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Special discounts up for AIE Melbourne (LS discount) and AIE World's Fair (group discounts up to 25% - CFPs still open for Autoresearch and Vertical AI) Cya there!Abridge did not start as an “GPT wrapper”. It was founded in 2018, years before the Cambrian explosion of AI application layer companies. OpenAI launched ChatGPT publicly on November 30, 2022 and by then, Abridge had already spent years doing the unglamorous work of building trust for one of the highest context, most important workflows in healthcare: the conversation between a patient and a clinician.Abridge's original wedge was clinical documentation. Listen to the visit, generate the note, reduce the clerical burden, and let clinicians spend more time with patients instead of the EHR. By focusing on how doctors actually document, how health systems actually buy, how EHR integration actually works, how clinicians verify outputs, and how missing context during a visit turns into downstream friction across billing, prior authorization, quality, and follow-up, the adoption of LLMs became a force multiplier on a workflow already optimized for sensitive context gathering.The company has scaled fast: Abridge says it is projected to support 80M+ patient-clinician conversations this year across 250 large and complex U.S. health systems, with support for 28+ languages and 50+ specialties. It raised $300M at a $5.3B valuation in June 2025, after a $250M round earlier that year.Today, Janie Lee and Chaitanya “Chai” Asawa of Abridge join us for another crossover pod with Redpoint's Jacob Effron (who is on the board of Abridge) to dive into how Abridge is building the clinical intelligence layer for healthcare starting with ambient documentation, then expanding into clinical decision support, prior authorization, payer/provider/pharma workflows, and eventually real-time agents that act before, during, and after the patient conversation. We go inside the product, data, infra, evals, workflow, privacy, and org design choices behind bringing AI into one of the highest-stakes enterprise environments from 100M+ medical conversations and specialty-specific evals to real-time alerts, EHR integration, de-identification, clinician-scientist teams, and why healthcare may solve some of the hardest AI problems first.We discuss:* Why Abridge started with clinical documentation, “pajama time,” and saving clinicians 10–20 hours a week* The transition from ambient scribe to clinical intelligence layer: save time, save money, and save lives* Why conversations between patients and clinicians may be the most important workflow in healthcare (patient visit summary feature)* Chai's “healthcare-coded Glean” framing: context is king, but healthcare raises the stakes on safety, evals, and rollout* Why Abridge wants AI to feel like “air conditioning”: always in the background, but only interrupting when it truly matters* The prior authorization example: turning a denied MRI weeks later into real-time guidance while the patient is still in the room* Why payer policies, EHR data, medical literature, and hospital-specific guidelines make the problem hard, and also create the moat* How Abridge thinks about ambient form factors: mobile, desktop, in-room devices, nursing workflows, multimodality, and future AR* The multi-sided healthcare customer: CMIOs, CFOs, CIOs, clinicians, patients, payers, and pharma* The hardest AI problem at Abridge: high-quality, low-latency, low-cost real-time support in a high-stakes clinical setting* When Abridge uses frontier models vs proprietary models, and why its unique data from medical conversations matters* Why “every agent is a coding agent underneath,” and how the EHR can be thought of as a filesystem for healthcare agents* How Abridge approaches personalization across individual doctors, specialties, and health systems* Why “AI slop” is AI without context, and how edits, memories, and clinician preferences create a data flywheel* Abridge's eval stack: LFDs, LLM judges, in-house clinicians, third-party evaluators, specialty-specific evals, and progressive rollout* HIPAA, PHI, de-identification, one-way anonymization, customer contracts, and learning from healthcare data safely* What changes when you operate at 100M+ conversations: reliability, cost, post-training, model routing, and infrastructure optimization* Why the same clinical conversation can serve doctors, patients, payers, pharma, and future clinical-trial workflows* How Abridge works with EHRs, and why deep interoperability is table stakes for clinician adoption* Why healthcare AI has regulatory tailwinds, why 80/20 does not work here, and why high-stakes domains may drive AI forward* Why Abridge embeds “clinician scientists” into product and eval teams* What Chai learned from Glean about search, quality, and durable AI infrastructure* Why the future of AI infra may look like context layers, event-driven systems, Kafka, Temporal, sockets, CRDTs, and tools built for humans* Why Janie changed her mind on “PRDs are dead,” and why crisp written clarity matters more in complex AI products* How Abridge uses Claude Code, Cursor, and coding agents internallyAbridge:* Website: https://www.abridge.com/* X: https://x.com/AbridgeHQJanie Lee:* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiejleeChaitanya “Chai” Asawa:* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casawaTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction and what Abridge does00:02:05 From ambient documentation to clinical intelligence00:04:04 Clinical decision support and context as king00:06:57 Alert fatigue, proactive intelligence, and prior authorization00:12:36 Ambient AI form factors and healthcare customers00:16:59 The hardest AI problems in healthcare00:18:26 Frontier models, proprietary data, and model strategy00:21:07 The EHR as a filesystem for agents00:24:03 Personalization, memory, and clinician preferences00:30:40 Evals, LLM judges, and progressive rollout00:36:47 HIPAA, de-identification, and privacy00:39:21 100M conversations and operating at scale00:44:10 EHR integration and the clinical intelligence layer00:46:39 Healthcare regulation, latency, and high-stakes AI00:50:11 Clinician scientists and long-tail quality00:53:04 Lessons from Glean and durable AI infrastructure00:57:03 The future of agentic healthcare workflows00:57:34 PRDs, product clarity, and building serious AI products01:03:11 AI coding tools at Abridge01:04:06 OutroTranscriptIntroduction: Abridge, Clinical Intelligence, and the Latent Space x Unsupervised Learning CrossoverSwyx [00:00:00]: Okay. This is a special crossover Latent Space Unsupervised Learning pod.Jacob [00:00:07]: Very excited to do this.Jacob [00:00:08]: At this point, we get together once a year.Swyx [00:00:10]: Once a yearJacob [00:00:11]: And this is a fun occasion to get to do it on.Swyx [00:00:13]: I really wanted to talk to Abridge but I felt very underqualified because healthcare is not something we cover very intensely. It just so happens that Redpoint's our big investors and supporters of Abridge.Jacob [00:00:27]: Anytime you want to have a portfolio company on your podcastJacob [00:00:29]: Please, by all means.Swyx [00:00:31]: So we'll introduce our guests. Chai and Janie, welcome to the pod.Janie [00:00:34]: Thanks for having us.Chai [00:00:35]: Thank you.Janie [00:00:35]: We're excited to be here.Chai [00:00:36]: Thank you.Swyx [00:00:36]: So for listeners, what do you guys do, just to situate you guys in the company?Janie [00:00:42]: Abridge is a clinical intelligence layer for health systems. We really started with documentation and building for clinicians and as we think about reducing the burden that clinicians have, they're spending 10 to 20 hours a week on documentation. There's a massive doctor shortage in the country. We also think that conversations between patients and clinicians are probably the most important workflow in healthcare. It's where care is given and received but if you think about the 20% of our GDP that goes towards healthcare, almost everything is a derivative of that conversation, whether it's the claim, the payment, the actual diagnosis given, the treatment. And we've started with a conversation to reduce the burden for doctors on documentation but we're really excited about the path ahead as we become this broader clinical intelligence layer.Chai [00:01:34]: I'm Chai. I work on clinical decision support at Abridge.Swyx [00:01:37]: Yes.Chai [00:01:37]: And so as Janie said, we're uniquely situated where we started off with the clinical note. What I'm really excited about and where we're expanding towards is what are all the things you can do before the conversation, during the conversation and after the conversation if you did have access to all the context about patients, payer guidelines, medical literature and put that together and to serve, how healthcare could look fundamentally different.Swyx [00:02:01]: And that's the context engine that you guys have?Chai [00:02:04]: Yes.Swyx [00:02:04]: Is that what it's called? Okay.Swyx [00:02:05]: So historically, as I understand it, the company started in 2018. A lot of people would be familiar with the AI voice notes form factor that doctors would be “Well, do you consent to being recorded?” It replaces handwriting and what have you. But it sounds like more recently there's been a big transition in the company. Tell me about the broader transition.From Documentation to Clinical Intelligence: Save Time, Save Money, Save LivesJanie [00:02:26]: So from a transition perspective, we really think about our journey as The first act was: how do we help save time? And that's where a lot of that original product was.Swyx [00:02:37]: By the way, one of those interesting statsSwyx [00:02:39]: On your landing page was, doctors spend time after hours.Janie [00:02:43]: They call it pajama time.Swyx [00:02:44]: Why is that pajama time?Janie [00:02:46]: Doctors after work in their pajamasSwyx [00:02:48]: In their pajamas. OhJanie [00:02:49]: At home are just writing and catching up on their notes every day.Janie [00:02:53]: Some of our favorite customer love stories, we have a Slack channel called Love Stories. We have clinicians telling us, “Abridge has helped us, from retiring early or we're now finally able toJanie [00:03:06]: go home and eat dinner with our kids for the first time.”Chai [00:03:08]: Save the marriage in some cases.Swyx [00:03:10]: One of the quotes was “We're not divorcing anymore.”Swyx [00:03:12]: I'm asking, “Why?”Swyx [00:03:14]: Because they're working too much.Janie [00:03:16]: But, in terms of where we're going and where we're expanding, we really think about our second and third acts around how do we help health systems save and make more money. Health systems are operating with record-low operating margins. It's getting harder and harder to serve patients and they have regulatory, some tailwinds but also a lot of headwinds coming their way and AI is ripe for helping on the saving and make-more-money piece. And then ultimately, how do we help save lives? The fact that our software and our product is open millions of times a week before, during and after a patient walks in the room, gives us massive opportunity with products like clinical decision support, which Chai is building but so many others to improve patient outcomes and probably one of the most important workflows and problems to be going after right now.From Glean to Healthcare: Context Is KingJacob [00:04:04]: One thing that's interesting, Chai, is you came over to Abridge from Glean and clinical decision support, which for our listeners is, in the context of a visit, helping a doctor figure out the right type of care. It's really a search problem in many ways, going through lots of different data sources. Very analogous to your previous role as one of the earliest engineers over at Glean. I'm sure a lot of our listeners are curious what's similar about the problems that you're going after now and what feels different, now that you're in healthcare.Chai [00:04:33]: Very similar. Taking a step back, with every wave, there's a lot of very similar patterns that happen across different products. A lot of social networking products look the same. A lot of credit-based products look the same. And we're seeing that very similar in the agent era with many companies, of course, in Redpoint's portfolio and so forth. And the key insight between both companies is that you have amazing models but context is king. Context is what puts them to work. So I see it in a lot of ways, a lot of similarities in this is a healthcare-coded version of Glean but the differences are really interesting. A couple things that come to mind. First and foremost, the rigor of the setting we're in. The downside risk is extremely high here in healthcare. It can be fatal in some cases. You prescribe something that the patient is allergic to for example. Whereas at Glean, it's “Oh, you got the question wrong.” It wasn't the end of the world in most cases. And so what does that mean? That shapes our evaluation strategy, both offline evaluation, progressive rollout and there's a lot more we could go into there. Second thing that comes to mind is, vertical versus horizontal. In both cases, there's a large variance but when Glean is, it's a much more horizontal company, there's a variance of personas, companies that you're working with. We also have a variance of personas, different types of specialties, different hospital systems. But the variance is a little more narrow. So from a product perspective, you're able to focus far more, especially when you have a maturing technology and you're building new products that never existed before. It lets you go after them much more easily and especially in healthcare where so many problems were solved with labor and process, that it's extremely ripe for AI to keep helping augment and enable. And the final thing that's really interesting, Abridge specifically compared to many other companies in the AI area, is the modality we started with where we're ambient and we're always listening in the background. And many more AI products will go that way but it's how we started. And that's the greatest form of AI we can create, AI that's seamless. You're not looking at your screen. It's always there. It's always helping you out and being proactive. The Jarvis vision that, every hackathon I went to over the past decade, there was always a Jarvis competitor. But Abridge very much started from the opportunity and continues to go that way.Ambient AI and Alert Fatigue: When Should the Product Interrupt?Jacob [00:06:57]: One thing that is super interesting then from a product perspective is you have this always-on seamless in the background and then you have to decide when you break the wall almost and say, “Hey, clinician, you might not have thought about X,” or whatever it is that you want to do. And in healthcare traditionally there's been this idea of alert fatigue and a million pop-ups and then a doctor just ignores all of them. It's probably a pattern that a lot of builders are thinking through now. How do you think about the right way to intervene or to pop up in a doctor visit?Janie [00:07:26]: It's such a good question. Alerts are notorious in healthcare specifically. Over 90% of alerts are ignored. The first and most important thing is context is everything, as Chai alluded to and I also think about how do we go from being reactive alerting to really proactive intelligence at the point at which it matters most. One thing we like to say is we want our product to feel like air conditioning. It should be in the background just making things better and if there is something that has great clinical risk and we're acutely aware that intervening now and not later is incredibly important, we should decide to act. But if you think about proactive versus reactive, instead of alerting a clinician during a visit when they're with their patient having a pretty serious and sensitive conversation, how do we prep a clinician before they walk into the room with that patient? And so historically, clinicians might have to manually go through charts with a patient that they've had over the course of months or years and they'll try to suss out what are the things they should be doing. You can imagine a world with Abridge. We'll summarize all of the most recent context for you, tell you based on the reason for a visit the patient is coming in for the types of things you should be discussing. And so you're going into that conversation prepped rather than walking in cold to that patient visit and then having this product interrupt you five or 10 times throughout the visit. And there might be times where it's really important to interrupt. We have a product called Prior Authorization and so this is when you may go into a doctor's office with knee pain. They'll prescribe you an MRI and so many of us have had this experience before, where in four weeks you'll get a call saying, “Hey, Sean, that MRI that you were prescribed wasn't approved and why don't you come back in? We'll figure it out.” In a world with Abridge, we might choose to quietly but still alert a doctor in that visit. And alert is probably not even the word we would want to use. Before a patient leaves, we would want to tell the doctor, “Hey, Doctor, before Sean leaves, you should ask him, has he had physical therapy and has his pain lasted for more than six weeks? Because the Aetna plan that he's on in California requires six things. We've already confirmed four of them have been met ‘cause we have all the context. But these two last criteria, if you can address with Sean before he leaves the room, we could guarantee that your MRI is approved before you leave.” And so when you think about clinical usefulness, impact to the patient, there are instances in which if we can catch a doctor while the patient is still in the room, as we think about save time, save money, save lives, we get to check all of those boxes. But when doctors have 15 minutes between visits, we have to be really thoughtful about when it matters.Prior Authorization: Reducing Latency in CareChai [00:10:23]: There's this interesting product opportunity AI has is reducing latency in the world. For example, prior authorization is an example of where care gets delayed and so great AI can reduce that. And the problem with alerts before partially is a technical problem: the quality of your alerts really matters. They're going to get ignored if you get alerts that... Similarly in engineering, where they're noisy alerts that you can't act on. But if you can make really high-quality alerts with both the context, as Janie said, and really high-quality models, then you can create a whole other game.Janie [00:10:53]: And I really like that experience because it starts to tease apart, what makes this so hard and unique. One, to make that prior authorization example possible, think about all the data that you need to have. You need to integrate with the electronic health record to know all of the patient context. Do we have access to your previous labs, previous imaging? And then to match you and to know that you're on Aetna, we have to collect all of the different payer policies and they vary by state. Some of these payer policies live on websites. Some of them live in unstructured 50-page PDF files.Jacob [00:11:31]: I thought this episode wasJacob [00:11:31]: To make sure we didn't scare people from healthcare.Janie [00:11:34]: But when you think about the things that make it hard, it also gives you the moat.Janie [00:11:39]: And then the second is the AI and the model quality we need to be able to hang our hat on. And so the bar, similarly when I worked at Opendoor, I worked on pricing models. Every outlier wiped out the margins of 30 and so similarly here in healthcare, the bar for accuracy is so high. And then I'd say the last is workflow is everything. If insurance companies deploy AI, it typically happens too late and this is when you have the notorious comical examples of AI just fighting each other when it's too late. But if we can pull forward the use of both the AI but also the ability to solve problems when the patient's in the room, you can start to collapse what typically takes weeks or months after your visit, ideally down to minutes or real-time. And it's where healthcare is both very difficult but also extremely rewarding if you can crack it.Product Form Factors: Mobile, Desktop, In-Room Devices, and ARSwyx [00:12:36]: Just to get some baseline on the form factors, because I've seen some videos on your website and stuff. You guys talk a lot about ambient AI. Is it primarily on the phone? Is there any other form factor that people get Abridge in? Is there an Abridge room setup where it's always on? I don't know.Jacob [00:12:55]: An Abridge podcast studio.Janie [00:12:58]: Primary form factor is mobile and desktop. UsuallyJanie [00:13:00]: Clinicians are walking in and out of rooms with mobile but at the end of the day, when they're closing out their notes or wanting to prep for the day ahead, they might use desktop. We have been having a lot of really interesting partnership conversations with a lot of these in-room device companies as you think about the power of multimodality and even more data, as you think about all of what is not captured today. It is fascinating to think about, especially even as we go into building and scaling our nursing product. It's one where nurses constantly, as they're walking in to check in on a patient for two minutes or maybe even 30 seconds,Janie [00:13:43]: Starting an Abridge experience is probably going to take longer than the visit. And so what can we do with in-room devices that are always on starts to raise really interesting and fun product questions.Swyx [00:13:54]: I was thinking, the way in tech companies we have all these Google MeetSwyx [00:13:58]: And other things, we might as well set up entire rooms with just Abridge tech.Chai [00:14:02]: Very much. AR glasses and related form factors are also relevant: how do we bring the information to the clinician in real-time without a screen, while still letting them focus on the patient?Swyx [00:14:18]: Do you think they want that? I'm skeptical of AR, but I'm curious what you've tried.Chai [00:14:26]: Admittedly, it's not a near-term product roadmapChai [00:14:29]: By any means. I'm being far-fetched.Jacob [00:14:31]: There's some sick AR stuff for surgeries.Swyx [00:14:33]: Really?Jacob [00:14:33]: When people are trying to visualize, you're about to make an incision but you want to see, what the cut might look or what the body might look like inside and they can layer in imaging.Swyx [00:14:43]: That's cool.Chai [00:14:45]: At some point in the future.Janie [00:14:46]: But there are a lot of our largest customers and at the largest health systems integrating already and so even as we think about building into it, unlocks a lot of product capabilities.Swyx [00:14:57]: And just to establish the terminology. Sorry, and I know I'm asking basic questions somewhat for myself but also for the audience who might beHealth Systems, Buyers, Clinicians, Patients, and PayersSwyx [00:15:05]: Less integrated. When you say health systems, it's like the Johns Hopkins, the Kaiser Permanentes.Janie [00:15:09]: Mayos, the Kaisers of the world.Swyx [00:15:10]: These are your customers, right? And the outcome that you deliver for them is happier doctors, reduced cost of processing, reduced mistakes. It's weird in a sense that I feel like there's also, a secondary customer, the customer of the customer and I don't know if you — do you think about it that way?Janie [00:15:28]: The other interesting and complex part of building product is we have our buyers, who are the chief medical information officersJanie [00:15:39]: The chief financial officers, the CIOs of these large health systems. Our users today are clinicians but if you think about who downstream is impacted, it's patients. And so as we build, with every product in mind, we think about who we're building for, who the secondary user is and what does that mean either in terms of experience, security compliance, ROI that we have to make tangible. And so like you said, time savings is one of them. But for CFOs, they care a lot more than just time savings. We have to show for every dollar you put into Abridge, because you have more compliant documentation or because you have fewer queries coming from your billing team, we save or add real dollars to your bottom line or top line, are things that we're constantly thinking about because of the dynamic across all three sets of users.Chai [00:16:32]: There's a whole other axis too with the payers and pharmaChai [00:16:35]: as well. Connecting all these three big stakeholders in healthcare isSwyx [00:16:39]: Do the payers ever see your data? Sorry, the payers meaning the insurers, right?Chai [00:16:44]: Yes.Swyx [00:16:44]: They also see Abridge data?Chai [00:16:47]: NoSwyx [00:16:47]: Like the direct integration to you guysChai [00:16:48]: They wouldn't see the raw Abridge data but when you're working together on something like prior authorization, whatever information they need, we'd communicate to them.Jacob [00:16:59]: That's cool. I would love to dig into the AI side. You still have a lot of problems on the AI side. And so maybe to start at the highest level, what's one of the hardest problems you have to solve in AI at Abridge today?The Hardest AI Problems: Quality, Latency, and CostChai [00:17:11]: To make things simple, let's take, building off the prior auth example. So one thing Janie talked about is okay, this data is all over the place and there's this combinatorial explosion of procedures, payer policies and even sometimes different health systems. There can be some cross-product of all of these different considerations you have to take into account. But what's really hard about this problem is doing it real-time in the conversation. So, in any AI product, usually the three KPIs you care about are quality, latency and cost. Now, what we're saying is we want you to do this real-time in the conversation, guiding the clinician. How do we do it in a way that does not break the bank? But we're using — But we also need very intelligent models because you're working with this cross-product of data and this, all this context layer as well. So you need high intelligence and high-quality because you don't want the alert fatigue but you also need to be fast and cost-effective. And so that's where a lot of clever engineering goes. It's okay, without getting into all the details here, can you model these policies in some intermediate representation or other things that you can do that can make this problem tractable? And of course, the Pareto frontier is always changing but we are also trying to do this now.Model Strategy: Third-Party Models, Proprietary Data, and Medical ConversationsJacob [00:18:26]: What implications has that had for what you take off-the-shelf and say, “ what? We don't need to be world-class at X. We'll just take this from the model providers or from some infrastructure player,” and what you're “No, this is where we spend most of our time focused on”?Chai [00:18:38]: This is, the fun challenge in AI?Jacob [00:18:42]: It changes every three months? SoChai [00:18:42]: Of course, with the shifting landscape, we try to be extremely thoughtful on predicting the trends of where third-party models are going and where we can uniquely go. And, sometimes when you talk about AI models, we're the models are just going to get infinitely better. But I don't think... It may be in the grandness of time you could say that but, within every month, every quarter, there's specific ways they're getting better. They're training on a lot more, coding data to be better coding agents, for example. And soChai [00:19:14]: We have to think about where are the things that won't — unique data that we're uniquely training on or to step back a little, where is a proprietary model bringing advantage to us is if it can give higher quality or lower cost and latency for similar quality, very similar to many other companies. And when we can do that is when we have proprietary data. So, for example, we have on the order of eighty million or hundreds of millions now getting close to of medical conversations.Jacob [00:19:44]: It's insane.Chai [00:19:45]: This is a unique data set. And this data set, it's very interesting because this data set is effectively a large part of the trace between the patient and the provider. That's where the quote-unquote debugging happens in healthcare. We have these traces at scale, as in as, our CEOs even called it, an exhaust that comes out of our product. And so when you have these traces, that's how you can train better agents on certain use cases, whether it's your transcription diarization use cases or so on or like note generation models and we can do that much cheaper and faster. But we're always also working with these third-party model providers. We closely collaborate with them and that's how we predict where the trends are going. The thing that I think about a lot is that, I know that the model providers are going to train much more on agentic workflows and so forth, so that's great, so that you have a better agentic harness. But the other thing that's interesting is that the model providers, because a large class of the consumer model providers is healthcare queries, that they might, optimize to train a lot of healthcare data to encode the knowledge in its weights. And this is just a great thing for us as well, where the off-the-shelf models can keep bett-getting better at general healthcare information, such that what our strategy is, we have a constellation of models, we can use something for this, that and, we only care about, at the end of the day, the best product experience.EHR as File System: Agentic Workflows and Real-Time InterfacesJacob [00:21:07]: And, you have, overall capabilities improving. I'm curious, as these models get better, is there something you look at and you're “, three months ago, we really couldn't do that but God, the the latest models really allow us to do it”?Chai [00:21:19]: So here's something interesting that I've, been toying with. So all models are... This wasn't super obvious a year ago but now it's become clear and clear that almost every agent is a coding agent underneath the hood? So you give it whatever file system, it can write its own code and so forth. So when you think about within healthcare and the use case that we have, you can think of the EHR effectively like a file system. It's just — it's a storage of all this information. It's a lot of information there that cannot fit into the context window, at least of today's models and you want to use that context effectively for all these product use cases we're talking about. And so if you have better agents that can, manipulate data, read that data, treat it as a file system as we see they're going and we know model companies are investing this way, then that very directly benefits us.Swyx [00:22:09]: Yeah. Okay, cool. Again, just establishing basic things. But we're going back to the model stuff. I'm really interested in double-clicking more on the real-time, element, which is pretty important for both of you. Is it — Is real-time just batches of every one minute, every five minutes? Is that how we do it? Or is there some more native, genuinely real-time in the sense that OpenAI has a real-time API or Gemini has a real-time API?Chai [00:22:35]: Yeah. Yeah. So today it is more on the on the batch basis but there's interestingChai [00:22:41]: Prototypes that we have that we're still not fully, full time, voice in text out or in that sense. But, can you trigger your models, your agents or agentic workflows, depending on the right times in the conversation?Chai [00:22:58]: And so you can imagine, different techniques to bring this latency down and, you want to bring the feedback loop down as much as you can. And so a lot of clever engineering there without fully... Maybe one day we'll do full voice in and text out, train a model to do something like that.Swyx [00:23:15]: You do — People don't want voice in voice out?Chai [00:23:18]: Now we aren't creating experiences that are, during the conversation, inter — It's almost likeSwyx [00:23:25]: Might be too disruptiveChai [00:23:26]: Too disruptive until, who knows, maybe eventually you could have full voice agents once we — the quality and we improve the comfort of the technology. But right now gra — that change is much more gradual and it's more text focus, text out.Janie [00:23:42]: And so much of currently what our product is trying to do is allow a clinician to focus on their patient and maybe at some point but right now patients, clinicians don't want a third voice, at least in a literal voice in that room. And so how do we be there with all the contacts and information ready at hand when there's the right moment?Personalization: Individual Doctors, Specialties, and Health SystemsJacob [00:24:03]: Jenny, one thing I'm curious about is how you think about, personalization in the product. I imagine, every doctor is a special snowflake in their own way, has their own way they like to do things. There are probably a bunch of different approaches you could take to doing that, both within the model layer itself but then also just with clever prompting or engineering. How do youJacob [00:24:20]: Deliver on that?Janie [00:24:21]: It's such a good question. Personalization is massive for us. We think about personalization at three levels. The first is at the individual, the second is at the specialty level and then the third is at the health system or the organization level. To your point, there are a lot of individual preferences. You-When a note is produced, it almost is a reflection that is so deeply personal of a doctor's work and how they give care. And so do they have preferences on things like style? They might want bullets versus paragraphs, really concise versus comprehensive. They also might have phrases that they really like to use or the templates that they want every note to be structured. And, we see it in our feedback all the time. We want two spaces in between sentences or I refuse to use this tool. And so that's something that we've had to build in. And the tricky part is how do you make sure that stylistic preferences don't interrupt accuracy and quality and that's something that we've really had to refine and hone over time. Second is at the specialty level. A cardiologist note or workflow is going to look very different from a dermatologist workflow.Jacob [00:25:32]: I assume cardiology notes are the highest stakes for you guys, given your CEO is a cardiologist.Jacob [00:25:36]: It's “Oh my God, make sure we get this one.”Janie [00:25:37]: Shiv, our CEO, is still a practicing cardiologist. He rounds once a month. And so, first call when we want just quick and easy user feedback too.Janie [00:25:46]: But, specialties require a lot of personalization, both in terms of what does the product look and so we make sure that as new users onboard, we catch that and the product proportionally reflects that. But also on the back end, evals at the specialty level, they are hard-earned to calibrate and get. What does a really great dermatology note look like? What makes it complete? What makes it compliant and billable is very different than a primary care doctor. And so it's not just about what does the product experience look but on the back end tuning and really deepening our understanding for the specialists. What does great output look like? And that's, a problem that we need to calibrate internally, externally, online, offline but, takes lots of cycles but is necessary in a high-stakes environment. And then at the health system level, for products like clinical decision support, you have health systems who've spent years or decades refining their best practices and they want to know, “Hey, we love your clinical decision support product but how do we embed our own hospital guidelines into them to inform clinicians before, during or after a visit what brest — best practices should look like?” And as you think about, deepening moats as well, when health systems, trust us with that data, allow us to productize it and directly into the clinical workflow, makes us a really great partner to health systems who want to build something that truly meets their needs, their practicing guidelines.AI Slop, Memory, and Product Data FlywheelsChai [00:27:23]: And I want to add onto that. The for the clinical documentation problem, it's very similar to AI writing that doesn't feel like your own and then we call that slop. But the way I describe one framing of slop is like AI without context. But we have all that context and both the clinicians, can have it and can guide it. And so part of the other interesting exhaust for us is, memory is, one of these new systems recordsChai [00:27:49]: Almost.Janie [00:27:50]: And we also have all the edits people make on our product and when you think about a data flywheel and how we get better over time becomes really powerful as a mechanism to just going deeper in personalization.Jacob [00:28:04]: It's interesting. I love this idea of working with systems on the guidelines they built up over a long time. I feel like so many of the best AI app companies today are... The question is: How do you take the expertise that a law firm or a bank has built up over many years and then add that as context and also a special sauce over, a an AI tool? And so seems like y'all are really doing that very effectively.Janie [00:28:24]: We're now starting to have our customers ask, “What are other customers doing?”Janie [00:28:28]: “And how are they doing it?”Janie [00:28:30]: And as we think about having visibility across such a large set of care being delivered right now, a really interesting place we could also partner.Swyx [00:28:40]: I'm just curious. I — This may be a nothing question but, how different are health system guidelines from each other? Don't they all converge to the same thing? And if not, where do they differ?Chai [00:28:52]: At a really high level, they're going to talk about very similar things but the difference is probably in some more of the details. “Oh, you should refer to specialists only when XYZ conditions are met,” or so forth and maybe different organizations have different practices and guidelines around that. But high level, talking about similar things but the details are what, of course, that shapes the context and the decisions you make.Swyx [00:29:15]: And this all goes into the context engine and it might affect the notes but maybe not.Chai [00:29:21]: The — For these local pathways, we're definitely thinking about it a little more for our clinical decision support product.Chai [00:29:26]: So yeah.Swyx [00:29:27]: Which is your stuff, yeah.Swyx [00:29:28]: And then the memory which you raised, let's just tell us more about that. What have you tried in memory? What's the structure of the memory? What works? What doesn't work?Chai [00:29:38]: There's, of course, many different ways you could do memory, where it's okay, can you bake it into the model weights or can you do it in some external store? For us, what's interesting is, of course, when you think the models are rapidly changing, whether it's in-house or third-party, baking into the model weights, sometimes you worry that it could be a little throwaway. And so, how do you... You need to find a way that you decompose the problem, the preferences from the underlying models and so forth. The thing we're right now most both that's easiest to start with and we're excited about is having, a separate store for memory, where you have, for example, a memory sub-agent that's, working in the background, figuring out what are the important parts of the clinician's actions that we want to remember for the long term. And then you can also imagine, other things where in the — you have background jobs that are running that are collating these, memories similar to Sleep, of course and what other pattern, patterns products do as well. Learning over all these action, all the action data we have, again, note edits, the conversations they did and the actual transcripts.Evals: LFD, LLM Judges, and Clinical SafetyJacob [00:30:40]: What about evals? How in the world do you... It is such a complex product surface area. We would love to hear you riff on that and also how has that evolved? I'm sure you've gotten better at it, so any learnings along the way.Janie [00:30:50]: From an evals perspective, we, from day one when we build any new product or feature, we think about, what does good look like? And there are table stakes things like clinical safety but then you start to get deeper into what does good quality look like. And when you go into something like our core product, there's stuff like style and completeness and there's things like does this note become something that can be billable, which is very high stakes for a health system. We have a number of ways in which we get confidence for this. We have, internal in-house clinicians who do what we call an LFD process to give us our very first pass at is this or isn't this a good enough output, look at the effing data.Jacob [00:31:41]: LFD?Chai [00:31:42]: That's why I was smiling. I was “Is Janie going to mention what it stands for?”Jacob [00:31:46]: I was not... There's like a million acronyms.Jacob [00:31:48]: How am I supposed to know that I don't? So “Oh yeah, of course, an LFD.”Swyx [00:31:51]: I've never heard of LFDs.Chai [00:31:53]: It's a bridge for sure.Janie [00:31:55]: I got through three days and then I had to ask someone.Janie [00:31:58]: I thought it was just me that didn't knowJanie [00:32:01]: It's our internal process.Swyx [00:32:02]: But look at the data as a meme in ML, ‘cause you tend to not look at it. You just want to look at number go up.Chai [00:32:06]: Exactly.Swyx [00:32:07]: But yes.Janie [00:32:08]: But so, we make sure we look at the data and then as we think about all of the components of good output, we, one, create LLM judges across all of these and we make sure with annotated data and either internal or external evaluators, we feel like these judges are calibrated. And then depending on the stakes, we also work with in-house and third-party evaluators across all of these before we ship any big change. And the goal is, in terms of evolution, how do you go from this process taking months, down to weeks, down to days? Some of it is, a true science and ML problem. A lot of it's also just, hard operational work. Have you planned ahead in terms of what you need? Have you really optimized the capacity that you need across all of the different specialties you need? Have you gotten a really good sense of which third parties are great to work with for what use cases? This takes a lot of domain, expertise and, lots of mistakes and errors in figuring that out. And so as much of it is an ML problem, so much of it has also been operational gains that are hugely important, where domain-specific expertise is everything.Specialty-Level Evaluation and Progressive RolloutsJacob [00:33:23]: But it's funny, ‘cause I feel like people talk about healthcare like it's one giant market and the reality isJacob [00:33:26]: It's, dozens and dozens of sub-markets. And so it feels like in your evals you have to build that up across the board, probably.Swyx [00:33:34]: And is specialization the primary cardinality at... That's the word that comes to mind.Janie [00:33:40]: Sometimes, depending on the product or the use case. And so if we're making a note improvement or feature for a particular specialty, definitely but we have products that are for nurses. We have products that, are really aimed at making the document or the output a lot more billable. And so we'll want to work with coding teams and not necessary clinicians. And so likeJacob [00:34:05]: Coding meaning healthcare coding.Janie [00:34:06]: Yes. Yes.Jacob [00:34:07]: NotChai [00:34:07]: Yes. I see you.Swyx [00:34:07]: Other kinds.Janie [00:34:09]: But is this output proportional to the work that was delivered? Is there sufficient documentation to justify the amount that a health system may end up charging? And so, specialty sometimes but also domain, very different across all of the different products that we're working for. And building out that network is, not easy and is where a lot of our operational investments have gone into.Chai [00:34:35]: And I view a lot of analogies to self-driving cars here, where, part of it is we really want progressive rollout of features to test in the real world is this useful? Is this going to work? One big difference compared to past lives is before I'd build a product, maybe I'd alpha it and then I'd like GA it the next week, ‘cause I'm “Go, move fast, ship,” and whatnot. But the mentality is like you... I want to make contact with the reality as quick as possible but I want a progressive rollout. Because as much as I get as large of an offline eval set, I want the distribution of that to match real-life distribution. And over time, by rolling out early, similar to Waymo has a tagline, “The world's most experienced driver,” another thing that can, at least linearly increase for us is, both the size of our evaluation offline and online, that and it all feeds back.Janie [00:35:25]: Something that's been earned over time, speaking of evolution, is just the trust we've gotten with customers. Historically, a lot of these health systems, when they bring on new vendors, their release cycles are quarters, sometimes twice a year. We've gotten our customers onto monthly release cycles, which is pretty fast for health systems but what is more exciting over the last, call it, few quarters, has been, a subset of our customers have said, “We want to innovate with you. We trust you,” and we have a pretty, decent chunk of our customers who say, “We'll develop with you outside of these monthly release cycles. We have a higher tolerance. We know that the stakes are very high but we want to be the first ones using these products, giving you feedback.” And so for a pretty substantial set of our customers, we've been able to convince them to be able to ship, in this gradual way before GA. Something we talk about a lot internally is, trust is earned in drops, earned in buckets and so we still can't do what I used to do when I worked at Loom. We had 30 million users. I'd just be, rolling out experiments left and. The bar is still quite high for iterative rollout but because of the trust we've earned, we're able to learn at pretty high volume very quickly.Privacy, HIPAA, and De-IdentificationSwyx [00:36:45]: Your scale is still pretty huge.Swyx [00:36:47]: One thing I want to... We were going to go into scale? In a sec. One thing I wanted to call up, follow up on evals, which, again, just coming from a generalist engineer point of view, just thinking through what would people be scared of in doing this, the privacy and HIPAAJacob [00:37:00]: Elements of this. I have zero experience in that. What do you have to do? What is surprisingly not that bad?Chai [00:37:06]: So one thing that's really important here from a compliance perspective is very much that any of the data we use needs to be de-identified, any real-world data we use as a basis of online eval sets we're learning from. And so you have to — And there's, very clear, government guidelines, what counts as PHI. And so we've even have built models that can take, for example, a clinical transcript and remove all the key PHI indicators and so you have a scrubbed/de-identified version. And then once you... And so one thing that's important is first you've got to get confidence in that model in the first place? And prove that out. Because, now you have, multiple probabilistic systems on top of each other.Chai [00:37:46]: But once you have that, then you can train on it use it for evaluation and so forth, provided one of the cool things also that you can do from a business side is the right data contracting as well with your partners.Jacob [00:37:57]: Is the anonymization one way? Once it's done, you cannot undo it? Or is there someoneChai [00:38:01]: YesJacob [00:38:02]: Who holds the master key that can... Yeah, okay. So it's one way.Chai [00:38:05]: It's one way. Yeah.Jacob [00:38:06]: That's how it works. I just wanted to... Because, there's a lot of this, learning from feedback and everything that, you would want to debug more but you can't because you just physically don't allow yourself to.Janie [00:38:17]: Some of it's also written in our customer contracts in terms of who can or can't access PHI data, how long do we retain it,Jacob [00:38:27]: Very goodJanie [00:38:27]: Before it gets de-identified. And so we have a pretty high bar for who can access that PHI data, just to make sure that we always respect our customer data and privacy. But that's something that we partner with our customers on too, to make sure that as we want full, as close to precision as possible in that qualityJanie [00:38:48]: We can still use it.Jacob [00:38:50]: But it'll be fascinating to see how that space evolves? Because you think about, I used to work at a company that, did a lot of healthcare data in the cancer space and if you asked, the average cancer patient, “Hey, do you want people, do you want other patients to be able to learn-”Chai [00:39:03]: Take it.Jacob [00:39:03]: “... Learn from your experience?”Chai [00:39:04]: Take it all.Jacob [00:39:05]: They're “Please.”Jacob [00:39:06]: “I'd love, nothing more than for other people to be able to learn fromJacob [00:39:10]: The experience that I had.” And so in the past it was a lot harder to do that learning. But with this technology, that might really be practical and so it'll be fascinating to see how that continues to evolve.Chai [00:39:21]: There's so much in our data set of 100 million conversations.Chai [00:39:26]: You can imagine things like insights that you can give to the clinician. How could you, oh, how could you have reacted to this? In coaching or insights around, which treatments are effective or, like... Because you have this, again, this data source that was never captured before but that's, where, intuition or experience is created from, going back to this idea that the conversation is the agent of truth.Operating at Scale: Reliability, Cost, and Token EfficiencyJacob [00:39:46]: Back to the 100 million conversations, I feel like you have this insane scale that maybe only a few other AI app companies have and everyone else dreams of. So not everyone has had to confront this yet but maybe just talk about some of the challenges of operating at that scale and what, our listeners have to look forward to if they ever get to this level of scale.Chai [00:40:05]: At large and larger in scale, so of course there's a general, infrastructure reliability. When you... In any given startup, you're building the plane while it's flying. So there's some notion of that. But what gets interesting on the AI and ML side for sure is this, as you get at more and more scale, so one, you have the data to first and foremost do this. But, you start thinking about costs or infrastructure in a whole different way at scale versus, a prototype.Chai [00:40:34]: You can use the most expensive model, you can burn as many tokens as you want but when you're doing 100 million conversationsJacob [00:40:41]: Token max on leaderboards are less upsetting than that context.Chai [00:40:45]: . When you're doing that and so that comes for we have the data and we also have the team that's able to post-train based on this and you can optimize for efficiency, especially in areas where you believe that maybe a lot of the quality headroom is less so and you don't expect the other off-the-shelf models to go that way, such that you want to do, efficiency maximization, in terms of compute and tokens.Jacob [00:41:08]: I feel like you guys live in the future in some way where most use cases today are really just in use case discovery mode, where it's “God, I really hope I can find something that can get to scale,” and so you're always going to use the most powerful model. And then the few things that do get to this level of scale, you start to do those optimizations.Chai [00:41:22]: It's a natural trajectory where it's like zero-to-one, we're not talking about any of these optimizations.Chai [00:41:26]: But when maybe we're in the one-to-100 or so forth, then we're in optimization mode and, what works out really well is you've got all this data from zero-to-one that lets you do this.What Comes Next: The Conversation as the Shared Healthcare PlatformJacob [00:41:36]: That's fascinating. I feel like one thing that's so interesting about the Abridge footprint is that you're in the doctor-patient visit in real-time. I always like to say, there's like probably 50 years' worth of product you could build on top of that. What gets each of you, I don't know, what are you most excited about building, either in the short term or medium term or even, long down the line?Janie [00:41:53]: Something that I get really excited about is that the same conversation can serve so many stakeholders. If you think about the conversation, a doctor needs to know what is the documentation, how do I make sure that this fully represent the care I gave? A patient needs to know, “What the heck just happened? This was really overwhelming. What are my next steps?” A payer needs to know, was this the proper and appropriate care given? A pharma company might want to know why isn't this drug being properly used or is there a good candidate for this clinical trial that I'm about to run? And where I get excited is that our product and our platform and our infrastructure can be the same product across all of those things and start to what's today, separate, very expensive, complex systems that serve each one of these stakeholders in very different ways, start to collapse all of that into a singular platform that enables not just more efficiency across the board but also better outcomes for everyone. And, all of us experience healthcare in probably very painful ways and knowing that there is a world in which we can simplify a lot is really exciting to me and it all starts with the conversation.Chai [00:43:15]: It's interesting. Of it very similar to going back to the KPIs that any AI product cares about. How do you increase quality of care? How do you reduce latency to care? And how do you reduce costs? Which is a huge, in healthcareJacob [00:43:28]: They call it the triple aim in healthcare.Chai [00:43:30]: But very similar to building AI products and the thing that really excites me is when we talk about that latency piece, we talked about one example earlier of prior authorization, can you reduce the latency to care? But you can imagine so much more. Oh, as soon as the lab value gets updated, do you have like a background agent that, kicks off and uses all the context to be “Oh, hey, the patient should do this next,” for example. And of flagging that to the clinician who's always in the loop but reducing that latency, to care. And then you can imagine this is much further down the road but it's like even connecting that to the direct patient and the consumer. And so how can you, how can you build a bridge to all of these things?EHR Partnerships and the Clinical Intelligence LayerJacob [00:44:10]: Very cool. The connections piece is just an ever-growing thing. And one of the key partners is the EHR and I wonder what that relationship is like. Will they, look at this as, something that is valuable enough that they want to own someday?Janie [00:44:29]: Our partnerships with the EHR is, we know that we have to be extremely close partners with all the EHRs who we partner with. Being able to not only pull and push all of the data into the right places is, not only table stakes, if we can't do that, health systems don't want to use us. The second and the reality of today is clinicians spend a lot of their days in the EHR. So much of what allowed us to win in the largest health systems was pretty direct and, very close partnerships with some of the largest electronic health records that allowed us to pull and push data with APIs that weren't ready out of the box. And clinicians want to save clicks. Anytime we introduce a new product that, adds two clicks for them in their day, they're “We're not going to use it.”Janie [00:45:21]: They have 15-minute back-to-back appointments with their patients. They're spending, hours during pajama time doing documentation. Every second and every minute counts and so we really think about being deeply integrated into the EHR as also table stakes to getting real usage and adoption. And anything that we build or introduce, we really talk about earn the right internally a lot, which is we have to provide so much value or save so much time that people will use us. But those are the two things that are close to us, is we know that the product won't be used unless it is deeply interoperable.Chai [00:46:01]: And strategically, to your point, it's like what does EHR want to own versus us? EHRs are really focused on the clinical workflows and so forth but some of the things that we're talking about here, I do these traditionally are outside of the domain where it's oh, connecting pairs and providers together with provider policies or the clinical trial matching, as Janie brought up. And so these are, entirely — we position ourselves as building this entirely new intelligence, clinical intelligence layer across, again, providers, pharma and, payers.Chai [00:46:33]: And so that's a it's a whole different ballgame that we try to playChai [00:46:36]: In combination with them.Jacob [00:46:37]: But it's like a different layer of scope.Healthcare AI Regulation, Technical Depth, and What Changed Their MindsJacob [00:46:39]: I'm curious, you are both relatively newcomers to healthcare. People have these, there's lots of futuristic healthcare AI takes of “Oh, everything will look different.”, now that you've been in healthcare for a bit, you live at the edge of AI, what have you, changed your mind on around this, as you think about what healthcare looks like in ten, 20 years? Any updates to your mental model from the time being close to the problems?Chai [00:47:02]: One thing that IChai [00:47:04]: Was hesitant about before and it's a common thing when I'm trying to recruit engineers that people ask me around, is definitely oh, healthcare, heavily regulated space. And it is, rightfully so. You want to keep, the patients at the end of the day safe. But one of the interesting things that, is a that surprised me how much it is coming to the company is there's a lot of really favorable regulatory tailwinds as well. Where you think about, government really wants interoperability between all these systems that we talked about and so agents can access this information. The government just in January, the FDA released updated guidance on clinical decision support, what I work on in such a way that they used to have guidance from like 2022 that required you to have, mention all these options and do all these other things but it's a very forward and forward-looking way. And so for me, what's been really cool to work on is this, there's this very special moment both in AI in general, we all know that but there's a special moment also regulatory in healthcare as well.Janie [00:48:05]: One thing I would call out is for the very reasons things are higher stakes or, potentially considered more difficult in healthcare, it's where some of the hardest AI problems will get solved first, just because the bar is so high. When I first joined, I was “Oh, this is where we'll be on the tail end of where, all of the AI innovation will be able to be applied.” But when you think about, zero error evals or multi-step workflows that have really low tolerance, a lot of the innovation will happen here just because we have to or else we can't ship.Jacob [00:48:42]: ‘Cause like in other domains, you'd much rather just solve the 80%-is-good-enough problems firstJanie [00:48:46]: 80/20 doesn't work hereChai [00:48:48]: And building off that, traditionally, there was a bit of stigma that, oh, healthcare companies are not that interesting from a technical perspective or I've seen that or faced that myself. But these are really hard and fun problems from a pure technical perspective beyond just the impact. How do you bring the latency of this thing down and make it really high-quality?Reducing Latency: Clinical Workflows, Agents, and Implementation RealityJacob [00:49:07]: How do you bring the latency of things down?Chai [00:49:10]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So okay, let's answer the latency question. And maybe hopefully not too redundant with some of the things I've said earlier but some part of it is with any latency, you have to like what is, what is really your bottleneck. In a lot of workflows, it's sometimes it's the model itself. And so that's where like our data flywheel, our post-training team and so forth come in so that can you make the models far more efficient. So that's one aspect of latency. But there's whole other aspects of latency where it's okay, on top of that, if you use a constellation of different models, can you use — can you first use like a — it's like thinking fast and slow. Can you use a cheap, fast model that triages and hands it off to a larger model where you get more intelligence and so forth and so all theseChai [00:49:56]: Clever tricks to make it work.Chai [00:49:58]: And by the way, we are totally — we also realize that the parameter frontier is changing and so these tricks will — may not get us to where we want to be in five years but we need to if we want to build a useful product right now.Jacob [00:50:11]: Should we go to the quick-fire or you want to ask more about Abridge? We can stuff everything that's not Abridge into the quick-fireSwyx [00:50:16]: I don't mind. I was — I feel like Janie was on the topic of more long tail stuff, which isSwyx [00:50:21]: Not the eighty/twenty thing and that really matters. And I'll —, if you have any tips or cool stories or just general approaches that have worked for you that's interesting to dig into.Janie [00:50:32]: One of them is even just how we staff our teams looks different than a traditional software engineering team, I'd say.Swyx [00:50:40]: Let's go.Clinician Scientists, Edge Cases, and Evals at ScaleJanie [00:50:41]: We have a bunch of folks with different roles who are clinicians and so we have this role called the clinician scientist and I heard one of our leaders refer to them as mutants recently. But they are people who've had clinical backgrounds, so MDs typically, who are also deeply technical, somewhere, on the spectrum of like a full stack engineer all the way to like extremely scrappy prompter. But having each of these people embedded within our teams instantly raises the bar for everything that we build because not only are they determining, is this product clinically useful but they're deeply embedded in our whole evals process. And so when we talk about LFDs, when we talk about what is our actual evaluation criteria, you don't want Chai or me creating what those are because we don't have clinical background. But is probably unique to Abridge but has been game changing. And when you think about where the puck is going, you have people build with clinical backgrounds who are technical and where AI tools are going, they just becomeJanie [00:51:53]: More and more, critical and like the killers of the team. And so that's one. And then the second is just the scale at which we do evals to catch that long tail up front before anything ever gets into production is something that we've pretty much like really started to fine-tune, both from a scale but when do we know we need to get several hundred versus several thousand offline responses, what helps us make that quick decision and make this less of an art and as much of a science as possible. But that's also been something we've had to tune over time.Swyx [00:52:27]: And you have partners who opted in to give you those evals.Janie [00:52:31]: So we work either internally or with third-party for offline evals and then we have customers who also agree to give us, whether it's like thumbs up, thumbs down to like choose this or that, a lot of data to get us to what is as close to fully confident as possible.Swyx [00:52:51]: The term that comes to mind isSwyx [00:52:53]: Like active learning on things where you're weak. I feel like it's a lost artSwyx [00:52:58]: Is a lot of the polish that comes into doing something like this.Janie [00:53:02]: Really.Chai [00:53:03]: Hundred percent.Lessons from Glean: Technical Foundations and AI App InfrastructureJacob [00:53:04]: Maybe, on a totally unrelated note, Chai, you had a very, storied run at Glean b

Coming to you from the JRE Tobacco Aladino Studios, Nick is joined by Litto Gomez Jr, vice president of retail partnerships and sales at La Flor Dominicana, to discuss the future of the cigar industry. Litto is part of the new generation of cigar manufacturers coming up in their family companies and taking more and more control, and he brings a unique perspective to the way these traditionally run companies need to evolve with the times. While Nick smokes the new Carbon Flower, the guys dive deep into what the industry will look like in 15 years time and what LFD is doing now to prepare for the future. This is part two of our discussion. Part One came out on Friday, May 8, so be sure to check that out if you haven't yet. Find out what Nick is watching lately in the Villiger Cigars Entertainment Report. And its Tuesday, which means its time for another Lemonade Review! Get your calls in for Ask the Pulpit at (863)874-0000. Or email your comments to Nick@CigarPulpit.com! SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS... For all your online cigar purchasing needs, head over to 2GuysCigars.com! In business for 40 years, they are THE trusted name in the cigar industry! Family owned and operated, they provide a great selection, fair prices, and outstanding customer service. That's 2GuysCigars.com! Follow JRE Tobacco/Aladino at @AladinoCigars on Instagram or check out their website, JRETobacco.com for a store near you that carries their cigars Follow Villiger Cigars at @VilligerCigar on Instagram or check out their website, VilligerCigars.com for a store near you that carries their cigars, or visit their new online shop at https://villigercigars.store/home

Coming to you from the JRE Tobacco Aladino Studios, Nick is joined by Litto Gomez Jr, vice president of retail partnerships and sales at La Flor Dominicana, to discuss the future of the cigar industry. Litto is part of the new generation of cigar manufacturers coming up in their family companies and taking more and more control, and he brings a unique perspective to the way these traditionally run companies need to evolve with the times. While Nick smokes the Andalusian Bull, the guys dive deep into what the industry will look like in 15 years time and what LFD is doing now to prepare for the future. This is part one of our discussion and part two will come out on Tuesday, May 12, so be sure to check that out. Find out what Nick is watching lately in the Villiger Cigars Entertainment Report. Get your calls in for Ask the Pulpit at (863)874-0000. Or email your comments to Nick@CigarPulpit.com! SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS... For all your online cigar purchasing needs, head over to 2GuysCigars.com! In business for 40 years, they are THE trusted name in the cigar industry! Family owned and operated, they provide a great selection, fair prices, and outstanding customer service. That's 2GuysCigars.com! Follow JRE Tobacco/Aladino at @AladinoCigars on Instagram or check out their website, JRETobacco.com for a store near you that carries their cigars Follow Villiger Cigars at @VilligerCigar on Instagram or check out their website, VilligerCigars.com for a store near you that carries their cigars, or visit their new online shop at https://villigercigars.store/home

We kick off with one of our longer format interviews from PCA 2026. A staple of PCA for many years is visiting our friends at LFD. We had the opportunity to sit-down with @lfdlittojr for an extended interview. Bear discusses one of the Coalition's popular cigars - the LFD Carbon Flower! Special thanks to the entire LFD team as well.

We kick off with one of our longer format interviews from PCA 2026. A staple of PCA for many years is visiting our friends at LFD. We had the opportunity to sit-down with @lfdlittojr for an extended interview. Bear discusses one of the Coalition's popular cigars - the LFD Carbon Flower! Special thanks to the entire LFD team as well.

On Prime Time Special Edition 189, begin the Aging Experiment on the La Flor Dominicana (LFD) Double Ligero Chisel Natural. With the “Aging Experiment” Series, Bear and Coop smoke a cigar, smoke another cigar six months later, and a third cigar one year later. The idea is to see how the cigar responds to aging over a period of time. Today we are in the second leg of this experiment at the 6-8 month ppoint. With the Chisel, this is iconic and signature size in the LFD portfolio and one that has special meaning to co-host Bear Duplisea. Plus we will have our Artesano de Tobacco Under the Sea, Espinosa This Day in Sports History, and Altadis USA Great Things are Happening segments. In the spirit of Dave Burck from Jukebox, Coop and Bear will go through some “now or never” companies for PCA.

On Prime Time Special Edition 189, begin the Aging Experiment on the La Flor Dominicana (LFD) Double Ligero Chisel Natural. With the “Aging Experiment” Series, Bear and Coop smoke a cigar, smoke another cigar six months later, and a third cigar one year later. The idea is to see how the cigar responds to aging over a period of time. Today we are in the second leg of this experiment at the 6-8 month ppoint. With the Chisel, this is iconic and signature size in the LFD portfolio and one that has special meaning to co-host Bear Duplisea. Plus we will have our Artesano de Tobacco Under the Sea, Espinosa This Day in Sports History, and Altadis USA Great Things are Happening segments. In the spirit of Dave Burck from Jukebox, Coop and Bear will go through some “now or never” companies for PCA.

#ELOsoFumarTakes #356thTake This week, we're honored to welcome a next-generation voice in premium cigars — Litto Gomez Jr., son of founder Litto Gomez and Vice President of Sales at La Flor Dominicana. From the tobacco fields of the Dominican Republic to the boardroom — and back to the blending table — Litto Jr. is helping shape the future of one of the most respected boutique cigar houses in the world.   We'll dive into: • His journey growing up inside LFD and stepping into leadership • The story behind blending Solis — a deeply personal project that challenged him to define his own palate • How LFD is redefining full-flavor, medium-bodied cigars without sacrificing strength • Why staying family-owned, hands-on, and quality-driven still matters in a world chasing scale • What's next for LFD as the torch is passed to the next generation   Founded in 1994, LFD built its name by doing things differently — growing its own tobacco, embracing bold profiles, and making decisions the old-school way… often over coffee at the family table. Now, the legacy continues with a new perspective grounded in tradition.   If you appreciate cigars with power, purpose, and personality — this is an episode you don't want to miss. Tap in. Light up. Let's take it deeper.   #ELOsoFumarTakes #356thTake #LaFlorDominicana #LFD #BoutiqueCigars #FamilyLegacy

R2 clôture la semaine de présentation de son album "HyperActif" sur Planète Rap. Pour cette ultime émission du vendredi, Fred Musa reçoit D2L, La Chine, Lee, LFD, Wixo, La2s et RDN

Coming in at #18 Cigar of the Year for 2025 is the La Flor Dominicana 30 Years. The La Flor Dominicana 30 Years commemorates the 30th anniversary of when Litto and Ines Gomez entered the cigar industry and founded a company called Los Libertadores, which eventually became rebranded as La Flor Dominicana. The LFD 30 years is a limited edition cigar that made its debut at the 2024 Premium Cigar Association Trade Show. The cigars were packaged in exquisite humidors that were built at Tony Gomez' box factory. Full Details: https://wp.me/p6h1n1-yok

Coming in at #18 Cigar of the Year for 2025 is the La Flor Dominicana 30 Years. The La Flor Dominicana 30 Years commemorates the 30th anniversary of when Litto and Ines Gomez entered the cigar industry and founded a company called Los Libertadores, which eventually became rebranded as La Flor Dominicana. The LFD 30 years is a limited edition cigar that made its debut at the 2024 Premium Cigar Association Trade Show. The cigars were packaged in exquisite humidors that were built at Tony Gomez' box factory. Full Details: https://wp.me/p6h1n1-yok

Jack talks to Fayette County Sheriff, Kathy Witt about the upcoming property taxes and Community Paramedicine Program with LFD representatives FF Patrick Branam - EMT-P and Lt. Alex Jann - EMT-P. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Prime Time Special Edition 178, begin the Aging Experiment on the La Flor Dominicana (LFD) Double Ligero Chisel Natural. With the “Aging Experiment” Series, Bear and Coop smoke a cigar, smoke another cigar six months later, and a third cigar one year later. The idea is to see how the cigar responds to aging over a period of time.  With the Chisel, this is iconic and signature size in the LFD portfolio and one that has special meaning to co-host Bear Duplisea. Plus we will have our Artesano de Tobacco Under the Sea, Espinosa This Day in Sports History, and Altadis USA Great Things are Happening segments.

On Prime Time Special Edition 178, begin the Aging Experiment on the La Flor Dominicana (LFD) Double Ligero Chisel Natural. With the “Aging Experiment” Series, Bear and Coop smoke a cigar, smoke another cigar six months later, and a third cigar one year later. The idea is to see how the cigar responds to aging over a period of time.  With the Chisel, this is iconic and signature size in the LFD portfolio and one that has special meaning to co-host Bear Duplisea. Plus we will have our Artesano de Tobacco Under the Sea, Espinosa This Day in Sports History, and Altadis USA Great Things are Happening segments.

What is LFD? How does it apply to me?

Our visit to the La Flor Dominicana booth at the 2025 Premium Cigar Association (PCA) Trade Show continues an annual tradition for the Cigar Coop Coalition team. This year, the difference is that the LFD sales team has a new Vice President in Litto Gomez Jr, and a new branding and marketing Vice President in Eddy Guerra. Since sales is a primary activity at the Trade Show, this was Litto Jr's show. Watching Litto Jr, he handled his responsibilities with poise and confidence. We were thrilled to have the opportunity to sit down with Litto Jr. for our annual interview. There is plenty to look forward to this year, as La Flor Dominicana has revamped the Suave and introduced new packaging for the Oro line. Full PCA Report: https://wp.me/p6h1n1-wAx  

Our visit to the La Flor Dominicana booth at the 2025 Premium Cigar Association (PCA) Trade Show continues an annual tradition for the Cigar Coop Coalition team. This year, the difference is that the LFD sales team has a new Vice President in Litto Gomez Jr, and a new branding and marketing Vice President in Eddy Guerra. Since sales is a primary activity at the Trade Show, this was Litto Jr's show. Watching Litto Jr, he handled his responsibilities with poise and confidence. We were thrilled to have the opportunity to sit down with Litto Jr. for our annual interview. There is plenty to look forward to this year, as La Flor Dominicana has revamped the Suave and introduced new packaging for the Oro line. Full PCA Report: https://wp.me/p6h1n1-wAx

In this exclusive special episode, we sit down with Litto Gomez Junior for a rare behind-the-scenes look at La Flor Dominicana (LFD) cigars. From the fields to the factory, Litto Jr. shares personal stories, family legacy, and the passion that fuels one of the most innovative cigar brands in the industry. Tune in for an insider's perspective on craftsmanship, challenges, and what's next for LFD.

Unveil the secrets of effective end-of-life planning with Greg Barnsdale, CEA, CFP, LFD. In this vital episode, he shares insights from his personal health scare and professional experience, underscoring the importance of clear communication and thorough documentation to safeguard your wishes and prevent family conflicts. Don't miss these essential strategies to ensure your legacy is managed exactly as you envision.   Key Takeaways To Listen For The importance of pre-planning What are medical directives for? Pros and cons of setting up wills online How planning ahead can prevent financial overspending Why you need a certified executor advisor   Resources/Links Mentioned In This Episode Do Not Ignore Your Mortality by Greg Barnsdale | Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover   Take the Living Legacy Quiz and find out if you're truly prepared. Start now at https://www.donotignoreyourmortality.com/quiz.html. Start meaningful conversations about end-of-life planning with Top 30 Questions To Ask Yourself Right Now. Access the free resource and Canadian planning tools at https://www.donotignoreyourmortality.com/resources.html.   About Greg Barnsdale, CEA, CFP, LFDGreg Barnsdale is a seasoned professional in the funeral industry and financial planning, with credentials as a Certified Executor Advisor, Certified Financial Planner, and licensed Funeral Director since 1985. His diverse experience spans roles in various funeral homes, as an examination proctor, and a life insurance specialist, educating financial advisors across Canada. Greg, who is also a hospice volunteer and holds a certificate in Estate & Trust Administration from STEP Canada, has authored the book "Do Not Ignore Your Mortality," which aims to encourage proactive end-of-life planning. His work promotes the Death Positive Movement and offers practical advice for legacy planning, blending seriousness with a touch of humor. His book is available on major platforms, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.   Connect with Greg Website: • GREG BARNSDALE • LinkedIn: Greg Barnsdale CEA/CFP/LFD Facebook: Do Not Ignore Your Mortality YouTube: Greg Barnsdale   Connect With UsIf you're looking to invest your hard-earned money into cash-flowing, value-add assets, reach out to us at https://bobocapitalventures.com/.   Follow Keith's social media pages LinkedIn: Keith Borie Investor Club: Secret Passive Cashflow Investors Club Facebook: Keith Borie X: @BoboLlc80554

Episode 189 of the #LovinLebanon Podcast features a pair of young Lebanon firefighters who have a special connection. Katie Pallikan and Kurt Keller went through the academy together and have been friends ever since. Now, they share the pride of being on the Lebanon Fire Department. The pair shares what makes LFD so special, even after a couple embarrassing moments during training...that they're willing to share. ;)  

Jonathan Carney, the former Vice President of Sales for La Flor Dominicana, joins Smoke Night LIVE to make a major announcement. Earlier this summer, Carney surprised many by leaving his position at LFD, sparking widespread speculation about his next move. In this episode, he reveals all the details about his new role.

One of the big stories of the 2024 Premium Cigar Association (PCA) Trade Show was La Flor Dominicana celebrating 30 years in the cigar business for Litto and Ines Gomez. Given La Flor Dominicana had released milestone cigars for the 20th and 25th anniversary, it was no surprise that there was a 30th-anniversary cigar, LFD 30 Years. This year, we caught up with Litto and Tony Gomez to discuss this important milestone. PCA 2024 Report: https://wp.me/p6h1n1-sBB  

One of the big stories of the 2024 Premium Cigar Association (PCA) Trade Show was La Flor Dominicana celebrating 30 years in the cigar business for Litto and Ines Gomez. Given La Flor Dominicana had released milestone cigars for the 20th and 25th anniversary, it was no surprise that there was a 30th-anniversary cigar, LFD 30 Years. This year, we caught up with Litto and Tony Gomez to discuss this important milestone. PCA 2024 Report: https://wp.me/p6h1n1-sBB  

Never miss cigar greatness. Click here for Boveda's email insider news: https://hubs.la/Q01BLsBF0 It's like having a smoke in a cigar lounge WITH 5 CIGAR NOTABLES. Light up you best celebratory cigar (perhaps La Flor Dominicana Andalusian Bull, rated #1 cigar of 2016 by Cigar Aficionado, BTW?) for this virtual smoke sesh featuring:- Cigar Aficionado Hall of Famer Litto Gomez, Co-owner of La Flor Dominicana (LFD)- Tony Gomez, LFD Vice President- Sean Knutsen, Boveda CEO- Tim Swail, Boveda Executive VP of Sales- Drew Emmer, Guru of Strategic RelationshipsOne of the top premium cigar brands, LFD creates some of the strongest smoking profiles and full-flavored Dominican cigars around. LFD is known for its consistency thanks to the cigar maker's vertical integration—from farming its own tobacco to producing its own cigars in its own factory. LFD's highly skilled artisanal cigar rollers produce distinctive cigar shapes and limited-edition designs. Recorded at PCA 2024, the preeminent event for premium cigar and pipe industry. 00:00 This is Box Press08:28 What's it like to be Litto Gomez's son?13:00 Creating a successful cigar business from nothing20:31 Litto Gomez knew nothing about cigars when he started in the cigar business20:54 Versace silk shirts, gold chains and Dominican cigars24:59 Litto and Ines Gomez cold called cigar stores 29:31 The cigar brand that didn't grow during the 1990s cigar boom32:40 You'll know you made it when you don't pay the bill35:06 A cigar maker is only as good as your last cigar37:58 $100 cigar—what a cigar should cost38:23 LFD Cameroon Cabinet #342:09 Creating the world's first cigar NFT and Alex Martinez of Mane Street Cigars46:42 The Cigar Merchant in Atlanta was an early adopter of LFD cigars50:53 Tony surprised Litto Gomez with a 70th birthday party on the eve of the 2024 PCA Show56:58 Litto Gomez made his own vacuum chamber1:00 Litto Gomez talks about his dad's factory accident1:08 Tale of two different perspectives on life1:14 LFD cigars and Boveda 2-way humidity controlWhat is Boveda? Legendary cigars brands like LFD protect their blends with Boveda 2-way humidity control—that brown pack that you find in the box with your cigars. Boveda preserves the flavor and character of premium cigars by keeping them at ideal humidity. At home, continue to use Boveda in your humidor to keep cigars well-humidified or they can be hard to light, burn to too fast or get moldy. With Boveda in your humidor, you'll enjoy full flavor and a perfect smoke from every cigar. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bovedausa/X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/BovedaInc Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bovedainc/?..

Brought to you by J.C. Newman Cigar Co. - This week Matt and Jon Carney are back together again...like old times! Jon talks to us about what La Flor Dominicana will be bringing to the 2024 PCA Trade Show next week in Las Vegas and the pair also talk about the show as a whole form multiple perspectives. Tune in now to hear about the monster year ahead for LFD!  Don't forget to Like and Subscribe and visit www.smokintabacco.com for more news and updates from the cigar industry. Visit www.2GuysCigars.com for the best selection of in the industry! Accessories provided by S.T. Dupont - Be Exceptional Micallef Black - It's a black out!

On this episode of The AIE Podcast... Seeds of Renewal is almost upon us! RED ALERT< RED ALERT… through January 18th! We have news from FFXIV FF So many games, so many updates! And, we are getting back into the swing of things after our break All that and more coming up right now... Podcast Audio Raw Video http://youtu.be/tcSyvsdoPDk Open Welcome to episode #414 of the podcast celebrating you, the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Mkallah: To my left is Tetsemi: - (catch phrase here). And to my right is Mewkow: (catch phrase here). This week, we are catching up to see what we've been up to over the break, what games we have been playing, and the like. Welcome! Before we get into what we have been up to, let's go over this week's news! AIE News Community We have your Mandatory Fun Nights schedule for 2024! Where the fun is mandatory but the attendance is not. Sunday - You all get a day off! Monday - GW2 9:30 pm Eastern Monday - STO 10:00 pm Eastern Tuesday - SWTOR 9:00 pm Eastern Wednesday - HFO Mythic+ Mayhem (WoW) 8:00 pm Eastern Thursday- Board Game Night (1st and 3rd Thursdays) 7:00 pm Eastern/6:00 pm Central Friday - ESO 9:00 pm Eastern Friday - FFXIV(Magical Misc Tour) 9:00 pm Eastern Saturday - LotRO 8:30 pm Eastern Saturday - FFXIV (Maps) 9:30 pm Eastern Saturday - WoW Classic Hardcore 9:30 pm Eastern Saturday - Noob Raid (WoW) 11:00 pm Eastern Streaming and Guild Podcast News We have a ton of AIE member podcasts! Want to know where to find them? Look no further than here- New Overlords Podcast (Max and Sema) https://www.newoverlords.com Working Class Nerds (Marcus and Nick) - NSFL https://workingclassnerdscom.wordpress.com Boards and Swords (Chris and Philip) https://boardsandswords.com/blog?category=Boards%20%26%20Swords Dr. Gameology ( Dr. Daniel Kaufmann ) https://drgameology.com/ STO - Fleet Action Report (Grebog and Nikodas) https://www.youtube.com/@fleetactionreport A Podcast Reborn: A FFXIV Community Podcast (Brandon aka Old Man Franks, Meagan, and Rho) - NSFL https://www.bonusroll.gg/directory/a-podcast-reborn/ NOMADS On the small server front, there's groups running right now in ARK and Rust. Rust has a fresh map this week and Corley and Kuda have just started building. On ARK, we've just wrapped up the winter event and a few of the group have started in on end bosses. We'll be continuing there for a while and are looking forward to the next holiday and soon, the next expanded map for Ascended. WoW WoW Retail, Patch 10.2.5 Seeds of Renewal is coming January 16 with lots of changes. Night Elves are building their new capital, Bel-Ameth in the World Tree Amirdrassil and Alliance and Horde players can visit, although Horde will have a buff warning that they're being watched... especially fire mages. There are new Night Elf tabards, cloaks and weapons there as well as new Night Elf children NPC's. Worgen leader Genn Graymane is also taking his people back to their former capital, Gilneas. Dragonriding is coming to every zone in WoW where flying is possible -- but at 80% Dragonflight speed... because 100% would be ridiculous, right? There will be new Dragon Racing events with new transmog and achievements to earn. Darkspear Trolls are getting 5 new hair colors and Dranei will have a new skin tone available, and Warlocks will have new customizations for their Demonic Tyrant and Darkglare demons. New Follower dungeons will allow players to practice roles and abilities without resorting to LFD. NPC's will make up the rest of the party. Holidays Love Is In The Air, the Lunar Festival and Noblegarden have new content including battle pets, transmog, and a dragonriding appearance. Be warned there are some very, very pink items coming to the Trading Post in February. And there's a new weekly event, Azeroth Archives that will have solo and group content to earn a v...

Brought to you by J.C. Newman - This week, Jon Carney stops by in studio to catch up with Smokin Tabacco. We talk about LFD and what is new there plus Jon talks to us about Stan, his artificial intelligence who creates his new voicemails. Micallef News: This weeks news segment covers a variety of happenings from the industry on our website. Don't forget to Like and Subscribe and visit www.smokintabacco.com for more news and updates from the cigar industry. Visit 2GuysCigars for the best selection of in the industry! - www.2guyscigars.com  Accessories provided by S.T. Dupont - Be Exceptional

GGG 322 2 Wheeled Adventures - This week we discuss project updates and some early resustls of a test for an upcoming LFD video. Twitch Channel Instagram (Matt) Instagram (Heinrich) LFD Research Youtube LFD Research Playur Facebook Apple Podcasts Stitcher  Contact the show directly at geeksgadgetsandguns@gmail.com

In this episode of Smoking Underground, Devin, Gary, and John discuss tips on cigars. They start by talking about the importance of being specific when making a wish with a genie, and then move on to discussing the different styles of cigars and the proper way to smoke them. Gary, who is an expert on the subject, shares his knowledge on the topic. They also talk about the specific cigar they are smoking that day, the Tatuaje Ina 6, made by Pete Johnson. They give a brief history of the brand and its connection to the Garcia family.[00:01:37] Tattawaha cigar review. [00:06:11] Cigar wrapping and capping. [00:08:24] Cigar cutting techniques. [00:13:23] Chisel format trademarked by LFD. [00:16:46] Cigar shapes: torpedo and belacoso. [00:19:41] Cigar cutting techniques. [00:23:31] Cigar cap removal techniques. [00:27:02] Cigar Punches. [00:30:37] Cigar cutting pet peeves. [00:36:08] Proper cigar smoking techniques. [00:38:06] Smoking Cigars Too Farcigars, tips, Pete Johnson, price point, bands, tension, founders 11th-anniversary blend, cigar caps, capping, cigar, humidified, toreadors, filler, binder, box, wrapper, elasticize, pliable, cap, standard, three caps, basic model, cut, bands, wide mouth punch.,cigar, chisel, technique, punch, model, cigar, chisel, trademark, LFD, diamond industry, copyright, trademark, jeweler, precision, leggero, bellicose, torpedo, terminology, website domains, honeycomb tip, pigtail, cigar, lighter, Christoph, convenience, cigars, cap, quality, reinforcement, pigtail, cigar tips, cigar pen, punches, tool, price, practice, punch, tiger cut, serrated, tobacco, cutters, hand sanitizer, cigars, lotus, share, parejo, cigar, smoking, logo, whiskey, cigar, tunneling, purge, flavor, Vitola Find Cigars, podcast, audience, producer, plug, network

Brought to you by Drew Estate: This week, we talk about the latest updates on PCA 2023 including new announced releases and some information regarding alternative networking options at the show. We also keep tabs on the Celtics-Heat Game 6 throughout the show and at the end, you can catch our reaction to the end of the game live in real time. Jonathan Carney of LFD also makes a surprise appearance on the show.  Don't forget to visit Smokintabacco.com for more news, reviews and updates from the cigar industry and while you're at it, LIKE and SUBSCRIBE! Cutters and Lighters provided by Cigar Blondie Accessories www.cigarblondie.com 

This podcast we smoke LFD chisel Double Ligero drink Wiser's 15yr Whiskey and take at look at the List of best stand up specials of 2022, along with our typical sophomoric behavior.   Follow @TheCigarDungeon  On twitter/Instagram/facebook   Follow @WarPigsSC On twitter/Instagram/facebook

JC Newman tampa factory update. We lay the groundwork for starting new traditions, New release from LFD, and could an alcohol-free social club make it?

Brought to you by J.C. Newman - This week Jon Carney of LFD is back with us after a long hiatus. We spend most of the show reviewing the big and busy year that LFD had in 2022 with the NFT, Solis, TAA and more. Jon gives us some insight in what to expect for 2023 and we finish the show talking about celebrities and their impact on the industry as well as the importance of celebrating with cigars. Micallef News: United Cigars Announces Independance Day Firecracker for 2023 with E.P. Carrillo Pledge blend. Don't forget to LIKE & SUBSCRIBE and visit our website for more news, reviews, and coverage of the industry as well as update son our CFCF fundraiser which begins in March. Cutters and Lighter provided by Cigar Blondie Accessories. For all of your retail needs, head over to 2GuysCigars for one of the most amazing selections in the industry!

What exactly does a funeral director do? And why is he/she/they a critical advocate for anyone planning a funeral? Darren Picht, LFD and Executive Vice President of Funeral Operations at Plaza Jewish Community Chapel in NYC, gives a primer on funeral planning and what we should all do now to be properly prepared. He is […] The post The Funeral Director as Your Advocate: Darren Picht, LFD appeared first on Plaza Jewish Community Chapel.

Brought to you by J.C. Newman Cigar Co. - This week Nicole and Matt sit down and light up some Atabeys and talk about a topic that has come up in the media recently - cigar industry power rankings but broken down into three categories. We break down who is who based on current analysis on who is in control, who is hot and who to watch out for. Listen in to find out who we named and why. A written three-part article is to follow. All of which is subject to change year-to-year. Micallef news brings us some exciting stories from the week including news from JC Newman, Plasencia and LFD. During the Room101 Top Three we talk about what Thanksgiving dishes we each like the most during the holiday. Cutters and Lighters provided by Cigar Blondie Accessories. www.cigarblondie.com  Don't forget to Like and Subscribe here and everywhere you listen to podcasts and visit www.smokintabacco.com for more news and updates.

This week, La Flor Dominicana's own and beloved Jon Carney returns for our #ELOsoFumarTakes #227thTake! Jon has done more than a few favors for me over the years, but that's what friends are for. I'm blessed to be close with a lot of people in this industry, but I do consider Jon a dear friend. But, far too much has happened since Jon's last stop on the show. From Family news to NFTs, we sit down to cover it all. We'll be smoking the new, new Solis and discussing socks, steaks (of course) and all things LFD! Enjoy!   For this occasion, Jon and I would like to spotlight Cigars for Warriors We had an interview with Storm on #Take193: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-vwf62-1153f4b   Presidents and their Steak: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-presidents-eat-steak-2018-2#donald-trump-new-york-strip-well-done-with-ketchup-1   NFTs: https://cigar-coop.com/2022/08/cigar-news-la-flor-dominicanas-golden-bull-nft-auction-closes.html Solis: https://cigar-coop.com/2022/06/cigar-news-la-flor-dominicana-to-launch-solis.html   other LFD News: https://cigar-coop.com/tag/la-flor-dominicana  

On Episode 244, we welcome back Jonathan Carney, Vice President of Sales for La Flor Dominicana We will catch up on the happenings at La Flor Dominicana including the company's auction of the Golden Bull NFT and some of LFD's latest projects.  Plus we will have our Alec Bradley Live True segment, Cattle Baron Steak Question of the night, and an expanded Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust Deliberation segment!

On Episode 244, we welcome back Jonathan Carney, Vice President of Sales for La Flor Dominicana. We will catch up on the happenings at La Flor Dominicana including the company's auction of the Golden Bull NFT and some of LFD's latest projects.  Plus we will have our Alec Bradley Live True segment, Cattle Baron Steak Question of the night, and an expanded Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust Deliberation segment!

This week we give Mitul Shaw and Danny Ditkowich a chance to rebut the comments made on The Cigar Authority about their NFT purchase from LFD

Brought to you by J.C. Newman - This week, Matt and Jon join forces to talk bout the 2022 PCA Trade Show and Convention. They recap what they liked and disliked, what changes the PCA should make and the potential for the "Big Four" to return. They also talk about the potential for the relocation of the show to New Orleans.  Jon gets into the current legal battle between Arturo Fuente and General Cigar over the use of the "X" on the CAO band. Matt showcases some photos from the PCA trade show and Jon gets more in depth over the new cigars and ashtrays that LFD showcased at the show. He also went over how they as a company performed. Matt and Jon later discussed some of the other brands that showcased some interesting products. Don't forget to Like and Subscribe and head over to www.smokintabacco.com for more coverage of the 2022 PCA Trade Show and the news and updates from the industry.

This episode of the Inside EMS Podcast is sponsored by FirstNet, Built with AT&T. FirstNet uses the latest technology to keep your lines of communication and data open – to help you respond faster, smarter and safer. This week, our co-hosts welcome two members from the Lexington (Ky.) Fire Department, Lt. Ken Howell and Firefighter Mackenzie Gross, to discuss the organization's community paramedicine program. Gross also serves as one of two social workers in the program.  The discussion flows as our guests outline their efforts and share how to progressively develop as a community medic. Gross, who serves as one of two social workers for the LFD, explains the importance of social work in conjunction with a community paramedicine program.    Additional resources Looking for more information about community paramedicine? Check out these additional EMS1 resources:  Chris Cebollero's work to bring reimbursement to community paramedicine How community paramedicine is a risk reduction program for your citizens How to hire effective community paramedics

This episode of the Inside EMS Podcast is sponsored by FirstNet, Built with AT&T. FirstNet uses the latest technology to keep your lines of communication and data open – to help you respond faster, smarter and safer. This week, our co-hosts welcome two members from the Lexington (Ky.) Fire Department, Lt. Ken Howell and Firefighter Mackenzie Gross, to discuss the organization's community paramedicine program. Gross also serves as one of two social workers in the program.  The discussion flows as our guests outline their efforts and share how to progressively develop as a community medic. Gross, who serves as one of two social workers for the LFD, explains the importance of social work in conjunction with a community paramedicine program.    Additional resources Looking for more information about community paramedicine? Check out these additional EMS1 resources:  Chris Cebollero's work to bring reimbursement to community paramedicine How community paramedicine is a risk reduction program for your citizens How to hire effective community paramedics

Tony a man of MANY stories works along with his father Litto Gomez at LFD cigars. Tony is a visionary and with this he helps innovate the LFD brand while sticking close to his father's high standards of quality! Tony sits with The Burn Down as we discuss anything and everything! A 20 minute phone conversation with Michael Jordan, NFTS?!, the challenges with social media, a HILARIOUS story about the first time his father gave him a cigar, the future of LFD and so much more!

This week we are back in the JC Newman Cigar Studios and Jon Carney and Matt reconnect after Jon's absence. They talk about the new cigar that Litto announced on the show a few weeks ago as well as some other projects that LFD has been working on. The boys talk about preparing for PCA and tease some shenanigans. This week since there is no guest, the guys talk about some interesting topics or facts about cigars that maybe you haven't heard of. Some more unheard of than others. They also talk about Ligero and how it is harvested and used properly to roll a cigar. In the news brought to you by Micallef Cigars, we talk about the upcoming open comment period to be held by the FDA on flavored cigars and the ban that the FDA is proposing on them. You can visit www.fightflavorbans.com to let your voice be heard and help stop this atrocity. Be sure to tune in next week, LIKE & SUBSCRIBE and as always visit www.smokintabacco.com

This week with Jon absent we are joined by his boss and LFD owner, Litto Gomez of La Flor Dominicana. Litto spoke to us about the early days of LFD and how it came to be after being robbed at gun point in the jewelry/pawn business. We discuss how LFD performed during the boom of the mid 1990's, and how they are one of the few companies who survived and took off after. In addition, a Smokin Tabacco exclusive, Litto has announced at PCA 2022 we will see a new cigar called Soleil, which means “The Sun”. According to Litto, this cigar was created by his son Litto Gomez jr. It is considered the opposite of the La Nox - created by his other son Tony Gomez, which means “The Night”. More information to follow. In our Cigar Industry News segment, brought to you by Micallef Cigars, we talk about the return of the Herrera Esteli Lanceros. More information can be found here: Return of Herrera Esteli Lanceros In the Room101 Top 3 Segment, Litto talks about his favorite alcohol and why he almost exclusively uses foam cups for all of his drinks. Be sure to visit our fundraiser page to donate for the CFCF raffle fundraiser here: Raffle Tickets Don't forget to LIKE & SUBSCRIBE on all of our platforms and don't miss out on more news from www.SmokinTabacco.com

Minter Dialogue avec Denis Cristol Denis Cristol est Directeur Innovation et développement APM - Association Progrès du Management. Il est Membre fondateur chez Cercle APE - Apprendre Ensemble et a écrit plus d'une vingtaine d'oeuvres. Dans cet entretien, nous discutons de l'association et du succès de l'APM, les nouvelles méthodes d'apprentissage, les nouvelles exigences pour les départements de LFD en entreprise, le leadership et comment le leader de demain doit évoluer. Nous parlons aussi de son blog qu'il maintient depuis plus d'une décennie, l'importance de l'empathie et du rôle du dialogue dans l'intelligence collective.  Si ce podcast vous a plu, merci de prendre quelques instants pour laisser une revue sur iTunes.

Pixel 6a, Pixel 7 y Gafas mágicas de Google / FIDO triunfa en Yahoo Japón / Gran terremoto en Marte / Renfe invertirá en startups / Serie sobre Dinamic Software en Netflix

Come on by and have a listen as Cy and Projali talk about the new mobile game that was just announced, Wrath classic, and all kinds of other shenanigans. Do the dynamic duo want LFD? Do they also approve of boosting? Find out today!   www.scrubsvstheworld.com @scrubsvs

Welcome to the gaming podcast where it's not my opinion that counts - but yours! Listen in each episode as Josh sits down for lengthy chats with passionate people about the things we love. Today, I gather 12 members of the Countdown listener base to go back and forth on the big issue of LFD in Wrath Classic.  Two teams, six speakers each, and many, many questions presented in Presidential Debate format.  Who's the winner?? You! Enjoy the content! HUGE thank you to Actriev, Alenya, Ayle, Dom, Hunk, Jigantor, Jooda, Meowfurian, OmegaKai, Ruuzh, Waklo & Zorin again for being brave and saying yes to this one! You guys help make this amazing community what it is. Support Josh & Countdown today over at Patreon, including bonus 'Countdown After Dark' podcast content: https://www.patreon.com/joshcorbett Or if subscriptions aren't your thing, support Josh & Countdown by shouting him a one time beer here: https://ko-fi.com/countdowntoclassic Join the show's discord here: https://discord.gg/83thqw2fBw Listen in on live recordings for the show on Josh's Twitch channel here: https://www.twitch.tv/joshcorbett Check out Josh's hilarious movie podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sinner-files/id1290218344 or on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/469qUDnQHBkCogdjZyFUjb?si=jNgDTiEnSvKBbZuNz2xcxw

Welcome to the gaming podcast where it's not my opinion that counts - but yours! Listen in each episode as Josh sits down for lengthy chats with passionate people about the things we love. Today, Ayle and I sit down for a chat amongst mates about the state of play in TBC.  I brought 15 topics to the table and we zip through them in 5 minutes each, lightning round style, in an homage to Pardon The Interruption! A Canadian & an Australian walk into a bar... - 2:35 The Arugal Experience vs. The Rest of the World - 4:50 Worldwide Faction Balance Issues - 10:30 World PvP Campfire Stories - 16:35 The State of Raiding in TBC - 24:30 Is the Classic Franchise The Least Casual Friendly MMO Experience Ever? - 30:00 Gladiator Buyers Club - 36:50 Zul'Aman Incoming - 44:50 Bear Mount Carry 20K PST for Details - 50:15 Wrath of the Plate King - 56:30 The Warrior Tanking Plight - 1:03:15 Learning To Tank, But I Do Got Wings - 1:11:20 Season of More? - 1:17:45 Wrath of the LFD - 1:21:55 Ayle's Wrath Plans - 1:29:00 Support Josh & Countdown today over at Patreon, including bonus 'Countdown After Dark' podcast content: https://www.patreon.com/joshcorbett Or if subscriptions aren't your thing, support Josh & Countdown by shouting him a one time beer here: https://ko-fi.com/countdowntoclassic Join the show's discord here: https://discord.gg/83thqw2fBw Listen in on live recordings for the show on Josh's Twitch channel here: https://www.twitch.tv/joshcorbett Check out Josh's hilarious movie podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sinner-files/id1290218344 or on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/469qUDnQHBkCogdjZyFUjb?si=jNgDTiEnSvKBbZuNz2xcxw