00:48:21 · Nikhil Kamath, Mati Staniszewski
[00:48:21] S1: Mhmm. [00:48:22] S0: Which is responsible for the citizen support app. And now what has started happening is that it started effectively adding modules across the entire government, so now you can have health care information. Now you can have education where you have personalized content for you based on things that you know, and and I thought it was brilliant. It's... And what we do with them is now help bring the voice into the equation, you can communicate and call a lot of that or you could learn by speaking. But you literally have all the modules deployed across the government services. And I I thought it brilliant for two reasons. One is, like, that you embed those resources. Like, in the AI world, it feels so right. That's that's that's, like, as I think about young entrepreneurs building their companies, like, you want, of course, engineering talent, but you want the engineering talent in in sales and go to market and and and and and and and finance and and, like, all divisions because it can help get smarter. So I like it for that. And two, despite everything that's happening there, they are actually can truly from everybody worked of leading the way with like the one of the best apps that I've seen. [00:49:23] S1: In places like India, there's the David and Goliath problem. When you're David, everybody loves you when you're starting something. When you become a Goliath of a company, inherently people dislike large corporations in a strange way. [00:49:41] S0: It's almost everywhere a little bit.
00:49:41 · Mati Staniszewski, Nikhil Kamath
[00:49:41] S0: It's almost everywhere a little bit. [00:49:43] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Even in America, think. There's a little bit of anti incumbency and a rebel in everyone and hence I don't think a super app works in places like that. [00:49:52] S0: Why did you want to start the social media? [00:49:54] S1: I believe social media is broken today. We were looking at data from a bunch of people that the really young people sixteen-twenty take snapchat for example. They might be logging into snapchat the same number of times but the amount of time they're spending on it is significantly lower. If you take Instagram, it's become almost no organic content like Mati will not post a picture of his, I don't know, you having a drink on a weekend nor will I or nor will anybody, none of my friends. It seems to be a place where brands are showcasing different things and influencers are trying to sell one thing or the other either consciously or subconsciously. To have an app which is not governed by an algorithm which kinda insinuates and incentivises a reaction in you by triggering hate or emotion that I don't think is conducive in the long term I think is useful. Also I don't like the fact that a foreign nation controls the algorithm that defines the mood, nature, and evolution of the youth of my country. [00:51:19] S0: And in the incentive side, do you have a take of how, like, how you change the incentives to get people to pause the organic side?
00:51:19 · Mati Staniszewski, Nikhil Kamath
[00:51:19] S0: And in the incentive side, do you have a take of how, like, how you change the incentives to get people to pause the organic side? [00:51:27] S1: I think we are thinking of a very, like, very tight funnel on the top where we control who enters the app. Like, incumbent social media probably has bots engaging with you and trolls engaging with you and I don't know how much of it is organic and how much of it is not. But the idea is to have a place where real people can connect with real people, speak about real things without I don't think anybody can take out bias altogether but with significantly lower bias and a place which is safe to have discourse. I might agree with you on something, I might disagree with you on something but I don't think there is a place or an ecosystem today where you can have that conversation. So we hope to kind of create it. But I'd love advice from you. Broad thoughts on what should a new social media have. Also, how voice plays a part in whatever the newer version of social media is.
00:52:33 · Mati Staniszewski, Nikhil Kamath
[00:52:33] S0: First of all, I think you're you're now, like, the aspiration or the idea, like... I mean, I I agree with... I hope even the current social media platforms will get there too, like you, you know, like, I think there's a clear aspiration for them to have, like, a little bit more of the positive sentiment rather than kind of the the the the the fear driving the the the algorithm. And I I I don't know if, you know, like, I don't know how this will get figured out yet, but there's definitely this element of, like, authenticity being now the the way to go, like, nobody wants to read, like, a corporate, you know, like, manicured press release statements, and I think that's that's great. So if I were designing social media, it's, like, how do I get more of of of that part would be, like, one of the key elements. I'm thinking through through both the the kind of the voice aspect and... Do you know AirChat, by the way? Do you see... Do you... Have you seen AirChat? [00:53:28] S1: I have seen AirChat. Yes. [00:53:29] S0: They're trying to build, a social media based on voice and podcasts. Mhmm. [00:53:36] S1: We do have that moat that we already have... Like, I think our podcast is very, like, entrepreneur heavy. We try and tell people how to A) start a company and then we try and help them on the path of starting a company. We have a grant, we give them some money, we try and build a network for them to go out and build. So it can be pivoted around a podcast not just of mine, but of a bunch of people who have the same outcome in mind.
00:54:05 · Mati Staniszewski
[00:54:05] S0: So maybe, you know, I can start in the kind of opposite way on the on the voice side first. Like, I could imagine the whole interface very... Being very different where you you kind of... Same way you would imagine Alexa or Siri delivering you the knowledge or some version of of Jarvis where, like, you wake up, you want to learn what happens on the social media and and it kind of summarizes things that are interesting to you and you can ask questions, go deeper. Like, for me that would be, like, part one where social media comes with, like, embedded assistant that kind of keeps you up to date on what's happening and you can engage with that, where where I could, like, oh, leave a comment here or hey, engage with this part or respond to this person. And you could you could, like, imagine both responses, being text or voice directly. So that that would be, like, a first... Like, a very shift into, like, the static timeline view into more of, like, interactive companion view. So that would be one component of this. Two... Yeah. I'm I'm kind of... I'm hesitating because I'm thinking, like, how would I incentivize the people? And that's the tricky part, but, like, I do think there, you know, if you record a video message from you, like that's great, second to that you record audio message, image, then text, so if you could have voice as part of that, it would be great. Simple version of that on social media could be, like, you know, you write a you write a post or you write an essay, and I can listen to that in your voice and and and enjoy it. But that's that kind of part of how can I leave the messages and comment across would be another another big one? Free, which is both on language level but on the voice level. Making it straight international, translated, and and and and and enjoyed across languages would be would be another one. But look, think it's a very tricky tricky one in terms of, like, the incentive side, like, how do you shift that? Know you're probably more familiar given given given your work of, like, tokenized based or or, like, incentive... Monetary incentive based approaches. I'm not... I... It's like... I I can see this working, but I'm not a big fan. I don't like this, like, kind of transactional approach, like, should not be that.
00:56:14 · Mati Staniszewski, Nikhil Kamath
Ideally, you're, like, engaged because you're interested rather than because you you think it can give you, like, the monetary award. Like, it should be a secondary versus primary effect. I think, you know, like, that that what what Sean to be working... I I think the verification side, I would keep the verification side. I think it's valuable for people to know that the the other side is is a real person. Mhmm. And then over time, there'll be a a question of how you verify for for human part. I think that's going to be another big topic, but I would I would have that. If I was creating social media, I would bring that as a big part of the equation. I'm still thinking about the incentive part. How how would I incentivize the positivity versus the negativity? And that's that's that's, you know, like, almost the world got... At at some places, calibrated this way where negativity gets more attention. Yeah. And, like, how do you shift that? Is it... [00:57:09] S1: It doesn't even have be positivity. It could be neutrality. [00:57:13] S0: Positivity? Like, you know, like like... But then... Like, if [00:57:18] S1: you're gonna trigger a emotion, like, the emotion could be greed, the emotion could be to pontificate. By being here, you sound smarter. This is a bunch of people who are trying to feed curiosity. There's a bunch of thing... Other emotions that you can play with which are more on the right if the curve is left being negativity and right being positivity. You're more towards the right.