Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:21:49 · Aaron Epstein, Alex Danilowicz
[00:21:49] S0: Yeah. Yeah. There's a pattern that I've seen where sometimes you have actual UI elements embedded in the page, but they're actually real and and interactive. Right. And that's cool to be able to do that. That's something that I think agents make a lot simpler now that was much harder to do before. And so it can feel very interactive and, like, you can actually try out the product live on the page, and that's super cool. But, yeah, the flip side is when it looks like something like that and it becomes misleading and you think that you can interact with something, but but you're actually not able to. [00:22:17] S1: Yeah. And I think it's important to talk about, like, why does this matter? Why does it matter if there's a vibe coded smell on the website? Right? And I think it matters because you can notice how distracted we are by this input trying to type, and we're distracted from the core thing, which is whatever the CTA is supposed to be, I guess, this case. Right? It's join the join the wait list.
00:22:17 · Alex Danilowicz, Aaron Epstein
[00:22:17] S1: Yeah. And I think it's important to talk about, like, why does this matter? Why does it matter if there's a vibe coded smell on the website? Right? And I think it matters because you can notice how distracted we are by this input trying to type, and we're distracted from the core thing, which is whatever the CTA is supposed to be, I guess, this case. Right? It's join the join the wait list. [00:22:38] S0: Yeah. It's cool if you scroll down, you see, the pictures of the people. They match that vibe, that kinda eighties video game throwback vibe, which I think is cool. You know, they had that eyeball up at the top, which is, like, very provocative. It creeps me out a little bit. There's, like, an eyeball looking directly at me. But but it's interesting, and it and it becomes memorable if that's the vibe that you're going for. But, yeah, it just wasn't obvious to me what this is until we got halfway down the page. And so I think just a little more about what it is and what's the action that you want people to take. Even that call to action in the top right, that button, it just says Ronin. Right. I don't know what Ronin is. The company's called Ego. I guess it says here Ronin launching September. Is Ronin a product? Is it a model? Is it... Like, it's not clear to me what this is. And so I think, ultimately, I'm just left very confused.
00:22:38 · Aaron Epstein, Alex Danilowicz
[00:22:38] S0: Yeah. It's cool if you scroll down, you see, the pictures of the people. They match that vibe, that kinda eighties video game throwback vibe, which I think is cool. You know, they had that eyeball up at the top, which is, like, very provocative. It creeps me out a little bit. There's, like, an eyeball looking directly at me. But but it's interesting, and it and it becomes memorable if that's the vibe that you're going for. But, yeah, it just wasn't obvious to me what this is until we got halfway down the page. And so I think just a little more about what it is and what's the action that you want people to take. Even that call to action in the top right, that button, it just says Ronin. Right. I don't know what Ronin is. The company's called Ego. I guess it says here Ronin launching September. Is Ronin a product? Is it a model? Is it... Like, it's not clear to me what this is. And so I think, ultimately, I'm just left very confused. [00:23:31] S1: This is another vibe coded smell, by the way. It says scroll right here. I'm naturally gonna scroll. Like, I don't think... Personally, I don't know many instances where where a human would feel the need to put scroll there. Because naturally, you're gonna do that, versus I commonly see agents trying to always nudge the user to do to do something. [00:23:51] S0: Mhmm. [00:23:51] S1: Should we take a look at another one?
00:23:51 · Alex Danilowicz, Aaron Epstein
[00:23:51] S1: Should we take a look at another one? [00:23:53] S0: Yeah. Okay. We got Sentient OS. Your Mac, Sentient, an on device LLM understands your entire life, then proactively offers to get your work done through computer use. Okay. That's interesting. And then I guess we have an image here of a laptop that's open. [00:24:11] S1: Woah. Okay. [00:24:12] S0: Okay. And it closes when you scroll. Hold on. Go go back for a sec. Oh. So... Alright. So there's a bunch of stuff going into the middle. And then when you scroll down a little, and it says, while you sleep, your Mac understands your entire life. Okay. [00:24:30] S1: And I think notice something here. I'm really struggling to, like, perfectly match the scroll. [00:24:36] S0: Yeah. [00:24:36] S1: One thing I I never see a, you know, Decacorn company ever do any kind of scroll tracking. Yes. Why don't they do any kind of scroll tracking? Well, because it does not convert and it's frustrating. Another thing that I see AI agents doing doing a lot. Right? I mean, notice, like, okay, if I... I I missed it. Right? Again, go to, like, the top Fortune 500 company sites that are... Have millions and millions of page views. They are not scrolljacking. [00:25:05] S0: Yeah. What's frustrating about it is you're used to the precision of how you move through a site [00:25:11] S1: Mhmm.
00:25:11 · Alex Danilowicz, Aaron Epstein
[00:25:11] S1: Mhmm. [00:25:11] S0: When you're scrolling. And when you hit a site and it's different precision, you know, it it keeps scrolling after you've stopped touching the mouse or the trackpad. It messes things up, and it feels unnatural. And so please, everybody, please stop scroll jacking. Stop scrolling. Just keep the normal scroll. Because there's some cool stuff that's happening here. Right? Like like, okay. We started out with the laptop screen open. A bunch of things are going into it. Right. The lid closes. And I think it's trying to tell you, like, all this stuff happens while you sleep. The lid is closed. And then you wake up to your finished work, and so it wakes up and here's all the things that it's done. And then it takes you through that. So the visual and the experience, what I like about this one is it's actually reinforcing the concepts that it's trying to tell you about. Mhmm. When it talks about going... When you sleep, the lid closes. The computer is asleep. And then it's like, oh, it wakes up. It does all the work while you sleep. So when you wake up and then boom, the laptop comes back out, we have all the work is done, and it's showing it to us. That's, I think, the best version of an animation is not animation for animation's sake, but animation that actually reinforces the point that you're trying to make and communicate something in a way that just being static would not have been able to do.
00:26:23 · Alex Danilowicz, Aaron Epstein
[00:26:23] S1: Totally. I mean, it's it's definitely helping me understand what this product does. But I would also... I always think when you're you're trying to be too creative for something, that's great on like a product page or a video. Not your landing page. Your landing page, the number one thing you wanna try and get me to do is click this button, download for Mac OS. Right? Now also, just speaking about that button for a second, this kinda glow, another bit of a vibe coding smell. Again, hey, it's definitely getting my my attention. But one thing that I've noticed is AI agents, they love to overdo it on this kinda gradient, on this massive drop shadow. And and again, look, it got my attention, but it's just one thing to be wary of if that's something that you're trying to not do. [00:27:16] S0: Yep. And then what do we have further down the page here? Just see. Recipes. [00:27:25] S1: I think what... What's interesting here is... Again, this is that main CTA. Right? I scrolled through the whole thing and I'm just... I... You really want me to click this button or perhaps even do this homebrew installation, but it's so small. Like, I'm at like 100% and I can barely see it. Mhmm. Right? And like this has this kinda hover effect. I guess this brings me to the GitHub. I can barely read that. [00:27:48] S0: Yeah. It's really tough to read those. [00:27:50] S1: Right. Like free, there's a reason that free is giant on pricing pages. [00:27:55] S0: Mhmm. Yeah. Download for free.