Transforming the Tech Landscape: Insights from Travis Fischer on Open Source

Aqeel: You're continuing to put out love in the world and we just talked about democracy. Yeah. Democratizing, like you're more mission driven than the product or as a solution or the results of it. You're more just like, I want to make this thing accessible to everybody right now. 

Travis: Well, like, like you said in terms of learning, learning as you go.

Travis: I've learned the hard way, right? Like I've made mistakes. One of my past startups in 2017 was called Automagical, and it was AI-based video creation before AI was really ready for it. But it was very constrained. So, the idea is like you give us any news article or blog posts and we'll summarize it and turn it into a short marketing video.

Travis: There's a bunch of those. Yeah. That's a great model now. And it was, it was great. You know, I had joined two friends as co-founders and was working on this because it was a cool technical problem. I was really excited about the how, right. What we ended up realizing as a group was being perfectly honest.

Travis: Like I didn't care at all about marketers or the minutiae of their problems.And we ended up shopping around and selling the company. But, what I realized was I need to thoroughly care about the people I'm solving the problem for, not just the technical, like how it was a cool technical problem.

Travis: It was like, how do I build this AI pipeline? Do this video generation stuff? And that was awesome. I was very proud of what I built, but I was like, if I wanna put my all into something, I need to care about the why, I need to care about the people that I'm solving for. And I was like, I will never do a startup that I make that mistake again.

Aqeel: Absolutely. How did you learn to, or how'd you cultivate, Finding who you love and what you love building?

Travis: Yeah, so this goes like, open source. Like anytime in my life where I find myself, maybe I'm not in the best headspace or I just left a job and I'm not sure what to do. I always want to go back to open source.

Travis: And, and for me it's this just like this pure expression of my creativity and my particular skill set. It is completely separate from any other incentives in life, right? If you think about like business incentives or financial incentives or any, anything like that, like completely decoupled from that.

Travis: And when I'm at my most creative, when I'm having the most fun doing it for the right reasons, I always go back to open source. And so sort of, for me, that's like a big part of when I think about what I care about and the other people in the world that I identify with is these other open source developers who feel this kinship and are also working on whatever problem they're working on, but doing it in a way where they don't care about capturing value necessarily.

Travis: It's awesome. It's pure, it's also super powerful. I find myself saying, you know, the only thing that can keep up with the pace of AI these days is open source. And it's because it's just this massively efficient, like distributed way of solving problems, right? Like there's your better areas to entry.

Travis: Anyone in the world can contribute. It's just permissionless. At the same time, it's very hard to do sustainably. And so, you know, open source is great at creating value, very efficient at creating value, but it's very poor at capturing value. And I feel like this is one of the problems I care a lot about.

Travis: It's the same thing in other industries. You have artists, right? And it's like, I just put out art because I love it and it's pure, right? But like, how do I make a living? How do I adjust engineers? In the engineering world, it's even more cute cuz I feel like you have to justify to your friends and your family, like, why am I not working at a bank company?

Travis: Like, I'm making however much money and I'm just building open stores. What are you doing, Travis? That is something that it's at the heart of a lot of why I do what I do and the types of problems and the types of people that I care a lot about.

Aqeel: A lot of open source community members I'm sure are also finding this camaraderie community. And you find folks who like you, you have this like alignment in value such that you got there yourselves to do the thing you care about and you want to give it away. Yeah. And sort of like this ability to say, I don't necessarily need to sell my brain for dollars, even though it can be because everybody just genuinely cares about providing the value.

Aqeel: Yeah. Is there some, what's the model you're seeing now with how you foresee things going down with these investments into like these open source libraries and there's a lot of dollars being thrown at some of them. Oh yeah. And don't me wrong, they're providing a lot of value. So how do they sustain it to keep on making the thing better?

Aqeel: Is that just taking outside dollars or do you think that once they take in outside investment where the incentive structure for the investor is returns? Yeah. How much do, how, how do you feel about open source libraries to sustain that value? Hopefully even pay top contributors or higher contributors or, or market it to more open source community members so you get more eyeballs on it and can convert that to more, um, contributors.

Aqeel: Yeah. How do you foresee sustainability in open source communities, especially when VCs are involved? Yeah. 

Travis: Yeah. It's a really hard, but like, important question. I can say a couple of insights that I think are useful. One is that, like, it used to be that the vast majority of open source projects were these massive projects from Apache or Google or something, right?

Travis: Yeah. And they had, it was either like you had funding or you didn't. Right. Um, and nowadays, I think with the proliferation of MPM and these different, different module ecosystems and GitHub, there's just this massive long tail of open source projects and also open source authors, right? So the first thing I'd say is, open source is not a monolith, right?

Travis: Like it really, there's different types of over source projects and what works for one might not work for another. The other thing I'll all say is that, when I look at like the larger projects or the projects that have the potential to be larger. There's this term, and there's JJ from OSS Capital, coined this term, commercial open source, right?

Travis: And you think of like, you can start off and you can have an open core and you can build a community around that. You can make sure you're building the right thing, you can work with the community. But then once you want to try to capture the value and maybe approach the enterprise or look at the business side of that, there's aspects for capturing the value.

Travis: Maybe it's adding soft two compliance or maybe it's adding certain types of database connectors or something where you can look at adding proprietary portions of your product or a hosted proprietary version of your product. And I think that that tends to, to provide a pretty good balance, um, between these, these two sides of things.

Travis:It's something that I've, it's a business model that I've come to really, really enjoy. Um, And then on the, on the, like the long tail, you know, all the little guys, uh, which I, I love the little guys, right? I'm a little guy. I try to maintain that energy, right? Um, I think that there's a lot to be said for comparing individual open source developers to creators in the creator economy.

Travis: Usually when you think of a creator in a creator economy, you think of like a YouTuber or somebody, a TikTok or somebody that's like a blogger or a podcast, podcast host like yourself, right? But I really strongly feel like developers are creators and, you know, it's just a different outlet, like you're putting out code.

Travis: But a lot of the same lessons that come from the creator economy in terms of building an audience and genuinely connecting with your audience in order to, to find sustainability long term can apply to developers, right? And, and I think the methods for doing that.

Travis: I mean, you see like developer influencers and stuff, people who create courses and sell content for, for beginners or, or advanced content or, or doing speaking gigs. Like there's, there's all sorts of, of, um, revenue streams that you can do once you have a certain levels of success and open source, but it's really about like adapting the mindset, going from I'm a developer, I just like to produce code to, hey, I'm actually a creator and I'm providing value for the world and, and my like, art form or the way I create is through open source.

Travis: But I also need to think a little bit about building my personal brand and building a following. And that is, I think the most surefire way to sustainability that I'm aware of for individuals. It's a hard problem. There's no one size fits all solution.

Travis: It is something that I care a lot about though. 

Aqeel: I think we're getting into, there's a question, a burning question I have for you. Well then, I think this is a great segue, which, because you're already touching on it for this, the model you have to adapt to, to sustain anything now is like really understanding the concrete concept is funnels.

Aqeel: That's when we get into more of like, I really wanna pick your brain as a builder and I wanna pick your brain as sort of the entrepreneur and you gotta sustain and know how to like suffice both because there is an overlap in there, kind of like your daily life and how to be the best you or something like this.

Aqeel: But the burning question is, you touched on this interesting concept, especially with some of this or even when you get into more of the commercial side of things, and this is for the little guys. There's some analogy I'm seeing right now in my head, I've been diving pretty deep.

Aqeel: For this mid journey class action lawsuit. Mm-hmm. And I'm wondering what is the new system or paradigm shift going to be for this like ability to, for attribution there's some great artist whose hand drawn like 30 volumes of something for 30 years.

Aqeel: Like volumes and volumes of like lore or some sort of like, it's got this incredible thing and then you train a model on it and now everyone can generate things in the style of this person. Yeah. Like we got this Andy Warhol story going on as an individual case basis. Yeah. Brilliant. Like some, some presence on this planet, you know, when during this time here and yet it can continue to spin off.

Aqeel: But now as work will go indefinitely, onwards, but this model that's kinda artificially recreated or augment this, this individual's like work and that work will bring into fruition whatever they went through to like manifest. That's part of the artist's journey when you award a great artist, it didn't just happen, right?

Aqeel: Um, And now it can just happen by texting something. Yeah. 

Travis: I'm getting it. So like what does that mean for, for creativity for artists? Yeah. 

Aqeel: There's developers and you've always been able to just kinda like, especially if I was like an MIT license, you just like rip the damn code. Yeah. Don't even, don't even forget just like rip the code off.

Aqeel: Yeah. Go cold source and sell an app to somebody to raise millions of dollars. Like you see this playbook happen, like whatever. Like I'm not hating on the game. Yeah. But there's something about attribution to the little guy in oss. Yeah. All right. Um, and then the artists are contributing to the data sets for, from big models.

Aqeel: What are your thoughts on this? Uh, so value share for the long tail. 

Travis: Yeah, it's, it's a great question. Um, I, again, I don't, I don't have any real concrete answer. I do have a couple of thoughts here. Like me, my sister has pushed back on me a little bit about this cuz she's an artist and she really cares about the artist side of this picture.

Travis: And Good had some, some good conversations. And I think there's, there's a few. So on the one side, there's the side of this, which is just pragmatic and it's like it's impractical to stop this technological progress from happening. Like it's just, let's just be honest.

Travis: Like, it's just not possible to really constrain it. Now, you could certainly apply some like copyright and IP law and go after the big guys and stuff, but it's happening at such a scale and, and the data is so freely available out there that it is just very impractical in my opinion to just stop it.

Travis: And it's also, it's not like, like a direct where you can say, to prove the data providence of like, this was in your training set just because you can create something that resembles it or that that, you know, you see the Getty images where, or, uh, uh, where it's like, like the, the, the generated stable diffusion image literally has a sharp stock watermark. Yeah. Um, that's hilarious. Right. But it's also pretty clear that was in the training data. Uh, because these things are kind of black boxes because there is a level of indirection in the training. It's, it's hard to, to, to prove. On, on my, on my end. I feel that let's say take open source code, for example, there's some developers who are very worried about these models being trained on their code and then not getting attribution.

Travis: Like, I already put all my code out there for free because I view it as just, I want to maximize my impact on humanity. And if that's through somebody, you know, in Asia reading my code and, and learning something from it, or if it's from a model being trained on my code as an artifact, like to me that is a net good thing.

Travis: Um, there was one, one tweet by someone who was talking about how when they were writing a physics paper, you know, with Chat GPT, they were feeling like all of the minds of the greatest physicists of all time. Were kind of like being embedded in as they were typing, right?

Travis: And it was like late spirits. And I kind of think about with typing, right? With a gang of co-pilot, it's like all the best developers in the world, have been used to train the model that's helping you co-pilot, right? And that's like their ghosts are kind of surrounding you as you're typing, right?

Travis: And that's this cool thing. There is an aspect of the artistic, creative process where we all learn from others, right? We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. Whether I'm creating a painting or whether I'm creating an app and I've learned by looking at code, or I've learned by looking at other people's processes and things.

Travis: And there is an aspect where it's like, yeah, that's great. And then we all learn from examples, but to what extent is it so automated now where you can, where you can take the likeness of a particular author and just automatically create something,does that really diminish the worth of that net individual?

Travis: That's complicated, right? There's, there's human emotion in that and there's a lot of, of, of people who will be displaced. Let's just be honest, with the advance of some of these technologies, I tend to be an optimist and a pragmatist when it comes to this  and think of it as, okay, like a question.

Travis: Economic incentive wise, geopolitical incentive wise, there's no flowing of this technology. It's just not practical. And therefore let's take that as a baseline and just say, well,  what can we do with that as an assumption? How can we try to build in attribution or align incentives going forward?

Travis: Iknow there's a few guys at, at HF zero that are trying to work ondata providence for distributed training of providing data and being able to align those incentives with some crypto stuff. I don't know. It's a little out there, but, but like there's, there's a lot that we can do to try to help.

Travis: I don't know where that heads though. 

Aqeel: You think there's going to be some sort of economy created there where creators can submit and try to get some sort of revenue share or licensing fee or something for submitting their original body of work to be in some models?

Aqeel: That's kinda what I'm imagining with what's going on here with data providence possibly. 

Travis: Um, it's also like this difficulty of that, that, that sounds like it's aligning incentives and it sounds nice from a practical standpoint. Like we're already seeing companies that, that basically can, can just scrape, you know, millions of images or, or text or whatever and, and like, why would you use that if it's gonna slow you down?

Travis: Maybe the answer to that is well, if you get sued, and if it actually holds up in courtand some of these early landmark cases are in the favor of the copyright law. Like Yeah. And that's gonna force people to come to the table  and think through, well we need this to create a marketplace.

Travis: We need to, to track the data providence for the training data. Um, you're still gonna have problems around like, how do you prove these things when it's just this massive bot box and you have billions of whites, right. I don't know. Um, yeah. Right, right. 

Aqeel: I think we're, we're seeing like the cusp of some very like, Futuristic, but not so far in the future, like precedent setting right now.

Travis: Um, on, on the legal side, the other, the other thing is like, we're, right now we're still very much focused on mainly like, like single modalities. So it's like, generate an image. Yeah. And it's like, oh, it looks like this artist. Right. Or generate, uh, a song and it looks like, you know, this like, like the Drake weekend, uh, uh, weekend song, right?

Travis: Yeah. And then Grim comes out and she's like, okay, well I see that this is happening. There's no stopping it. I'm gonna try to try to work with you and we can do a rough share split or something if somebody creates a Grimes, you know, AI song. Um, but I think in the, in the very near future, we're gonna see a lot more multi multimodal outputs where it's even harder to, to trace the providence.

Travis: Um, and it's really more just about like general inspiration, right? When you have a whole, like, like, like, uh, there's a New York Times, uh, writer who, who wrote about how large language models basically create this, like lossy jpeg, um, of, of the web. And it's a very, like, general, but lossy kind of, uh, uh, Compression of humanity.

Travis: Right. And, and to what extent, when, when you, when you, you take all of, of humanity as an input and all of our outputs that we've generated, does any one individual, like, like contribution, um, matter to, to some of the, the parts? Um, and I, I don't know Right? This is this hard problem. Yeah. But we, you know, we're getting a little, little abstract at that point.

Travis: But, but that's, we're headed towards that direction of multi-modal inputs, multi-modal outputs. Um, as these models get, get more powerful.

Aqeel: That just like thought, remind me of, um, like the trolley problem. The what? The trolley problem. I'm not familiar. There is this. Uh, we'll call it like a philosophy class.

Aqeel: Yeah. Sort of like lecturer concept. 

Travis: Okay. Is it, is the thing where like you, you gotta choose whether you like one person or a hundred people or something. Yeah, 

Aqeel: exactly. It's like, what would you, one person or five people? And then you get to demographics. What if it's tech people? What if it's 15 people, one young person, five old people?

Aqeel: It just never ends with a variability. And yeah, it's the same question of saying like, okay, well this artist's thing was here, but wait, like, and the entire network being trained, like, yeah. Is it weighted higher? Like is it not like it's the same question of like interpretability problems. Yeah. And justifications that are like always gonna be sandbox environments because of that lens of that 

Travis: that interpreter.

Travis: And it's, it's, it's, it's something that, it's like, it's interesting. You, you can talk about philosophical, like lens. You can, you can talk about individual use cases of like, let's, let's talk about, um, uh, who's, who's the one, uh, Rob Ruski, or, or, or, or, or, you know, the, the Mid journey. Proud, like in the style of Ruski, uh, there's a few artists that, that have just like found their way just to be prolific in all these prompts, right?

Travis: Um, and, and they, uh, you know, you can talk about both those particular examples in artists, but then at once you start to get to like multimodal outputs and it's more like, like taking inspiration from all of these, you know, like, like, uh, uh, give me a video in the, in the style, like, The visual style of Metallica, like what does that even mean?

Travis: Right? But it's like, like that's an audio style. Um, and then you, you just mix and match like, like, like all these, but like, like with the feeling of Lord of the Rings or something, it's like, what does that mean? Um, but there's some latent space there that can capture some of that, some of that, that meaning.

Travis: Um, and it can become some very difficult to say like, well, you're just copying or using this as, as part of your training data. And I don't know, like, like we're, we're getting pretty abstract here. No, no. Hundred percent. Okay. Well, let's go to that other 

Aqeel: question here about, about the entrepreneurship side of things.

Aqeel: Uh, I like that. Let's, let's, let's step into, uh, pragmatic Travis. Mm. Yeah. All right. So we're talking about, um, funnels for a second. There. A actually this Friki person you're just mentioning, um, they did what, like the entrepreneurship skillset really is, is like seeing where attention is, how can you can refer that to something for him.

Aqeel: It might just be like he gets some attention these days. With the basic funnel these days are, it's something like awareness, engagement, conversion, monetization, like those are the four 

Travis: marketing funnel 1 0 1. Yes. Market funnel 1 

Aqeel: 0 1. But yeah, I mean, you, you must be seeing some interesting stuff here, um, in San Francisco, how folks are like designing business models and like, you know, I'm curious about how can we go to different layers of what would you do if you're starting from scratch right now, where, you know, entrepreneurs are and Tech 1 0 1 is Yeah.

Aqeel: Distribution and product. Yeah. Like, answer those two questions first before you ask me for money. Yeah, right. 

Travis: Um, and, and have some validation around them. Yeah, exactly. You're 

Aqeel: right. So don't even, don't even talk about money. Don't even talk about money right now, so to speak. Just like value creation and capturing mechanisms.

Aqeel: Yeah. Uh, like, that's the biggest question I want. I'm gonna dive into like, okay, you, your experienced entrepreneur, you've been building for a long time. Mm-hmm. So I trust your sense of our product. Your website's got some very rich and generous content about how like, Explicative you are as to like what's going in your head every step of the way.

Aqeel: Particularly like you're a Chad, g b t, and pm. Oh, cool. It's like, this is just like nice. Yeah. You like new a developer. We just want to type this into their terminal and they're good. That's like, it's kind against building and product. Like he get, he gets this audience based thing. Audience there. Awesome.

Aqeel: Yeah. I'm curious like how you, how you've, again, we we're still talking about, you know, prone spaces and areas in which you actually care about. Mm-hmm. That's sort of a layer before this. Okay. When you get into implementation, like building a business. Yeah. I'm curious just to dive into some of your mental models there on starting from scratch today.

Aqeel: Yeah. Knowing all the things at your fingertips and imagine you're also, you don't have these skill sets to begin with. Yeah. You just have your heuristics and like the ability to access everything you need to and the internet connection. Yeah. Uh, so curious about your models as you would navigate that journey.

Travis: Ab Absolutely. So, I would say there's a lot of hype around AI and, and it's different from, from some of these other hype cycles. Like it is a hype cycle, make no mistake. But, but um, that's just how technology works. Uh, but a lot, a, one of the, the key things I'd say is that if you actually want to build a business, like a lot of it, you can basically just, just take AI and, and replace it with technology crew, replace it with, with tools, right?

Travis: It, it's a tool, um, for, for solving problems. And you need to start from the problems and the jobs to be done. And, and it's really like, it's no different from starting a company five years ago or 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. Um, and you know, when, when I think about that, I think I, uh, like a lot of builders, uh, I, I, I get excited about a lot of, lot of, lot of problems, a lot of ideas.

Travis: Um, and I'll like, you know, my, my personal, I use notion for everything. So I'll like write it into this notion. I'll create a page, be like, oh, this would be a cool idea, right? Um, And I've gotten better over time at creating my own framework or, or set of litmus tests for which ideas I allow myself to, to like research which ideas I allow myself to write any code for.

Travis: Um, because I, I, I do find myself getting getting distracted very, very easily and I like, oh, this would be so cool to do this. It's like, wait a minute, that's gonna take like three months to build, and then it's gonna be really hard to validate and what is the business model, right? So, so just getting a little more disciplined and intentional about, like, thinking through some of those things.

Travis: Um, and, and, you know, that comes to a time and experience, but I think you can start doing it, uh, earlier. Like I, I, that's something that I, I wish an earlier version myself would've, would've been kind of more aware of. Um, and. You know, I think of, for instance, uh, like for a given idea, how quickly will I be able to, to, to validate that, that this is solving a real problem for real people?

Travis: How quickly would I be able to validate that people will be willing to pay for this? Um, and you know, if it's, if it involves me spending six months to a year building, uh, technology for it, like that's a huge risk. And, and oftentimes I find myself saying, well, that could be cool. That's a certain type of company, but it's not in my wheelhouse.

Travis: Like, I don't want to have that upfront investment of time and energy. Um, cuz if, if I find myself coding for a couple months and not getting like, feedback, not, not getting to a place where I'm actively validating that what I'm working on is the right thing, usually that means I'm, I'm massively wasting my time.

Travis: Um, Not always. There are some problems that, that require that upfront like investment, um, but for like 99% of problems, like that's a good litmus test. How quickly could I validate, uh, or create an, uh, an initial, initial version and validate that like I'm actually solving a problem and then this is something that people want, right?

Travis: Like, like that's, that's the thing I might be excited about. Oh, this is cool, right? But, but it's, it's both the, the MVP mentality of like, how quickly could I build something? How quickly could I validate it? Also, how quickly could I validate it from a marketing perspective? Like, am I just posting this to my Twitter?

Travis: Do I have a, a way of getting this out to people? Um, do I know enough about the people that I'm building this thing for? And, and I think all of these are fundamental questions that have nothing to do with ai. Yeah. Where, where I think AI does is really interesting. Is it, it allows. A, a whole new class of people to, to, uh, try to build and, and, and, and, and solve problems.

Travis: There's, they, they're still gonna have the same fundamental, uh, entrepreneurial problems of, of, of how efficiently can you, can you do that? How efficiently can you, um, build, how efficiently can you answer those questions around for this idea? I'm excited about, like, can I validate it? Uh, uh, will people pay for it?

Travis: Like, like these are just fundamental, uh, entrepreneurial questions. And what ai what, what I'm excited, a few things I'm excited about with AI is one, for folks like myself who are experienced builders or developers, like, it allows you to do some of these things just sniffly more efficiently. Uh, you know, using, using ai uh, AI tools in your tool belt to build product faster to, uh, uh, build, build content, uh, you know, uh, on, on the marketing side faster and, and just.

Travis: If you have, if you have that, that, that loop, um, that, that, that is really honing down where you're like, I go from idea to, uh, mb MVP of something that you could validate to getting it out there in, in real user's hands to, to gain feedback. If you can, if you can make that loop as, as, as short and concise as possible, you become extremely efficient at, at either, uh, uh, at, at, at getting to the point where you say, you throw this away idea and you're, you're like, not too emotionally attached to it.

Travis: So it's another thing that, that is really hard. Or in the early days of building, you get really attached to things, right? Cause like, oh, I just built this thing. Right? It's amazing and, and it's my first thing, or it's, it's one of my first things, but, but, um, you know, being be the, the more more that you build, the more that you learn to, like, detach yourself from, from these things.

Travis: And, and, uh, I think that that just takes, uh, a little discipline and a little, little perspective. Um, and, you know, AI allows people to do that much more efficiently. Um, and then the other side, it's like, Well, if I think there's like 0.5% of the world can, can program, um, to some degree, uh, and let's say maybe 10% of the world is like, uh, uh, of intellectual kind of, uh, age and, and capacity where, where they could like create something of value for the world.

Travis: And they have ideas and they like want to create, but they're constrained that they can't actually program or, or, or, you know, maybe they need to hire a technical founder or something. And if that's you, like, uh, I have, I have a few, few friends who, who, who are in that, that domain. And they're, they're basically created like an iOS app, you know, through talking to chat G B T, which is amazing.

Travis: Like my number one piece of advice for, for kind of, if, if you're like a non, non-technical or, or you, you, you think of yourself as non-technical, um, is to actively try and use, whether it's chat, b, t or one of these, these, these, uh, language models to solve your own problems. Um, cuz it's, it's like a muscle that, that you're building up in your head, right?

Travis: And whether it's whichever AI tool it is, there's so much noise out there, you know, so, so kind of cutting through that noise and just thinking of it as, uh, using tools fundamental to humanity, right? But like, using tools efficiently and, and solving your own problems, which is, which is going to, it's like doing reps.

Travis: It's, it's building up that muscle in your, in your head. Uh, and, and I think that's the number one thing that you can do. So next time that you're like, I, I have an idea for this, I'm not sure where I would start, or, or I have a problem at work and I'm, I'm not sure you know, how to solve it. Like, like just go into ch CBT and, and, and ask it very specific to your use case, right?

Travis: Like, you're, you're, you're building up that muscle, um, and, uh, and solving problems for yourself. And it's, it's, it's a, it's an enabler. Like, like it's, it's literally like having, I like to describe it as, uh, imagine if you had a really, really smart friend who was honestly like really art autistic. Um, and so like, like, They're there for you 24 7.

Travis: They're always gonna be there when you need them, but they're autistic and, and you need to talk to 'em in a certain type of way. And it's about learning to build up like your ability to effectively, you know, communicate with them and, and use them to solve your own problems. And that is regardless of, of all the noise of all the tools, like that is the one skillset that, that will still be as relevant today as it is a couple years from now.

Travis: This is 

Aqeel: fantastic. Uh, could you elaborate a little bit more on methodologies or sort of the, the practices you or others, you know Yeah. Have for these limus test portion is pretty key here. Yeah. So I agree. So you're supposed to hit these nodes or these portions of which is validate, I agree with, tighten your feedback loop as quickly as possible.

Aqeel: Yeah. I agree with like caring what you work on or being part of, um, you know, the end user's group to begin with so that you'll know how to think you know about the problem. Cuz at the day, Your brain's, I think conjuring the ideas of what to do to unlock or catalyze or mm-hmm. Or walk through like how, how to get from point hand to point B with your, with your ambition here.

Aqeel: Yeah. Or the vision as well. Um, yeah. What is practices today with the litmus test? 

Travis: Yeah, that's a, that's a great, great question. Let's make it more concrete. So, um, I, I think as you, as you get more experienced, your, your framework and your litmus test will, will, will change in, in the beginning if you're not really sure.

Travis: Like, like what is litmus test? Like, you know, I've never built anything before. I would say keep it as simple as possible. Don't worry too much about it, and just follow your own curiosity, right? If you're interested in building something, if you have something that sparks your, your interest, just, just pull on that thread and, and just try to get something out there.

Travis: Right. One, one concrete piece of advice is, uh, to, to this concept of, of learning and building in public. Um, where if you do, let's say, create a, a very simple, like iOS app or web app or, um, you know, an an essay that you're, you're really proud of and you, you kind of used an AI tool or, or, or something to, to create it.

Travis: Like, sh don't be, don't be, uh, afraid to share it out there and be a little, little vulnerable. It doesn't have to perfect, it doesn't have to be world changing. Um, there is immense value in sharing what you learned along the way. And it's really, it's long-term value in terms of, uh, uh, building up like a, a, a, a pattern.

Travis: This is a, again, like, like, like, like, Training the, the muscle in your brain of, of sharing and being default open of, of putting yourself out there, being vulnerable, and people connect with that vulnerability, right? If you're like, this is my first iOS app, it's horrible, but like, I had fun and I learned this, this, and this.

Travis: Like, that's amazing. People love that, right? Because then like other people who are, who are in the same position, maybe they're, they're a little scared to take that first step. They see that and they're like, oh man, thank you for, you know, like, like it can oftentimes, uh, uh, this gain momentum in, in unexpected ways over time.

Travis: But, but in order to do that, like you need to put yourself out there. And this is really like, like, Flipping the switch from, um, just being a consumer to, to, to being a producer and putting, putting content out. So that's the first thing I'd say is like, if you're, if you're early on in this journey, you're not, you don't have your own set of litmus tests and you're, you're, you just have ideas, right?

Travis: Is is, that's fine. Keep it, keep it lightweight. Just, just follow your career, curiosity, build something fun. I got my start, you know, building, um, uh, TI calculator games and I was like, oh, man, like, just these, these games, right? And it was, it wasn't to any end, it was just literally I had this, this platform in front of me and there was, there was this code and there was an edit button, and it was like, well, I can, I can create stuff.

Travis: This is so cool, right? Um, and then, you know, over time, that leads to good, good, good, good things. Um, and then if you are a little more, let's say, uh, uh, experienced or you put things out, you wanna be a little more disciplined, a little more intentional, um, a couple of my litmus tests that I, I go by, one would be, How, how, how quickly will it take me to build an MVP of this?

Travis: Um, and for some ideas it's like, well, this, this is gonna involve a massive, like, like research. I have no, I have no idea about this, this domain or something. It's like, okay, well I'm just going to, to deprioritize that. I won't cross it off, but it like gets de de-emphasized because it will take me more time to ramp up.

Travis: Right. Um, or if it's, uh, like how, just, just literally asking my qu my myself, what would the business model be? Um, which, which you'd be surprised at how often I don't even ask myself that. Right. And it's like, that's okay if, if it's just like an open source project. I'm like, this is cool. I can get out in a day.

Travis: Like, and it's going to, I'm gonna learn, learn something. Um, that's, that's another like, like massive litmus test. Will I learn from, from doing this? Or, or is the goal just to capture value? If I'm going to learn to put something about like a new AI technology or, or a new framework that I'm excited about trying or I'm gonna learn about like, Uh, marketing on TikTok or something like, like that is, it pays for itself long term.

Travis: Yeah. Um, so like, will you learn something? Is is a great litmus test as well. That's 

Aqeel: awesome for these folks. There's, I think there's a large group of folks in, you know, I've been in this category where it's like you this day job, but you know, it's possible. Like now you can change up PT or iOS app, but there's so many conditionals and you can't wrap your head around it.

Aqeel: And this is maybe just like a human flaw or sort of a bias issue where your, your perception is largely like the thing holding you back, but you just won't know without experience or like some sort of emotional spike to the point where you have to create these changes in your life in terms of your lifestyle to just start building and getting yourself out there.

Aqeel: And for some folks it might just be different folks of cultural, uh, I will say beliefs, right? Or like, just ways of being at, at, so to speak. Uh, where, you know, they're say they identify as being nontechnical. Sure. But they have this idea for this app and they know it'll serve their audience and those other nature, but they're just like, oh, look like it.

Aqeel: I can't stop working my job, or I need to quit my job. And you go to certain extremes where you can't spend those 20 minutes building. Yeah. This has been around for like, this is pre tragedy b LGBT world too, right? Um, the folks who make it out say it's like, yeah, the nights and the weekends, it's the, oh, yeah, whatever you gotta do.

Aqeel: It's the take the lunch, shower off, it's the struggle and sacrifice, whatever, and there's some sort of glory and the hustle culture is derived from that or whatever. Yep. I'm not comment again, I'm not commenting good or bad or passing judgment or anything. Oh yeah. It's more just like a, what would you mention to these folks, this group where there's sort of like, maybe, maybe you said the number is 10%, but there's a.

Aqeel: Ever could be an entrepreneur. Yeah. Uh, could be, especially now, bears are lower than ever. Yep. Uh, beginning to be, continuing to be lowered. But just to go on the journey in itself isn't, doesn't just mean just cuz you have a product. Like you said, you, you have AI in your thing and now you can provide some value.

Aqeel: Uh, there is the operation to, to go through. Yeah. It's the building, it's the marketing, it's the relationships, it's the iterations, it's the growth. Yeah. It's like a stranger direction and it's, it is like cognitively consuming. Yeah. Um, so I'm sure you've got friends, you, you've seen both tracks where, you know, they stepped their way incrementally through it and this successfully navigated it.

Aqeel: Yeah. There's some folks who just for sheer external life forces, they're just obligations or things happen. They can't. You 

Travis: got, you got family, you got, you got, you got responsibilities. You got commitments. Totally understand. Yeah. Are 

Aqeel: there, exactly. So what would you say about that aspect, right? The, the, let's talk about, we're getting into like the boots, trappers.

Aqeel: Oh yeah. Yeah. Uh, I feel like you. You've attracted a very great audience, but certainly your, your community, your discard group mm-hmm. Like that of folks in this, and I, I think you've, like, you've unlocked some, like folks who are like enjoying this idea where they identify being like the little guy. Yeah.

Aqeel: Yeah. But they're like not ashamed of, it's like not knows status games. It's just like, help, help, help, help, help. Absolutely. Uh, which is an amazing thing. But some folks might be like, I can't just give, give, give, give. Yeah. I need to think about, and so like you said, there's a, there's a mindset of value provision and through the nature of the world and reciprocity and being a great species on this planet and what have you, Eventually, like the value gets returned back to you.

Aqeel: Right? And along the way you'll learn and you accumulate relationships and that eventually pays those dividends that might manifest like Yeah. Into your like million dollar startup investment. Cause everyone knows you're good for it. Like you got this 10,000 plus community, everybody loves you, you're fine.

Aqeel: We'll just, we just like you Travis, right? Yeah. But 

Travis: thank you Aki 

Aqeel: Novelly dollars. Yeah, yeah. Uh, but then, um, but, but how, I guess the thing in capturing value is like, I need value right now. I gotcha. To sustain things or I can't, um, you know, the whole idea, like once you get your first dollar on the internet, your suck psyche changes.

Aqeel: But like, sometimes it's like this binary, conditional or something. Um, so I'm, I'm going for a little bit longer here, but I think you kind of get the question I'm asking. Yeah. Um, let's talk about the booth trappers and the folks who feel limited and blocked, and they might have very real obligations.

Travis: Yeah. No, no. It's, it's a great question. I I, I, I love for like Andy Hackers and, and the, the bootstrapping community, um, the, the, the, the folks who, who work nine to five or, or have a, an normal job, they're just like, they, they, they, they want more, right? And, and they're, they're, they're, they're driven. They're passionate about something, but they practically like they have family or whatever.

Travis: Um, I have a lot of friends like that, right? And, and, and I care a lot of 'em about, I think those, those folks. Cause it's also, it tends to be like, well that's like your, your pure, you know, your passion, like the, your passion project, right? Yeah. Um, and the, the question of of how do you take your, your, like, passion, uh, uh, project and, and make it real.

Travis: I, I also, I get asked the question a lot, like, um, how do I find a technical co-founder, right? Because that maybe that's like the one thing that unlocks that for them. And then, you know, if they're not a builder, like, or, or if they're not a developer, they, they feel constrained by that and they're like, how if only I had a technical developer, like I'd be able to make my idea come to come to fruition, right?

Travis: And I think my, my general advice for, for if this is resonating, you know, with you, um, would be, first off, it's, it's, it's become. More accessible than ever to show progress on an idea and make it more concrete. So instead of just talking about an idea to have something, whether it's, it's a Notion Doc or a presentation or showing like, like using some AI tools to, to create something very, very basic right?

Travis: And it doesn't have to be like world change. It doesn't have to be, uh, a polished version. Um, I know this is something that I even struggle with to this day, right? It's like I, I put pressure on myself for like, oh no, it needs to look perfect. It needs to be this right? And kind of let, letting go of that.

Travis: But, but showing, uh, just enough that, that, that, that you can get the idea crossed and, and, and, and it's, it's less talk and more like showing don't, don't tell. Um, that goes a long way with, with people, uh, who, who you want to attract at that stage of your, your journey. Um, especially like, like if you're looking for like a technical found, a co-founder or, or somewhere to help you, like on, on the technical side of things, um, showing versus telling.

Travis: Like it just, it, it, it's that extra step, right? That, that really shows that you're serious. That you've, you've, you're, you're trying to, you're scrappy, you're, you're, you're, you're connecting things together. There's all these no code tools out there nowadays, like, like, like Saper or, or glide for, for creating like mobile apps.

Travis: Um, and if, if you can do something there that just, just shows that you're serious, that that shows that you're putting in the work, and it might not be the thing that you launch, it might not be the thing that, you know, goes to a million users, but, but just, uh, it, it, it will attract people, um, that, that might have complimentary skill sets or it might attract people that, you know, are a little further along in their entrepreneurial journeys that, that have a little more perspective and, and be able to, to guide you.

Travis: And I think, you know, it's, it's really. About like, like putting out that energy, uh, showing with your work, like showing proof of work, uh, uh, and, and, and, and, um, you know, with whatever limited time capacity that you have, uh, showing that you're scrappy, showing that you're, you're willing to learn and to put in, put in the, the effort and that, that really attracts the right type of people.

Travis: Um, and I'd say, you know, you don't have to do everything by yourself. Like you can surround yourself with, with other folks. Um, and, you know, getting outta your comfort zone a little bit. Like, if you're not someone that normally goes to events or goes to talk like, like maybe instead of, uh, spending, you know, a couple hours on the weekend trying to learn, JavaScript or something, which is, is, is, is a very long, long path.

Travis: Not as long as you might think, but, but a longer path to like building something for yourself. Like go to that, that hack week, uh, uh, hackathon on the weekend, try to meet a developer or, but like, like, don't come empty headed. Right. Come, come willing to win the give, willing to, to uh, be like, well, well, what, you know, what, what are your problems?

Travis: Right? Like, like what are you excited about? And, and, uh, make it more of a conversation versus just looking to, to be like, I have this thing and I want you to build it. Right. Like, um, and I think this is a general, like a good, a better way to approach developers or to approach problems in general of, of trying to find people and attract people to, to, to, to, to build and, and, and to, um, to unblock yourself.

Travis: What are 

Aqeel: fallacies you've seen that folks typically met? I know like, uh, there's generally some clusters. Mm-hmm. But what are fallacies you've seen that, you know, when you're just slightly further down your journey or path that you Yeah. I remember when I thought, and sometimes it's like, oh, I need X to do Y.

Aqeel: Yeah. I'd just be a psychological barrier. I don't even insert answer, but certain No, no, you're, you're fine. Yeah. What are the fallacies that you've seen and sort of like taking on the, bring your vision to life 

Travis: world? That's a great question. Um, one would be like, I need a technical co-founder to, to make progress.

Travis: Like, you don't need a technical founder to make progress. Maybe at some point, if you want to build a venture scaled, you know, uh, company, like you might need a technical co-founder or someone to, to make sure that, that you have the, the correct like, Scalability of, of, of what you're building. Um, but to, to make progress, to, to get traction, to like, like, like, uh, get your point across.

Travis: You don't, like, that's not something that should stop you from starting. Right. Um, and also it's more accessible than ever with AI tools to, to, to make progress or, or create a demo or prototype or something. So that's, that's a big one. Um, another fallacy that I've fallen into, uh, for sure, and we were talking about this, uh, before, before we started, was, um, this idea that like, you have to create a, a venture venture sales startup.

Travis: And, and just the, the infatuation with, with Silicon Valley and with, with startups and, and you know, as a, as a younger developer, it's like you, either you go and work in a big company or you, you start a startup, right? And it's like this, this binary thing. Um, and, uh, I, I think it's unhealthy. I think that, um, a lot of the incentives are, are not really aligned oftentimes with like, Founder health or, or building, you know, healthy, healthy businesses.

Travis: It's like the venture venture business model is very much optimized for building the next massive exit, the next massive company. And then everyone else kind of doesn't matter, let's just be, be, be real, right? Like, and, and you're just a small bet in a large portfolio. Um, and it like, like a younger version myself did, definitely didn't understand that that the consequences of that, and I would've been much better suited towards building, uh, just something of value that, that produced, uh, revenue, that, that was smaller, that was calmer, that, that, uh, didn't play into the vc like growth, growth at all cost type type games.

Travis: Um, and I think the vast majority of, of, uh, entrepreneurs or, or aspiring entrepreneurs would be better off. Looking at it as well, I want to build a, a small to medium sized business that's going to just have, the difference is, is if you're using tech right, you, you're gonna have, uh, uh, much higher margins, uh, which is great.

Travis: Uh, but it doesn't need to be this, this like startup or bust type thing. And yeah, there's, there's so much, there's so much capital, there's so much, uh, uh, energy and enthusiasm around startups and it's great, but it's also like you need to know what you're signing up for and, and, and if, if today, like the vast majority of people, it, it really is, is, uh, I I I look at like false, false, um, dichotomies or like, like false, uh, binary, you know, binary very, very often.

Travis: Yes. Yes. And, and, and, and, you know, you, you could, I, I, I think this is one that, that there actually is a very explicit, like, like split between am I going to build a venture scale business? Is that my goal? And why is that my goal? Versus like, I want to build a business. Um, and, and, and those oftentimes the, the, the, the split in, especially in the, the tech world is like 95% of people just, just default.

Travis: I'm gonna build a scale business. Cause that's what everyone does. And that's, that's that they, the kind of, uh, uh, the, the, the happy path, the easy path. Um, but I think that the vast majority of those people would probably be better served by trying to build, um, you know, a, a profitable, calm, uh, tech company that just happened, uh, business that happens to use tech.

Travis: Um, and maybe down the road if you have enough traction and you, you see, you know, the market opportunity you can always raise like later on. But instead of that being the default mentality, um, I know a younger version myself would've been very, very, uh, uh, well suited towards hearing that, that feedback.

Travis: Yeah. 

Aqeel: What is, um, do you think this comes from this perception of like, okay, my company's valued at a hundred million bucks now and I'm situated like I'm rich now even though, yeah, I don't know. There's little, these rallies might get into with like the actual usage of. What do ask you characters on a screen mean represent versus like 

Travis: that's one way of putting it.

Travis: Yeah. This is like your 

Aqeel: life. Yeah. And like I know there's some things here and so like an ed hack community, I really like these, uh, this Twitter bio concept with like the r and I'm gonna get there like yeah. I'm like 10% of my goal and my goal is $10,000 an hour and I'll be 

Travis: like financially independent.

Travis: Yeah. It's very concrete. It's also doing it in public. It's showing that vulnerability people and 

Aqeel: they're so generous. Yeah. You know, they're just like, oh, you should try this tool out, or here's this thing, or, Hey, I'll give you some credit to my thing. They're so collaborative and it's that like, Shared in the trenches, kind of like, 

Travis: yeah, I sell this thing.

Travis: It's a, it's a positive sum mentality as well. Yeah. It's like I'm in this game. I know it's a tough game. And I also like, like you're, you're out there, you're sharing, being very vulnerable with, with your progress as you go along. And, you know, you're your own harshest critic and like, oh no, no. Like my, my father has all these, these problems.

Travis: Right? And it's like, like I just look at it and it's like, dude, you're building a cool product. Like you got some money, you got some customer. That's amazing. Yeah. And just that, that positive support, that reinforcement. Um, I, I love, love this community. This is 

Aqeel: amazing. How would you expectation reset if you could with these folks?

Aqeel: Is it something like a understanding cash flow in month to month and ex experiencing, you know, fair but modest growth? Yeah. And like, sort of like keeping your focus and agenda sustained on like, getting the better product or getting more sales and like figuring out and testing and like building a growing, uh, and sort of like, Letting folks create a, a more, like, then there's gonna be like problems to solve for, but you're not freaking out about everything or incredible duress and pressure.

Aqeel: So you're not like, you're in, you're not taking out the passion for building and it becomes resentment or something over time because there's likes locking you door. 

Travis: You have, you have the incentives right? From the VCs and, and, and that just like, it skews things. Yes, massively. Um, it's a great question because I always tell people 

Aqeel: like, what is the, what is that figure in which the threshold of like marginal units of like happiness or joy, like cuts off.

Aqeel: So I'm not there for my own number. Right. But I'm, I'm curious if it, if it is this like, psychological relationship to money. Um, I, I guess money is interchangeable. The word might be actually resources. Yeah. Uh, look really well is like wealth, freedom, creativity, like I say, our spiritual like. Desires and, and lifestyle being like permeated Yeah.

Aqeel: To reality or something? 

Travis: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I, I'll, I'll say a few things. One, The more that you're motivated by extrinsic fa factors, which are, are things outside of yourself, whether that's the finances or, or the fame of like, oh, I want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or something. Right? Like, nobody wants to be Mark Zuckerberg.

Travis: Come on, bro. Um, no, but like, like, like, I wouldn't mind having his money. Right? It's winner now. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. Right, right. So, so, so like there, there's the fame aspect, there's the, the financial aspect. Um, and, and there's also just like, it's, it's sexy, right? Like, like, like all of the, uh, the, the info that you hear about so, and so raising an a hundred, $200 million valuation or whatever, and it's like, that's just paper money and, and whatever.

Travis: But it, it, it does, there's a, a massive correlation there with, with eventual success once you exit or whatever. Like, yeah, like I wouldn't, I wouldn't turn that down, right? Um, but, but I would say these are all extrinsic things and, and the more that, that I, I'm just saying for myself personally, The more that I think about what motivates me intrinsically in terms of the problems that I wanna solve, in terms of what's in my control and, uh, uh, what I'm passionate about, that that can find the balance between that and the, the extrinsic, which is like, you know, am I gonna make enough money to, to take care of my family?

Travis: Um, and everyone has a different, different line there, you know, where they fall. But the more that I, I orient myself and I'm, I'm motivated by those intrinsic factors, I think the, the better that I, I oftentimes find myself in the long run. Um, and then, you know, I, I would say the, the allure. Of these massive exits and, and becoming like wealthy through, through, through a a, a startup.

Travis: It's not an overnight thing. Um, it, it tends to be, you know, success 10 years in the making. Right. Um, more on the other side, the, the kind of, uh, indie hacker, calm, profitable, like, like business that happens to be a tech business side of things. Um, the, the ideal there is really passive income, right? Like, there's this, this, there's this concept that, that the vast majority of us work for someone else.

Travis: And you're, you're trading time for money and that's great. Like, like, it, it, it's what makes the economy and the world go around. Uh, but when you can decouple your time from the money that you're making and you can make passive income and, and you can have, there's a reason why if, if you're only making one K of R uh, you know, that, that is just so amazing.

Travis: And, and, and, and why the community is, is, is, is, is, uh, around indie hacking is, is tends to be so positive because. That's one key of r where you're not trading actively trading time for money now. No. There, there, there is usually more work that goes on under the hood of support and, and ongoing maintenance and stuff for these things.

Travis: Not as like, like decoupled, but, but the, the fact that you're at that early stage that you've already like, put in that work to get to some amount of r that that is, is passive income. That really is a massive unlock. Um, and you know, if you can, you can kind of just keep your head down, keep going. There's that awesome, um, Jack Butcher visualized value, uh, graphic of like, uh, uh, overtime, dot, dot dot.

Travis: Like, like, like this is pointless. And then at one, right before, right after this is pointless. It like, it, it, it, it blows up. Right. And I think, uh, just keeping that in mind and the fact that like, So you asked about mental models. One thing I, I, uh, use is like, you can control your inputs, not necessarily the outputs.

Travis: So I, I can control how much work I do. I can, I can control what, what, what I put out into, into the world. I can't control how much revenue it generates. I can't control, you know, how many users I, I end up getting. Um, but I know that, and I have confidence to myself that, that if I control my input tonight, I'm really disciplined about like, releasing code, you know, writing code every day or, or about, um, uh, getting, getting this, this, this next app out that I'm working on, that good things will happen.

Travis: And it might not be the first version of it, it might be like the seventh version, but, but that, that's the part of, part of, part of this picture that is under my control. And as long as I focus on that and, and think less about the eventual, like external. Well, what does this translate to in terms of the M R R or in terms of the, uh, the number of users or, or whatever, like.

Travis: I just focus on what's in my control and, and, uh, stay grounded in that. Like, good things will happen. Yeah. This is 

Aqeel: very eloquent describing like just years of Lord wisdom. Yeah. Yeah. 

Travis: There's a lot, like I've, I've, I've gone through some ups and downs, man. I've definitely, I've had, I've, I've, I've sold two, two startups.

Travis: Um, I've, I've folded a couple of startups, like I've, I've had some failures. Um, and, uh, I'm just scratch on the surface here, but, but I, I, I do think it, uh, if, if I was talking to a younger version of myself, this is all stuff that would be worth a lot in, in, in, in, in my eyes. How can you 

Aqeel: identify a false dichotomy, especially like when you're actively.

Aqeel: Anyone? Yeah. You don't look at it that way. You need to, you need to step outside yourself and, you know, not everyone can meditate daily or something. Oh, well, it can't, but everyone's meditating daily to remove themselves and look at themselves through some sort of tertiary lens. 

Travis: I got, I gotta go a few, but, uh, wrap it up.

Travis: How do I, so first, first off, I would say having, surrounding yourself with, with good advisors and mentors to, uh, identify when he help you identify when, when, um, you know, you're, you're, you're like, being, being a a, a, a world class founder is, is, is about like, really focused and, and, and you need, you need to, to almost be a little, uh, maniacal in terms of like your beliefs and, and, and be a little contrarian.

Travis: And, and, but you need people to, to that you trust that will constructively cut through that noise and just give you the Right, right. Feedback that, that, you know, are, are, you know, they're not just being an asshole to you, but they're, they're gonna cut through it and, and be like, Travis, like, I don't know what you're doing.

Travis: Or like, like, this doesn't make sense. Right. And, and you know, you can. Build those relationships up over time. If you don't have that person, ask g p t for, you know, um, and, and just have a conversation with it. But, uh, that's, that's pretty important as well, surrounding yourself with the right support, uh, framework and people who will have your best interest in mind, but also like, have the perspective and, and the understanding about the world or the technical world or whatever you're building in, um, to, to give you real, honest, critical feedback.

Travis: Awesome. 

Aqeel: I do wanna let you go, but I have to just like, I need the, the Travis plug now. Oh yeah. Last, last few minutes of spare. Yeah. Um, in probably this amazing program now. Mm-hmm. Um, the crew, right? There's like Dave, Emily, Evan, 

Travis: this is H ffc, 

Aqeel: right? Like it's amazing accelerant program. You're here in sf, like you said, you're here on stints, but now you're immersed in this wonderful community that is just this output oriented environment that's having fun along the way and incredible memories, but, You're doing your, you're doing your passion project at that day, like with all the, everything you can ask for it Yeah.

Aqeel: To get there. Um, what, yeah. So, uh, I'm gonna let you explain it again. Yeah. Cause it's much better luck than myself and I'm, I'm all for open source tooling and then you have the agents coming out. But, you know, there's this why you talked about, which is beautifully described and it fits with my personal mission and sort of like, uh, somewhat fear driven motivation of why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Aqeel: Yeah. Like, democratize and get everyone, let everyone have a shot. Yeah. Um, sort of like very big underdog personally over here. But, uh, you're, you're building the means for this, uh, I'm trying to You're trying, you're trying to, so curious about this and where you see the future going and. Yeah. What obstacles are you facing actually, in real time?

Travis: Yeah, I, I have a whole hour conversation. I'll give you, I'll give you the quick version. Gimme the skis. Yeah. Yeah. So I am currently working on, uh, an open source type script framework for building reliable agents. And, you know, I, I, I think we've seen a massive change in, in the, uh, capabilities of, of AI and, and large language models recently.

Travis: They're very good at understanding and generating text, but the part of things that is, is game changing in my opinion, is their ability to reason, right? Like so, so, so up until even very recently to gdpd four, these models couldn't really reason or, or, or plan or do do kind of complex tasks. And what we're seeing at the very early stages of right now is that, that you can, you can view them as.

Travis: Uh, reasoning engines or, or I like to think of them as CPUs of a new compute paradigm. And, and the question is like, like what will be able we be able to build in this new world of compute on top of these much higher level reasoning engines? Uh, and in my view, that's agents and, uh, you know, I think of like agents.

Travis: There's uh, uh, a spectrum there. You have very deterministic agents on the one hand that are, are written by a human. And, uh, and, and on the other hand you have self-driving programs. Um, what, what I'm really excited about is, is, is building practical, real solutions that are a little more constrained than the fully self-driving, uh, programs.

Travis: But, you know, one way of, of framing this, uh, that we were talking about earlier is like, what, what do the world's most well-resourced people, you know, the top 1% of the population, what tasks do they already hire out to teens of humans? Um, that, that they, they have the resources to hire. To do work for them more efficiently.

Travis: So things like giving them a daily briefing of the news, uh, uh, doing, doing ghost writing for them, whether it's speeches or emails or, or on Twitter, you know, maximizing their, their, their, their time, uh, you know, their coordinating their, their schedules, uh, and, uh, uh, optimizing their finances. Like there's entire teams of people that, that billionaire's higher to, to make their life as efficient as possible.

Travis: And, you know, the, the question is, is with agents as we, we, uh, go from, from them kind of being toys, uh, to, to, to being kind of more reliable and, and eventually being able to do more and more complex tasks and offload tasks to them, uh, I'm really excited about a future where, where we'll be able to take those, those, uh, resources that were previously reserved for the top 1% and really democratize it and say, what if, what if I as an individual could have a thousand agents, right?

Travis: That, that, that are all doing, doing bits of work for me in the background, all always on, um, and, and be able to, uh, uh, be so efficient and, and be doing so much as one person with a thousand agents that I could literally compete against a corporation. That's a pretty cool world, right? Yeah. Like, that's exciting.

Travis: The, the, the, the, the ability to take something which was previously reserved for the top 1% because you had to hire people. Uh, and, and, and people are expensive. Um, and now you, you can make it a thousand times less expensive and, and hire out, uh, uh, agents. Now there's a, a downside to this right there. The, the downside is, is well, we're, we're going to be, um, replacing some jobs.

Travis: Uh, and, and there will be, you know, a human impact to this. But there's also, on the flip side of this, for, for individuals, uh, and you talk about the middle, middle class and, and, and folks who, who are ambitious and creative, the ability to do more with, with less the ability to, to be more ambitious and, and have the resources that are much more affordable to, uh, tackle bigger problems.

Travis: I'm really excited to see what, what that world looks like and, and what, you know, uh, uh, a younger version myself or, or, or a kid in, in, in, in, uh, wherever in the world right, is, is able to do with, with, uh, a small army of agents, you know, on their behalf. 

Aqeel: This is amazing. Uh, my personal vision is like to have my own little, I was very inspired by like the Iron Man or, oh, hell yeah.

Aqeel: Your own Jarvis Right. Your own sort 

Travis: of like layer of lines. The Jarvis Swarm 

Aqeel: booms. Yeah. And then is doing things like, okay, you're researching this task. Yep. You point A to point B. Yep. I'm just taking information and distributing tasks. Right. Like, this is cool. Yeah. That's what 

Travis: sometimes we mentioned, we mentioned like, like Rick Ruben earlier, and, and, and you know, he has this, this amazing producer and he has this, this, uh, focus on, on what do you actually do if you don't, like, you don't, you don't play instruments, you don't, you don't do this, you don't do that.

Travis: What do you actually do? And he's like, well, I, I have taste and I, I, I, I have, uh, a very strong opinions about taste. My, my taste and what I like. Right. And I, I think to some degree that's like the ultimate human leverage in this picture where you have all of these agents or, or other, other people. But, but like you, you have all of these resources that are much more economical that you can, that, that you can have.

Travis: Working on your behalf as an individual and ultimately, like you, you as the human in this picture, have the taste to, to, to decide, uh, you know, what, what are they actually doing? What, what, what, what, what goals are they working towards on your behalf? 

Aqeel: This is amazing. A good entrepreneur can like build people one before they know they need it.

Aqeel: Yeah. Um, this is brilliant. Awesome. 

Travis: This is sweet, man. Thank you for having me, man. Yeah, of course. I learned a lot.