Podcasts about Twilio

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.In this episode, I sat down with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director of Redpoint Ventures. We explore the evolving landscape of venture capital and startup investing and dive deep into the challenges facing unicorn companies post-2021, the transformative potential of AI, and the critical factors for successful startup investments. Logan shares insights on identifying promising founders, navigating market uncertainties, and the importance of adaptability in both founding teams and venture capital. Key takeaways include the need for founders with rapid learning capabilities, the potential disruption and opportunities in AI, the changing dynamics of startup valuations and exits in a challenging market environment, and so much more.About Logan BartlettLogan Bartlett is a Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures, where he leads early-growth investments in enterprise software, with a focus on infrastructure, SaaS, and AI. Since joining Redpoint in 2020 after six years at Battery Ventures, Bartlett has backed high-growth companies such as Ramp, Cribl, Cyera, Monte Carlo, FloQast, Crossbeam, and Workato. His work has earned him recognition on both the Forbes 30 Under 30 and the Midas Brink lists.Beyond investing, Bartlett hosts The Logan Bartlett Show, a podcast featuring in-depth conversations with top founders, operators, and investors. The show offers insights into startup growth, market cycles, and venture capital strategies, and has become a respected resource within the tech ecosystem.Redpoint Ventures, founded in 1999, is a venture capital firm that partners with visionary founders to create and redefine markets. The firm invests in startups across various stages, from seed to growth, and has backed over 578 companies, including industry giants like Snowflake, Looker, Kustomer, Twilio, and Netflix. With 181 IPOs and M&A exits and managing $7.2 billion across multiple funds, Redpoint's expertise in guiding businesses toward success is well-established.Timestamps:In this episode, we discuss:* Logan Bartlett's Path into Venture Capital (1:46)* The 2021 Unicorn Logjam and Future Outlook (4:38)* AI's Role in Reshaping Legacy Companies (8:32)* Liquidity Challenges and Growth Stage Investing (11:16)* Portfolio Construction and Risk Balance (17:16)* Underwriting Series B Investments (22:41)* Portfolio Composition and Risk Appetite (26:36)* Evaluating AI Companies and Revenue Durability (30:01)* Forecasting and Macro Underwriting (35:32)* Key Investment Decision Criteria (40:11)* Traits of Successful Venture Investors (45:28)* Final Thoughts and Takeaways (49:58)I'd love to know what you took away from this conversation with Logan. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you'd like to be considered as a guest or have someone you'd like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on X. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com

Chris Degnan is one of the most legendary CROs of this generation. He joined Snowflake as employee #13 and the 1st sales hire. He scaled the sales org from 0 to over $3B in ARR, spanned four CEOs, and retired as CRO after 11 years. In his first podcast post-retirement, Chris opened his CRO playbook, from early enablement to hiring rigor and fending off threats from competitors. He also reflects on lessons from working with leaders like Frank Slootman, John McMahon, and Sridhar Ramaswamy. If you're a founder or running sales at a startup, this one is for you. (00:00) Introduction to Chris's Journey at Snowflake (01:47) Navigating Leadership Changes (04:39) The Importance of Sales Methodology and Enablement (10:22) Near-Death Experiences and Company Resilience (13:39) Building a Strong Sales Organization (27:25) Hiring and Scaling the Sales Team (34:52) Board Dynamics and Mentorship (44:29) The Influence of John McMahon (46:22) Leadership Styles and Intuition (46:56) Launching Snowflake Japan (49:39) Learning from Leaders (55:10) The Importance of Competitive Moats (59:12) Snowflake vs. Databricks (01:07:45) Public vs. Private Markets (01:14:03) Sales and Marketing Synergy (01:26:17) Final Thoughts and Future Plans Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

In this episode of Builders Wanted, we sit down with Dar Miranda, VP of Customer Engagement at DailyPay, to delve into the innovative strategies behind real-time financial management for workers. Explore how financial stress impacts employee engagement, the shift towards employee-centric pay models, and the bold moves Daily Pay is making to transform traditional payroll systems.-------------------Key Takeaways:DailyPay's mission to provide employees faster, more flexible access to earned wages.Financial stress causes a significant impact on employees' focus, productivity, and job satisfaction.The integration of AI will help solve customer problems and drive growth, but will not replace humans.-------------------“ The trend that I'm watching most closely is the integration of AI to proactively solve customer problems, but also unlock new growth avenues. So it's not just about reactively answering questions or the ability to reactively answer questions quickly, it's about shifting AI from this like cost center efficiency play  to a revenue and loyalty driver.” – Dar Miranda-------------------Episode Timestamps:‍*(05:36) - The boldest thing DailyPay is building right now‍*(11:25) - The surprising way users engage with DailyPay ‍*(21:15) - Where Dar draws the line between automation and human connection ‍*(32:01) - A CX trend Dar is watching closely ‍*(36:27) - What every CX leader should start or stop doing‍*(38:55) - Dar's advice for builders creating empathetic customer experiences-------------------Links:Connect with Dar on LinkedInConnect with Kailey on LinkedInLearn more about Caspian Studios-------------------SponsorBuilders Wanted is brought to you by Twilio – the Customer Engagement Platform that helps builders turn real-time data into meaningful customer experiences. More than 320,000 businesses trust Twilio to transform signals into connections—and connections into revenue. Ready to build what's next? Learn more at twilio.com.

Logan sits down with Bipul Sinha, CEO and co-founder of Rubrik and former VC at Lightspeed and Blumberg Capital. Bipul shares what he learned transitioning from investor to founder, why intuition beats expertise, and how he built Rubrik into a category-defining business by betting on uncool ideas. They talk product-market fit in the AI era, what most VCs get wrong today, and why the enterprise IT market is still just getting started. It's a conversation packed with hard-earned wisdom and bold takes on building lasting companies. (00:00) Intro (01:42) Transitioning from VC to Founder (02:27) The Genesis of Rubrik (03:30) Navigating Uncertainty in Business (06:57) Product Market Fit and Early Success (08:56) Evolving with the Market (13:14) AI and Data Security (18:53) Leadership and Intuition (28:34) Building a Transparent Culture (31:52) Handling Tough Questions in Board Meetings (33:28) Changing Perspectives Over Time (34:57) Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs (36:46) The Future of Venture Capital and Startups (40:38) Balancing Forward and Lateral Motion in Business (42:35) The Impact of AI on Various Industries (01:00:28) The Evolution of Work and Technology (01:02:52) Fostering a Collaborative Company Culture (01:04:56) Looking Ahead: The Future of Rubrik Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

How TestDevLab's Ervins Grīnfelds Built a Global Software Testing Powerhouse Without Outside FundingOn a recent episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur, host Josh Elledge sat down with Ervins Grīnfelds, co-founder and co-CEO of TestDevLab, to explore the critical role of quality assurance (QA) in software development. Ervins shares how his company—launched from Latvia—has become a go-to QA partner for giants like Zoom, Microsoft, Discord, and Pinterest. This episode unpacks how smart QA practices can reduce risk, speed up development, and help businesses deliver world-class software.Why Quality Assurance Should Start on Day OneErvins explained that most companies think of QA as something to address at the end of development. But at TestDevLab, the approach is radically different: quality assurance starts at the very beginning. Integrating QA early means identifying bugs before they compound, improving user experience from the outset, and significantly lowering long-term costs. With a background leading mobile development teams at Microsoft's Skype, Ervins knows firsthand how missed bugs can affect product success and customer trust.Ervins also discussed how modern QA isn't just about functionality. It's about legal compliance (especially accessibility standards), performance optimization across devices, and ensuring high standards in today's AI-infused tech environment. With AI now playing a growing role in software development and testing, TestDevLab incorporates machine learning tools—but never loses sight of the human element. Their hybrid approach blends automation and manual expertise for reliable results.Another theme was scaling without outside funding. TestDevLab has grown to more than 500 employees and over 10 offices across Europe—all without a dollar of venture capital. Ervins offered his philosophy: build something valuable, prove its worth, and let great service drive sustainable growth.About Ervins GrīnfeldsErvins Grīnfelds is the co-founder and co-CEO of TestDevLab. A former engineering manager at Microsoft, where he led Skype mobile development teams, Ervins brings deep insight into building scalable, high-quality tech services. He is passionate about delivering reliable software solutions through a blend of trust, rigorous testing, and technical innovation.About TestDevLabTestDevLab is a leading software quality assurance company trusted by global tech giants including Zoom, Discord, Microsoft, Pinterest, and Twilio. Based in Latvia with 10+ offices across Europe, the company specializes in test automation, continuous testing, and custom QA solutions to accelerate development cycles and ensure top-tier product quality.Links Mentioned in this EpisodeTestDevLab WebsiteErvins Grīnfelds on LinkedInEpisode HighlightsWhy software QA is like insurance for your productHow TestDevLab scaled to 500+ employees without fundingThe hidden cost of skipping early-stage QAWhat it takes to win enterprise clients like Zoom and MicrosoftThe future of QA in an AI-driven development landscapeConclusionErvins Grīnfelds gave us a behind-the-scenes look at how one of Europe's fastest-growing software QA companies is helping developers ship better software, faster. His story is a lesson in long-term thinking, strategic growth, and the value of starting with quality from day one. Whether you're a startup founder or a CTO at a scaling tech company, this episode is a...

Rick Smith (CEO, Axon) joined Logan to share the 30-year journey of building a nearly $50B public company behind the TASER, police body cameras, and now AI-powered tools like Draft One. He talks about taking Axon public in the early 2000s, navigating intense public scrutiny, and evolving from a controversial hardware startup into a software and AI pioneer. Rick also reflects on leadership lessons, regulatory battles, and his long-term mission to make the bullet obsolete. It's a candid and compelling conversation with one of the most unconventional founders in tech. (00:00) Intro (01:31) Axon: Reducing Violence Through Technology (02:12) The Evolution of Axon: From Taser to Body Cameras (04:56) Challenges and Triumphs: Going Public and Beyond (07:17) The Impact of Ferguson and the Rise of Body Cameras (11:16) Navigating Cultural and Business Shifts (17:04) The Role of AI and Future Innovations (25:26) The Taser: Technology and Purpose (34:17) Making the Bullet Obsolete: Future of Law Enforcement (37:10) Consumer Market Evolution (37:59) Proving Taser's Viability (40:17) Targeting Gun Owners (41:45) Taser-Related Deaths and Media Perception (48:07) Employee Taser Experience (50:59) Impact of Body Cameras (52:43) AI Innovations in Law Enforcement (56:15) Challenges in Product Development (01:04:27) Regulatory Hurdles (01:11:31) Leadership and Company Culture (01:14:58) Future Vision for Axon Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

In this episode of Builders Wanted, we sit down with Cole Moir, Vice President of Brand and Digital Marketing at TCL North America, to explore what it takes to create a standout brand in a crowded market. Tune in to hear about the methods behind creating high-impact, emotionally resonant brand experiences and the future role of AI and personalization in marketing.-------------------Key Takeaways:A focus on creating memorable and emotional moments for audiences builds a more meaningful connection with consumers and aligns with the brand's identity and values.Brands that leverage cultural moments to enhance their relevance and impact connect with audiences on a shared emotional and cultural ground.Clarity in messaging often wins over cleverness, especially in crowded markets, and leads to stronger trust and engagement among consumers.-------------------“ The key is to design brand experiences that respect attention, not demand it. In a world of infinite content, brands that break through are the ones that earn the moment by being useful or entertaining or emotionally resonant. We don't chase eyeballs, we chase impact.” – Cole Moir-------------------Episode Timestamps:‍*(02:08) - The boldest thing TCL is building right now‍*(06:08) - How Cole thinks about aligning brand moments with cultural ones ‍*(09:17) - How to design brand experiences without burning out your audience‍*(12:54) - How TCL stays fresh in a fast moving category‍*(21:54) - What Cole learned from campaigns early in his career‍*(28:28) - Quick hits: insight and inspiration-------------------Links:Connect with Cole on LinkedInConnect with Kailey on LinkedInLearn more about Caspian Studios-------------------SponsorBuilders Wanted is brought to you by Twilio – the Customer Engagement Platform that helps builders turn real-time data into meaningful customer experiences. More than 320,000 businesses trust Twilio to transform signals into connections—and connections into revenue. Ready to build what's next? Learn more at twilio.com.

Alastair Hussain⁠ welcomes back ⁠Chris Koehler⁠, CMO at Twilio, for the second half of their two-part conversation. In this episode, Chris and Ali discuss how to shift from talking about point solutions to telling a platform story, their shared passion for pricing, slaying the attribution dragon, and why CMOs need to feel uncomfortable.  How to Grow a CMO is brought to you by The Marketing Practice - the global marketing agency for B2B technology brands. To find out more, visit ⁠https://www.themarketingpractice.com. 

In the first of our interview series exploring AI and its impacts on leaders across functions, Heidrick & Struggles' Lindsay Leach and Hugh Marshall were joined by Chris Koehler, the chief marketing officer at Twilio, a customer engagement platform that drives real-time personalized experiences for leading brands. Chris discusses the ways in which his marketing function is using AI and where they are finding it adding particular value, as well as how he uses AI tools in his day-to-day work. The three also discuss what skills and mindsets marketing leaders will need to thrive in this AI-driven world, as well as how they will continue to find talent to make the most of AI. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Logan sits down with Jeffrey Katzenberg, Hollywood legend and co-founder of DreamWorks, and Sujay Jaswa, former CFO of Dropbox - together, the duo behind WndrCo. They talk about building enduring companies, bridging tech and media, and what makes a great CEO partnership. The conversation also touches on storytelling as a business superpower and lessons from scaling at different stages. Whether you're a founder or a media nerd, there's something here for you. (00:00) Intro (04:26) The Genesis of the Partnership (13:06) Building and Investing in Companies (20:27) The Team and Their Roles (26:52) Decision-Making Process (33:25) Balancing Dreams and Skepticism (35:06) The Dynamics of Partnerships (37:25) Transitioning to Tech (38:45) Cultural Differences in Industries (41:26) The Value of Failure and Success (44:37) Excitement in Emerging Technologies (48:23) The Venture Capital Game (56:42) The Dropbox Talent Network (01:01:20) AI's Impact on Media and Creativity (01:06:18) Transitioning to CG Animation at DreamWorks (01:08:39) Embracing Change in the Intelligence Revolution (01:11:52) The Role of AI in Enhancing Productivity (01:14:11) Building a Consumer Cybersecurity Business (01:23:49) The Mission to Protect Children Online (01:35:17) Reflections on Partnership and Innovation Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

This week on How to Grow a CMO, ⁠Alastair Hussain⁠ sits down with ⁠Chris Koehler⁠, CMO at Twilio, for part one of a two-part conversation. Chris reflects on his early aspirations, from childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut, to excelling in soccer. He shares how influential mentors have been key to his success, as well as his wife, a psychologist, whose perspective helps keep him grounded. Chris also opens up about overcoming imposter syndrome and the power of preparation when it comes to public speaking. How to Grow a CMO is brought to you by The Marketing Practice - the global marketing agency for B2B technology brands. To find out more, visit ⁠https://www.themarketingpractice.com⁠. 

AI agents are moving fast — but scaling them across your business? That’s the real challenge. Christopher Conolly, Director of Solutions Engineering, APJ Communications Business at Twilio, shares insight into how businesses are moving beyond chatbots to deploy AI agents that can act, reason, and scale. Dive into what’s driving adoption across Southeast Asia, and why scaling automation takes more than just smart tech. Learn about the practical examples of agentic AI in action, from streamlining customer service to optimising logistics and sales workflows. Tune in to Industry Insight and find out what it really takes to move from pilot to production — and why the next wave of AI will be about impact at scale.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Roman Gershman is Co-Founder & CTO of Dragonfly, the drop-in Redis replacement for heavy data workloads that has significant performance, cost, and scale benefits. Their open source dragonflydb has 28K stars on GitHub. Dragonfly has raised $21M from investors including Quiet Capital and Redpoint. In this episode, we dig into:The challenges with Redis The users that have really benefitted from Dragonfly (high scale + real-time needs - gaming, B2C) The benefits of being multi-threaded How they got some of their bigger users / customers like Twilio, SoFi, and Spotify

In this episode of Builders Wanted, we sit down with Dugan Winkie, Head of Commercial Strategy at Cedar, to explore how AI is reshaping one of the most emotionally complex industries: healthcare. From frustrating call center experiences to opaque billing processes, Dugan breaks down how Cedar is reimagining patient engagement with conversational AI, real-time data, and a builder's mindset.-------------------Key Takeaways:Strategic innovation involves closely monitoring market feedback, especially given significant operational cost constraints, regulatory uncertainties, and budget cuts.The use of conversational AI ensures that patients receive timely and accurate assistance, which reduces dependency on call centers and enhances the overall patient experience.Health systems must balance using innovative technologies while adhering to strict regulatory frameworks to ensure a seamless and secure patient financial experience.-------------------“ There is a lot of information silos, simultaneously, where we're expecting patients to know how to navigate a very complex system.  And we think conversational AI and agentic AI is a great manifestation where we can leverage a lot of our core competency and network connections to help answer those patients' questions in a way that is delightful.” – Dugan Winkie-------------------Episode Timestamps:‍*(02:10) - The boldest thing Cedar is building right now‍*(03:52) - How Cedar is using AI to humanize the patient financial experience‍*(14:24) - Recent patient behaviors that pushed Cedar to rethink the billing experience‍*(23:11) - How Cedar designed its AI agent, Kora, to be helpful and empathetic to patients‍*(31:10) - How Cedar is balancing AI innovation and healthcare regulations‍*(35:40) - How AI has already improved the patient journey-------------------Links:Connect with Dugan on LinkedInConnect with Kailey on LinkedInLearn more about Caspian Studios-------------------SponsorBuilders Wanted is brought to you by Twilio – the Customer Engagement Platform that helps builders turn real-time data into meaningful customer experiences. More than 320,000 businesses trust Twilio to transform signals into connections—and connections into revenue. Ready to build what's next? Learn more at twilio.com.

Season 6 kicks off with a must-listen for senior creatives ready to take the next step. Host Adam Morgan breaks down what it really takes to land a Creative Director role —  the experiences you must have, the details to leave out, and the important questions you must ask. Discover how to position yourself for this next level of creative leadership, speak the language recruiters want to hear, and step into the role that unlocks greater influence across brands and organizations. Tune in now.

In this episode, Logan is joined by Zach Weinberg (Co-Founder/CEO @ Curie.Bio) and Derek Thompson (writer at The Atlantic) for a candid discussion on the state of U.S. healthcare and scientific progress. They unpack what went right, and wrong, with COVID vaccine policy, the public backlash against mRNA technology, and the ripple effects on trust in science. The conversation also dives into the real reasons behind NIH budget cuts, the economics of drug discovery, and the business incentives in medical R&D. It's a sharp, thought-provoking look at the intersection of policy, innovation, and public perception. (00:00) Introduction to Drug Pricing in the US (00:23) Broad Healthcare Topics and Open-Ended Discussion (02:37) COVID-19 Vaccines: Successes and Public Perception (06:21) The Evolution of COVID-19 and Vaccine Efficacy (07:59) Public Policy and Vaccine Mandates (13:10) Impact of School Closures and Public Sentiment (19:23) NIH Funding and the Importance of Basic Research (25:04) Challenges in Science Funding and Public Perception (35:19) Government vs. Private Investment in Science (36:40) Operation Warp Speed: A Case Study (39:07) Antibiotic Resistance Crisis (43:22) The Drug Pricing Debate (44:05) Challenges in Drug Discovery (54:06) Regulatory Hurdles in Medical R&D (58:06) The Future of Drug Development (01:04:19) Concluding Thoughts Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

Yotam Segev is the co-founder and CEO of Cyera, one of the fastest-growing cybersecurity startups in the world. In this episode, he joins Logan to talk about scaling Cyera from 100 to 550 employees in under two years, what it takes to operate at that speed, and why going slow can actually be riskier. They cover lessons from a tough go-to-market year, the emotional conviction behind choosing data security, and how Yotam thinks about platform expansion, hiring, and staying close to customers. It's a candid look at the mindset and mechanics behind building an elite security company at breakneck pace.(00:00) Intro(01:23) Yotam's Journey in Cybersecurity(02:30) Scaling a Company with Core Values(05:02) Founding Cyera: From Military to Startup(07:59) Entering the Venture Ecosystem(18:19) Early Challenges and Lessons Learned(22:36) Achieving Product-Market Fit(33:01) Ambitious Goals and Rapid Growth(37:39) The Future of Cybersecurity(39:07) The Cybersecurity Paradigm Shift(39:47) Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Cybersecurity(40:25) The Cat and Mouse Game of Cybersecurity(42:47) Traits of Effective CISOs(43:55) Expanding the Cybersecurity Platform(52:36) The Role of AI in Cybersecurity(01:03:25) The Impact of the October 2023 Attack on Israel(01:08:27) Leadership and Company Culture at Cyera(01:12:33) Reflections on Success and Future Goals(01:21:37) Fundraising and Partnerships(01:26:07) Hiring and Company GrowthExecutive Producer: Rashad AssirProducer: Leah ClapperMixing and editing: Justin HrabovskyCheck out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

The Gross Domestic Product of the United States fell last quarter by 0.3%. The big tech giants are still growing. Jason Moser and Asit Sharma join Ricky Mulvey to discuss: - If the U.S. economy is sliding into a recession. - Earnings from Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple. - If investors should mind 20% of the S&P 500's market cap being tied to four companies. Then (19:11) Motley Fool Contributor Rick Munnariz joins Mary Long to discuss Universal Studio's new park, Epic Universe, and the state of the travel industry. (32:17) Asit and Jason break down two radar stocks: Twilio and Reddit. Host: Ricky Mulvey Guests: Jason Moser, Asit Sharma, Mary Long, Rick Munarriz Engineer: Dan Boyd Notes: How a millions of dollars worth of NFTs temporarily disappeared: https://www.404media.co/nfts-that-cost-millions-replaced-with-error-message-after-project-downgraded-to-free-cloudflare-plan/ This advertisement is sponsored content and is provided for informational purposes only. The Motley Fool and its affiliates (collectively, "TMF") do not endorse, recommend, or verify the accuracy or completeness of the statements made within this advertisement. TMF is not involved in the offer, sale, or solicitation of any securities advertised herein and makes no representations regarding the suitability, or risks associated with any investment opportunity presented. Investors should conduct their own due diligence and consult with legal, tax, and financial advisors before making any investment decisions. TMF assumes no responsibility for any losses or damages arising from this advertisement Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe at Thisnewway.com to get the step-by-step AI workflows.In episode 2 of This New Way, Felipe Izquierdo, CEO of Quest, explains how a small, boot-strapped team runs both an educational game studio and a cohort-based learning program by leaning on AI for almost every function — prototyping multiplayer math games in hours instead of weeks, automating high-touch parent emails, and even building a 24/7 “executive-coach” phone agent from scratch.Along the way he shares the exact stacks (Cursor, Replit, Zapier, Anthropic, Twilio, 11 Labs) and design choices that let three people operate like fifty.Timestamps00:00 Felipe's path from non-technical founder to AI-assisted coder01:28 What Quest does and why AI keeps the team lean03:28 How AI shrinks game-prototype cycles from weeks to hours08:34 Daily workflow: Cursor, Replit, Super Whisper voice coding & Mac dictation14:00 Learning to code faster via screenshot-driven ChatGPT tutoring16:58 Show & Tell #1: Zapier + Anthropic email-drafting pipeline (live demo)30:59 Show & Tell #2: Building and calling “Maximo,” a voice executive-coach agent41:48 Future bets: voice as the primary UI and AI-only workflowsResources & Tools Mentioned:Coding & Prototyping: Cursor, Replit, Devin (reference), GitHub PR reviewsVoice / Dictation: Super Whisper (Mac), macOS built-in dictation, 11 Labs Voice & Conversational AI, OpenAI Real-Time APIAutomation & LLMs: Zapier (Zaps), Anthropic Claude, Google Sheets / Airtable, Twilio (SMS & voice)Products & Links:Quest math & strategy games – joinquest.comAI executive coach “Maximo” – meetmaximo.com

Twilio just reintroduced itself to the world with a bold new brand—and in this kickoff episode of Builders Wanted, you'll meet the leaders behind it.Host Kailey Raymond sits down with Chris Koehler (CMO) and Adam Morgan (VP of Brand & Creative) to unpack the strategy, emotion, and hard decisions behind Twilio's brand refresh. They share how they turned a platform for developers into a movement for builders, what it takes to evolve without losing your DNA, and why the best brands don't just look good—they make people feel seen.Expect honest takes on brand risk, leadership, internal buy-in, and one idea that (almost) involved a kidnapper van.-------------------Key Takeaways:How the Twilio rebrand unifies developers, business leaders, and marketers through the ‘builder' concept.How to achieve buy-in from employees and customers for a successful brand refresh.How adaptability and a sense of urgency enables swift and decisive actions, fostering creativity and strategic alignment during a brand refresh.-------------------“ A builder is really anyone. It's anyone who's got a dream or a vision or a passion or excitement to go out and make something. Builders are the people who have an idea and actually go and do something about it. They go out and make it. That's such an important part of our story because what are we as Twilio? We are a platform where you can build amazing customer experiences. That is the invitation to anyone, whether you're the C-suite down to a developer, that you have this freedom to build whatever you want.” – Adam Morgan“ It actually speaks to me because I may not be building software, but I'm trying to build a team and a culture and a company, I'm building a family. I see myself as a builder, but I'm not hands on keyboard building applications. That's, I think, the secret sauce of this is that it actually applies to everyone. That takes some deliberate thought into, as you build this, and really understanding what your audience cares about.” – Chris Koehler-------------------Episode Timestamps:‍*(02:37) - Introducing Twilio's brand refresh ‍*(06:45) - How the term ‘builder' is central to Twilio's new identity‍*(13:58) - How and how not to run a rebrand ‍*(22:47) - How the brand is landing in market‍*(33:20) - Rapid fire takes-------------------Links:Connect with Chris on LinkedInConnect with Adam on LinkedInConnect with Kailey on LinkedInLearn more about Caspian Studios-------------------SponsorBuilders Wanted is brought to you by Twilio – the Customer Engagement Platform that helps builders turn real-time data into meaningful customer experiences. More than 320,000 businesses trust Twilio to transform signals into connections—and connections into revenue. Ready to build what's next? Learn more at twilio.com.

Send us a textn this episode of Salesforce Hiring Edge, Josh Matthews and Josh LeQuire break down two real-world Salesforce hiring stories—one a textbook win, the other a slow-motion fail. You'll learn exactly what separates high-velocity teams who land top talent from the ones who lose momentum and miss out.Josh unpacks a step-by-step playbook on how one fast-moving company hired a Salesforce pro in under 48 hours—from job order to offer. No red tape, no games, just clear priorities, time-blocked interviews, and decisive leadership.

Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, is leading the boldest effort in decades to bring back commercial supersonic flight—this time with product-market fit.We talk about what went wrong with the world's first try at supersonic commercial aircraft (launched in the 70s), why Boeing hasn't introduced a new plane in over a decade, and how Blake's startup is building a jet that flies 2x faster than today's aircraft—without the sonic boom. This episode is a crash course in engineering ambition, regulatory dysfunction, and what it takes to defy gravity and incumbents.(00:00) Intro(00:40) The History and Evolution of Aviation(01:12) The Rise and Fall of Concorde(05:25) The Impact of Government and Founders on Innovation(08:57) Regulatory Challenges and Business Models(26:53) Boom's Vision for Supersonic Travel(47:10) Building Trust with Regulators(48:16) Challenges in the Aerospace Startup(49:36) Recruiting Talent from Unlikely Places(55:47) The Importance of Mission Success Events(01:01:52) Developing a Custom Jet Engine(01:22:54) Reindustrialization and Economic Strategy(01:34:42) Conclusion and Final ThoughtsExecutive Producer: Rashad AssirProducer: Leah ClapperMixing and editing: Justin HrabovskyCheck out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

Think building killer APIs like Stripe or Twilio is purely a technical feat? Think again.This week, we dive into why crafting successful APIs is fundamentally an organizational challenge, demanding internal excellence long before code is deployed. Sagar Batchu, co-founder and CEO of Speakeasy, joins us to unpack the crucial role of ownership, design principles, and why even internal APIs benefit from treating them like first-class products. Discover how Conway's Law dictates your API's fate and why achieving that coveted developer experience starts with your company's structure.Getting these foundations right is more critical than ever, as the landscape now faces a dramatic shift with the rise of LLMs and agentic AI. This potentially multiplies API usage and introduces the concept of "Agent Experience" (AX), demanding even greater rigor around clear standards, documentation, and metrics like "Time to First 200." Sagar also explores the emerging Model Context Protocol (MCP) and explains why focusing on developer productivity today prepares you for the AI-driven future of tomorrow.Check out:AI Features Demo: The Future of Productivity Is AI-DrivenSurvey: Discover Your AI Collaboration StyleFollow the hosts:Follow BenFollow AndrewFollow today's guest(s):Website: speakeasy.comLinkedIn: SpeakeasyX: @speakeasydevReferenced in today's show:It costs nothing to be polite unless you're talking to ChatGPT - then it costs tens of millionsAnnouncing the Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A) - Google Developers Blog A Deep Dive Into MCP and the Future of AI ToolingSupport the show: Subscribe to our Substack Leave us a review Subscribe on YouTube Follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn Offers: Learn about Continuous Merge with gitStream Get your DORA Metrics free forever

On this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan and Corey welcome Rob Spivey back to the show. Rob is the director of research at our corporate affiliate Altimetry. With both buy-side and sell-side experience, he offers his unique perspective on the markets today. Rob kicks off the show by describing how Altimetry uses "Uniform accounting" to get a better sense of a company's financials and the health of the U.S. market as a whole. This leads to a conversation about corporate profitability, credit risk, and the future of AI. Rob explains the role Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is playing in implementing AI at the federal level, how AI could revamp Medicare and Medicaid, and what the fiscal multiplier effect means for government spending and AI. (1:47) Next, Rob breaks down the entire AI ecosystem and its many parts. He cites Twilio as an example of an AI company that's leveraging this technology in interesting ways today. And he goes in depth on a hidden opportunity in AI investing: companies that are warehousing and organizing data. "Nobody's paying attention to them now," he says. Rob then covers the government's profit surplus, how it differs from China's, and how a trade war could lead to a real war. (20:56) Then, Rob divulges America's secret weapon for corporate dominance: the Bill of Rights. He notes that it protects innovation and gives the U.S. a leg up on a global scale. After that, Rob discusses large language models and how they're trained, the usefulness of Google's NotebookLM, and the "revolution" that will be happening in AI in the next three to six months. (39:17)

On this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan and Corey welcome Rob Spivey back to the show. Rob is the director of research at our corporate affiliate Altimetry. With both buy-side and sell-side experience, he offers his unique perspective on the markets today. Rob kicks off the show by describing how Altimetry uses "Uniform accounting" to get a better sense of a company's financials and the health of the U.S. market as a whole. This leads to a conversation about corporate profitability, credit risk, and the future of AI. Rob explains the role Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is playing in implementing AI at the federal level, how AI could revamp Medicare and Medicaid, and what the fiscal multiplier effect means for government spending and AI. (1:47) Next, Rob breaks down the entire AI ecosystem and its many parts. He cites Twilio as an example of an AI company that's leveraging this technology in interesting ways today. And he goes in depth on a hidden opportunity in AI investing: companies that are warehousing and organizing data. "Nobody's paying attention to them now," he says. Rob then covers the government's profit surplus, how it differs from China's, and how a trade war could lead to a real war. (20:56) Then, Rob divulges America's secret weapon for corporate dominance: the Bill of Rights. He notes that it protects innovation and gives the U.S. a leg up on a global scale. After that, Rob discusses large language models and how they're trained, the usefulness of Google's NotebookLM, and the "revolution" that will be happening in AI in the next three to six months. (39:17)

College sports are going through massive changes—from athlete pay drama to superconference realignment and transfer portal chaos, not to mention the giant class action lawsuit playing out now.Matt Brown, the publisher behind Extra Points and one of the top experts on the business of college athletics, joined the show to break it all down. We walked through the full history of college sports, the current money dynamics, and where things could be headed. (00:00) Meet Matt Brown: Expert in College Sports Business(03:09) The Origins of College Sports(06:31) The Evolution of College Sports Broadcasting(14:53) Title IX and Its Impact on College Athletics(17:53) The 1984 Supreme Court Decision and Its Aftermath(20:03) The SMU Death Penalty Scandal(22:19) Conference Realignment and the BCS Era(28:22) The Rise of Conference Television Networks(30:23) The Arms Race in College Sports Facilities(34:41) The Role of Boosters in College Sports(36:03) Financial Breakdown of Major College Sports Programs(37:04) Understanding Nonprofit Accounting in College Athletics(38:20) Revenue Generation in College Sports(40:34) Athletics as Enrollment Management(42:04) The Flutie Effect and University Applications(44:37) Conference Realignment and Financial Instability(48:58) The O'Bannon Case and Video Game Licensing(53:59) The Northwestern Unionization Attempt(58:19) The Alston Case and Educational Awards(01:02:11) Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) Marketplaces(01:05:51) The Role of Collectives in College Sports(01:12:08) Dependability of Young Campaign Partners(01:13:03) Transfer Portal and Its Impact(01:15:56) Rise of NIL Agents and Handlers(01:17:40) Economic Incentives and Transfer Market(01:20:37) Challenges in NIL Enforcement(01:22:48) House Settlement and Future Implications(01:25:38) Allocation of NIL Funds by Universities(01:44:26) Potential Super Leagues and Investment Challenges(01:48:07) Concluding Thoughts on College SportsExecutive Producer: Rashad AssirProducer: Leah ClapperMixing and editing: Justin HrabovskyCheck out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

In this episode, Derek Thompson (Writer, The Atlantic) delves into the tumultuous nature of Trump's trade policies, especially regarding tariffs, and how they impact American manufacturing and global markets. They discuss the constant changes in policy, the resulting uncertainty for industries like automotive and aerospace, and the mismatch between Trump's ‘madman strategy' and effective industrial policy. The conversation also explores the broader economic consequences, including stock market volatility, housing affordability issues, and the role of government in promoting economic growth and innovation.(00:00) Intro(00:20) Trump's Trade Policy and Its Implications(01:30) The Uncertainty of Tariff Policies(02:12) Impact on American Manufacturing(05:15) Stock Market Reactions(07:00) Debating the Effectiveness of Tariffs(10:02) Wall Street vs. Main Street(18:44) Housing and Healthcare Challenges(34:53) Historical Context of Housing Regulations(41:48) The Reality of Construction Jobs(42:35) The American Dream and Housing Costs(42:57) The 30-Year Mortgage and Its Impact(43:48) Comparing Home Ownership to Stock Market Investments(45:14) Political Reception of the Book 'Abundance'(46:17) Pro-Business Democrats and Government's Role(48:38) The Need for Aggressive Democratic Leaders(51:18) The Importance of Economic Growth(01:01:26) Debating Government's Role in Industrial Policy(01:03:34) Challenges in the Semiconductor Industry(01:13:19) The Housing Problem in New York City(01:15:26) Conclusion and Final ThoughtsExecutive Producer: Rashad AssirProducer: Leah ClapperMixing and editing: Justin HrabovskyCheck out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

Debate between Keith Rabois and Zach Weinberg on what tariffs are actually trying to accomplish. One core theme: Tariffs aren't fully about “bringing back factories,” but rather a negotiation tool to eliminate foreign trade barriers - ultimately aiming to increase free trade, not restrict it.We also got into:- What each of them would do if they were in charge- Whether the trade deficit is a meaningful metric or just a misunderstood talking point- If tariffs could be part of an initiative to replace income tax — shifting toward a more consumption-based tax system- If tariffs could successfully be used as a non-military tool to reduce drug supply to the US- If there's a major disconnect between the new administration's rhetoric and the actual economic goals behind the policyOne of the deepest economic conversations from the show's recent history — and a rare debate where both sides had real logic behind their views.(00:00) Introduction and Host's Biases(00:46) Keith's Perspective on Tariffs(03:05) Zach's Perspective and Clarifying Questions(05:14) Debating Tariff Strategies(07:45) Economic Implications and Free Trade(13:31) Trump's Tariff Policies and Goals(16:57) Global Trade and Protectionism(25:52) Final Thoughts on Tariffs and Trade(29:16) Discussion on Trade Tariffs and Partners(30:17) Impact of Tariffs on GDP and Debt(31:20) Political Coalitions and Trade Policies(32:00) Tariffs as Consumer Taxes(33:30) Debate on Trade Deficit and Tariff Rates(36:53) Regulatory Reforms and Economic Policies(47:25) Fentanyl Crisis and Trade Negotiations(51:06) Closing Remarks and Future TopicsExecutive Producer: Rashad AssirProducer: Leah ClapperMixing and editing: Justin HrabovskyCheck out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

Veteran and entrepreneur Chad Grills of National Capital League discusses his experience with Big Tech and how building anything meaningful and lasting will likely not come out of Silicon Valley or places like California. He explains how Silicon Valley was seeded by DOD, the Intelligence Community, and DARPA. The culture of Silicon Valley and most major cities will not allow anything original or good for humanity to emerge. He argues we have neither communism nor capitalism, but a monopolistic system that keeps the little guy out. He stresses a need for better governance, creating good culture, maintaining personal integrity, and is optimistic about the ability of America to reinvent itself. Watch on BitChute / Brighteon / Rumble / Substack / YouTube Geopolitics & Empire · Chad Grills: Is a 'Golden Age' Possible for America? #537 *Support Geopolitics & Empire! Become a Member https://geopoliticsandempire.substack.com Donate https://geopoliticsandempire.com/donations Consult https://geopoliticsandempire.com/consultation **Visit Our Affiliates & Sponsors! Above Phone https://abovephone.com/?above=geopolitics easyDNS (15% off with GEOPOLITICS) https://easydns.com Escape Technocracy course (15% off with GEOPOLITICS) https://escapethetechnocracy.com/geopolitics PassVult https://passvult.com Sociatates Civis (CitizenHR, CitizenIT, CitizenPL) https://societates-civis.com Wise Wolf Gold https://www.wolfpack.gold/?ref=geopolitics Websites National Capital League https://www.nclhq.com X https://x.com/ChadJGrills Short Stories: Veterans after War https://www.amazon.com/Short-Stories-Veterans-after-War-ebook/dp/B0127DN39M Dustin Chambers: DOGE & America's Chance to Cut the Government Down to Size https://geopoliticsandempire.com/2025/01/02/dustin-chambers-doge-americas-chance-to-cut-the-government-down-to-size About Chad Grills Chad is the former founder and CEO of a company backed by Founders Fund and Sequoia. His previous clients include companies like: Salesforce (6x business units), Dell, Splunk, Twilio, and Government entities like Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He was selected “Best of Year” by Apple for two podcasts he hosted. He has spoken at places like the Defense Foreign Language Institute, Coast Guard Academy, Salesforce World Tour, and the Spartan Up Podcast. He's a U.S. Army veteran with deployments to Iraq, Egypt, and has provided security for the 56th Presidential Inauguration. He's the author of three books. His upcoming book is on the Texas Miracle and the economic destiny of Texas. He founded the National Capital League as a studios and labs to build media and technology products. *Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Last year, after pressure from activist investors, Jeff Lawson stepped down from his perch as CEO from Twilio, the cloud communications company he co-founded. But he didn't spend any time twiddling his thumbs — that same spring, he bought the satirical news organization The Onion, and by the end of the year, they'd tried to buy Alex Jones' Infowars at a bankruptcy auction.  Jeff also stayed busy on the political front, continuing his work on DemocracyFirst, a political action committee he co-founded, in 2022, to support candidates committed to democracy.  So there was plenty to chew on when Kara interviewed Jeff last week at Democracy's Information Dilemma, a symposium hosted by the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. They discuss the tech founder mindset; how Jeff is remaking The Onion; why political satire is more necessary than ever; why DEI — which Jeff championed as a CEO — can sometimes do more harm than good; and how to fight for democracy during Trump 2.0. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does it really take to make go-to-market teams more efficient? Our guest on this episode, Jen Igartua, works on answering this question every day. Jen is the CEO of Go Nimbly, a 60-person RevOps agency for Mid-Market & Enterprise SaaS companies. With an amazing roster of clients that includes Zendesk, Twilio, Snowflake, Intercom, and others, she and her team help companies solve what's getting in the way of growth.When you spend your days advising companies on how to operate more effectively, it's easy to think you've seen it all. But not Jen. She's a relentless learner. In our conversation, we demystify what GTM efficiency actually looks like behind the scenes, how her team is implementing AI in practical ways for clients, and why, despite all of Go Nimbly's success, she doesn't really focus on innovating internally within their business.Be sure to check out Go Nimbly's first conference, RevFest, on June 10 in Brooklyn: https://revfest.gonimbly.com/Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Sean on LinkedIn or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

In this freeform episode, Logan sits down with Zach Weinberg (Co-Founder and CEO of Curie.Bio) to break down two of the biggest storylines in tech: tariffs and AI.They banter through the core arguments for and against tariffs, including national security, domestic employment, and negotiation power. Plus, they revisit what's happened in past trade wars and share predictions on the real economic consequences this time around.Logan and Zach also discuss OpenAI's $40B raise and the broader race for AI dominance—can OpenAI maintain its lead against tech giants like Google and Apple? They debate the limits of product defensibility, the power of platform defaults, and the strategic moves OpenAI might need to make to stay ahead.Topics include:The arguments for and against tariffsWhat happened during past U.S. tariff cycles—and how this one comparesWhether OpenAI can maintain its edge in a world of native AI platformsA possible playbook for OpenAI to build user lock-in beyond utilityWhat this era of AI competition means for the U.S.—and what could derail ithttps://fdra.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Trade-War-Lessons-from-the-Past-2025.pdf?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosmacro&stream=business00:00 Intro01:35 Liberation Day and Global Trade02:13 Freeform Discussion on Various Topics02:44 Podcasting and VC Life03:32 Debating Tariffs and National Security11:26 Arguments Against Tariffs22:19 Historical Context of Tariffs26:58 Economic Predictions and Stagflation33:39 The Forgotten Lessons of Recessions36:02 The Fixed vs. Growth Mindset in Economics37:17 The Democratic Party's Shift on Economic Policies42:33 The Rise of Populism and Its Impact50:28 OpenAI's Explosive Growth and Challenges54:28 The Competitive Landscape of AI58:33 The Future of AI and Consumer Behavior01:07:20 The Role of Social Networking in AI's Future01:10:43 Wildcard: The Role of XAI and GrokExecutive Producer: Rashad AssirProducer: Leah ClapperMixing and editing: Justin HrabovskyCheck out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: / @redpointai

Andrew Cleland, Chief Investment Officer at Techstars, shares how the world's leading accelerator invests in early-stage startups. He breaks down what makes a great founder, how Techstars selects startups from tens of thousands of applicants, and why a strong technical differentiator is crucial. Andrew reveals the most common reasons startups get rejected and how Techstars mentors founders to avoid early mistakes. He also talks about the biggest themes shaping the future of venture capital.In this episode, you'll learn:[03:00] How Andrew's background in consulting, startups, and venture capital led him to Techstars [07:34] How Techstars selects startups from thousands of applications—what matters most[14:01] The #1 mistake founders make when applying to Techstars, and how to avoid[20:50] Why founders need to build investor relationships early when thinking about fundraising[26:04] Why the VC industry needs more transparency—and how that benefits foundersThe non-profit organization Andrew is passionate about: Magic BusAbout Andrew ClelandAndrew Cleland is the Chief Investment Officer at Techstars, where he oversees investment strategy, fundraising, and portfolio growth across Techstars' global network of accelerators. With over two decades in venture capital and early-stage investing, he previously led investments at Comcast Ventures and Time Warner Investments. An INSEAD MBA graduate, Andrew has backed dozens of high-growth startups and is focused on empowering the next generation of global founders.About TechstarsTechstars is one of the world's leading startup accelerators, backing thousands of early-stage companies across 50+ accelerator programs worldwide. Since 2006, Techstars has helped launch 20+ unicorns, including SendGrid, DigitalOcean, Uber, Twilio, DataRobot and Outreach. The program provides mentorship, funding, and global networks to help startups scale fast.Subscribe to our podcast and stay tuned for our next episode.

Oracle, Check Point, Twilio, Royal Mail, NYU and more are all in the hot seat this week!

Analysts Don Kellogg and Roger Entner are joined by Hermann Frank, CEO of Gigs, todiscuss the company's facilitation of MVNO creation for tech companies.00:24 Gigs platform overview 02:01 How Gigs actually works 04:24 Success stories 06:12 Smoothing the process 06:58 U.S. operating profile 08:04 What MVNO size is best? 09:07 Specialty MVNO cases 09:29 Gigs named as one of the World's Most Innovative Companies 10:05 Episode wrap-upTags:telecom, telecommunications, wireless, prepaid, postpaid, cellular phone, DonKellogg, Roger Entner, Hermann Frank, Gigs, MVNO, MVNE, carrier, tech,product-market fit, Nubank, Twilio, customers, Fast Company

Today we're thrilled to feature Ash Panjwani, the Head of Talent Development at Procore. Ash brings her wealth of experience from companies like Twilio and VMware to share;Her transformative approach to leadership developmentHer unique Define, Drive, and Develop frameworkHow the framework aligns leadership expectations to build ecosystems that nurture leaders on a large scaleWhether you're a talent development pro, a leader, or someone keen on organizational growth, this episode is loaded with actionable insights. Don't miss out on learning how Ash and her team are revolutionizing talent and leadership development. Tune in and elevate your understanding and capabilities within your organization!Ash Panjwani's journey began with a clear vision at an unusually young age. At just 16, while immersed in an AP Psychology course, Ash discovered a fascination with interpersonal dynamics and business operations. Growing up in a family with a small business owner father and a marketing executive mother, Ash was constantly surrounded by discussions about people, management, and workplace interactions. These daily conversations piqued Ash's interest in how these elements influenced business environments, sparking a lifelong passion for understanding the human aspect of business, even before fully grasping what the business world entailed.Connect with Andy Storch here:WebsiteLinkedInJoin us in the Talent Development Think Tank Community!Connect with Ash Panjwani here:LinkedIn

In this episode, Zachary Hanif, VP of AI, ML, and Data at Twilio, joins Amir to talk about the engine behind B2B AI innovation. From selecting the right tools to navigating the shift from POCs to production, Zachary offers an insider's look at how enterprises can thoughtfully and effectively integrate AI.We unpack:The danger of "boiling the ocean" with AIWhy chatbots aren't always the right starting pointWhat makes an AI POC actually valuableAnd why UX in the age of AI needs systems thinking

Carson Group's Ryan Detrick and Evans May Wealth's Brooke May break down the latest market trends and today's big rally. Morgan Stanley Global Chief Economist Seth Carpenter weighs in on the economy and impact of tariffs talk. Twilio CEO Khozema Shipchandler discusses AI's impact on business—and how the company is using AI internally to drive efficiency. Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman & Associates, analyzes KB Home's earnings. Plus, former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger gives his first interview since being ousted from the helm of the chipmaker and an inside look at how China is courting US CEOs (again) with our Eunice Yoon.

Some of the most successful technology companies—like AWS, Stripe, Twilio, and GitHub—have built platforms that developers don't just use but genuinely love. So, what sets these platforms apart from those that developers avoid? In this episode, we break down three key trends that make a platform indispensable: deep customer empathy, an iterative approach to product management, and a culture of empowerment.  Through real-world case studies, including stories from Integral's work with automotive and commercial vehicle clients, as well as insights from industry leaders like Stripe, GitHub, and Netflix, we explore what it takes to create platforms that drive innovation and efficiency. From GitHub's early days embedding in developer communities to Stripe's hands-on support of its first users, and Netflix's culture of autonomy and accountability, we uncover the strategies behind their success.  Whether you're building an internal platform for your company or a developer-focused product for the market, these lessons can help you increase adoption, reduce friction, and build something that developers truly love. Inside the episode... Why platforms like Stripe, GitHub, and AWS succeed while others struggle The three trends that define highly adopted developer platforms A case study from Integral: building a flexible payments platform for an automotive company How GitHub revolutionized version control by embedding in developer communities Stripe's hands-on early approach to supporting developers—and why it worked The role of iterative product management in successful platform adoption Netflix's "Freedom and Responsibility" principle and how it drives internal innovation Practical tips for increasing platform adoption in your own organization Mentioned in this episode Netflix Culture Deck: https://jobs.netflix.com/culture Unlock the full potential of your product team with Integral's player coaches, experts in lean, human-centered design. Visit integral.io/convergence for a free Product Success Lab workshop to gain clarity and confidence in tackling any product design or engineering challenge. Subscribe to the Convergence podcast wherever you get podcasts including video episodes to get updated on the other crucial conversations that we'll post on YouTube at youtube.com/@convergencefmpodcast Learn something? Give us a 5 star review and like the podcast on YouTube. It's how we grow.   Follow the Pod Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/convergence-podcast/ X: https://twitter.com/podconvergence Instagram: @podconvergence  

As tariff drama continues to heat up, Ryan Petersen, CEO of Flexport (one of the hottest freight forwarders in the world) came on the show to unpack the impact. Ryan also dives deep into the hidden world of US shipping, opportunities for AI automation in logistics, reflections on building Flexport, and some supply chain conspiracy theories.(00:00) Intro(01:16) Flexport's Mission and Operations(02:28) Impact of Tariffs on Businesses(05:15) Navigating New Duties and Regulations(09:19) Flexport's Strategic Response(14:39) Challenges in U.S. Shipping Policies(28:21) Union Influence on Port Automation(40:35) National Security and Trade Negotiations(41:06) Tariffs and Business Planning Challenges(42:16) Investment Opportunities in Ports(44:02) Port Automation and AI Integration(45:09) Flexport's Big Tech Launch(47:02) AI's Role in Supply Chain Management(53:14) Digitizing Freight Contracts(58:18) Lessons from Flexport's Growth(01:09:13) Conspiracy Theories in Shipping Executive Producer: Rashad AssirProducer: Leah ClapperMixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

For Founders and Funders and those supporting the startup ecosystem, this episode was a kool convo around all things fundraising, founder journey, cap tables, dilution and more. For the chat with Peter of Carta, I am joined by Startup Guru Bobby Napiltonia, the Managing Partner @TheGTMFirm and former head of the AppExchange at @Salesforce and @Twilio's first CRO.  See https://www.thegtmfirm.com/ Subscribe and Share!

Jordan Burton is an executive assessor and interview trainer, working with top VC/PE investors and high-growth startups to hire the best of the best. He has trained over 3,000 executives and investors on hiring and interviewing skills, working with companies like Sequoia Capital, TH Lee, Insight Partners, Twilio, and Scale AI, and over 50 venture-backed startups. He was formerly a Partner at leadership advisory firm ghSMART, a consultant at Bain & Company, and he holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.Mentioned on the ShowConnect with Jordan Burton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanwburtonLearn more about Talgo Team Building and Training: https://www.talgo.io/Listen to futurist Alexandra Levit on People Business: https://peoplebusinesspodcast.com/alexandralevit/________________________Connect with O'Brien McMahon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/obrienmcmahon/Learn more about O'Brien: https://obrienmcmahon.com/Timestamps(1:44) - Welcoming Jordon(2:17) - How does one become an expert in interviewing?(3:27) - How should you structure different types of interviews?(5:03) - What makes a good candidate? (10:53) - Are there any counterintuitive aspects of the interview process?(16:05) - How and What questions vs. Why questions (24:34) - When it comes to hard skills, how do we create good problem-solving interviews?(27:24) - Is there a similar way to test soft skills?(38:50) - The importance of motivation and will. (32:03) - How do we assess the actual skills required in real-time?(35:14) - What are your thoughts on the statement  "hire for attitude, train for skills"?(42:12) - Tips for candidates and interview teams to get organized and prepare(45:13) - How do we decide the best questions to be asked?(45:07) - How does an individual prepare for an interview?(46:19) - How do you analyze an interview?(49:09) - How do we develop our gut instincts? (52:32) - What is disciplined decision-making? (55:02) - Track, with honesty, which decisions worked out.(58:46) - Can you share a crazy interview story?

Twilio is a customer-engagement platform that combines cloud-based communications tools with contextual customer data, analytics and AI that are used by brands like Nike, Dominos and Toyota. The company is expanding beyond its historical focus on cloud-based communications platform-as-a-service software to allow its clients to more narrowly target their customer communications and increase the ROI on their marketing investment. In this episode of Tech Disruptors, Khozema Shipchandler, CEO of Twilio, speaks with Bloomberg Intelligence tech analyst John Butler about recent organizational changes intended to accelerate the company's evolution, expand its addressable market and drive higher revenue growth as it broadens its offerings.

Today's episode is with Paul Klein, founder of Browserbase. We talked about building browser infrastructure for AI agents, the future of agent authentication, and their open source framework Stagehand.* [00:00:00] Introductions* [00:04:46] AI-specific challenges in browser infrastructure* [00:07:05] Multimodality in AI-Powered Browsing* [00:12:26] Running headless browsers at scale* [00:18:46] Geolocation when proxying* [00:21:25] CAPTCHAs and Agent Auth* [00:28:21] Building “User take over” functionality* [00:33:43] Stagehand: AI web browsing framework* [00:38:58] OpenAI's Operator and computer use agents* [00:44:44] Surprising use cases of Browserbase* [00:47:18] Future of browser automation and market competition* [00:53:11] Being a solo founderTranscriptAlessio [00:00:04]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO at Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Smol.ai.swyx [00:00:12]: Hey, and today we are very blessed to have our friends, Paul Klein, for the fourth, the fourth, CEO of Browserbase. Welcome.Paul [00:00:21]: Thanks guys. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. I've been lucky to know both of you for like a couple of years now, I think. So it's just like we're hanging out, you know, with three ginormous microphones in front of our face. It's totally normal hangout.swyx [00:00:34]: Yeah. We've actually mentioned you on the podcast, I think, more often than any other Solaris tenant. Just because like you're one of the, you know, best performing, I think, LLM tool companies that have started up in the last couple of years.Paul [00:00:50]: Yeah, I mean, it's been a whirlwind of a year, like Browserbase is actually pretty close to our first birthday. So we are one years old. And going from, you know, starting a company as a solo founder to... To, you know, having a team of 20 people, you know, a series A, but also being able to support hundreds of AI companies that are building AI applications that go out and automate the web. It's just been like, really cool. It's been happening a little too fast. I think like collectively as an AI industry, let's just take a week off together. I took my first vacation actually two weeks ago, and Operator came out on the first day, and then a week later, DeepSeat came out. And I'm like on vacation trying to chill. I'm like, we got to build with this stuff, right? So it's been a breakneck year. But I'm super happy to be here and like talk more about all the stuff we're seeing. And I'd love to hear kind of what you guys are excited about too, and share with it, you know?swyx [00:01:39]: Where to start? So people, you've done a bunch of podcasts. I think I strongly recommend Jack Bridger's Scaling DevTools, as well as Turner Novak's The Peel. And, you know, I'm sure there's others. So you covered your Twilio story in the past, talked about StreamClub, you got acquired to Mux, and then you left to start Browserbase. So maybe we just start with what is Browserbase? Yeah.Paul [00:02:02]: Browserbase is the web browser for your AI. We're building headless browser infrastructure, which are browsers that run in a server environment that's accessible to developers via APIs and SDKs. It's really hard to run a web browser in the cloud. You guys are probably running Chrome on your computers, and that's using a lot of resources, right? So if you want to run a web browser or thousands of web browsers, you can't just spin up a bunch of lambdas. You actually need to use a secure containerized environment. You have to scale it up and down. It's a stateful system. And that infrastructure is, like, super painful. And I know that firsthand, because at my last company, StreamClub, I was CTO, and I was building our own internal headless browser infrastructure. That's actually why we sold the company, is because Mux really wanted to buy our headless browser infrastructure that we'd built. And it's just a super hard problem. And I actually told my co-founders, I would never start another company unless it was a browser infrastructure company. And it turns out that's really necessary in the age of AI, when AI can actually go out and interact with websites, click on buttons, fill in forms. You need AI to do all of that work in an actual browser running somewhere on a server. And BrowserBase powers that.swyx [00:03:08]: While you're talking about it, it occurred to me, not that you're going to be acquired or anything, but it occurred to me that it would be really funny if you became the Nikita Beer of headless browser companies. You just have one trick, and you make browser companies that get acquired.Paul [00:03:23]: I truly do only have one trick. I'm screwed if it's not for headless browsers. I'm not a Go programmer. You know, I'm in AI grant. You know, browsers is an AI grant. But we were the only company in that AI grant batch that used zero dollars on AI spend. You know, we're purely an infrastructure company. So as much as people want to ask me about reinforcement learning, I might not be the best guy to talk about that. But if you want to ask about headless browser infrastructure at scale, I can talk your ear off. So that's really my area of expertise. And it's a pretty niche thing. Like, nobody has done what we're doing at scale before. So we're happy to be the experts.swyx [00:03:59]: You do have an AI thing, stagehand. We can talk about the sort of core of browser-based first, and then maybe stagehand. Yeah, stagehand is kind of the web browsing framework. Yeah.What is Browserbase? Headless Browser Infrastructure ExplainedAlessio [00:04:10]: Yeah. Yeah. And maybe how you got to browser-based and what problems you saw. So one of the first things I worked on as a software engineer was integration testing. Sauce Labs was kind of like the main thing at the time. And then we had Selenium, we had Playbrite, we had all these different browser things. But it's always been super hard to do. So obviously you've worked on this before. When you started browser-based, what were the challenges? What were the AI-specific challenges that you saw versus, there's kind of like all the usual running browser at scale in the cloud, which has been a problem for years. What are like the AI unique things that you saw that like traditional purchase just didn't cover? Yeah.AI-specific challenges in browser infrastructurePaul [00:04:46]: First and foremost, I think back to like the first thing I did as a developer, like as a kid when I was writing code, I wanted to write code that did stuff for me. You know, I wanted to write code to automate my life. And I do that probably by using curl or beautiful soup to fetch data from a web browser. And I think I still do that now that I'm in the cloud. And the other thing that I think is a huge challenge for me is that you can't just create a web site and parse that data. And we all know that now like, you know, taking HTML and plugging that into an LLM, you can extract insights, you can summarize. So it was very clear that now like dynamic web scraping became very possible with the rise of large language models or a lot easier. And that was like a clear reason why there's been more usage of headless browsers, which are necessary because a lot of modern websites don't expose all of their page content via a simple HTTP request. You know, they actually do require you to run this type of code for a specific time. JavaScript on the page to hydrate this. Airbnb is a great example. You go to airbnb.com. A lot of that content on the page isn't there until after they run the initial hydration. So you can't just scrape it with a curl. You need to have some JavaScript run. And a browser is that JavaScript engine that's going to actually run all those requests on the page. So web data retrieval was definitely one driver of starting BrowserBase and the rise of being able to summarize that within LLM. Also, I was familiar with if I wanted to automate a website, I could write one script and that would work for one website. It was very static and deterministic. But the web is non-deterministic. The web is always changing. And until we had LLMs, there was no way to write scripts that you could write once that would run on any website. That would change with the structure of the website. Click the login button. It could mean something different on many different websites. And LLMs allow us to generate code on the fly to actually control that. So I think that rise of writing the generic automation scripts that can work on many different websites, to me, made it clear that browsers are going to be a lot more useful because now you can automate a lot more things without writing. If you wanted to write a script to book a demo call on 100 websites, previously, you had to write 100 scripts. Now you write one script that uses LLMs to generate that script. That's why we built our web browsing framework, StageHand, which does a lot of that work for you. But those two things, web data collection and then enhanced automation of many different websites, it just felt like big drivers for more browser infrastructure that would be required to power these kinds of features.Alessio [00:07:05]: And was multimodality also a big thing?Paul [00:07:08]: Now you can use the LLMs to look, even though the text in the dome might not be as friendly. Maybe my hot take is I was always kind of like, I didn't think vision would be as big of a driver. For UI automation, I felt like, you know, HTML is structured text and large language models are good with structured text. But it's clear that these computer use models are often vision driven, and they've been really pushing things forward. So definitely being multimodal, like rendering the page is required to take a screenshot to give that to a computer use model to take actions on a website. And it's just another win for browser. But I'll be honest, that wasn't what I was thinking early on. I didn't even think that we'd get here so fast with multimodality. I think we're going to have to get back to multimodal and vision models.swyx [00:07:50]: This is one of those things where I forgot to mention in my intro that I'm an investor in Browserbase. And I remember that when you pitched to me, like a lot of the stuff that we have today, we like wasn't on the original conversation. But I did have my original thesis was something that we've talked about on the podcast before, which is take the GPT store, the custom GPT store, all the every single checkbox and plugin is effectively a startup. And this was the browser one. I think the main hesitation, I think I actually took a while to get back to you. The main hesitation was that there were others. Like you're not the first hit list browser startup. It's not even your first hit list browser startup. There's always a question of like, will you be the category winner in a place where there's a bunch of incumbents, to be honest, that are bigger than you? They're just not targeted at the AI space. They don't have the backing of Nat Friedman. And there's a bunch of like, you're here in Silicon Valley. They're not. I don't know.Paul [00:08:47]: I don't know if that's, that was it, but like, there was a, yeah, I mean, like, I think I tried all the other ones and I was like, really disappointed. Like my background is from working at great developer tools, companies, and nothing had like the Vercel like experience. Um, like our biggest competitor actually is partly owned by private equity and they just jacked up their prices quite a bit. And the dashboard hasn't changed in five years. And I actually used them at my last company and tried them and I was like, oh man, like there really just needs to be something that's like the experience of these great infrastructure companies, like Stripe, like clerk, like Vercel that I use in love, but oriented towards this kind of like more specific category, which is browser infrastructure, which is really technically complex. Like a lot of stuff can go wrong on the internet when you're running a browser. The internet is very vast. There's a lot of different configurations. Like there's still websites that only work with internet explorer out there. How do you handle that when you're running your own browser infrastructure? These are the problems that we have to think about and solve at BrowserBase. And it's, it's certainly a labor of love, but I built this for me, first and foremost, I know it's super cheesy and everyone says that for like their startups, but it really, truly was for me. If you look at like the talks I've done even before BrowserBase, and I'm just like really excited to try and build a category defining infrastructure company. And it's, it's rare to have a new category of infrastructure exists. We're here in the Chroma offices and like, you know, vector databases is a new category of infrastructure. Is it, is it, I mean, we can, we're in their office, so, you know, we can, we can debate that one later. That is one.Multimodality in AI-Powered Browsingswyx [00:10:16]: That's one of the industry debates.Paul [00:10:17]: I guess we go back to the LLMOS talk that Karpathy gave way long ago. And like the browser box was very clearly there and it seemed like the people who were building in this space also agreed that browsers are a core primitive of infrastructure for the LLMOS that's going to exist in the future. And nobody was building something there that I wanted to use. So I had to go build it myself.swyx [00:10:38]: Yeah. I mean, exactly that talk that, that honestly, that diagram, every box is a startup and there's the code box and then there's the. The browser box. I think at some point they will start clashing there. There's always the question of the, are you a point solution or are you the sort of all in one? And I think the point solutions tend to win quickly, but then the only ones have a very tight cohesive experience. Yeah. Let's talk about just the hard problems of browser base you have on your website, which is beautiful. Thank you. Was there an agency that you used for that? Yeah. Herb.paris.Paul [00:11:11]: They're amazing. Herb.paris. Yeah. It's H-E-R-V-E. I highly recommend for developers. Developer tools, founders to work with consumer agencies because they end up building beautiful things and the Parisians know how to build beautiful interfaces. So I got to give prep.swyx [00:11:24]: And chat apps, apparently are, they are very fast. Oh yeah. The Mistral chat. Yeah. Mistral. Yeah.Paul [00:11:31]: Late chat.swyx [00:11:31]: Late chat. And then your videos as well, it was professionally shot, right? The series A video. Yeah.Alessio [00:11:36]: Nico did the videos. He's amazing. Not the initial video that you shot at the new one. First one was Austin.Paul [00:11:41]: Another, another video pretty surprised. But yeah, I mean, like, I think when you think about how you talk about your company. You have to think about the way you present yourself. It's, you know, as a developer, you think you evaluate a company based on like the API reliability and the P 95, but a lot of developers say, is the website good? Is the message clear? Do I like trust this founder? I'm building my whole feature on. So I've tried to nail that as well as like the reliability of the infrastructure. You're right. It's very hard. And there's a lot of kind of foot guns that you run into when running headless browsers at scale. Right.Competing with Existing Headless Browser Solutionsswyx [00:12:10]: So let's pick one. You have eight features here. Seamless integration. Scalability. Fast or speed. Secure. Observable. Stealth. That's interesting. Extensible and developer first. What comes to your mind as like the top two, three hardest ones? Yeah.Running headless browsers at scalePaul [00:12:26]: I think just running headless browsers at scale is like the hardest one. And maybe can I nerd out for a second? Is that okay? I heard this is a technical audience, so I'll talk to the other nerds. Whoa. They were listening. Yeah. They're upset. They're ready. The AGI is angry. Okay. So. So how do you run a browser in the cloud? Let's start with that, right? So let's say you're using a popular browser automation framework like Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium. Maybe you've written a code, some code locally on your computer that opens up Google. It finds the search bar and then types in, you know, search for Latent Space and hits the search button. That script works great locally. You can see the little browser open up. You want to take that to production. You want to run the script in a cloud environment. So when your laptop is closed, your browser is doing something. The browser is doing something. Well, I, we use Amazon. You can see the little browser open up. You know, the first thing I'd reach for is probably like some sort of serverless infrastructure. I would probably try and deploy on a Lambda. But Chrome itself is too big to run on a Lambda. It's over 250 megabytes. So you can't easily start it on a Lambda. So you maybe have to use something like Lambda layers to squeeze it in there. Maybe use a different Chromium build that's lighter. And you get it on the Lambda. Great. It works. But it runs super slowly. It's because Lambdas are very like resource limited. They only run like with one vCPU. You can run one process at a time. Remember, Chromium is super beefy. It's barely running on my MacBook Air. I'm still downloading it from a pre-run. Yeah, from the test earlier, right? I'm joking. But it's big, you know? So like Lambda, it just won't work really well. Maybe it'll work, but you need something faster. Your users want something faster. Okay. Well, let's put it on a beefier instance. Let's get an EC2 server running. Let's throw Chromium on there. Great. Okay. I can, that works well with one user. But what if I want to run like 10 Chromium instances, one for each of my users? Okay. Well, I might need two EC2 instances. Maybe 10. All of a sudden, you have multiple EC2 instances. This sounds like a problem for Kubernetes and Docker, right? Now, all of a sudden, you're using ECS or EKS, the Kubernetes or container solutions by Amazon. You're spending up and down containers, and you're spending a whole engineer's time on kind of maintaining this stateful distributed system. Those are some of the worst systems to run because when it's a stateful distributed system, it means that you are bound by the connections to that thing. You have to keep the browser open while someone is working with it, right? That's just a painful architecture to run. And there's all this other little gotchas with Chromium, like Chromium, which is the open source version of Chrome, by the way. You have to install all these fonts. You want emojis working in your browsers because your vision model is looking for the emoji. You need to make sure you have the emoji fonts. You need to make sure you have all the right extensions configured, like, oh, do you want ad blocking? How do you configure that? How do you actually record all these browser sessions? Like it's a headless browser. You can't look at it. So you need to have some sort of observability. Maybe you're recording videos and storing those somewhere. It all kind of adds up to be this just giant monster piece of your project when all you wanted to do was run a lot of browsers in production for this little script to go to google.com and search. And when I see a complex distributed system, I see an opportunity to build a great infrastructure company. And we really abstract that away with Browserbase where our customers can use these existing frameworks, Playwright, Publisher, Selenium, or our own stagehand and connect to our browsers in a serverless-like way. And control them, and then just disconnect when they're done. And they don't have to think about the complex distributed system behind all of that. They just get a browser running anywhere, anytime. Really easy to connect to.swyx [00:15:55]: I'm sure you have questions. My standard question with anything, so essentially you're a serverless browser company, and there's been other serverless things that I'm familiar with in the past, serverless GPUs, serverless website hosting. That's where I come from with Netlify. One question is just like, you promised to spin up thousands of servers. You promised to spin up thousands of browsers in milliseconds. I feel like there's no real solution that does that yet. And I'm just kind of curious how. The only solution I know, which is to kind of keep a kind of warm pool of servers around, which is expensive, but maybe not so expensive because it's just CPUs. So I'm just like, you know. Yeah.Browsers as a Core Primitive in AI InfrastructurePaul [00:16:36]: You nailed it, right? I mean, how do you offer a serverless-like experience with something that is clearly not serverless, right? And the answer is, you need to be able to run... We run many browsers on single nodes. We use Kubernetes at browser base. So we have many pods that are being scheduled. We have to predictably schedule them up or down. Yes, thousands of browsers in milliseconds is the best case scenario. If you hit us with 10,000 requests, you may hit a slower cold start, right? So we've done a lot of work on predictive scaling and being able to kind of route stuff to different regions where we have multiple regions of browser base where we have different pools available. You can also pick the region you want to go to based on like lower latency, round trip, time latency. It's very important with these types of things. There's a lot of requests going over the wire. So for us, like having a VM like Firecracker powering everything under the hood allows us to be super nimble and spin things up or down really quickly with strong multi-tenancy. But in the end, this is like the complex infrastructural challenges that we have to kind of deal with at browser base. And we have a lot more stuff on our roadmap to allow customers to have more levers to pull to exchange, do you want really fast browser startup times or do you want really low costs? And if you're willing to be more flexible on that, we may be able to kind of like work better for your use cases.swyx [00:17:44]: Since you used Firecracker, shouldn't Fargate do that for you or did you have to go lower level than that? We had to go lower level than that.Paul [00:17:51]: I find this a lot with Fargate customers, which is alarming for Fargate. We used to be a giant Fargate customer. Actually, the first version of browser base was ECS and Fargate. And unfortunately, it's a great product. I think we were actually the largest Fargate customer in our region for a little while. No, what? Yeah, seriously. And unfortunately, it's a great product, but I think if you're an infrastructure company, you actually have to have a deeper level of control over these primitives. I think it's the same thing is true with databases. We've used other database providers and I think-swyx [00:18:21]: Yeah, serverless Postgres.Paul [00:18:23]: Shocker. When you're an infrastructure company, you're on the hook if any provider has an outage. And I can't tell my customers like, hey, we went down because so-and-so went down. That's not acceptable. So for us, we've really moved to bringing things internally. It's kind of opposite of what we preach. We tell our customers, don't build this in-house, but then we're like, we build a lot of stuff in-house. But I think it just really depends on what is in the critical path. We try and have deep ownership of that.Alessio [00:18:46]: On the distributed location side, how does that work for the web where you might get sort of different content in different locations, but the customer is expecting, you know, if you're in the US, I'm expecting the US version. But if you're spinning up my browser in France, I might get the French version. Yeah.Paul [00:19:02]: Yeah. That's a good question. Well, generally, like on the localization, there is a thing called locale in the browser. You can set like what your locale is. If you're like in the ENUS browser or not, but some things do IP, IP based routing. And in that case, you may want to have a proxy. Like let's say you're running something in the, in Europe, but you want to make sure you're showing up from the US. You may want to use one of our proxy features so you can turn on proxies to say like, make sure these connections always come from the United States, which is necessary too, because when you're browsing the web, you're coming from like a, you know, data center IP, and that can make things a lot harder to browse web. So we do have kind of like this proxy super network. Yeah. We have a proxy for you based on where you're going, so you can reliably automate the web. But if you get scheduled in Europe, that doesn't happen as much. We try and schedule you as close to, you know, your origin that you're trying to go to. But generally you have control over the regions you can put your browsers in. So you can specify West one or East one or Europe. We only have one region of Europe right now, actually. Yeah.Alessio [00:19:55]: What's harder, the browser or the proxy? I feel like to me, it feels like actually proxying reliably at scale. It's much harder than spending up browsers at scale. I'm curious. It's all hard.Paul [00:20:06]: It's layers of hard, right? Yeah. I think it's different levels of hard. I think the thing with the proxy infrastructure is that we work with many different web proxy providers and some are better than others. Some have good days, some have bad days. And our customers who've built browser infrastructure on their own, they have to go and deal with sketchy actors. Like first they figure out their own browser infrastructure and then they got to go buy a proxy. And it's like you can pay in Bitcoin and it just kind of feels a little sus, right? It's like you're buying drugs when you're trying to get a proxy online. We have like deep relationships with these counterparties. We're able to audit them and say, is this proxy being sourced ethically? Like it's not running on someone's TV somewhere. Is it free range? Yeah. Free range organic proxies, right? Right. We do a level of diligence. We're SOC 2. So we have to understand what is going on here. But then we're able to make sure that like we route around proxy providers not working. There's proxy providers who will just, the proxy will stop working all of a sudden. And then if you don't have redundant proxying on your own browsers, that's hard down for you or you may get some serious impacts there. With us, like we intelligently know, hey, this proxy is not working. Let's go to this one. And you can kind of build a network of multiple providers to really guarantee the best uptime for our customers. Yeah. So you don't own any proxies? We don't own any proxies. You're right. The team has been saying who wants to like take home a little proxy server, but not yet. We're not there yet. You know?swyx [00:21:25]: It's a very mature market. I don't think you should build that yourself. Like you should just be a super customer of them. Yeah. Scraping, I think, is the main use case for that. I guess. Well, that leads us into CAPTCHAs and also off, but let's talk about CAPTCHAs. You had a little spiel that you wanted to talk about CAPTCHA stuff.Challenges of Scaling Browser InfrastructurePaul [00:21:43]: Oh, yeah. I was just, I think a lot of people ask, if you're thinking about proxies, you're thinking about CAPTCHAs too. I think it's the same thing. You can go buy CAPTCHA solvers online, but it's the same buying experience. It's some sketchy website, you have to integrate it. It's not fun to buy these things and you can't really trust that the docs are bad. What Browserbase does is we integrate a bunch of different CAPTCHAs. We do some stuff in-house, but generally we just integrate with a bunch of known vendors and continually monitor and maintain these things and say, is this working or not? Can we route around it or not? These are CAPTCHA solvers. CAPTCHA solvers, yeah. Not CAPTCHA providers, CAPTCHA solvers. Yeah, sorry. CAPTCHA solvers. We really try and make sure all of that works for you. I think as a dev, if I'm buying infrastructure, I want it all to work all the time and it's important for us to provide that experience by making sure everything does work and monitoring it on our own. Yeah. Right now, the world of CAPTCHAs is tricky. I think AI agents in particular are very much ahead of the internet infrastructure. CAPTCHAs are designed to block all types of bots, but there are now good bots and bad bots. I think in the future, CAPTCHAs will be able to identify who a good bot is, hopefully via some sort of KYC. For us, we've been very lucky. We have very little to no known abuse of Browserbase because we really look into who we work with. And for certain types of CAPTCHA solving, we only allow them on certain types of plans because we want to make sure that we can know what people are doing, what their use cases are. And that's really allowed us to try and be an arbiter of good bots, which is our long term goal. I want to build great relationships with people like Cloudflare so we can agree, hey, here are these acceptable bots. We'll identify them for you and make sure we flag when they come to your website. This is a good bot, you know?Alessio [00:23:23]: I see. And Cloudflare said they want to do more of this. So they're going to set by default, if they think you're an AI bot, they're going to reject. I'm curious if you think this is something that is going to be at the browser level or I mean, the DNS level with Cloudflare seems more where it should belong. But I'm curious how you think about it.Paul [00:23:40]: I think the web's going to change. You know, I think that the Internet as we have it right now is going to change. And we all need to just accept that the cat is out of the bag. And instead of kind of like wishing the Internet was like it was in the 2000s, we can have free content line that wouldn't be scraped. It's just it's not going to happen. And instead, we should think about like, one, how can we change? How can we change the models of, you know, information being published online so people can adequately commercialize it? But two, how do we rebuild applications that expect that AI agents are going to log in on their behalf? Those are the things that are going to allow us to kind of like identify good and bad bots. And I think the team at Clerk has been doing a really good job with this on the authentication side. I actually think that auth is the biggest thing that will prevent agents from accessing stuff, not captchas. And I think there will be agent auth in the future. I don't know if it's going to happen from an individual company, but actually authentication providers that have a, you know, hidden login as agent feature, which will then you put in your email, you'll get a push notification, say like, hey, your browser-based agent wants to log into your Airbnb. You can approve that and then the agent can proceed. That really circumvents the need for captchas or logging in as you and sharing your password. I think agent auth is going to be one way we identify good bots going forward. And I think a lot of this captcha solving stuff is really short-term problems as the internet kind of reorients itself around how it's going to work with agents browsing the web, just like people do. Yeah.Managing Distributed Browser Locations and Proxiesswyx [00:24:59]: Stitch recently was on Hacker News for talking about agent experience, AX, which is a thing that Netlify is also trying to clone and coin and talk about. And we've talked about this on our previous episodes before in a sense that I actually think that's like maybe the only part of the tech stack that needs to be kind of reinvented for agents. Everything else can stay the same, CLIs, APIs, whatever. But auth, yeah, we need agent auth. And it's mostly like short-lived, like it should not, it should be a distinct, identity from the human, but paired. I almost think like in the same way that every social network should have your main profile and then your alt accounts or your Finsta, it's almost like, you know, every, every human token should be paired with the agent token and the agent token can go and do stuff on behalf of the human token, but not be presumed to be the human. Yeah.Paul [00:25:48]: It's like, it's, it's actually very similar to OAuth is what I'm thinking. And, you know, Thread from Stitch is an investor, Colin from Clerk, Octaventures, all investors in browser-based because like, I hope they solve this because they'll make browser-based submission more possible. So we don't have to overcome all these hurdles, but I think it will be an OAuth-like flow where an agent will ask to log in as you, you'll approve the scopes. Like it can book an apartment on Airbnb, but it can't like message anybody. And then, you know, the agent will have some sort of like role-based access control within an application. Yeah. I'm excited for that.swyx [00:26:16]: The tricky part is just, there's one, one layer of delegation here, which is like, you're authoring my user's user or something like that. I don't know if that's tricky or not. Does that make sense? Yeah.Paul [00:26:25]: You know, actually at Twilio, I worked on the login identity and access. Management teams, right? So like I built Twilio's login page.swyx [00:26:31]: You were an intern on that team and then you became the lead in two years? Yeah.Paul [00:26:34]: Yeah. I started as an intern in 2016 and then I was the tech lead of that team. How? That's not normal. I didn't have a life. He's not normal. Look at this guy. I didn't have a girlfriend. I just loved my job. I don't know. I applied to 500 internships for my first job and I got rejected from every single one of them except for Twilio and then eventually Amazon. And they took a shot on me and like, I was getting paid money to write code, which was my dream. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very lucky that like this coding thing worked out because I was going to be doing it regardless. And yeah, I was able to kind of spend a lot of time on a team that was growing at a company that was growing. So it informed a lot of this stuff here. I think these are problems that have been solved with like the SAML protocol with SSO. I think it's a really interesting stuff with like WebAuthn, like these different types of authentication, like schemes that you can use to authenticate people. The tooling is all there. It just needs to be tweaked a little bit to work for agents. And I think the fact that there are companies that are already. Providing authentication as a service really sets it up. Well, the thing that's hard is like reinventing the internet for agents. We don't want to rebuild the internet. That's an impossible task. And I think people often say like, well, we'll have this second layer of APIs built for agents. I'm like, we will for the top use cases, but instead of we can just tweak the internet as is, which is on the authentication side, I think we're going to be the dumb ones going forward. Unfortunately, I think AI is going to be able to do a lot of the tasks that we do online, which means that it will be able to go to websites, click buttons on our behalf and log in on our behalf too. So with this kind of like web agent future happening, I think with some small structural changes, like you said, it feels like it could all slot in really nicely with the existing internet.Handling CAPTCHAs and Agent Authenticationswyx [00:28:08]: There's one more thing, which is the, your live view iframe, which lets you take, take control. Yeah. Obviously very key for operator now, but like, was, is there anything interesting technically there or that the people like, well, people always want this.Paul [00:28:21]: It was really hard to build, you know, like, so, okay. Headless browsers, you don't see them, right. They're running. They're running in a cloud somewhere. You can't like look at them. And I just want to really make, it's a weird name. I wish we came up with a better name for this thing, but you can't see them. Right. But customers don't trust AI agents, right. At least the first pass. So what we do with our live view is that, you know, when you use browser base, you can actually embed a live view of the browser running in the cloud for your customer to see it working. And that's what the first reason is the build trust, like, okay, so I have this script. That's going to go automate a website. I can embed it into my web application via an iframe and my customer can watch. I think. And then we added two way communication. So now not only can you watch the browser kind of being operated by AI, if you want to pause and actually click around type within this iframe that's controlling a browser, that's also possible. And this is all thanks to some of the lower level protocol, which is called the Chrome DevTools protocol. It has a API called start screencast, and you can also send mouse clicks and button clicks to a remote browser. And this is all embeddable within iframes. You have a browser within a browser, yo. And then you simulate the screen, the click on the other side. Exactly. And this is really nice often for, like, let's say, a capture that can't be solved. You saw this with Operator, you know, Operator actually uses a different approach. They use VNC. So, you know, you're able to see, like, you're seeing the whole window here. What we're doing is something a little lower level with the Chrome DevTools protocol. It's just PNGs being streamed over the wire. But the same thing is true, right? Like, hey, I'm running a window. Pause. Can you do something in this window? Human. Okay, great. Resume. Like sometimes 2FA tokens. Like if you get that text message, you might need a person to type that in. Web agents need human-in-the-loop type workflows still. You still need a person to interact with the browser. And building a UI to proxy that is kind of hard. You may as well just show them the whole browser and say, hey, can you finish this up for me? And then let the AI proceed on afterwards. Is there a future where I stream my current desktop to browser base? I don't think so. I think we're very much cloud infrastructure. Yeah. You know, but I think a lot of the stuff we're doing, we do want to, like, build tools. Like, you know, we'll talk about the stage and, you know, web agent framework in a second. But, like, there's a case where a lot of people are going desktop first for, you know, consumer use. And I think cloud is doing a lot of this, where I expect to see, you know, MCPs really oriented around the cloud desktop app for a reason, right? Like, I think a lot of these tools are going to run on your computer because it makes... I think it's breaking out. People are putting it on a server. Oh, really? Okay. Well, sweet. We'll see. We'll see that. I was surprised, though, wasn't I? I think that the browser company, too, with Dia Browser, it runs on your machine. You know, it's going to be...swyx [00:30:50]: What is it?Paul [00:30:51]: So, Dia Browser, as far as I understand... I used to use Arc. Yeah. I haven't used Arc. But I'm a big fan of the browser company. I think they're doing a lot of cool stuff in consumer. As far as I understand, it's a browser where you have a sidebar where you can, like, chat with it and it can control the local browser on your machine. So, if you imagine, like, what a consumer web agent is, which it lives alongside your browser, I think Google Chrome has Project Marina, I think. I almost call it Project Marinara for some reason. I don't know why. It's...swyx [00:31:17]: No, I think it's someone really likes the Waterworld. Oh, I see. The classic Kevin Costner. Yeah.Paul [00:31:22]: Okay. Project Marinara is a similar thing to the Dia Browser, in my mind, as far as I understand it. You have a browser that has an AI interface that will take over your mouse and keyboard and control the browser for you. Great for consumer use cases. But if you're building applications that rely on a browser and it's more part of a greater, like, AI app experience, you probably need something that's more like infrastructure, not a consumer app.swyx [00:31:44]: Just because I have explored a little bit in this area, do people want branching? So, I have the state. Of whatever my browser's in. And then I want, like, 100 clones of this state. Do people do that? Or...Paul [00:31:56]: People don't do it currently. Yeah. But it's definitely something we're thinking about. I think the idea of forking a browser is really cool. Technically, kind of hard. We're starting to see this in code execution, where people are, like, forking some, like, code execution, like, processes or forking some tool calls or branching tool calls. Haven't seen it at the browser level yet. But it makes sense. Like, if an AI agent is, like, using a website and it's not sure what path it wants to take to crawl this website. To find the information it's looking for. It would make sense for it to explore both paths in parallel. And that'd be a very, like... A road not taken. Yeah. And hopefully find the right answer. And then say, okay, this was actually the right one. And memorize that. And go there in the future. On the roadmap. For sure. Don't make my roadmap, please. You know?Alessio [00:32:37]: How do you actually do that? Yeah. How do you fork? I feel like the browser is so stateful for so many things.swyx [00:32:42]: Serialize the state. Restore the state. I don't know.Paul [00:32:44]: So, it's one of the reasons why we haven't done it yet. It's hard. You know? Like, to truly fork, it's actually quite difficult. The naive way is to open the same page in a new tab and then, like, hope that it's at the same thing. But if you have a form halfway filled, you may have to, like, take the whole, you know, container. Pause it. All the memory. Duplicate it. Restart it from there. It could be very slow. So, we haven't found a thing. Like, the easy thing to fork is just, like, copy the page object. You know? But I think there needs to be something a little bit more robust there. Yeah.swyx [00:33:12]: So, MorphLabs has this infinite branch thing. Like, wrote a custom fork of Linux or something that let them save the system state and clone it. MorphLabs, hit me up. I'll be a customer. Yeah. That's the only. I think that's the only way to do it. Yeah. Like, unless Chrome has some special API for you. Yeah.Paul [00:33:29]: There's probably something we'll reverse engineer one day. I don't know. Yeah.Alessio [00:33:32]: Let's talk about StageHand, the AI web browsing framework. You have three core components, Observe, Extract, and Act. Pretty clean landing page. What was the idea behind making a framework? Yeah.Stagehand: AI web browsing frameworkPaul [00:33:43]: So, there's three frameworks that are very popular or already exist, right? Puppeteer, Playwright, Selenium. Those are for building hard-coded scripts to control websites. And as soon as I started to play with LLMs plus browsing, I caught myself, you know, code-genning Playwright code to control a website. I would, like, take the DOM. I'd pass it to an LLM. I'd say, can you generate the Playwright code to click the appropriate button here? And it would do that. And I was like, this really should be part of the frameworks themselves. And I became really obsessed with SDKs that take natural language as part of, like, the API input. And that's what StageHand is. StageHand exposes three APIs, and it's a super set of Playwright. So, if you go to a page, you may want to take an action, click on the button, fill in the form, etc. That's what the act command is for. You may want to extract some data. This one takes a natural language, like, extract the winner of the Super Bowl from this page. You can give it a Zod schema, so it returns a structured output. And then maybe you're building an API. You can do an agent loop, and you want to kind of see what actions are possible on this page before taking one. You can do observe. So, you can observe the actions on the page, and it will generate a list of actions. You can guide it, like, give me actions on this page related to buying an item. And you can, like, buy it now, add to cart, view shipping options, and pass that to an LLM, an agent loop, to say, what's the appropriate action given this high-level goal? So, StageHand isn't a web agent. It's a framework for building web agents. And we think that agent loops are actually pretty close to the application layer because every application probably has different goals or different ways it wants to take steps. I don't think I've seen a generic. Maybe you guys are the experts here. I haven't seen, like, a really good AI agent framework here. Everyone kind of has their own special sauce, right? I see a lot of developers building their own agent loops, and they're using tools. And I view StageHand as the browser tool. So, we expose act, extract, observe. Your agent can call these tools. And from that, you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to worry about generating playwright code performantly. You don't have to worry about running it. You can kind of just integrate these three tool calls into your agent loop and reliably automate the web.swyx [00:35:48]: A special shout-out to Anirudh, who I met at your dinner, who I think listens to the pod. Yeah. Hey, Anirudh.Paul [00:35:54]: Anirudh's a man. He's a StageHand guy.swyx [00:35:56]: I mean, the interesting thing about each of these APIs is they're kind of each startup. Like, specifically extract, you know, Firecrawler is extract. There's, like, Expand AI. There's a whole bunch of, like, extract companies. They just focus on extract. I'm curious. Like, I feel like you guys are going to collide at some point. Like, right now, it's friendly. Everyone's in a blue ocean. At some point, it's going to be valuable enough that there's some turf battle here. I don't think you have a dog in a fight. I think you can mock extract to use an external service if they're better at it than you. But it's just an observation that, like, in the same way that I see each option, each checkbox in the side of custom GBTs becoming a startup or each box in the Karpathy chart being a startup. Like, this is also becoming a thing. Yeah.Paul [00:36:41]: I mean, like, so the way StageHand works is that it's MIT-licensed, completely open source. You bring your own API key to your LLM of choice. You could choose your LLM. We don't make any money off of the extract or really. We only really make money if you choose to run it with our browser. You don't have to. You can actually use your own browser, a local browser. You know, StageHand is completely open source for that reason. And, yeah, like, I think if you're building really complex web scraping workflows, I don't know if StageHand is the tool for you. I think it's really more if you're building an AI agent that needs a few general tools or if it's doing a lot of, like, web automation-intensive work. But if you're building a scraping company, StageHand is not your thing. You probably want something that's going to, like, get HTML content, you know, convert that to Markdown, query it. That's not what StageHand does. StageHand is more about reliability. I think we focus a lot on reliability and less so on cost optimization and speed at this point.swyx [00:37:33]: I actually feel like StageHand, so the way that StageHand works, it's like, you know, page.act, click on the quick start. Yeah. It's kind of the integration test for the code that you would have to write anyway, like the Puppeteer code that you have to write anyway. And when the page structure changes, because it always does, then this is still the test. This is still the test that I would have to write. Yeah. So it's kind of like a testing framework that doesn't need implementation detail.Paul [00:37:56]: Well, yeah. I mean, Puppeteer, Playwright, and Slenderman were all designed as testing frameworks, right? Yeah. And now people are, like, hacking them together to automate the web. I would say, and, like, maybe this is, like, me being too specific. But, like, when I write tests, if the page structure changes. Without me knowing, I want that test to fail. So I don't know if, like, AI, like, regenerating that. Like, people are using StageHand for testing. But it's more for, like, usability testing, not, like, testing of, like, does the front end, like, has it changed or not. Okay. But generally where we've seen people, like, really, like, take off is, like, if they're using, you know, something. If they want to build a feature in their application that's kind of like Operator or Deep Research, they're using StageHand to kind of power that tool calling in their own agent loop. Okay. Cool.swyx [00:38:37]: So let's go into Operator, the first big agent launch of the year from OpenAI. Seems like they have a whole bunch scheduled. You were on break and your phone blew up. What's your just general view of computer use agents is what they're calling it. The overall category before we go into Open Operator, just the overall promise of Operator. I will observe that I tried it once. It was okay. And I never tried it again.OpenAI's Operator and computer use agentsPaul [00:38:58]: That tracks with my experience, too. Like, I'm a huge fan of the OpenAI team. Like, I think that I do not view Operator as the company. I'm not a company killer for browser base at all. I think it actually shows people what's possible. I think, like, computer use models make a lot of sense. And I'm actually most excited about computer use models is, like, their ability to, like, really take screenshots and reasoning and output steps. I think that using mouse click or mouse coordinates, I've seen that proved to be less reliable than I would like. And I just wonder if that's the right form factor. What we've done with our framework is anchor it to the DOM itself, anchor it to the actual item. So, like, if it's clicking on something, it's clicking on that thing, you know? Like, it's more accurate. No matter where it is. Yeah, exactly. Because it really ties in nicely. And it can handle, like, the whole viewport in one go, whereas, like, Operator can only handle what it sees. Can you hover? Is hovering a thing that you can do? I don't know if we expose it as a tool directly, but I'm sure there's, like, an API for hovering. Like, move mouse to this position. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you can trigger hover, like, via, like, the JavaScript on the DOM itself. But, no, I think, like, when we saw computer use, everyone's eyes lit up because they realized, like, wow, like, AI is going to actually automate work for people. And I think seeing that kind of happen from both of the labs, and I'm sure we're going to see more labs launch computer use models, I'm excited to see all the stuff that people build with it. I think that I'd love to see computer use power, like, controlling a browser on browser base. And I think, like, Open Operator, which was, like, our open source version of OpenAI's Operator, was our first take on, like, how can we integrate these models into browser base? And we handle the infrastructure and let the labs do the models. I don't have a sense that Operator will be released as an API. I don't know. Maybe it will. I'm curious to see how well that works because I think it's going to be really hard for a company like OpenAI to do things like support CAPTCHA solving or, like, have proxies. Like, I think it's hard for them structurally. Imagine this New York Times headline, OpenAI CAPTCHA solving. Like, that would be a pretty bad headline, this New York Times headline. Browser base solves CAPTCHAs. No one cares. No one cares. And, like, our investors are bored. Like, we're all okay with this, you know? We're building this company knowing that the CAPTCHA solving is short-lived until we figure out how to authenticate good bots. I think it's really hard for a company like OpenAI, who has this brand that's so, so good, to balance with, like, the icky parts of web automation, which it can be kind of complex to solve. I'm sure OpenAI knows who to call whenever they need you. Yeah, right. I'm sure they'll have a great partnership.Alessio [00:41:23]: And is Open Operator just, like, a marketing thing for you? Like, how do you think about resource allocation? So, you can spin this up very quickly. And now there's all this, like, open deep research, just open all these things that people are building. We started it, you know. You're the original Open. We're the original Open operator, you know? Is it just, hey, look, this is a demo, but, like, we'll help you build out an actual product for yourself? Like, are you interested in going more of a product route? That's kind of the OpenAI way, right? They started as a model provider and then…Paul [00:41:53]: Yeah, we're not interested in going the product route yet. I view Open Operator as a model provider. It's a reference project, you know? Let's show people how to build these things using the infrastructure and models that are out there. And that's what it is. It's, like, Open Operator is very simple. It's an agent loop. It says, like, take a high-level goal, break it down into steps, use tool calling to accomplish those steps. It takes screenshots and feeds those screenshots into an LLM with the step to generate the right action. It uses stagehand under the hood to actually execute this action. It doesn't use a computer use model. And it, like, has a nice interface using the live view that we talked about, the iframe, to embed that into an application. So I felt like people on launch day wanted to figure out how to build their own version of this. And we turned that around really quickly to show them. And I hope we do that with other things like deep research. We don't have a deep research launch yet. I think David from AOMNI actually has an amazing open deep research that he launched. It has, like, 10K GitHub stars now. So he's crushing that. But I think if people want to build these features natively into their application, they need good reference projects. And I think Open Operator is a good example of that.swyx [00:42:52]: I don't know. Actually, I'm actually pretty bullish on API-driven operator. Because that's the only way that you can sort of, like, once it's reliable enough, obviously. And now we're nowhere near. But, like, give it five years. It'll happen, you know. And then you can sort of spin this up and browsers are working in the background and you don't necessarily have to know. And it just is booking restaurants for you, whatever. I can definitely see that future happening. I had this on the landing page here. This might be a slightly out of order. But, you know, you have, like, sort of three use cases for browser base. Open Operator. Or this is the operator sort of use case. It's kind of like the workflow automation use case. And it completes with UiPath in the sort of RPA category. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I would agree with that. And then there's Agents we talked about already. And web scraping, which I imagine would be the bulk of your workload right now, right?Paul [00:43:40]: No, not at all. I'd say actually, like, the majority is browser automation. We're kind of expensive for web scraping. Like, I think that if you're building a web scraping product, if you need to do occasional web scraping or you have to do web scraping that works every single time, you want to use browser automation. Yeah. You want to use browser-based. But if you're building web scraping workflows, what you should do is have a waterfall. You should have the first request is a curl to the website. See if you can get it without even using a browser. And then the second request may be, like, a scraping-specific API. There's, like, a thousand scraping APIs out there that you can use to try and get data. Scraping B. Scraping B is a great example, right? Yeah. And then, like, if those two don't work, bring out the heavy hitter. Like, browser-based will 100% work, right? It will load the page in a real browser, hydrate it. I see.swyx [00:44:21]: Because a lot of people don't render to JS.swyx [00:44:25]: Yeah, exactly.Paul [00:44:26]: So, I mean, the three big use cases, right? Like, you know, automation, web data collection, and then, you know, if you're building anything agentic that needs, like, a browser tool, you want to use browser-based.Alessio [00:44:35]: Is there any use case that, like, you were super surprised by that people might not even think about? Oh, yeah. Or is it, yeah, anything that you can share? The long tail is crazy. Yeah.Surprising use cases of BrowserbasePaul [00:44:44]: One of the case studies on our website that I think is the most interesting is this company called Benny. So, the way that it works is if you're on food stamps in the United States, you can actually get rebates if you buy certain things. Yeah. You buy some vegetables. You submit your receipt to the government. They'll give you a little rebate back. Say, hey, thanks for buying vegetables. It's good for you. That process of submitting that receipt is very painful. And the way Benny works is you use their app to take a photo of your receipt, and then Benny will go submit that receipt for you and then deposit the money into your account. That's actually using no AI at all. It's all, like, hard-coded scripts. They maintain the scripts. They've been doing a great job. And they build this amazing consumer app. But it's an example of, like, all these, like, tedious workflows that people have to do to kind of go about their business. And they're doing it for the sake of their day-to-day lives. And I had never known about, like, food stamp rebates or the complex forms you have to do to fill them. But the world is powered by millions and millions of tedious forms, visas. You know, Emirate Lighthouse is a customer, right? You know, they do the O1 visa. Millions and millions of forms are taking away humans' time. And I hope that Browserbase can help power software that automates away the web forms that we don't need anymore. Yeah.swyx [00:45:49]: I mean, I'm very supportive of that. I mean, forms. I do think, like, government itself is a big part of it. I think the government itself should embrace AI more to do more sort of human-friendly form filling. Mm-hmm. But I'm not optimistic. I'm not holding my breath. Yeah. We'll see. Okay. I think I'm about to zoom out. I have a little brief thing on computer use, and then we can talk about founder stuff, which is, I tend to think of developer tooling markets in impossible triangles, where everyone starts in a niche, and then they start to branch out. So I already hinted at a little bit of this, right? We mentioned more. We mentioned E2B. We mentioned Firecrawl. And then there's Browserbase. So there's, like, all this stuff of, like, have serverless virtual computer that you give to an agent and let them do stuff with it. And there's various ways of connecting it to the internet. You can just connect to a search API, like SERP API, whatever other, like, EXA is another one. That's what you're searching. You can also have a JSON markdown extractor, which is Firecrawl. Or you can have a virtual browser like Browserbase, or you can have a virtual machine like Morph. And then there's also maybe, like, a virtual sort of code environment, like Code Interpreter. So, like, there's just, like, a bunch of different ways to tackle the problem of give a computer to an agent. And I'm just kind of wondering if you see, like, everyone's just, like, happily coexisting in their respective niches. And as a developer, I just go and pick, like, a shopping basket of one of each. Or do you think that you eventually, people will collide?Future of browser automation and market competitionPaul [00:47:18]: I think that currently it's not a zero-sum market. Like, I think we're talking about... I think we're talking about all of knowledge work that people do that can be automated online. All of these, like, trillions of hours that happen online where people are working. And I think that there's so much software to be built that, like, I tend not to think about how these companies will collide. I just try to solve the problem as best as I can and make this specific piece of infrastructure, which I think is an important primitive, the best I possibly can. And yeah. I think there's players that are actually going to like it. I think there's players that are going to launch, like, over-the-top, you know, platforms, like agent platforms that have all these tools built in, right? Like, who's building the rippling for agent tools that has the search tool, the browser tool, the operating system tool, right? There are some. There are some. There are some, right? And I think in the end, what I have seen as my time as a developer, and I look at all the favorite tools that I have, is that, like, for tools and primitives with sufficient levels of complexity, you need to have a solution that's really bespoke to that primitive, you know? And I am sufficiently convinced that the browser is complex enough to deserve a primitive. Obviously, I have to. I'm the founder of BrowserBase, right? I'm talking my book. But, like, I think maybe I can give you one spicy take against, like, maybe just whole OS running. I think that when I look at computer use when it first came out, I saw that the majority of use cases for computer use were controlling a browser. And do we really need to run an entire operating system just to control a browser? I don't think so. I don't think that's necessary. You know, BrowserBase can run browsers for way cheaper than you can if you're running a full-fledged OS with a GUI, you know, operating system. And I think that's just an advantage of the browser. It is, like, browsers are little OSs, and you can run them very efficiently if you orchestrate it well. And I think that allows us to offer 90% of the, you know, functionality in the platform needed at 10% of the cost of running a full OS. Yeah.Open Operator: Browserbase's Open-Source Alternativeswyx [00:49:16]: I definitely see the logic in that. There's a Mark Andreessen quote. I don't know if you know this one. Where he basically observed that the browser is turning the operating system into a poorly debugged set of device drivers, because most of the apps are moved from the OS to the browser. So you can just run browsers.Paul [00:49:31]: There's a place for OSs, too. Like, I think that there are some applications that only run on Windows operating systems. And Eric from pig.dev in this upcoming YC batch, or last YC batch, like, he's building all run tons of Windows operating systems for you to control with your agent. And like, there's some legacy EHR systems that only run on Internet-controlled systems. Yeah.Paul [00:49:54]: I think that's it. I think, like, there are use cases for specific operating systems for specific legacy software. And like, I'm excited to see what he does with that. I just wanted to give a shout out to the pig.dev website.swyx [00:50:06]: The pigs jump when you click on them. Yeah. That's great.Paul [00:50:08]: Eric, he's the former co-founder of banana.dev, too.swyx [00:50:11]: Oh, that Eric. Yeah. That Eric. Okay. Well, he abandoned bananas for pigs. I hope he doesn't start going around with pigs now.Alessio [00:50:18]: Like he was going around with bananas. A little toy pig. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. What else are we missing? I think we covered a lot of, like, the browser-based product history, but. What do you wish people asked you? Yeah.Paul [00:50:29]: I wish people asked me more about, like, what will the future of software look like? Because I think that's really where I've spent a lot of time about why do browser-based. Like, for me, starting a company is like a means of last resort. Like, you shouldn't start a company unless you absolutely have to. And I remain convinced that the future of software is software that you're going to click a button and it's going to do stuff on your behalf. Right now, software. You click a button and it maybe, like, calls it back an API and, like, computes some numbers. It, like, modifies some text, whatever. But the future of software is software using software. So, I may log into my accounting website for my business, click a button, and it's going to go load up my Gmail, search my emails, find the thing, upload the receipt, and then comment it for me. Right? And it may use it using APIs, maybe a browser. I don't know. I think it's a little bit of both. But that's completely different from how we've built software so far. And that's. I think that future of software has different infrastructure requirements. It's going to require different UIs. It's going to require different pieces of infrastructure. I think the browser infrastructure is one piece that fits into that, along with all the other categories you mentioned. So, I think that it's going to require developers to think differently about how they've built software for, you know

Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot (a $40 billion leader in the CRM space) shares how AI is transforming go-to-market strategies, the key lessons Yamini has learned as a first-time CEO, and the sales tactics she's mastered.She also discusses the challenges of navigating major business pivots, including how companies can successfully transition into AI-first businesses and what it takes to stay competitive in an evolving landscape.(00:00) Intro(00:56) Yamini Rangan's Background and Career Journey(02:33) Joining HubSpot and Early Challenges(03:49) Transition to CEO and Leadership Insights(07:33) Strategic Planning and Long-Term Vision(15:15) AI Transformation and Product Innovation(18:57) AI's Impact on CRM and Future Prospects(28:51) Content Strategy and Customer Engagement(37:34) Contextual AI Features for Better Usage(38:13) Human Expectations and AI(39:36) AI in Daily Productivity(42:54) The Art and Science of Sales(51:05) The Role of Curiosity and Resilience in Sales(53:23) Evolving Company Culture(55:27) Leadership Style and Management Lessons(58:27) Scaling Startups: Lessons from Workday(01:02:54) The Future of AI and Incumbents(01:14:10) Concluding Thoughts Executive Producer: Rashad AssirProducer: Leah ClapperMixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

Andy is the founder of Artisanal Ventures and Artisanal Talent, one of Silicon Valley's top search firms. He's helped build leadership teams at companies like Databricks, Snowflake, Confluent, Abnormal Security, AcuityMD, and many more.In this episode, he shares…- How founders can differentiate in the talent war today- Maximizing the success rate of executive hires- Why interviews are a waste of time- The best ways to do references- How to choose the right search firm& more (00:00) Intro(02:02) Andy Price's Background and Career Journey(03:20) The Role of Founders in Hiring(04:32) Challenges in Early Stage Hiring(10:08) Importance of Venture Capital Brand(12:14) Effective Search Processes and Candidate Evaluation(23:27) Backchannel References and Networking(29:10) Identifying Key Players in Sales Growth(29:44) The Importance of Minimal Disruption(30:40) Effective Founder-Executive Relationships(30:57) The Role of Soak Time in Differentiation(31:52) Hiring Strategies for Rapid Growth(33:42) Common Failure Modes in Hiring(34:32) Aligning Founder and Executive Expectations(38:26) Building a Strong Talent Acquisition Team(40:51) The Talent Wars and Hiring Choke Points(44:24) Balancing Skill Sets and Company Culture(47:29) Evaluating and Upleveling Team Members(49:59) The Importance of Forecasting and Planning(51:34) Handling Executive Transitions Smoothly(59:09) The Art of Firing: Best Practices(59:32) Handling Employee Terminations with Dignity(01:02:19) Negotiating with Candidates: Tips and Tricks(01:06:31) Understanding Compensation Trends(01:08:18) Avoiding Common Founder Mistakes(01:11:28) Scaling Operations in Hypergrowth(01:15:00) Navigating the Current VC and Talent Ecosystem(01:23:34) The Importance of Specialized Search Firms(01:28:03) Adapting to the New Market Realities(01:30:46) Final Thoughts and Reflections Executive Producer: Rashad AssirProducer: Leah ClapperMixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

The recent controversy between WordPress and WP Engine put Matt Mullenweg (Co-Founder of WordPress, CEO of Automattic) under intense online scrutiny. In our conversation, he shared lessons from the controversy and managing through crisis, as well as this thoughts on the future of open source AI and more.(00:00) Intro(01:17) Controversy with WP Engine(03:36) Understanding Open Source and Trademarks(04:36) Automattic's Role and Contributions(08:26) Navigating Legal Battles and Community Relations(18:27) Leadership and Personal Resilience(21:49) The Impact of Social Media on CEOs(31:22) Future Outlook and Reflections(32:42) Exploring the Quinn Model and Open Source Innovations(33:17) The Evolution of AI Interfaces and User Interactions(35:36) AI as a Writing and Coding Partner(38:07) The Power of Open Source in AI Development(40:00) Commoditizing Complements: A Business Strategy(41:39) The Battle with Shopify and Open Source Models(42:33) The Impact of Open Source on Market Dynamics(43:55) USB-C Transition and Gadget Recommendations(47:53) The Benefits of Sabbaticals(53:34) The Future of WordPress and Automattic(59:12) Employee Ownership and Liquidity Programs(01:04:33) Conclusion and Final Thoughts Executive Producer: Rashad AssirProducer: Leah ClapperMixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 

At new all-time highs, the market's valuation concerns aren't going away anytime soon. But they're also not keeping big money from being committed to artificial intelligence. (00:44) Jason Moser and Asit Sharma discuss: - The S&P 500s new highs, what to make of the market's valuation and what some of the big names on The Street have to say about it. - Stargate, the new $500B planned joint venture between OpenAI, Softbank, and some of the biggest names in tech. - Fantastic earnings reports from Netflix, GE Aerospace, and Twilio. (19:03) Tim Beyers talks with Frances Schwiep, a partner at Two Sigma Ventures, about where the biggest early-stage opportunities are right now in the AI ecosystem and what to look for in great founders. AI Summit interview with Frances Schwiep: https://www.fool.com/premium/4056/coverage/2025/01/15/ai-summit-2025-interview-with-frances-schwiep (32:30) Asit and Jason check in on their new year's resolutions and offer up two stocks on their radar: Nike and Garmin. Stocks discussed: MSFT, NVDA, ORCL, NFLX, GE, TWLO, NKE, GRMN Host: Dylan Lewis Guests: Asit Sharma, Jason Moser, Tim Beyers, Frances Schweip Engineers: Rick Engdahl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Fitbod. Get 25% off your Fitbod subscription or try out the app for FREE when you sign up: fitbod.me/TWIST Squarespace. TWiST listeners: use code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain: https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST Horatio. Visit https://www.hirehoratio.com/twist and get $2,000 off your initial set up. Today's show: Jason and Alex cover Twilio's team size compression, DeepSeek's scary good AI for only $6M and the GameOn fraud saga that sounds too crazy to be true. Timestamps: (0:00) Alex and Jason kick off the show (6:27) Rundown of potential topics (7:10) Twilio's team size strategy and AI's impact on workforce (9:40) Fitbod. Get 25% off your Fitbod subscription or try out the app for FREE when you sign up: fitbod.me/TWIST (14:52) Entrepreneurship in the AI era and automation concerns (19:30) Squarespace. TWiST listeners: use code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain: https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST (22:49) Meta's investment in data centers and surplus compute power (26:36) Technology's potential to solve humanity's problems (30:12) Horatio. Visit https://www.hirehoratio.com/twist and get $2,000 off your initial set up. (32:01) Empathy for workers displaced by automation (34:11) DeepSeq's role in reducing AI industry costs (37:27) Game On startup fraud case and due diligence in startups (53:13) Venture capital's role in startup oversight (55:36) OpenAI's Operator announcement and AI autonomy risks Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Thank you to our partners: (9:40) Fitbod. Get 25% off your Fitbod subscription or try out the app for FREE when you sign up: fitbod.me/TWIST (19:30) Squarespace. TWiST listeners: use code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain: https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST (30:12) Horatio. Visit https://www.hirehoratio.com/twist and get $2,000 off your initial set up. Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916

Chris Sacca is the co-founder of Lowercarbon Capital and manages a portfolio of countless startups in energy, industrial materials, and carbon removal. If it's unf**king the planet, he's probably working on it. Previously, Chris founded Lowercase Capital, one of history's most successful funds ever, primarily known for its very early investments in companies like Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, Docker, Optimizely, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Stripe. But you might just know him as the guy who wore those ridiculous cowboy shirts for a few seasons of Shark Tank. To purchase Chris's ranch, schedule a viewing at FivePondsRanch.com.P.S. This episode features a special, one-of-a-kind introduction that Chris recorded of yours truly. :) Sponsors:MUDWTR energy-boosting coffee alternative—without the jitters: https://MUDWTR.com/Tim (between 15% and 43% off) Helix Sleep premium mattresses: https://HelixSleep.com/Tim (Between 20% and 27% off all mattress orders and two free pillows)AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement: https://DrinkAG1.com/Tim (1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase.)*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim's email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim's books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Margaret Atwood, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Dr. Gabor Maté, Anne Lamott, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.