How can being a playwright prepare one for designing social intelligence?
Jason Yuan is the CEO and founder of Hivemind. A former Apple designer, he pioneered MercuryOS, an early vision of intent-based computing, then cofounded Dot, a personal AI companion with long-term narrative memory. He now sets off to build a second AI startup inspired by the Madonna song “Future Lovers.”
In this conversation with Soleio, Jason explains why Hivemind runs on principles instead of rules, why every relationship is a story with shared authorship, and why his product motto is “for the plot.”
Jason makes the case that the best products, like the best stories, are based on truth. A truth that is fundamentally plural.
00:00 Own Your Story, Do It True
00:49 Costumes, Stages, then World-Building
03:03 Hivemind in the Wild
08:42 From MercuryOS to Dot
13:20 Did You Make a Startup to Fix Yourself?
16:47 Every Relationship is a Story
19:35 The Graveyard Before Hivemind
22:25 Can Jason See Gotham?
28:13 Do It for The Plot!
29:13 Designing the Hivemind launch
32:48 The Information Market
34:45 Making Work That Feels True
41:02 Being Known Is the Most Wonderful Thing
S3:E02 Jason Yuan: For the Plot
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