Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:34:08 · Lenny Rachitsky, Simon Willison
[01:34:08] S1: My take was that he called it a clawed bot because it's like AI with claws that could do stuff, like AI with hands. [01:34:14] S0: But I liked, Alfred Molina, legendary Spider-Man villain, I like that. I like that connection. [01:34:21] S1: So interesting. Okay. Final question. What are you up to? What's next for Simon? What should people know about what you're doing these days? What's coming next? Writing a book? Make you building a claw?
01:34:31 · Simon Willison
[01:34:31] S0: Yeah. So my day job is open source tools for data journalism, specifically. And I've been working on these for more than five years now. And the idea is to build software that helps a journalist tell stories with data, which doesn't make you any money because journalists haven't got any money. But, if I can help journalists tell stories with data, that's valuable to everyone else in the world with data that they need to interrogate. And what's been interesting over the past, especially over the past year, is I've started bringing my interest in AI and my interest in journalism together. And it's like, "Okay, what are the things that I can build for journalists using AI that can help them find stories and data," which given that AI makes things up and hallucinates and so forth, you would've thought that it's a very bad fit for journalism, where the whole idea is to find the truth. But the flip side is, journalists deal with untrustworthy sources all the time. The art of journalism is you talk to a bunch of people, and some of them lie to you, and you figure out what's true. So as long as the journalist treats the AI as yet another unreliable source, they're actually better equipped to work with AI than most other professions are. And so, I'm building things where you can feed in PDFs of police reports and it'll pull out the key details and build your dataspace table and help you run SQL queries, and all of that kind of stuff. It's also great from an AI research point to have real software that I'm working on that uses this. So goal for this year is, get that... I want it to win a Pulitzer Prize. Or rather, I want somebody in the world to win a Pulitzer Prize where my software was like 3% of what they used. I want a tiny bit of credit for my software for some Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting. And that means getting into more newsrooms, and getting all of those kinds of things. And so that's fun. That's the day job. And then the book project, I've been calling it a not a book because I don't want the pressure of building a book, that's going to keep on rolling. And then also, my blog has started making me money, which is good, because up until last month, the blog was taking an increasing amount of my time and it wasn't making any money, and it was an unpaid side project.
01:36:29 · Simon Willison, Lenny Rachitsky
And now, I've got a very, very subtle sponsorship banner on there and I put a sponsored message in my newsletter and that's actually real money. So the blog is becoming less of a side project and more of a thing that actually helps financially support me. And I do bits and pieces of consulting and stuff as well. But yeah, that's the setup at the moment. [01:36:48] S1: Share more about that, but just quick shout out, WorkOS, your sponsor of your blog right now, who I'm also working with. Go WorkOS. WorkOS.com. Talk about this consulting piece, because I don't think people know this. [01:36:59] S0: So the problem with consulting is I'm very lazy when it comes to actually making money. I don't want to go out and find clients, and I don't want to invoice them, and chase them, and negotiate, and all of that kind of thing. But, ideally what I want to do is every now and then, spend a week on a call with somebody where they get my full attention for an hour, and I don't have to... It's called zero deliverable consulting. I don't write a report, I don't write any code, you just get my time for an hour. And I've got a few relationships that are helping channel those to me, which is amazing. So every now and then I spend an hour on a call with somebody, and I get paid for it, and that fits into my lifestyle perfectly. Because I don't want to be doing full day-long engagements or figuring out the marketing side and so forth. I just want to spend, every now and then, spend an hour, earn some money, and then move on with all of my other work.
01:36:59 · Simon Willison, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:36:59] S0: So the problem with consulting is I'm very lazy when it comes to actually making money. I don't want to go out and find clients, and I don't want to invoice them, and chase them, and negotiate, and all of that kind of thing. But, ideally what I want to do is every now and then, spend a week on a call with somebody where they get my full attention for an hour, and I don't have to... It's called zero deliverable consulting. I don't write a report, I don't write any code, you just get my time for an hour. And I've got a few relationships that are helping channel those to me, which is amazing. So every now and then I spend an hour on a call with somebody, and I get paid for it, and that fits into my lifestyle perfectly. Because I don't want to be doing full day-long engagements or figuring out the marketing side and so forth. I just want to spend, every now and then, spend an hour, earn some money, and then move on with all of my other work. [01:37:49] S1: If someone wants to reach out to you to work with you on something like that, what's the best way for them to do that in case they're listening and are like, "I need this." [01:37:55] S0: I'm almost hesitant to answer because I might get people talking to me and not going through an intermediary. [01:37:59] S1: Yeah, okay. And that's acceptable. They'll have to find you. [01:38:02] S0: Let's do that. You'll have to figure it out. That's the challenge.
01:38:02 · Simon Willison, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:38:02] S0: Let's do that. You'll have to figure it out. That's the challenge. [01:38:02] S1: You'll have to figure it out. Incredible. Simon, anything else you want to share, anything else you want to leave listeners with before we get out of here? [01:38:11] S0: Yes. I have a rare piece of excellent news about 2026. There is a rare parrot in New Zealand called the Kakapo Parrot. There are only 250 of these parrots left in the world. They are flightless nocturnal parrots. They're beautiful green, dumpy-looking things. And the good news is they're having a fantastic breeding season in 2026. Which is particularly good because the last time they had a good breeding season was four years ago. They only breed when the rimu trees in New Zealand have a mass fruiting season, and the rimu trees haven't done that since 2022. So there has not been a single baby Kakapo born in four years of this species of only 250. This year, the rimu trees are in fruit, the kakapo are breeding, there have been dozens of new chicks born, there are webcams where you can watch them sitting on their nets. It's a really, really good tie. It's great news for rare New Zealand parrots. And you should look them up because they're delightful. [01:39:06] S1: It's the best news of the podcast. That is incredible. I love the spectrum we've been on. I'm excited to look at a photo what these parrots look like. That sounds- [01:39:15] S0: You should splice the photo into the video. It's worthwhile that they're actually- [01:39:19] S1: I love it. Simon, you're awesome. Thank you so much for doing this.
01:39:19 · Lenny Rachitsky, Simon Willison
[01:39:19] S1: I love it. Simon, you're awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. [01:39:22] S0: Thanks. This has been really fun, it was really great talking to you. [01:39:25] S1: Same for me. All right, bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.