Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:27:55 · Aaron Epstein, Alex Danilowicz
[00:27:55] S0: Mhmm. Yeah. Download for free. [00:27:57] S1: Yeah. Exactly. Right. Right? And I swear, it's it's, you know, perhaps it's because of the angle, but it doesn't really matter. I cannot see the word free Right. Right now. [00:28:07] S0: If you have something important to communicate, it shouldn't matter the angle that the user is looking at it. It should be painfully obvious. [00:28:13] S1: Yes. Exactly. [00:28:14] S0: Alright. I mean, I guess maybe, you know, one of the other pieces of feedback for a product like this that runs locally on your machine, privacy and trust is something that's very important. What do they do with the data? I I guess they have an FAQ here to try to answer some of this, but this is actually an interesting problem in new world of AI apps and LMs is they need so much data and so much context to be really valuable. And especially a product like this that's gonna run locally on your machine and have access presumably to everything that's on your computer. And so there's a new bar that needs to be established for trust and privacy and security for all of these types of products. My take is that I actually think the products that really lean into that and go above and beyond Mhmm. To make users feel super comfortable around what is the data we're gonna have access to, how are we gonna use it, what are our retention policies, is this secure or not, all these things, and being very proactive about that are the ones that I think are gonna have more success of getting users to download and try it and spread the word and tell their friends.
00:28:14 · Aaron Epstein, Alex Danilowicz
[00:28:14] S0: Alright. I mean, I guess maybe, you know, one of the other pieces of feedback for a product like this that runs locally on your machine, privacy and trust is something that's very important. What do they do with the data? I I guess they have an FAQ here to try to answer some of this, but this is actually an interesting problem in new world of AI apps and LMs is they need so much data and so much context to be really valuable. And especially a product like this that's gonna run locally on your machine and have access presumably to everything that's on your computer. And so there's a new bar that needs to be established for trust and privacy and security for all of these types of products. My take is that I actually think the products that really lean into that and go above and beyond Mhmm. To make users feel super comfortable around what is the data we're gonna have access to, how are we gonna use it, what are our retention policies, is this secure or not, all these things, and being very proactive about that are the ones that I think are gonna have more success of getting users to download and try it and spread the word and tell their friends. [00:29:17] S1: Totally agree. As someone who applied to YC with a text message analyzer that was open source and read your iMessages all locally on the computer. I completely agree. [00:29:26] S0: And so what were the things when you're working on that product that you thought about that you felt like you had to do in order to get people to trust your product and give it access to all of their text messages?
00:29:26 · Aaron Epstein, Alex Danilowicz
[00:29:26] S0: And so what were the things when you're working on that product that you thought about that you felt like you had to do in order to get people to trust your product and give it access to all of their text messages? [00:29:37] S1: Hero on the landing page was open source completely on device. Mhmm. Right? Communicating that the Internet doesn't touch it in any single way. The... And that's what we learned that people really, really cared about. Right? Yep. And they do it here, know, in on device LLM. Yep. But it's funny like like is the word an relieving necessary? Like it's it's interesting to me. They're like bolding these words. Another sign of AI writing actually is, you can look this up on Wikipedia, is when random words are are bolded. Right? Like... But just communicating those kind of... That that most important thing, is that it's on device. [00:30:13] S0: Yep. [00:30:13] S1: The only thing that kinda makes me laugh is this font. Let's see what the font is. Space Grotesque is is always the the font that is... Oh, instrument serif is another one. Instrument serif... Claude Code loves instrument serif. Oh, which is funny. This kinda reminds me of the em dash. Right? It's like, you can still use the em dash in your writing. But, unfortunately, people are gonna look at it and go, oh, he used AI. Right? Instrument serifs, space grotesque.
00:30:13 · Alex Danilowicz, Aaron Epstein
[00:30:13] S1: The only thing that kinda makes me laugh is this font. Let's see what the font is. Space Grotesque is is always the the font that is... Oh, instrument serif is another one. Instrument serif... Claude Code loves instrument serif. Oh, which is funny. This kinda reminds me of the em dash. Right? It's like, you can still use the em dash in your writing. But, unfortunately, people are gonna look at it and go, oh, he used AI. Right? Instrument serifs, space grotesque. [00:30:45] S0: It's interesting how these things are trends that sometimes are hard to spot in the moment. I feel like we're on it, and, you know, we can spot it in the moment here. But it's like you see a kitchen that was designed in the eighties or something like that, and you're like, man, this looks like an outdated kitchen. But in the eighties, it probably looks like a modern kitchen. And that's what some of this feels like. It's something that feels, like, of the moment now. But five, ten years, we're gonna look back at this. We're gonna be like, oh, yeah. That's a hallmark mid twenty twenties site design that will feel outdated at that point. And so I don't know. I would encourage people just resist the urge to do the default that the agents are spitting out when they're designing or the default fonts or use something that is more unique to you and communicates what you wanna communicate rather than just using the thing that everybody else is using. And that's the way to create more timeless design, I think.
00:30:45 · Aaron Epstein, Alex Danilowicz
[00:30:45] S0: It's interesting how these things are trends that sometimes are hard to spot in the moment. I feel like we're on it, and, you know, we can spot it in the moment here. But it's like you see a kitchen that was designed in the eighties or something like that, and you're like, man, this looks like an outdated kitchen. But in the eighties, it probably looks like a modern kitchen. And that's what some of this feels like. It's something that feels, like, of the moment now. But five, ten years, we're gonna look back at this. We're gonna be like, oh, yeah. That's a hallmark mid twenty twenties site design that will feel outdated at that point. And so I don't know. I would encourage people just resist the urge to do the default that the agents are spitting out when they're designing or the default fonts or use something that is more unique to you and communicates what you wanna communicate rather than just using the thing that everybody else is using. And that's the way to create more timeless design, I think. [00:31:33] S1: Yeah. And and establishing that brand book early on. That's one thing that I regret that we didn't do earlier for our own company was establishing a brand book, deciding on what is the brand, what is your font, your... Really your design system. Mhmm. Companies should do that earlier for sure. [00:31:50] S0: Alright. Well, thank you, SentientOS. [00:31:52] S1: Let's do another one.
00:31:52 · Alex Danilowicz, Aaron Epstein
[00:31:52] S1: Let's do another one. [00:31:54] S0: Alright. CeraNovus, institutional intelligence and decision infrastructure. Yeah. Don't really know what that means, but, CeraNovus is your AI operating partner. It reads every record your company produces, finds the operational inefficiencies nobody's tracking, and warns you while problems are still small. Okay. I don't know. This is I think the copy could be improved here. It's very generalized. It's very vague. I'm kinda like, is this something I need? I'm not really sure. It does everything that my company wants and finds inefficiencies. It's a decision infrastructure. I don't know what that means. So I think something that would be helpful is just getting to more specifics or more specific language around who should use this and why. Because right now, I think it's it's too unclear. [00:32:39] S1: I was... It's interesting to me. Like, the... There's so much padding. Right? Like, there's just a lot of white space. But this is Yeah. This is what they call above the fold. Right? [00:32:46] S0: Mhmm. [00:32:46] S1: Before I scroll, it's such an important section, the hero section of the landing page. And yet, immediately, my eyes, I'm, like, looking at white space right now. Right? Unfortunately, this is also kinda like a classic vibe coating smell. This... [00:33:02] S0: Small all caps. Exactly. [00:33:05] S1: Yeah. And again, it's like, okay. Is there anything inherently wrong with small all caps? Not necessarily, but when I read it, every claim cited, years of history alive from day one.