Interview with Nashilu Mouen-Makoua, head of storytelling at The Browser Company, about how the team behind the Arc browser builds its brand. Topics include her people-centered storytelling philosophy, how the creative team generates ideas and structures internal meetings, using ChatGPT to research past cultural moments, polish writing, and simulate and interview a typical Arc user live on the show, and how the company aims to reach "laptop people." Timestamps cover storytelling philosophy, creative strategy, integrating ChatGPT into her workflow, and positioning products through social context. # Video Identity Observation: Ep. 32 with Nashilu Mouen-Makoua ## Explicit Self-Description Evidence ### Show Identity - The host identifies the program as **"AI and I"** in the closing segment: > "you absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to AI and I." - The host is named **Dan** (Dan Shipper), identified in the outro: > "a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship." - Episode numbering is present in the title: **"Ep. 32"**, indicating a serialized, ongoing interview format. ### Host Role Disclosure - Dan discloses a financial interest in the guest's company: > "I'm also a tiny, tiny, tiny investor. So, I'm invested in your success. Everyone should know that." This is an observable transparency practice regarding conflicts of interest. - He also discloses personal connection: > "We've been friends for a long time. And I've been an admirer of your work for a long time." ## Intended Audience - The audience appears to be **professionals interested in practical AI use**, particularly those who use ChatGPT for work tasks like research, writing, and market analysis. Evidence: the episode centers on the guest's specific ChatGPT workflows (free-flowing research, one-liner iteration, language tightening). - A secondary audience: **brand/marketing and storytelling practitioners**, given the extended discussion of the Browser Company's brand strategy, "Writers' Room" meetings, and positioning work (e.g., the Tracy Chapman 1988 context research). - The outro frames the audience as entertainment-and-insight seekers: > "Every episode is a roller coaster of emotions, insights, and laughter." ## Claimed Scope of the Channel - The show positions itself as covering **ChatGPT and AI use cases**, per the outro: > "knowledge bombs about chat GPT." - Topics demonstrated in this episode: brand storytelling at a tech company, AI-assisted writing workflows, market research with ChatGPT, and persona simulation for research. - Format demonstrated: **long-form conversational interview** with live screen-sharing of ChatGPT sessions (the host drives the tool while the guest directs prompts). ## Observable Presentation Patterns (Not Creator Claims) - **Interview guests are practitioners with named roles**: the guest is introduced as "head of storytelling at the Browser Company, which is the maker of Arc, the Arc browser." - **Guests are personally known to the host**: > "we first met when you were working at First Round Capital, and I was doing a little bit of an angel fund with them." - **Live, unscripted tool demonstration**: the host and guest collaboratively prompt ChatGPT mid-episode (e.g., generating the "Aisha Khan" persona), including handling an error: > "we got an error. Have it be broken." - **Tone**: informal and enthusiastic ("Like, I'm kind of buzzing right now"), with hype-driven outro language ("smash that like button"). - The outro appears **tongue-in-cheek/exaggerated** in style ("let me just say Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you"), suggesting an intentionally over-the-top persona for the closing segment. ## Notes on Source Boundaries - The outro's grandiose claims ("epitome of awesomeness," "treasure chest") are creator claims about the show, not verifiable qualities; they are recorded here as self-description evidence only. - No curated metadata was supplied; observations are drawn solely from the title and transcript. # Delivery Observation: "The Browser Company Is Building a Brand That Drives Viral Growth" — Ep. 32 with Nashilu Mouen-Makoua ## Participants & Format - **Two-speaker interview** (host Dan; guest Nashilu Mouen-Makoua), largely conversational with a **live screen-share segment** where Dan drives ChatGPT while Nash directs ("I can drive and you can you can tell me like what you what you want me to say"). - The episode **opens cold** with a guest clip before the intro: the first ~30 seconds are Nash's AI-use summary, repeated nearly verbatim later at [1324]–[1476] — a pre-produced teaser pattern. ## Tone - **Warm, informal, mutually admiring.** The host opens with heavy praise: "I'm a gigantic admirer of the work that you've done at the Browser Company," and later "But I also want to gas you up a little bit." - Guest tone is **reflective and exploratory**, often thinking aloud: "Um I'm trying to think uh but there's something about just like where AI is currently..." - Frequent **enthusiasm interjections** from both: "This is crazy, Dan," "Oh my goodness. Dan, this is so cool," "I'm kind of buzzing right now." ## Vocabulary & Recurring Phrases - **"Invert / inversion"** is the guest's signature term, repeated throughout: "how do you invert the narrative?", "inverting how we did releases," "how do you invert invert the current story because it's so big?" - **Concrete pop-culture anchors** for abstract strategy: "selling kitchen knives in a QVC TV show," "Can you make it Kitchen Nightmares?", "80s TV show meets browser company." - **"People" as a frame** repeated deliberately: "it always starts with people, and it always has to do with people"; "centering people." - The guest self-consciously avoids industry language: "I don't care to speak the language of what exists already." ## Teaching / Explaining Habits - **Numbered structure for lists.** "there's uh three ways that I've learned to... the three things that I've started using it for are one is... the second is... then the third" — delivered twice (teaser and body). - **Walks through artifacts live.** The ChatGPT research segments are narrated step-by-step: "So you've asked how many people work remotely around the world... then you say, can you give me an estimate of what you mean when you say hundreds of millions?" - **Metaphors for AI's role:** "acting as a little bit of a mirror," "new Play-Doh for the same mission that you've always had," "organized chaos." ## Communication Patterns - **Hedged, self-correcting speech** from the guest: repeated words ("the the the whole goal," "it it it's the feel of the team"), fillers ("Um," "you know") — consistent throughout, suggesting unscripted delivery. - **Host pattern: summarize-then-probe.** Dan frequently restates the guest's point, then asks a question: "You're saying we want to make it like selling knives on QVC... why that's important?" - **Collaborative prompting on the fly:** the host asks the guest to direct his prompts — "I want you to ask like um is he the guy on the tank." - The guest **flags confidentiality boundaries mid-flow**: "I don't want us to be like oh Browser Company's only building AI," and "you know Hush." ## Isolated Moments (Uncertain as Patterns) - The **closing voice** ("smash that like button... Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you") is a one-off outro bit — likely scripted/AI-generated comedy; no repetition elsewhere in the transcript to establish it as a host habit. - The host's aside about **writing a piece on ancient Greece** ([4063]) appears once; his claim to be "the chat GPT AI guy" suggests recurring show identity, but this is single-instance evidence. ## Uncertainty Notes - Timestamps in brackets reflect transcript indexing, not verified clock time. - The "pre-produced teaser" reading of the opening is inferred from near-verbatim repetition at [1324]; the transcript itself does not label it as such. # Position Extraction: "The Browser Company Is Building a Brand That Drives Viral Growth" (Ep. 32 with Nashilu Mouen-Makoua) ## Participants - **Nashilu (Nash) Mouen-Makoua** — Head of Storytelling, The Browser Company - **Dan Shipper** — Host --- ## 1. Storytelling Philosophy at The Browser Company ### Core beliefs (Nash) - Storytelling **always starts with people** — both the audience and the product creators. - The company's aesthetic comes from its **DNA**: "people who love the product that they're building, love the potential of technology, but also love something outside of technology." - In 2022, the team decided: **"we didn't really have a brand. It was people building a product."** ### Three iterations of storytelling (Nash) - **2022**: Blurring lines between company and "members" — behind-the-scenes videos on performance, Swift on Windows, why they stopped shipping from London. - **2023**: **Inversion** — flipping narrative conventions, e.g., Arc Max launch framed "as accessible as selling kitchen knives in a QVC TV show." - **2024**: Telling the next-stage story, e.g., a keynote "in a diner in Josh's home city" rather than "a black background room." ### People-first as strategy (Nash) - Competitors (Chrome, Safari/Apple) are **"too big to center people"** and "it's too scary to center people" due to risk of unpolished, spiky individuality. - Contrasts with conventional marketing: she rejected coordinating matching outfits for a press article — employees wear what reflects who they are; the company is **"organized chaos."** - Motivation: "it just felt more authentic, because I think that people are tired of things being overly curated." ## 2. The Writers' Room Process (Nash) - A recurring meeting with the storytelling crew (herself, Josh Lee, Cyrus, Carla, Jess, Devin). - Two formats: **feedback meetings** (no agenda) and **"go wide" meetings** for kicking off projects. - Principle: **"I would much rather we start here and bring it back to what's possible than start from what's possible... and work our way out."** - Best ideas (Arc Max, video of the year, boost) came from go-wide sessions; e.g., an unrealized idea to rent a Broadway storefront as a "museum of technology." - Meeting rules: bring **key questions and reference points**; the leader must "poke, being maybe controversial" — leaving it wide open yields less. ## 3. Evocative, Concrete Branding (Nash) - The QVC framing originated from a product intention of improving **"small moments"** in people's days, then: "what if we were selling people less internet? ... more time? ... literally software on a QVC TV." - Rooted in wanting to "ground technology in something that feels really human." - Personal test: she doesn't "care to speak the language of what exists already" in tech; she wants stories her non-tech friends and three younger sisters would understand and love. - **"Operation New York City"**: aspiration that Arc membership feel like NYC — "something for everyone." ## 4. AI Positioning (Nash) - Current AI releases are **about companies, not people**: "GPT-4 is about OpenAI... There isn't room to really talk about what these products are trying to do for people." - There's public **fatigue**: "it says it's going to do this, but does it actually help me?" - AI as **"new Play-Doh for the same mission"** — contrasted with competitors' framing of "keeping up," which measures against competitors' shipments rather than meaningful delivery. - On owning AI-first identity without falling into the "tired" existing narrative — still an open question she flags, with an explicit "Hush" signal that some things are unannounced. ## 5. Personal AI Use Cases (Nash) Initial struggle: fighting with ChatGPT over writing; outputs came back "really cheesy" or wrong-toned because "it was really hard to delegate words." **Three uses**: 1. **Free-flow research** — e.g., sizing the "laptop person" market, Tracy Chapman context research. Prefers ChatGPT over Google/Statista: "I would much rather have a couple of websites summarized" and dig deeper fluidly. 2. **External prompt / iterative thinking on active writing** — learned from teammate Sadina's chats. 3. **Language-tightening prompt** (created by Josh) — "the only time when I let ChatGPT change my words"; most documents pass through it. Key framing: **"I wasn't trying to replace myself. Basically, I was trying to improve the work that I was already doing."** She also uses it as a **tonal gut check**: pasting her writing in blind and asking for a summary to see if intended tone (e.g., "compassionate and supportive") comes across. ### Fact-checking qualification (Nash) - She clicks through links and does additional research when numbers seem off (e.g., catching the freelancers-vs-remote-workers discrepancy). ## 6. Research Methods Demonstrated Live ### Positioning in societal context (Nash) - Thesis: "the best positionings are in response to the societal context that you're building your product within" — examples: Ford Model T (1908, post-1907 recession, cheap car), Macintosh "1984" (response to Reagan-era conservatism), Tracy Chapman's "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" (released ~6 months before the Nov 1988 election, capturing hope/frustration/change). - Present-day context she identifies: years of acceleration, pandemic aftermath, people "on our laptop the whole time," and a question: **"is it okay to aspire to less?"** - Brand's role: "you can't be the antidote to everything, but you can actually be the antidote for like this part" — the time spent on the computer. ### Persona simulation (Dan driving, Nash directing) - Dan prompted ChatGPT to generate five "laptop class" profiles, then a detailed biography of "Aisha Khan," then simulated her in a new chat ("only respond as this person"). - Nash's persona definition: people whose **livelihoods are on the computer**, hybrid/remote, proud of work but with competing priorities, phone people for fun, "don't want to be on their laptop all the time." - Observed limitation: initial answers were **"a little bit generic"**; pushing with "tell me things only Aisha might say" produced specifics (fundraising events, crisis comms, donor relations) that Nash found more useful for jobs-to-be-done thinking. - Dan's meta-observation: specificity is "such a function of prompting." ### Related use cases mentioned - **Dan**: using transcripts to "write a profile of that person... then continue interviewing them after they're gone." - **Nash**: team members Adina and Jay put 25–30 interview transcripts into ChatGPT to tabulate responses and extract cross-interview threads. - **Nash**: using ChatGPT to reformat lists (e.g., "list these industries in one sentence with commas") — Dan: reformatting is "actually really underrated as a time-saver." - **Nash**: two-sentence podcast descriptions for "Imagining Arc" from Josh's diary transcripts. ### Dan's closing assessment - Simulating an age's gestalt via language models is "such a powerful shortcut" versus weeks of reading; he plans to recreate the exercise for "Ford T folks of 1908" and for his own ancient Greece writing. ## 7. Speaker Disagreements / Tensions - No direct disagreements; both note the **genericness problem** with AI personas and the need for verification, preserved above as explicit qualifications. - Nash withholds detail on AI product plans ("Hush") — an unresolved tension deliberately left open by the speaker. # Speaker Attribution & Provenance Record ## Video - **Title:** The Browser Company Is Building a Brand That Drives Viral Growth - Ep. 32 with Nashilu Mouen-Makoua - **ID:** `01a0f15b-089d-768a-bf03-57632b02b209` ## Speakers & Roles ### Primary Speakers - **Dan (Dan Shipper)** — **Host / creator** of the show "AI and I." - Identified via closing promotional segment: *"a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship."* - States he is a **"tiny, tiny, tiny investor"** in the Browser Company — **disclosed conflict of interest** (self-disclosed in transcript). - Recounts prior connection to the guest via First Round Capital ("I was doing a little bit of an angel fund with them"). ### **Nash (Nashilu Mouen-Makoua)** — **Guest**. - Identified as **Head of Storytelling at the Browser Company** (maker of the Arc browser), per Dan's introduction. - Primary speaker throughout the episode. ### Third-Party Personas (AI-generated, not real speakers) - **"Aisha"** — a fictional persona simulated live via ChatGPT during the episode; responses were read aloud. **Not a human speaker.** - ChatGPT-generated profile names (**Rebecca Green, Jake Thompson, Sophia Martinez, Ahmed Khan, Laura Bennett, Aisha Khan**) are synthetic personas, not participants. ## Referenced Third Parties (mentioned, not speakers) - **Josh (Josh Miller, implied)** — Browser Company co-founder/leader; quoted/anecdotal reference only. - **Nate** — co-founder, referenced by Nash regarding the pre-product browser.company website. - **Carla** — leads brand at Browser Company. - **Josh Lee** — filmmaker/documentarian at Browser Company. - **Cyrus, Jess, Devin, Sadina (Adina), Jay** — Browser Company team members referenced in anecdotes. ## Referenced Sources & Claims - **ChatGPT (OpenAI)** — central AI tool demonstrated live; quoted outputs in transcript are ChatGPT-generated claims, not verified facts. - **Statista** — cited by Nash as a statistics lookup source. - **Tracy Chapman, "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution" (1988)** — cultural reference used in a positioning research exercise. - **1984 Macintosh ad, Ford Model T (1908), Reagan presidency, 1988 US election, Michael Dukakis** — historical references used within ChatGPT research demonstrations; factual accuracy not verified by speakers. ## Promotional Segments - **Flagged — closing promotional segment** (delivered in a parody tone, likely AI-generated voice or scripted outro): urges viewers to *"smash that like button and subscribe to AI and I"* and includes *"Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you."* This is a promotional/outro segment, not substantive content. - **Host self-disclosure:** Dan's investor interest in the Browser Company is a disclosed financial stake tied to the guest's employer. ## Availability & Uncertainty - **No curated metadata supplied** — speaker identities inferred from in-transcript introductions only. - Last names for "Dan" (Shipper) and the promo persona context come from the outro; guest's full name comes from the title. - **Comment availability:** not stated in source material. - No timestamps available in transcript. I was fighting with chat GPT. At one point, I was doing a lot of writing at Browser Co. And so, I was like, man, if chat GPT can take this off my plate, and it would come back with like this crazy tone. And I'd be like, this is really cheesy, or this is just not working for me. And the three ways that I found that it helps me. One is just as I'm in free flow. The second is external prompt for writing that I'm actively doing. And then the third, tightening your language with a very specific prompt you gave it. But it took me a long time to get to a place I wasn't trying to replace myself. Basically, I was trying to improve the work that that I was already doing. Nash, welcome to the show. Hey, Dan. Good to be here. So good to have you. We've been friends for a long time. And I've been an admirer of your work for a long time. And so, it's really, really amazing to get to have you on the show. For people who don't know, you are the head of storytelling at the Browser Company, which is the maker of Arc, the Arc browser, which I use all the time. I'm actually using it right now to record this episode. I'm also a tiny, tiny, tiny investor. So, I'm invested in your success. Everyone should know that. But yeah, it's great to have you. It's good to be here. Yes, I feel like we've known each other through many lives at at this point. We have. Yeah, we we first met when you were working at First Round Capital, and I was doing a little bit of an angel fund with them. And we've stayed connected ever since. Um So, the thing I wanted to start with today, we're going to get into some AI use cases. But the thing I wanted to start with today is I'm a gigantic admirer of the work that you've done at the Browser Company. I think everything from your website to your YouTube videos to the way you write job posts. Like it's all kind of like has this really interesting aesthetic. And it's different and new. And it's like refreshing. It's like I've never really seen a technology company do like storytelling like this. And I I wanted to talk about that. Like I want to talk about how you how you think about it, how you put that together, how you make sure that everything is on on the vibe, how you even articulate think about the vibe. So, let's start there. Perfect. Um I think the first thing that I would say is even the examples that you've given, uh it's all it's it's the feel of the team in many ways. And I think that one of I remember when Josh first first approached me. And we hadn't even landed on the name storytelling yet. It was like this this role. I think that it feels like it has your name on it. And then we landed on storytelling. And I was like, feel like the Browser Company is pretty good at storytelling already, you know? And so, like even the the browser.company website, um that was before there was ever a product that Josh and Nate had put that together. And so, I think that there's something about the the DNA of this company, which is people who love the product that they're building, love the potential of technology, but also love something outside of technology. And so, when I think of our our storytelling, I think of uh Carla, who leads brand. And so, a lot of the visual feel, and who's an artist who lives up in Harlem with her family and brings a lot of external um feel to the work that she does. I think of Josh Lee, who was a filmmaker, documentary creator before joining the Browser Company. I think of myself, I love writing outside of Browser Co. And so, I think that was always my biggest uh hope was that we would challenge what a what a tech company felt like and how it would show up in the world. And I think that that comes a lot from just having people who care about things outside of outside of this industry. That that makes total sense. Um and and I love that you're bringing in the team. But I also want to gas you up a little bit. Like you're doing you're doing amazing stuff. Like tell us about like what you are doing, like what you are bringing to the Browser Company in like what storytelling actually means to you. And and and what what part do you have to play in what you guys put out? Yeah. Um So, I think there's there's two things that I believe fundamentally in terms of storytelling. Um the first is that it always starts with people, and it always has to do with people, whether it's the people that you're talking to, or it's the people that are creating your product. And so, I remember in 2022, we were doing this presentation for the team. It was like 6 months into creating the storytelling team. We were thinking about, what is the Browser Company brand? And one of the decisions was that we didn't really have a brand. It was people building a product. And so, if you think about storytelling over the last 3 years, I'd say there's been like three iterations of it, where year one, 2022, was really can we bring our team to the forefront? Can we be people building a product in the way that you're you know, showing behind the scenes in ways that's never been done by folks before. And so, we really started with with these videos that were people sharing how we're thinking about performance, or how we're thinking about Swift on Windows, or why we stopped shipping from London. It was always the team sharing the story. So, 2022 was really about blurring the lines between company and our members, as we call them, in a way that hadn't been done before. And then 2023 was really about thinking about inversion. And it's another thing that I like to think about is, how do you invert the narrative? How do you take what everyone else is saying and do it differently, or tell it in fresh and new ways? And it was really inverting how we did releases. And so, if you think about Arc Max release, which was in October, wave one of AI, when everything was so big and world-changing, and it was like a year after chat GPT had been released initially. And we wanted to think about, how could you flip how AI felt to people and make it as accessible as like selling kitchen knives in a QVC TV show. And so, it really is a lot of the time, can you keep people guessing? Can you keep it fresh? Can you make it really personal? And can you invert what people's expectations are? And even this year has been a lot around, how do you think about the next stage for our company and how do we tell that story? And again, how do you do a keynote that isn't in a black background room? What if it was in a diner in Josh's home city with a couple of our members? Again, you're inverting people's expectation and really centering people. So, I'd say those are probably two of my biggest things is people and inversion. And I love we we like keep ourselves guessing at the Browser Company, too. And so, not falling into what has worked will keep working for you. That's so amazing. You said so many things I want to follow up on. Like the the first one that comes to mind is thinking about companies as collections of people and telling stories from that perspective instead of sort of like this formless mass. Like I think a a good example would be like um like at Hertz, like everyone wears the Hertz uniform. Like they're not individuals. They're like Hertz it's Hertz. It's the physical embodiment of Hertz. And it sounds like you're kind of like flipping that on its head a little bit. Where where did that come from? Like how are you how is that coming out of your head or or the team's or the team's collective brains? Like how are you coming to like, oh, I have this like cool new way to talk about companies and and and story tell about companies and it's individuals. Like tell me about that. Um I so, I think two things. I think at the high level and then really tactically, one of the things that we do at Browser Co, which I love. Um so, the people first is also a question of it's strategic, too, because what can our competitors not do? Our competitors are the Chromes of the world, the Safaris of which are part of Apple. And they're too big to center people. And it's too scary to center people, because that comes with its risk of, you know, people have their own opinions, and they show up in their own ways. And you lose a sense of, you know, of of polish in some ways when you let it be spiky. And I remember one time I was speaking to a different who did marketing for another company. And and we were we were talking about our first big article that was going to be in a publication. And she was like, oh yeah, like what is the thread across the people who will be interviewed? What are they wearing? Are they wearing similar clothes? Is it the similar story? And I remember talking about it with Josh. And we were like, oh, no. So-and-so is going to wear a knitted jumper because she loves knitting. And that's who she is. And so-and-so is going to wear a Hawaiian shirt if he wants to, because that's who he is. And that's the Browser Company. Like it is organized chaos in some ways. And it is an inversion of what you would expect as like the Hertz of it. So, I think at the at the highest level, it um I'm trying to think where it came from from a like it just felt more authentic, because I think that people are tired of things being overly curated. And I think that I wouldn't I wouldn't still be in technology if it weren't for the Browser Company. And I know there are many people at this company for whom this is like their time to like build a build a product that they want to see. I I would be out somewhere writing a book, which we've talked about many times before. So, it was if I was going to do this role and stay in technology, it was to do something different and to really push the boundaries. And part of that meant um it's just about I fundamentally believe it's about people. Um from a more tactical perspective, we have this meeting that I love called Writers' Room. And it's the storytelling crew. It's myself, Josh Lee, Cyrus who works with us on video, Carla who leads brand, Jess who's a brand designer here as well, Devin on the growth team. And and what we do is we have two types of meetings. It's like a no agenda meeting. It is a feedback meeting. And so, you can either like bring projects you're working on just to get people's thoughts. Or we have go wide meetings, which is where somebody has like a project that they're kicking off. And they just want to go as wide as we can and throw out the biggest ideas and pull from everywhere other than technology. And I would much rather we start here and bring it back to what's possible than start from what's possible and what we know and work our way out of there. And so, our biggest moments, whether it is Arc Max or it is our active video of the year or it is boost or all of those have come from a writer's room where you really give people the chance to go wide, pull from outside, and then bring it into, okay, what do we what are we going to do with that? That's fascinating. How does that work? So, when you're going to a go wide meeting, does everybody pull a bunch of references together or is someone who's the person who's presenting, are they responsible for just like coming to the meeting with all the references and doing all the stuff and then everyone just reacts or how does it work? No, it will be something like, hey, I am uh hey, I'm kicking off this project. I'm, for example, uh one of the thoughts that we had, which we like never did, was uh when we we would think about, how would we want to tell the story of Arc and what's possible? Um and so, it was a a go wide meeting, hey, I want to talk about this topic. Here's like a a write-up. I think it was Josh and I and I who like collaborated on bringing this to the to the team. Um here are the goals. And I just want to talk about this for like however long we have. Uh and then everyone will either read that the night before or come with some thoughts the morning of or do like a voiceover coming into the meeting. And then it's just it's riffing. It's like riffing for now and the person is like taking notes. We were like, man, we should rent a storefront on Broadway and do like a museum of technology and it's like Chrome on the walls and at the end is like a couple, you know, we didn't we never did that, but we would never have gotten to that idea if it hadn't been for just throw stuff at the wall. And then the person who's leading will take that and kind of be like, okay, cool, I'm hearing a couple of threads. I'm going to go and sit with what's most interesting and I might come back with like three different directions. I'd love pushback on these three and I'm going to commit to to one of them. I love that. Um and are there any other any specific rules about how you do this like in the meeting? Um like how do you how do you keep things free flowing? Like how do you how do you get people generating as much interesting stuff as possible? I think you have to um have a couple of key questions that you're bringing to the group. Um and a couple of key reference points. I think that uh folks always have like a reference point or two that they're bringing in. Um and uh you have to be prepared to lead the meeting in a way that you are poking, being maybe controversial. Um you can't just kind of leave it wide open. If you leave it wide open, we'll still get good stuff, but I think that it is the uh we we talk about lookouts fours. Like what are your lookouts fours? Or if there's anything you want pushback on, bring that to the bring that to the crew as well. Another thing that you said when you were first sort of introducing how you think about storytelling is when you're doing, I think it was the Arc Mac Arc Mac launch, you were talking about um AI is this currently like this currently like hyped thing that um everyone's talking about and you're you were like, we want to flip the narrative and we want to make it as accessible as buying QVC kitchen knives. And that little thing like QVC kitchen knives, it's so evocative. Talk about that. Mhm. Um yeah, I think a lot of the product team's intention had been around uh what are the small moments that we can make better in somebody's day. Um and the thread that that pulled was like, oh, what if it is it's giving people like less in I'll tell you even how we got there. It was like, okay, small moments of people's day, not big things, can we just improve the small interactions? Um and so, that was the product intention already. And then there was a question of, well, um is it and I think we'd had an offsite in uh in LA that summer where we were talking about and it was like, is it that we're giving people the opportunity to have less internet in a world that like wants to give people more etc. It was less internet. And what if we were selling people less internet? And what if we were selling them more time? And what if we were selling them literally software on a QVC T and so, that's kind of how and you know, and you land with like, yeah, actually we're going to sell it on a QVC show. Um and and it was a um I think it I think it's it's always been part and parcel of the browser company to want to ground technology in something that feels really human. And that was the you know, I used to live near a I think it's like the QVC center in London. I used to like pass it on the train and so, it's like always been a a back of the mind thing, but um even as as Josh and I were talking about it, there's just like the the and it it was like Josh and I were thinking about it with Josh, a couple of other folks. Um Carla did the design for it as well. Like what are the reference point of like 80s TV show meets browser company and uh what are the human elements that many people will actually be able to see and feel? And that's one that uh there's some sometimes you just know when something's captured. That's also to the question around writer's room, you know when something's capturing the imagination of the people around the table and like pull it. Totally. I I guess what I'm what I'm what I'm getting at or what I'm asking about is like there's a way that people might say we want like they might just say we want to make AI accessible. Right? Like that's a that's a pretty common thing that you might hear from a branding person or anyone involved in storytelling or marketing or anything like that. Yeah. And you're saying we want to make it like selling knives on QVC. Like that comes with so much flavor and and evokes so much emotion and so many associations. And I want to talk about for you as a storyteller like um why that's important or getting to those like sort of really concrete evocative details. Yeah. Um I think because I don't come from the tech world in that way. And um and I uh you know, grew up in London. I was an English major, so I've always cared about like the stories of people. My friends in London are uh you know, photographer or documentary or filmmaker. And so, um I don't care to speak the language of what exists already. Um and what exists already as in like the language of this industry. And so, for personally for me, I would say if I'm telling a story that the people around me will not be interested in or not get and that's that's not exciting or interesting or uh motivating. Um And I think Carla Carla and I have had this conversation a lot around like, yeah, you want your brand to um to make people feel something, but not just people around us only. Um and so, I think that my my sisters love Arc. I have three little sisters. They're uh 15, 19, and 20 and they're in New York at the moment right now, which is crazy. And um and they love Arc and I want the people in my life to be able to understand and love this thing because this is part of the reasons I joined the browser company. It is such an audacious bet to build a new browser. And that touches so many people. And so, can you build a product can you build a brand that speaks to so many people? And that means not that means making it really tangible and tactical. Um Make it feel like something you can actually put your put your arms around. Um the the last thing I'll say is we done this presentation a while ago when I just joined, which was uh it was called Operation New York City and it was thinking about our membership uh our members at Browser Co. And New York City is the type of city uh where there's something for everyone. And there will always be the leading industries of whether that is finance or consulting or fashion. Um but there is something for everyone in the city. And could Arc and our membership feel like the city that we're born of where there is something for everyone and it can speak You always have the the leading, you know, demographics using your product, but it should feel like it speaks to there's something here for anyone. And I think that that's part of the the fabric of this company and and our story. I love it. Um I want to get into the AI stuff. Okay, let's do it. So, I know you're using AI for some some work stuff and some personal stuff. I also know that you've had a little bit of like uh interesting journey with it where you found it's useful for some things and not useful for others. So, like so tee us up. Um tell us a little bit about where you're using it and then we'll we'll jump into some use cases. Cool. Awesome. Um I'm trying to think uh but there's something about just like where AI is currently in terms of um the stories that are being told about AI. For us at Browser Co, you know, we're explore we've we've been exploring it since October of last year, right? Um and we've always been focused on the smaller parts of people's days. And I think that as we look at um this next phase for AI and what's possible, um I'm really excited for part of our story to be also, how do you tell a new story about AI? Because I think that if you really think about it, all of the releases are always about companies, right? It's like new GPT-4 is about OpenAI. Gemini is about Google. Um And Lama is about Facebook. Um And there isn't room to really talk about like what are these products trying to do for people in the uh most intimate ways but intimate as in the smallest ways. And I think that there is this fatigue around like it says it's going to do this, but does it actually help me to do this? And what can it actually help me to do? And I think my own journey was like that, too. And I'm like, man, I'm missing this I'm I'm clearly not using this in the right way. Um but I'm really excited for what it means to like invert the story of AI because it's not going anywhere. It's really powerful. It's really help I I was in Kenya and my aunt was talking about using ChatGPT for something, right? I love that. And so, what does it mean for us even as a company to think about how do you invert invert the current story because it's so big? Can you make it uh can you make Can you make it Kitchen Nightmares, right? But on a on a on a broader scale. Totally. That's all I got. Just cuz I'm like now I'm like okay, I can't talk to you cuz I don't you know, I don't want us to be like oh Browser Company's only building AI. But like I think that it's something where we've really been thinking about um you know, uh how much do you put like if you are building AI into your product and you know, you know Hush. So you know we're really exploring uh what that can mean. Like how much How do you own the fact that you are building maybe an AI first product or you know, whatever that may be but without falling into the existing narrative because it's tired and it's fatigued and there is that weight around it. Um I think that's one of the interesting things is like um most companies when they think about participating in AI are like framing it around um keeping up. Yes. Um and that seems like a very different you're you're attacking with a very different perspective. Talk about that. Well, I think that it's because um it's coming from a place of keeping up and it's coming from a place of uh measuring yourself against your competitors and what they have shipped, not what can you deliver to people that is meaningful to them. And so that's a really good way of putting it. Uh it's And so the audience is actually not the person who knows and loves your product. The audience is everyone beyond them and it's a it's a keeping up with the Joneses in some way. And I think the way that we've thought about it is it's new Play-Doh for the same mission that you've always had, you know? Um but I hadn't thought about it in the way of it is it's keeping up. And keeping up is is is for secondary reasons. It's not because it delivers um what you want to for the people that you're hoping to build for. Totally. And so personally, how has the new Play-Doh? How has it played out in in your work life? Yeah. Um I was fighting with ChatGPT. I was like drop this for me, please. And it would come back with like cuz I was at one point I was doing a lot of writing at Browser Company. You know, it was our member updates. It was our internal docs. It was um and uh you know, at one point most of the words that you would see uh were coming from me. And so, um I was like man, if ChatGPT can take this off my plate and type in hey, can you draft XYZ? And it would come back with like this crazy tone, right? And I'd be like this is really cheesy or this is just not working for me. Um and so I'd say there's uh three ways that I've learned to I'm a I'm probably I'm I'm a I'm a daily user at this point, Monday to Friday. I'm not really using it outside of work. Um but uh and the three ways that I found that it helps me, especially cuz I care so much about words. And so it was really hard to delegate words. And I think that that's something with AI is like what can you do for me that is helping me but isn't trying to replace what I do that is good and um and so uh the three things that I've started using it for are one is just as I'm uh in free flow in like if I'm following an idea and I'm doing research and I and I want to bring I I was researching uh the context behind Tracy Chapman's talking about a revolution because of this presentation that I'm giving next week. Um and what was happening in 1988 and how does that relate to this other thread of the positioning of this other product in 1988, right? And so that's like the free-flowing conversation that I'll have with ChatGPT. Like how should we size this market, etc. Um the second is uh kind of external prompt for writing that I'm actively doing or like variations. And it was actually one of my teammates, Sadina, we were revving on one-liners and she was like I've been thinking with ChatGPT. And I was like how do you think with ChatGPT, right? And she sent me her chat and I was like oh yeah, this isn't iterative uh experience. And then the third uh which I'll say is the only time when I let ChatGPT like change my words is this um prompt that um Josh came up with and it is around you know, tightening your language with a very specific prompt you gave it and I actually put most of my documents through that. But it took me a long time to get to a place where I felt that I was getting value and that it was I wasn't trying to replace myself. Basically, I was trying to improve the work that that I was already doing. That's cool. Uh let's let's start with the first one. Like I want to see how you're using it for that free-flowing research. Um okay, so this is one example where um we're developing a better understanding of like who is Arc full at its early stages. And so um this is a conversation just around the different subsets that uh we call them lap We call ourselves laptop people in many ways. Like a laptop person is a specific type of person who is maybe going to the office but primarily on their laptop. And so this is just like an ongoing conversation that I was having um just like dig a couple of levels deeper. So basically you've like let's start at the top. So you've sort of come up with this like laptop person idea. You have the tag, you have the word already and you're like I want to I want to sort of flesh this out and understand more about like who those people are so that why are you why? Like why do you want to flesh it out more? Um because we are you know, the browsers are for everybody. Who are they for initially? And uh as we understand as we think about it, it is for people whose livelihoods are on the computer, right? And what is it This was this was me trying to understand what does it mean to have your livelihood on the computer? Um and there is livelihood on the computer in that I am going into the office every day. There is that I'm hybrid or I'm remote. And so just trying to get an understanding of um who are the people who should be in this audience that maybe we're not thinking of as being in this audience right now. I see. And so you start with like how many people work remotely around the world. So I'm curious like you could Google that. Why didn't you Google it? Um because now I'm in Statista and I'm in this other place and I actually have I would much rather have a couple of websites summarized and because I knew that I wanted to do a deeper dive than go through seven different pages that are giving me information in an un-nuanced way. And so I knew that I wanted to go a couple of of levels deeper here. Okay, what's Statista? Oh, Statista is like you know, if ever you look up like how many people use Mac or Windows, it'll give you Yes, it'll give you like a website with a graph and that's the end of the information. Okay, that makes sense. Um okay, so you you asked how many people work remotely around the world. Um and it's saying, you know, as of 2014 it's estimated that 35% of workers are working globally. So it's giving you like a little bit of an answer. And then you say, can you give me an estimate of what you mean when you say hundreds of millions of people worldwide are now working remotely? So like you're basically asking it to like go deeper in a particular part of the answer it gave you, is that right? Yeah, yeah. Because if I'm trying to understand uh an initial target market, I need it to be much more specific than hundreds of of millions. Okay, cool. And let's let's keep going down the chat. Mhm. So it says when I say hundreds of millions of people worldwide are now working remotely, I'm referring to an estimated range of 500 million to 1 billion people. Um so it's it's giving you a more specific number to to work from. And then um and now you're kind of your next your next follow-up is like which industries lend themselves to remote work more than others. So like you started with like this initial sizing. Yeah. And then now you're kind of like okay, I want to cut up the the kind of remote work industry into like um industries that maybe are like leaning more towards that kind of work than others, right? Yes, because what I want to develop is um I want to develop a hypothesis around at the most granular level, who is this person that we're thinking of? And um and so part of that is uh what do they do? Right? And there's only so far that I can think of what they may do. Um and so yeah, the the the whole goal of this is to go from like a macro statement to actually being able to envision this person as we're doing research and meeting loads of different people who are Arc members and not Arc members, um trying to fill out the edges of the world here. Okay, that makes sense. Um so you're saying which industries lend themselves to to remote work? And it says technology, what else? Finance and accounting, that makes sense. And part of this is that you want to speak to people in a in a way that feels like you're speaking directly to them, right? And so this is just developing it. Okay, what are they doing day-to-day? Who are they? What are they doing? All that kind of stuff. Yeah. So it gave you like a whole big list. And then you follow up with that with to that list with can you list some these industries in one sentence with commas so I can copy them into a document? I love that. I was like I was like this is great. I don't want uh Thanks. I I think that like ChatGPT's like reformatting capabilities are like actually really underrated as a time-saver. Um something like that it's a task like that might have taken you like 5 minutes to do. But sometimes you have lists that are like gigantic and it just it would take you like an hour or two and it just does it in an instant. It's so nice. It's great. Uh one of the things that we've been using it for as well is um we've been experimenting with a podcast called Imagining Arc that is just weekly diary updates from Josh and uh Here's the transcript, make it into a two-sentence description that sounds like a description for X other podcast is also just like those types of tasks that um That's cool. So let's keep going. So it gave you that list and then so now you're you're getting even more granular with the list. It's giving you like the list of technology, finance, accounting and you're like, "Okay, how many people are in those industries?" Mhm. Um it's and it's basically doing the research of like going to different articles and then summarizing what it finds for you in one response so you don't have to open up a bunch of tabs. And part of this is also developing an understanding This is much more fluid than if I were doing this research across different tabs or it's it's uh I can go back to kind of what I was looking up earlier without having to literally go back in tabs. And so one of the things I was trying to understand here is like is the larger market remote globally? How large is the market in the US? But actually what are the industries and what So it was it's moving between different levels of the same problem in one place. And how are you checking all this stuff cuz like for me sometimes like looking at an answer like that I'm like, "Okay, that's that might be right but also like I don't I don't know. Are you checking? Like yeah. I clicked through a couple of these links and then I would do like for example at one point you'll hear me ask about freelancers and it was like, "Oh, freelancers is 1.5 billion in the world." And I was like, "Oh, but remote is 1 billion so like how will we" and so that's when I might go and do Yeah yeah yeah yeah. some additional research. That makes sense. Um Sorry, there's someone Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So okay, so let's keep going. So we've got our estimates. You're you're like you're continuing to ask it to like refine that down. Mhm. Um I'm talking about students. Um Uh and now you're like getting into students. Like how many students are in the US? Mhm. Um how many remote remote workers in the US? Yeah, tell us like I guess let's let's like keep scrolling through. I kind of want to see if there's um Yeah. other ways that you're slicing things. So continuing to kind of like follow up on all the other ChatGPT all of the same questions in different variations of the same I mean it makes sense. Like it's really good for that. I think it's it's underrated how good it is for asking repetitive annoying questions that like you can't ask anyone else cuz they get mad at you, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And and when you when you when you're trying to develop a perspective This is like I'm developing an opinion. It's not I am trying to get it down to a T. It's I'm trying to adjacent work that I'm doing right now is like I'm going from like this is the world to this is the intersectoral and what are the levels between that? And so that's what I was trying to like work through and estimate. But yeah, this is a uh I'm trying to develop a perspective while I'm doing this basically. Yeah, one one of the things that you brought up earlier is a sort of using this kind of free-flowing research style to like understand a context. So like I think you brought up like Chase Tracy Chapman's like one of Tracy Chapman's songs or albums. I can't I can't remember. Um I'd love to see how you do it for something like that where you're um and I don't know if you can share that specific one but Cool. All right, so I love to start presentations off with something that is um outside of what we're going to be discussing. And at the moment we're talking about positioning. And for some reason Tracy Chapman's talking about revolution has been in my head. I think somebody played Tracy Chapman at the beginning of our all hands this week and I landed on on this song. And so there's there's this thread and then there is another that I'm pulling at the moment which is like the best positionings are in response to the societal context that you're building your product within. And so some of the research that I've been doing prior to this was around you know, what was the context around the Ford T when it was released, right? Which was like 1908 recession 1907 really cheap car 1908 positions that way because you're coming out of recession. 1984 is in response to Macintosh Reagan administration. So it was kind of just feeling those things out. That's so cool. I just got to stop you. Like I just very rarely hear someone talk about positioning with that kind of like sense of breadth and context and history. Um I I love it. It feels like such a rich way to think about how to how to talk about your products. I I just love it. Thank you. Thank you. And so I for some reason yeah, Tracy Chapman came on yesterday and so I was curious about I was just listening to the song then I was like, "What is the context around this song?" And so Yeah. Okay, when did Tracy Chapman's "Talking About a Revolution" come out? Um Cool. And so it was a question of what were the societal questions in the US in 1988. And it's saying like you know, economic inequality and poverty. So like widening economic disparities, homelessness, race relations and civil rights, racial racial tensions, affirmative action, the AIDS epidemic the war on drugs the Cold War and nuclear anxiety. Yeah. There was a lot going on. It's I'm like I thought we had it complicated. Um and so then part of my question was like uh then I I remember seeing something about Reagan here and I was like, "Oh, when was Reagan um Is that how you spell Reagan?" Uh no, you got it right the first time. When did um Re- Reagan R yeah, yeah. Thank you. Presidency end? Um Yeah, yeah. And so it was like, "Oh, when was the election So you said so you said So you said like when did Reagan's presidency end? So like tell me about So why are you why are you asking that? Yes, because I had been doing research around um 1984 the Macintosh advert and I think that part of 1984 individualism was in response to the conservatism that had started in the 1980s a couple of years before out coming out of the '70s into the '80s. And so I remembered that this was a time of political transition. And so I was curious how close was this political transition to this song coming out. And so I'm asking, "Okay, what was the election where he left power?" And this is where it got a little I think it gets a little complicated. Um okay, cool. 1988. And so then I was like, "What was the election date in 1988?" And what I'm trying to do is understand the context of this song. Is it It was November 8th. So we're talking it came out 6 months before this moment. And so what is the context of the country in April of 1988? If And so this is really trying to dig into the best positionings or the best products or the best moments come in conversation with the time in which they're brought into the world. And so here I was like, "Okay, who was the who was the opposition in 1988 at the US election?" Uh Michael Dukakis. And what guy I think he was like he he rode a tank famously and like wore a helmet and everyone thought he was kind of like a little too nerdy or something to be president. I I think that's the guy. I love this. Now I'm going to have to go and research that after. I You should follow up follow up and ask like what did people think of Michael Dukakis and and did he ride a tank? Um Wait, so And So yeah, so the the opposition platform yeah, tell us about that just real quick. And so I'm trying to understand the the context of again, we're trying to understand the context of Tracy Chapman "Talking About a Revolution" in you know, and if you if you we could even ask it like what verses may refer to some of these conversations in 1988? But it is about people you know, trying to get jobs and people trying to make it work and people standing in the welfare line. And so I wanted to understand in April of that year or in the 1987 leading into '98 when it was released, what is the context that she's telling the song in and why did it resonate so deeply? And so now I'm like, "Oh, it wasn't election year." Okay, if you think 6 months out from an election and this is my brain at 11:00 p.m. on a Tuesday night. Sometimes the most creative time. Exactly. If you're thinking 6 months out from an election, you're in the it's not dissimilar to the time that we're in now, right? Where you don't know where things are going to go but you do know what you're hoping for and I and I'm curious about this moments of shifts because I think that not just in the US but globally we're in a moment of shift. And as I think about what does it mean to position our company? Like how do you feel out how people are feeling at this point in time? And so this is all a a thread of um of pulling that. And so it was like, "Okay, what was what was the conversation in 1988 like?" Um and part of that comes from like part of the the remote questioning that I was doing as well is like how are people feeling today? Like we've done a lot of interviews with uh with individuals just that we know that we don't know. And there is this feeling that like it's been many years of things just going faster and faster and do more. And actually I went through a pandemic and some people moved and some people have had kids and some people got married and you're just kind of more all the time. We haven't had room for pause and we've been on our laptop the whole time. And so that's like that's the context of today. And so I'm trying to understand what is the context of these different times, these different positions, with these different songs um that people created something that made people feel something. I got I really connected to what you just said like more and more we've and we've been on our laptops the whole time. I was like that hit me. You know what? Let's let's try something actually. I'd I'd run this through it. Um Hi Chat GPT. Uh could you summarize um Cool. And so this is something I'll do sometimes to feel out if what I'm writing is coming across. Right? Is it tonally uh is it capturing? And so here uh is it tonally is it cap I can write in very convoluted way sometimes. Um is it capturing the message I want to come across? Is it capturing tonally the uh you know, tone is compassionate and supportive? And so this is a I wrote this just cuz it came out of my brain last week. Before I share it with the team, is it is what I'm want it to come across at is that coming across uh in this case as well? So this was a a short piece about being on your laptop the whole time. So you're using it sort of like like as a gut check or like a just a little sanity check of like this is what my gut says or this is what I'm trying to do and I'm not going to tell you what I'm trying to do. I'm just going to ask you to summarize what you see and it's sort of like acting as a little bit of a mirror that's like maybe slightly more objective than you can be on Tuesday at 11:00 at night before you share it with your team. Yeah. And I can follow up and ask uh does this point come across? Does this feel like specifically things that I that I wanted to? If it didn't mention them, is this part of of your read? Yeah, I just I I don't know. I feel like you're doing such a good job of like capturing the spirit of like right now and uh I'm just I'm getting some good vibes from this. I So I want to go back to the like the capturing the spirit of like 1988 like and and just sort of see how like how you're continuing to do that. Um cuz I want to learn how to do this. Um and I feel like you're giving me some like really interesting ways to incorporate Chat GPT in this. So So we were we were sort of like you're asking about the opposition and so we're kind of like flushing out the picture. I had that idea to ask about Michael Dukakis. So I want to just I I want you to ask like um is he the guy on the tank or whatever you would whatever you would ask to like flush him out. feel about Michael uh Let me ask what it what did people think? What did people think about Michael I'll ask was he the guy on the tank? Okay, so it's saying um it was you know, they think it was it was mixed. So what I would probably do right now is I would be like Hey Chat GPT. Um can you give me this response in three paragraphs max? Got it. So basically we got a response and you're like I you know, I want it in I want it in a in a couple paragraphs. Mhm. Um and he's basically like it's saying that they think of him as a competent and effective technocrat. Mhm. Um but this image also worked against him because he was like sort of criticized for lacking charisma and the emotional connection with voters that he and the emotional connection with voters that he needed. Mhm. Um and yeah, that's that's really interesting. Like it he sort of came off as lacking leadership qualities um cuz he was he was too smart. Yes. Um do you want me to ask was he the guy on the tank? I have another question that I would ask it too. Yeah, just just ask just we'll forget the guy on the tank for for a second. Like what would be what would be your like follow-up? And would you how do you swerve this chat to start talking about Tracy Chapman or would you? I would ask um were any of these threads present in Tracy Chapman's song? I think so because Let's ask. Let's ask. Okay. Uh So it's saying yes, several threads uh were present um present in the US in 1988 are reflected in Tracy Chapman's song. Economic inequality and poverty. So the song's lyrics speak directly to the struggles of those living in poverty highlighting the frustration and despair people crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation armies of salvation. Social justice and change. Chapman's call for revolution in the song symbolizes a broader desire for social change and justice. Political polarization and desire for new new leadership. While not explicitly political, the song's message of change and empowerment reflects the broader public sentiment in 1988. In essence, talking about revolution it encapsulates the hope, frustration, and desire for change that were significant undercurrents in the in the US during the lead-up to the 1988 presidential election. And so the reason I highlighted this is because like that's what that like that's one of the things that I was trying to get at in my mind is like was that we went from like does this interesting song to what was happening in 1988 to there was an election to who was in the election? And what was the incumbent and what and okay, yes. So these what you're hearing in this song is not somebody in like a non-election off year who just kind of felt this way. No, it was a um it was capturing a moment in time. Yeah. What and what do you what do you think? So we've talked a little bit about what you feel like are important threads of the context in our time. So things like things are moving faster and faster. We're spending all of it on our laptops. We're just coming out of COVID. Are there other things? Like I just want to like how are you seeing the time that we're living in right now? Um I one thing I wonder about is which is a related thread, but like is it okay to aspire to less also? I think that that's something that that we are seeing and feeling and that we've talked about internally is uh it's the flip side of like go for more. Uh it's the flip side of you know, um of everything going so fast is like is it okay to aspire for this? Is it is it okay to aspire for the um for the small things which might also be an age thing? I think that like there are times to grind and and as we're doing some of these interviews, people like, "No, I know what my priorities are at this point in time." Um so I think that I think that that's one part of it. Um I just think that we uh the the levels at which we're thinking about positioning are societally and then what does it mean like within your computer and what does it mean for the person? And the things are going so fast is on a personal level, it's also on a global level, you know? And so it really is this interplay between everything is moving so fast in the world uh you know, whether it's elections in different countries, whether it is, you know, uh climate disasters, this that everything is so much up here. And even when you get to my computer, I'm having like I'm having more ads than ever on YouTube. And I everything is actually optimizing to give me a little red dot in the corner of the app to remind me to check it cuz they want me to spend time in it. You know? And so it's like what are the threads that how can you you can't be the antidote to everything, but you can actually be the antidote for like this part. And this part is not insignificant because of the time that you're spending in it. And so it really is that what is the relationship between um how somebody's feeling and then this small but big part that you can that you can affect some um some lightness for. Mhm. One of the things I think could be fun to do together is like just to go down even further on this like on this rabbit hole is I think Chat GPT is actually um really good at like simulating the personalities of different people. So we could have it pick out someone from the laptop class and ask it about how it how to how it how we're encapsulating the the feelings of this age and see if we can discover anything new. Are you down for that? I love that. I'm very down for that. Okay, cool. So I I can drive and you can you can tell me like what you what you want me to say. Okay, cool. So what we're going to do is we're going to um basically describe the laptop class to Chat GPT and then we're going to ask it to simulate someone from the laptop class and then and then we're going to uh then we're going to talk talk to them and see what we can find. So, whoop. So, yeah. So, tell me uh give me some give me some descriptions of of the of the laptop class I can give. Yeah. So, these are people who spend um 5 days a week on the computer. Um they rely on their computer for their livelihood and so uh it's not that they could do this work on their phone or that their primary job is is off their computer. Um They use their computer for work and for like internet chores. Um but for things that are more fun, they're phone people. They probably try not to open their laptop over the course of the weekend. Um they might go into an office. They're probably hybrid. Uh or they may also be fully remote and working from home. Um It's laptop people who care also. Like they care about their work. They're really proud of their work. Um but they also have like uh a lot of competing priorities and they are clear on what is important to them. And so, for some of them that might be their kids and their family. For others it might be uh you know, teaching a yoga class out in Brooklyn. They don't want to be on their computer all of the time. And there's a disconnect between being a laptop person because you love what you do and you have pride in what you do. Um but also um wanting to be off that laptop. Like you're on the laptop too much. Um They care about what they do. So, they probably use something like ChatGPT or Grammarly or uh Calendly to like help them get some of these tasks done. Um And I'll I'll I'll stop there for for now. Okay, cool. So, we're basically like putting that into ChatGPT and we're saying, um here here's a here's a group of people uh I'll call the lap the laptop class, right? And we're going to just describe the laptop class. Um I just want to see what it says just to that. I love this little memory updated. It really makes you feel like, thanks for remembering ChatGPT. Yeah. Um okay, so um I want you so now I'm going to say like I want you to give me five profiles of specific people who could be in the laptop class. Make it up based on what I've described and what you know. So, it's giving me crazy. Isn't it cool? This is crazy, Dan. So, it's giving me Rebecca Green, a remote marketing manager who's age 34. She lives in Portland, Oregon. She's a senior marketing manager for a tech startup. She's married with two young kids. So, it's giving me like all that stuff. Um you're Yeah, go for it. Can I tell you in my document here, which is like our uh examples of real people. Uh the first one is this person who um I will call Claire for the sake of this discussion, who is 37, lives with her husband and two children, is like a leader at a company that does coaching, but like cares deeply about her job, but is also So, this that's that's Rebecca. So, that's what I love this. It's so funny. I I actually use ChatGPT for this all the time and it's like it's kind of crazy how good it is for like especially like initial market research. Like you always want to talk to real people, obviously, but like if you're just sort of getting you want to just get a sense like you're kind of doing with the con- this whole context exercise is really good for this. Yeah. Um So, we've got Jake Thompson, the freelance web developer, lives in Austin, specializes in e-commerce sites. He's single, enjoys live music, and practices yoga. Um he loves the flexibility of his freelance career, but finds himself working late into the night. Um and so, he's sort of stressed out about that. We've got Sophia Martinez, the hybrid teacher and writer. We've got Ahmed Khan, the corporate consultant, and Laura Bennett, the health tech entrepreneur. So, which of these people feels like an interesting profile that you want to explore or do none of them feel interesting or should we get more? Um Let's get more. I'm curious to see more cuz these ones are interesting and I know I like know them now. Um Cool. So, I'm going to do I'm going to hit regenerate, which is a really nice thing cuz it'll basically just take this like this prompt and just do it again and try to try to make it like slightly more diverse. Um so, we'll see if that works for you, but if there's something that's like it's feeling too um No, this is great. generic in a particular direction, we can always like ask it to be like, hey, give me a a person who's more like X. Mhm. So, we've got um a senior product manager at a tech startup. We've got a freelance graphic designer, um university professor of history, a software engineer at a Fortune 500 company, a marketing director at a nonprofit. Any of these stick out to you or should or should we push it in a different direction? Aisha. Okay. Uh Aisha Khan. So, Aisha is the marketing director at a nonprofit. Uh she lives in Washington, D.C. She's in her late 30s. She works in a hybrid role balancing in-office meetings with remote strategy sessions. Okay, cool. So, great. Um I'm going to say, please let me just I'll write it out. Oh my goodness. Dan, this is so cool. Okay, so I'm going to say, great. Please write me a detailed profile of Aisha. It should be so detailed that another AI could take on her personality and simulate everything important about her, how she thinks, and her worldview. Um So, this is oops. So, we got a we got an error. Have it be broken. So, we're So, now we're getting like now we're getting deep into into Aisha. We're getting like a detailed profile. Um you know, physical description, basic information, background and upbringing. Um Education and early career, current role and work philosophy. Um and Yeah, this is like super this is like super detailed. It's like a it's a biography. Yeah. This is crazy. How does it um generate this type of depth about a a person that we've made up together? I don't know. Your guess is good as mine. I mean, I think like um there's a lot of this type of stuff on the internet where it's like people talking about different types of personalities and different people and how they think and and all that kind of stuff. Um so, it's it's obviously like drawing on that and it's just really good at giving like a little bit of text. So, like you know, we have a little bit of a profile uh above here. Just like just exploding that out into something more detailed. It's like really really good at um So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this profile. I'm going to copy it. And I'm going to I'm going to open up a new chat. I'm going to say, I want you to simulate this person so I can talk to them. Um and uh uh I'll say also only respond as this person. Just to make sure it kind of captures it. And let's see how let's see how it does. This is a really long prompt. So, sometimes it gets like a little bit confused and forgets. Oh, so we've got we've got Aisha. So, Hey, Aisha. Um so, yeah. What what would you want to know about Aisha to kind of like help with this positioning exercise? Um I want to ask Aisha how she's feeling today. All right. How are you feeling today? Aisha says she's feeling centered and focused. Thank you for asking. I've been balancing a few projects at work, but I made sure to start my morning with some yoga, which always help me helps me stay grounded. How about you? How are you feeling? Um I'm good. I'm curious what your first 10 minutes are like when you sit down to start your work every day. And maybe it's what your first 10 minutes on your laptop are like when you sit down. Um be detailed and specific and honest, I'm going to say. See what that see what that hap- that does. My first 10 minutes at work are a crucial part of setting the tone for the day. Here's how it typically goes. Log in and settle in. I start by logging into my laptop, making sure everything is in place. My coffee is in the within reach. My notebook is open beside me. My phone is on silent to minimize distractions. I like to have a clean organized workspace. So, if anything's left from the previous day, I'll tidy it up. Then I check my calendar. The first thing I do on my laptop is open my calendar. I review the meetings scheduled. If there are back-to-back meetings, I mentally prepare myself for a more intense day. Um this gives me a sense of how much uninterrupted work time I have, which helps me prioritize tasks. That's actually like quite insightful. I do that, too. You're like, hey, we're all Aisha. Yeah. Scan through emails and messages. Next, I open up my Slack and check for any urgent messages. Scan for anything that requires immediate attention. Review to-do lists. And then a brief moment of moment of reflection. So, I think this is like this is reasonable. It's probably like a little bit generic. Mhm. Um how are you feeling about it? It's a it is a little bit generic. Um I mean, it's it's true. Um what like the next question I would want to ask with people would be like, what part uh like what part of that do they most enjoy and do they least enjoy? I I will also say we can push it to be less generic. So, if if it's if it's feeling like if it's feeling like we want something else, we can do that. Um do you most enjoy and least enjoy? Actually, before we do that, I want to just press redo once just to like see like, okay. Yeah, what could what could happen? I want to explore the space a little of the space of possibilities. So opening ritual, I begin by opening my laptop and launching a few key apps. These are my lifelines. Workspace setup, while my computer is waking up, I'll take a moment to adjust my workspace. Quick review of the day, email check-in, Slack messages, prioritizing tasks, setting intentions. So more or less the same, but there's like this this one feels a little more like spiritual or something like opening ritual and setting intentions, which is kind of interesting. So maybe we can go with that one. So I'm going to say, what parts of this do you most enjoy and least enjoy? Okay, she most enjoys the part where she sets her intentions. I least enjoy scanning through emails and Slack messages. Same same Aisha. Okay, can feel overwhelming. There you go. Especially if there are unexpected issues. What about it feels overwhelming? What about it feels overwhelming? Be really specific. The overwhelming part comes from a few things. Volume and urgency, context switching, pressure to respond, unplanned tasks, emotional weight. These factors combine to create a sense of being pulled in multiple directions at once, which is why I try to keep this part of my morning routine as streamlined and brief as possible. Cool. It's interesting it's interesting cuz it's a variation of what you hear from people, right? But I think that this is where you I would want to um just like un- understand this person even a little bit even a little bit more. So yeah, tell me more like what like where does this go for you or where what what would you want to ask more of? Like how would you Yeah, well maybe it's I would want to cuz what I'm trying to understand in this case is like what is causing the overwhelm for people, right? And if there's anything that they could remove from here or that would change how that feeling in that instant, what would it be? Or from a higher level like I mean maybe ask Aisha when else do you feel overwhelmed? I'd be curious. Uh One of the things while it's responding, so I'm saying when else do you feel overwhelmed? One of the things while it's responding like this pressure to respond thing is really interesting. It's like that feeling I I know that feeling of like weight that comes over you and expectation and like it is to some degree driven by like the outside environment and it's like to some degree driven by like those little beeps of like the red lights of the notifications, but it's also it's also very internal. It's like I feel like I want to live up to all these like expectations, you know? Yes. Uh-huh. I think that that's that's something we've talked a little bit about is it's it's also the like wanting to be on it for other people or not let down other people. Um Totally. Hopefully yourself. Okay, so we we asked Aisha where she feels overwhelmed. We got back-to-back meetings, tight deadlines, unclear expectations, managing team conflicts, information overload. Um personal life demands. So one of the one thing that we can do is um we can say something like these feel pretty generic. Can you tell me things that only Aisha might say to a question like this? Aisha, it's really specific to you. Um so Aisha says like fundraising events is a is a place where she feels particularly overwhelmed and and so this is this is where we're starting to get into like Her job. This is her. Yeah, this is actually her day and and it's one of the really interesting things about this is it's such a function of prompting. Like if I'd said this at the top, I think we would have gotten a lot less generic answers to begin with, but like yeah, she's thinking about fundraising events. She's thinking about crisis communications. Um Um cultural tensions, donor relationship, managing expectations from from my family. What is what are the what does that stuff make you think about? Yeah. Um What do these things make me think about? Uh this is interesting because this would be insight into the day-to-day of somebody who I would have to be on a call with otherwise to even think about the different things that they're work working through over the course of the day, if that makes sense. Like yeah, what does go into donor relations or what does go into fundraising for an event? What does this from a from a team building and products perspective, it's like oh, these start to be some of the jobs to be done by a person who is separate to us. And yeah, that's the first place where my where my mind went. Which is much more helpful than like signs of burnout or Totally. I want to go back to now now I now you're making me think I want to go back to our original question like I'm I'm good like I'm curious about what the first 10 days of your like are like what they're like and I'm just going to add in can you like just tell me things that only Aisha might say to a question like this and make sure it's specific to you and see how it changes it. Like see if it's it changes it from the opening ritual workspace setup all that kind of stuff to something that makes us like see her day a little bit more. Um this makes me think of one other use case I've seen which is helpful that Adina and Jay are on our team who lead on research do, which is when we do these interviews, we get transcripts of the videos afterwards and it can be like 25 or 30 people and putting those transcripts into chat GPT and creating a table of like what all the responses were and then for specific types of insights and then what are the threads across all of those across all of those interviews. I love that. Another thing you can do is like um you can uh put a transcript in and have it write a profile of that person from the transcript and then continue interviewing them after they're gone. That's fascinating. Um okay, so so we got like a slightly more detailed you know, response from from Aisha of saying things that you know, only Aisha would know. I would say it's still like a little bit more generic than we might like, but it's it's it's starting to feel more visceral and visual. Um and I think with a little bit more tweaking, we could probably get to get somewhere get somewhere good, but like I just you know, I think going back to that that sort of um that other response we got where it's like talking about crisis comms and you're like okay, now I'm like it's saying things where I'm getting into the world a little bit in a way that I wouldn't be able to otherwise. That made me think of is then I was like oh, what if I could talk to Tracy Chapman in 1988? And then I was thinking about another example of the positioning which was the Ford T in 1908 that uh the whole positioning around it was like you know, buy Ford T and then buy more with what you have left over and it was cost. It was every man's car because it was a you know, cheaper alternative and it came on the tail end of a recession in 1907, which is probably what played into its positioning at that point in time. And the the the overall cultural feeling was probably like I'm broke, right? And so it's not like you're broke, here's a car. It's like no, do this and do more after it. And so what we did with Tracy Chapman, I would probably be interested in like diving into understand the context, but from the perspective of the team or people who would have participated in had that context in 19008. Yeah, I think this is a fantastic use of language models. Like I'm I'm kind of buzzing right now because like it's so valuable to capture a gestalt of like an age and usually the way to capture a gestalt is you go and you read a bunch of stuff and like you just like if you if you spend like a couple weeks doing that, you get this like this residue that just like accumulates in your body that's like the vibe and then that's what lets you like you know, do the positioning or write the piece or like whatever. I'm doing this right now with like I'm writing a piece about ancient Greece and like I'm doing the same thing and I'm just trying to get the vibe. And it's such a powerful shortcut to just use this. And I I'm the chat GPT AI guy. I don't know why I don't know why I haven't been doing that. I love it. Yeah, it's really interesting cuz it's that you're steeping yourself in something. And and it it's so impersonal or it's just like tab after tab of text after text. So I'm probably going to try and recreate what you did here afterwards for my for my little Ford T folks of 1908. I love that. Well, I we had more to cover, but we are unfortunately out of time. We'll have to have you back for another episode. Maybe maybe around one of Arc's new launches. We'll see. But this is this is fantastic. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. Oh my gosh, folks, you absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to AI and I. Why? Because this show is the epitome of awesomeness. It's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard, but instead of gold, it's filled with pure unadulterated knowledge bombs about chat GPT. Every episode is a roller coaster of emotions, insights, and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat craving for more. It's not just a show, it's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship. So do yourself a favor. Hit like, smash subscribe, and strap in for the ride of your life. And now without any further ado, let me just say Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you.