Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:15:35 · Lenny Rachitsky, Claire Vo
[00:15:35] S0: My feeling is... because I've tried a few of these things, it's just you learn so much more doing it this way, like doing the OpenClaw thing versus just press a couple buttons and you have this AI agent, and it's also just feels just more fun using it versus other products. [00:15:51] S1: It's fun. I think I talked about high school, and I used to build my own computer in high school. I used to go to Fry's and buy a motherboard. [00:16:01] S0: Fry's. [00:16:01] S1: Yeah, throw back. Yeah. You know how old somebody is if they know where to look for Fry's? [00:16:05] S0: Are they not around anymore? Is Fry's not around? [00:16:06] S1: I think there might be like one lone Fry's in California standing. I've looked at this a couple times, but I would go to Fry's, and I would buy a motherboard, and I would buy a graphics chip, and I would get one of those really cool cases that had the window and the lights in it, and the fans because I was a very serious gamer. And in that process, it didn't make the computer better than what I could have bought off the shelf. It probably didn't make it cheaper, but I learned so much, and it really felt like it was mine. And these agents, I don't feel like I'm using Claude with AU or an AW. I don't feel like I'm using Claude. I feel like I'm using Polly. I feel like I'm using Finn. I feel like I'm using these things that I built, and that sense of crafting your personal agent experience, as opposed to giving your tasks to a general purpose agent, I think just changes the user agent interaction in a very interesting way.
00:16:06 · Claire Vo, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:16:06] S1: I think there might be like one lone Fry's in California standing. I've looked at this a couple times, but I would go to Fry's, and I would buy a motherboard, and I would buy a graphics chip, and I would get one of those really cool cases that had the window and the lights in it, and the fans because I was a very serious gamer. And in that process, it didn't make the computer better than what I could have bought off the shelf. It probably didn't make it cheaper, but I learned so much, and it really felt like it was mine. And these agents, I don't feel like I'm using Claude with AU or an AW. I don't feel like I'm using Claude. I feel like I'm using Polly. I feel like I'm using Finn. I feel like I'm using these things that I built, and that sense of crafting your personal agent experience, as opposed to giving your tasks to a general purpose agent, I think just changes the user agent interaction in a very interesting way. [00:17:06] S0: Okay. So let's get people to actually get over the hump and actually install this thing. So many listeners are listening to this. They're like, "Yeah, this is cool. I'm going to do it someday." So few people actually do this. Let's make it very easy. First question is just, do you need a Mac Mini? Where do you recommend running this thing, installing this thing?
00:17:06 · Lenny Rachitsky, Claire Vo
[00:17:06] S0: Okay. So let's get people to actually get over the hump and actually install this thing. So many listeners are listening to this. They're like, "Yeah, this is cool. I'm going to do it someday." So few people actually do this. Let's make it very easy. First question is just, do you need a Mac Mini? Where do you recommend running this thing, installing this thing? [00:17:24] S1: No, you don't need a Mac Mini, but they sure are fun. They sure look cute, stacked up on your computer. So if you can get a Mac Mini and it will spark joy, it's a really easy way to start with OpenClaw. And while you don't need a Mac Mini, I think the safest and cleanest way to start with OpenClaw is a clean machine. And so that clean machine can be what mine was, which was an old MacBook sitting in a closet somewhere that I just did a fresh install on and said, "This is going to be Polly's laptop." It could be a machine in the cloud that you can run. I found the setup to be pretty hands-on, and just plugging in a keyboard, plugging in a mouse, having the computer, having the monitor was just useful for me as I was setting it up. So I think the easiest way is to start with a machine. It doesn't have to be a Mac Mini, but once you're hooked, you're probably going to want to get one.
00:17:24 · Claire Vo, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:17:24] S1: No, you don't need a Mac Mini, but they sure are fun. They sure look cute, stacked up on your computer. So if you can get a Mac Mini and it will spark joy, it's a really easy way to start with OpenClaw. And while you don't need a Mac Mini, I think the safest and cleanest way to start with OpenClaw is a clean machine. And so that clean machine can be what mine was, which was an old MacBook sitting in a closet somewhere that I just did a fresh install on and said, "This is going to be Polly's laptop." It could be a machine in the cloud that you can run. I found the setup to be pretty hands-on, and just plugging in a keyboard, plugging in a mouse, having the computer, having the monitor was just useful for me as I was setting it up. So I think the easiest way is to start with a machine. It doesn't have to be a Mac Mini, but once you're hooked, you're probably going to want to get one. [00:18:24] S0: Wouldn't it actually benefit with the Mac Mini because I got one. I have it right here and I put a little lobster claws on it to make it look like a lobster, is like you order it, it come arrives and then you're like, "Okay, I actually have to do this. I spent 500 bucks on this thing. Okay, let me actually do it." [00:18:39] S1: Yes. It's an accountability cost. [00:18:41] S0: Yeah. Okay. And people keep talking about they're all selling out because of OpenClaw. I think they're still available. [inaudible 00:18:48]. [00:18:47] S1: Yeah, [inaudible 00:18:48]. Apple will still take your money.
00:18:47 · Claire Vo, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:18:47] S1: Yeah, [inaudible 00:18:48]. Apple will still take your money. [00:18:50] S0: Okay. And then another tip I've heard that I used was to create its own Gmail account, its own local account. Talk about that.
00:18:58 · Claire Vo
[00:18:58] S1: Yeah. So it's definitely going to need its own local account on your computer. And honestly, to make it useful, it sounds scary. It's got to be an admin account. You got to let it run on your computer. So you would set it up at its own local admin account. And then going back to what I was using it for, personal assistant, executive assistant. And I have had as an executive, executive assistant, so I know how to onboard them. And you don't onboard your EA by giving the password to your email account. You don't do that. What you do is they have their own email, they have their own calendar, and you give them access or permission. You share your calendar with them. You delegate your email to them. And so as I was thinking about how to set up Polly, my first OpenClaw, I just took that exact same mental model, which is, I'm hiring an employee. If I were to hire an employee, I would provision them an email address. I would give them a calendar. They would be able to see all my public events like any other calendar, any other person in my team would be able to see. And then because Polly, she's my EA, I'm going to share edit access with my calendar so she can drop things on my calendar or remove them or move them around. And so I do think if I had to onboard an employee to my business or if I had to onboard a household manager into my family, what would I give them? And it's not the password to your email address, is a really good mental model. And then the other thing that I think is really useful is you will be sharing, logging into things, sharing API keys. And so I find some way to get passwords onto that new computer in a secure way. I used one password, ended up just being an easy way to get things back and forth from my main laptop onto this Mac Mini.