Grand Slam Journey
This podcast discusses various topics around - sports, business, technology, mindset, health, fitness, and tips for growth. Topics range from what sports have taught us and how we transitioned from a singular focus and pursuit of our athletic goals and dreams to the decision to end our sports careers and move into the next phase of our lives. My guests share how they found their passion and purpose, tips for maximizing potential - holistically - physically and mentally, how they transitioned from one chapter of their lives to the next, and how to drive success in sport, business, technology, and personal life.
Grand Slam Journey
86. Josh Payne⏐Coframe: The AI-Powered Future of Digital Experiences
Josh Payne shares his unique journey from musician to tech entrepreneur, exploring how AI is creating a more personalized, adaptive internet experience that could revolutionize how we interact with the internet, websites, and overall digital experiences.
• Personalization is fundamentally changing the internet, making it more contextual and adaptive to individual users
• Josh sees personalized experiences becoming essential, predicting A/B testing will eventually be obsolete
• Founding multiple startups, including AccessBell, Autograph with Tom Brady, and now Coframe
• Coframe uses AI to transform website testing from months-long processes to minutes or hours
• Working with major brands like OpenAI and The Economist to drive millions in incremental revenue through personalization
• Finding balance through music, playing with the SF Philharmonic, and using flotation tanks for deeper thinking
• Partnering directly with OpenAI to train specialized models for website code generation
• The importance of choosing founding team members based on working relationships rather than friendship alone
• Josh's perspectives on AI's rapid advancement and the need for responsible governance while embracing its creative potential
Learn more about Josh and Coframe:
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The way that we see the internet going with this advent of very powerful AI is it's going to become much more personalized and adaptive. There's two sides of this. There's the what we as people experience on the internet, and then there's the business side, what businesses want out of these digital experiences. On our side, for the most part, the internet is fairly static. It's not very contextual, it's not very personalized. It's a little bit hard to conceptualize this when you don't have a clear picture of what it could be Like before people had the iPhone. They didn't know that they wanted the iPhone kind of situation.
Josh Payne:But I think the closest proxy that we could make to this and we can argue certainly on the impact on society, but social media and search too, I would say highly contextual, highly adaptive and extremely effective at keeping people engaged. Now is that a good thing for society? We could certainly argue about that. But I think, by and large, making the internet more contextual, we would see in some cases it would also maybe have this negative effect on people would be wasting their time and so on and so forth. But what I get excited about are the cases it would also maybe have this like negative effect on people would be wasting their time and so on and so forth. But, like, what I get excited about are the cases where it makes people more productive, more effective, more informed right.
Klara:You're coming into a new website or experience and it's able to communicate to the Grand Slam Journey podcast, where we discuss the Grand Slam journey of our lives sports, business, technology and, in today's episode with Josh Payne, a path from music to scaling startups centered around technology, ai, gen, ai, crypto and a bunch more cool stuff. I'm going to keep this intro short because I provide plenty of introduction for Josh and his background during the episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to provide a review on Apple Podcasts, spotify or any other platform you use to listen to this episode. This episode is also available in video on YouTube. Thank you for tuning in and I hope you enjoy the lesson. Hello, josh, welcome to the Grand Slam Journey podcast. How are you?
Josh Payne:Doing great. Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
Klara:I've been super excited. I've been studying your background actually a connection of ours, send me your profile which I rarely accept. I've been diving into your background actually a connection of ours, send me your profile, which I rarely accept but I've been diving into your background, including listening to what you're creating, what you have created and a few podcasts you have been on, and I have so many questions that I feel like this could be a half a day episode, but I'm really excited. Before we kick off, I know you recently came back from an awful work trip Cannes in France, which is probably one of the worst cities to go to for a work trip for the Cannes Lions event. How was that?
Josh Payne:I mean it was just awful. The truth is, I can't recommend it enough. It was such an amazing time. It was just one of those events where you meet so many interesting people and it's not like you're meeting them just randomly and it's in a work setting. It's like they're friendly. It's about really making genuine connections, getting to know people. Super fun event. There's actually this really incredible sub event there called Sports Beach, which I was able to attend and I felt you would have totally loved it.
Klara:That sounds interesting. What is that about?
Josh Payne:So Sports Beach was put on by this agency called Stagwell, and the way that can is organized is they have a bunch of different what are they called beaches which are sectioned off parts of the actual beach, and different agencies will have their own sections. I don't know how much pay I have to pay to to have one, probably six to seven figures or something crazy but one of the ones was SportsBeach and they hosted a bunch of really interesting kind of just like athletes giving talks there about their work and athletic brands and that kind of stuff. I was able to kind of take a peek and see a couple of the talks really, really interesting stuff People, of course, talking a lot about sports marketing, but also influencer marketing that was a huge piece of it and how people can leverage their credibility and fame for interesting new ventures.
Klara:Nice and, before we dive into your beginning, all the background. Actually, how was the event for you? I know you went there for work as the founder of CoFrame, so I'm sure you had many meetings set up with marketing CMOs. How was that, when it comes to reception of what you're building and building the network and spreading the word about Coframe and what you all are doing?
Josh Payne:Yeah, it was really great, Such a special experience. I met a ton of really interesting partners both on the brand side and also on the agency side. One really funny story actually from it was actually at SportsBeach where this happened. I was hanging out with a partner at a big consulting firm and they have a bunch of really big companies and brands they work with and we've been exploring working together. They've brought us into a couple of things so far a couple of like their companies that they work with and we were just talking about different specific companies that might make sense to get in touch with on their side. And one of the ones a really really big retailer, he brought up and I was like, oh, that's interesting, we're actually already talking with them, we're in touch with them. In fact, I have a demo that I made for them and I pulled up the demo and it was of their website and our system, creating a variation of their website, and the variation was basically like a gift finder for Father's Day, a gift finder quiz.
Klara:Nice.
Josh Payne:And he like stops me midway through that and he's like there's no way. Like was that already on the site? And I was like no, our system made it. He's like we've been working with them for the past X amount of time and this was like the outcome of our engagement was like a recommendation to do this, to do this thing that you were actually showing me live on the site a gift finder quiz and it's just kind of like amazing validation. And he pulls out his phone. He's like I got to text the CTO of this company. He texts the cto you gotta meet co-frame. Um, that was super fun.
Klara:yeah, I love when that happens, that you are creating something they already think about without you knowing and then being able to show them and bring it to life, which I'm gonna jump into a little bit your intro and I want you to add a highlight but I've been really impressed by all you have achieved in our building. So, as the founder of CallFrame, which is one of the most powerful ways to increase web conversions, and I want to dive into kind of how you all are doing it with AI already driven millions in incremental revenue for some of the world's largest brands like OpenAI, the Economist and many more, creating real ROI with bleeding-edge AI. You previously co-founded Autograph with NFL legend Tom Brady, which is a unicorn, backed by Anderson Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins. So I'm curious about that background. Also, access Bell, which was acquired by a huge conglomerate data group. You created the first major autonomous agent for code generation, gpt Migrate, previously number one on GitHub. Co-created Coffee, authored 20 peer review papers and patents.
Klara:You attended Stanford University, where you're still in your free time, which I don't know where you found lecture and teach generative AI. You're an angel investor in 20 plus early stage technology companies and, on top of all this, you're also a musician. You play at the SF Philharmonic and SF Civic Symphony. You are a drummer, composer and producer of two jazz albums and composed an orchestral piece that is played by the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, which I actually listened to just before this episode. So all of that to say. Number one what do you want to add? And number two, how the heck have you achieved all of this in this? I find still very short life that you have. Like, what's the secret, josh?
Josh Payne:oh, my goodness, well, I appreciate, I appreciate this. Uh, a ton, you really, you really uh, um, did your homework. Um, let's see, I don't know, I just kind of just do what is interesting to me. To be honest, I think a lot of people like to map out the specifics of how they're going to accomplish xyz thing, and what I found to be the thing that keeps me going and and and energized, which is like really important piece of this, is just maintaining that energy is working on things that you like genuinely find interesting, and, of course, that gives you the fuel to to put in the hours and put in the work. Um, but but doing that, like with without that level of, you know, intrinsic motivation and passion, I don't know how anyone would do it. So I guess if I had any thought on how to do more things in life, it would be to do the things that you actually find interesting.
Josh Payne:There's this really interesting it was an interview, I guess, with Elon Musk and they're asking him what are you telling your kids to focus on, like to invest your time into, and learn and so on, and in the age of AI that's coming and that's a really interesting kind of topic that a lot of people are discussing right now, like when you were in an era where AI is able to do all the knowledge work that humans are doing today. Where are people going to find a place? And this is like fresh off the press I think this interview was like a week ago or two and he's just like you just got to do what you find you're passionate about, and that's the only way to really keep yourself going is to do that, and we might reach a point at some point down the road where AI is able to do all these things and maybe humans are less useful than we are today, but doing things that you generally find interesting is, I think, kind of a cure for that.
Klara:Are you one of the people that, once you kind of get that intrinsic motivation and passion that you don't need to sleep, do you sleep four or five hours a day?
Josh Payne:No, I need my sleep. I mean I got less sleep the last couple nights, but I usually try to get you know eight to nine hours each night. I find that having more sleep makes me more like net net. I'm more effective because I'm able to like just operate at a higher level, like if I have less sleep, the whole day is ruined.
Klara:Nice, so you're still able to achieve everything you have. So I want to dive into several of the things that I have mentioned, but before we do, I'm curious about what was your upbringing. I've also read that you mostly grew up in Texas, and who have influenced you, or what are some of the themes you came across in your upbringing that you saw, perhaps led you to finding your passion and entrepreneurship?
Josh Payne:I did grow up in Texas. I grew up in a military background. My dad was actually an athlete, which is really cool. I feel like I disappointed him a little bit by not becoming an athlete, but I have amazing parents and they're super supportive. I wanted to be a musician, actually growing up, and obviously music doesn't really pay the bills, so I was somewhat discouraged from going all in on music school. But, yeah, I had two amazing parents and we bounced around quite a bit when I was a kid military background and all that so lived in a bunch of different cities, countries, actually I lived in Italy for some time when I was really young and I think that that constant movement has sort of stayed with me today.
Josh Payne:As you looked at. I mean, one interpretation of the background is like he's done a lot of things. Another interpretation is he's just all over the place. He can't keep still, which, yeah, I think there's definitely an element of that Not keeping still long enough for any given time, and I think that's probably due to my early upbringing of kind of just constant change, but I don't know. It keeps life interesting for sure.
Klara:And you mentioned music. That is clearly a passion and I know we chatted briefly in our intro call that you still keep that on the side, something that is your outlet and inspiration. What was that path? How did you uncover music being the thing for you, and even the passion you mentioned initially wanting to be a musician, perhaps?
Josh Payne:Yeah, this is one of those things that I've learned that I can't do without. And how I learned this is for the last. The last company that I built we were based in LA for most of it and I didn't have anyone to play music with for the longest time living in LA, because I didn't have a community there initially and I started getting a little bit I don't know, I wouldn't say depressed necessarily, but I could feel that part of myself really shriveling up and that was impacting my mood, creativity and all that stuff. So I actually started flying up to the Bay Area every weekend to just play music with my jazz quartet on the weekends. And yeah, I guess it was that point.
Josh Payne:It was probably about eight months, nine months into living in LA where I kind of cracked a little bit and I was like I have to keep playing somehow and since that moment I just realized this has got to be part of my life in some fashion. Obviously, there's a limit to what you can do with limited hours in the day, so I don't play in a ton of groups. So, like, the SF Philharmonic is not the professional level SF symphony, to be really clear, but it is a good group and so we are able to get together, have a couple of rehearsals before each concert once a quarter, and yeah, it's like a lightweight way to keep that part of me alive and, you know, do a little jazz trio on the weekends as well. So it's just really important for creativity. I think music is one of those things that completely rewires your brain, puts you in a different state.
Josh Payne:When you're actively making music it can be almost meditative in terms of where your mind goes and how you feel coming out of it. I'm sure that there are other things that bring that. I'm sure, like for elite level athletes, you can find that same level of flow state in the sport that one is doing I've heard, which is really cool, so definitely a huge recommendation on that, just to find that flow state.
Klara:Yeah, it is interesting, as what you mentioned, I do definitely get it in my favorite sports and music is one of the interesting things. When you find a song that really hits with you, it just can get you moving. I always listen to music on my playlist before my tennis matches and you kind of go through the same routine that you know tries to get you to the same mindset. So you're consistent. It's interesting. It's something that's been with us for the history of society. Civilizations, right, people always found a way to enhance the culture or our lives with music and that has evolved. But you really sense it. You mentioned composing. I can't envision. Actually I love music, obviously, listen to music. I used to play piano. I would be very crappy pianist now. I quit that right when I started playing tennis seriously. But I can't imagine the mindset or, I guess, relaxation or what's the state of mind when you actually get to create something completely new. How do you come up with that idea?
Josh Payne:well, it kind of it has to be emergent to an extent and it's a little bit reactive, like when you're, when you're playing tennis you mentioned you have some of a flow state. Have you found that your body is able to kind of react on its own?
Klara:based on what the opponent does yeah like you actually just have to give it away, and if you get out of your own way, it knows exactly what you do. Actually, that's mostly the way to play. Well, you have to disconnect the mind and let just your body execute yeah, that that.
Josh Payne:That resonates a lot with me. I think that's the exact same concept. I mean, the more you try to force it, the worse it's going to be, counterintuitively. But you do have to, like I mean, imagine, in tennis too, you just have to. You can't get to, you know, level 10 off the bat immediately, like you have to put the hours in. It has to start to become second nature and then you can enjoy those benefits, right? Is that the case in tennis too?
Klara:The muscle memory is fantastic thing, and the only way to do it is you just put in a lot of hours. So I always yeah, I think there's a lot of similarities actually between all being an athlete, being a great musician, because no great musician just was born by sitting by a whatever piano or whatever their instrument is, for 10 minutes a day. Whatever you do, you have to put hours and hours of practice into it and then you get better. And now, as I say, it is probably the same with entrepreneurship. So it really seems to me now, as you mentioned the music, that you're applying a similar method for creating companies into your entrepreneurship. Is that accurate? You just try to get out of your own way and see the trends. Or, if you look at your startups that you were part of and co-founded and even co-frame, what's the mindset for creating those ventures?
Josh Payne:Yeah, certainly, elements of that are about getting out of your own way. It's definitely more of a complex process than the act of maybe writing something or playing a sport in the moment, because it requires a bunch of different. It's a life, right, it's a way of life, I would say. But there are certain aspects of that or certain times within that where you do need to feel like you're in a flow state, for instance, sales calls or recruiting calls. You just have to really let yourself connect with the other person, other people, try to let yourself feel that flow and try to communicate that flow to the other person as well, and and and that that's a really, really key part of um, a part of, I think, any type of repetitive thing that you're doing. That's really important for you to nail at a company is is getting into that flow state and letting your body learn right.
Josh Payne:There are also elements of it that are just genuinely. You got to grit your teeth and it's hard. It's not flow state. It's like I have to think really hard to figure out this challenging problem I found, personally speaking and I'm sure that this is useful in sports as well there's a therapy that I discovered recently, called flotation tanks, like sensory deprivation chamber, some people call it, and just getting in there for an hour or two hours and letting your mind wander, or maybe even having an agenda for what to problem solve around. But you're able to get into this like subconscious, almost lucid dreaming, like state where your mind is less blocked and you're able to figure out what are the actual important things I need to be figuring out right now.
Josh Payne:Yeah so, so certainly levels to it. There's a ton of different aspects of of building building a company, and sometimes, sometimes, it's legitimately just a grind, like when you're in there doing cold outbound to people, or like someone someone tells you like they're going to quit, or like some customers angry. You just got to grit your teeth and get through it, but that's life.
Klara:Yes, there's always a balance of the things that are pleasant or joyful and the things that you have to do, and I think, as far as the good and positive still overpowers the things that you just feel like you have to do and grind through, I think that's still a good balance if it's more than 50%.
Josh Payne:That's the aspiration at least.
Klara:Yeah, that is true. I'm sure in the startup building phases that can be even more than that, which I'm curious to dive into. So, outside of the things I have mentioned, you are also founder of the Stanford COVID-19 Response Lab. You are a founding team of Marlin Protocols and also started then the Access Bell and Autograph. Which order was that in? And actually, how do we want to start? How did you get the courage to jump in? It seemed like right away to. I want to create something of my own.
Josh Payne:I guess I started getting a little bit of an inkling of entrepreneurial push in high school. I would say that that's the first time I really started to feel that a little bit, and it was not through anything technical, in fact, it was definitely very much not technical. Prior to going to college I was more to music. I was working as a waiter at the time at a local restaurant and saved up some money to buy some recording gear for my at the time jazz quintet and had a great time. We made some music and so on, and then I had the notion to create an actual album. So we did that. We sold the album, did a little bit of local touring in the local cities and stuff Nothing super serious. But the sales from that I was able to see like we're like oh wait, I can reinvest this back into business. Obviously it wasn't thinking very sophisticated back then, but I took the proceeds and was able to buy better equipment. And then we made another album and I was like wait, this is a loop, this is basically a business in a way, in a small way, very small way, and that was really interesting to me is that you could create these loops and it could be something that you really genuinely enjoy doing as you were doing it.
Josh Payne:So going into college I got exposed to computer science and you know the general notion of building things and startups super out of my depth, like very much did not have a good time. The first quarter or two in college was like way outgunned by all my peers who were just like doing amazing things and I was like what do I do with my life? I don't know what I'm here for. So I definitely did some soul searching but I guess that like that seed was already planted and I started exploring entrepreneurship, which was kind of like the term that I had sort of started to discover in high school, and the first exposure to that was through a class taught by this amazing professor, chuck Easley, at Stanford in technology entrepreneurship. So that kind of like showed me the ropes of what that was. One of my current jazz trio members I actually met. He was one of the guest lecturers in that class. So that's a fun fact, definitely mixing that, the music and entrepreneurship.
Josh Payne:So got the bug there, built something. It didn't work out, decided I wanted to like join into something. That's where Marlin came into the picture. I was really interested in crypto at the time as a general concept and went through a different class in which some classmates and I built something which ended up becoming Marlin Protocol. That company ended up becoming pretty successful.
Josh Payne:I unfortunately left pretty early, I guess within six or nine months, to go work at IBM Research for an internship, but it continued and it became really. You know, at one point it was quite, quite, quite big. So that was kind of an initial, like a cool initial early experience there from from there, went through college, I guess, worked on a couple of things here and there and then when COVID hit, that was when I guess I was like really called to action. I would say so. It was COVID had just hit. I was going in between my senior year and then my going into business school at the GSB and there were a bunch of classmates and I were just like sitting there like what do we do with this crisis and what I? What I figured might be both like a way to leave a big impact but also have a lot of fun was basically bringing together this group to solve these problems related to COVID, and that's what ultimately became this incubator called the COVID Response Innovation Lab. I grew it to a couple hundred people and there's actually a lot of really cool companies that came out of it. One of the companies was AccessBell, which I kind of like had met with a couple of classmates GSB classmates basically like went through this together as I was kind of helping to organize it, I suppose, and that ended up becoming an actual company.
Josh Payne:And we worked with Tata Group. As you mentioned, big conglomerate in India ended up selling the company to them after about a year and it's still used internally at TopTag Group today. Actually the software powers the internal telemedicine, which is kind of neat, and so as we were navigating that sale, we weren't able to really scale to other big companies, which is what we wanted to do. Or I would say we might've been able to if we had more experience and we just didn't. So that was kind of a sign that we needed to, because it wasn't scaling, it was kind of a little bit more consultative. It was less of a high growth, high scale tech company and more of just like let's figure out and solve for your problems, cause they have a lot of needs. So we ended up selling to them. They have a lot of needs, so we ended up selling to them and as I was exploring, you know what to do next.
Josh Payne:That's where the idea for autograph came along. I met my co founder for that, dylan, through the same actually the same incubator, the COVID response lab, and we had stayed in touch throughout, and initially we were actually working on a hedge fund idea. We wanted to like basically create strategies for trading money and initially looking at normal equities, and then we looked at crypto and then Dylan got really, really interested in the at the time was really starting to boom was NFTs and that, sure enough, like we kept tracking it and it kept you know, taking off and we were like, wait, we should, instead of like trying to make you know, instead of trying to make a fund which none of us have the dna for, we should just try to make a company. And that's that's basically how that kind of got got off the ground.
Josh Payne:Dylan and his father, rich rosenbl His dad is super connected in LA, very seasoned entrepreneur himself, and he's built a lot of really cool companies. And the TLDR is they lived next door to Tom Tom Brady for like eight years, or they had lived next door to him for like eight years, and so they're still relatively close, and so, yeah, we were able to get in touch, kind of tell them about the concept. We had built a little bit of momentum we're getting some cool partnerships going Told him about the concept and, sure enough, he wanted to join on, not just as like a supporter or investor, but also as a co-founder, and so that's how that got off the ground. That's the whole arc. I went too long, but that's it.
Klara:No, you actually didn't. I have a whole bunch of questions as a follow-up. How do you know that this area or that specific idea that you have is the one to follow and that you want to build into a startup, because it seems like, kind of the way you describe it, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of interesting things coming your way, even at Stanford, that seem to be highly creative and entrepreneurship type of crowd, and so how do you validate, all right, this team I want to be part of, or this one not, and this idea has enough legs for me to explore it further and then build it to something bigger when there are specific trends, as you kind of look at the past, that you want to take, even as learnings. This is what works for me and this is maybe things that I should be aware of for any new ventures that if I see this or the other flag that it might be not worth it pursuing.
Josh Payne:Yeah, that's a fantastic question. That's a million dollar question really. This is changing for me. It's a million dollar question really. This is changing for me. But so far it's been very, very instinctual and not very strategic is more, it's been more like kind of follow the plot, like plot driven or narrative driven. Certainly I do want to like follow your passion part to stay like I wouldn't want to find myself building something I wasn't truly passionate about. But I actually think that becoming as strategic as possible as early as possible is is is a good move. What that does is it allows you to like plot for a longer course, right, um, something that's been interesting.
Josh Payne:I guess I give myself some critique here, like I've for the most part. I mean it's been, I don't know, like six years out of school or so at this point Um, in terms of looking at like compound value in building like one thing and making that really really big and important. There's that. That's one strategy. Another strategy is to, like you know, take a shot at a couple of things because it's like shiny and interesting, which I think was good for like learning and getting a sense of the space, and like having a bunch of different experience and basically like laying out the map essentially, but I don't know if it was as good for just like going super deep, which is something I have growth in, I have room to grow in for sure. It's just like the discipline of being super strategic and going really, really deep and staying committed. I was never uncommitted, but just like having that depth, if that makes sense.
Josh Payne:So, yeah, if I were to maybe like give my past self some advice, it would probably be keep the passion, keep the instincts for the right people, which is really, really important, cause that I think I've always done a good job with. But think a little bit like always done a good job with, but think a little bit like it's not just about having fun, like, yes, have fun, but that shouldn't be the entire plot. If that makes sense, there should be some deep thinking, especially with things that are so important as like what company do you build? That's one piece of critique and I'm working on it. You know these, these float tank sessions, are really helping me out here. I will say I discovered it like half a year ago and it's been absolutely incredible. I've, like I've probably bought, like at this point, like five people float tank or more probably, float tank sessions, just so that they can try it, cause I'm like this is the way, like you gotta try it, you'll figure out all your problems.
Klara:I love that. How often do you do them?
Josh Payne:Not often enough, like probably once every two months, I'm overdue. Well, I did one about three weeks ago, right before my trip to Cannes, so that I could sort of path plan and strategize what I was going to get out of it, and that was actually like incredibly helpful, yeah. But out of that session I knew I needed to do another one quickly because I was like there's still a lot more to dig into here that I didn't have time to dig into. So I got to do a part two.
Klara:Love that. I want to dive a little deeper into the second one. You mentioned instinct for the right people Because, again, building startups and from my own experience I've kind of had a few things on the side in the past that I've been trying to build and I think the founding team is so important If you don't have the right people. In fact, I would guess that the vast majority why startups fail is because of the founding team. They even can't figure out how to have complementary skill set or can't figure out to get to know each other enough or just grind through the beginnings that are super challenging. There needs to be commitment from all people who are involved. How do you choose your founding teams? It seems like you've had some connections that you knew from one that you were working out well with another partner and kind of started another one later. But what do you look for? What are some of the keys to success for picking the right founding team?
Josh Payne:That's a difficult one to put into words because, as I mentioned, instinct is really really important here. Honestly, one of the most important things you can do with figuring out any part of your team ideally, but, but especially the founding team is is, like, how do I work with this person before I work with them, if that makes sense, like in this, in this initiative? Startups are quite a ride and they can sometimes really strain your relationship, and so I actually usually don't. I think this is common advice to like not start something with someone who you're like good friends with, because you don't want to have the business strain leak into your friendship and maybe potentially like kind of ruin it. There certainly have been times in the past where, like, just the business strain has been really immense and, on the other hand, like having someone who you have a really incredible working relationship with is super valuable and establishing that prior to starting something with them is such a smart thing to do. So I would say maybe like separate that notion of friendship and work ship I don't know what the word for it would be, but work, relationship and trying to get a sense for them beforehand. I definitely did that with with everyone that I've basically started something with the covid responsivation lab. Like that was a great way for me to observe and work with people. I started access belt with, and then actually the same thing for autograph and you know I explored that too for co-frame, ended up starting off as a solo founder for a co-frame, um, but I certainly like had a couple of conversations and a little bit of collaborating here and there with people. Well, I guess I had a couple of experiences in the middle there like, um, starting at like a small fund, so I got to work with a couple of folks before we went all in and doing, uh, a fund together. That was super valuable and yeah, that's something that I can certainly vouch for is just like getting to know someone, I guess.
Josh Payne:If maybe like other characteristics value, alignment, and what are you here to do? You know, here in this world to do Maybe that's a profound question, maybe too deep for the first conversation you have with someone, but getting, but getting that sense like cause. Some people, some people don't have too much um, uh of a direction either way, and some people are like very driven by a trip on their shoulder. Some people are genuinely just pulled, pulled forward by what feels like the universe, um, or you know whatever it is like. Try to find out what drives them and align.
Josh Payne:You know you got to have the equal yoking right, be aligned and be driven by ideally like the same force, because that's going to be so important when the time is really tough, like why are we here? Like what are we in here in the trenches doing If it's not for a deeper reason? There's going to be less durability in that, like desire to push forward, which is honestly something that every successful company you know faces at one point, is adversity, like extreme adversity, and continuing to push forward is really, really key there, and finding people who are going to do that with you is really important. Continue to push forward is really key there.
Klara:And finding people who are going to do that with you is really important. That reminded me I listened to one of your podcasts where you actually shared a while back you had a bike accident and really got out of that accident with a lot of luck, which made you reevaluate a little bit of these deep questions I also shared. I recently went through a little bit of my health care too. Three, four months ago. That was really kind of the first time facing with potential news of like really some deep thinking.
Klara:I've always thought I was thoughtful about my career, but just that experience three, four months back made me realize how not thoughtful enough I was and there's probably even deeper level of thoughts that I haven't even gotten to. How do you reconcile that, because I find it's really rare that people have the level of awareness and asking those deep questions. Do you contribute that to the accident? Has that triggered kind of the deeper chain reaction to really understand that time is limited and you need to maximize it as much as possible to create the value and achieve what you want, or either other things, even from your upbringing or the journey that made you realize the importance of it?
Josh Payne:As you've probably experienced, those moments can just like open a door that can't be closed, if that makes sense. Like you know, you see something you can't unsee. Uh, yeah, certainly. I mean, the accident was a major catalyst for thinking, thinking about all that stuff in a pretty deep level. There probably is a fairly a fairly large like contrast in like life, in thinking before versus after, from that particular moment, um, and in other moments surrounding it, like, uh, of, maybe there's the feeling of like you know what's Like there. There certainly were moments of despair, I would say, especially throughout college, even like throughout throughout my whole life, but I mean certainly some, some, some difficult ones throughout that experience, just like you know, not necessarily triggered by any specific like event, but just a general uh, despair, um, and so, yeah, those things will make you think, for sure, and it'll, it'll, it'll cause you to to like, question, uh, question things that aren't usually questioned and and allow for new thinking and allow for new um realizations about yourself and direction, and that'll create new direction and you will use that direction to like find the next thing and it ends up turning into into, into something and I suppose, like the, the hope is that that something is, is, is good, and it puts you on path. Usually going through difficult things does um, does, does turn into into good outcomes.
Josh Payne:Like um, jensen Huang had had this like amazing talk at Stanford. Um, I wasn't there for it, but I saw a recording. One of the lines that he that he said to the the audience was um, I wish you ample doses of suffering, because because that's what makes people truly strong and and resilient and and great. Honestly, it's like well, that's how greatness is formed is through suffering. It's kind of I don't know if it's an unfortunate fact of life, it's kind of beautiful. It's certainly beautiful, that's for sure. Um, it feels like it might be unfortunate but in a way, it's like, yeah, it feels right that that's the case.
Klara:Yeah, I resonate with it for sure. I think that's one thing I remind myself to work at every day. Muscles are formed through strain, and I think it's the same true for mind. If you want to be smarter, you just got to use your mind in the same way, or in many ways, as the cold plunges is what we do. We're putting yourself in discomfort for four, five, 10 minutes in the cold water, and then you come out and you feel amazing about yourself. It doesn't last that long, but it's still something that I'm addicted to, that I do every day. How do you actually maintain, josh, that groundedness? I know you mentioned the flotation tanks, music. How do you keep that steadiness and awareness and keep track of the purpose and what you're building? Are there any other tips?
Josh Payne:No man, I mean that question is making a lot of assumptions that I do keep a steadiness. I mean, to an extent I do. I'd say it's not I'm like completely lost all the time. But there's certainly moments where it's like you do feel ungrounded and disconnected and maybe just like like whoa, and then you then you take a step back or like you have some moment where you you're thinking consciously about it again. It's like whoa, like that whole last week, like I was kind of just like out of the zone, like what happened.
Josh Payne:So flow tanks are a great way to get back into that grounded state. Cold plunges are great. I love cold plunges. I don't have the same discipline that you do to do them every day, but they're really great. Yeah, music like getting into a flow state.
Josh Payne:I think what that does is it refreshes your mind. So it puts you into a, into a mental state where you're able to you have, you have like a, not a second wind, but like more, more mental durability and energy, and that can lead to you feeling like you have the space to think about hard things again, cause sometimes sometimes I mean the fact of it is life is so busy that you feel like you don't really have the luxury of taking a step back and having that 30,000 foot view and thinking about things. Even if you did, it would actually be highly beneficial. And you look at the before and after and it'd be like night and day. You still, in that moment especially, you're oh, but like in this one moment right now I still got to grind or I don't have the energy or motivation. I just want to keep scrolling on Instagram or whatever it is. That's just like really challenging.
Josh Payne:I feel like there's like a some, some idea of a muscle that that must be worked up. That sort of like pulls you out of that state. When I find a way to like train that consciously and directly, I'll let you know. But like that's a really interesting and important one. But I guess, like having habits, like people fall back into their habits, that's kind of one thing. So for me it's music habit, for others it could be doing that daily ritual of a cold plunge. You probably have an immense amount of energy coming right out of that and a lot of like exuberance and joy and so on. If you had a schedule for flotation tanks to have that like high level thinking, that could be really beneficial. I haven't given myself a schedule for that yet. I probably should. I just kind of like generally do it when enough like mental cruft builds up. I got to think about all this.
Klara:I just kind of like generally do it when enough like mental cruft builds up. I got to think about all this. Yeah, I feel like creating a routine can be helpful, but at times it's really hard. I think especially hard when you feel like you're driving progress and you're solving something and you have one thing after another, and even the more exciting it is, the harder it is to step away. So actually continue to carve out the time every two, three, four weeks, whatever cadence that is for you. I feel like it's even more challenging then because you so don't want to step away from what's going on. But you also know that the stepping away will create much more space and clarity of thought or ideas, which, yeah, I always struggle with it. It's hard to step away, but then once I'm due, I'm so grateful that I have done it.
Klara:So I want to go a little bit deeper into a couple of the startups still even Access Bell which again remind me. It seemed like it was digital health platform that came out a little bit out of the Stanford COVID-19 response that was acquired by Tata, because they seemed like they wanted to actually stretch into the healthcare market and build something of their own. So it seemed like it was a perfect fit. Again, being acquired is no small task. How did you achieve that? How did you find that match?
Josh Payne:Well, the initial match was made. Once you're working with the company, I guess the discussion to sell something to them isn't. It's not an easy one, but it's not completely out of the blue. It happens a lot. You'll sell it to one of your customers. So I guess the more interesting piece here was how the initial relationship got started. Certainly a good degree of, I guess, fortune involved there too. I had this classmate when I was in undergrad. Relationship got started. Certainly a good degree of, I guess, fortune involved there too. I had this classmate when I was in undergrad.
Josh Payne:I took a couple of classes at the business school just because I wanted to learn about business, and one of the students that I met there she was an MSX student At the time. She was a general manager for Tata, so she helped with a bunch of initiatives across the whole portfolio. She was part of Tata, so she helped to. She helped with a bunch of initiatives across the whole portfolio. She was part of Tata Sons, which is like kind of the parent company, I would say, and we like kept in touch over the course of I don't know three years or four years from when I met her to, and then she went back to India, I think. And when we were catching up at that point we had this software that we built and we built a video conferencing platform for calls. We could easily spin up and I was doing all the time catching up with people with it was like, yeah, let's use our platform, that's kind of cool. And so catching up on this platform and she, she just says, hey, like you know, we're exploring a new video conferencing platform. I noticed that this worked on mobile for web, which is kind of cool. We're exploring new platform options for telemedicine, for Tata Medical and Diagnostics, which is that part of Tata that was kind of getting spun up I think at the time, and a really important requirement for their telemedicine platform was that it could work on mobile web. The reason for that being is that most people have mobile devices and, you know, downloading an app it takes a lot of bandwidth. You know people don't want to download an app for just like a telemedicine call with their doctor, right. So, like, if it works in mobile web, it's like great's. It's relatively just kind of like transient. You know it happens. Then you're done.
Josh Payne:And we were, I guess, being evaluated against cisco, webex and zoom, neither of which had mobile web offerings. I think at the time google meet also did not have a mobile web offering. It was, it was only through the app if you're on your phone, and so we like went through the process and and we were the solution that they went forward with and got to kind of like build for the requirements and ended up becoming, like I mentioned, pretty consultative because they're a huge, huge enterprise. Lots and lots of needs. We had to be like deployed in Mumbai servers like in India, and had to go through, like you know, be HIPAA compliant especially, and a bunch of other compliance hurdles.
Josh Payne:But that was a really cool experience for just like I was sort of right out of undergrad and so was. So was our CTO, kamil, and then it was like collectively it was kind of like our first real startup. I would say so really cool like early experience working with a big company like that. Very, very lucky, I would say so really cool like early experience working with a big company like that.
Klara:Very, very lucky, I would say. So how did that acquisition feel Like after? Did it give you more confidence that this is cool, I want to continue doing this? Did you feel successful? Or did you think, oh, I wish we did something else?
Josh Payne:I think there was. There was definitely like a some. I mean, you always look back and you're like man, if only I had done this. Uh, right, yeah, I felt good, it's always smarter. Yeah, that's right. Um, it definitely felt good for sure, like kind of to kind of have that under our belts.
Josh Payne:And what also felt good, to be honest, was like, um, that we didn't have to continue doing this consultative thing and it was hard to scale. We were like we were all wanting to build stuff that was really going to scale and it was feeling like this wasn't as easy to scale, and so I suppose it was a little bit of uh, just like feels right, you know, it feels right to to kind of like support this and then deploy it with them. They own it, and we had a couple of smaller customers, I, I think, at the time, but it was like they were like our only really big customers. But I don't know, I think that you look back and you're like, if I had more experience, if I had the notion that we should have gone and done a bunch of like outbound sales or I didn't even know what that term was at the time Right, like, and so, being an enterprise company, you kind of like.
Josh Payne:That's like bread and butter. So we just none of, none of us really really knew how to do the thing. And so you look back and you're like, okay, well, if, if, if I'd done this, this and that you know would have, would have, could have, should have, because it certainly didn't. It wasn't like a huge exit telemedicine, but yeah, it was like it was nothing, nothing substantial, but it also like allowed me to then go and build Autograph, which is cool, and then now Coframe, which is also cool.
Klara:Yeah, I'm curious how did even the Autograph idea started? Because you had a background into something completely different you mentioned before. You did crypto, then digital health. You have this really broad expertise that I'm really curious about, even into your IBM and the other podcasts I listened to. You did IP and networking, even telecom that a lot of people just don't even want to scratch the surface of Software development, ai. You have this really impressive breadth. So, going from digital health and, I guess, telehealth platform to Autograph that is working with athletes, that's a very different idea and startup. How did you uncover that path and what's the next step for that?
Josh Payne:Let's see it wasn't extremely different from what I'd been doing, for instance, with Marlin, because they're both crypto. Crypto has always been of interest to me. It still is. That initial experience certainly helped, I think, my framing of the opportunity to borrow pardon the pun, but I certainly didn't have any experience working with athletes or celebrities or anything of that nature and luckily I wasn't the one who had to manage that as someone who was kind of like leading on the products and technical side. That was more of Dylan and Rich's job. That's to be like completely honest. That's like why the business worked Like they were like absolute killers at that side of it. But it was like a fantastic learning experience. It was consumer. I hadn't at the time done a consumer product. I guess like Marlin was a little bit consumery, but not really. It was more kind of like deep tech and so that was new.
Josh Payne:What I like to do in general is kind of try to understand the full environment of something before figuring out how to navigate it, if that makes sense.
Josh Payne:That is a pattern that I've seen in myself, both within a company and also when I look across my journey so far and getting coverage in different roles, different responsibilities, different types of markets and one could argue maybe like there's not enough time in the world to really understand everything and you got to go deep, and I partially agree with that.
Josh Payne:I think it's important to at some point like go deep.
Josh Payne:But that has really like, I find, that you take learnings from certain areas and you're able to apply them to new areas. For instance, with Autograph I learned a lot of incredible things about marketing and driving interest and driving brand and sort of like taste, I would say, and that helped significantly with Cofring. We had like an incredible growth marketing team at Autograph. We had like an incredible growth marketing team at Autograph. And likewise there were things that I picked up with Access Bell and thinking about like bigger deals and that kind of stuff that I was able to use and think with Autograph, incredible point of view on how you can, how you use different disciplines, uh, in in a lattice work of mental models, as you're starting, as you're solving problems, and I firmly believe in that. I think it's actually really beneficial to have experiences in various places that you can apply to new problems, because then you can generalize and you are able to solve things that people who are just a little bit stuck in a certain track aren't able to solve.
Klara:Yeah, and so the Autograph idea actually curious. How was it to work with Tom Brady? I always look at him as just amazing figure that whichever team he's on, he's able to level up obviously just himself, but everybody around him to win, and so I wonder if you had a chance to interact with him on that note. Any observations?
Josh Payne:Yeah, a little bit. We interacted especially more at the beginning. He did give a couple of really great pep talks to the overall company, which were always inspiring. Of course, he's just really good at getting people fired up. You know he wasn't like in the slack or like he wasn't. You know you couldn't be like at Tom Brady, get this done or whatever Not that type of relationship but when he was there it was always really inspiring.
Josh Payne:I remember the first time at least the first time I interacted with him. We were just telling him about the general idea and he was at a practice, I think, or after a practice, sitting in the back of like an SUV, and I just remember being like wow, the most important meetings in one's career can be just as casual as this. It's kind of crazy, and that has been true. I've had several such meetings with other really interesting people in similar environments, just like off the cuff, and it ends up being one of the most important things that you do. In those moments you didn't have the suit on, you didn't have like the 60 page deck ready, you just like were in the moment and you made it happen, and it's like those types of moments make it all fun I love that, and tell me a little bit more about the autograph, because I know it's still around now.
Klara:You're still advisor and it has evolved quite a bit from when you initially started it with just the crypto to a little bit different platform, so I'm curious about it. Obviously it has an athletic focus well.
Josh Payne:So now what we've, what we've identified, you know, of course, as you're probably aware, the the market for what we were doing has diminished a bit across the entire market, and so we decided it would be the best use of the team's talent and resources to focus on an adjacent market a couple of years ago, and that market right now is fitness.
Josh Payne:So we merged with this company called Future. We had a bunch of amazing athletes as part of the platform, bunch of amazing athletes as part of the platform we work with not just Tom, but Derek Jeter, tyra Gray-Woods, naomi Osaka, usain Bolt, simone Biles, people like that and with all that amazing star power, why not apply it to something that is both very relevant and also has a great mission, which is fitness and wellness? So we kind of acquired this company called Future, which had been growing. The whole thesis was let's supercharge it with this star power and accelerate the growth, basically, and so that's what Autograph is currently focused on now is really going all in on using this amazing talent to help create these digital experiences for people to improve their fitness.
Klara:Got it, and so how do you still keep an eye and stay well with that while building Co-Frame? So I want to transition now to the Co-Frame idea and what you're doing and things that you're scaling for some of the largest companies in the world.
Josh Payne:Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, From a day-to-day basis I'm definitely not very involved. They got a good thing going, the team's got it handled and I wouldn't be that much help anyway, and so the TLDR is right now. I'm very, very focused on co-framing. It's like very important for us to to nail this, because we have a huge, huge opportunity on our hands if we execute really well, which is what we're singularly focused on. I guess the last I don't know year and a half or so of my life has been just completely focusing in on this area. That's why I kind of, at the beginning, was talking about how this was a growth edge for me, which was focusing more and being more strategic. Well, this is me being more strategic. Now I've like done a lot of thinking about the arc of this opportunity and this business, and that's what I'm pretty solely focused on at the moment.
Klara:Tell our listeners a little bit more of what Callframe is. I've done some research. I've listened to some of your illustrative videos. Ai is generating sort of personal website experiences for a person that is based on algorithms that you have behind AI Gen, ai and to kind of take into consideration. How do I, for example, clara, who's Czech and lives in Texas, now like to perceive the brand and what resonates to me versus, perhaps, my mom, if it's a global company in Czech Republic, versus somebody else who has, let's say, different preferences? Is my understanding accurate? What do you want to add and what is maybe the hypothesis for even starting this?
Josh Payne:Yeah, 100%. You're pretty spot on the way that we see the internet going with this advent of very powerful AI is it's going to become much more personalized and adaptive. There's two sides of this. There's the, what we as people experience on the internet, and then there's the business side, what businesses want out of these experiences, these digital experiences. On our side, for the most part, the internet is fairly static. It's not very contextual, it's not very personalized. It's a little bit hard to conceptualize this when you don't have a clear picture of what it could be. You know, like before people had the iPhone, they didn't know that they wanted the iPhone kind of situation.
Josh Payne:But I think the closest proxy that we could make to this and we can argue certainly on the impact on society of these platforms but social media and search too, I would say highly contextual, highly adaptive and extremely effective at keeping people engaged. Now is that a good thing for society? Like we could certainly argue about that. But I think you know, by and large, making make the internet more contextual, we would. We would see in some cases it would. It would also maybe have this like negative effect on. You know, people would be wasting their time and so on and so forth. But, like, what I get excited about are the cases where it makes people more productive, more effective, more informed, right, like you're coming into a new website or experience and it's able to communicate to you why it makes sense for you to be there or or not. Like you know, you have the clearest picture possible of like what this is that I'm interacting with, and suddenly that like you're not just on the internet, like kind of more or less blindly trying to figure out what what's relevant to you. It's like kind of along with the journey with you, it's like a companion in a sense, and so that's that's kind of the future that I see these interfaces, these digital interfaces, continuously adapting to us and personalizing and so on, and that ultimately should make information more efficient. Like information flow more efficient, commerce more efficient, the whole. Like notion of blasting ads at people that are just irrelevant, like that's why people don't like ads. It's because it's like not relevant, it's like spammy, it's you know it's not for them, but like if you had a world where everything just made sense and like was a good fit. Like that's what we want to drive toward for the internet.
Josh Payne:So on the business side, of course, this is where, like, more of the strategy part comes in and like kind of framing it. You know, people have websites that are an important part of their commerce, and how do you drive more business through the website? Well, you have to make sure that that experience connects the most effective way possible with your visitors to the site, and so the way that people do this is because you're not an Oracle, you don't know for sure. You have to run these experiments, so you have to try different versions of the website. People refer to the term A-B testing. You know is a common kind of like well-known, well-understood term for this.
Josh Payne:You have to try different experiences out, but the act of trying those experiences out is really time consuming, really expensive. It requires marketers to go and understand the data and then that they pass it off their concepts, the designer who goes and designs variations, and it takes a couple weeks to get those out. And then they pass it off to the engineers who go and build and implement it in code, and that takes another few weeks. And then they go and pass it to the QA team and they make sure it passes all the brand guidelines and the compliance guidelines, and it's just like a huge, long, messy process, and what we're doing at Coframe is simplifying it immensely, like we're taking what usually takes sometimes months.
Josh Payne:I was just chatting with a really, really large brand and one of the things that we discovered in one of our calls recently with them was it takes them anywhere between 600 hours and 1,000 hours per experience to do an A-B test, and sometimes 2,000 hours plus for really complex ones. That's just like an immense amount of time. It's mind-boggling. It's like three to four months to get something out the door and um and a co-framed. We're like we help to create these variations within minutes and hours, like it's way, way faster and we can test way more as a result. Basically, someone has an idea either us or them and it's ready within a day instead of being months, you know, and so, as a result, what we're able to do is just have a way higher velocity of testing and really iterate toward that best, most optimal experience for your customers and for the metric that you care about.
Klara:Once we think about both sides of the coin, the speed at which you can continue going and savings when it comes to not running these A-B tests. I've actually listened to one of your videos that you're kind of predicting A-B tests are going to be obsolete sooner or later. Because if you actually could apply this also to anything campaign, email marketing, even social media people usually run A-B testing right and it's just the same amount of you have to create different versions. You test monitor. So if you can shorten that across all spans of marketing communication, I can imagine just that saving and efficiency and effectiveness.
Klara:At the same time, it makes me think of especially one of the big brands that I worked for consistency and kind of fear of always be exactly on point the way they want to be, and so that could be just an obstacle that I can foresee you maybe running into in some ways or another. I guess the question is is there an ideal client, or who are you seeing this is resonating with the most? Maybe, on top of that, are there any specific objections or fears that you see you have to debunk when it comes to adopting call frame?
Josh Payne:yeah, well, so who works with the most is anyone that has a good amount of traffic. So, like most consumer businesses, this is great, for it tends to work really well for e-commerce, for travel, financial, consumer financial services. There's a bunch of different categories out there, but anything consumer-y, if you will, and not just enterprise either. Also, we work with a number of mid-market companies as well. Anything that's got enough traffic, or if they have a team that's running these experiments, imagine if you could staff that team on building your product instead, instead of just building stuff that 90% of it's going to get thrown out anyway because it's not a winning test. So that's where we fit in really well.
Josh Payne:And on the objection side, I mean, yeah, of course there are objections, like is this fit with my brand guidelines, like how do I make sure I get approvals over this, like other impacts on performance and all that stuff. And the cool part is like, once we get deep enough, we always have the right answers. It's just a matter of like getting there, but it has taken some iteration to get there for sure.
Klara:So similar questions on Conframe, even how you started it, I'm really curious if you can dive a little bit deeper into how you measure the data. How do you distinguish, let's say, what I would like to see and perceive on the page and what I'm looking for versus somebody else? Are there trackers on the website that you have to use? Privacy and security? How do you measure even where my eyes go and what am I interested in when I get on the page versus somebody else? There's like a whole concept of even privacy and security. I guess that is underlining. I'm just curious how you're segmenting that on the broader scale.
Josh Payne:Yeah, that's a good question. We're not doing anything as sophisticated or scary as eye tracking. That would be pretty insane, although the technology does exist. But yeah, so we don't track anything that's personal as far as data goes. We're not tracking you across different sites. We're not tracking any personalized information. We work with a number of companies that are subject to GDPR requirements, and also for medical, there's HIPAA as well, and so we're only measuring events that happen on the website on an anonymized user basis.
Josh Payne:So if someone comes to the website, the place they come from can also actually give us some good signal on what is going to resonate the best for them. Let's say that you're running some ads to your website like some Google search ads. If the user is clicking on the ad and then they are dropped into a one size fits all landing page that's not personalized to them, the conversion rate is going to hurt, because that user is gonna be like this is not quite what I was expecting. You know, I kind of looked at something different in the ad. It said something else. I'm not seeing it here. I'm gonna leave the cool thing.
Josh Payne:One cool thing about co-frame is that you can sort of like do this personalization across different ad groups that you're running and individual ads and stuff like that. That tends to be a powerful way to do personalization across different ad groups that you're running and individual ads and stuff like that. That tends to be a powerful way to do personalization, where you don't actually know anything about the person themselves, but you do know where they came from, and that's something that, luckily speaking, isn't of concern on any sort of data privacy. And then, yeah, the other cool part is like to us, users are just a series of clicks on a page. They're not tied to anything personal. We don't know their name, we don't know their email, anything like that, so it's a highly anonymized environment, which, for companies that are subject to GDPR and other regulations like that, it's very important to have that level of kind of like anonymization.
Klara:Yeah, people can see. I've been in Accenture for a while. We have a whole bunch of public research and the world is continuing to head towards personalization. Whether we want it or not, consumers do want personalized experiences. I guess the question is how to personalize in the right way, how to achieve it in the right way, which seems like your technology and the way you have built Coframe allows companies to do that, so why wouldn't anybody use that? Is that the aspiration, or what are your goals that align with, kind of your view of where the internet is going and the personalization?
Josh Payne:Certainly, and that's our view as well Like there should be no reason not to use Cofframe, it should be silly to not use co-frame. That's kind of our mantra in general and I think today it's still silly to not use co-frame. The only limitation really is that there is still some human involvement required from our side to make sure all the quality is there, the layer of quality assurance. It's not fully automated. Ai is only so good. It's getting better really quickly.
Josh Payne:Even in just the last two months, like our product quality has kind of skyrocketed and we've seen some really big wins as a result for clients. But there's still that human factor of I would call it customer success or service delivery and making sure people are getting the value that they pay for and all that stuff and more. And so once it's fully, fully and ai is really really great well, it is already really great, but once it's, you know, good enough to be able to take on this fully, sure, I mean this is going to be something I think every website should have like as a no-brainer for sure yeah, where do you see this ai world heading?
Klara:because you've been at the center of, it seems like, playing with AI from the beginning and now implementing it really as a core ingredients of your venture at Cofframe. What do you foresee happening next?
Josh Payne:Yeah, I wouldn't say I was there since the beginning. For sure that's true.
Klara:Actually I started way back, I guess the Gen AI and kind of the new wave of. I feel like you've been playing with the technology, really, since it's been picking up.
Josh Payne:Yeah, nai, for sure, and deep learning before that, I guess that was yeah. Where do I see it going? The pace at which it's improving is remarkable and at times, a little bit alarming because of the implications of not being the most intelligent species, like the, not being the top dog eventually. I don't think humanity is prepared for that at all, like we've never faced any problem that is remotely close to this. So, all the way up to the top government, I think there needs to be a lot more discussion about how we govern, how we as a society transition to like kind of cope and deal with this. Right now, it's it's all, it's all game. It's basically a very powerful calculator, it's a very powerful tool and it's starting to become more and more agentic. Uh, I would use that word even if agents were to weren't a buzzword. Um, it's becoming more autonomous, but at some point in the near future we're going to be faced with basically our digital counterparts that are as capable or more than we are, and I don't think anyone is very few people like truly grasp what that is going to entail and how we're going to. No one knows how we're going to adapt for sure. The hope is, of course, and this is where a lot of the research and alignment is going into. The hope is is that we are able to structure these systems in such a way that they remain on our side, to like kind of put it bluntly.
Josh Payne:There's a lot of great, great thinkers out there who are sort of like pushing the boundary here, who I would certainly recommend checking out. Jeffrey Hinton he's like the godfather of AI, he's like someone to listen to. Eliezer Udowski I don't know if that's the right pronunciation of his last name, but I would say he's kind of a quote unquote doomer. He's got the pessimistic view on it, but it's really, really well thought out.
Josh Payne:The Leopold Oshchenbrenner's essays and I don't know if I'm pronouncing these names right, it's rare that I say them out loud, I just usually read them. He has the situational awareness essay, which is extremely well, in my opinion, extremely well thought out, so there should certainly be more awareness of it. People should be thinking about it. Of course, I'm really gunning for the bull case here. Right, there are a lot of incredible things that could come out of it. That's going to be the position that the leaders of these companies, like Sam Altman and Dario and everyone, are pushing for. So that's the camp that I sit in too, but I do think that we're going to need to approach it with a pretty high degree of just like intelligence and prudence here. Yeah, government is going to need to get involved and start thinking about this at a high level, for sure.
Klara:Yeah, so it seems like you're leaning towards the positive side, but thinking about the potential risks.
Josh Payne:I just, like you know, hope for the best plan for the worst. It's kind of the situation.
Klara:And you have partnership actually with OpenAI. You're using, I'm guessing, some of their technology or models for your product as well.
Josh Payne:Yes, we partner with them. We have the distinction of, as far as I'm aware, being the only MarTech company who's partnered with them directly in training models, which is kind of cool. So, yeah, we worked with them to train a fine-tuned model for writing website code, essentially like creating on brand style and brand aligned code for variations for your website, which is kind of neat.
Klara:Yeah, so I'm guessing you are leaning towards SAM, because otherwise you wouldn't partner with OpenAI. But there's a lot of people like Ilan and Jensen you mentioned all of the leaders that are obviously preaching as well as stating the risks of AI and how it can overcome our analytical thinking or the wisdom of humans. Do you have a leader that you look up to? Or it could be either of those or somebody else.
Josh Payne:when you look at kind of the entrepreneurship, what you're building and kind of your path ahead, yeah, I definitely look up to different people in different ways, like I have an immense amount of respect for, for instance, like elon musk's kind of grit, uh and just like tenacity. I don't know if I would necessarily like hold him as like, uh, the most stable.
Josh Payne:You know the grounded presence in someone's life, necessarily he's he's certainly I definitely feel like he thrives at chaos and throwing cards in the air and then realigning them yeah yeah, yeah, which, to be fair, I also like chaos sometimes too, but but, yeah, like, everyone has their strength and the people that you mentioned all have just like an insanely immense amount of strength in respective areas that have made them very successful, and so certainly I try to like learn what I can from people like that. I wouldn't say that I have like one camp or another necessarily, but, yeah, try to take inspiration where I can get it.
Klara:And so there's lots going on now although I realized I've been saying this for years, since the duration of the podcast and the world seems to just keep spinning wilder and wilder. Maybe that's just the way our lives are now, even just with AI and what we have been mentioning. What would you want to inspire people to be doing more of, or less of?
Josh Payne:Yeah, I think now more than ever, it's a really great time to just be like following your curiosity. It's like building stuff, like it's so easy to build stuff now, especially with the help of AI. But I firmly believe that, like people are here on Earth to like create things and be creative and discover and, you know, make meaning out of things, and curiosity is kind of like the compass that helps us to do that. Um, amazingly, we're living in a time, more than ever, where we are empowered to, I guess, like act on our curiosity, like want to build something, some some cool new app. You can do that in a weekend with with some of these coding platforms like lovable or replator cursor.
Josh Payne:Um, if you want to learn about astrophysics as though it's taught to you like a high schooler, you can ask oh three to do that, and it'll do a pretty freaking good job at it too. This is a such a rare and unique time where, like, what we do is, uh is is still meaningful. We haven't been supplanted by AI yet and, at the same time, we have the ability to execute our vision and let our curiosity just explore more than ever. So that's something I just like let yourself loose is kind of the short answer here.
Klara:Love it, I guess. Just one more follow-up you mentioned quite a bit of AI, some of the new tools. Is there anything that you're playing with now that's really exciting, whether it's an app or something that you're testing. You would suggest people to follow or test out on their own to just check out some of the AI, gen, ai advancements.
Josh Payne:Yeah, actually, my advice here is not about finding the apps. It's about sufficiently going deep enough and exploring what they can do. Like everyone already knows about ChatGPT and Cloud, but not that many people know that you can build an entire web application in Cloud or in ChatGPT web application in cloud or in chat gpt, or you can like teach yourself an entire language in these platforms, or you can like create new recipes like people just need to explore. Like we've already been given fire by prometheus. Like the fire is already there. We don't need like some new like fireplace to put it into or some new whatever we we just need to like explore how it's burning. You know what I mean? Like just explore the properties of it.
Josh Payne:Ai is extremely adaptive and malleable and like multi-purpose, and there's actually a muscle that you build which is like figuring out when to go in and ask. You know either this used to be done with, like with people, right, you'd have the muscle of like when to delegate something, or when to ask for help, or when to have someone show you how to do something. That same principle can be applied to ai. Like you ever? You have that like uh, that moment where like oh, I'm stuck just like ask, ask a model. I mean it depends on the problem, obviously, but there's just like so many problems that are very easily solvable with these models now, and so people just, I think, need to get better at building that muscle, because we have it as a tool now. It's like kind of an extension of ourselves if we would let it be A really powerful one at that. So people just need to explore it more deeply.
Klara:Is it part of your Stanford AI class curriculum? Maybe I should sign up for it.
Josh Payne:Yeah, that one's a little bit niche. It should be a class.
Klara:It's like you could create a new one around that. That would be exciting.
Josh Payne:Yeah, I mean, I definitely try to push for that. And I also talk about the dangers of relying too much on AI in that class, particularly for engineers, it's very tempting to just like let it take care of everything and not even thinking about what. What it's doing which? Um? Eventually that might actually be fine. Um, as ai gets extremely powerful, it's almost as though you become an engineering manager and you don't actually have to know the code. But it's not quite there yet. You still should be using it as an assistive tool, not not a full-on replacement yeah, I can imagine.
Klara:with coding the hallucination can be weird. Even chedji bd makes up stuff for me at times. Josh, thank you so much. I want to respect your time because I know we're over, but this was fantastic you letting me in on your Grand Slam journey that you have been building, and a super fan of what you're building at Cofframe Hope to stay in touch. If you have a trip to Austin, please let me know. Would love to catch up in person for coffee, or I'll do the same if I'm in Bay Area and you're there and not traveling. What's the best way for anyone who wants to get in touch to reach you? Can I add your LinkedIn profile, or is there any of your favorite social media that you prefer to use?
Josh Payne:Sure, yeah, linkedin is good. I think it's Josh Payne with an X instead of the A, so P-X-Y-N-E and then joshcoframecom is my email. Feel free to hit me up with questions. Happy to try to be helpful as helpful as I can, but thanks for having me on the show. This is such a pleasure. It's great to have this amazing conversation. I'd love to catch up when you're in SF or I'm down in Texas, maybe visiting my family. That'd be great.
Klara:That'd be fantastic. Thank you, and actually last question, can I add your symphony, the one you composed, as the ending of this episode? I don't know if it needs to be cleared through IP rights.
Josh Payne:Oh man, it's not very good, but you can. If you want to, you can. Yeah, I appreciate that, all right.
Klara:I'll add it. I thought it was great. All right, I'll add it. I thought it was great. I listened to it before, so I'll give a peek for listeners to the music talent and what you're able to create, also on the music side.
Josh Payne:Appreciate that Awesome, if you enjoyed this episode.
Klara:I want to ask you to please do two things that would help me greatly. One, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, spotify or any other podcasting platform that you use to listen to this episode. Two, please share this podcast with a friend who you believe might enjoy it as well. It is a great way to remind someone you care about them by sharing a conversation they might be interested in. Thank you for listening © BF-WATCH TV 2021.
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