. Okay. So it wasn't that email is intractable. I'm just trying to figure out like, look, is there something bad? Like, is this a graveyard of ideas, right? Everyone wants to do email and then nobody does because something. And I think it's just hard to make an email client. I think it's hard to make an email client. That is, it's a competitive space in which there are lots of things. I do think that the better version of that is something that looks closer to what Intercom is doing. And Intercom obviously existed beforehand. So you can think about like any product. Like, should you be doing it or should somebody else in the industry who already has the existing customer set do it? And I think Intercom has pretty much very successfully done like they already had the position to do it. Like, what do you actually need the AI to write your emails for? Like, most people don't need this. But what who does need this is like support use cases is pretty much there. d the position to do it. Like, what do you actually need the AI to write your emails for? Like, most people don't need this. But what who does need this is like support use cases is pretty much there. And the people who are best able to execute on this is totally Intercom. So like props to Owen. I think that was like completely the correct move. Yeah. Closing thoughts. Call to action.…

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