Generative Now | AI Builders on Creating the Future

Latest Episodes:

Gaurav Misra: Building an AI-Powered Creative Studio Dec 07, 2023

Show notes

Captions.AI is taking the world of video creation by storm. With features like AI-corrected eye contact and automatic captions in 28 languages, more creators than ever can bring their ideas to life. Captions.AI Co-Founder and CEO Gaurav Misra joined Lightspeed Partner and Host Michael Mignano for a conversation spanning from his days as a design engineer at Snap to finding a surprise $500k in his Apple account.

Episode Chapters

(00:00) An intro to Gaurav Misra, co-founder and CEO of Captions.AI

(06:03) Gaurav got an early start in startups

(09:24) Getting a phD in machine learning before it was cool

(12:04) From Lattice Engines to Microsoft to Localytics

(17:26) Making the leap to Snapchat’s elite engineering team

(20:57) Keeping innovation alive at a huge consumer company

(26:48) Being on the ground floor of Snapchat’s major feature overhauls

(30:47) Leaving Snapchat to found a top-tier AI company

(33:48) It all started as a social network

(38:10) The happy accident of the original Captions.AI tool

(44:08) They raised a series A for the social network only to find a $500k surprise

(50:00) Building a text-based video editor from the ground up

(58:25) Beyond the editor - launching the AI-powered Lipdub

(01:04:14) What will video editing look like 5 years from now?

(01:06:52) Is Captions.AI hiring?

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The content here does not constitute tax, legal, business or investment advice or an offer to provide such advice, should not be construed as advocating the purchase or sale of any security or investment or a recommendation of any company, and is not an offer, or solicitation of an offer, for the purchase or sale of any security or investment product. For more details please see lsvp.com/legal.

Kylan Gibbs: How Inworld is Bringing Games to Life with AI NPCs Nov 30, 2023

Show notes

Kylan Gibbs got his start in social sciences, but after stumbling into startups via a winning pitch at a Singaporean business competition, he never looked back. He spent time as co-founder of FlowX, a consultant at Bain & Company, and Product Manager at Google. Kylan talked with Lightspeed Partner and Host Michael Mignano about where he’s at today, and how Inworld AI is leveling up is changing the way people interact with games throughAI powered NPCs.

Episode Chapters

(00:00) Intro to Inworld’s Co-Founder

(11:16) How a background in social science helped launch AI interactive gaming

(17:54) Accidental success with FlowX - building infrastructure for autonomous vehicles

(23:41) Innovating in a traditional firm - Kylan’s experience at Bain & Co.

(28:49) Generative AI has massive untapped capacity

(30:44) How Inworld brings the world of gaming to life

(33:48) Making social puzzles part of the core gameplay

(39:45) Leveraging unique interaction without derailing the plot

(44:04) A day in the life of a Chief Product Officer

(47:17) Keeping the lid on hallucination

(51:08) Scaling up over long time horizons

(54:40) AI can level up gaming with more than just characters

(01:02:19) Inworld works beyond the world of gaming

(01:04:44) ChatGPT woke up the market

(01:09:49) Is Inworld hiring?

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Edo Liberty: How Pinecone Revolutionized AI’s Long-Term Memory Nov 16, 2023

Show notes

Pinecone is one of the preeminent companies building in the generative AI space. Pinecone is able to integrate AI models and vector search databases to ensure that AI applications are getting the most relevant and up to date information as quickly as possible. Lightspeed Partner and host Michael Mignano spoke with Pinecone Founder and CEO Edo Liberty at a Generative NYC meet-up in early 2023.

Episode Chapters

(00:00) An intro to Edo Liberty and Pinecone

(04:02) “It’s either now or never.”

(05:11) Building the “smartest person in the room”

(06:48) Giving AI the context it needs

(08:02) Building an AI startup before it was the coolest thing in the world

(12:09) Incumbents vs. Startups - where do we go from here?

(14:41) “We’ve been stumbling in the dark and someone flipped the switch.”

(16:52) Model dominance vs. Vector database dominance

(19:01) What role do vector databases play in a world of LLMs?

(21:29) Go-to-market insights from Pinecone

(23:26) An on-the-fly feature request

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Dan Siroker: Giving Humans the Superpower of Perfect Memory Nov 09, 2023

Show notes

Rewind is a personalized AI powered by everything you’ve seen, said, or heard. Rewind’s co-founder and CEO Dan Siroker lived several lifetimes before starting the company: product manager at Google, Director of Analytics for the 2008 Obama campaign, and co-founder of Optimizely. Lightspeed Partner and host Michael Mignano spent some time with Dan talking about the roads that got him to Rewind, and where he sees things going next.

Episode Chapters

(00:00) Early days

(06:32) How going deaf inspired products that give humans superpowers

(09:53) How A/B testing helped Obama win

(12:57) The worst ways to come up with startup ideas

(14:36) A breakthrough at Y Combinator

(18:42) Getting Optimizely off the ground

(22:18) Customer empathy is the most important thing

(23:50) Bad advice for a CEO

(25:45) How Dan’s “grass is greener” mentality led to Rewind

(27:31) What exactly is Rewind?

(31:03) How Rewind is creating a shift in user behavior

(36:22) Hacking the standard fundraising model

(40:26) The mechanics of Rewind for macOS and iOS

(44:58) New Rewind release: the Rewind Pendant

(47:48) How Rewind thinks about privacy

(50:43) Privacy product decisions

(53:21) Incumbents’ next moves

(57:27) When will the Rewind Pendant be available?

(01:01:04) Is Rewind hiring?

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Email: generativenow@lsvp.com

Hilary Mason: Deterministic vs. Probabilistic, and How AI is Changing Storytelling Nov 02, 2023

Show notes

Hilary Mason was on the ground floor of data science research, and now she’s bringing that same pioneering spirit to generative AI. For this episode, Host and Partner at Lightspeed, Michael Mignano, talks with Hilary about how to safeguard probabilistic systems and how researchers and founders can form the most effective teams.

Episode Chapters

(00:00) - Intro

(05:18) - A founder’s thoughts - NYC vs. Silicon Valley

(09:50) - Why Hilary thinks non-linear storytelling was wrong

(13:44) - Understanding online traffic through bit.ly

(15:57) - The taxonomy of data science

(19:06) - Founding Fast Forward Labs - “Hire your nerd best friend”

(23:05) - Can academia and startups coexist?

(26:50) - Machine learning (ML) vs. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

(34:00) - Selling Fast Forward Labs to Cloudera

(38:51) - Hidden Door’s inception

(44:29) - The challenge - and opportunity - of AI hallucinations

(48:07) - What is Hidden Door?

(52:38) - Building an architecture for unstructured input

(57:38) - How can you try Hidden Door?

(01:00:45) - Shifting the software engineer mindset

(01:04:17) - How will product-building shift with generative AI?

(01:07:34) - Is AI hype dangerous?

(01:12:36) - Where to learn more about Hidden Door

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Email: generativenow@lsvp.com

Max Child: Reinventing Gaming for the AI Era Oct 26, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of Generative Now, Lightspeed Partner and host Michael Mignano sits down with Max Child, CEO and Co-Founder of Volley. Volley led the charge of voice controlled gaming that uses Alexa as a platform. Max gives an inside look into what it was like to be a platform pioneer, and all the steps along the way.

Episode Chapters

(00:00) - Intro

(05:11) - Lessons from The Harvard Crimson

(07:14) - How a failed dating app launched Max’s coding career

(11:47) - From Infatuation restaurant critic to iOS developer

(19:30) - The birth of chat-based games

(21:17) - Chatbots: 2015 vs. 2023

(25:34) - Amazon Echo and Volley's breakthrough

(28:15) - The trouble with being first to market

(34:00) - Expanding from little speakers to big screens

(38:57) - Voice AI stack enables natural communication for non-gamers

(41:39) - Why isn’t Siri as good as ChatGPT?

(46:13) - Why generative AI is a game-changer for Volley

(58:34) - How generative AI has infected Volley’s strategy

(01:02:44) - The second annual Cerebral Valley

(01:07:58) - Is Volley hiring?

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Email: generativenow@lsvp.com

Scott Belsky: How Startups (And Incumbents) Can get Ahead of the AI Curve Oct 19, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of Generative Now, Lightspeed Partner and host Michael Mignano showcases a live, in-person interview from a Generative Meet-Up in early 2023. Michael sat down with Adobe’s Chief Strategy Officer & EVP, Design & Emerging Products, Scott Belsky. The two discussed Adobe’s AI initiatives, what’s on the horizon for the industry, and how the future of AI can take us back toward the intimate communities of our past.

Episode Chapters

(00:00) - Introduction

(02:00) - Interview with Scott Belsky

(05:18) - The origins of AI at Adobe

(07:18) -Firefly: past, present, and future

(09:25) - Startups v. incumbents

(11:28) - The personalization wave

(13:04) - The good and bad of hyper-personalized experiences

(15:15) - Verify, then trust: the future of content authenticity

(16:20) - Will AI enable creators or creative directors?

(18:40) - Compensating IP in an AI-first world

(22:16) - How LLMs will transform the way we work

(26:05) - Generative AI products Scott wants to see exist

(27:28) - Audience Q&A

(39:24) - Outro

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Connor Zwick: Making Language Immersion Possible Through AI Oct 12, 2023

Show notes

Connor Zwick was a formidable founder on the day he graduated high school, and that hasn’t changed in the intervening years. He’s the founder of Flashcards+, which was acquired by Chegg, and CEO and co-founder of Speak, the cutting edge app using AI speech models to help users perfect their conversational English. In this episode, Connor Zwick sits down with host and Partner at Lightspeed Michael Mignano to talk software iteration, finding a useful use case, and building a new business abroad.

Episode Chapters

(00:00) - Intro to Connor Zwick

(04:48) - Building Flashcards in high school

(08:42) - Lessons from Flashcards product market fit pull and how to value for sale

(13:31) - The hype of becoming a Thiel Fellow

(23:45) - Sneaking into a Berkeley graduate course on reinforcement learning

(27:45) - John Schulman built OpenAI’s playground for a homework assignment

(36:07) - The big AI unlocks went to incumbents

(38:33) - ChatGPT proved that UI matters

(41:49) - Language learning models don’t need perfection to be viable

(46:40) - Speak is a painkiller for English language-learners, not a vitamin for English speakers

(57:09) - Operating in San Francisco while iterating in Seoul

(01:05:13) - What does product market fit feel like?

(01:09:30) - One-on-one tutors are the holy grail of education

(01:14:33) - The moving goalposts of AGI

(01:17:17) - Is Speak hiring?

Stay in touch:

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Email: ⁠generativenow@lsvp.com⁠

Victor Riparbelli: Why the Future of Video is Synthetic Oct 04, 2023

Show notes

In this first episode of Generative Now, Victor Riparbelli, Co-Founder and CEO of Synthesia, joins Host and Partner at Lightspeed, Michael Mignano. The two discuss democratizing video production, the role of regulation in AI’s future, and what it takes to make it through three years in the wilderness.

Episode Chapters

(00:00) - Welcome to Generative Now

(05:28) - Learning startup strategy from World of Warcraft

(15:09) - Is your product a utility or a novelty?

(16:09) - Synthesia's cofounder on Jimmy Kimmel

(21:43) - Replacing physical video production

(26:05) - Finding product market fit

(28:30) - 1,000x easier and cheaper

(30:21) - Three years in the wilderness

(33:42) - ChatGPT’s ripples on Synthesia

(39:52) - The life cycle of a hype cycle

(44:00) - Is the camera dead?

(52:58) - AI safety: building on an ethical framework

(1:02:24) - AI-native formats

(1:07:44) - How Synthesia landed Mark Cuban as an investor

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Email: generativenow@lsvp.com

Introducing Generative Now Oct 04, 2023

Show notes

Generative Now is a new podcast from Lightspeed dedicated to highlighting the stories, strategies and insights behind today's most exciting AI companies. Host Michael Mignano, Partner at Lightspeed and Co-Founder of Anchor, speaks with Founders, Engineers, Designers and other leaders that are leveraging AI to take their products to new heights.

Stay in touch:

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Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: generativenow.co
Email: generativenow@lsvp.com

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