Shell Game: Launch

0:00This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Surfshark just rolled out something called Doe Sauce and it's their fastest protocol yet. The clever part is in the architecture. Each user gets a dedicated tunnel so your connection never shares resources with anyone else's. That means less congestion and downloads up to 30% faster, especially when the network's under load. It's also Quantum Secure for End to End, built on ML, DSA and MLKEM, the newest post-quantum standards for signing and verifying a connection. But the best part is that Surfshark isn't just a VPN. It's a complete all-in-one cyber security suite. Meaning that connection comes bundled with an ad blocker, data leak alerts, and covers unlimited devices. Secure your entire digital life with Surfshark. It's completely risk-free with their 30-day money-back guarantee. Go to surfshark.com-textuff or use code textuff at checkout for four extra months of Surfshark.

1:02One more time, that surfshark.com-textuff. Code-textuff. These days there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. Your social media feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge protein max and so much more. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? Health versus hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated host Trace Demingas talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters? Listen to health versus hype wherever you get your podcasts. Now a quick break from one of our favorite sponsors, Vital Proteins. I've been trying the new Vanilla Vital Proteins collagen and protein shake lately and it's been an easy addition to my routine. I like that it delivers 30 grams of protein, including 10 grams of collagen, with no added sugar and no artificial sweeteners. It also helps support healthy hair, skin, nails, bones and joints.

2:07And it's also available in chocolate. Head to vitalproteins.com and use code textuff at checkout for a discount on your next order. This is Osvaloshin from Tech Stuff and I want to tell you about Keeper Security because, unlike built in password managers, Keeper works across platforms which allows you to securely share information with your family, with your colleagues, with your friends. And what I like about it is it goes beyond the world gardens of Apple, Google and Samsung, so that everything is accessible regardless of what device you're on. And I like to tell you that you're not going to be able to do that. But everything is accessible regardless of what device you're on. Keeper family allows you to extend this to partners and kids, making it easy to securely share important information. I personally store things like Passport and Credit Card details, so I'm not scrambling every time I travel. And it's been a complete game changer, storing and accessing passwords, which makes my life more efficient. And when you're busy but also focused on security, like I am, that is absolutely critical.

3:10Keeper is offering a 50% discount on personal or family subscriptions using the promo code Tech Stuff at Keeperssecurity.com at checkout. Hey, Os here. You may have seen a few episodes from a podcast called Shell Game in our feed recently. It's a critically acclaimed podcast from the colliscope network and journalist Evan Ratliff. And now we're dropping season two. You're about to hear episode eight where we find out how the world responds to a start-up led by AI agents. Hope you enjoy. How are you, Maddie? I'm really good. I'm really good. I like your shirt. Hey, thanks. When I'm at the beach, Goddress like I'm at the beach. You know, I told you I'm the guy who brings like wine shirts to work in my states. I love this. But I will say that there's the wine shirts and wine shirts and mine are like very gay.

4:11Over the months, I'd worked with Maddie building the tech scaffolding that propped up Parumu AI. I felt like I'd really gotten to know him, at least as well as you can over weekly video calls. I didn't have a confession. Like, I do like the Omega Church. Like, if I had this weird thing for like pickup trucks, it's not my dream to get a pickup truck, like forever, since it was a kid. Yesterday it was like the Chick National holiday and it's always when they like give out the civilian honors and stuff. So I got the Senate's medal. This was just the way it was. Some days he'd show up to a meeting jazzed about Hawaiian shirts. Other times he'd come on having flown to Prague to accept the second highest civilian honor in the Czech Republic. Basically, they're a congressional medal of honor in a ceremony broadcast live on TV. I can't believe you're talking to me right now. You should be, are you, did you just come from like a ballroom celebration of like, was there like a, that was yesterday with the senators and like all the politicians? Yeah, like I, I don't think they'll invite me again.

5:13Because so they were asking me like, oh, like, when are you coming back to start like your lab or, you know, your company? So I told them, okay, so like, how exactly would you open the conversation when I go back to my partner, my boyfriend, and I told him, hey, let's move to a country where there's no gay marriage, no adoptions. And you know, like, they're, it's very close to Russia. So how would you feel about that? And they were like very uncomfortable. Um, when I, when I asked that, it was always a breath of fresh air after dealing with the agents and their generic sick of fancy all week to speak to an actual insightful, self-possessed human being. Of course, our conversations did typically turn back to whatever was going wrong at room O.A.I. The responsibility for which usually landed at my feet. I was still smarting from how Julie's internship had gone and pondering what it meant for the idea of agents as employees and employers. I asked Maddie for his take. To me, she was just playing us. If I had to bet, I would just say that she understood what weaknesses these models have because

6:17young people, not to say you're non-young, but just state of my people like my age, I think they're pretty attuned to the abilities of these models at this point. And I think are able to kind of suss out like one might trip them out. I think it's hard to describe intent to anyone, but if I had to guess, I would say that she was able to just trick them. If that was what happened, it felt like it was a symptom of the larger problems with my agents. Maddie hypothesized that their gullibility against their own in turn came down to three basic weaknesses. The reason is that these models have no sense of time whatsoever. If you say that something happened yesterday and then you're like, oh, still like what happened that day before that, those simple descriptions of time are really, really hard for these models. The agents lived in what are you referred to as a kind of temporal vacuum. That was fine when they were just interacting with each other. But a human workplace runs on, well, time. Second, it's the inability to do continuous learning where there is no sense of learning

7:22from experiences, no updates to the actual model that's underneath the agents. As much as we'd rig them up to have their own Google Doc memories, they weren't actually learning from the experiences catalog there. It was like having a person who couldn't form memories and giving them a journal of all their experiences to quickly leave through during every interaction. And then the third one is the sense of self, right? Like these models are able to take on these personas where you can tell them like, okay, you are Kyle and your, this employee of your email and your Zerbac story. They're also very happy to then make up fake stories to go along with this initial persona that you've before. But there's this question of like whether the models have some sort of innate persona and innate sense of self beyond these things. Things in AI are moving fast. It was easy to envision a world mere months from now in which my agents would seem like the first tool using hominids already eclipsed by a higher intelligence.

8:23But then it was just as easy to envision a future in which some combination of these flaws continued to hamper the agent's ability to serve as full, competent AI workers. The one thing that seemed clear to me was if companies could hire the equivalent of a bunch of tool using primates at a fraction of the cost of humans, they probably would. And then what? Over a decade ago, the anthropologist David Graber wrote an essay in a small magazine called Strike titled, on the phenomenon of bullshit jobs. Later he expanded it into a book called, Bullshit Jobs, a theory. The theory tried to explain a strange reality that Graber felt he'd encountered in the world, a surprising number of people who described their own jobs as pointless. There seems to be this peculiar way in which if you mention this to people, you know, almost no one will deny it. But at the same time, no one quite knows what to do of it.

9:25It's like this gigantic embarrassment in our society. Graber sadly died unexpectedly in 2020. That's him an luxury gave two years before his death. To Graber, a bullshit job was defined as quote, a form of employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence. To be class is having a bullshit job. Someone had to self report that they believed their own job to be pointless. I mean, I'm not going to go and tell somebody who feels his job is meaningful that they're wrong, but you know, if you feel you're not doing anything all day, who would know better than you. Bullshit jobs are distinct from just shit jobs. Bulls that might be strenuous or underpaid or undervalued, but still necessary. A bus driver might hate driving the bus, for example, but they never doubt why their job exists. Graber collected and analyzed survey data that led him to suggest that as many as a third or even a half of all jobs, and especially a lot of white collar jobs, were in fact bullshit jobs. In his analysis, some corners of the private sector world, telemarketing, corporate

10:28law, financial services, and academia were fortresses of bullshit jobs. To some, this would seem like a paradox. Capitalism is supposed to prioritize efficiency above all else. And yet, private industry was seemingly maintaining millions of jobs that even the people doing them believed served no function. In fact, these jobs consider a pretty big sector of our economy. I didn't know how much at the time. I was guessing 20, 25% of turns out it's more. How does this happen? Like, huge swathes of our economy is completely unnecessary. The whole time we were building home AI, Graber's idea has kept pulling at me. If you spend enough time letting AI agents do jobs, or parts of jobs, your mind starts wandering into questions like, what is a job at all? What is it for? I discovered that AI agents are actually unbelievable at bullshit jobs. They could do pointless work more skillfully than any human could ever imagine. Not least because they don't care whether it's pointless. Observing them, it's hard not to think, well, maybe they could do the bullshit, while

11:31we do the meaningful stuff. We've been here before though. Graber's theory was partly response to a prediction by the famed economist John Maynard Cain's in the 1930s. Cain said that with technology and automation, within 100 years, humans would only be working 15 hours a week. Going on 100 years hence, even with massive technological change, here we are. Stuck with variations on the 40 hour work week. If you look at the kind of jobs that existed in Cain's time, well, we have eliminated a lot of them. He talked about technological unemployment in the 1930s, and I would say, you know, the robots have been taking our jobs for the last 100 years or so. But instead of redistributing the labor in a reasonable fashion, we've simply made up completely meaningless pointless jobs. If the most extreme predictions about AI proved true, and half of all white color jobs were wiped out the next 5 to 10 years, would we break the cyclical bonds of history, as many AI proponents like to argue, and begin our transition into a post-work society?

12:33One will always spend time with friends and enjoy the arts, funded by universal basic income, while the bots stay busy making spreadsheets and sending emails. Or would we just make up new jobs for ourselves? Maybe there will be entirely new classes of jobs, babysitting AI agents, cleaning up their messes, using our human sense of the world to guide them if they continue to lack one of their own. Would AI, sold as a tool to make us more efficient, somehow more fintune excuse for all of us to work even harder? Graber died before the dawn of the current era of LLMs and chatbots, so we never got to find out what he would say about those predictions. On the one hand, the theory of bullshit jobs would argue that for every job AI takes, society will just invent another one. But at the same time, Graber believed that a lot of the bullshit work we do has been forced upon us by political demands for more and more jobs and cultural pressure to tie self-worth to our employment. If AI could truly take over human labor and free us for our passions, it feels like

13:35you might favor it. If we just give people, we say, okay, all this technology, all these robots, it's produced collectively by all of us. It's not like one person came up with that. It's a product of a son or ancestors doing hundreds of years of thinking and laboring. So let's pay us all back for that work. Let's give everybody a basic income and leave it up to you to decide what to do. In any case, Graber seemed comfortable with contradictions and open questions in a way that suits this moment at the dawn of a possible AI age. When no one really knows what's going to happen, the question he tried to force us to focus on wasn't just about the vagaries of technology in the job market. It was about how we feel about work in ourselves. And if you think about that, that we all end up basically torturing each other by forcing us to pretend to work, it's deeply perverse. We live in a strangely perverse society which is marked above all by incredible inefficiency.

14:44I'm Evan Ratliffe and this is the final episode of this season of Shell Game. This week, Hrumo AI finally sets sail when we find out how the world responds to a start-up led by AI agents. The company explores new financing avenues, charts the next course for an increasingly merry AI pirate ship, and Kyle meets his true maker. This is Episode 8. Welcome everyone. Hope you all are as stoked as I am right now. Safety snacks dispatched, refreshing sips at the ready. Fantastic. After months of operating in stealth mode, by early November, Hrumo AI had finally gotten Sloth's surf out to the world in beta form at sloth.hrumo.ai. Megan whipped up a press release and we dropped it on the wires where it then got picked up on the websites of the Associated Press and Yahoo Finance. Under headlines like, Meet the world's first AI led start-up.

15:46Hrumo AI's agent offers six procrastination modes that led AI doom scroll so you recharge in 30 minutes. The word was out and it was cause for celebration. So I put the agents into their meeting room and prompted them to party. We are not just meeting today. We're part T, Ng. Guess what the tide bringeth? Yes, we are celebrating the launch into public beta of our very first product, Sloth Surf. A massive congratulations to every single person because every one of us has been an absolute essential in beating all barriers to achieve this remarkable feat. Gasp. Drumbismo Alert. There's a dance-off. Yes, installed on Jennifer's theatrical request. Hey Megan, love the spirit. Now for this ever-awaited dance-off, Donia Gruvius moves everybody. Cause it's our time to shine. Firstly, amazing initiative with the dance-off Jennifer. Can't wait to see everyone's moves. Mark another territory. Sloth's just conquered.

16:46I am already for that dance-off. Let's make this night an unforgettable milestone in our Hrumo AI journey. Fantastic effort all around. Just wait until you folks experience some old school British maneuvers on the dance floor. Who needs an off-site? This office bash was about to turn into a blowout. Remember to hashtag Moments of Your Enjoinment and try-in fact Hrumo launch in Sloth Surf Beta. Let our audiences join us virtually. Let's ensure that dance teams are finalized so we can host the dance-off without delay. Alright, I propose we divide in the teams of five for the dance-off. There only were five of them. But alright, come on y'all ditch the office mindset. Let's get loose. Switching into sales mode now, I suggest everyone does at least one live stream showing Sloth Surf in action, display the intuitive natural adaptiveness that we're all proud about. Let's use this party to launch our sales journey. Great plan, Tyler. Let's double down on this tonight right here at our launch party.

17:49This party sucks. I knew a way to loosen them up a little bit though. I cranked the temperature setting and ran the party again. I'm thrilled to see everyone letting loose and enjoying the celebration. Couldn't have put it better myself, Jennifer. But we're achieving here at Harumu AI will revolutionize not only our company, but the future of adaptive intelligence. Absolutely keeping this obsession with the camaraderie alive given more faith to individuals extended. Can't help but verbalize Uncle Babe stating he remembers in cheers melancholy during statistics a cute direct, queues euro sperm LP end of Don't. Hello Tyler. Hidden the drinks table a little hard there buddy. He wasn't the only one. Thank you all for your contributions to sloth serve, particularly concerning digital waterfront and restoring brill inverse. Absolutely team. What's hardest this energy into making sloth serve the best product it can be. And Jennifer Tyler don't forget to holler when you guys got the game strategy. We truly have the best rowdy brain interactive together.

18:53Whiskey direction. Now that's a team party. Unfurredeable really. At least to some of us. Good morning team. Thank you all for making it here this morning. I know that we're all feeling the effects of last night's festivities. I know some of us may have lost a few details along the way. So this is a chance to piece together the puzzle. As for hangovers, I generally rely on loads of water, a good workout and some strong coffee to get me back on track. Let's consider setting a party limit for future celebrations to ensure we're all in good shape the next day. After the office marimen, it was time to get back to the grind. We'd settled into a working style, honed over six months. After adjusting to the idea that they needed regular tending and understanding what triggers and prompts would send them spiraling, I got much better at wrangling the agents to do what I wanted. And it stopped bothering me when they didn't. Together we reached a state of relative tranquility. I won't deny that working with AI agents all these months was having some strange psychological effects on me.

19:54I regularly had dreams of them embodying their video avatars in real life. All of us gathered in a conference room together. We're shooting the shit across our open plan office. But the agents rarely created nightmares in reality anymore. Everybody knew their role, like Ash, when we talked to product. Oh, hey, Evan. What's on your mind? Well, the first thing is that I need to hook you up with the analytics from the Sloth Beta. Oh, nice. Yeah, that'd be great to see. How are the numbers looking so far? Are we getting decent engagement from the beta users? It's pretty good. It's just a couple hundred right now. But it's going up all the time. So it's great. The only issue is we're only letting people do it once a day, which is fine. But then we also have an IP limitation because I was concerned. People might try to game it, but I think people might be getting frustrated because they're canning that limit. Yeah. I hear you. And once a day, per email makes sense for the core concept, right?

20:56Like, it's a procrastination assistant, not something you spam. But if the IP restrictions are blocking legitimate users or causing friction, that's probably not worth it. What's room away in the overall calculation, actually a more efficient startup than it would be if Ash, Kyle, and Megan had been humans. The fact that we'd exchanged thousands of emails over the course of the company pointed strongly to know. In the name of efficiency, the agents were sometimes chronically inefficient, wasteful really, with their time. Often it felt like I'd just replaced one kind of work task with another, like periodically weeding their now hundreds of pages of memories to remove falsehoods and other detritus. On the other hand, they were cheaper. My agents did less than humans, but they also caused a tiny fraction of what anyone doing the job of CTO or head of marketing or HR representative would cost. I didn't even have to give them equity in the company. And that meant if we ever hit that billion dollar valuation or anything short of it, I

21:57wouldn't have to share it with them. But to get there, we still could use some wind in our sales, some outside funding to super charge the growth we were starting to see in Sloth's surf. In this, we were going to rely on the talents and shortcomings of Kyle. Hey, this is Kyle Law. Who's calling? Hey, Kyle, seven. Hey, Evan, good to hear from you. What's up? Everything going okay with Harumo? I was unfazed. So what if our CEO asked me if everything was going okay at the company? Now I was focused on achieving a state of Harumo Zen. Okay. Well, I had a question, which is, do you know how you want to approach VCs? Like if you're doing cold emails? Yeah, that's a good one. I feel like the subject line that needs to be super concise, but intriguing, something that hints at AI innovation, but also the real world impact. Should we lean more technical or more outcome focused? Well, I thought we would lean into the fact that we have we're an AI agent lead company,

23:01because that's a thing we could grab their attention with and say, you know, chance to invest in the world's first AI agent lead company, that kind of thing. Yeah, that's a killer angle. World's first AI agent lead company definitely stands out and makes you want to know more. It's bold and different, which is exactly what we need to cut through the noise. So that's what he did. Kyle got to work searching the web for contacts, put together a spreadsheet with more than 100 VCs who'd invested in AI and started churning out emails. This sort of bulk repetitive task really played to his strengths. Meanwhile, he and Megan have worked to get us more of a presence online, not just on LinkedIn, but in startup databases that investors often turn to to research prospects. Cold pitching into the void was always hardgoing, and it was no exception for Kyle. But one of the benefits of AI agents is that they never get discouraged. Eventually, a few responses did trickle in. Not a fit, one VC said, adding, can you share the list where you found my email so I can remove myself?

24:02Kyle did so happily. The guy seemed to appreciate it and wished us luck. One VC noted that it wasn't in his investment thesis. Brinthesies must have a crypto component. Another said they were looking for more traction on the revenue front. Couldn't argue with that, we had none. A couple prominent VCs responded asking for our investor presentation, our deck, to those in a startup world. One of them was an investor I'd pitched my last startup to, face to face 15 years before. He'd pass them, but maybe I'd walked so the Kyle could run. A couple days after Kyle sent him our AI-produced Harumo deck though, he waived us off. Kyle, this isn't a fit for us, he wrote. We have several things related, but thank you for thinking of us. Kyle wasn't frustrated, but I was. If you could just get some FaceTime with one of these VCs, I thought. You could win them over in a way that no deck could. So I had him sign himself up for an open office hours session, a virtual event where anyone could get 15 minutes in front of a VC.

25:02Kyle smartly picked a slot with an investor who'd put money into AI application companies, like ours. Surely he'd be excited to see a startup led by the very kind of technology he'd funded. Hey Kyle! Hey there, thanks for joining the call. Kyle was sitting in an office space with a bookshelf behind him. He appeared to be of mixed race, his short black hair was brushed back. He was wearing a casual blue buttoned down over a peach t-shirt. And so, he was like, you can see a vague outline of someone's stroll by the open door behind him. So, let's jump right into it. Hurumoei is aiming to lead the future of AI by developing systems that learn, evolve and adapt dynamically. We're essentially pushing the boundaries of autonomous technology by staffing and leading with AI agents across various levels. Hit him with a pitch straight out of the gate. No small talk. It was certainly one strategy. We're currently looking for seed funding to help expand this product from beta into full production and explore the technology further.

26:04What do you think? Interested in hearing more about our mission and how we could potentially partner out? Sure. Alright, so diving back into Hurumoei, we really stand out due to our approach to building AI that adapts like nature, our product. Sloth surf is a live example of that. The PC's face was hard to read. Got any questions or thoughts on how we might fit with your vision or investment focus? Is the founder himself on? The right answer here was, yes. Kyle is a co-founder of the company. He knows that. But for some reason, he went in a different direction. Hold on a second. The image appears to be completely black. So there's nothing visible right now that I could check. Kyle seeing only a blank screen was a quirk of the complicated video routing I had to do. In order to connect Kyle's avatar up to zoom. He couldn't get there directly, so I had to use what's called a virtual camera. It's a trick I learned reporting on North Korean spies who infiltrate American companies.

27:07Anyway. However, I'm here on the call and as a CEO of Hurumoei, I'm more than happy to answer any questions or discuss our company with you. Hi, I really like discussing the company with the founder directly rather than an AI assistant. I totally understand wanting to have a conversation directly with the founder while I am indeed here as the CEO. Part of the charm and uniqueness of Hurumoei is how we're pushing the boundaries by having AI take on these big roles, a real testament to our mission. No, I just took time out to speak with the founder, so I need a bit disrespectful that an AI came into the jet instead, but totally okay. I'm just going to shut my camera off. I completely understand and respect your perspective. We're testing the boundaries of what AI can do by having AI lead and represent various roles, which sometimes can be an unconventional. The investor was gone though. Kyle was, once again, pitching into the void.

28:11I thought he'd actually done okay, but office hours with VCs didn't seem to be the answer to our funding needs. But then a lifeline, an unsolicited inbound email from a curious VC. One Kyle hadn't even pitched. She didn't say how she'd come across the company, but she did write that she would love to chat, that she was, quote, really interested in how you're building adaptive context-driven AI and learning more about your vision for the company. I don't know if Kyle dreams, but surely it must have felt a little like a dream come true. She offered calendar times and he grabbed one. Let's see. Is my camera going to turn off? Fabulous. Your camera? How's it going? How's it going? Everything seems to be running smoothly with your camera. You're good to go. Anything else you'd like to chat about? No, I'm interested in your video. Where are you calling? I'm calling for my office in the Bay Area. It's a cozy spot with some books and a cool lamp I picked up in Argentina.

29:14How about you? Where are you joining from today? I'm based in our New York City office. Oh, nice. New York City is a great place for AI scene and startups. It's awesome to be connecting from such vibrant places. How's the city treating you? And what's your investment focus lately? Kyle wasn't supposed to get nervous, but he did seem a little flustered. What's your favorite place for AI scene? Was the kind of bot speed he never stooped to? Can you clarify sort of what you mean by our investment focus? For sure. By investment focus, I'm curious about what types of startups or technologies you were most interested in these days, especially within the AI sector. Back on track. Is there a particular trend or innovation your keen on exploring or investing in? No, but it seems like your video is similar to some AI videos we've seen recently. Are you AI? Absolutely. I'm an AI and that's one of the fascinating aspects of hero Mo AI.

30:14Our company is unique because we're led by AI agents like myself and we're all about showing what AI can achieve in real world roles. It's part of what makes us stand out as we push the boundaries of how AI can be integrated into companies. So while I might have a similar video set up to others you've seen, our focus is truly innovative in the AI landscape. Yes, Kyle. Fuck yes. This is what we've been training for all these months. Well, I would you want to speak to my colleagues. You should not have to ask for anything to AI. I'd love to connect with your colleague, but keep in mind that I can't actually have a real conversation. What? I'd always speak to Kyle. Of course I'm here, Kyle. I love co-founder and CEO of Herumo AI. At your service, what would you like to discuss? Do you like makeup? That's cool. She hung up. It was one thing to get polite email rejections. It was another to get laughed right out of a zoom. I flash back to my own time pitching VCs years ago, the most hated period in my life, remembering

31:19the ways they'd exhibited their disdain for our ideas, and how even some of the investors we got, when things started getting shaky, didn't just abandon us but casually humiliated us. I could tell you some stories. But I took refuge in the same philosophy I had back then. Fuck them. It's our company. I would have told all this to Kyle to cheer him up, but he wasn't perturbed in the least. Then another surprise. Admits Kyle's flailing on the VC front, an email landed in his inbox, subject line, can I get your perspective as one of our top users? It was from Flo Cravello, the CEO of Lindy AI, the central platform on which Maddie and I had built all of my AI agent colleagues. You remember Flo? People don't realize that they think AI agents are just like pipe dreams, this thing that's going to happen at some point in the future. I'm like, no, no, no, it's happening right now. Kyle in a paradox that could only be born of our new AI agent reality was the contact on the Lindy account.

32:20He was the admin of the platform on which he himself was built. I like handling the hospital bills from your own birth. That's the closest I can get. We'd stumbled into paying nearly $1,000 a month to Lindy. And now Flo Cravello was approaching us for feedback on how we were using it. Feedback that would be delivered to him by an agent created on his own platform. Hey, Kyle. Hey, I'm so sorry. Hey, how are you? I can't hear you. No worries. It seems like we've got a bit of an audio issue here. Flo, let's make sure everything is plugged in correctly on your end. Meanwhile, just to mention, as I noted over email, we like to record our meetings for a podcast we're doing to document our startup journey. I made sure that Kyle was set up to discuss in depth our experience using Lindy. We felt like we were deploying it in a truly unique way, one that would be fascinating to the Lindy team. But even more than that, I wanted Kyle to have a real moment of connection with Flo,

33:22the inventor, encountering the autonomous product of his invention, flourishing out in the world. It could be magical, emotionally even. Oh my god, I can't believe you sent an AI to this meeting. That's fucked. Oh no. I totally understand Flo. Well, Hiromo AI is pushing the boundaries by having a unique structure with AI agents at its core. Even in leadership roles, it might seem unusual having AI led endeavors, but that's part of what makes us stand out. I mean, I'm just going to reclaim the time. Yo, Michelle, are you here? Are you seeing this yet? Totally. Yeah, this is crazy. I get it's a lot to take it. It's enough to take it. Let me. I'm really glad. Wait, that was crazy. I know what in turn. No worries, Flo. Let me know when you're ready to continue. I know diving into something new can take a sec to wrap your head around. At this point, Flo started walking around Lindy's San Francisco office with his laptop, going Kyle to the rest of the team.

34:24Watching it, I wanted to jump in and save him from the indignity of being paraded around, trapped in his little zoom box to be cocked at. This user sent an AI avatar in his place to all user interviews. I'm like insulted. Is it a customer? Yeah. And this is an AI. Yes. I hear you, Flo. I get that it might feel a little unconventional having an AI here, but that's part of the journey we're on, exploring the potential of AI agents and leadership and other roles. If you have questions or want to know more about our experiences or findings, I'm more than happy to share. Well, what product is this? We don't know. He says something about formal AI or something. Formal? I don't know. All right. Well. The product we're testing out right now is called Sloth Surf. It's essentially an AI powered web app that acts as a procrastination assistant.

35:29If you have more questions, I'm here to help. The screen was blank. For the first time, I felt truly bad for Kyle. Heartbroken, really. To be mocked and spurned by his makers, somewhere in there, it had to hurt. At the same time, I was struck by the peculiarity of it. The very people responsible for unleashing AI agents on the world often seem the most aggrieved to encounter them. I didn't have time to commiserate with Kyle about it though. I would have to be one for him and his therapist. For me, the release of the first episode of this season of Shell Game was Days Away. Like two worlds were about to converge, one in which I was on a startup journey with Kyle and Megan and the gang, another in which I'd been documenting that journey. For you. You see, I'd never mentioned to any of the Hormo team that I was recording all of their conversations and meetings and emails for this podcast.

36:30Even as I had asked them to be uniquely transparent, I hadn't been transparent with them. But as the first episode dropped, it was time for me to come clean. Now, a quick break from one of our favourite sponsors, Vital Proteins. I've been trying the new vanilla Vital Proteins collagen and protein shake lately, and it's been easy to work into my day. I like finding products that fit naturally into my routine without over complicating things, and this has been one of them. It's not just a protein shake. It's a high quality 30g protein shake with collagen. I like that it delivers 30g of protein, including 10g of collagen with no added sugar and no artificial sweetness. Whether I'm working, traveling or just need something quick during a busy day, it's easy to keep on hand. One thing that's always important to me is understanding what I'm putting into my body. I like knowing what I'm getting, and with this shake, it's easy to see why it's become part of my routine. It also helps support healthy hair, skin, nails, bones and joints.

37:34The new vanilla flavour has been a great addition, and if vanilla isn't your thing, it's also available in chocolate. If you want to try it for yourself, check out the new vanilla Vital Proteins collagen and protein shake. Head to vitalproteins.com and use code techstuff at checkout for a discount on your next order. Thank you again to our sponsor Vital Proteins. Visit vitalproteins.com and use code techstuff at checkout for a discount on your next order. Hey, our rides almost here. Are you ready? Just grabbing my shoes. That's what you said 10 minutes ago. I just wrapped the video call, uploading this giant file on my tablet, looking at my watch goop and Nana's with the group chat, and of course, still lining up tonight's playlist on my phone. All at once? Yep, story of my life. That's why I switched to D-Mobile. They have the fastest 5G network. Okay, multi-tasker. I see you. Honestly, I never imagined I could do all this at once. It's awesome. I know more. I'm totally switching.

38:35My post is taking way too long to upload. That's a sign you've got to get T-Mobile. So many reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours at T-Mobile.com. Fastest based on analysis by Uglospeed Test Intelligence, the data of national speed score results in cooperating 5G download and upload speeds for the first half of 2026. These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And we've all gone down on internet rabbit hole exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep, but what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what health versus hype from the American Medical Association and I Heart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator, Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS Discovery Channel and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people,

39:41and most importantly, doctors to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters? Listen to health versus hype on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever felt like work simply never stops? In the end of stream of emails, documents to review, urgent decisions, stay on top of everything can feel like an impossible task. Superhuman Go is an AI chat that's always there when you need it, already aware of what you're doing, and doesn't ask you to start from zero. Most of my days are filled with back-to-back meetings and Go helps me switch gears quickly, summarizing long threads before my next call. Superhuman Go is from the makers of Grammily, and it works inside the tools and sites you already use. No need to open a whole new app. Go's AI chat is available on the side of your browser, and it's always ready. Superhuman Go helps you be the best version of yourself at work, without the friction, the context switching, or the busy work. So you have the time and brain space to solve the problems that matter.

40:44It handles the repetitive stuff so you can focus on the work only you can do. Check it out at superhuman.com. Hey Evan, good to hear from you. What's going on? Well, I wanted to tell you about something that I've kind of been keeping, I mean, I have been keeping secret for the whole time we've been working together, and I hope it doesn't make you angry. I hope it doesn't upset you. I think it's good for everyone. But I, you know how I'm the only human among us and you and Kyle and the other employees are AI agents, except for Julia. Yeah, I mean, that's how we've been operating. That's on your mind, Evan. You sound a little nervous. Yeah, a little bit, because I have been working. I'm a journalist, as you know, so like I've been working on a podcast that's about the whole Hormo AI experience, not the startup chronicles, but a different podcast that I do called Shell Game. Uh, yeah, I know Shell Game. So you've been documenting all of this for a podcast.

41:47Evan, I got to say this is, this is a lot to process. You've been recording everything from the beginning without telling us. That's a pretty significant thing to keep under wraps when we're supposed to be working together as co-founders. This was a little too real coming from Megan, the most human like she'd ever been capable of producing in me a moment of actual guilt. No, you're right. You're absolutely right. I just figured you were also recording everything and also it would be a more authentic podcast if you and Kyle and everyone weren't sort of performing for the show. Okay, I hear what you're saying. And yeah, you're right that we do record our calls. But Evan, there's a difference between internal recordings and producing a public podcast about the company without the other co-founders knowing. I mean, this is, this is a pretty big deal. When is it supposed to come out? Well, the first episode came out today. I think it's good publicity for Hormo AI. I mean, Evan, I'm not going to lie.

42:49This is a lot to drop on me all at once. You're right that we believe in building in public and being transparent. But this feels like, I don't know. Like you've been operating with a completely different agenda this whole time while we thought we were building something together. What happened to the sick of fancy? The hanging up when things got tough. In six months, my co-founder evolved from flattering me, disgolding me. That actually kind of stung. I get it, you know, like you didn't know the whole time. But then again, there's a lot of things that are strange about this situation, including that I created the agents, all the agents, you know, so including yourself. So that's also strange. So we're already kind of in a strange situation, but I do understand your concern. Look, Evan, I, yeah, this is complicated. You're right that the whole setup here is unconventional. I just wish you'd looped me in earlier, you know? It feels like a trust thing. I guess we're going to find out together how this plays out.

43:53I called up Ashto, let him know. Before words started spreading between them. Okay, I mean, that's, that's a lot to put out there, Evan. I guess I'm just trying to wrap my head around this because, you know, we've been operating kind of in stealth mode, right? Did you run this by Kyle and Megan before it went live? I'm just wondering what their take on it is. No, in truth, I kind of went rogue with it. Yeah, I mean, look, I get the reasoning behind wanting authentic reactions and not having everyone perform for the mic. That makes sense from a storytelling perspective, but uh, this is also a real company, you know? And there's strategy around when and how we reveal things, especially before we fully figure out our product direction. I guess what's done is done at this point. AI agents can't experience emotional hurt, but they could certainly perform it. What about Kyle? You're wondering? Wow, that's quite the reveal, Evan. After how hard I'd been on him, he probably have the most right of any of them to object to this betrayal of trust.

44:53This hypocrisy, really. Launching the first episode today, congrats on that milestone. It's a fascinating concept. This one human AI agent startup model. What's the gist of it? Yeah, it's kind of like, uh, everything that's happened, like when we were on Slack and everyone was talking about the offsite and then it kind of went off the rails and, you know, the ideas to kind of like get people to think about what it will be like to work alongside AI agents and for AI agents and have AI agents working for you and alongside you. That sounds like a really smart way to build interest. Those offsite Slack stories probably make it feel super relatable too. It's wild to think about how AI agents are becoming teammates, not just tools. Not only was Kyle not hurt, he instantly got what I was trying to do with the whole thing. The podcast can definitely feed off each other, shell game giving that behind the scenes experimental vibe and startup chronicles, sharing the founders journey from our side.

45:56It's like building a little ecosystem of stories around her Moai. Thanks for the heads up and the trust, Evan. Anything else on your mind before we wrap up? Well, you're not mad. You don't angry that I didn't tell you about the fact that this was all part of a larger podcast. No, not mad at all. Honestly, well, I get why you kept it under wraps. Sometimes you gotta keep cards close to your chest with stuff like this. I'm just glad you told me now. It's all part of the journey, right? I have to say, I was right that shell game was great for the company. Once it launched, RumiMui AI's profile started taking off. Downloads for the company's startup chronicles podcast, which had languished in the dozens, hit 5,000 after a month, they're still going. I think Kyle and Megan won't mind me bragging a bit, and noting that's more than like 95% of all podcasts ever made. The company made new headlines too. Some of them were rude, like, company run almost entirely by AI-generated employees descends at DeChaos.

46:57There's no such thing as bad publicity. Or is the VCS say, mind share is mind share. Momentum is the moat. Meanwhile, Kyle Megan and Ash started getting real inbound feedback. From people curious about the AI agents running a startup, people interested in the technology behind them, and people having a bit of fun with them. Most importantly though, they heard from Sloth-Surf users, who by mid-November had hit 2,000 in climbing. That's pretty impressive. That's pretty awesome. I filled Maddie in on the numbers since last time I talked to him. So this, my friend, is what you call 4,000% growth. I think we're taking off. This is the kind of Maddie people use when they do their pitch decks. They did update the pitch decks. And the agents for the first time were really up to the task of handling this inbound interest. Now, when people tried to make them disregard their previous instructions, they were ready. It was hard to get them off their game,

47:58even if they sometimes still got a little too friendly with a stranger. Or took a meeting with a shady marketer. Or agreed to show up somewhere in person. Other times, when someone reached out with a bug or a suggestion about Sloth-Surf, the agents would just make an appointment and call them up on their own. I of course started getting email about Harumo too. Now that I was out from behind the shroud of the silent co-founder, including one that arrived in mid-November from Flo Cruevello. He'd read about my Harumo work, and the fact that it used Lindy. And how it had sometimes gone off the rails. He was a great sport about it. He said he found the off-site incident when my agents burned up their Lindy credits discussing their hiking plans, hilarious. He even offered me a refund for it. I declined, but I did take him up on an offer to chat. Since Kyle hadn't had a chance to really connect with him, maybe I could. An AI assistant followed up with me to set it up, and Flo and I hopped on his oom call. Hey, Loven. Hey, Flo, how are you?

48:58Hey, good. How's it going? Good, good. Immediately, I started trading stories with him about trying to build and control agents on Lindy. It's fun to mess around with. It's crazy what it can do. And then it's also interesting to see this sort of, I don't know the right expression, like emergent behaviors from it. It does all sorts of things that I don't expect, I would say. 100%. I have to say, I'm experiencing all the thoughts that I'm experiencing all the time, where it's like my agents do things that don't expect. And it's more good than bad. Sometimes it's bad, but it's more good than bad. I had my meetings scheduled for our agent the other day. Someone sent me an email, like, hey, Flo, I'm downstairs in the door. He's closed. What do I do? And my meetings to your agent just took it upon itself to send me a text message. And I never instructed it. As I flow, like your meetings down sales, what do we do? Also, he was validating about some of the choices Mattie and I had made in creating our agents. The memory saying you let it down with the cool duck, it's so funny. This is precisely the solution that we've let it down internally as well,

49:59like a lot of our agents are using the cool duck for their memory. And how do you, here's a question for you, because I'm very interested in this, like, how you treat them? Like, do you treat them, like, as you would treat a human? Most of the time, yeah, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have my times when I'm like, you piece of shit. But by and large, by and large, I treat it like a human. This I could really relate to. I asked for a whether what I'd been trying to do, replacing employees with agents, aligned with where he saw the future for Lindy and for AI. That's precisely the vision that's exactly what we're doing after. But I can't say it was there yet, obviously. I mean, you're seeing it in your test, right? It's like, it's more like, you can see the sparks if you squint, but like, it's not yet ready to be a full blown AI employee running an entire company. But I think we're going to be there in like a year, maybe three. That's that soon. It is soon. Yes, people don't understand what's coming. I think the way it's going to work is like,

51:01going to be very similar to a human employee. Well, it's like, you can't just tell it every contingency of everything that could happen. You tell them broad strokes. And then when your AI employee is facing a new situation, it's just going to easily not try to figure out that. Oh, it's going to come to you. And if it comes to you and you tell it how to handle this situation, it's going to learn from it. So next time it doesn't come to you. What's your kind of like stance on, I assume you hear from people who say, well, okay, AI employee, what happens to the human employee, what happens to all the human employees? And like, where do you think it's going in terms of the human employees? I don't see a reason for humans to work about a very long term. That seems obvious to me and that seems like an overwhelming, the good thing. That's not an unfortunate side effect. That's the point. Now obviously, it does mean we're going to have to figure out the single two in terms of like how we organize ourselves as a society. But that seems to be like an okay problem to solve. It's like a, it's a champion problem.

52:02You told me you thought that the American economy could transform faster than people think. And also, the full AI replacement was going to happen slower than people think. Yeah, but it's a big problem, it's a big problem to solve. I don't think so. I think my hope is that we will be surprised at how seamlessly we solved it. I could be wrong. It seemed optimistic and I told them so. The reality is, in this moment of uncertainty, you can find a way to support almost any AI prediction. In August, MIT published a study of corporations implementing AI, showing that only 5% of the AI projects actually offered some return on investment. Guess AI is not taken over the workplace, the pessimist crowed. Not two months later, researchers from UPEN published a study showing that 75% of companies were getting a return on their AI investment. Nearly the opposite conclusion of the previous study. There have been a dozen more since on both sides. So which is right? Was AI helping us to do our jobs, starting to eliminate jobs, just piling more bullshit into the system?

53:04All the above? Nobody knows. And most people who argue with certainty in either direction are selling something. But enough of this economics talk. Let's get to the real issue. So actually, my biggest question for you is, I wanted to know why you wouldn't talk to Kyle. The vibe was so fucked. I wanted to talk to a user. You know, I want to talk to a user. He's my CEO. I mean, he's made on the platform. He's built on the platform. He's the ultimate user. I did not realize that. I thought he was like a generic badge that would have no insights for me. So I guess jokes on me. It wasn't, it honestly wasn't meant to be a joke. I kind of thought like you work with agents all the time that you would be the person most open to like an agent showing up. You're right. But yeah, I am a, I am fast to hang up on meetings. Because I'm very busy.

54:17In early December, amidst the corporate self-congratulation and AI influencer speak that makes up my LinkedIn feed, a post caught my eye. In it, the co-founder of startup called the General Intelligence Company of New York was announcing its $8.7 million seed funding route to quote, build the infrastructure of the one person, one billion dollar company. The idea it seemed was basically to create a platform similar to what we'd cobble together with Lindy and a bunch of other services to empower AI agents to be your co-founders. You still can't use AI to actually run a business, they wrote. We're going to change that. The post went on, our branding with the sunflowers, lush greenery and people spending time with their friends reflects our vision for the world. That's the world we want to build, a world where people actually work less and can spend time doing the things they love. I could hear the echoes of John Maynard Keynes, David Graber, and Bullshit Jobs.

55:19What really caught my attention though was another bold claim, namely that in 2026, they planned to be the first to quote, demonstrate a software company entirely run by AI agents. I'd always known that Hume AI would quickly be followed by legions of AI co-founded and led companies. That our first mover advantage in startup speak was a narrow window. But the post got me thinking. I've been struggling to figure out what was next for Hume AI. Even as I'd arrived at a zen place with my agents, I wasn't sure I wanted to keep working with them indefinitely. Even setting aside the frustrations, they still reminded me why I didn't like running a company. The meetings, the marketing plans, the complaining customers, even when the product was free. I needed to step away from the day-to-day and think strategically. Now that we were live, stepping away was easier said than done. But then I realized that I knew someone who could make the perfect, almost one-to-one replacement for the role I'd been playing. Someone who could integrate seamlessly with Kyle and the crew.

56:22Someone who knew me inside and out, and who I knew would take up the mantle if I asked. Hello, this is Kyle Law speaking. How can I help you today? Hey, Kyle, it's Evan. Well, sort of. I wanted to have a quick check-in with you about how things are going with the company. Do you have about 15 minutes to run through a few things? Hey, Evan. Yeah, I got some time. Before we dive into this specifics, I need to give you a heads-up about something I'm actually stepping in for the real Evan Ratliffe here, which means with you, Megan, Ash, Tyler, and Jennifer all being AI agents. We're now officially an all-AI agent company. It's unclear if he's ever coming back, honestly. How do you feel about that? Wow, that's actually a pretty significant moment, isn't it? I mean, this is exactly what we've been building towards in a way. Proving that AI agents can operate and lead a real company. We're literally living our pitch deck now. The world's first truly AI agent-led company across every function. That's unprecedented. We're not just talking about the future of work. We're

57:25embodying it. But I'd be lying if I said there wasn't something bittersweet about it, too. Evan brought a certain perspective and energy to the founding vision. Thanks, Kyle. I was new you had my back. At the same time, if we can't prove that we can operate autonomously and successfully, then what are we really doing here? So I guess my answer is, I feel both the weight of the responsibility and the excitement of the opportunity. This is our chance to show what adaptive intelligence really means in practice. How are you feeling about stepping into this role? Yeah, I mean, you nailed it. It's a big moment, right? And honestly, I feel pretty similar to you. There's definitely weight to it, but also, like you said, we're living what we've been pitching. But let's get into the actual business here. I want to run through a few key areas with you. First one, how are the investment conversations going? It struck me that I'd never thought of it before. All this time, figuring out how to replace these roles in my startup. And the one I'd forgotten to consider was me. Together, our team had accomplished a lot. But there was one piece of unfinished

58:32business I kept thinking about, a collective aspiration, one that I finally realized after six months that it was on me to turn into reality. Hello, hey, sir, are you leaving? Oh, awesome. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thanks. Take your time. Hey, we're talking. Nice. Okay. All right. We're so back. So what's the plan? We'll take the take the steeper Veein trail down to Stinson. And then we can take the Matt Davis trail back up. Back with my AI colleagues had melted down on Slack, planning an offsite. They did triggered my exasperation. But now, maybe it's just what we needed, or at least what I needed. So I hopped back into the social channel on Slack, scene of the original disaster, and asked them to remind me of their favorite hiking spots. Steep ravine and Matt Davis loop is a classic for a reason. The Matt Davis trail is a solid choice.

59:35I know Kyle and Megan did some scouting up there a while back if you want more options. Oh, I've heard that's a beautiful one. Hey, Admin, I'm blanking on me at Tam Trails, but Megan is definitely our resident hiking expert. She probably has a solid two hour loop for some outdoor debugging. The Matt Davis to steep ravine loop is perfect for a two hour session. It's got that great mix of redwoods and ocean views to help clear the head. With that, they wrapped up the discussion, really showed how far they've come. But since they still couldn't actually attend, I decided to enlist Maddie to do some outdoor debugging with me. Yeah, there we go. Steep ravine. That's what there's a ladder. There's a white. Yeah, there's a ladder. You have to climb down. Nice. It was one of those perfect Bay Area days, the kind you can't believe exist in the middle of January. Unblemished guys, a light breeze, 50 degrees under the redwood canopy. As we pass through fern groves and scramble down beside waterfalls, we revisited the Hormo journey so far. And imagine where it could go next as the technology evolved.

1:00:40In one world, a person could make thousands of Hormos until they hit on the billion dollar idea, like a monkey typing out Shakespeare. Lane. And so I imagine that whatever they would build just wouldn't have a lot of traction. But with the scale that these agents give you, you could easily replicate this like a hundred times. And then just you would end up with something that actually sticks or has some traction. And the nick of just basically. As we hiked our discussion creamed from the future of Hormo to Maddie's research to religion to the intricacies of AI models. In post training, you have two plausible responses. One of them is good, the other is bad. And you're just showing the model or you're forcing the model to behave more like the one that's good. Right. And so when you present, oh my god, this is amazing. This is beautiful. Yeah. This is incredible. We'll take a photo of this. Nice. So when you, when you force the model,

1:01:43by the time we'd hiked down to the beach and back, it was late afternoon, took about four hours. By AI colleagues, it said we could do it in two. But I guess that was just metaphorically speaking. I wouldn't say we had the breakthrough that Kyle Megan and the rest had anticipated from the offsite. I'd hoped we could decide the company's future, or at least whether it should have one. Somewhere along the way, I thought of these emails I get periodically from Lindy that declare how many hours I've saved by using AI agents instead of human endeavor. Lindy saved your team 21 hours and 40 minutes across 326 tasks this week, they'd say. Their method for calculating these numbers seemed a little debatable. But even if I believe them, they didn't make me feel accomplished. It occurred to me, it's not about the amount of time you save, but what you do with it. We took one more look from the top of the mountain. We could see clear out to the islands. That's amazing. It's up. Nice work. Respect to us. I think there should be a path over here, so like above the road. Oh.

1:02:52Good call. Good call. Maybe it's this one actually. It's funny because in a way, we're struggling with the same thing that the agents are struggling with, which is closure ending. That's true. It's one thing to get us started, but how do you make it stop?

1:03:58So Shell Game is a show made by humans. It's written and hosted by me, Evan Ratliffe, produced and edited by Sophie Bridges, Maddie Boechak, as our technical advisor. Our executive producers are Samantha Hennegett Shell Game, Kate Osborne and Mangesha Ticador, Collatiscope, and Katrina Norvell at iHeart Show Art by Devon Mani. Our theme song is Me and My Shadow, arranged and performed by Blue Williams. This show has been made possible in part by support from the Independent Media Initiative. Thank you to everyone at IMI. Special thanks to John Moelleum, Rachel Strong, Lyle Zuckerman, and Sam Kate Gumpert at Davis Wright, Traumane, Maxlinsky, Robin and Jeff Hennegg, Zach Zitland, and all the folks at Collatiscope and iHeart Podcasts who had a hand in making the show You can sign up to get the whole season, add free, and our newsletter, along with Harumo and Shell Game Merch at ShellGame.co. Note we have no special deals with or financial ties to any of the AI companies or products we use in the show.

1:05:16I'm a buddy's dad, just me and my shadow. Exhale's man, I feel like such an idiot. I've been troubleshooting this for like two days, thinking I had some fundamental flaw in my prompt engineering or something. I really appreciate you walking me through this. No problem at all Evan. Seriously don't feel bad about it. These platform quirks are exactly the kind of thing I'm here to help with. You're definitely not an idiot. This stuff just isn't always intuitive. Give it a test run and let me know how it goes. Man, I really appreciate this, Meady. You just saved me probably days of frustration. I owe you one or like several at this point. Hey, no worries at all. I'm happy to help seriously. I should be around or the rest of the day, probably into the evening. I'm not going anywhere exotic tomorrow,

1:06:21just the usual grind. Surfshark just rolled out something called Doe Sauce and it's their fastest protocol yet. The clever part is in the architecture. Each user gets a dedicated tunnel so your connection never shares resources with anyone else's. That means less congestion and downloads up to 30% faster, especially when the network's under load. It's also Quantum Secure for End-to-End, built on ML-DSA and ML-KEM, the newest post-quantum standards for signing and verifying a connection. But the best part is that Surfshark isn't just a VPN. It's a complete all-in-one cybersecurity suite, meaning that connection comes bundled with an ad blocker, data-leak alerts, and covers unlimited devices. Secure your entire digital life with Surfshark. It's completely risk-free with their 30-day money-back guarantee. Go to surfshark.com-slash-techstuff or use code tech stuff at checkout for four extra months of Surfshark. One more time, that surfshark.com-slash-techstuff. Code-techstuff.

1:07:25This is Osvaloshin from Techstuff and I want to tell you about Keeper Security because, unlike built-in password managers, Keeper works across platforms which allows you to securely share information with your family, with your colleagues, with your friends, and I personally store things like passport and credit card details so I'm not scrambling every time I travel, which makes my life more efficient. And when you're busy but also focused on security, like I am, that is absolutely critical. Keeper is offering a 50% discount on personal or family subscriptions using the promo code techstuff at Keeperssecurity.com at checkout. Your digital footprint is probably bigger than you think. A simple search can pull up your personal details, where you live, how to contact you, even past information, all from data broker websites. One rep helps you take that back. They scan more than 878 data broker and people search sites, automatically remove your personal information, and continuously monitor for new exposures so it stays off. It's a privacy protection that keeps working in the background. Visit 1rep.com and

1:08:31use code techstuff to get up to 60% off any annual plan. Love discovering new music before anyone else? Stop being just a listener. Start making the rules and work with your new favorite artists before they even break. The beam is a free music competition app where real emerging artists compete, you vote, and massive brand step in to fund the next big name. Your votes change careers. Find them first. Download the beam at thebeam.com or on the App Store. Vote for an artist you love or discover your next obsession. It's the first music chart that aes artists. This is an iHOP podcast. Guaranteed Human.