Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:40:14 · Alexa von Tobel, Mikey Shulman
[00:40:14] S1: That is really cool. Actually, one of the questions I wanted to ask you is, how do you think about agentic artists? Right? Like, I've seen the hologram AI people who... Or the now agentic movie stars, and you're starting to see the edge of what that could be. How do you think about what that looks like, Mikey? [00:40:34] S0: I don't think a ton about agentic stars. I think about... In music, people resonate both with the way things sound and with the message and the person behind the music. And I think it is impossible to really remove either of those. It has to sound good and interesting, and there has to be a person behind it. Even if the person is not, you know, front and center, there is a person behind it whose message you are resonating with it. And I think you see that in Xania Monet. There's a person behind Xania Monet who has a message that resonates very deeply with a lot of people. But you also see that in artists today who largely don't write and produce their own music, and there's nothing bad about that at all. Like, you are still getting that artist's message and that... The performance of that artist, and they are getting helped by other people along the way to help write and produce their music. So I see I see actually not a huge change happening there. The thing that changes is who is doing it and how are they doing it. [00:41:29] S1: And how quickly they're doing it. [00:41:31] S0: Yes. 100%.
00:41:31 · Mikey Shulman, Alexa von Tobel
[00:41:31] S0: Yes. 100%. [00:41:32] S1: One question I just wanted to make sure I asked you because I'm so interested, and this is a little bit on the technical side. In less than two years, Suno moved from early generation model to a V five. So just rapid iteration is happening. And a plethora of product launches. What have you learned about structuring teams and your own sort of cultural... You know, pay it forward to all the entrepreneurs that are listening, sort of the cultural tenants to be able to move at the pace and speed that you've had to maintain at Suno?
00:42:03 · Mikey Shulman
[00:42:03] S0: I think the the thing that dictates the pace here is how much people actually enjoy their work. And it's like if you're really excited about your work and everybody here, like, truly deeply loves music, it ends up it ends up helping a lot in terms of just getting you excited enough to make the next breakthrough and the next breakthrough and the next breakthrough. I think culturally, there's something I think missing in a lot of AI companies, which is that a lot of products start as thin wrappers around the model. It's like, my product is whatever thing my model can do. And that is not a terribly user centric way of thinking about things. It's appropriate in some domains. But I think when you think about building a consumer product that is intended to be used by billions of people, it's not that. And so at the beginning of the company, the whole product is the model, but there needs to be some cultural shift of... And it's actually a challenge to the machine learning team. It used to be that the machine learning team comes up with the entire product, and now you actually need your users to come up with the product and to challenge your machine learning team, can you build this? And it's actually flipping it around. And culturally, making a one eighty like that is actually very tricky. But I don't think you can really service hundreds of millions or billions of people if you don't make that flip.
00:43:22 · Alexa von Tobel, Mikey Shulman
[00:43:22] S1: Mikey, just again, very few CEOs, founders are sitting in a seat where you've grown from zero to 200,000,000 of revenue in honestly, like, weeks in some ways, and from zero users to north of a 100,000,000, and I know that number is growing rapidly. Talk a little bit about the culture of speed and how you guys are managing that. [00:43:48] S0: You know, it's a really tricky balance because different trade offs are appropriate for different companies and products. And I think we have two things that are somewhat opposed. Like, speed is obviously good, and it's because, ultimately, if you're trying to invent new consumer behaviors, which is what we are trying to do, you need to show your users a lot of things. You need to ship things very, very quickly to get feedback from people. And I think, ultimately, the experimentation velocity, velocity, the the the how many experiments can you ship to your users and learn from, that is ultimately the thing that the company will live and die by. So speed is very important. But there are two things, I think, that push against one another in the speed direction. One is, at the end of the day, we are not building airplanes. We're not making medical devices. When our site goes down, it's not good, but it's not catastrophic. And so that is something that can actually allow you to move more quickly. [00:44:41] S1: That's a really good point, Mikey, that I didn't think about, which is no one's dying, and you, as a result, can go a lot faster than other businesses.
00:44:41 · Alexa von Tobel, Mikey Shulman
[00:44:41] S1: That's a really good point, Mikey, that I didn't think about, which is no one's dying, and you, as a result, can go a lot faster than other businesses. [00:44:50] S0: That is a blessing. Right? You... And we should use that. Yeah. You know? And so that's not appropriate if you're if you're building supersonic aircraft. The thing that moves against it is that if you are building for billions of people, you actually have a very high craft bar. Things need to look and feel beautiful. And, like, why do you use an iPhone when there are cheaper, honestly, capable phones, it's because, like, this thing is kind of, like, high craft and a joy to use in every way. And so that is the thing that actually pushes you against speed. And so we often just say here, it's just like, it's speed and craft. It's speed and craft. It's speed and craft. We're, like, constantly trying to push both of those. And ultimately, I think this just comes down to good judgment on the part of all of the employees here. It's like, do you have good judgment of knowing what corners you can cut and when? Because it's going to be very hard down to write down... It's gonna be very hard to write down principles. This is when you move fast, and this is when you move slow. [00:45:51] S1: Mikey, is there a sneak peek of a product or anything that's coming out that you could just maybe delight us with a bit? Is there anything that's coming that we should stay tuned for?
00:45:51 · Alexa von Tobel, Mikey Shulman
[00:45:51] S1: Mikey, is there a sneak peek of a product or anything that's coming out that you could just maybe delight us with a bit? Is there anything that's coming that we should stay tuned for? [00:46:01] S0: Oh, I think in the not so distant future, you will see new models, you will see new lyrics capabilities, and you will also see new workflows for putting yourself into music. And I think those will be really, really powerful. [00:46:18] S1: Wait. Say a little bit more. That is very exciting. What does that mean potentially? [00:46:22] S0: I can't. I can't. It's too early. Stay tuned. [00:46:26] S1: Mikey, few more questions before we go to our quick fire round. Are there any guardrails? Is there anything just culturally... And by the way, what comes out so clearly, Mikey, is just how sincerely passionate you, the Suno team is. It is so tangible that you absolutely love what you are doing. It is just so clear as I've gotten to know you better, like you are in the seat for a reason doing the thing because it is coming out of your cells. It is on the cellular level that you love what you're building. That is such a powerful cultural tenant of Suno. Are there any guardrails? Or are there like any rules or things that you guys really have to ensure that you are building Suno in the way you want to?