When life gives you LLMs... (Friends)
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
1hr 40min May 2, 2025
Our old friend, Zeno Rocha, returns to discuss email etiquette, the strange new world of AI SEO, the coming LLM enshittification, and SLATE Auto – the just-announced $20k modular EV truck.
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Sponsors:
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Featuring:
- Zeno Rocha – Website, GitHub, X
- Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- Getting to Resend (Changelog Interviews #585)
- When life gives you Lemons 🍋 U make Billions 💸
- Can I email… Support tables for HTML and CSS in emails
- Email Marketing Platform | Litmus
- Profound | Optimize Your Brand’s Visibility in AI Search
- AI Product Rankings
- SLATE Auto
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Jerod Santo
So Zeno Rocha is back on the show. Welcome, Zeno.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Zeno Rocha
Hey, Adam. Hey, Jerod. Super-happy to be here. I told the team that I was going to chat with you two today, they were like "Oh my gosh, the Changelog folks! It's our favorite podcast!"
Jerod Santo
That's our favorite thing to hear.
Adam Stacoviak
It's been a bit, man. How you been?
Zeno Rocha
Yeah, it's been wild.
Adam Stacoviak
How long has it been? A year?
Jerod Santo
A year, a year and a half...
Zeno Rocha
Yeah, I think so.
Adam Stacoviak
That's too long, man. What a shame.
Zeno Rocha
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
The last time though, I want to say -- okay, so this is Friends... We're not interviewing Zeno, we're just digging into some details...
Jerod Santo
Just a chat.
Adam Stacoviak
But the last time we wanted to go deep. We went to "Getting to Resend." That was the last time on the show.
Jerod Santo
That's right. Getting to Resend.
Adam Stacoviak
We went through all the history. Getting to Resend. So if you want to know that journey for Zeno, check that podcast out. Sadly, that was before we were video-first, on YouTube and stuff, so you won't see his face... But today you will.
Jerod Santo
That is a shame, because look at that face...
Adam Stacoviak
Look at that face...
Zeno Rocha
\[laughs\] My gosh...
Jerod Santo
You've gotta have that face in there, Zeno. You've gotta have it. I've been seeing your face a lot on LinkedIn lately. Are you like a LinkedIn guy now? Or are you just on all the platforms?
Zeno Rocha
You know what's crazy? I'm definitely not on LinkedIn. What I do is I'm on X, I'm on Twitter. That's my home. And then I just repost stuff on LinkedIn. But somehow the algorithm is -- I've been hearing that a lot, like "Oh, I see you all the time on LinkedIn." It's not my fault. I'm just reposting stuff.
Jerod Santo
"It's not my fault." Well, you should be happy about it. It's a good thing. I swear every time I log in, I see a new post from you, and then I realize "No, this was three weeks ago." Because LinkedIn doesn't care at all about recency, which is strange to me.
Adam Stacoviak
They do not.
Jerod Santo
But they care about Zeno. There's like a special trigger in there. "Is this a Zeno post? Because we're going to put it back at the top of your feed."
Zeno Rocha
\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, I wonder if it's because you use a mixture of mixed media. I've seen videos of you all in there, I've seen obviously your marketing images you attach to announcements and stuff, which I think is just super-well done. Are you the originating designer of Resend? I feel like you are.
Zeno Rocha
Man, I would never in a million years introduce myself as a designer, because I'm an engineer that loves design. I feel like that's the best way of putting it.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, gosh...
Zeno Rocha
My sister's a designer.
Jerod Santo
Imposter syndrome...
Zeno Rocha
Yeah, I think so...
Jerod Santo
Dude, you designed the Dracula theme, and the website, right?
Zeno Rocha
True. But still...
Adam Stacoviak
You're a designer, Zeno.
Jerod Santo
Dude...
Zeno Rocha
Man... No, designers... They're so much --
Jerod Santo
You have more design skills in your right pinky than I have in my entire body.
Zeno Rocha
No way... No way.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
Well, I've been following Resend since the beginning, and I feel like the design started -- obviously, you're the original co-founder or founder, so I think I've always seen you as the designer for your things, and then I just assumed that you established the foundation, let's just say, of the design process for Resend. So it looks a lot like your stuff, in my opinion.
Zeno Rocha
Yeah. Well, we had a lot of folks helping us, so I can definitely not take the credit... But I feel like what we really were trying to do is like "Man, there's so many competitors out there. We're not the first email API in the world... So how can we differentiate?" And branding was the thing that we were like "We've got to double down on branding." Otherwise... Yeah. Like, people need to go to the website and they need to see those cover posts and be like "Oh, okay. That's something that SendGrid wouldn't do, Mailgun wouldn't do", and so on.
Jerod Santo
\[07:58\] Right. So the Resend design is really solid. I like it a lot. It's definitely of an era or an ilk. Like, it's very much in the Linear, kind of the -- is it \[unintelligible 00:08:10.08\] I don't know, whatever that toolkit is; I don't know the initials.
Zeno Rocha
Yeah...
Jerod Santo
Which produces really polished, really kind of high-quality, black, dark mode mostly, designs... Which have been very popular the last five years. And I don't keep up with design trends, but I'm starting to. I mean, I keep up with them as far as I eventually notice them. But I'm not like at the frontend of that. But I wonder, a company starting today, if you were starting Resend today, would it look like this? Because you always tend to be at the very front edge, I think, of trends. Or would it look more "What's new and going on in design world that's going to be trending maybe next year"?
Zeno Rocha
Yeah... I feel like when you're getting started, you should try to lean on the trendy movement, because you want to position yourself as this modern player in the market. So following the trend is actually a good thing. As you evolve, just like Linear - you go to the Linear website now, it's way less fancy than it used to be. Because now you can afford to build more timeless design, once you establish yourself, once you establish the brand... Which probably is a step that we might take a year or two from now, something like that. But you need to show that you're different. So for us, it was like "Yeah, let's go dark mode first, dark mode only." And that's just a different move. Let's go with like a WebGL on the Hero, because we need to show right away that we're different.
So those were decisions that we made that were very intentional... And the covers on social too, because it's like - okay, we know that developers appreciate when this other developers ships a lot. So that's something that when we see other companies doing or other developers doing it, we're like "Wow, this is so great. They're always moving, always shipping." So we wanted to get that feeling of always shipping... So every day we've got a post. There are days that I hate and I don't want to post. But I feel like it's my duty as a founder. It's my duty to be investing on my personal brand, along with the company brand. And those two need to evolve in different ways, but they need to exist both.
Jerod Santo
Is there anybody breaking that rule? Because I definitely feel like that's true... And yet, I imagine there's probably founders out there who never post, and just do their thing, and are still killing it for some reason... But it's so hard to get attention nowadays, how would you do it, and so you have to post... I don't know, is there anybody who just - and this is not necessarily for you, Zeno, but even Adam... Is there a startup or a scale-up that just kills it and doesn't have constant marketing and social media stuff going on? Or is it pretty much part of the game now?
Adam Stacoviak
I think it's part of the game, personally.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
It's been my biggest fear for a decade now, that eventually everybody will have to become some version of a media company... I mean, I was even looking at this -- as you know, Jerod, I've recently gotten back into golf. My brother visited, and we toured some golf courses, and it's a connection point for us... I'm trying to improve my game, and I'm just learning that "Wow, TaylorMade, and Ping, and Titleist", and these major brands, they are basically media companies.
\[11:48\] Now, if you go on YouTube and look at this stuff, you obviously see the PGA Tour stuff, but you see the brand-specific things. Even like this thing called TrackMan - it's a hardware/software product that's used to track your swing, and ball, and speed, and stuff like that... They are a hardware/software manufacturer for the golf industry, and you go to their YouTube, they've got really good content. And the reason why they have really good content is because they're focused on creating media that pulls people in. And I kind of feel like -- it's funny you ask this question, because literally last night I was thinking to myself, there are infinite channels in this world to subscribe to. As I said, just got back into golf, and I'm just discovering this plethora of content.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. It's a whole new world.
Adam Stacoviak
It's just there waiting for you, you know?
Jerod Santo
Totally.
Adam Stacoviak
Tap into the channel.
Zeno Rocha
Man, that's so true. I'm glad you brought that up, because I'm thinking about that a lot recently. I even chatted with Garry Tan from YC last Friday, because I was like "Man, this is so top of mind for me", and I feel like when he joined YC -- he was a solo character on his initialized fund before he joined YC, so he had his YouTube channel, he was doing his thing. But then when he joined YC, he could have just doubled down on the \[unintelligible 00:13:14.29\] type of content, because that's a proven content strategy for the past 20 years. But no, they just revamped their whole YouTube thing, and now you can definitely tell YC is a media company. And you'll see they have multiple shows, with multiple characters. Each character plays a different type of role. \[unintelligible 00:13:37.26\] So yeah, for me it's extremely inspiring. And that's a playbook that HubSpot did, Ahref, other companies maybe outside of dev tools... But I can totally see dev tools going down that path, too.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. It has to be media, though. Content for - not a sales content. Content to show off who you are, to tell your story, to tell your customer story, to tell the bottleneck, the breakage story, the "It's broken" story kind of thing. Not this "Let's buy our thing, here's how it works" only story. I feel like that's where maybe folks will hear us talk about this and go and explore and examine themselves, and come back and say "Oh, we should do this. Let's just sell our stuff on YouTube." I think that's not the way to do it. I think you need to talk about your world and your ecosystem, but not "Here's how you buy our thing." There may be a channel for that, but I feel like that's a specific layer of the funnel that you address, and that's more like sales content, literally. Can it live in YouTube? Sure. But I wouldn't overly saturate that channel with two different types of content, because now you've got this "Let's capture some people, let's get some attention", kind of distribution or become more exposed to certain folks in the world... And then you have "Hey, I want to buy your thing. Help me buy your thing." That's a whole different content slice, but do they belong on the same channel? I don't know about that.
Zeno Rocha
Yeah. And it's definitely not about YouTube. What we're talking here is about storytelling. And where do you do that doesn't matter. You see all these indie hackers going down that path, building in public, which is amazing. They should do that. They're inspired by \[unintelligible 00:15:30.12\] and it's amazing. I guess where people typically fail is they just show the good side of things. So they are always promoting like "Oh, this is great. This is great. This is amazing." And if you're never vulnerable, then there's no way I can connect with you on a human level. It's just sales.
Jerod Santo
Right.
Adam Stacoviak
\[15:54\] That's the challenge though, is like how -- not that I'm not honest with the world, but how much of the filter do I want to remove from... Not so much the perfectness or casting this perfect vision of who I am or what I do or what this business does, or somebody else's business does... Like, it's scary to remove that filter, to sort of only post the good stuff and not show the bad stuff. It's a little scary to do the bad stuff, or the challenges. Not so much like "Oh, we're stuck", or sucking, or whatever, but more like "Here's a whoa", not just "Here's a high moment."
Zeno Rocha
Yeah. There's a paradox... I forgot the name now, but there's a Wikipedia page on this, where you can transform a bad experience into something that's actually good. And that's the paradox. Like, you go for something super-bad, like an incident, but because you do the postmortem, because you're transparent about the issues that it caused, because you show "Hey, here are the next steps", then that actually creates more trust. So something that was bad, a downtime, becomes a good thing, because of the transparency, because of the accountability and ownership and all that. But when you're in the middle of the fire, it's hard to want to be vulnerable. And there's a line between "Okay, I can only go so far. If I cross this line, then..." Yeah, it's super-tricky, super-difficult.
Jerod Santo
I think that Wikipedia page is called "When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade."
Zeno Rocha
\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
Is that right?
Jerod Santo
That's the page.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, my gosh... Did you see that -- I don't watch the show. I think it's from Millions, or Billions... I don't know what this show is. I don't even know the actor.
Jerod Santo
It's gotta be Billions, because millions is not impressive anymore.
Adam Stacoviak
But they said that. He's like "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." He's like "No. When life gives you lemons..." And then he goes on.
\[17:53\]
*"First you roll out a multimedia campaign to convince people lemons are incredibly scarce... Which only works if you stockpile lemons, control the supply. Then a media blitz. Lemons are the only way to say I love you. The must have accessory for engagements or anniversaries. Roses are out. Lemons are in. Billboards that say "She won't have sex with you unless you've got lemons. You cut the beers in on it, limited edition lemon bracelets, yellow diamonds called lemon drops... You get Apple to call their new operating system OS Lemon. Little accent over the O. You charge 40% more for organic lemons, 50% more for conflict-free lemons. You pack the Capitol with lemon lobbyists. You get a Kardashian to suck a lemon wedge in a leaked sex tape... Timothee Chalamet wears lemon shoes at Cannes. You get a hashtag campaign. Something that isn't cool, or tight, or awesome... No, it's lemon. Did you see that movie? Did you go to that concert? It was effin' lemon. Billie Eilish. OMG. Hashtag. Lemon. You get Dr. Oz to recommend four lemons a day and a lemon suppository supplement to get rid of toxins, because there is nothing scarier than toxins. Then you patent the seeds. You write a line of genetic code that makes lemons look just a little more like tits. And you get a gene patent for the tit-lemon DNA sequence. You cross-pollinate... You get those seeds circulating in the wild... And then you sue the farmers for copyright infringement when that genetic code shows up on their land. Sit back, rake in the millions, and then, when you're done, and you've sold your lempire for a few billion dollars, then and only then you make some f\*\*\*ing lemonade."*
But yeah. Life, lemons, lemonade... Sure.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. So you're selling lemonade. So Zeno, what are some failures you posted?
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, boy...
Jerod Santo
\[19:56\] ...that you're willing to talk about. You've got an incident, you've got a fail, bad decision, bad hire... Don't name names. What have you got? Something vulnerable.
Zeno Rocha
Man, so many of those. I think the incidents is a good one, because I think we went through some pretty bad stuff. Like, there was one last year -- so it's been more than a year since we had those two incidents, but the timing of them were terrible. So there was one incident where it happened right before our launch week, and then this other incident that happened, after we were announcing something else... And it's so weird, because I remember when the incident was happening -- so one of them was related to data being leaked. So that's like the worst possible type of incident, because it's not just a downtime. It's like, you're actually --
Jerod Santo
Right.
Zeno Rocha
And it was so hard to navigate those moments, and I felt like "Okay, this is it. There's no way we're going to recover from this. There's absolutely no way." But then you're like "Okay, this is what I'm doing... And yeah what am I going to do? Am I going to hide? Or just like go with it and trying to make the most out of it and learn it?"
So the weird thing about the bad stuff is that when you look back, in retrospect, everything is different. Today, I'm extremely grateful for those things to happen in the very early days of Resend, because it changed the way I see security, how often I run pen tests, and so many other things. Like how often we run stuff on the CI, so we detect stuff before it goes to production. And I could say so many things about this, but... Yeah, I feel like when bad stuff happens, you always have to try to see the good side. Otherwise - yeah, you don't recover from it.
Jerod Santo
I heard it said - maybe it was Adam that said this, and maybe an Adam original, maybe not... But it's only a failure if you don't learn anything. Like, if you don't learn, you did fail.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, that's an Adam original.
Jerod Santo
Is it an Adam original?
Adam Stacoviak
I don't know. It sounds good, though. I like it. Go on, \[unintelligible 00:22:08.00\] Say it again. Say it again fresh.
Jerod Santo
It's only a failure if you don't learn something.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, that's an Adam original.
Jerod Santo
If you learn from your failure, then it's not a failure anymore. You've actually turned it into lemonade, really.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
And - I mean, the fact that you can be thankful for what was potentially a catastrophic incident shows that you actually learned, and adjusted, and are now more resilient than you would have been had you not had that situation. So that's all good.
Now, if it actually kills you, then it's not good. Right? Whatever doesn't kill us...
Zeno Rocha
Makes you stronger, right?
Jerod Santo
Makes us stronger. \[laughter\] But if it kills us, then it's not -- now you're not thankful anymore.
Adam Stacoviak
Now you're dead.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Zeno Rocha
So many catchphrases... Remember Twitter back in 2010? Like, the blue whale. All the time --
Jerod Santo
Oh yeah, the fail whale.
Zeno Rocha
Yeah, it was so unstable. Today, we don't even think about it anymore. Like, it just works.
Jerod Santo
That's true.
Zeno Rocha
But yeah, I think about that a lot.
Jerod Santo
But there was something about the fail whale that it became like Twitter culture, and also produced this - not FOMO, but like fear because we're all missing out... Basically, you're hitting refresh waiting for the fail whale to go away, because you want the site to come back up. And so it almost made you want to use it more, even in a weird way, because you're like "Oh, it's down", you know? So that was kind of a weird deal, where it kind of produced more demand, which probably was really bad for the engineers that were trying to get it back up again. Like, "Stop hitting Refresh, guys."
Zeno Rocha
Yeah, for sure.
Jerod Santo
As far as the addiction factor, I think it probably helped us all get addicted to it back in the early days... Because sometimes you don't realize the addiction until something gets pulled away from you, you know...
Zeno Rocha
Oh, yeah. That's so true.
**Break**: \[24:07\]
Adam Stacoviak
Who here is addicted to their phone?
Jerod Santo
Probably... Don't want to admit it. \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak
I'm happy to -- I mean, I'm not happy to admit it, but I'm happy to admit that at least I'm aware... Because if I don't have this black mirror near me, I'm like "Can I do life?" And I think it's just because it's become this tool that I use in so many ways.
Jerod Santo
It's just so useful.
Adam Stacoviak
Right, it's a necessary thing to navigate my daily life, but it's also my boredom antidote, so to speak. And so there's a fine line between utility tool, and the other thing... Which is not a good thing.
Jerod Santo
Right. And that's why it's such a mixed bag, is because it's both. I mean, some things are tools, other things are entertainment, but your phone is like a thousand and one things. And so yeah, I've left it at home and had to stop and think "Am I turning around the car, or am I just going?"
Adam Stacoviak
"How do I get there...?"
Jerod Santo
And I can live without the entertainment part, but then you're like "Yeah, but... What if somebody has to get a hold --" I mean, it's always that, right?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
"What if somebody has to get a hold of me?" It's like, they probably don't. And they'll find a way.
Adam Stacoviak
And that's the one time they will, though.
Jerod Santo
I know, but you know that people lived hundreds of centuries without these things, and life continued...
Adam Stacoviak
Yes.
Jerod Santo
Like, even in the '90s, when we were kids... Pagers, maybe...
Adam Stacoviak
Coolest.
Jerod Santo
If you were well to be, you had a pager...
Adam Stacoviak
The coolest, man.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, pagers are awesome, because they had plausible deniability built right in, you know? Because you can page somebody, but that doesn't mean they have a phone to actually call you back. And so they always had a reason to be like "Sorry, I couldn't find a phone", and you just can't argue against that. But life went on. Life was fine. Maybe it was even better.
Adam Stacoviak
Where did you buy your pager, Jerod? Do you know? Do you recall?
Jerod Santo
I wasn't cool enough. I didn't have a pager. So...
Adam Stacoviak
You didn't have a pager?!
Jerod Santo
I had a friend who had a pager, which was even better, because I'd say "Page Cody. If you wanna get a hold me, page Cody." Now he's like my personal assistant.
Adam Stacoviak
Page Cody Jerod. J-E-R-O-D. \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo
I was right on the cusp of like flip phones and pagers. So pagers were just going out, and my first personal device was like a little Motorola flip phone, at probably the age of 15 or 16. What about you, Zeno?
Zeno Rocha
Yeah, I got the flip phones, too. I can totally relate to that feeling of almost like addiction, borderline addiction. I remember last year Twitter was blocked in Brazil. There was like a whole thing between Elon Musk and the government and then they blocked all the internet providers. So then I traveled there, I arrive at the airport, and I have like a few hours in between flights... And I noticed this thing -- like, whenever I was going to do a task, I was like doing something, and then if I had to wait for like three seconds for the thing to finish, then I would go to the browser and be like "Okay, Command+T, tw, Enter." And that was just like a movement I would do. So I would always go to Twitter in between tasks. But because the website was blocked, then I would always get like this page of "No, it's offline. It's offline." To the moment where like I was doing that for like 30 minutes, I'm like "Okay, I just need to get into a VPN, because I have to go there." Like, it's so addicting. It's crazy.
Jerod Santo
\[29:51\] Yeah... I definitely have the pull to refresh thing ingrained deep down in there, where I'll do it without thinking about it sometimes... Because I don't let my mail just come in. I have to go check it, because I don't want to just be pushed. But at the same time, I check it all the time. So it's pretty stupid. But I opened the mail app and I pulled up refresh, and I'll do that just habitually without even thinking about it. And that's when you know something's tightly ingrained.
Adam Stacoviak
Email, man. Email is necessary, as you can probably assume.
Jerod Santo
But is it, though? \[laughter\] Do they have to get a hold of me right then, in between bites?
Adam Stacoviak
I'm kind of with you on that. I think it was David Heinemeier Hansson one time that talked about this around the Hey launch, or somewhere along their storyline, discussing this idea... I think -- I'm not too familiar. They have like an inbox, where it's like not an inbox, it's an Mbox...
Jerod Santo
What's that mean?
Adam Stacoviak
I think it's actually IM, I don't know. I don't know their terminology. I'm not going to try and sell the product, but...
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] Okay.
Zeno Rocha
Oh yeah, I remember that.
Adam Stacoviak
...the idea was essentially that just because you email me, does that mean I owe you my time as a response? I feel like there's this -- you know, just because you can find my email on the internet, or maybe even book time on my cal, because we have links out there... I'm like "Does that \[unintelligible 00:31:16.17\]
Jerod Santo
Yeah, people do that sometimes, and I'm like "Who is this person?"
Adam Stacoviak
It's like "No, I'm sorry. That's not how this works. You have to be invited. You can't just get on my calendar." I think it's the same thing with email. Just because you emailed me, does that mean I owe you my time to respond to you? And it's a little pretentious to think that way, I think, but I think we have to be protectors of our - I would say probably our most important asset to manage is time. You can't get it back. This moment we're sharing now is gone forever. This is time you cannot rewind and do differently. And so you dedicate that time to something you think is important... Does that mean I have to dedicate it to respond to you, because you emailed me? I'd say no. No.
Zeno Rocha
And it's so hard to say no, right?
Jerod Santo
Yeah. And I do not reply to every email, but I read almost all of them, you know...
Adam Stacoviak
And that upsets me, too.
Jerod Santo
So that's an even different question. Do I owe you the time to read your email?
Adam Stacoviak
Exactly...!
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
Exactly. Gosh.
Jerod Santo
Especially the sixth time that you sent it. "Just following up..."
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, yeah...
Zeno Rocha
Oh, my gosh...
Jerod Santo
So Adam and I get a lot of the same emails, because we share editors \[at\] changehog.com.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh gosh, you just said it.
Jerod Santo
And so many of them are pitches, and so many of them are so bad...
Adam Stacoviak
So bad.
Jerod Santo
And so many of them follow up, without response. Like, we have not said a word, but they'll send four, five, six emails. Professional courtesies, they call it. And so every once in a while, one of us will reply with an all caps unsubscribe. But one person, who neither one of us engaged with at all, finally emailed back for like the fifth time, with no response, and accused us of ghosting them. I was like "You can't ghost somebody you've never talked to." What are you talking about ghosting you? We've just ignored your emails. That's the first for me... It's like, being accused of mistreatment from somebody I've never met, and has only stolen like 30 seconds of my time five times.
Adam Stacoviak
I don't know, we're talking about it now, though... Can I read it verbatim? I have it pulled up.
Jerod Santo
Well, I'm turning it into lemonade. You see, I've created content out of this.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, you are.
Jerod Santo
Ha-ha, I win.
Adam Stacoviak
Can I read this email verbatim, just for context?
Jerod Santo
Sure.
Zeno Rocha
Please.
Adam Stacoviak
It says "Adam and Jerod, this will be my last email I send to you." It's like, come on...
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] Finally, some good news.
Adam Stacoviak
"Either you ghosted me, or you don't want so and so on your podcast. If anything changes, let me know."
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
I mean, I applaud their effort. I really do. I mean, they're getting creative at least.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
But... We never ghosted you, because we never talked.
Jerod Santo
That's right. \[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
You've only stolen our time here on this podcast and in our emails five or so times, and we've never engaged with you.
Jerod Santo
Oh, gosh...
Adam Stacoviak
\[34:14\] And just because we create podcast and invite people on our shows doesn't mean we owe you a response.
Jerod Santo
That's right.
Adam Stacoviak
And then we have a phone number on our website, Zeno, and they call us. I got a phone call last week, Jerod --
Jerod Santo
Well, that's your fault. You put our phone number on our website.
Adam Stacoviak
It's been useful a few times...
Zeno Rocha
Who's fault is this...?
Jerod Santo
Yeah, exactly. \[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
This is my fault. This is my fault.
Jerod Santo
Alright. So we can't complain too much when people call that phone number, you know?
Adam Stacoviak
No, but then they call and they're like "Hey, I've emailed a few times about getting so-and-so on your podcast... Are you guys accepting guests?"
Jerod Santo
You've gotta respect that...
Adam Stacoviak
And I'm like "Well, if you've emailed us and we haven't responded, it's unlikely that \[unintelligible 00:34:50.28\] your email or we're interested." So it's just like, don't call. Come on.
Jerod Santo
No, I've definitely cold-emailed people. I'm sure, Zeno, you have as well, in our lives... And sent them an email and asked them for something, or to come on our show, and tell them why it would be a good idea, and why we would appreciate it, and have gotten no response back... And maybe a couple of times, maybe like six months later, when they come back across my radar and I'll be like "You know what? They never replied. I'll try one more time." Maybe I'll try it another time, especially if I really want them to come on the show... Guido Van Rossum... I mean, come on, man... \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak
And many others...
Jerod Santo
Yeah. But I couldn't -- and I appreciate the hustle, but I do not appreciate somebody who's going to send the same person five unanswered emails. What's your limit, Zeno? How many emails would you send somebody if you don't get a response?
Zeno Rocha
Me? As a receiver, my technique is like I just block the domain. So if people are sending me these --
Jerod Santo
Okay. \[unintelligible 00:35:54.19\]
Zeno Rocha
...extremely automated code emails, zero context, they're offering me a position as a software engineer or something... I'm like "What the hell? I'm not interested. That's not me. I don't know how you really put me on this list." And you can tell when the follow ups are automated. Because one thing is what you were doing, that's like, okay, as a human, I really want you on the show, and then you come in, you're explaining why, and all that... Versus - like, you know you're in a sequence. It's just so clear. And people have these hooks that get your attention, like "Oh, you're ghosting me." And then you're like "No, I don't want to ghost you." So then you reply, because now they trigger something in your psyche that then makes you want to reply. Or the subject line that they use to get your attention.
I've seen all sorts of crazy things. People sending emails with typos on purpose, and then they send a follow up email saying "Oh, I fixed that." But then they get your attention.
Jerod Santo
That's actually hilarious, because -- so I just had Kendall Miller on the show a couple weeks ago...
Adam Stacoviak
That's true.
Jerod Santo
And he was giving some top tips about how to get people's attention, and one of them was that. He's like "You can just spell their name wrong on purpose", which shows them that you're a real person. That was his reason why he does it, is to just get past that immediate... Because we all have that Bayesian filter where it's like "This is just spam", you know. But a typo is kind of proof that you handtyped it. And personally I wouldn't do that, I'm with you on it... But it's certainly a technique that people do. And Kendall seems like he's okay getting that one out there, if it's effective. So we all have our little borders of where we think is over the line, and is kosher.
Adam Stacoviak
Let me go on record to and say -- well, I want to say, even though I'm personally and we all are collectively, I would say loosely just like griping about this, as someone who's an encourager, keep going. Don't stop. Do that stuff. You may upset me, I may go on a podcast and not name you, but literally verbatim read your email out loud...
Jerod Santo
And shame you...
Zeno Rocha
\[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak
I might ghost you...
Jerod Santo
That's right.
Adam Stacoviak
\[38:25\] ...but still do it, man. Push whatever buttons you've got to; by any means necessary, push through those boundaries and find your way.
Jerod Santo
Right. But we get a pushback. We get to come on a show and say "This is not cool." And that's just part of life. That's just how it works.
Zeno Rocha
There's definitely something beautiful about a protocol that you can reach anyone in the world, if you know \[unintelligible 00:38:45.19\]
Jerod Santo
A hundred percent.
Zeno Rocha
That's just something beautiful. Right? And then you can try your shot. Like "Oh, let me see if I can get a hold of Jeff Bezos." I don't know... I'm sure he has an email, and there's an executive assistant that triages that... But yeah, you hear stories of like Tim Cook answering stuff... Like, you can always just try your luck.
Jerod Santo
That is so true, and it's such an equalizing technology, where it's like as long as you can get the email address and craft the email in the proper way... Like, if you can find the magic combination of characters to put into this little box, and send it, you can get the attention of anybody in the world.
Adam Stacoviak
That's true. I mean, theoretically. But yeah, that's --
Jerod Santo
Yeah, theoretically. I mean, it happens, and it also doesn't happen. Sometimes they ghost you. \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak
Sometimes.
Jerod Santo
Oh, that's hilarious. But yeah -- I mean, email is probably to this day top five coolest things in technology. The way it works...
Adam Stacoviak
Yes, a hundred percent.
Jerod Santo
Of course, it has its problems, and I'm sure you know all of them very well as an email sending provider... A lot of the technical problems. Of course, spam is an issue... I mean, there's so many issues. But it's not siloed, it's federated in old school ways... It works, and - yeah, you can reach anybody in the world just by having their address.
Adam Stacoviak
And theoretically, nobody owns it. Maybe, Zeno, you could speak to the deliverability aspect... Because I think there's some layer of ownership or centralization. It's like there's a cabal, so to speak, that gatekeeps the protocol, to some degree.
Jerod Santo
Google and Microsoft, basically...
Adam Stacoviak
You know, like, I imagine deliverability is probably the biggest thing, and like somebody controls deliverability of email.
And if you don't send from a certain IP address or a range of IP addresses, you have less likely the ability to actually utilize the protocol. You may send it to the ether, but it won't actually arrive, because the system says no, essentially.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Which - is that fair, Zeno? Is it basically Gmail and Outlook, or Yahoo? I mean, there's probably just a few centralized providers who have so many people's emails hosted that if they lock you out for whatever reason - they think that you're a bad actor - then you're kind of locked out, and you can't hit a third of email addresses in the world. I mean, Gmail is so massive. I'm not sure how big Microsoft's email hosting is, but I'm sure it's just massive. And I'm sure there's other big players like that. But those are the two that come to mind.
Zeno Rocha
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Gmail definitely dominates... And then you have Yahoo, who is super-popular in Japan, for example, still. And then Outlook still, and Hotmail, those ones from Microsoft...
Jerod Santo
Hotmail, yeah...
Zeno Rocha
\[41:55\] What is cool about them, and not cool too, is they have to keep improving their game, otherwise their products get obsolete. And especially now with AI, you can generate so many different emails, and they're highly personalized... And it gets even more tricky. But I think the beauty is -- or the challenge for them is "Okay, how do we evolve?" And in the beginning, you're totally right, Adam, there was a lot of emphasis on the IP level. So then you would have like an IP, and if the reputation of that IP is good, then just let all those emails go through. And then email providers came up and they were like "Okay, now I have this big IP pool, and I just shove people there", and then the good actors balance the bad actors. So then these inbox providers, they're like "Oh, okay, so now we have to go up a different abstraction layer and look at the domain more than just the IP."
And they have different techniques. They look at how fast you send emails, and that's something that dictates "Are we going to throttle the emails or not?" They look at the engagement early on for like emails that are coming to the inbox, and based on that, they dictate the inbox placement. "Are we going to keep it on the primary box, the promotional tab, the spam folder?" And those things are constantly evolving. But the thing I don't like is like -- I wish they would evolve as fast as the web, for example. Because I feel like the web was super-slow, maybe in like the 2000s, and then 2010 HTML5 comes in, and CSS 3, and ECMAScript 6, and it's like "Oh, wow there's so much movement." And now we don't care so much about how this website looks on Opera versus Firefox versus i6. It's just like the same website. Very little things like that are different in Safari than Chrome...
Jerod Santo
Right.
Zeno Rocha
But with email, it's still -- man, it's so hard.
Jerod Santo
Tell me about it. I'm facing an uphill battle right now, because Gmail just decided that they're going to start ignoring our styles in our newsletter, with zero changes from me. Like, it's the exact same thing, it worked fine last week... I can send the same email I sent two weeks ago, and if I go in my archive, the two weeks ago one looks like it looks like in every other email client... And if I resend the same exact content today, it looks different. Specifically, they're ignoring our fonts, and our link colors... The actual form of email is still there, but it just looks kind of whack. And there's no announcements, there's no nothing. It's just like, you know, they just changed the way they handle rendering, and now I have to go chasing down whatever it is different in order to get my rules to work. And that just makes me mad. I mean, I can't ignore it. It's Gmail.
Zeno Rocha
And at least with browsers, there's an engine behind, and that engine is open source. So you're like "Okay, Gecko for Firefox, and Blink for Chrome", and then there's an actual change log publicly available... But for those email engines - no, there's nothing that's like "Oh, here's what we change in terms of rendering." No. You cannot find it.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, I'll pause for a second just to reflect on the idea that Jerod just said resend, and then you just said change log...
I just think that's kind of cool how both brand names show up in natural conversation.
Jerod Santo
Wow, that's true.
Adam Stacoviak
It's just beautiful, you know?
Jerod Santo
That's good naming by us, by all of us.
Adam Stacoviak
I do like that a lot. And I had to go sign in, Jerod, to Gmail, and look at it... Because you're right, it looks fine, it's not the worst ever...
Jerod Santo
You can read it.
Adam Stacoviak
\[45:55\] ...but it's not respecting the styles. It's respecting the overall framework of how the email looks, and stuff, but it's... It's all gone. What's up with that...? Not cool.
Jerod Santo
They're using their own fonts. It's like they care more. And Microsoft has done this a while... Specifically, if you log into - whatever it is; Live365... Or if you use the Microsoft Office in the cloud thing, and read the email there, it's also ugly, because they want it to look like their UI inside their web app. And so all the links are blue, because that's what Microsoft wants. Now, if you read that same email, still hosted by Microsoft, but inside of Outlook.app... Or .exe... Sorry, I haven't been on Windows in a while. I forgot what their extension was. Outlook.exe. It'll look fine. It'll look just like it does everywhere else. But in the web app specifically, they override things. And Google, I think, just started doing that, is my guess, because Gmail just this last couple of weeks now, it's like Roboto Sans, or Google Sans... I don't know. They're using their own fonts. I'm surprised this is news to you, Zeno. Has anybody else told you this?
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, he knows this... \[laughs\]
Zeno Rocha
No, man.
Adam Stacoviak
He knows this... You don't know this?
Jerod Santo
You haven't heard this?
Adam Stacoviak
You know this...
Zeno Rocha
\[laughs\] I hear that all the time. And then Superhuman does their thing as well... And the Gmail mobile app will invert the colors to be -- like, if you're using dark mode on your phone, then there's absolutely no control, but they will invert everything. And then you just hope that they will invert right with their inversion algorithm, too. So it's just crazy how you just have to -- it still feels super-archaic, even though email is around for 20-plus years. 30-plus years.
Jerod Santo
And I've been talking with my research assistants, ChatGPT, I've asked Grok... I think those are the only two that I asked this particular question... What I can do about this. Is there anything that they know? And they both have pushed me towards Litmus, which is a commercial product. Are you aware of that one, Zeno? Litmus? They do take the guesswork out of email marketing. And so what I want is a way I can send my preview email into all of the weirdest places it might be rendered, and see how it looks, and then somehow open a DevTools kind of thing... And I think Litmus offers you something like this. But you know, I'm just a guy with a newsletter. I'm not like an enterprise. Where Litmus is like "Come get all our suite of tools for $150 a month", or whatever it is. And it just doesn't feel like the product for me. And so that brings me up to thoughts. A, as a Resend guy, what is there in this world? Are you guys trying to solve this problem? And then B, I think this leads us into our AI SEO, because both Grok and ChatGPT pushed me towards Litmus. That's great for Litmus, right? Potential new customer, because they were the thing that showed up, that these things knew about. So let's start with the email side. What's out there for people to be able to send a preview email into like all the weird places it might render and look at it?
Zeno Rocha
Yeah. So yeah, Litmus is definitely the most popular one. And it's almost like a browser stack kind of product. They run VMs that take screenshots, and then you see how it renders... So that saves you time. You don't need another Windows machine to check how things look on Outlook, so that's great. But it's still like "Okay, now I see that it's different. What do I do?" So there are other tools like Can I Email, which is the alternative to Can I Use, where it shows --
Jerod Santo
Oh, nice.
Zeno Rocha
...like "Okay, here's how this -- like, is Flexbox supported or not?" And then they will tell you.
Jerod Santo
Oh, I see. So it's just like Can I Use, but for email.
Zeno Rocha
Yeah. Exactly.
Jerod Santo
That's cool.
Zeno Rocha
\[50:02\] It's like SVG. You still cannot use SVG on emails. So then the tool will tell you, "No, you cannot do that." So that helps. And then if you try to -- like, we try to put things like that in the product. Like, okay, let's add a linter, a compatibility checker powered by Can I Email on React Email. So we try to shove as much tooling on the email template creation process, so then when you go live, you don't see as much inconsistencies... But there's always a little thing here and there.
Jerod Santo
That's cool. I'll link that one up. Of course, if you know Can I Use, replace use with email, and you'll hit the website. So I'll definitely bookmark that. I don't think it helps me with my particular problem, because I'm not using anything weird, and it's just like... What I might need to do is I'm putting my styles not inline on the elements, but in the head. And I think that perhaps if I inline them -- I mean, that's inlined. It's not a separate style sheet that you're \[unintelligible 00:51:04.17\]
Zeno Rocha
File
Jerod Santo
...like a separate resource. But it is in the head, and maybe I need to get them even closer, and inline everything and just bloat out all my elements and see if that fixes it. That's probably my next step, is to do that. But then let's take up this other thing, which you've put some work into and have been sharing some of your findings on... Is, you know, Litmus is probably very happy that when I said "I've got this problem", that these LLMs are sending me to Litmus. Because I didn't know about their product prior. And there was one other one. I think it was -- yeah, I forgot what it was. It wasn't as memorable of a product name. So they lose. But when people ask for the best developer podcast, I would love for the Changelog to be the answer, right? \[laughs\] I mean, let's just get down to brass tacks.
Zeno Rocha
For sure.
Jerod Santo
So how do we do that? Help us do that. How do we get our stuff at the top of AI's SEO?
Zeno Rocha
Yeah, I think everyone is trying to answer that question right now.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Zeno Rocha
Man, for me, what really clicked -- so I've been ignoring AI for the past two years. Not like from a company perspective... As an individual, I use AI a ton. I love it. I'm optimistic about it. I think it's great. But on a company level, it's like "Man, we just need to find product-market fit. Nothing else matters. Let's just ship stuff that's going to help users." But then in January this year, I just started seeing some stuff that I couldn't ignore. So what do we do now is every time someone signs up for Resend, we send a welcome email. And that welcome email comes from me. It's very personal, so then when they reply, it comes to me, and then I reply as well. And then this one day I'm just like waiting... I start to get into running, and then I'm waiting for this Nike store to open... So I'm just sitting there, it's like 30 minutes until the store opens, and I'm just replying to those emails. And then one person is like "Oh, I came from Lovable." I'm like "Oh, that's cool", to reply that. Next person is like "Oh, Claude recommended you." Reply... ChatGPT recommended you. v0 recommended you, Bolt... I just started seeing those things... And it was six or seven emails in a row. So I was like "Whoa, there's just something here." I don't know what changed... Is there a new version of the LLL? I don't know. But something clicked. And I was like "Okay, I cannot ignore this anymore from a company perspective. I just have to keep pulling that thread."
\[53:54\] And then I started finding like, okay, who is thinking about this problem? Who is digging into that? And it's a huge rabbit hole... And then what are the techniques to -- what you were saying, "I just want more of that." I want Changelog to be the default solution here. The default answer.
Jerod Santo
That's right.
Zeno Rocha
And man, there's so many interesting things... For example, from an SEO perspective, we care a lot about Google. And we care about Google Search Console as the tool to see how we're doing in terms of SEO. It turns out, if you want to be the first one in ChatGPT, you've got to care about Bing. Because Bing is what's powering ChatGPT, because of the Microsoft partnership.
Jerod Santo
Really?
Zeno Rocha
So that's how the whole indexing of the web came from Bing as the data source for ChatGPT. So then - okay, now that's different. How do I rank number one on Bing, versus Google? Which is something you would never really pay attention to. And then you have to start thinking about "How do I structure my content on my website?" Because people are asking questions to LLMs. So if they're asking questions, then it's a Q&A type of format. So then what we started doing was let's just have more FAQs on every single page we have, and let's turn our knowledge base to be more of a question and answer to feed the LLM. And then yeah, I've just started playing with llms.txt, which is like this protocol for you to just strip all the HTML and just have the content ready for LLMs to consume. So we did that as well. And man, just started going down that path. Using tools like Profound...
So there's tryprofound.com, a tool that shows you all the traffic. This one is fascinating, by the way. So the way this works is they hook into your server, and then whenever the server gets a hit, they will look at the origin of the request, and then break it down between like "Okay, where is this request coming from?" And the reason why that works is because when you ask ChatGPT what is Resend's pricing - for example, if you do that now, ChatGPT wasn't trained in that data. So there's no way that they know that. That's different than if you ask ChatGPT, "Write me a poem." They can do that using the trained data. But if you ask pricing for any product, they need to look at the web. So because they are able to search the web nowadays, you get a citation. And then when you get a citation, it's basically them crawling your website, getting the information. So then you get that request. You see "Okay, ChatGPT went to my pricing page." And then you can start looking at the breakdown between every model. Like, "Okay, Claude users, they actually go to this page. And ChatGPT users go here." And it's just fascinating. It's a completely new way of looking into SEO, that's for sure.
Jerod Santo
That is cool. So are you using this Profound platform with Resend?
Zeno Rocha
Yeah, we are. Yup.
Jerod Santo
Is it worth it?
Zeno Rocha
Man, right now, you've got to try everything, right?
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Zeno Rocha
What I love about Profound - it gives me the information... I think they still have a long way to go in terms of "How do I take the beautiful graph and turn it into action points?" So then as a team, I can be like "Okay, let's change this content. Let's do this. Let's do that." Now you get the data. So you still have to parse the data yourself, I guess.
Adam Stacoviak
\[58:04\] While we were discussing these things, I couldn't help myself but go to Claude and ChatGPT 4.0 and say "What are the best software developer podcasts?" And we'll start with Claude, because that's the one that made me smile. The very first one - The Changelog.
Jerod Santo
Wooh!
Zeno Rocha
Nice...!
Adam Stacoviak
Nothing else. I'm just kidding, there's some others.
Jerod Santo
Number two, Resend. Wait...
Adam Stacoviak
That's right. There was 10 listed, but we were first. I couldn't believe it. I was like "Do you know who I am?"
Jerod Santo
I was gonna say, you logged in...? Is it in sycophant mode? That's the thing this week. ChatGPT is too sycophant-y.
Adam Stacoviak
And then ChatGPT had Software Engineering Daily first, and then us second.
Jerod Santo
Okay...
Adam Stacoviak
Which is just as good as first, in my opinion.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, second's just as good as first.
Zeno Rocha
Yeah. \[laughter\] If you have the same prompt in like Cursor or Windsurf, those models, they cannot do web search. So then you will get different answers than the ones like when you use the web. So you can rank differently depending on where you're asking stuff. And yeah, it's just -- it's crazy, man.
Adam Stacoviak
I've been really curious about how this will all play out, because I think we've talked about this several times, Jerod... I think you said recently on these podcasts you produce that you don't really google much anymore. You pretty much go right to the LLM to ask a question, for the most part.
Jerod Santo
For the most part.
Adam Stacoviak
When you're asking questions, not finding things.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. I mean I will google if I know I can just get -- like, sometimes you're searching for something and you know it's the first hit on Google as long as you just type it in. And so that will be faster than going and asking. And it will save the world some energy. I heard recently that every ChatGPT question is 10x the cost of a Google search. We're just talking about not the training, but the inference cost, of energy. And I'm thinking that makes sense. It's basically a database lookup versus an inference call. And so if I can do a database lookup, I'll do it. But anything serious, or that I don't know the answer to, or I can't find it quickly, then yeah, I'll pretty much ask an LLM first. And I have noticed that they've started to push me towards -- I mean, push me is okay. That's an implied. Like, I'm adding that, a little bit of -- although I hear they just added today shopping results...
Zeno Rocha
Yup. That's right.
Jerod Santo
And people are complaining that they're getting like really heavily pushed towards products, on questions that don't have to do with that. I haven't used it much today, so I can't say. But that's kind of a topic that's hitting the social web right now. And so maybe it's really going to push you towards products here, now that they've added some shopping stuff into ChatGPT specifically. But I have noticed that like whereas in the past it would try to answer my question, but it was always very generic, now it's like "Here are some potential things you could buy", you know. Like, I was trying to get my DJI Spark's batteries to work again... I'm not sure if you guys know about this, because I sure as heck didn't... But the DJI Spark, which is their small drone, has these batteries, rechargeable batteries, that if you don't use them for a while - and I haven't used my drone for maybe two years. I don't know, it's been sitting in the drawer, until we just got it out... If you don't use these batteries for a long time, they go into like hibernation mode, and they won't charge.
Adam Stacoviak
Really? Well, that's good, I guess...
Jerod Santo
\[01:01:42.22\] It's supposed to save the battery life, but really, all it does is make me think as a guy who doesn't want to go open it up and do surgery on it, like "My drone is worthless, unless I buy new batteries. I can't get it to charge." So of course I'm talking to ChatGPT about this, and it takes me down this long road of figuring out "Here's different things you can try." At the end it's like "You're going to have to buy this little, I don't know, gizmo, and a cable. And I can give you links to ones you can go buy on Alibaba", or somewhere. And whereas it did not use to do that, but like "Here's an actual product you should go buy." Which is very helpful if I'm going to go do that. But anyways, I started just ranting after you asked me a simple question, Adam... And the answer was yes, I asked an LLM.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, I don't even know what I was going to say, but I think more of this was like --
Jerod Santo
It's because this was like five minutes ago. \[laughs\] I'm sorry.
Adam Stacoviak
That's okay. No, that's okay. That's totally fine. This is definitely a conversation. I think when it comes to the way I find out what I'm curious about, let's just say, there's two places I go. An LLM... Lately it's been Claude first, then ChatGPT. And then obviously YouTube. Those are the two places I tend to go...
Jerod Santo
Sure.
Adam Stacoviak
...because I highly research. I just bought some new clubs. I'm going to admit it, they were more than I wanted to spend, because that's just how it works... But I researched them.
Jerod Santo
Because he researched it.
Adam Stacoviak
I researched them. And then I just wonder if the research isn't just confirmation bias.
Jerod Santo
Sure.
Adam Stacoviak
Sometimes it is.
Zeno Rocha
For sure, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
But how do you research the things you want to buy or consume or enjoy in the world? And I really feel like the place I go to learn... I'm more conversationally asking questions to this thing, versus just throwing in keywords into Google and hoping I get a web page that may help me out. I feel like the internet is dramatically changing as we speak insofar as how we find information, and I wonder how that will impact publishing of information. Because if you don't go to the website anymore to get the info and the LLM just consumes it... In a case like Resend you don't really care, because you're just trying to get them to become a customer, and enjoy your product. But in the case of something else, you may really want them to come to your website, because that's the value to your brand. It's a captured consumer, whether they're a curious person, an advocate, a customer, you name it. I just wonder how this is going to change things.
Zeno Rocha
Yeah. I was just thinking how much of a buying decision is just confirmation bias. I bought a new barbecue this weekend, and I remember watching a lot of YouTube videos just so I had more excuses to buy that one barbecue that I wanted to buy.
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\]
Zeno Rocha
Lik, "Oh, now that I know the specs, now that I know this one thing or another, now I can justify to my engineer brain that I'm allowed to spend that much money on a barbecue."
Jerod Santo
Totally. Well, especially the way that -- so I've been mostly a ChatGPT user. I've tried LLaMA, I've tried all these other things, but I keep coming back to that one. And I have found recently - that's why I brought up the sycophant mode, which they're working on... But I've found recently that it's been way too affirmational to my ideas, and to my plans. And I'm like, I don't really want that. I don't want you to just tell me that I'm right all the time... Because talk about confirmation bias. Like, "Yes, you should buy this thing that you want to buy." I'd rather just have the truth and not a yes man... And so that made me start to think "Wow, these people who run these companies have so much power right now." Because all it takes is a little tweak to that algorithm, and all of a sudden I got a sycophant, and I'm detached from reality because I've got a yes man, that wasn't a yes man yesterday, but today it is. Or that wasn't pushing certain grocery products yesterday, but today it is. And so that's just very concerning.
\[01:05:59.02\] That's why I've been using Grok today, because I want to just use them both... Because Grok - a different company, obviously, and different purpose... The idea being truth should be the ultimate goal. I mean, that's of course the idealistic spin that Elon Musk puts on it. But I feel like if I can use both those two, then maybe I'll get the truth out of one of them, or something. I don't know.
Zeno Rocha
I keep coming back to "How is this different than traditional SEO?" And when Google came out, I guess it was the same concern, right? And then when -- oh, before I could just go to the web, and now Google is like putting more results in front of me, and it's influencing what I see. And then social media comes up and we were like "Oh yeah, now there's this algorithm controlling what I consume." Yeah, it's always scary, right?
Jerod Santo
\[unintelligible 01:06:56.26\]
Zeno Rocha
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Maybe we just leave the phones at home, you know? Maybe that's the answer sometimes, is just let it... Go out there and touch grass, as the kids say. Okay, well, at least that is good information. I'm glad you've done that research on how to position yourself. I didn't know about that profound platform. I didn't know that Bing was the backing for that. And I'm sure that this is an ever evolving landscape, and one that every internet phasing business is going to want to engage with. Right? And just like SEO, even though it became such a snake oil business, it was such an important business, because everybody needed to rank well on Google to exist. And I think that whether we like it or not, that's going to be the case over the next 5, 10 years. Like, if you are not getting surfaced by one of these tools, you are not going to exist... Which is sad.
Zeno Rocha
That's so true. And if you are number one right now you guys are, then you want more of that. You definitely want to be number one in every LLM.
Adam Stacoviak
Stay there. Yeah.
Jerod Santo
I bet there's -- I mean, I guess Profound might do this, but you need like a "Here's how you rank in all these different ones." Is that one of the screens they give you on that Profound thing?
Zeno Rocha
Yeah, they show you - not exactly where you rank, but like how each LLM is consuming your data.
Jerod Santo
Consuming you, but not necessarily pushing you out there.
Zeno Rocha
Because they don't have access to the prompts. None of us have. We don't know what people are asking necessarily.
Jerod Santo
Well, they could ask them -- what I would like to have is "Here's my prompt. What are the best developer podcasts? What are my best email sending platforms, or whatever? Who should I use for sending my email?" And then just something monitors "Here's where you are in Claude, here's where you are on this, this, this, this, this." And they could do that by just having an account and just asking it the question or something without needing the prompts necessarily. But...
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, they could sort of like host a prompt for you that sort of triggers like a cron job almost.
Jerod Santo
That's all it is. I mean, it's basically an API key and a cron job across a set of providers. This is probably an open source tool already...
Zeno Rocha
Yeah, there's a YC company --
Adam Stacoviak
Somebody out there is screaming into the podcast...
Jerod Santo
There's a YC company?
Zeno Rocha
Yeah.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, there's always someone screaming into the podcast...
Zeno Rocha
ProductRank.ai.
Adam Stacoviak
"You guys are idiots...!"
Zeno Rocha
That's the one.
Jerod Santo
ProductRank.ai. See, Zeno has all the links...
Adam Stacoviak
Come on, Zeno...
Jerod Santo
This guy's like an LLM with good training data. There you go, AI Product Rankings. "Understand how the top AI models promote products and brands with citations." Show notes...
Adam Stacoviak
\[01:09:53.08\] Well, the point I think you're bringing up though, Jerod, I think is important, which is this bias. This new technology ushered onto the world. I mean, humanity's changed because of this. At least the ones that are in first world countries using this. I don't know how to describe access and availability to the world in this idea I'm sharing, but just that if you've got access to these models and you're using this stuff, there's a lot of things you can do that isn't just generate the best email, or find the best podcast, or email platforms to send with, but a lot more stuff that... I mean, I go back to golf, man. I literally made a club inventory list with lofts and field notes for myself, because I'm a new golfer, or back to being a new golfer again... And I'm reminding myself, "When do I use my wedge? When do I use my gap? How should I stand with my 7 wood?" kind of thing. Different things like that. So I'm like making my club inventory... And this thing is like -- rather than me type it all up and make the spreadsheet and create the table and all this tedious stuff, it's doing it for me and with me. And it's a very much, I would say, to some degree, collaborative, in the fact that I know what I want, I'm asking you to produce it... But it's not just generate an email kind of thing. But it knows a lot of this stuff. And if there's if there's bias injected into this new magic box we all have access to... Like from yesterday; yesterday, it wasn't promoting this, and today it is... I'm just -- I don't want it to ruin what they are like search has been ruined, I would say, over the years. Search is not -- it's reliable in the fact that, like you said before, Jerod, if you know kind of what you're looking for, you can find it pretty easily... But you've got seven sponsored before you even get to the real content. The real content is there because it was gamed in some way, shape or form... They've done things with backlinks, and all this trickery to get there... Maybe they've earned because they are the brand. Who knows? And then you get the sidebar, and... It's just become just icky, and I don't want this newfound thing that humanity has to be ickified like that.
Zeno Rocha
I think we should assume that's what's going to happen.
Adam Stacoviak
Aww...
Zeno Rocha
The same way that Google didn't have ads, and then it introduced ads, ChatGPT doesn't have ads today, but Anthropic is playing with ads for their results. It's like a private beta program, or something. So I think you will have to pay to be among like the first ones to be -- but hopefully they show as an ad. But then something else will come, and once it starts to be so bad, then a new disruption will come up.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Don't you think this is where open models could win, though? I mean, there there was not an open alternative to Google search. I mean, that was comparable. But the current technology, at least, with transformer models, there's ample opportunity and slight leads by the proprietary models for the open models to be used by somebody, to come along and productize a model and create an actual product that you want to use, not just a model you can call... That could be that disconnected, quote-unquote unbiased... It's not gonna be perfect, but not like \*bleep\* which is what we're all afraid of. Right? That's what we're afraid of, is this going the way that everything else has gone over time. I think that that's a possibility because there's open models. There was not an open Google. There just wasn't. That could compete. There was an attempt to create an alternative product, like DuckDuckGo... Great attempt. But maybe this time around we'll have options. And maybe those options will actually keep the proprietors more honest, less crappy, because they'll have more competition, and people just won't put up with it... But I mean, Google's been a search monopoly for a very long time. We haven't had options.
Adam Stacoviak
\[01:14:21.12\] No, we haven't. You know, you may me really sad when you said that, because I started thinking "Okay, the next thing coming out is ad-supported Claude." And that just just makes me super-sad. It's like, well, now you're going to have a tier that - sure, maybe it may be affordable, but I'm just so tired of these things coming out with like "Here's the ad supported version of it." Do you want to spend the double money to get the non-ad-supported version of it? Maybe...
Jerod Santo
It might actually backfire with this kind of product, because it is so personal and real... Whereas Google search is a list of results. And it's like - yes, you can pay money to just be listed before these other results, but we all know that that's what's going on... But the way you treat Claude, or ChatGPT, or Grok, or whatever it is you're using, you treat it like your little research assistant. I don't know why it's so little to us, but it's like "Hey, little guy..." And you treat it like a friend. And when you come to a friend for something and they're shoving sponsored stuff as answers - like, that's... That's so unappealing and so unattractive as a friend. Like, I wouldn't do that. If you came to me and I was like "You should use Resend, because I'm an affiliate..." I mean, maybe I'll tell you, "Hey, I'm an affiliate. Use Resend and I'll get 10 bucks and I'll give you five", or whatever. Friends do that kind of stuff. But if everything I told you as far as advice in life was just a sponsored piece of advice, I wouldn't be your friend anymore. You'd be so turned off by that, wouldn't you?
Zeno Rocha
And maybe what changed is the memory portion of it. I see my wife using it, and it's just so interesting, because she builds these little coaches for her. So she was like "Oh, I want to improve my health. Can you tell me health tips every day?" And then she already fed the memory with the fact that she's married, and that she has a daughter, and the model knows their name, so they would tell "Okay, maybe you should go with Zeno and Victoria to a brunch, and just drink more water than normal." And the voice and tone - it cheers her up. I'm like "That's crazy. That's beautiful", because it has memory now. And maybe that's the moat. People keep talking about "Oh, what's the moat for LLMs?" Maybe that's what's going to be, the fact that now they have memory. The one that has the best memory, the one that knows "Okay, Jerod, I just want the truth. Don't try to be nice. No fluff." Okay, I know that's how I'm going to communicate with him, and I would just follow that.
Jerod Santo
Yes. I did try putting -- there are prompts you can put in that have been able to disable sycophant mode, by the way. But go ahead, Adam.
Adam Stacoviak
I was gonna say, I agree with you, Jerod, on this front, because you want the LLM to be for you. And I guess you could say your friend, in a way, or friendly.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. Helpful.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. For me, not against me.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, exactly.
Adam Stacoviak
And I would say if you're advertising to me, if you've got some sort of alternative motive that you're suggesting things for... Like, help me find the version of truth I'm trying to seek, whether it's health tips, or business advice, or what's the best podcast, or email platform to consider... I want whatever the consensus of the world, I suppose, deems as truthful and honorable, versus not fabricated or made up, or for some sort of "I get paid behind the scenes" motive kind of thing.
Jerod Santo
\[01:18:05.14\] For sale. Right.
Adam Stacoviak
I want the real. And I would I would probably immediately stop using whatever doesn't respect that, and then I would use the one that does, obviously. And I'd pay more. I'd probably pay more for that. I hate to even say that, because I feel like everything is rented, man. They've said it before. "You will own nothing and be happy." Everything is rented. Everything is a service and a rent. Tired of it. I'm over it.
Jerod Santo
You didn't rent those golf clubs, did you?
Adam Stacoviak
I bought them...
Zeno Rocha
\[laughs\]
Jerod Santo
But did you buy a license to use those for a certain amount of time?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, I didn't. I mean, honestly though, I think golf clubs are one of those things, they're too personal, that you really couldn't rent them. Not if you're a serious golfer. You wouldn't rent clubs.
Jerod Santo
No.
Adam Stacoviak
You'd certainly rent the golf cart to go on the course, because who the heck's going to take their golf clubs and their cart to the courts? That just doesn't make any sense.
Jerod Santo
Wait, wait, wait... Do you drive the cart to the course, or you've got like a trailer? You pull the cart on the trailer?
Adam Stacoviak
Exactly. Who would do that? No one would do that.
Jerod Santo
"This is my cart."
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah. "Can I bring my own cart?" "Hey, if you want to. You sound like you're really committed."
Jerod Santo
The only time you rent clubs is when you're in like Maui, or something, and you didn't bring your clubs with you... Because traveling with clubs is a pain in the butt.
Adam Stacoviak
It is. Now, I will say that a serious golfer will take their clubs with them.
Jerod Santo
100%. But they're still a pain in the butt.
Adam Stacoviak
I've rented a mountain bike before when I was in Sedona, and I have my own mountain bike. I didn't send mine there. I'm like, it's impractical to send my mountain bike to Sedona, so I can ride it in Sedona.
Jerod Santo
Well, the same thing with golf clubs.
Adam Stacoviak
I'll rent the exact same one that's owned by a bike shop there... And I did. I rented my literal same bike, same \[unintelligible 01:19:59.09\] most of the same specs... But it was pretty much on par for - to use a pun, pretty much on par for what I actually own. So it was like renting my bike...
Jerod Santo
Close enough.
Adam Stacoviak
...but in Sedona. Which is kind of cool.
Jerod Santo
Mm-hmm.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, man... Oh, boy... Why do we always end up dystopian when we talk about AI? We always kind of end up a little depressed about where it might be going...
Jerod Santo
I think it's kind of overwhelming, because we just don't know... And we have such a history of things going from like great to worse, that... I mean, the internet's gone, I think, from great to worse in many small and big ways... And I think Cory Doctorow has done a good job of documenting a lot of that. And so we can't help but be a little bit skeptical, or cynical, or whatever the term is, dystopian with where we think it's going to go... I mean, in the small, though -- I'm not pessimistic in the small. But when I think about the bigger pictures and the implications, it starts to overwhelm. And a lot of it is just because we don't know, and so what you don't know is scary. That's my take. Zeno, why do you think we always -- although Zeno's not always here, so he doesn't realize that we always tend to do this. We always get to here.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, it's true.
Jerod Santo
Here we are, at the end of the show, we're all a little bit contemplative and concerned.
Zeno Rocha
Yeah, why is it important to think about the end result of a technology? Maybe it isn't. Like, right now it works great. Right now I can come in and ask, "Based on what you know about me, give me your sincere opinion on my flaws", and then it will give something. Maybe it's great, maybe it's not, maybe it's just fluff... Right now there are no ads. Let's just enjoy it while that's the case, you know?
Jerod Santo
Let's just enjoy it \[unintelligible 01:21:54.07\]
Zeno Rocha
\[laughs\]
Jerod Santo
Well, it's still called today. We will enjoy today... I would say that life is better with these tools than it is without these tools.
Zeno Rocha
Yeah... For sure.
Jerod Santo
\[01:22:08.00\] And that's why we all have our phone addictions, because our phone has actually provided so much value to us on a recurring basis that we've become addicted to it. I mean, you can take your phone and nothing else and travel the world. Okay, that would be a big stretch, because there's parts of the world that it probably wouldn't work, but... You have to plan for that. But you can travel America, \[unintelligible 01:22:28.08\]
Adam Stacoviak
And a charger...
Jerod Santo
Yeah, you need to charge.
Adam Stacoviak
Take a charger.
Jerod Santo
That's about it, though. No, actually, most hotels will have a charger for you, or whatever. I'm just saying... Okay - maps, communications, emergencies, transactions, local touristy questions... What could you not get? What else would you need? Obviously, you need to eat... That's about it.
Adam Stacoviak
It's all in there.
Jerod Santo
So it's a pretty valuable thing. That's amazing.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, provided you're connected. Provided you're connected, you have access.
Zeno Rocha
I would rather have that than a book with the map, and carry that with me...
Jerod Santo
Right? Well, it's kind of like that iPad commercial gone bad, where they were smashing all the stuff... They're smashing the creative stuff, and all the creatives got mad about it. I wasn't mad about it, but apparently -- maybe I'm not creative enough. But it was a good idea in concept, because it has replaced... I think there was a better one, where it's like sitting on a desk, and the phone replaces all the different things you used to have on your desk. And they really have done that. They can be so many different things... That - yeah, you don't want to have a giant map, and your shotgun person sitting next to you in the driver's seat, you know... They've got the map open real wide, and they're trying to find where you are, but then they're holding it upside down... You know, it used to be rough.
Adam Stacoviak
It used to be rough.
Jerod Santo
Then you leave your wallet on a – you're filling up gas, and you leave your wallet sitting there, and you drive away to the gas station... Not speaking from personal experience or anything.
Adam Stacoviak
You know, this weekend we had this thing called Founder's Weekend, Founder's Day, here in Dripping Springs where I live at...
Zeno Rocha
Oh, nice.
Adam Stacoviak
And it's this big old festival, basically... You know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.... It's like, everybody's there. The whole town's there. It's a small town, everybody's there.
Jerod Santo
That's cool.
Adam Stacoviak
And I thought I lost my phone. I freaked out. I was like – I didn't cry and fall down and whatever, but I was like...
Jerod Santo
"I curled up into a ball..."
Adam Stacoviak
...knew where I left it, I knew I set it down, and I was just praying when I got back it was there still yet. But the whole time I'm like "Oh my gosh, what would I do?" Sure, I could get a new one... But I don't have the thing, and it's got all my information... I was just like, "This cannot happen. I've never literally lost my phone like this ever in my life. Today can't be the day. No, no, no." You know? So... I don't know what I would do if I lost my phone. I would be pretty sad, and I'd have to wait for this new one to come in, which would probably be days... So here's me, days without a phone... Could you imagine that? Like, nah... Let's not do that.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, I can do hours, but I wouldn't want to do days. Too valuable.
Zeno Rocha
Yeah. Same.
Adam Stacoviak
Then you're jealous. You're like "Look at them. They've got their phone over there..."
Jerod Santo
"They've got their phone..."
Adam Stacoviak
"She's got their phone, he's got his phone... Where's my phone? Where's my phone?" I don't know...
Jerod Santo
Well, Zeno, your goal is to make Resend so valuable that people talk about it like we talk about our phones. Like, "Where's my Resend? Come on... That guy's using Resend, she's using Resend... Where's my Resend?!" If you do that, you'll be a very rich man.
Zeno Rocha
Oh, man...
Adam Stacoviak
On his way, I would say. On his way. What's left? What's left unsaid? What else can we friends about?
Jerod Santo
You guys want to talk about that new car?
Adam Stacoviak
What car is that?
Jerod Santo
The new Slate Auto...?
Zeno Rocha
Oh, I didn't see that.
Jerod Santo
Alright... Slate.auto.
Adam Stacoviak
I'm on it.
Jerod Santo
\[01:25:56.16\] This truck can be anything. Even an SUV. This is a brand new company, I think they're about three years old... Just came out of stealth. Based in Michigan, I believe, but their factory is going to be in Indiana. So it's all US-based. Mostly American-made... A Slate is a radically simple electric pickup truck that can change into whatever you need it to be. So the idea here is, as an EV, it does not have great -- it's not really called gas mileage anymore. It's still mileage, though.
Adam Stacoviak
Range.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, it doesn't have great range. Thank you. I'm not up to date on my EV lingo...
Adam Stacoviak
Mileage might be good, too. Mileage.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, it doesn't have great range. I think it's like 150 to 200, but you can buy a bigger battery. But the idea here is, it's cheap. It's less than $20,000 for a truck. Now, this is a small truck...
Zeno Rocha
Wow!
Jerod Santo
...it's a two-seater...
Adam Stacoviak
No way...
Jerod Santo
Yeah, less than $20,000.
Zeno Rocha
That's crazy.
Jerod Santo
After EV credits. So probably like in the range of $25,000 to start...
Zeno Rocha
Okay...
Jerod Santo
And it's bare bones on purpose. It's completely bare bones. There's nothing to it.
Zeno Rocha
Wow.
Jerod Santo
There's no dash with a computer screen... It's not even painted. It's like carbon fiber. So it's built to be wrapped, not painted, because that's kind of the cool thing nowadays, too. It's like, get your car wrapped... And they call it Slate, because it's a blank slate. Get it? You're supposed to customize the heck out of it. So it's like modular, you can buy different parts... You can turn it into an SUV by buying the SUV add-on. You can add battery...
Zeno Rocha
That's crazy.
Jerod Santo
You can add like roof racks... You can do that in regular cars. But you name it. Like, the dash, you can do stuff... And then you can wrap it. And you can even... It's so easy to wrap - they're saying; this is all just marketing fluff. It doesn't exist yet. The truck exists, but not anywhere that you can buy it. You can only reserve it. But it's so easy to wrap that you can actually do it yourself in an afternoon. Like, you don't have to actually have a professional, is what they're saying, is the plan. And then like everything is self-maintained. So if you break off your rear view mirror, they're just gonna ship you a new rear view mirror and a little tutorial on how to like put the other one in. So it's kind of a cool new take, I think, on reinventing the personal vehicle... And I'm into the idea. I'm not sure if I'm into the product, because time will tell... I think it doesn't ship until like end of 2026. But that's the Slate. What do you guys think?
Adam Stacoviak
I almost bought one just now. \[laughter\] This is cool.
Jerod Santo
Well, you've got a big truck. This is a little truck.
Adam Stacoviak
Well, no, I know that. So I think there is -- it's very popular... Not in the US. I wanna say like Japan, maybe even China, India, places like that, that they have this tiny little truck... And I think they only make them there, and there's been a few imported to the US. You can even like buy it on the internet for like 10 grand. It just arrives, and you just unbox this truck. It reminds me of that, this little simplistic thing... I think this is a revolutionary idea. Like, this is the way it should be. Give me a bare bones vehicle, that just drives, that's modular. That I can maintain. That doesn't cost Tesla prices.
Jerod Santo
And that you can spend more if you wanna spend more, and upgrade it, and put all kinds of stuff on it... But if you go through the little customizer... I mean, it's pretty cool. Like, you can pick these different wraps, pick your color... They'll show you some different examples of people who have -- not real people have customized it, but what real people might do to really make it your own. And I feel like my phone is like a no case, standard, bog standard iPhone... And I'm a weirdo, because so many people have like cases, and designs, and... They wanna trick out their phone, because we all have one. You want yours to be yours. I'm just a boring loser, so I just leave it... But I feel like with these slate trucks, potentially, it could be very popular with people that wanna customize, and not spend an arm and a leg doing it. I mean, you customize a Tesla and you're just like "Well, I spent 50K on a Tesla, and now I've gotta get it wrapped for another 5K, or whatever?" Like, this is so much cheaper.
Adam Stacoviak
\[01:30:14.13\] Yeah, I think that this will be very popular with younger folks, for sure. Especially the way young folks, that I know of at least, like to stand out, or be different, or go counter-cultural, so to speak... It kind of reminds me of like the Model T. I mean, I wasn't alive in those days, but it reminds me of like when the Ford truck first came out, the Model T; it's like, you can have any color you want, as long as it's black. It's like, you can have any of these you want as long as it's simple when we give it to you, and then you can do whatever you want to at that point.
Jerod Santo
Right. Here's how simple it is. And this might be like a bridge too far for some people... You actually have to wind the window down, like with the old winding thing...
Zeno Rocha
Wow, really?
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, that might be a deal breaker for me... \[laughter\] That's too simple.
Jerod Santo
Here's how simple it is. No seatbelts. No, just kidding. I think it should have seatbelts. But... What are you thinking, Zeno? Are you going to buy one of these? Would you get one?
Zeno Rocha
I've been an optimistic this whole podcast, and I'm going to be the skeptical one now.
Jerod Santo
Okay.
Zeno Rocha
I remember seeing the modular phones. Remember those?
Jerod Santo
Right. Right.
Zeno Rocha
It's just so tricky to build like super-highly niched modular products. I love the idea...
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Zeno Rocha
...but I feel like people want -- they like the idea of personalization more than they actually personalize things themselves. So maybe -- it's great that it has an option.
Jerod Santo
I think that's true. I think that's true. I would be with you if it wasn't so cheap.
Zeno Rocha
It's super-cheap.
Jerod Santo
To get an EV truck for under 20K... That's bringing the price into a lot of people's wheelhouses who would otherwise not be able to afford it. So I feel like that's probably why I'm more bullish... But yeah, I agree, I think -- customization people want. But completely modular - it ends up having like a Lego feel to it, or something. When things kind of snap together, you're like "Can I even trust this?" So yeah, I can understand your skepticism.
Adam Stacoviak
It has different charging options, too. Like, you can plug it into a normal plug, a normal 120-volt plug.
Jerod Santo
Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak
It takes a little longer, I think. It charges longer.
Jerod Santo
I appreciate a company that comes out and just like really does think about everything differently. Like, let's throw out every assumption. Here's an assumption - you have to paint your car. Like, no, you don't. Here's some carbon fiber... Maybe you want to wrap it, maybe not.
Zeno Rocha
It's crazy.
Jerod Santo
Yeah. So that's cool. The company's kind of interesting... I think there's two women at the top, founders, and there's some backing by -- it hasn't been confirmed, but Jeff Bezos allegedly is an early investor. And so it's kind of a Tesla competitor in that way, in every way that Bezos wants to compete with Musk... And so there's some of that going on, but... They're very young. Three years... Who knows if they can even ship this thing? But yeah, I think it's a cool, different take on trucks. And like you said, Zeno - win, lose or draw, I think it's cool that it exists and that they're trying it.
Adam Stacoviak
I think it needs to exist, honestly. What was that -- there's like a Kia Soul, or something like that... This ugly little box thing. It's so popular with young folks that are buying their first vehicle. This is going to be like that. I think there's no way they can not succeed. I'll say this now...
Jerod Santo
\[01:33:58.05\] So you're the most bullish of all of us.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, yeah. I think the world needs the simplest choice to get a vehicle.
Jerod Santo
Would you invest?
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, I'd invest.
Jerod Santo
Okay.
Adam Stacoviak
I'd invest right this second.
Jerod Santo
Right this second.
Zeno Rocha
Would you buy one?
Jerod Santo
Would you buy one?
Adam Stacoviak
I've got Apple Pay right here. No, I really do. I think that this is -- I agree with you, Jerod. I applaud new companies -- not just like this specifically, but ones that throw out all the rules, and say "Is that true? Do you really need to paint your car? Do you really need power windows?" I think that's a yes. That's a yes for me.
Jerod Santo
I know... Who wants to \[unintelligible 01:34:37.14\]
Adam Stacoviak
I want some power windows.
Jerod Santo
Yeah, that's a bridge too far.
Adam Stacoviak
But maybe that actually -- I mean the '80s is a big thing.
Jerod Santo
There's no stereo.
Adam Stacoviak
There's no stereo?
Jerod Santo
Nope.
Adam Stacoviak
Oh, gosh...
Jerod Santo
Add-on. \[laughter\]
Zeno Rocha
I love how the optimism is like dropping little by little...
Adam Stacoviak
I'm still optimistic... I did see that, actually, when I was watching -- I was looking at some of these photos and I saw like a JBL kind of speaker...
Jerod Santo
Well, there's places to put things. Things can snap into the dash. Yeah, totally. But they're like, "You can buy one of ours, or bring your own Bluetooth stereo and just like set it in the dash." I'm like "This is crazy." But it just might work.
Adam Stacoviak
I'm still for it. I think this is a good thing. I think worst case, in my opinion, is this a great place to begin. They'll probably have always this model that's like "You know what? It's bare bones." It's the OG... It's just like ZSA and our friend with the Voyager, the original ErgoDox...
Jerod Santo
Right. The keyboard?
Adam Stacoviak
The keyboard kind of thing. Go back in the day, you've got the OG ErgoDox, right? But here you've got this OG, simplistic, everybody can afford it for the most part... Like, it's in the -- if you're in a certain income bracket or below a certain income bracket, you can likely afford this thing, and plug it into your 120-volt outlet. It's that accessible. You don't really need a radio. It's nice to have it... You don't need it. You don't really need power windows. It's nice to have it. You don't need it. You don't really need the dashboard and all this stuff to show you maps... You don't need it. You have a phone. It's nice to have.
Jerod Santo
Right.
Adam Stacoviak
I think this will spark something new for them. They will probably come out with Slate, other Slate versions of it... But this will be a good baseline to build from, I believe. I think so. And not that I'm a nationalist, or US only... One thing they say that is touching to me as an American forever is that on their About page they say "We believe an American vehicle should be engineered and manufactured in America. With Slate, we're proud to bring manufacturing jobs back to the Midwest." And that's cool. I admire that. It's born in the USA, made in the USA.
Jerod Santo
Cool, cool, cool. So Adam has reserved his... Zeno is waiting to see what happens; he's skeptical.
Adam Stacoviak
50 bucks to reserve...
Jerod Santo
I'm in the middle. I think it's cool. I showed it to my wife and she's like "That does not fit into our life anywhere." Of course, I've got six kids, so I'm never going to drive anywhere with just me and one other person, and it's a two seater.
And so as much as I like that form factor... I like the idea of a small truck, because it's so useful, but you're also not like this big, massive thing on the road... Probably not. She's probably right. Even though -- you know, under 20K, why not? You can grab a couple of them, just for giggles, you know? I'll take two.
Adam Stacoviak
I'll tell you one thing. It seems like a great first car for a son or a daughter. Right?
Jerod Santo
Totally.
Adam Stacoviak
If it's roadworthy, safe, reliable... I would love to see the crush test on it, things like that. If it's safe for the person, but bare bones as a vehicle, that's great. I'd buy that for my son any day.
Jerod Santo
In The Verge they asked about safety, and they said they're shooting for a five star safety rating. And then I thought to myself, "Who wouldn't shoot for a five star?" That means nothing.
Zeno Rocha
\[laughs\] That's the baseline.
Adam Stacoviak
"We're going for three. Okay? 3.5."
Jerod Santo
\[laughs\] "We're going for it!" Yeah, so they're shooting for it. But yeah, I don't know. Carbon fiber... I don't know.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up, man. This has been a fun conversation. I think the world needs this. Slate.auto. So cool. We should get them on the pod if they can. I'd love to talk to engineering or anybody there. If you know somebody, tell them to search Claude for us. We're first.
Jerod Santo
There you go. Alright, guys... Should we call it a show?
Adam Stacoviak
That's it.
Jerod Santo
That's it.
Zeno Rocha
That was awesome.
Jerod Santo
Zeno, thanks so much for hanging out with us.
Adam Stacoviak
Yeah, Zeno. Good to see you again, man.
Zeno Rocha
Well, for sure.
Jerod Santo
Check out Resend, y'all. It's the best email service according to all the LLMs.
Adam Stacoviak
Bye, friends!
Jerod Santo
Bye!
Zeno Rocha
See ya!
