Freemium and new goals

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

Note: This episode was supposed to come out a couple of weeks ago. But Andrew forgot to attach the audio file when he went to publish, so it's just been sitting in our podcast hosting software. Sorry about that.

In this episode, Andrew and Sean dig into Paul Graham's founder mode essay that has gone viral in the past couple of weeks. Spoiler alert: Andrew is not a fan.

Sean talks about the challenges of evolving client demands with Miscreants, while Andrew recounts his experiences in Mexico City and his decision to pivot ChartJuice towards a freemium model.

Then they talk through some of Andrew's new AI-related business ideas, including automating marketing graphics and financial modeling for agencies, and his new co-founder and year-end goals.

Links:

• Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins
• Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/
• ChartJuice: https://www.chartjuice.com/
• Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun
• Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/
• StackWise: Coming soon...
• FigTree: Coming soon...

For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:00.63

Sean

Can I start this podcast off by reading you a quote?

00:06.34

Andrew

Sure, I'm so curious.

00:10.28

Sean

um Have you seen the Ted Chiang essay about Gen AI?

00:15.59

Andrew

No.

00:16.55

Sean

okay um It was on The New Yorker. he okay so

00:20.85

Andrew

For a second, when you said JIN AI, I thought J-E-N, and I thought this was like some new AI company I hadn't heard of that named their AI JIN, as in short for Jennifer, and then I realized I'm an idiot, and you're talking about generative AI.

00:34.68

Andrew

so

00:35.09

Sean

Well, there's there's a startup called, I think, Jim, it's like a 25 year old like Korean person who Korean guy um and he like did like the rounds on YouTube for a little bit about how he like went from like broke to 100 million in net worth overnight because.

00:35.41

Andrew

ah

00:41.20

Andrew

Oh, that's cool.

00:51.05

Andrew

Jesus Christ. What?

00:52.11

Sean

um I mean, it was like the dawn of like LLM stuff and jennna I had just started so.

00:57.32

Andrew

Yeah.

00:57.44

Sean

adam

00:57.71

Andrew

Okay. All right. Hit me with the quote.

00:59.67

Sean

Okay, so let me just preface this. Ted Chiang, excellent sci-fi writer, um um ah wrote a really great book called Exhalation, one of my favorites.

01:10.54

Sean

um

01:10.83

Andrew

Oh, I've been wanting to read that.

01:12.94

Sean

Yeah, excellent, excellent book.

01:15.57

Andrew

Cool.

01:16.59

Sean

Would recommend, there's like a two page story in there that I really, really like. But, um You know, this this would have been great if i if I had it pull up, and I didn't.

01:28.60

Andrew

Had it pulled up if you were prepared.

01:31.18

Sean

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's not how we do things. we you You know what? I can't find in this article. So I'm going to pull it up on a Slack thing.

01:42.69

Sean

OK. um It's just the task that generative a generative AI has been most successful at is lowering our expectations. um And I was like, damn.

01:54.53

Andrew

Oh, interesting.

01:55.78

Sean

hot take yeah uh

01:57.03

Andrew

How do, okay. So how do you interpret that?

02:00.61

Sean

well um i sent it as like a kind of honestly like uh

02:05.49

Andrew

Do you agree?

02:10.72

Sean

Yeah, yeah, I do. um I don't agree with his essay. I think his essay about how his essay is about how Gen AI won't ever make art, and I think that's arguably true, um but I think that he misses the fact that Gen AI would be an art form, and people will use it the way that they make art with Photoshop and then collage things together.

02:25.42

Andrew

Sure, but at that point, it's not Gen AI making the art, I don't think. I think it's human artists making art using Gen AI as a medium or a tool.

02:29.77

Sean

you

02:35.06

Sean

Agreed, agreed.

02:35.66

Andrew

ah like I think what he's saying is like the thing that Gen AI, at least in its current form, can't think.

02:36.21

Sean

hence in

02:43.90

Andrew

right it doesn't It doesn't produce creative thought.

02:44.72

Sean

Right.

02:46.78

Andrew

it's not It's not actually that intelligent, even though it's really good at looking intelligent.

02:47.70

Sean

Right.

02:53.73

Sean

Right.

02:53.80

Andrew

um it just it repeats it guesses it and you know there's still this possibility that if we like scale it up enough we find out that that's all we do anyway and original thought is all just like guessing and repeating and suddenly it's doing what we can do but like we think that most likely we will need a new technological revolution like and a different form of AI technology paired with

02:58.14

Sean

Yeah. yeah

03:13.96

Sean

Sure.

03:25.17

Andrew

paired with or that replaces our current. Anyway, sorry, you know all this shit I'm preaching to the choir.

03:28.49

Sean

know um Well, to go back to the quote, I absolutely think it's true.

03:33.93

Andrew

Yeah.

03:34.93

Sean

I actually think Gen. AI makes incredibly mid stuff. um Yeah.

03:39.30

Andrew

Yeah, for the most part. Yeah.

03:41.52

Sean

But I think we are always astounded by it because of the speed at which it can make incredibly mid stuff is impressive.

03:41.64

Andrew

um

03:48.77

Andrew

Yeah.

03:50.11

Sean

And that's I think that's lowering expectat...