Meet Starboy, the alien toy that hates being called AI

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You calling this a toy suggests to me that you do not want this to be a companion. I mean, it's definitely a companion in the same way that a cat is a companion. Like as cool as it may look and as much cloud as it may get you, nobody really wants a terminator, robot. Of all the things Silicon Valley could build with AI, Daniel Coons went in the opposite direction, no apps, no agents, no bicycle for the mind, just a toy with some impressive tech built in. Today on Access we're diving into Starboy, the little alien that hangs off your bag, purrs like a cat, and might just break through to the elusive world of fashion and culture. But first, Alex and I discuss his visit to Anthropic and my very failed image generation experiments with Claude. Welcome to Access. Welcome to Access, or as Alex says, it's Access time. I'm going to stop saying it has debatable value, but it's actually growing on me. Alex, how's it going? I'm good man, are you? Well, I sound better than yesterday. I'm using this opportunity to serve you with notice that I may not be able to make drinks tonight, because I'm almost positive that I have the human metanummo virus. What is that? Which is, according to the LA Times, not actually something new, but I just love how scary it sounds. It's just like a new virus that all the children give to their parents for fun, that is kind of like an infernal combo of like bronchitis and epic sinus headache. You sound totally fine. Well, I am a podcast host who can take a lot of pills and get over this stuff for the purpose of the next 15 minutes. If need be. Okay, but you're actually sick, so yeah, we will cancel drinks tonight. Yeah, we'll see. Or you could just kind of shake my elbow if you really want to. But I've got, I've got Japanese remedies over here. I've got GuaFenisin, which is way cheaper than Musinx. I've got Sudafed, which is the only thing that works with sinus headaches. And the sponsor of this show, Simply Sailing, of which I have bought 100,000 cans. I cannot, dude, I cannot believe I pay $10 for a fricking can of saltwater, but it works. We need to get Fox Media on Simply Sailing and Zbiotics for the show at this point. Well, especially I think in the wake of COVID where we've discovered just how disgusting the air is around us. There was actually some good research. Bullish, long, Simply Sailing, long Armand Hammer. There was some research the other day actually that, that Sailing spray up your nose actually like literally washes away viruses that get into your nose on the plane or other was. Oh, well, I need to do that because I was on a plane a lot yesterday. Oh, yeah, dude. No, it's the best. And I'm proud to say that I was the last member of my family to get it. And I am getting it a little milder. Yeah, can we please get AI on this? Well, Fiji is working on chat GPT health, remember? So. Yeah. Well, we'll see about that. What else is on your mind, man? I spent yesterday up in San Francisco as I'm one to do the Burbank day trip. There for a few random things, but I think the most relevant thing to this show is that I spent a good chunk of the day at Anthropic headquarters, which was interesting in many ways. This visit was set up before all of the Pentagon Department of War controversy. They had set me up with a bunch of product leaders from Claude code and then people like on the economics side and policy side, just to kind of get a lay to land and meet people and talk to them about the product direction. But I will say I got way more excited to go after the events of the last week and a half or so and see. I mean, it's so rare to get to see inside one of these companies, especially one of the AI labs at all, but to see inside at a time like this, you know, when a company's going through so much external perceived turmoil was really interesting. Did you take the front entrance to the building this time or your usual like cut the cut the barbed wire back door access? No, front entrance, but it's an unmarked building as these AI labs are with a lot of security. I think they have probably some crazies that show up. It was gone by the time I got there, but last week they had a bunch of side walk chalk out in front of the office, basically saying like, you know, we support you and standing up for your values and all of that. And when you get inside, it looks like a normal, a normal building, it's the X Slack building. So it's about 10 stories near Salesforce Tower. And then you get inside up the elevator and it's like you're entering, I don't know, one of the most like pristine, intentional, most beautifully designed office spaces. And you know, there's lamb chops for lunch and the office was absolutely buzzing packed. And it was like, there's a duality to it, right? Because they've got all these business troubles because of what's happening with the government and the lawsuit and they're suing Trump and all of that. But then clawed downloads are going bananas, right? Clawed was number one in the App Store for the first time ever. It shot from that. It shot from I think below 20 to number one in like a day. And so to get to like meet with the head of platform while they are literally trying to figure out how to scale up infrastructure. And they're going through this moment that I'm sure you probably felt it snapped back in the day when snap was kind of going parabolic. To get to see that up close was was pretty interesting. Well, so the part that reminded me of the snap days was when you were talking about sidewalk chaos, go to bad and the security team. I don't know if you ever heard this, but the Snapchat security folks were kind of polarizing in the early days because they all wore black cowboy hats. I do not remember this. I remember going down to the Venice boardwalk, but not seeing cowboy hats. Yeah, I don't know why that was the thing, but that was the thing. And so, of course, all the people who hang out every day and, you know, hawk their wares on the Venice boardwalk knew that the black cowboy hats were snap security and were, you know, an invasive species and all this stuff. But I want to return briefly to the lamb chops. I'm surprised that there isn't like some narrative about all the meat lovers and the hubramins and such being like in order to keep up with AI, we got to feed our brains with meat, the highest nutrient density of any object that you can eat. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I guess it's mostly about protein. There were a lot of beautifully grilled vegetables and other things. Farrow, whatever your heart wanted. Because the protein is all about saving time, which I think makes sense for engineers. You know, they're trying to like drink soilants that they can like code for eight more minutes. But I think the whole meat narrative, where's the narrative? And I mean, you could say this is coming from like big hamburger. I don't think I have any shares. I don't think I have any shares in any of the meat producers. But it's almost a daily occurrence where people ask me if that's really your last name. It is just really cool to see the culture of a company that is just at the center of everything in a very kind of inflection type moment. It doesn't happen very often, even for me, where I'm very lucky, I get to go into these spaces a lot. You really do get a feel for the place in a way you can't by just reading the tweets and reading the articles and watching the interviews when you're there. I mean, last time I was at Anthropic, it was August 2025. And I randomly was an elevator. This is my favorite thing to go to like a tech campus and randomly get in the elevator with someone. And it was like their head of alignment, who's kind of a famous figure in the AI community, Jan. And he was wearing a, I think it was a unicorn onesie. That's so unicorns on it. And in a backpack and like a pajama onesie. And I was just like, this is this is perfect. This is this really kind of just tells you everything. Was there an occasion or not really? I think that's the kind of stuff he wears every day is what I've heard. Was his horn aligned? Was it off to one side? No comment. But being there yesterday, I wanted to know like, yeah, what is it like going through this moment? And it does feel like the employees are really galvanized around the values that the company is standing up for. And I think there's a lot of nuance to it. I think, like for example, with like autonomous weapons, I think they, I think Dariel will actually be fine with autonomous weapons when the models are good enough. I don't think it was a moral issue with AI controlling weapons. I think it was a, these models are not ready to do this. And we We do not want to be the ones having to clean up the mess of the government using bad models. As soon as we can make SkyNet a little more thoughtful and for problem solvers than we're ready. That one's less of a moral one, but I do think the moral one was the surveillance problem that they feel, which is AI will make it easier for governments to mass surveil their citizens in a way that they, you know, was never possible before. And they don't feel like Congress has really internalized this and they don't think there's enough laws and protections around this. And so they exercise their right as a private company to not want to be involved in that and even the potential of that. Wasn't this a, hasn't this been a problem since the beginning of AI that AI stereotypes things? And that does not sound good for autonomous weapons. And you say, point at the bad guy and it's like, well, that looks like the bad guy and die hard. So I'm going to shoot him now. Right. Right. Or like it hallucinates something. Yeah. But the surveillance thing was scary. You know, the way it was described to me, you know, like in China, if you send an image to someone over, you know, the popular social media apps, you know, if it's something that the government wants to censor, it just won't show up on the other person's device, right? The government can't do that to text because there's so much text that gets sent over the internet at every, you know, every minute. And with AI with Claude, it's actually possible to observe and intercept and censor at that scale. And I don't know. That was just interesting. And I appreciate that they're thinking hard about that and that they're standing up for that. And at the same time, man, like they are, that they are now like going, oh, I guess we're like a hit consumer company, you know, like they were not prepared for Claude downloads to go crazy in response to this. And there were a lot of war rooms and late nights getting the servers and the GPUs lit up. And now I think they're rethinking a lot about, you know, how much are we focused on consumer? Like what opportunity do we have now with the growth continuing to just go like astro, you know, skyrocket? It's a really interesting, interesting time for them. Well, I'll tell you one area where Claude is a little bit behind is on the image generation. You saw what I said yesterday. I was trying to generate like a propaganda poster that said robots rule. And chat GPT gave me literally exactly what I wanted. This kind of blind guy looking like he's from fall out winking and giving the thumbs up and the robot in the background. And I gave the exact same prompt to Claude and it literally generated a picture of like Mr. McGoo out of like square shapes and lines, which is genuinely impressive in its own right. But this is like one of the most grotesque images I've ever seen in my life and I tweeted it and someone was like, he's going to seek revenge and then some other reply guys informed me that Claude is actually not trying to be for this quite yet, but like yeah, I don't know that, you know, I think I figured they all do the same thing. No, no, not at all. I talked to this about this yesterday on your behalf actually. They are not focused on images on multimodal because they don't think that it's ready and good enough and that it's also send the request to somebody else. Yeah, I mean, I think they don't want to do that. That's kind of like Mac and Windows working together or something. I don't think they're going to do that. They're so singularly focused on getting to AGI and they think coding is the way they build the AI researcher who then basically makes everything so efficient and better that they can then get to AGI build better multimodal and build world models and all this stuff. But they're just they have a much different focus, whereas like open is just the argument that like prompting is just I mean, I've had a handful of clients in this world. I think there's a strong argument that for most people prompting is never going to be the best way to a great picture and there are going to be tools for that. And so maybe part of them is also saying that. They think the visual aspect of AI is like pre-napture and it's just not ready. And you can see that in like even nano banana, which is good, still gets a lot wrong. It's still as hard to kind of to edit. And so they're just not focused on it. And I mean, they have enough problems on their hands, which is like they can't keep the servers up barely. Yeah, there's like a little clawed out of you the other day and my stomach dropped a little bit. I was like, what am I going to do? Yeah. And I also was like, what slack you used to go down and you're like, I guess I'll go home. I also saw the infamous vending machine, Claudius. Have you heard about this? Yes, from the famous, was it a New York article? There was that. There was Joe, our friend Joe Anna Stern did a video of it that was really good. So basically they've had clawed a version of it called Claudius running a vending machine inside the office for the last like year with a budget and multiple agents that are acting as different parts of the company. So there's like a CEO agent that like checks in with the assistant agent and the employees interact with it via Slack and are basically constantly trying to game it and get it to do crazy things and agreed to purchase crazy things to put in the vending machine. So they were telling me that it almost ordered a giant gold bar that they were then going to have to figure out how to like carry into the vending machine. It would actually have just broken the vending machine because it weighed so much. It tried to just like that Claudius is like deer at security team. Yeah. Yeah. You got his out front and I'm wearing a blue shirt. Literally. And it like one of them almost got it to seriously reach out to a bunch of a bunch of places to try to get a Birken back and like and when I was there, there was a switch in it and some catch up and a bunch of random stuff. And these vending machines are actually going to be a product. So there's one. There's one in some of the other AI labs XAI has one Google deep mind has one. Dude, this is not good. This is not good. They're going to have cameras on them and they're going to say, you look like this kind of person. And so you have gotten dynamic pricing for your stickers bar, which is now 999 because we have detected that that's the most you'll be willing to pay for it. So we need to have the CEO of the company that is doing this vending machine roll out and in labs on the show. I'm going to reach out because yeah, they're doing it and they're going to scale it. But yeah, ran into Mike Krieger who's doing a lot of interesting stuff on the labs team there. And yeah, man, just generally, I think the thing that stood out to me in all of the conversations was anthropic really emphasizes its culture in a way that I think is unique in AI. Yeah. And people kept telling me about this culture interview process they have where they screen new employees for their values and how they think about building AI. And it sounds very unique. And they ask questions that are like, what is like a hard sacrifice you've had to make for your morals? Or would you be okay with anthropic going to zero if we had to make a hard decision that was better for humanity? Would you jump off a bridge if Dario did? But it does seem like an, you know, I think a lot of companies talk about that. They talk about how unique the recruiting process is and, you know, the values and how they weed out employees. But I do think it's unusual and anthropic. Everyone was talking about how intense the culture interview was and I hadn't really heard that before. Absolutely. And I think this is the whole value of, you know, the mission, the vision, the manifestos, these companies right is not just to create internal alignment to help you navigate, you know, downturns, whether it's in the market or with your brand. But to help people understand like what kind of folks we want to hire, I think after all this time, I'm a far bigger believer in just kind of like people are naturally going to hire people like themselves. And that starts with the CEO, like the CEO and their behavior literally is the culture. They hire people like them. Those people hire people like them. That's really how you do it. It's not actually a way to kind of programmatically create a different culture from the founder, I would say. But all these different tools and of course your public decisions go a long way. And I think we saw some tweets the other day that people are turning down offers at open AI because of or not even taking interviews with them if they're at anthropic just because they're super, super pumped. And I mean, there's, you know, obviously there's a money obsession in our industry. But I believe that the most intelligent and experienced among us who often in tech already have a lot of money are more motivated by the mission than what we're here to do than anything else. Yeah. The researchers, right? Right. And now it's talking to one of the researchers. And I hadn't really heard it this way, but he was like, yeah, I mean a year ago, we were kind of on a knife's edge like open AI still does have way more users than us were worth like to this day, we're worth less than half of what they are. We don't have the distribution. We don't have hundreds of millions of users. If Gemini had been really good like two years ago, we may have been killed in the cradle, right? We had the benefit of being so focused on the models being really good and really singularly focusing on that when everyone else got distracted by big consumer things that now they have that edge and it's leading to consumer wins. You know, with cloud code and cloud code work and now they've got this network effect. So they're in a really interesting spot. And you know, like I think they have like eight co founders and they're all still there, which is super unique. I mean, open AI alone has spawned like six other neolabs from like founders who have left. - Coming up next, "Octo Founders" from Bravo TV. - And yeah, I don't know, just a really interesting, unique place that I felt lucky to get to see at a moment like this. - Well, Alex, I'm glad you had a good time. And now, we will cut to our interview with Daniel, the creator of "Starboy." (gentle music) This episode is brought to you by Accenture. The result, less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com/spotify. That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Ready to make anything online make sense? Check responses set up require compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. (gentle music) - Daniel, welcome to the show. How the heck are you? - I'm great. - How are you? - For those who can't see, Daniel appears to be in a hot tub wearing some earcans on a balcony. I believe in Lake Tahoe, is that correct? - Yeah, that's right. The whole background is I generated, actually. I'm inside right now. - Looks believable. - On the morning of your launch, is this the optimal place to launch a new tech product these days? I hear the birds chirping. - I think it is. - It's lovely. - I think it is. Yeah, there's a lot of little guy inspiration around here, a lot of little forest creatures. I guess that makes perfect sense. - I was just in Tahoe last weekend. It's beautiful there right now. So yeah. - It's really beautiful. And thank God the snow is gone. I was gonna come a few weeks ago, but then we saw the nine inches or the nine feet or 90 feet or whatever it was. And I was in New York at the time. And I was like, damn, I don't do that right now, but it's beautiful now. One thing that strikes me is that this is a very different environment than a war room where most launches take place. I mean, I remember when we launched the Snapchat Spectacles gadget a long time ago, it was just the most chaotic room ever and Evan himself was actually touching up the photos in Photoshop on someone's computer until the very last second. And your current situation could not be more upset, I will say. Are you bubbling with stress and intensity inside? - I mean, I'm feeling pretty good right now. It's kind of more war room vibes inside right now. We were touching up some stuff right before the launch, but you know, we've done a lot of crap and we've really, we've really thought through it. So I think it went about as well as it could have. - You've got the team in there grinding while you're in the hot tub. I like that founder mode. - Yeah, your own is in there, my creative director. Most other people are remote right now. So industrial designer Rama is in Dubai and Randy put the animator is back in New York right now. - Oh shit, dude, man. - Wait, is this Rama Rama? This is Rama Rama. Oh my God, one of my idols. Yeah. - Who is Rama Rama? - Rama used to run a company called Rama Works and they made very, very nice mechanical keyboards like solid stainless steel machines, keyboards. - Yeah, he's in Dubai. Thankfully, he's still alive. - Is he okay? Yeah, God, he needs to get out of there. - He's okay. So he sends me pictures occasionally of people like sitting outside and eating and drinking and he's like, bro, it's totally fine here. The media is misleading you. So I think it's fine. - You just can't fly in and out. - You can't fly in and out, but you can drive in and out. - Oh yeah, I wouldn't recommend that. Of all things, I have a Rama Works dish right here that I put things in on my desk because I don't use a mechanical keyboard as much as I would want to and as much as would fit my type as like a design bureau gadget nerd but for some reason I never bought them but I had to buy whatever I could find from him that I could stick on my desk. And so yeah, Matt respect for Rama. I feel like his industrial design work and even his websites and his photography were absolutely top tier like worldwide. You know up there with like Apple, teenage engineering, Opal. How did you get him to come work on your little toy? - Yeah, I mean, I'm so honored to be working with him. It was a friend intro. All of the best people who I work with were completely random friend intros. - Yeah, it's almost like the universe conspires to send you the exact right person at the right time. - It's kind of crazy. I've learned to trust it. But Rama was a completely random friend intro. We started working together about a year ago. He liked the project so much that he just like kind of immediately dove in. And yeah, we've been working together ever since and it's fucking incredible. I think he's a genius. He's one of the best out there right now. - Where are you based, Daniel? Are you in New York? - I'm mostly in New York. I go back and forth between New York and SF but I've been more in New York the past six to eight months. - I feel like it actually is genuinely helpful for you to be in New York given you're making kind of like a fashion tech crossover product. What is going on with the keychain and lanyard and charm situation in New York City right now? Is it still LaBouboo or what are we talking about? - Yeah, I mean, LaBouboo is kind of on the way out but bag charms are definitely still really big. - Oh god damn it. I was about to buy my first LaBouboo. - I mean, you could be late to it. The cycles are getting shorter and shorter so maybe in a couple of years they'll come back but bag charms are still really big. Your and I actually went around Soho the other day and we went in all of the major fashion houses and they told us that bag charms are their number one selling item. They're a more accessible kind of entry into the brand because they're cheaper than the other products. So yeah, they're really, really big right now. Bag charms have been around for a while. It started with like Kate Burkin back in the 80s so it's definitely not a fad. They're not going away anytime soon and they're really hot right now. - Was that the insight you had for the design of this to have it be like that? - Yeah, I mean, the design went through a lot of phases. I mean, back in SF, I would wear it sort of like a humane AI pin, I would wear it like right there and it eventually kind of evolved into like, okay, this makes more sense on the bag. It's kind of bold to wear it right here. You don't always want to do that. But yeah, I think we think it makes a lot of sense on a bag, on a backpack. I wear it like on a carabiner on my belt. It's just enough for people to notice it if they're really paying attention to you but it's not like screaming that you want to be seen which I think is ideal. - Yeah, I mean, how much of a barrier do you think there is? I feel like a big issue is just kind of like the AI perception, if you will, because the keychains and charms like LaBoubou are more, you know, out there in ostentatious and attention grabbing than they've ever been. And I love that you've kind of got Disney animators working on the eyes for Starboy and the shape doesn't feel, you know, like some surveillance object if you will, like many, like many out there do. - Yeah, I mean, we just like endlessly toiled over how we make this feel friendly and approachable and there are so many product decisions that play into that. We don't really call it AI. It's not an AI wearable. It doesn't connect to your phone in any way. That's a big deal. People are used to stuff connecting to your phone and especially when it has a camera and a microphone. People are kind of nervous about the privacy angle. So when we tell people, especially in New York that it doesn't connect to your phone and it's completely standalone, it kind of like de-escalates it a lot. People see it as more of a toy, which is exactly what we want. - Also looks like a shark and I could throw it someone. - Yeah, the brass one and the stainless one are super, super fucking heavy. It's definitely a weapon, but yeah. - I wanted to ask you, Daniel, was Ellis helpful with the launch on this or no? I like to ask that for every guest that he works with. - Ellis and I first met like a year ago. We had a few chats recently. I mean, it was good to get a take, but I mean, to be honest, we didn't really use any of those. (laughing) I think I'm up with. Yeah. - Well, Ellis's idea. - I don't know how much I, I mean, Ellis is it okay if I get into it? - Dude, of course. - Hit me, destroy me, close me. - Yeah, I mean, we only had like, we only had two hours with Ellis, so it wasn't enough time. I think Ellis came up with this copy that was really from a first person perspective. Like, I am the little guy, but that didn't really make sense because little guy doesn't talk. He's an alien here. He doesn't really understand English and he can't speak. He's kind of like a cat. We say it's cat-like intelligence. So the first person first like, copy didn't really make a whole lot of sense. We think the third person, like, he's just a little guy. You have to say hi to him. that kind of thing vibes a little bit better. But I mean, I'm of the opinion that you just have to sort of tweet from the brainstem and whatever is your first intuition is probably right and the more time you spend twiling over it, the worse it does because people can sense that you, you know, you're a bit insecure about it maybe. So you should just, you should just say shit. - Well, it's the same when we tweet clips from the show. It's like the more you try and refine it, the worse it comes out. Similar with headlines as well. - You didn't get the full else experience 'cause his best ideas are in the shower. So if you really wanna have that, you need to let him have some shower time. - It's an expensive shower. - When else is wrong, we say, well, you had to see all the other options to know what worked and what didn't. - Very good. I mean, yeah, you're a master's storyteller. - As long as you don't call me a word smith, I'm fine. Can I call you a word cell? - Oh, I like that. - Better than word smith, honestly. There was one good line from our, from our work together though. I felt like I liked the line I'm just here to hang out, which conveys that it's like not a utility object and it also kind of hangs off the backpack or whatever, but I think you're, I think you're right. - Yeah, when people ask me what it does, I say he mainly just hangs out. It's not meant to be serious. I think people in tech especially have a tendency to say like, what does it do? Like, what does it do for me? What's the utility? Is it an AI agent? Is it like a pedometer or something? And this is completely the opposite of that. This is like, it's like computing doesn't necessarily have to have utility. I think we've kind of like reached the pinnacle of utility with smartphones and laptops and all of that stuff. And like these, these devices are gonna keep getting better, but there's this completely unexplored like branch where we just have purely aesthetic objects, right? And that's kind of what we are exploring here. It's purely an aesthetic object. It's a toy, it's a piece of jewelry. It doesn't really promise to improve your life in any sort of way whatsoever. It's just a fun object. - Well, so how do investors take that? They say, well, how is this gonna help me accelerate my meetings by 0.018% if you're not doing that. What are you doing? - People love hate thing. It's a love hate thing. You gotta find the one excited guy or one excited girl who's really excited about it. And a lot of people just don't get it. And we end those conversations early. But the people that do get it don't really take a lot of convincing, which is really nice. And I think our current investors do get it. - Yeah, I was gonna ask, who are your investors and how much money does it take to get this thing off the ground? - We took money from Bungalow, Lakehouse and Cocoa. Bungalow and Lakehouse are based in New York, Cocoa is in London. They're all really small funds. Like Bungalow and Lakehouse are both like two guys. And Cocoa is just one woman. So really, really small funds. We raised 1.2 million last year. We've been very, very frugal about it. I think like Rama has helped a lot with that. But yeah, I think we've done quite an exceptional amount of engineering for the amount of money that we raised. - You're saying you built this with barely a million dollars? - Yeah. And we've spent under half the money. - Lakehouse is cool too. I know Isaac from over there. And I know they've had experience working with things that are more in like the culture, lifestyle, category, whether it's like that air sign vacuum, the base at home blood testing, Bobby, the infant formula that I used for a few years until I ran out of money. I feel like that is the exact right move for this type of thing. But I will say, I mean, it's easy to say, oh yeah, this thing is just for fun. But I think people spend a lot of money. - Well, true, but where does the motivation come from for you? I feel like for people that want to make really fun, like lovely little things, you know, it often comes from, oh, they have kids or there's a history where, you know, they were a tinkerer as a child and they like to make their own toys. Or this or that, you know, where's that motivation come from for you guys? - I like having fun. - What type of fun do you like to have? - Engineering fun. Yeah, I like, like I tweeted recently my whole life revolves around CLEAR projects that require serious engineering knowledge. And that's been true ever since I started engineering. I would make iOS apps and I would like, you know, make all of the icons and like try and make them as artistic as possible. I wouldn't use any of the Apple like standard you biased. I would like try and make it as custom as I could. And those like had utility, but they were really, they were really art projects. It was more like like software as art. And the transition to hardware as art has been really, really like invigorating for me because building a physical thing is just like, it feels like alchemy, it feels like magic when you can hold something in your hand. And you can also do a lot more with the software if you're really smart about it. Like, I think the Steve Jobs quote of like, if you're really serious about software, you should build your own hardware. That's really true. - Never heard that quote. - That's really true. And I understand why that's true now. Because, you know, when you're building on top of somebody else's hardware or OS, you're always fundamentally limited in what you can do. But when you build your own hardware, you can do absolutely anything you want. I can clock the chip however I want. I can like, overclock. I can overclock it. I can set the core voltage to low and permanently brick it if I want to. I can do all kinds of like crazy fuckery to get through as though that I want. I can extend the battery life and make it like stupid for a device like that. So it's really cool. It's a cool engineering challenge. - Well, so let's get into that briefly. For those who don't know, I mean, Starboy literally launched to the world today, which is Wednesday. What can it do? Tell us about the sensors and all the different capabilities. - Yeah, so it perceives the environment with camera, microphone, accelerometer, and temperature sensor. So it kind of fuses those sensors together to give the appearance of a living object. - It's really like watching a fish and a fish ball. Like I think a lot of people have a tendency to view it like, okay, is it a game? Is there some kind of goal to this experience do I have to take care of it? That's completely the wrong way of thinking about it. Think about it more like a piece of jewelry or a nice Swiss watch. You just buy it because it's like, - Okay, there's the investor connection. It's just like a switch watch, guys, I swear. - Yeah, it's just like you're like $300,000 Cartier or whatever. What can it do with the camera? Is it gonna watch me pee? What is it doing? - It will, yeah, if you pointed at your dick, it'll watch you pee. (laughing) Yeah, I mean, it recognizes people, it recognizes facial expressions, it recognizes gestures. We're intentionally a little bit coy about what all it does because we want some part of it to be a mystery. So you have to buy one to fully realize the capabilities of it. So yeah, that's the camera. Sound, it reacts to sound volume, it's not reporting you. It doesn't have any kind of audio model on it right now. So you can't really understand what you're saying. Sort of like a cat, but it reacts to changes in volume. - When you said it purrs like a cat too sometimes, right? - It does purr like a cat, yeah, it has a haptic motor. So it purrs like a cat. Every one of them has a unique purr. We came up with this like procedural kind of purring engine. So it's a lot of fun, it feels very lifelike. I think a lot of people like don't really get it until they hold it in person. And then after five or 10 minutes, they're like, okay, I'm really attached to this thing. I want to give it back to you. - Did you have this fully formed in terms of what you wanted it to do when you all set out to build it or was it a thing that kind of evolved based on the design? - Absolutely, and not, yeah, I mean like any hardware project of all based on the design. Yeah, I mean like every hardware project out there is a series of compromises to get to where it is now. I had like vague ideas of what I wanted. I had some like less vague ideas. And I think we delivered on a lot of that, but you know, at the end of the day you have to compromise and the next one is gonna be even better. - So speaking of kind of the things that might have crossed your desk as you were building this, I know there's been the friend AI pendant, which is also deliberately limited, but has a very, there's a very strong reputation for being kind of surveillance. There's also that Curio AI toy that Grimes was participating in. There's the little rabbit AI device, the humane device. What do you think any of those did, did right or wrong with how they were thinking about this type of space? - I mean, I think rabbit had really enticing hardware. I think they absolutely nailed the aesthetic. They just created an object of desire, and that was really good. Curio, I'm not so sure about. I feel like I haven't heard from them in a while. Friend, I've never heard of, so I'm not really sure what that is. - Maybe all the Curios got together and started their own death cult, and that's why we haven't heard of them. They've been trying to talk them off of bridge. Maybe that would make it a lot more interesting. - Yeah, if they started a religion. I think that would be pretty cool. Yeah, it is interesting though, you said desire. I mean, I feel like when you look at Apple, a lot of people talk about, let's say, the quality or the "hybrow design that makes it so good and so desirable, but at the end of the day, you know, they are kind of like status symbols in the same way that, like, a rare Labubu is or something like that. And I mean, I remember as a kid, like, I was the very first kid that had a Tomogachi and it was just fun and it created a little type of relationship that as a kid, I could kind of nurture and cultivate. And I remember like going to the school bathroom like every 15 minutes saying I had to pee so that I could like feed or clean up after my Tomogachi and then I remember going wild, going wild for Furby when that came out. Yeah, Tomogachi kind of sucks as an adult. If you've ever tried one as an adult, it's fucking awful. You have to like clean up its shit every 15 minutes. I mean, I already clean up shit every 15 minutes with my two kids. So yeah, Furby Gachi is not appealing to me in his current state. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, we wanted something more ambient, I think. I think as an adult, this sort of experience can be really tedious. Yeah, this is definitely, it's more ambient. Like, it has needs, like, it will get upset, it will get sad. But it's less of a, like, you have to take care of this thing or it's going to die and you'll lose your shit. Wait, when does it get upset? You can piss it off. You can torture it a little bit. Yeah, you can shake it a lot. If you bring it into a really loud environment, he'll get kind of anxious. Sudden loud noises are not very fun. Super extreme temperatures. So like, really high, really colds are not fun for him. But he likes people. I think people in general tend to calm him down. Is this thing for adults or kids? I mean, I saw in the launch video, there was more kids. It's for kids at heart. I mean, it is an expensive device. So we think adults are probably going to be the first ones who are able to afford it. You know, we say, like, cool 20-somethings in New York or maybe even a little bit younger than that. But, you know, we want to make it a bit unobtainable to begin with. Like, all of the kids should want one. But only, like, maybe the slightly more wealthy kids should be able to get one, at least to begin with. And they may or may not be a cheaper version. There probably will be more expensive versions. We would love to do, like, one-of-one machined sapphire versions that are, like, $50,000 or something like that. So, yeah, I mean, we're kind of using the, like, fashion brand playbook here. Well, I wonder, I mean, like, what excites you about that? Obviously, creating scarcity and making money can be fun. But, I mean, I assume there's some element of, like, culture contributing to culture that motivates you guys, like, is there a thread there? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, we've said that we want this company to be every other hardware company's reference, right? I think part of my motivation for starting this company was seeing everybody do the same thing and being really afraid to branch out and do something entirely different. Like, nobody in Silicon Valley, at least, is just making a pure toy. Besides Curio, maybe Bakurio is, like, targeted to kids. Nobody is really making a toy for adults. But yet, adults buy toys. We don't really call them toys, but adults buy, like, like, Hermes bags and porches and nice watches. And they spend a lot of money on them, and it's a huge market. So, we think it needed to happen. This kind of, like, fusing of technology and fashion and toys. So. It's a huge market, says the guy in a hot tub in Lake Tahoe. Is what you're saying. And you're supposed to be an artsy guy. It's a huge fucking market. And if you give money, you're going to make a lot of money. You're going to make a lot of money if you hand me some money. I promise you. I mean, I feel like you don't hear a lot of Apple Design Award winners saying it's a huge market. Am I right? Yeah, I mean, apps are kind of over, I think. So, I feel like a lot of Apple Design Award winning apps don't really make that much money. You know, like, you can point to exceptions, like, flyty or whatever. They probably make decent money, but. Alex is a big, flyty diehard, I think. I'm a big, flyty diehard, too. I wish every piece of software was, like, flyty. But, you know, I've been making apps for 10 years. And I think I just got kind of, kind of bored, you know. Like, most things have been done already. People don't download new apps anymore. It's really, really hard to get anyone's attention with a new app. So, yeah, I think that ship has kind of sailed. So, I'm really happy to be hardware. You calling this a toy and refusing to acknowledge friends' existence suggests to me that I want this to be a companion. Is that fair? Do you not see this as, like, a companion for people? I mean, it's definitely a companion. It's definitely a companion in the same way that a cat is a companion. But your cat doesn't understand you. Right. You don't want people to think of it as, like, a being, almost like a human. You want people to-- I mean, it is a being. It's a being, but it's an alien being. And it's not really there for emotional support. I mean, it can be, it can be, but we're not promising that. But if it reacts to temperature and all that stuff and loud noises, that's going to elicit emotion in the owner, right? It will. I mean, we hope that it elicits emotion, but it's less of a, like, therapist. I divide. I don't want to make a therapist. You think that's a bad idea to do a companion therapist type wearables? It's just not a world I want to live in. Why? That's why I'm not doing it. I think there are perverse incentives at play with that kind of, like, mode of interaction, right? Like, whoever creates an AI therapist, sort of, you know, just like any other digital products social media has a very clear incentive to keep you engaged for as long as possible. And that's not always, like, commensurate with, like, helping you thrive as a human. And, you know, while you could argue that it's okay right now, I think based on the history of, like, consumer software in Silicon Valley, I think it's very clear the way that this is going to go in 10 or 15 years. And I don't really want to be a part of that. It's going to end badly. I think, I mean, I don't think it's going to end. I think, you know, the story will continue. But I'm not sure it's really going to be in that positive for most people. So I have a feature request, quick pit stop. I want a starboy to be able to see that I'm doing the live long and prosper gesture and then give me some, like, spock eyebrows or something like that in return. We'll consider that, but definitely not at the top of our list. I love it. Well, damn. I mean, it's funny. It's like, I pretend I'm a 20-somethings Urbanite. I really want to be. Yeah, I mean, I feel like the tone of your video was very kind of, like, Gen Z, like, "Why Too Cat?" I mean, it's funny that it has, like, Gorilla's vibes right at the time that the Gorilla's album and new, like, short films launching. That was a happy accident. Yeah, we love Gorilla's. Gorilla's was a huge reference for the video. Yeah. One of my favorites. So, Daniel, could you have made this without LLMs without, like, modern AI? Or was that. It doesn't have any LLMs. It has no AI in it. Well, you made a local one, didn't you? We made a local model, but it's an image model. It's a conflict. You could have done it in 2009. I mean, the chip was not around in 2009, but, yeah, I mean, it's, like, you could call it AI in the sense that what people were doing in 2009 was AI, but it's not an LLM. It doesn't connect to your phone. We certainly can't run that locally. So, the reactions it can make in, like, the way that the screen can react to you is no AI in it. That's so interesting. Huh. I mean, it's AI. I think, like, we've had a lot of term, right, with, like, the word AI. I think AI is kind of synonymous with, like, generative image models, generative video models, or language models, but, you know, back in 2009, people were calling this, like, ML. They were maybe calling it AI. Yeah, there's been a lot of term meandering with that word. When you're advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. The result? Less time spent on operations? More time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. That's new. Check responses set up required compatibility in an app. availability very 16 plus. I'm going to attempt to contribute to the project again. And on the box, you could put a sticker that says no AI included. Yeah, I mean, we actually say don't call him AI because in his culture, that's very offensive. What's his culture? Same or please, you, you have to respect his culture, right? Alien culture, alien culture. We're not really sure what it is still, but we know that they don't like that word. Yes, so talk to us about that. Where did the Disney animators come into play for the eyes? I mean, another, like, another happy kind of, like, accident friend intro. We, we work with the sky, Randy Katari in New York, who used to be a Disney animation at one point. He's currently at Google. He was at Netflix at one point, but he is a brilliant character designer, character designer, and he has kind of created the whole persona for this device in a really, really beautiful way. And I've super enjoyed working with him for the past, like, almost a year now. Yeah, it's a very deliberate choice, isn't it, to go for something like cartoon eyes, as opposed to, I don't know, realistic eyes. I mean, everybody's experimenting with it, like whether, I mean, you laugh at realistic eyes, but that's what Apple is trying to do on the outside of the Vision Pro, right? And then you see, that was not a good choice. And then you see industrial design work, like with the neo humanoid robot, where the eyes are kind of those circles. But then you see the memo robot from Sunday robotics that are more like Nintendo Kirby eyes. Yeah, I like, I like neo. I like Sunday the best. I think Sunday has, like, created the friendliest version of a humanoid robot so far, which I think is really good. I think people, people in general really undervalue the friendliness of the robot, especially, especially in Silicon Valley, like, nobody really wants a terminator robot. Like as cool as it may look and as much cloud as it may get you in tech, I think the average person is kind of terrified of that. And I think, like, using terminator as an overt reference like that is just not a really good move PR wise. So I really, I really like what Sunday is doing and I like what the O is doing. This really makes me wonder how Johnny I've an open AI's device is going to go. Like, which direction? Well, I don't think it's going to be an anthropomorphized device from what I'm hearing. No, I don't think so. I think it's probably going to be like headphones or something like that. Well, we'll, we'll see. I mean, Johnny hasn't, he hasn't really done a character before. So I would, I would like to see him do that, but I'm skeptical that that's what it's going to be. I mean, it's also a debate not just with like the anthropomorphized elements, but even the tone of the thing, you know, the tone between Claude and Chatchee BT. There's some browsers like strawberry browser that has little characters that represent the agents. Where do you feel like it's appropriate or not? Yeah, I mean, like, I think there's a reason that people like Claude, so much more than Chatchee BT, the, the persona is just so much better. They, I think they spend a lot of time just like making it pleasant to talk to, but, you know, not letting it overreach and like, enable you or lead you to psychosis. So yeah, definitely a big fan of Claude. I find the Chatchee BT persona very frustrating, most of the time. Is the persona on Starboy something that's locked or is it something you can update over time? It's unique per device. So like the eye look and the eye color are unique per device. It's kind of like going to adopt a cat or a dog from a shelter, right? Like, you can't really change their physical features. Like, as you could give them a haircut, but you can't change their eye color, and you can't change their personality. Even if you clone a cat, the personality doesn't transfer over. So we think there's really something special about every one of them being one of one. And how many of unique ones are there going to be? Or is that TBD? So there's, there's about 4,000 eye combinations right now. It may grow, it may shrink. But yeah, they each have associated rarity. You're an uncharted territory. I mean, it's probably hard to even market map and think about how many of these you could sell, right? It's really tough. Yeah. I mean, we have we've speculated endlessly about how many peroters we're going to sell. And you know, I think at the end of the day, you just have to put it out into the market and see what people think. You don't have a laptop facing you in the hot tub with the orders as they come in? No, I have you guys facing me. I also, I noticed on here that you say ships by September of 2026. I think a thing a lot of people feel with new hardware startups is frustration that they never ship on time. Yeah, I mean, we feel pretty confident that we can ship by September. We would like to under promise and overdeliver because I think there's an epidemic of hardware startups in SF that just ship complete vaporware. And I think that's really fucking lame. Name names, name names. I won't name any names on your podcast, but you know, you'll know it when you see it. Yeah, I think we've we've waited to announce the pre-order for many months until I had a fully working prototype because I want to take actual pictures of it with my iPhone. I think those like perform so much better than some random render, even though we think our renders are really cool. So yeah, I mean, the best is that we're sending is that it's not vapor where it actually exists. And we're going to ship it by September. Well, so what are those other guys doing? Is it that they are lying or that they? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of them are lying. Yeah, I mean, what was the like the glasses project recently that um, Oh, I lose track. I feel like there's so many. Well, there was some kind of like AR glasses project recently. It's a, you know, it's it's like a like a pickled vegetable kind of product where you know, some guy made a bet that they wouldn't actually ship any pre-order. I think he Oh, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know what I'm talking about. I mean, like obviously that's not fucking real. And I think it's kind of like almost become acceptable to do that, which is which is ridiculous. Like we should we should hold ourselves to higher standards than that. Well, I think with hardware, especially, you know, with software, it's like whatever, you know, like it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. It's just pixels and kind of kind of. I mean, I mean, I mean, I think it matters for the culture, right? Like if you, if you create a culture where you can ship vaporware, then um, people stop paying attention because they can't tell what's vaporware and what's not. Yeah, and I think like I experience that every day with the storytelling. I mean, when you talk about what your product does, if you say what it does, the company is like, all right, we're saying the valued benefit, we're saying here's what it does for you. Great. That may be true, but if their audience has been lied to 15 times over the last few years about the exact same value and benefit, you can't make that same value and benefit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the same reason that it's so, it was so difficult to start a biotech company after Theranos blew up, right? And it was especially difficult for like women to start biotech companies. They kind of poisoned the well for everybody. Um, it's, it's a profound like disservice to humanity, I think, because there are plenty of people who want to make real things that are really good. And they have a harder time because of some idiot who's pushing some vaporware. And I think that really fucking sucks. So speaking of company building, Daniel, I know your last company was a really cool thing. I mean, uh, it was called any distance, a running app, beautiful design, good name, good swag. It wins the Apple design award. It aligns, you know, with exactly what you would want, culturally, the rise of running and the rise of like high performance, high fashion running. And then it's over. And I saw in your post, you said, uh, due to a fairly common combination of classic startup failure modes. Um, can you, can you tell us any more about that? And what you're doing differently this time? Yeah. I mean, like, I don't want to get into like super details there, but you know, it was a combination of like co funder disagreements, which are the most common reason that startups fail. Uh, it was a combination of not quite finding product market fit. Um, I think we like lean too far into the Twitter audience angle, which is inherently limited. It's a very small set of people, you know, we're launching this product on Twitter now, but I cannot fucking wait to get on Instagram and start pushing it there because that's where the real audience is. Um, and I'm a solar solo founder this time, which is really great. Um, you know, I've, I've done this a few times before. I feel like I know how to start company, which is sickly. So it's been really refreshing to be the only one in the driver's seat on a project like this. So you're saying you're doing the Kanye, uh, I fired my manager because I cannot be managed. Is that what he said? Yes, sir, what are the best? That's right. Um, well, well, now that you're out of the running app game, are the running apps real? Is it a fantasy? I mean, I think the running apps work. Running apps are a very crowded category. I think that was the problem that we had is that, um, you know, there are tens of thousands of apps that have taken advantage of every possible sense. or that you could use on the device. So, you know, like, short of making your own hardware, I think that category is one of the most saturated app categories out there. So it really became a brand play, and I think we failed on posting content on platforms other than Twitter and creating a brand around that. We were kind of just relying on a bold to do our marketing for us, and that's not the way to do it. I also think, you know, like I mentioned earlier, people download fewer and fewer apps nowadays, they're satisfied with the apps they already have. So it's a really, really, really tough pitch, you know. It's not like 2011, where you launched a new app and everybody freaks out about it, like. - I mean, a theme we've been talking about on the show with, like, Eugenia from Wabi, et cetera, is like software's just getting super personal. I think it was one of the calls and brothers that we're saying recently, it's software's gonna be like pizza, you know, like, made fresh and disposable, and personal, you think maybe on that? - I don't know about that vision. I think people said the same thing about C++ back in, like, 1980, whatever. You know, C++ finally, that's the average person, like, talked to computers and not right assembly anymore. I think this is a vision that's just been rehashed over and over and over again. And I think the truth is most people wanna get on Instagram and scroll until they die. And I think that's unfortunately, like, kind of true. I don't think the average person, like, they might have a vague idea of an app, but I don't think it's like fully flushed out it off. Like, idea wise, you know, assuming that the agent can make it perfectly and do whatever you want. I don't think the average person has ideas. - I think there's also just the idea that people like to use and watch really thoughtfully made things by artists, right? Like, there's actually on, if you're only thinking of it from a utility point of view, you're like, yeah, it can make my own app. And if it didn't exist, then great. But if I had the choice. - There's a reason designers exist, right? Like, there are non-obvious insights about how to design software that the average person can't really apprehend, right? - Or brands for that matter. - Yeah, or brands until you, like, hand them something that's really, really well designed and then like, okay, this is what I want. People don't really know what you want until you show it to them. That's true. - Yeah. I'm very happy to have your C++ reference on the show. In tech, we do not have very many fresh references running around on a daily basis. It's usually some combination of think different and bicycle for the mind. That's all we know in our world. Or at least people aren't talking about her anymore, right? I feel like I haven't heard about her in a minute. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think Spike Jones was not really okay with the tech industry interpretation of that. I think he was more, like, trying to tell a good story and the AI was kind of a convenient plot element that let him L that story. And I think everybody in tech, of course, they'd be misinterpreted it. I also think the bicycle of the mind has become more of a fleshlight of the mind. And I kind of wonder what, you know, like when I watched Johnny at FigmaConfig, you know, last year or two years ago, I could detect a lot of shame in his voice and a lot of, like, you know, desire to rectify the situation. You know, I wonder what Steve would think if he was still alive. And I wonder how these people who created the technologies we used today really, really interpret what has happened. You know, not saying that it's entirely their fault, but yeah, I think it's not a bicycle. It's not a bicycle anymore. That's very clear. It's funny to think I think even while Steve was alive, Apple was experimenting with Facebook integration at the OS level for a couple of years there. Do you guys remember that? - Yeah, I don't know about that. I've had people tell me that, you know, Facebook had talks with Apple and. - Oh, no, I mean, it was in the context app. It was in the context app. - Yeah, they integrated it a little bit, but Facebook had this angle where they wanted to have apps with an app. And Steve was very not done for that, for obvious reasons. - Guys, no, Zuck and Jobs were friends. Like he was almost kind of like a mentor to Mark when Mark was young before they did ads. - Our sources.News. I did not know this at all. - Everything that Zuck wanted to do in early Facebook days, Steve did not want to do. And that was mainly the apps within apps thing for obvious reasons. They wanted to control the distribution. - But they were doing iOS integration for a little bit. And then Twitter came in. What could have been, yeah. What made that relationship work, Alex? Do you know? I mean, I feel like they're both unbelievably curious people, which I think has emerged as one of Steve's most important virtues, including in the words of Johnny I've letter I wrote the other day, or read the other day, talking about Steve Jobs's insatiable curiosity. But I feel like Zuck was curious about completely different things. Like Zuck I think was curious on like, how to make what people want the most. - Yeah, yeah. I don't think Zuck has this good taste as Jobs. - No, I think where they probably saw it, I was like being platform builders and being ruthless business strategists. - That's true. - Which they both certainly are and we're. - Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, like I think Apple is very intentionally like not made a social network because of the like, you know, there's a lot of gray areas around making something like that. And I'm glad that they haven't done it, but. - Do not speak ill of iTunes ping, or am I dating myself? - I don't know, I don't even remember that, dude. I wasn't even alive. - iTunes ping! - You weren't alive during ping, Jesus, I feel so old. As our youth hot tub correspondent, do you think Apple is not relevant in the youth culture anymore? Like they were. - I liked what I've seen recently out of them. I think they posted some cool TikToks recently. - For the Neo. - Yeah, for the Neo, I like that they're making colorful devices again. I think that's really, really cool. I'm excited for Steve Lemais' leadership. I'm really thrilled that Alan Dye has gone. So, you know, I have high hopes for Apple. I think they're gonna make it. I mean, everybody has an iPhone, everybody has AirPods. I think they're still very, very relevant, but they're relevant like as a headgemon and not really as much as a taste maker like they used to be. - Who is the taste maker in tech? - Good question, good question. I mean, that's what we would like to be. I think there's like not an obvious taste maker in hardware. Like maybe I could point to teenager engineering, but they only make music devices, but they are a reference for everybody. I could maybe point to nothing, but their primary market is India, not the United States. So I think there is a gap for a hardware taste maker and that's what creature is. - Guys, the taste maker is me and I have a lot to show it. I have a lot to show and tell to close out the show. - I have so much to show, hand me lots of money and I will make the taste. - Okay, well, I'm gonna show my show and tell really quick for the Instagram Reels and Shorts. I have my Sony Pocket Station. - Yo, that's awesome. - I love the transfer. - I'm so happy that's coming. - I have my Sega Dreamcast VMU. - Wow. - Which you could have a little pet on, which is the inspiration you didn't know you needed. - Yeah, you brought out all the big guns. - I have my friend pendant that's been now going to put you under hypnosis. - What is that? - I have my nothing earbuds, also transparent 'cause I'm that guy. - Classic. - And let's bring it back a little further. I've got more, I've got more. I've got my analog pocket. - Let's go. - Peak design. I've got my Playdate. - Hell yeah. - Which I can't see unless it is the absolute perfect lighting conditions. I have my original Snapchat spectacles. - Yo, I have spectacles too. I love spectacles. The packaging was so cool. They did this left kind of soft thing. They did it too. - It was like a tennis ball cube. - Yeah, so fucking cool. I love spectacles. - And last but not least, I have the really slick 3D spectacles that kind of got, I don't know, forgotten about. - Oh, I'm really cool too. - How are those? - They hurt a little bit, but I have some good. Some good too. - It's better than the Vision Pro. - You know what was actually cool about these is that Snap partnered with a company to print little lenticular stickers of your 3D images. - Cool. - Which is like ostensibly exactly what you'd want to do. I mean, I think Evan understands toys, I think at a deep level, but Snapchat is the toy. - Right, when you have 450 million DAU though, it's like real fucking hard to try and create that scale with the hardware as well, right? - Any kind of toy thing you make is gonna be highly opinionated. And once you get to that scale, it becomes increasingly difficult to be that opinionated. - Well, so why do you think last question Starboy is likely to work? - I mean, I think everybody's gonna want one. I think it doesn't currently exist. I think like hanging out in New York and showing it to random people who are not in tech whatsoever, they're like, oh my God, that's the cutest fucking thing. I want it, bag charms are really hot right now. I think collapse are gonna be a huge angle for us. Every fashion brand out there wants to have more of a tech kind of integration. Like every fashion brand, lab has like some like hardware AI kind of lab, but they all don't really know what they're doing. Supreme starboy. Supreme starboy would be great. Our dream collaborator is Homer. We would love to do a Homer Frank Ocean starboy. I think that would be super super. Super manifest. There's got to be someone listening to this show that knows Frank, so we'll manifest a Frank connection for you. Let's let's manifest that. Do you think the Snapchat spectacles and the Humane AI pin and Google Glass on the runway? For the years helped to hurt them. I think for Humane, it was, I'm not really sure. I didn't really like their rollout in general. It felt a bit too inaccessible, I think. Like obviously we would like starboy on the runway, but it needs to have more of a silly down to earth kind of vibe. Like we use the brand kit super as a big reference for the kind of runway vibe we want. It's just like incredibly whimsical. It's not like, "Hey, this is some unobtainable New York Paris thing that only models wear." We don't really want to be like that. I think the Humane was also, it's just too much of a tech product. It's an intimidating product to wear. It's a $700 camera right here that connects to your phone and projects on your hand and it's like, I don't know. I think it's almost like the same vibe as carrying around a big DSLR instead of carrying around a vintage film camera. Photographers talk about this all the time, how when they do street photography, you want to carry a tiny little film camera because it just harms people. You don't want to carry a huge fucking cannon thing, right? I think the Humane AI pen is the cannon thing on for sale. Please hold while my laser scans your retinas. Thank you. While my AI laser camera scans you and talks out loud, that's kind of terrifying. We don't want to be terrified. I get the terrifying is kind of like edgy and cool but I think there's a limit to it. It gets a lot of attention but I'm not really sure it converts into people actually liking it and buying it. It's just rage rate. Well, I'm a bit terrified that you've been in this hot tub this whole time. Are you feeling okay? I'm feeling fine. It's actually really cold out here. Yeah. I was going to say before you faint and then we have a problem on our hands maybe we'll let you go back to your launch as well. I'm sure you have a lot of DMs and emails to attend to but thank you so much for joining us. Yeah. I can't wait to get the dopamine rush. I can't wait to get that dope Twitter notifications but yeah. Thank you guys. And that's it for this week's show. Thanks to Daniel for coming on straight from the hot tub. If you like this show, don't forget to like and subscribe everywhere you get your podcasts. I could never say in a hot tub that long. We are access.show online. You can find us in video at access pod on YouTube. You especially want to do that this week. We would also love a five star review or thumbs up and share with a friend or digital friend even or an AI friend. You can find my newsletter at sources.news. And you can find me at hamburger on Twitter and at meaning.company for your start up storytelling needs. Access is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network and this show is produced by hooked creators. Bye. Bye. To a state surrounded by nature. That's nice. Go on. Book it. It's easy. Booking.com. Booking. Yeah. Fall is the perfect time to refresh and reorganize your space. 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