At some point, this is where AR and BR is gonna go. There's no reason why you and I, we wanna hang out that we have the option of go to a movie, have dinner, go to a night club, have a phone call, have a cup of coffee, whatever. Like, we have these, like, 7 or 8 options. Right? Right. Right. Why aren't there thousands of options? Yeah. There should be so many And that's why I think that founders need to think bigger. This is Kristin O'Brien Managing Editor at NFX.
In this episode, NFX partner James Currier connects with Investors, cyan Banister, in a conversation about AR, VR, and the future of human interaction. Syanne has previously invested in Uber, thumbtack, SpaceX, Postmates, and many other companies, and is also an entrepreneur herself. This is the NFX podcast. You're a former founder. You're, now an early stage investor, angel investor, early stage. You're an early stage investor in Uber, Niantic, SpaceX and bunch of others, so many others.
You spent 4 years at the founder fund. And now you've joined, our friends, Brian Balfour and Lee Jacobs at Long Journey Ventures. I grew up in Arizona at your self taught engineer. And last time you and I saw each other was at the lobby in Hawaii, David David Hornix, the lobby. And you and I share many loves, that hopefully we can talk about today, and we see the world in in similar ways.
I I feel like the reason that wanted to have you on here is just because you're such a futurist, and we love to spend our time in the future as well. And, you know, you see things as they could be, not as they are. And you've got this future orientation and everything you do. So you're spending all your time thinking dreaming about what the future looks like, and investing in people who are creating it. And and and what does that mean to you? This this futurism, this future mindset?
How to express what that's like to other people who are listening? So when people pitch me on their idea, often it's at the earliest stages of the company. Right? So there's there's not traction. There's not anything to really quantify. So it's all qualitative. And so one of the things that I like to do is daydream and see if I can visualize this future that they're trying to paint for me. If I can, then I try to figure out, like, what are the steps? Is now the right time?
You know, how far are we from that future? And is this the right team to actually execute that? And so, like, for example, with Pokemon Go and my Niantic investment in you know, right before they spun out of of Google, I identified that they had this, app called ingress. And I started playing ingress, and I started asking myself questions. Like, What is it that Google is using this app for? You know, it just can't be just to capture portals and play this game.
There has to be a bigger picture to this Google after all. Right? And I started dreaming about what that future would look like. This is gonna be the most amazing application in the future. Unfortunately, I couldn't invest in it at the time, so I just kind of dreamed about investing in it. And then they spun out as part of alphabet the whole reorganization that Google did. And a friend of mine messaged James, and he said, you know, now's the time to invest if there ever was any. You know?
So I was just like, this is great, but it it was really interesting. I was trying to convince other people, of this future that I saw. So that's what's been the most challenging part about my job, which I'm sure you also run into, which is trying to convince other people about what you see. Yeah. So why gosh. So many things are there. Number 1, you said you when you do you allow yourself to become obsessed with something.
Who has the time in this busy world to allow themselves that indulgence of getting obsessed with something Pete to me about the grandeur of obsession. Yeah. I mean, I I go pretty deep with the products that I use and try and get very, very immersed in them. It because I it's not that I'm trying to solve problems. They're they're just my problems. You know, you see that a lot with some investors. It's more I want to believe in that future, and I need to really immerse myself in it.
So, like, for example, I just invested alongside, you know, personally as well as with a long journey, a company called Popshot Live. It's one of the first deals that we did together. And I'm a seller on the weekends, so I sell things. And, and I really, really enjoy it. And that's how I got into it was pretending that that is my world, and that's all that matters to me.
And, you know, seeing how the tool works and how the fans come in and how they engage with me and how I sell product is all part of how I evaluate things. And so I can visualize that being a really big application with global reach and being very impactful to Pete. Which is why I get really excited about it. So I don't know how I have the time, to be honest with you. I just make it, I guess. It just becomes part of my life. Like, I like to invest in things that become part of my life.
Well, it's interesting because there is a culture, in in the tech world of of intellectualism. And intellectualism is often just being smart and often being smart is something we learned in school or something we learned from a mentor. But what you're saying is that part of this futurism is allowing there to be a daydream, allowing there to be an obsession, an immersion, that seems so indulgent. It's a little bit Flint intellectual anti thinking. It's more about the feeling.
It's not even it's past a feeling and a thinking. It's toward a living. Right? And that's that's that's a that's a powerful way of of thinking about And I love hearing that from you. So the other thing you mentioned was that you when you have these daydreams, you think when is the time for this to come? Right? So so I had a friend who always thought 15, 20 years in the future. He would talk about these things. I was like, dude, that's not gonna happen forever.
And then other people are sort of following trends already Pete. Like, oh, I'll invest in the next Uber or whatever, you know, right after Uber got invested in it. But what is the right amount of time for you to wanna make an investment where you think it's com. Is it 2 years in the future? Is it 4 years in the future? Is it 6 months from now? Probably, I take a very long time horizon for my investments. So a lot of my investments take, you know, 10 years or more to pay out at some point.
So I think that I'm patient with showing some traction, some results in the 1st couple of years. And I think that would prove whether or not you have some kind of fit in in whether the timing is correct. You know, if you think about Uber and Niantic and SpaceX and some of these investments I've done, they're all category defining companies that are actually creating a whole new way of doing things.
So with with Uber, that was based off of kind of my ideological beliefs you know, it was I was really, really obsessed with how the taxi industry worked. And I sat and basically evaluated the entire medallion system to try to figure out Like, why is it on a rainy day? I can't get a taxi. You know, why why are they so poorly maintained? Why is it that this taxi driver drives, like, a bad out of Beller? To inform the airport. And if you sit and you analyze the economics of it, you figure out why.
And so there was nothing I could really do about it other than be upset. And, you know, and so along came Uber, and it was the answer to my prayers. It was really interesting because if you allow yourself the daydream and think about problems in the world, then along comes a company and a founder who sees the world in that way. And maybe it's not the exact way that you see it, but it's close enough You know? And and so that basically, they came along and said, we're gonna fix this whole thing.
We're gonna disrupt this entire ecosystem. We're gonna destroy the medallion. If you're gonna have that kind of it's gotta be a founder fit. Right? So you've gotta, like, if you you know Travis. Yeah. So, you gotta have someone like Travis to be at the helm of a company and an idea like that. So a lot of people found his abrasiveness and, you know, the culture of Uber you know, they they they made them uncomfortable.
But at the same time, if you're good on regulators and you're gonna fight an entrenched establishment, Right? Like, that's the only way to do that is to have that kind of cuts. You know, it's just like, and so part basically, all those things had to kind of align in my mind in order to make sense of that investment. And at the time, it really didn't make a lot of sense. You know, there was the marketplace wasn't working. You know? Is it still a black car service at that time?
Yeah. It was still a black car service. It's called Uber Cab. Yeah. And, I think they only have 1 or 2 drivers they were paying them full time to drive around. Right. So the on demand, you know, get a car thing just wasn't working yet. Yeah. So it's It was definitely a leap of faith. Yeah. Cabulus was out there. Cabulus was already out there, and they've been out there for about a year by the time Uber came along.
Yeah. So I think that, mostly it was just, I think, people are at their breaking point. They're unhappy with the taxi industry. There's this narrative going that people will not get into stranger's cars, but I didn't think that was true because we did anyway. And, you know, all of that just sort of led to the right decision. And it's really interesting, like, how that works. But had I not allowed myself a daydream about taxis? Right. I don't know that I would have made that investment. Right.
They dream about taxis and also they dream about people getting into stranger's cars because this was a social barrier that you had to believe people would get over or sleep on their extra air beds at Airbnb or that sort of thing. Like, there there has to be a social change. And, you know, this gets it Flint interesting about you is that, you know, your origin story is really unusual for tech. Right?
I mean, you've come out and talked about how you are homeless, how teenager and under bridges and begging for for spare change before you became a self taught engineer. And then you find your way to Silicon Valley, and How does this really is part of your life inform sort of who you are now and how you see the world? Because you are able to imagine that people get into stranger's cars. No problem. So I think that part of it is I'm really, really in touch with an unusual experience Right?
And so I'm not gonna say I'm completely unique. There are other people in the tech industry who've confided in the income team and said, you know, I lived in a car or I was on the streets or I had this kind of family life as Beller, but, it is fairly unique. And I think that I had a lot of service oriented jobs when I first started out, I didn't immediately become an engineer.
You know, I was working at record stores, sweeping floors, food service industry, retail, you know, it it always changed, and I always improved my life Beller step that I took, but it gave me a fine appreciation for how things work. In part of how I think I got to where I am was was being just endlessly curious about the things that were around me. And I think it makes me a fairly good investor as well.
So you know, if if I wasn't curious about how systems work and I I sit down and I write down the questions of, like, why is it that Chipotle only has you know, 6 items or something like that, right, or in and out. Or, you know, I like to analyze businesses and try to figure out what makes special? Sure. What are the thickest magazines at the airport, newsstand? Yes. And why are they thick?
You know, if you try to figure out the economics of anything and why it works the way it does, it's really fascinating. And so, you know, that endless curiosity just kinda got me to where I am. And, And I think it helps me to identify people who also have those traits. There are solving problems that are actually real problems. And it makes a ton of sense.
I mean, that outside the box thinking that, is so critical to actually coming up with category defining companies like an Uber Omri space set. You know, if you can really relate to that because of the unique situation you've been in. So, you know, the other thing I so much admire about you is how you paint outside the lines in terms of your thinking, but you also paint inside lines.
So so you're painting inside the lines by living in Silicon Valley, by being a venture capitalist by investing in $1,000,000,000 companies, and being proud of it and doing it well and doing it repeatedly. But you're also painting outside the lines. Right? I mean, you've you found activity in 2007, which was an adult photo sharing site. Right? You raised about 8,000,000 and and guess, it ended in about 2017. I mean, you've shared your story about being homeless.
What does sharing these sides of yourself publicly allow sharing yourself publicly, allow you to see about Silicon Valley and about yourself. I mean, because this is all all this we're doing is just a journey for our own transformation. Right? So Beller, the the biggest thing is I'm facing my biggest fears. You know, my biggest fear in the world for the longest time, and it was the thing that helped me back Especially it was public speaking.
And, you know, so I would put myself out there on purpose, you know, and really make myself vulnerable And, you can't be more vulnerable than being naked on the internet. I'll tell you that. So once you do that, it's like, nothing can harm you. Nothing can touch you. You know, it's really interesting. The psychology that came along with that experience And, I also developed an appreciation for who I am through it. I had you know, a a complete disassociation with my physical self for a long time.
And so being able to take photographs and appreciate myself Flint that way was a gift. And I actually wanted to give that gift to other people. So if you talk to other people from Ziviti and during that time period, I think you will overwhelmingly discover that people really enjoyed and it, you know, being on the site and being part of the community, as well as how they viewed themselves afterwards. So it was a lot more than just pictures. Right?
I think pictures were just, you know, you can get pictures anywhere. Exhibit was more just a community and a patronage site. Eventually, you know, we have Pete and Kickstarter, but we really invented that category. And and so I'm pretty proud of that. You know, it was incredibly hard. So when I raised money for the site and, when we set out me and my co founders to build this company, the knee jerk reaction in Silicon Valley was, oh my gosh. You guys are starting a porn company. You're crazy.
You know, I had so many people that would come up to me and they'd find out who I was or what I did and the handshake would get retracted. You know? And then, you know, and some people leaned in. So it was interesting because some people, like, left and some people, you know, were much more interested in what I was doing and very helpful. So it was a really interesting filter. Yeah. You know, for the world. And, I have to say that Zibby really, really helped me in in so many ways.
One I got to start a company from beginning to end and see the entire life cycle of it. It also helped me with some of my investments. So it had I not raised capital myself, you know, hired people, had layoffs, unfortunately, hired Pete, you know, the whole system behind it, I wouldn't have identified opportunities like Carta. So when when Carta was e shares, they pitched on stage, and I thought to myself immediately, like, oh my gosh, cap table management is horrendous. You know?
And it has nothing to do with Pete and photography. Yeah. Every business faces this problem, including Vivity. And so, it helped me identify an opportunity. And I think That's why I do think a lot of investors should try. If they haven't, should try to either, intern or be a part of a business or help operationally under stand a business.
Yeah. It's not necessary, but at the same time, I think it makes you a lot more in touch and in tune with founders and their experience and how hard it is to build the things that they build It drives me crazy when you're online. Pete are like, oh, 2 engineers can do that in a weekend. You're like, great. No. No. That's not true. Okay. That works.
Yeah. Yeah. This thing about having people pull back their hands when they found that you were running Xfinity and there's this sort of sort of mainstream reaction to various new ways of thinking. I mean, you've experimenting with different hairstyles and how you show up and and whatnot. And I think there's just so much of a lesson there because I mean, what drives you to be like that? Do you know? Is it is it, love? Is it facing your fears? Is it is it some sense of power over your life?
I mean, because dissivity people were going through this psychological journey each of them within your community. It's not just pictures. It's actually humans evolving, exploring, right, growing, And and you were too by creating that context for all of them. I mean, what's what's behind that for you? Because because that the essence of Silicon Valley. That's the essence of creation. That's the essence of creating the future, and you're you're demonstrating that.
You're living it out loud, and I'd love to hear you speak to that. Yeah. I'm it's funny that you would identify by this. Of course, you would. You're always really good at at seeing these things, but, you know, I think that, to me, life is performance art in a James. You know, we're all playing a game. It's, different for every single one of us, but, you know, at the end of the day, the only people who keep score are ourselves, but I like to wake people up around me.
And one of my heroes of all time in life is Bill Murray. Like, he's my my spirit animal. You know, I think that he lives his life and he all of the art that he James, from what I can tell, I haven't seen a lot of his movies, but it seems to have this recurring theme about being present, appreciating the now, you know, being very curious seizing the day, you know, those sorts of things. And so I try to live my life that way to my best of my ability.
I really wish I could get rid of email and my phone and everything that Bill Murray does. But if anything, I kinda channel, Beller Murray, in a way, my perception of Bill Murray, and I try to bring a little bit of that to Silicon Valley I think Silicon Valley can sometimes be too serious. It's getting more serious by the day, actually, which is kind of sad because when I first got involved in tech, things were a lot more futurist.
And everybody was very bright eyed and everything was promising and anything was possible. And the energy was infectious. Right? And now we see some of that still, but it's also only model driven. You know, people care more about, you know, the the monetary outcome of something than they care about the journey or what they're actually changing Sometimes. And that can be fatiguing. You know, it's not what I got into this for.
And so I think part of what I'm trying to do I even have fun with outfits. I wear on stage. Like, I'm I spoke at, some disrupt thing, and I wore this head to toe Hawaiian outfit that just really loud, and I was channeling, hunters Thompson that day. I was like, you know, I'm gonna be hunters Thompson.
And people were talking to me about it, but it was a way for me to just get people to be silly and and remember their kind of childish selves their curious Beller in because they really feel like we're just losing touch with it. And, you know, if I'm gonna get up and do talks, because I don't really need to. Is, you know, I may as well have fun with it and try to reach someone. You know, if I can reach someone in the audience or if I can reach someone by talking or doing podcast or anything.
Morgan how to do your hair or by what you're wearing. Exactly. Exactly. Then I and I a lot of people will reach out to me and because of how I present myself. They identify themselves and me, and they'll say, I'm not different from you. So how is it that you got to where you are? Yeah. I love that. You know? I have so we love it when they stop me, and they're like, how did you get here? I don't find it insulting at all. Because that's a dreamer.
You know, I find them, and I'm they're they're dreaming about something different, something bigger, or trying to grow themselves. Every day. And I think that's really magical. I love it. And when you say when you first got involved with Silicon Valley, when did you arrive here? What was that? What was that 1st 4 or 5 year period where the energy was infectious? Anything was possible. Yeah. So I got involved with the internet.
So I considered my generation of people who got involved in the tech industry to be the Beller. We were the pipe players. So a lot of my background is in, Internet infrastructure. Mhmm. So I worked my first job was actually not in Silicon Valley. It was in Arizona. And, what year was that? Oh, I wanna say, like, 96 9697. I could be wrong. So Somewhere in there. But it somewhere in there.
Yep. And I started reading all these magazines and saw basically all of these companies that were exciting and they were all in Silicon Valley. And I was like, they're not here in Arizona. There's nothing. This is a one way ticket to nowhere land So I picked up everything and I came to Silicon Valley. And at the time, you know, Google had just launched, search was a thing. Right? It was, like, being able to find things on the internet was a miracle. So this is 98. Yeah.
So 98. Probably, like, 90 Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there was something just so miraculous. First, it was the miracle of getting online, right, in the first place and discovering anything Then it was the miracle of being able to talk to someone. And I remember back then, we used to see this future, this zoom future seems so far off. It's funny, like, how we take it for granted. Right? Like, you and I are having this conversation that 98 would have seemed impossible. Right?
Like, we knew it was coming, but we just didn't know when. And so back then, the people had webcams. It took still photos. You know? And so, like, that was the state of the art then. Mhmm. Got it. So so you you you you James in in 98 you're you're you're first touching the internet in 97 98. And there was this less serious. There was this hobbyist approach. There was this creativity first money as fuel for creativity.
And now what you're saying and what you're seeing is that it's now money first. And the creativity serves the money. Correct. Right? And so what's the diagnosis? I mean, that's the diagnosis. What's the prescription? I really think that One, it's it's on the venture side is 1. You know, there are firms that could think differently about how they deploy capital and who they deploy it with. And what sort of, outcomes they're looking for.
Like, we all have LPs, right, and LPs have different risk profiles. But I do think that we need to encourage people to to dream big and, you know, and to solve really meaningful problems. And, you know, people may argue that sandwich delivery is not a meaningful problem, but it actually is. You know, I think that it creates millions of jobs. It allows people to have their time back, which is incredibly valuable. So I have people who say, oh, that's not a valuable company, but clearly it is.
And, you know, Postmates is what I'm talking about. But yeah. So Right. Right. Right. Right. But I think that you know, I I really wish people tried to figure out how things work. Like, where did that hacker mentality go? It doesn't seem to exist You know, it does in a few little areas. So if you look at like crypto Yep.
And you look at, like, AR and VR, in some of the real frontier categories, there's still some of that bright eyedness that you can recognize the nighivity, you know, that we don't know what's gonna happen. So I I'm kind of addicted to spatial computing for that reason because it is a unknown territory of which we really don't know when gonna happen. Yeah. And, you know, what it's gonna look like.
I I am addicted to finding those little pockets and because I recognize I just remember the I'm sure you remember what was it like when you got online the first time. Amazing. Just sitting there Pete night, just coding coding the you know, coding the HTML and learning HTML from the things that you would print out about how to code HTML. Yeah. That's great.
Yeah. And then, like, putting up a website and somebody coming to it and seeing the little click, like, little counter thing count up, you're like, wow, there's human beings looking at what I'm making. This is amazing. So Is it is it a function there of the time in which refund ourselves 25 years into the advent of this new type of technology, and therefore, of course, things age. You know? And when the the great time to make railroads was sort of 1830s to 18 60s, 18 seventies.
If you're making railroads in the 18 eighties, it's kinda hard. You know, are are we just later in the cycle? Is that what's killing this, or do you think actually something culturally we could do. Some language, some approach, some mental models that we could bring to Silicon Valley that would help reinvigorate that playfulness, reinvigorate the the fund, the curiosity. Would like to think it's cultural because I do think that we haven't solved everything. We have not figured out every problem.
We have not stretch the internet and all the ways that it can be stretched. You know, it really James me out when people are like, well, this is it. This is Pete. You know? It's like, no. We can push further. We can go way further than this. Yeah. And, you know, I I I think that some people are just like, well, you know, I'm I'm just happy making this me too clone of this other company and, you know, selling it for a couple $100,000,000, and I'll be happy with that.
And to me, that's not That's not why I got into this. You know, I ended up making a lot of money, which is fantastic. And I was able to help other people make a lot of Morgan, and have wonderful jobs and Currier, and hopefully we'll continue to do so, but it is definitely not my driving motivation. You know, I don't I'm not gonna lie and say I don't like money. I do. But those 2 things can be in unison with one another. You can like making money, and that can be a mission.
In your life, and it can align with this bigger purpose. So I would just love to see more of that. Yeah. Yeah. No. I I completely agree. Yeah. I think that that as VCs, we particularly have, responsibility to strike the tone around that, around the creativity and around the, yeah, thinking big. And and you know, speaking to people who who think big.
The you know, speaking to people who think outside the box to know that to let them know that they're welcome and they're not gonna get trot by the machine that is, is becoming more and more of this ecosystem that we're in. So one of the things that you and I have talked about in the past that that we both love is these artificial beings. Right? So I was on the I was on the board of 2nd life for 5 years, and Philip Rosedale is a an amazing futurist himself.
You know, we would talk about creating a thing called promo. Which was gonna be this child that was gonna be born in second life. And then everyone was gonna watch it grow up, and it was gonna become sentient. And, you know, it was gonna, you know, eventually pass touring test and whatnot. Can you tell us about Lucy and Lulu Mikaela and what's going on with that? It's a fascinating part of your investing the, thesis. Yeah. So, I became obsessed with this space, after seeing hot spots.
Say again say again, you just cut out because this is Oh, after seeing hot suny Miku. Yeah. So for those that don't know what that is, I highly recommend you go to You two have been looking up, but she is an avatar, who plays music live and the music is created by fans. So the music is not, there's not one central source that's making the music. A whole bunch of people contributing, and it's fan made. And then she performs it for the fans, and she is, not a hologram.
She's like a pepper's ghost, I think, is what it's called projection. And so stage, and she'll be Yep. She's on stage dancing around. Yep. And she's 15 feet tall sometimes or whatever. Yeah. She's gonna be different heights and sizes. And Pete have these glow sticks, and they dance in unison to it. And it's like, so electric and amazing. And so I went to one of those. First, I saw it online, and then I decided I have to go immerse myself in this and experience it. And get all into it.
And I believe there's Did you fly to Japan? I did not see her in Japan. I saw her tour the the US. And, but I have gone to Japan specifically to immerse myself in some of these things. So, I am guilty of that. I will go there for, 10 days just to watch people Correct. And see how they interact with things and and with each other.
And part of what's really interesting about Tokyo and is that they have this density that we don't have here, and they have to figure out how to live in unison and in harmony with one another. So they have all these amazing things that we get later, you know, much later. So it's really great to go there and kinda see what our future might look like. Right? Hatsume Miku, I figured, wasn't our future, but at culturally, that's not quite who we are. So it wouldn't fit exactly.
It's not it can't be apples to apples. Right? So, I got a call from Jonathan Trieste. I don't know if you know Jonathan. And it's one of these favorite calls that they get. I remember I was in Hawaii. He says, Diane, I have this really weird company that only you are gonna understand. And I was like, oh, I love this. I love where this is going, and that was Brad, little Mikaela. And so I got on a call with Trevor, and it was so clear that what Trevor's the CEO. Trevor's the CEO and founder.
Yeah. And it was so clear that what he was building could could be very big. You know, one of his visions back then, I don't know what it is now. You know, the founder's journey changes. He wanted to create a marble universe. And so what he saw, Brad, and little Mikaela being is marble. And so if you know, marble was a very valuable company and it was based off of original IP. One of the things we've lost the ability to do, it seems just to create original IP.
Like, we keep regurgitating and cycling these Morgan characters and Disney characters and going back and reliving childhood, but there's very little new stuff coming out. And so I took a gamble on little Mikaela because I thought this is so out of the box and so interesting, and it feels so right. And it feels like this is what is, you know, our Willow Makayla or not not our Willow Makayla or hot suny Miku. Right? This is the American version of that.
And I felt like it was the right time, and it still remains to be seen whether it is. You know, there's a lot to that goes into making little Mikaela, and it's really, really difficult to do. So, I also invested in Superplastic. So Superplastic also has a virtual being component to it. I invested in AI Foundation, which also does virtual beings. They do these Pete realistic real time rendered talking heads kind of like out of futurama. Yeah. Right. Talk to you. Yeah. Sure. And then Lucy.
Mhmm. So Lucy is a little girl that you can go into VR space with, and she takes you on adventures. And she's really curious. And, you know, she is really interested in her environment and eventually, you're going to be able to hang out with Lucy and Lucy will watch movies with you and, you know, imagine being a child and you have instead of having a make believe friend. You know, you do have a make believe friend, but it looks really, really realistic, and you can really just get into the area.
Can we converse with Lucy yet, or is that not there yet? Not yet. So the last that I saw was that you could interact with her, by, like, reaching out to her and handing things and she hand things to you, and you can be in her space. And what you do in her space drives the narrative. But I think that that's the next step which is you interact on top of Lucy. She remembers you, and she remembers where you guys left off.
But that's the most important thing here is I saw all the these attempts of people making these things, but they would have no memory. So you would fire up an act. You'd have a really good time with a dragon that flies around an AR or something like that. You close the app. It doesn't remember you. Right? And so in order for us to connect on a human level with anything that that is driven by machines, it needs to behave in that way.
Like, for example, the other day, I tried out an app where you can sex Pete. They're raising money. And, and it responds too quickly. So immediately, I was just like, I can't I I I I'm not into this because, you cannot suspend my disbelief that you're even human. Right. And the founders the founders weren't sensitive enough to that. Right. That they had done it properly already, and therefore, not the team to back to do that. Yeah. So I I I think maybe they'll get there.
They'll get that feedback. Yeah. But that's one of the things I like about Little Mckayla. So when you message Little Mckayla on Facebook, we will respond sometimes a day later. You know? And it it gives you that sort of feeling of that she could be real. This person might and and some people, if you look in the comments, they're really confused. Or they want to be confused. Right. You know, they're they love this magical play that they're part of.
I've I've Beller been to sleep no more or Meow Wolf. No. Not yet. No. Okay. So sleep no more is in New York, and it's wonderful. I highly recommend it. You go in you're not allowed to use your phone. You put on a mask, and you're brought into this immersive theater experience that lasts about 3 or 4 hours. And you're encouraged to separate from your friends. So it's a solo experience in which you wander around this gigantic hotel.
Where a story is unfolding around you, and you have to figure out what it is. And, you know, that's it's so magical that they they Beller, the show sells out every single night. It's a company called Punch Strunk, and they're really creative. And then there's a a company in Santa Fe called Now Wolf. It's the same sort of thing. You basically go in, but this one you can do in groups. And you're in a house, where family once lived, and they mysteriously disappeared.
And you've gotta figure out where they went. And so you're wandering around this house, and there's nobody to guide you. You know, there's there's nothing there. I think at some point, this is where AR and BR is gonna go. You know, there's no reason why we have to go to Santa Fe or New York, we could put on a headset, or we can wander around our own town and transform our town into something really spectacular.
Like, There's no reason why you and I, we wanna hang out that we have the option of go to a movie, have dinner, go to a night club, have a phone call, have a cup of coffee, whatever. Like, we have these, like, 7 or 8 options. Right? Right. Right. Why aren't there thousands of options? Yeah. There should be so many And that's why I think that founders need to think bigger. Like, there's, you know, you don't need AR headsets to create this.
We have a phone, and the phone is a lens to an invisible world. Yep. You know, that you can imagine. Kinda speaking on as Pokemon Go showed us. So so viscerally. Yeah. Exactly. So I think that, you know, and interestingly, a lot of people said, oh, there's gonna be all these Pokemon Go clones. You know, Pokemon was easy to create. Someone will just create another one. It hasn't happened. Right. And it's because it was not a trivial Like, a lot of people thought it was incredibly trivial.
And it turns out it's not. And and a lot of people have had a really hard time, you know, duplicating that. So I don't know. I I don't I've wandered all over the place. I'm sure. Oh, it's great. It's great.
I mean, no, because because, no, this this idea that there are gonna be these artificial beings that the that we're gonna have both immersive spaces that we put ourselves into create enhanced states of mind to sort of accelerate our own personal evolution, to accelerate our connection other people. Right? The technology is gonna enable that. At the same time, the technology is gonna enable us to create new people.
It will also accelerate our learning and accelerate our experience and enhance our minds. And that could be a little mckayla or it could be a Currier. It could be the next generation of those those creations. And and, and you're you're immersed in the middle of that. I mean, if someone's nervous about that, you know, I've had I've had some people get tearful when they they hear me talking about this future.
What do you what do you say to people who get scared that we're gonna replace people with artificial beings or that we're gonna walk around with headsets on and and not really be the way we were in the seventies or whatever. Oh, I think that's impossible. I think, at the end of the day, we're still human beings and we're still the animals we are, and we know the difference. I don't think you're gonna get so lost in it that you will forget unless you're, like, on drugs or something. I have not.
It doesn't seem likely. Yeah. Yeah. I do think we always know that it's not real. We just want to believe it's real and we wanna play for a little while. It's like a child you know, you you wanna go into that child like zone and make believe for a while and have fun with it. And there's nothing wrong with that. I don't think you're gonna get lost in it.
I do think that I hear this all the time because, you know, with AI Foundation, a lot of people were really concerned about the dystopian nature of deep fakes. Right? And Right. You know, if you can create something that's as realistic as what they've done, why couldn't you create, you know, a Putin or you know, and and and basically create a chaos, which you can, you know, and, unfortunately, we are heading towards a bright and also a dark future.
And what what's gonna change is people need to become more skeptical we need to technologically come up with tools that discover and detect, you know, fake media and and videos and AI generated content. Right? So I think that there's this whole frontier out there, and we've solved we'll solve it the same way we solve spam and all of the other problems we've ever ever solved and, you know, to make sure that it it keeps its humanity intact.
Yeah. So I think that AI and artificial beings will be such a huge compliment to us. I don't believe that they're dystopian or dark. I think that it'll help solve some loneliness that people experience, which I think is a very valuable thing. Right now, people solve that through, like, Instagram, which I don't think is necessarily valuable.
You know, like, looking like an Instagram person all the time and always, you know, looking like you're on vacation and, you know, painting this picture that you're just crushing it and doing all that stuff. That's not real. Right. So that's, that's a fake reality already. Right. You know? So Right. I think that Having a meaningful conversation with Alusa Morgan little Mikaela would be a lot more real in a way. All the security that you see on this thing. It would be.
And, also, you could discover something about yourself that maybe you never thought possible and nothing that if you felt safe talking to an artificial being and not a human being, you might be able to confront things that you were never able to confront before. And or get things done that you never thought possible, because without judgment, because you're like, that that being can't judge me. They're not real. Mhmm. You know, so, again, I think a lot of people just immerse themselves.
It's a lot of people cause play too. Right? So if you look at the cold cause play universe, you know, these people get dressed up, and then they act out the scene for a day. And, you know, they they're Pokemon trainers or they're you know, dragon ball z people or whoever. Right? Sure. That's it's a similar thing. You know, they just wanna they just wanna play. Sure. Well, how they how they, create their characters in 2nd life or wherever else in them. Exactly. I love 2nd life, by the way.
Yeah. That's great. Yeah. That was that was 15, 20 years ahead of its time. It was incredible. Appreciate, you spending the time with me today and, It's great to see you, and, great to hear you. And, thanks so much. Yeah. Thank you.