Unlocking AI Superpowers for Entrepreneurs | Zach Wilson DSH #1267

He's done a lot of good for Twitter over the last couple of years.

Like I know, I mean, that's a very hot take for a lot of people in San Francisco, but like I know that like it's where the free speech and the AI that he's doing. He's deployed so many AIs there because like I know I remember 2019, 2020 Twitter, like just so many bots.
All right, guys, Zach Wilson here, one of the smartest guests I think I've ever had on. Thanks for joining us.
Awesome. I'm really happy to be here.
Yeah. What's been your main focus this year so far? Just building out my company, a data expert and just trying to teach the world about data and AI because AI is coming quick.
It's coming really fast. It's going to be way faster than we think.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think people know AI is coming. I'm curious about data though.
What's important with data? So one of the things that people forget about with AI is that AI is only as good as the data that you feed it because it's all about the knowledge that is fed into the AI is what makes the AI smart. And so there's this underlying layer that is less sexy than AI.
It's called data engineering, which is this layer of like building out high quality, valuable data sets that then are fed into AI that then allow them to be smarter and make better decisions. And I think that that's, it's kind of the whole, like you gotta walk before you run sort of mentality.
And that's a lot of companies get this layer very wrong. Right.
Even the best ones, cause I've been on ChatGPT and it'll have the wrong source. And then the answer comes out kind of wrong, you know? Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. And there's a lot of other interesting techniques that you can do to like ground ChatGPT.
And if you have other data that you want to bring in, this thing called RAG, Retrieval Augmented Generation, which is a way of bringing in your own local data to allow ChatGPT to not hallucinate as much because it's a very...

ChatGPT to not hallucinate as much because it's a very, ChatGPT essentially just pulls in the entire internet. And I don't know if you know, but not everything on the internet is true, right? There's a lot of things on the internet that is very like kind of sketchy and it kind of just pulls it all in.
And we're at the mercy of whatever those engineers decided that was quality and what they picked and what they didn't pick like as they were like scraping the internet right and so like and that's where you can have other engineers kind of build on top of chat gpt with your own high quality data that allows it to hallucinate a lot less that makes sense yeah have you seen apple new AI update? I have not. I don't think so.
Okay. Basically, when you open your text now, it summarizes it for you.
Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, there's going to be so many cool productivity changes.
I mean, I use ChatGPT and Gemini and all this stuff. If you're not using these things, you're falling behind it's like, I've been noticing that even in my own life, like when I'm like coding or building stuff, like I'm still hesitant to like give the control to the AI because I'm like, I know what I'm doing.
I don't need any AI. But then I know if I let the AI do it, well, I get 30 minutes back now and I can do something else or I can go have fun, right? And enjoy my life more.
Instagram has AIs that talk to people now. Yeah.
So exciting. It's crazy.
Yeah. Because some people get a lot of messages and they can't answer everyone.
Oh, yeah. And that's going to be a much better option than like ManyChat because I've been using ManyChat.
ManyChat's decent, but it's very like algorithmic and it feels very like body. Right.
Doesn't feel authentic. Yeah.
At all. Right.
And so if you have something that has a little more AI, especially if you can train on your and can learn who you are as a person, so then it kind of talks back to the user and the fan kind of like as you, that would be, ooh, yeah. It's going to be very amazing to see what happens with like personal brands because now like you can kind of scale yourself, right? You can literally make clones of yourself to talk to thousands of people at the same time on like a one-on-one.
Like, and that is something that is, that is one of the most exciting parts of our time for sure. Have you made a digital twin yet of yourself? Oh yeah.
I mean, I've done that like, uh, with, uh, in my, in my courses, we actually go over that. That's actually one of the big things I do when I teach AI is teaching them how to build Zach GPT, which is where we build an AI that has all the transcripts from all my videos and all my LinkedIn posts and just consume all of that data and then build an AI on top of that.
It's scary how good it is. It's scary.
When I talk to them, I'm like, wait, that's me. But I'm me.
What's that spider-man mean yeah right it is exactly dude that's not so how accurate are the answers like especially if it's going to be something that i've talked about and since i've made like 5 000 posts on linkedin that's where that's why content creators are so far ahead in this AI world because they have created so much high

quality information that you can just pull from. I mean, that's one of the things you're in an

amazing position here too of all these like recordings of all these really amazing people.

Like you'd be able to synthesize all of that. And like there's going to be a lot of application.

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Cations, right? Yeah, that'd be cool. I've had AI companies offer just to buy my raw data to train their AI models.
Oh, yeah. They're going to try to do podcast AIs.
Yeah. I think Google already has one, right? Oh, yeah, they have that where you can turn a document into a podcast.
Like it goes the other way around, right? Where it's not like podcast the document, but you can actually turn a document into a conversation. When I saw that, I was like, what is going on? Like, why do we need this though, right? To be fair, some people have different learning styles.
Sort of learn auditorially. Oh, yeah, for sure.
They can retain it more than just reading a document. Definitely.
So I some use case for that but man those podcasts are sound super accurate yeah yeah crazy time to run why do you choose to focus on linkedin out of every social media platform um part of it is i started on linkedin like four or five years ago when i was working at airbnb and part of it is i had an unfair advantage on linkedin because i worked at facebook netflix airbnb and if you just say that on LinkedIn, like you just get a million, you just get tons more views, right? Because it's just, it's unfair. It's just how it works, right? Because especially if you work that thing, right? Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, those five, right? Then like you have just, everyone's like this, whatever this guy says is correct, right? And there's like this unfair advantage that you get on that platform versus other platforms.
And so then I just got into the habit of like in the morning when I would go to work at Airbnb, I would go and write my paragraph on LinkedIn. And then after a while, like I noticed I was like, whoa, this is snowballing.
I'm getting hundreds of thousands of followers. And I'm like, then I got to a point where I'm like, I don't think I need to work at Airbnb anymore.
I think I can just do this content full time now because it's very, I can see the potential and see the momentum. Yeah.
And prior to that, you were, so your first job was 30K a year, right? Yeah. And you went all the way up to 600K a year? Yeah.
That's insane. Yeah.
That was in, so that was 30K in 2014 and then 600K in 2021 in seven years. Dude, that's insane.
Yeah. I did not know jobs were paying 600K a year, if we're being honest.
Yeah. Yeah.
And that's keeping in mind that this is not a VIP position or a director position or a manager position. No, I didn't.
I had no reports. No, no one under me.
Right. This is me making six hundred thousand000 a year writing code, right? And writing code and producing like a lot of architecture designs and stuff to like, like further the technical vision of Airbnb and Netflix.
But like, yeah, it was no managers though. That's nuts.
Does that still exist or is AI gonna replace it? Oh yeah, no, those roles are going, I actually think that those roles are actually going to become even more prevalent. Really? Because there's a side of it that's like, well, if I am a technical person who knows how to do architecture and vision and concepts, one of the things that I am slowed down by is just I can only write so much code in a given day.
Right. That's just that's a it's a fundamental thing.
I can only type as much as I can possibly type. And so that's where AI is going to kind of like, if you can kind of fill out all of the bigger picture things like this database, this piece, this piece, AI can kind of fill in the middle pieces.
This is one of the things I noticed when I quit my job and I've been building a data expert over the last year or two is when I'm writing the platform, it feels like I have five hands or six hands where I'm like, well, okay, I just have come up with the architecture and then the actual implementation, just let ChatGPT do it. And then it makes it so that all I have to do is come up with the design.
And that is, and I think that's where AI is going. So AI is going to replace some of these technical jobs though, for sure.
It's not like there's no disruption here. It's especially, this is where there's the, a lot of people on LinkedIn are talking about this is like the death of the junior engineer.
Because AI is going to take a lot of these junior roles. Like the people who are like trying to get into the field now, it is very difficult.
It's very difficult to get a junior entry-level role in tech right now because of AI. And you're competing with these roles.
It's complicated, though, because it's like, well, what do we do when all the senior engineers die? Because it's like, we have to have juniors now to replace them later. But I think that if you're a senior engineer or a staff engineer, there's never been a better time to be in tech actually as long as you can embrace using ai yeah yeah for sure you have to embrace using ai to like give yourself those superpowers but you should be actually able to make substantially more money that's good do you see any companies catching open ai catching up to them uh yes there's i oh a bunch of them i think there's uh well anthropics close with Claude.
I alternate between those two, between Claude and OpenAI. Those are very close.
Then there's also the Chinese guys, the DeepSeek. They did some crazy stuff, right, where they pulled.
But DeepSeek showed was that like any company that releases a model, you can just copy it. You can just copy it, right? And then you can essentially steal their model, right? And that's why OpenAI was like, it was comical what OpenAI was said though, because they were like, DeepSeek, you stole our model from the data that we stole from everybody else, right? And it's like kind of like, it's very comical, like how all of this is playing out because, you know, OpenAI kind of infringed on a lot of copyright, right? They stole so many things from the internet that were, they weren't legally allowed to take, right? But it's like, it's very hard for like, you know, us to sue, like an individual content creator trying to sue OpenAI, like very difficult, right? So yeah, but I think that that's one place.
I think another important thing is, I think we get caught up in this battle of these big companies. But another place is that small companies who build their own local models, that is a different way.
Because another thing to think about is a lot of people don't use OpenAI because of privacy. They're not just going to ship all their data to OpenAI and be like, hey, sorry.
And so what they want to do is build their own models. This is where meta is.
This is why this is, you know, I rage quit Facebook in 2018 because I actually did not agree with Mark Zuckerberg's leadership. Really? Now I actually think that Zuckerberg is doing a lot of really good.
Like the stuff he's doing with Meta, the stuff he's doing with Llama, the Llama models, because the Llama models are like essentially what open AI should be. Because open AI is like, no, we're not going to give you our model.
But then the Llama models are like, here's the model. You can look at all of it.
You can go all the way into it. It's very open and transparent.
And that's where I really think that Meta is doing a very good job in that space. What's the LLAMA model exactly? So LLAMA is going to be a competitive model with GPT-4.
But the thing is, is it's completely open source. So you can actually look at what it's trained on and the weights of the model and how it makes decisions.
Because with GPT-4 and these other models, you have to treat it as like a black box it's kind of magic right where you just put your prompt and then it gives you something back but with llama you can actually like see what it's doing underneath right you could because it's open source they give you all everything that it's doing right and that's what meta is all about right and they have two models they have like a 70 billion parameter one and like a 7 billion parameter one, depending on like how smart you need it to be and or how lightweight you want it to be. Dang, that is crazy.
Yeah. Zuck has grown on me.
I'm not going to lie. Yeah.
I wasn't his biggest fan. Why didn't you like him in 2018? So in 2018, I left Facebook.
So I worked there 2016, 2017, 2018. I worked in core growth there, like helping them scale up users.
In that period, like we went from 1 billion users to 2 billion users. Damn.
Yeah, Facebook was like on, that was like peak Facebook in some regards. And one of the things that happened though in 2018 was a privacy scandal broke.
There's a thing called Cambridge Analytica. I remember that one.
That privacy scandal broke. And it was all about Facebook mishandling data and supplying way more data than was allowed.
It essentially made it so that if you signed up for an app, you didn't just give your data away. You gave your data and all your friends' data away.
Damn. That's what it did.
And that's the crux of the scandal. And that's what allowed the Cambridge Analytica company to harvest like like a million like it was like 100 million accounts or something like that.
Right. And, you know, they used that to allow Trump to win.
That was actually a very critical thing for Trump to win in 2016, which is it's an interesting and interesting result from that, right? But personally, what happened for me was I found that they just didn't care about data privacy. And from my side, as someone working in data there, I like saw all this negative news come in.
And then I was looking at what was actually happening on the ground and on the data privacy things that were happening on the ground. Because Zuck was essentially being like, well, this was the past, right? Because a lot of the profiles and stuff was actually harvested in the early 2010s.
It was like 2011, 2012. And Zuck was trying to market it as like, no, this is the past.
We're a new Facebook now. But then I'm there looking at what was going on at the company.
And I'm like, no, I see this problem and this problem and this problem. And there's still a lot of other privacy problems that I see going on right now.
And so like, I, it felt like to me that Zuckerberg was straight up just lying to my face. Right.
And then it made me feel like I want to go somewhere else. So I left and that's when I left and I actually joined Netflix.
Cause I was like, I feel like, cause Facebook was very hated at that time. And I was like, I feel like people don't really hate Netflix.
They might think that the shows suck or whatever, but they don't like hate it. Right.
They don't like it might. They're like, oh, it's boring or like not that good, but no hatred there.
Right. And Netflix is an interesting company, too.
Yeah. That was before they started their originals.
Right. Yeah.
That was right. Right around then was like when I joined and they were, they just started making those like big billion dollar investments.
Yeah. Was it chaotic back then? Oh yeah, for sure.
Definitely. Cause they weren't making money back then.
They were not making money. And then, uh, also, uh, my, my second year at Netflix, that's when they, uh, Disney plus came out and people were like, Oh, they were like Disney.
They were very nervous about what, what the implications for Disney Plus were for the company. And the stock got cut in half.
People were very anxious, I could tell, about that competition. I know they feel differently now because I feel like they actually kind of crushed it.
Netflix has done a very good job. It took them a couple years there to find themselves again.
But yeah, definitely is. They rebounded well.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, now they're probably number one streaming service.
Oh yeah, dominant again, for sure. Wow, interesting.
Did you see that happening? I was not sure. I think for me, like what ended up happening for me was I joined Netflix and I learned a very hard lesson at Netflix, which was that just because you have the technical ability to do a job doesn't mean it's the right job for you, right? Because Netflix is a crazy company.
The way they pay, right, is they say, we're going to pay you your top of personal market, which means if you go and interview at another company, say I go interview at Google and they give me a 30% raise, I can take that offer back to Netflix and be like, hey, Netflix, give me a 30% raise and they'll give you a 30% raise. Because they want, because they're like, we're going to pay you as much money as you can possibly make.
That's like their whole philosophy. Right.
And one of the things when I was there, I was like, this is crazy. And I was really young when I worked there.
I was like 24, 25 when I was working at Netflix. And I loved it, but it was also a lot.
Because they pay that much, they also have sky high expectations. It's similar to like, you know, kind of like working at like a hedge fund or like one of those other like, you know, those places that they just expect the moon from you.
And I learned that like the thing that I was missing was I didn't actually have the social skills. I didn't have the soft skills necessary to say no to people and put up boundaries.
And even though I was able to write a bunch of code and deliver a lot of very good value, I just got super, super burnt out. And that's one of the things I learned is even if a company is paying you really well and you're learning a lot, sometimes it's still not the right job for you because of like, it's going to burn you out.
It's going to, it's going to be something that like is unsustainable. Right.
Was that the first time you experienced burnout? Yeah, for sure. For sure.
And that was, I did, uh, this was, uh, right before the pandemic, right? This was like January, February was when I realized I'm like, I don't think Netflix is for me. I think I need to go and do some soul searching.
And it was wild because I actually put in my notice and I quit on March 2nd of 2020. And I told my coworkers, I'm like, I'm going to quit my job to travel the world.
And then, you know, two weeks later, the world was like, no, you're not. No, you're not.
You're not. You're not traveling the world.
We're going to shut the world down. And I was like, what? I didn't think that I didn't think that was even possible.
But all right. Talk about bad timing.
Right. Oh, yeah.
Terrible timing. So you got stuck somewhere.
Yeah, I was in Puerto Rico. Actually, I got stuck in Puerto Rico for like a couple of months because I could have left, but there was no flights out.
The only way to get back to the mainland U.S. is by taking a boat.
You could take a boat, right? And I was like, I'll just stay in paradise. I'll just stay here, right? It's hard to beat Puerto Rico, right? Oh, it was great.
I just like swam in the ocean every day. And just like, it was weird though, because Puerto Rico locked down really hard.
And like, they like banned the forest. They couldn't go to the forest.
And like, the pandemic, if your license plate ended in an odd number, then you could drive Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And if it ended in an even number, you could do Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.
And then everyone could drive on Sundays. And I'm like, I don't know of anywhere else that did that half of the days.
Right. It's like and they would pull you over and give you a ticket.
I got a ticket for having an even numbered license plate on a Tuesday. Right.
And I was like, I'm like, I was like, this is the most arbitrary bullshit I have ever seen in my life. For sure.
What to say on the ticket. Right.
It was like a $50 ticket for it was violating uh pandemic like uh procedures and lockdown procedures wow at least it's only 50 yeah it was only 50 i just got a 680 yeah right yeah for speeding yeah right i was like how much are tickets these days yeah right dude 680 680 is a lot i would wreck a lot of normal 100 like if you're making like minimum wage that would yeah that's like your whole paycheck that's not cool man yeah man so you live in Puerto Rico, though? I did for three months, yeah. Oh, okay.
From like March to June, yeah. Where did you spend the last 10 months? Because you took a year off, right? I took a year off, and then I came back, and then I got a dog.
Yeah. That dog is very special to me.
She's actually like my logo and my brand and everything. I love it.
And so we did – because I still wanted to travel. And so I saw, I took that dog to every national park in the West.
So I did everything in Utah, Arizona, like Glacier, Olympic, Redwoods, like everything. And that was like a three month like thing.
And then I came back to San Francisco and got really stressed about the 2020 election. I don't know.
Like, I feel like it's interesting because my whole life has shifted. Because, like, back then, I feel like I was very, very, very nervous about Trump getting reelected.
I was super nervous about it. And this time around, right, in 2024, like, I didn't care.
I didn't care. I voted third party.
I didn't vote for either of them. I just didn't care.
But in 2020, I was very nervous. And I was like, we got to go.
We got to get Biden and we got to get Biden. And this is freaking really nervous, really nervous.
It's interesting to see how like that year, like media had a just a foothold with everybody.

It did a very good job at making people scared.

Oh, yeah.

And. year, like media had a, just a foothold with everybody.
It had, it did a very good job at making people scared. Oh yeah.
And, and, and now I'm like, I don't even really care. It's like, I'm like, whose president doesn't matter that much to me anymore.
Right. And, but like back then that was the only thing I could think about, especially like September, October, November of 2020.
That was the only thing I thought about. And like, after that I was like whoa and then uh in December I uh my girlfriend at the time was like Zach like you got to do something with your life you can't just like be just chilling right and she's like and uh and because what the the other thing I was trying to do during that period period was like I was just playing a lot of Call of Duty Warzone and like just like because I wanted to be like a pro War zone player because i had a dream as a kid i played a lot of halo halo was my game and i wanted to be like a professional halo player and then i saw war zone as like the new thing and uh i i got like over a hundred wins in war zone okay it was a lot it was grinded it out yeah and uh but like i i went to a couple tournaments lost every time got wreck I was like, OK, there's there's always some like 16 year old Asian kid who's just wants it more than I do.
And and then in December, my girlfriend is like, I'm breaking up with you like you're not going to be a professional gamer. And I was like, whoa, a lot.
Right. And then that's when I started making content.
She broke up because you were addicted to video games. Yeah video games yeah addicted to video games and like well and just in a very negative headspace about the election i was like two of two very negatively obsessed about that wow and uh and and then that's when i was like oh wow i need to like go get another job and and i started to make that's when i started in december of 2020 it was when i started making content on linkedin.
And then in January was when I got the job at Airbnb. And then I started like just picking my life back up and started, started moving and getting into it, getting into a much better space.
And that's cool. Yeah.
Yeah. For sure.
It actually turned around pretty quickly for me after that. And, uh, like, yeah, it was really exciting.
Like I, like, I think a lot of people should take a year off. Like it's something that like is very scary for some people.
I know for me it was. The one thing that made it easier is Netflix.
Another thing about Netflix is they say this when they hire you. They are like, it's very intense here.
And if you want out, we'll give you severance. Because we would rather you leave quickly than stay around and hurt the A players, essentially.
They're trying to build the dream team or the A team, right? And so they give you four months of severance. Damn, that's the longest I've heard.
Yeah, yeah. And so I was like, okay, I'll take that.
And so it made it very easy for me to quit. Cause I was like, okay, I have like, that's, that's good money, good money to, to, to go and leave.
And so like, I know for other people, like taking a sabbatical is trickier cause they see this like cliff, like a, like a financial cliff of like, well, if I jump dude, then I'm, I'll, I'll never financially recover from not working. Right.
And, uh, but sometimes what happens, right. is I know for me, the thing that happened

during that period was I discovered myself. I discovered content.
I discovered writing. I

discovered a lot of this entrepreneurial spirit. Because before that, my dream was I want to be a

principal engineer in big tech. I want to work at Google.
I want to be the top engineer at Google. Right.
That was like my dream job. And now now I look at that and I'm like, that just seems absurd.
It's very absurd. That seems like a lot of stress for not that much money.
It's decent money, but like it's like a lot of stress for not that much money versus like what you can do building a business. Yeah, because you're probably making the same, if not more, doing what you're doing now.
Oh, yeah. Way more.
Way more. Yeah.
It's millions of dollars a year now. Yeah, for sure.
100%. And you're way less stressed, right? Yeah, way less stressed.
Yeah, it's both. Like, when I look back on my time at Netflix in particular, I was like, wow, I was so stressed making, at the time, I thought making the most money I would ever make in my entire life.
600K, right? Yeah, 600K. I thought that that was, I peaked, right? It was my pinnacle, right? And now I look back on that.
I'm like, wow, like I should have like not treated it as as like intensely as I did. And I think part of that's just growing pains though, of like being very new, being young, not realizing like, like what is even possible in your life.
Right. I think that that's the other big thing

that taking this year off,

even though there was a lot of depression,

a lot of sadness,

it did unlock something in me

that allowed me to see the world

in a very different way,

in a way of like,

hey, I need to just give a lot of value

and get known, get known.

And that will eventually allow me to do that. And it's kind of set the stage for my now my content creation journey.
That's a good point, though, because not a lot of people take time to reflect. Yeah, because they're so work heavy, like you were probably working 80 hours a week, right? Yeah, for sure.
So you had no time to just sit back and think what's not it was just always about what the next deliverable was. It was all about what the next the next milestone was and the the next promotion and the next raise and the next, like it was, they're very good at that in big tech about like the very good about like the carrots and the sticks, right? Where they're like, well, if you do really well, we're going to give you another a hundred thousand dollars a year, but if you don't do very well, we're just going to fire your ass.
Right. It's like very good, like poking you and then rewarding you.
And like, they're very good at like putting you in that and and if you are uh like a certain type of person you can thrive in that environment you can thrive in it and uh i definitely did i definitely did for many years like i i think uh my personality has shifted now to a point where like i don't think i would thrive in that environment anymore i even uh i have like this last year i I've like kind of, I put out some feelers just to see like what kind of offers I could get in big tech. Because I interviewed at OpenAI and Meta last year just to see what was out there.
Because OpenAI is like, I'm like, well, I would go work there for a year just to learn, right? Just to soak it up. And like, but I realized like after interviewing there, I there i'm like wow my mind is so different now it's so different it's like when you think like an entrepreneur and you think like a boss it's very like it's very hard to go back to being an employee it's very hard that's like that's something that i think in some ways like one of the things i told myself when i quit my job was like you can always go.
I treated it like a two way door. And now that I've been doing it for a couple of years, I'm like, that door was a little bit more one way than I thought it was.
Right. Especially now that you're making more.
Yeah. Right.
Yeah. Very difficult now that I'm making more for sure.
Where do you side with the open AI versus Elon stuff? Ooh, that's a good one. I think in that space like i think elon had a very uh kind of idealistic vision of open ai of this idea that it's going to be ai for good and ai for it's going to be like a pure vision like prop pure for prop or pure non-profit vision for that company and in that way like it is it feels like open ai is deviating from that path that pure intentions path right but at the same time like what company has ever gotten to that level being non-profit like they're like the only one that comes to mind for me that is even close is like the bill and melinda gates Foundation.
And again, the only reason they're big

is because of Microsoft, right?

And they all got, you know,

just billions of dollars of shares of Microsoft, right?

And so it's like, they're just super funded

by a for-profit entity at the end of the day.

And so like, I'm very nuanced on this

because I feel like Elon has a very solid point

from like an idealistic perspective

of like what OpenAI should be.

But then from like a perspective of like, if you actually want open AI to be as big as possible to reach the most number of people, it does need to be for profit. It needs to make money.
It needs to like bring stuff in and be self-sustaining. Otherwise, investors are just going to keep burning money, right? And that's like where it's kind of, I'm kind of neutral.
I don't have a great perspective on Sam Altman. I think he's kind of like in the middle, like as a leader, it seems like I don't really trust him.
I don't really know why, though. I don't know why there's something about I trust Elon a little bit more than Sam Altman in terms of like just those two personas.
And that's I know it's well, Elon's all about transparency, right? He is for sure. Like, even though it sounds like you're not, you're not a conservative, but like he, at least he's honest.
Yeah. For sure.
He's showcasing what's going on right now. Right.
Definitely. Yeah.
So I like that he's doing that on Twitter. Oh yeah.
I love Twitter for that reason. I actually, uh, I, I feel like he's done a lot of good for Twitter over the last like couple of years.
Like I know, I mean, there's that's, that's a very hot take for a lot of people in San Francisco, but like, but like, I know that like, it's where the, the free speech, the, and, and, and the AI that he's doing, he's deployed so many AIs there. Cause like, I know, I remember 2019, 2020 Twitter, like just so many bots, so much, so many fake accounts, so much, just, just crap.
Right. And now I'm like, I'm like'm like i'm like when was the last time i saw a bot on twitter it's been a long time i feel like i might see like one bot a month now or something like that it's very rare it's actually he's done a very good job of either like pushing that content down or like the the spam filters are very good now yeah he said he would do that too and he bought it and he delivered yeah it's crazy that he did that And he delivered on making the product better with 20% of the engineers.
He's like, I'm going to fire 80% and make the product better. Those two things together feel like, whoa.
How did that make you feel? Because you're an engineer. Oh yeah.
I mean, I had a lot of friends who actually got let go from that. And I actually, personally, I actually benefited from that a little bit because I got some referral bonuses from to Airbnb.

So some of my friends went who jumped from Twitter to Airbnb because like he did let go talented people. He let go like brilliant, talented people, too, because like if you fire 80 percent, you're not just going to fire the bottom 80 percent.
Right. You're going to fire definitely going to let go people who have good skills, too.
So I personally think it makes it made sense in some regards because like there's a side of it that's like you need to have uh like because at netflix right netflix is a company that uh their head count is they're very lean they're very lean on head count that's because they their goal is to essentially let go five to ten percent of the company every year they have that like and that's the that's like the intensity of it. It's like, you need to be an A player or otherwise we're going to let you go.
And so that's where Twitter wasn't like that. Twitter was kind of ran like, I don't know, like kind of like a liberal agenda machine.
It was very, very in very bizarre like that that company in particular had a lot of bloat to it right that like so there's a side of it like do i think 80 was a little bit excessive probably right but 50 is probably like what was necessary right to actually get it to where it needed to go right so like yeah it's initially i definitely it was funny too because this is another thing where like i feel like my mind has changed right because when elon bought twitter and fired people i definitely was part of that group of people who were like fuck elon we're going to mastodon i hate twitter right and then i went i got on mastodon and i have like i have like almost 10 000 followers on mastod on Mastodon now at all, ever. Not even once.
Cause it's like, it kind of like, there was like this big spike when everyone hated Elon. And then it just kind of died out because it doesn't have the stickiness that Twitter does.
Cause that's where Jack Dorsey did a good job. He built a really good product.
Twitter is a great product. Like at its core, the soul of it is really good.
And that's where, uh, like when you try to like replicate it, you need, you need something else. That's why blue sky, you know, is kind of in that space a little bit, cause it's kind of more that, uh, is kind of has his soul in it, but like, it's still, still doesn't be Twitter.
Yeah. Twitter pretty much put clubhouse out of business too.
Oh yeah, for sure. Like clubhouse was hot.
Oh yeah, for sure.. I actually interviewed at Clubhouse when it was at its peak.
And like I got rejected. And I was depressed about that initially.
I was like, dude, because I thought I got rejected from like the next Facebook, like from the next. I thought I was going to get in really early.
It was hot. It was so hot.
But then it just gone. Right.
Just Twitter Spaces is the same thing. It's just like his Clubhouse is a feature in other apps.
Right. So what do you think caused them to fall off um i think that's a big part of it is that they weren't able to capitalize on that attention of like building out other spaces because like you need to have more than that like it's like it's similar to like you know like skype with skype's i think another interesting example of a company that's like where they did video call right and they actually were skype was also very big for a while like there's a lot a lot of people you know and you know they're actually getting rid of skype they're they're decommissioning it like next couple months yeah it's like going under right skype is gone forever and uh like i think part of it is you need to capitalize on that moment and get people to adore the brand but clubhouse as a brand was never like like it didn't they didn't do a good job.
They didn't do a good job of like building a brand that was like sticky of like, I like this platform. You went there because there was cool people there.
They kind of like they put themselves in a very precarious situation of like they were like, oh, the famous people are here. So everyone is here.
But then when those people left, it's like, okay, now no one's here. And it's like kind of dies out like where it's like they kind of, whereas like other places they have more sticky, like grassroots kind of communities.
That's why I think like, you know, places like Facebook, even though people say Facebook's dying, like there's also so many like, think about like all like the, I don't know, like the mom groups on Facebook. And like, I know I'm a part of like this magic, the gathering group on Facebook that I'm like, I know these like grassroots communities are never, ever, ever going to leave Facebook.
And so they have that stickiness to them where clubhouse was like, it was like a blockbuster, like one hit point, one trick pony, like one hit wonder. And they didn't like do anything grassroots.
And they just kind of capitalized on viral. And once that sugar high ran out, it was like, I guess we're going to go somewhere else.
Fell off quick. Yeah, right.
Yeah, for sure. It was like a year, right? And I feel like Snapchat too kind of fell off.
Yeah, definitely. I don't use Snapchat anymore.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I used to use it all the time.
Didn't they get an offer from Zuck? Yeah. You try to buy them.
Yeah, that was a while ago, though. That was when they were on the up, for sure.
I think that like that was back when their shares were at like 30 or 40 dollars. And I think they're at like 10 dollars now.
Yeah, for sure. You hold all your stock from all the companies? No, I mean, I only Netflix.
I'm very long Netflix. I have not.
I've, I've hold that for freaking like,

cause Netflix,

their compensation structure is very interesting.

We're like,

so they pay you all cash,

right?

Uh,

which is different from the other companies.

Most companies,

especially when you're like a senior or a staff engineer,

60 to 70% of your money is actually in stock.

And then 30% is in cash.

Whereas at Netflix,

they pay you all cash,

but then they also allow you a sliding scale. So they're like, okay, well, we're going to pay you 100% cash, but you can also pick whatever percent you want as options.
And so it's like a leverage scale. And for me, I picked 15% of my money to be paid out as options.
But these options are very special because most options that you buy on the market, you can buy a two-year horizon. So it's like you buy it and then you have to exercise in the next two years.
That's the longest dated option you can buy it publicly. But the options that you got on Netflix were 10-year options.
Damn. So for me, my first options were in 2018.
So I have to exercise in 2028. And so I'm like, just keep holding.
Yeah, and I, and they have gone to the moon, dude, cause their options. So they're leveraged too.
Right. So it's like in that time, Netflix has done 200%, but that position has done like a thousand percent, right.
Because of the leverage involved with options. So like definitely, uh, like Netflix is a crazy company in that way.
Whereas like other companies like Facebook and Airbnb, they pay you in just like a regular stock, like RSUs, like restricted stock. Yeah.
Which is like the more traditional way of doing things. That's why Netflix is a wild company.
They definitely like they're successful for that reason, though. They're successful because they're different.
I could see that. So you sold the Facebook stock? Yeah, for sure.
I did. I mean, I shouldn't have.
I definitely was right about Airbnb though. I was right about Airbnb because Airbnb has been like- That one crashed, right? I lost an unbelievable amount of money on Airbnb because I joined Airbnb one month after IPO, right? And so the stock was at like 200.
And so I joined as a staff engineer, which is like, that's like a top 1% engineer in big tech. And so the stock was at like 200.
And, uh, and so I joined as a staff engineer, which is like, like, that's like a top 1% engineer in big tech. And, uh, so I got like $1.5 million in stock.
Right. Just for joining.
Yeah. But, but it's over four years.
So over four years. So I get that money over four years.
So it's like something like 300, 400 K a year in stock over four years. But the thing was, that's at the $200 price point.
And then

the stock went from $200 to $80. Damn.
So the 1.5 mil turned into like 500K. And that was in

six months. And I was working at Airbnb for six months and I was like, did I just lose a million

dollars in six months? What is going on? This company is like, what is what? And it hasn't

come back. It hasn't come back.
Airbnb has has been, has been trading flat, right? It's been like, it's been between like 100 and 150 for the last like five years. Right.
And it has been just very like, cause they're having a harder time. They have a lot of like pressures, a lot of like regulatory things, right.
Where, you know, they're getting pushed out of New York city. They're like, there's a lot of different things.
You know, there's a lot there's a lot of band here yeah yeah yeah for sure because it's it has a lot of negative effects on um communities communities because it's like what if you want to rent a long-term apartment because what it does is like is airbnb is a more profitable way to uh use your space and so it's like landlords are incentivized to do short-term rentals at the expense of people looking to do long term rentals. And it's like long term rental people should not have to pay more money just because there's less supply.
Right. And so there is a it's an interesting trade of like, OK, how do we like balance these two things so that like landlords are able to still get the right balance of that with.
But Airbnb, I think, should exist. I think it's like a very good thing that allows for you to have a more authentic travel experience than like a sterile, like Marriott or like, you know, Hilton experience.
That's just literally exactly the same in every country on the earth or whatever. And, uh, like, but it's like, how do you balance that? So that the long, the long-term residents do not suffer.
And I think that's like a, it's a very hard balance. Like, cause you know, New York, what they do is like, okay, you can do an Airbnb, but it's like, you have to book for like 30 days.
Right. And it's like, yeah, it's essentially like the book a month.
Right. And it's like, it's like, uh, and that's too long.
Yeah. That's way too long.
Right. It's not short term anymore.
Right. I don't like leaving my dogs for more than like three days.
Yeah. Yeah.
Right. I got two dogs.
Yeah. Yeah.
Dogs are great. I got, I got a dog too.
I know you got a Husky. Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
I taught my Australian shepherd how to howl. Oh yeah.
That's great. Huskies can howl.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
My dog howls all the time. Yeah.
Dude, that, the noise of howling is just so soothing. It is.
It is for sure. I love that when I'm like, Hey Lulu, I'll woo.
And she's like, it's like so good. I love it, man.
If you could be any animal, what would you be? So my spirit animal is a giraffe. I'm a very giraffe.
I find giraffes to be very otherworldly. They feel like they shouldn't exist on this planet in some ways.
They feel like they're from another planet, and I always feel kind of out of place. I'm between a giraffe and something fast, like a cheetah or something like that.
Yeah, it'd be fun to have that speed. Yeah, for sure.
I go eagle usually. Eagle's good.
You can fly. Fly around.
Yeah. And you're the predator.
Cause you don't want to be prey. Yeah, definitely not.
It's a tough life out there. Being a rabbit would be terrible.
No, that's terrifying. You get a lot of sex, but that's it.
Oh man. You ever want to start your own company? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
I have a company, Data Expert. Well, no, like your own app or something.
Oh, my own app? Yeah. So Data Expert is actually, it's a double play.
So I have my, Data Expert is teaching people data and AI skills. And then below that is a platform called Tech Creator.
So Tech Creator is a platform that allows people to build their own communities. Have you ever heard of school? Yeah.
So it's similar to that. Like it's similar to school, except the difference is like, it's for technical people.
It's for people who teach code or teach data and it allows them to build their own cohorts. And so data expert is one community on the tech creator platform.
So that's my app that I build. So I do two plays at the same time because like I want to build long term value here to not just like teach.
I love that. Because I get very like I'm very ADHD.
So I have to like if I'm doing too much content, I get burnt out. But if I'm doing too much code, I get burnt out.
So I have to like kind of do a little bit of everything to like soothe the brain. Find that balance.
Yeah. I actually have ADHD too.
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Some people these days say it's a superpower. It is.
It is. I, I, it's a balance, right? I think that there's a side of it that is very, very useful.
It allows you to lock in and focus and like that hyper-focused part of it of like, I'm going to do this one thing every day for seven years. Right.
And a lot of people will look at you and like, dude, that guy's nuts. But then you look at it like, because what that hyper-focus and that kind of like addictive kind of side that ADHD has is it allows you to build that compound interest.
Right. Of like, I mean, being able to like what you've been doing, like you're doing like eight episodes today or something like that.

I'm not even tired. Yeah, yeah.
Not even tired. It's like you're like, I could do 16.
And like and then it's it's the combination of doing the intensity that you can do in one day multiplied by the consistency that you can do over years. And then that creates this compound interest effect that like ADHD people are able to generate more.
And that's the whole, like, you know, if you have ADHD, you're 700% more likely to start your own business. Damn, I didn't know that.
That's the stat. And you're also like 100% more likely to get divorced.
Really? Oh, that's scary. There's, and the data is really crazy.
So like, and like, you know, the ADHD also on average takes nine years off your life. No.
Yeah. It's yeah.
Yeah. Why? A couple of things there.
Like ADHD people are a lot more likely to like smoke. Smoking is a big part of it.
So if you're an ADHD or who doesn't smoke, it, the data looks a lot better. Right.
Like cigarettes or weed? Cigarettes, cigarettes in particular. And that the jury's still out on weed in terms of like, it seems like with weed, the big thing is like it only has a really negative effect on your life expectancy if you smoke more than 21 times a month.
Damn. So like, which is not that many people smoke that much, right? It's like essentially, but those are the people who are like, smoke weed every day.
Those guys, those guys exist. That was me for a long time, actually.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah, for sure.

You didn't get drug tested at the companies?

Only in Utah.

Where I grew up, I got drug tested for those first couple jobs,

my first couple of big data jobs in Utah.

The big tech companies do not drug test.

Really?

Yeah, at all.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I haven't had a drug test in like 10 years.

I thought they did for some reason.

Yeah, definitely not.

My last drug test was for research innovations. I worked there in 2016.
They were like a military contractor for the U S government. So it makes a lot more sense for them for sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
I guess they don't care as long as you're productive. Yeah.
Right. Well, like, I think there's a side of it where it was like such a large percentage of programmers smoke weed that like, it's similar to like the NSA, right? The NSA used to have a very strict no cannabis policy and they actually removed that because there was not enough cybersecurity people who don't smoke weed to fill the roles, right? So they had to actually relax that policy in order to get enough hackers on the team at the NSA.
And so I'm sure the big tech companies are very aware of that as well, of like the number of people. And it's like, they're all in California too.
So it's like, I know for me, there's a side of it where I'm like, I'm drawn to California for that reason too. So that's interesting.
Cause when I smoke it, I get lazy, but for you, does it make you more focused? Yeah, a little bit. It depends.
I think for me, there's a side of it where I have rules with it, where it's like my rules are like if I'm smoking in the a.m., my life is a mess. It's like for me, my rule is usually I can only smoke after 7 p.m.
7 p.m. After 7 p.m., it's fine.
It's fine. It does allow me to kind of chill.
It allows me to be more content because my mind is like I have a Ferrari mind bicycle brakes. Right.
So it's like very hard for me to like stop. And that's where cannabis is just.
That makes sense. Right.
Yeah, for sure. I wouldn't say I use it to be productive.
It is good for writing. I've noticed it's good to for like, like coming up with like divergent thoughts, like thinking like kind of sideways.
It's very bad for thinking convergently and like trying to like solve a specific problem.

But thinking about all the problems that you could solve, it's better for like brainstorming.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The crazy part about cannabis to me, like for you, it said it calms you down.

For me, it gives me anxiety.

Yeah, for sure.

And the same thing, we're smoking the same cannabis, but just different effects.

And there is data.

And I think for me, I saw I took a break Like back in September, I have not smoked since September because it's been like six months now. And one of the reasons was like I read a lot of data on this stuff.
So cannabis for a lot of people, it does calm them down in the moment. But then if you look at the data over 14 days or a month, they actually have higher levels of anxiety throughout the day.
Oh, wow. So like it does, when they're smoking, they're calmed down, but then like you pay a cost just the rest of the time.
It's similar like with people who drink, right? It's very similar with people who drink because they have the same thing where they drink to calm their nerves, but then their GABA is all out of whack for the rest of the week or the rest of the month because it's like they need to get their GABA back in balance to not have anxiety. Interesting.
That is so fascinating. Was that your only substance that you were doing? Yeah.
I mean, I'm prescribed Adderall for ADHD. So that one's like, I don't like to use the word I do Adderall because it makes it sound like a drug, right? When it Adderall, it's what I use for my medical diagnosis.
Do you take it every single day? Yeah, for sure. I'll take a break maybe every 10 days or so.
Because there's a point where I'm like, dude, I just need to have a really nice, amazing day of sleep. Because I notice it does take 10% off the top on my sleep, which is not great.
Yeah. But like, it's, uh, it's worth it to me cause it makes it so I can get all my stuff done.
And then the one day I don't take it, then I sleep amazingly. And that like allows my brain to like reset.
Yeah. I'd be curious if you would microdose mushrooms.
Yeah. Oh, microdosing is great.
I mean, that's a big thing because they, it's decriminalized in francisco now oh no yeah you can literally do it and like uh i tried that uh in 2022 um one thing about that that i've noticed is like getting the dose right is hard it's like like whether you're doing like 0.1 or 0.2 grams and uh i noticed with that like i did that for a while the only thing is like my stomach just doesn't tolerate it as well. Like it's like it works.
It actually gives me a very similar effect to Adderall. But like then I'm like, but I have like this like queasy stomach the whole time.
And I'm like, oh, dude, I wish this is so close. It's so close to like the perfect like supplement.
But it's just a little bit off. Once they could fix that.
Yeah. Hopefully they can figure that out.
But yeah, some of it grows on like cow poops. Yeah, right.
Yeah. Makes sense, right? I just had it.
Yeah. And I got nauseous.
I got pale. Yeah, it's rough.
But dude, it's been awesome. Where can people learn from you and keep up with you? Yeah, for sure.
I mean, the big ones are going to be my socials are going to be exactly. That's my handle everywhere.
And my YouTube is Data with Zach. It's going to be the big one.
That's my website, DataExpert.

I run a bunch of cohorts.

If you're very interested about becoming very dedicated about learning AI,

that's where you can join my academy.

Perfect.

Yeah, check them out, guys, and stock up on AI domains.

Yeah, let's go.

See you guys next time.