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00:01 - Chris (Host)
Hello founders and venture capitalists out there. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Startup Founder Roadmap. Today we have very special guest, denny O'Brien. This is another AI founder of Hyperhumans. Got some MVPs out there. We're going to get into it, give you some insights and background and everything. Denny, welcome to the show.
00:20 - Dinidh (Guest)
It's great to meet you, Chris. Really good to be here and really looking forward to our chat today.
00:30 - Chris (Host)
So I have to always ask this question why AI? Like what pushed you in that direction? Because me, I'm somebody that's into it a lot and I do a lot of research, I'm reading on it, I'm using it every single day. I think most of the world is still terrified of it. I know people like us are kind of crazy for going more into it. So what kind of pushed you in that direction?
00:46 - Dinidh (Guest)
So I've always been fascinated by tech. Even from a young age, like 12, 13, I started to build computers. Well, take them apart, rebuild them, and my very first startup was back when NFC so near field communications were newer technology and I'm in my 30s, so I miss a dot com boom. But the AI boom is right here right now and right I just what.
01:06 - Chris (Host)
I'm in my 30s, so I miss the dot-com boom, but the AI boom is right here, right now. Right, that's what I'm saying. The AI boom, man, people aren't catching on.
01:10 - Dinidh (Guest)
No, it's incredible. Even just having helped launch different startups over the last decade, mostly in the technological space, what AI has really done is just fast-forward the potential for development, the timelines of startups. We're seeing people go to market within weeks with the help of AI, developing their code, testing their code, even inventing their products.
01:29
There's one startup that recently made their CEO in AI and they already went to market within two or three months in their post-profit. So it really is this kind of like magic supercharging power for your business, your idea, your startup, and we've not seen anything like it since the internet and that really it is such a parallel to me to the dot-com boom in the 90s.
01:48 - Chris (Host)
Yeah, and that's what I was thinking of myself, because I just go to random webinars, I listen to a lot of podcasts, watch a lot of YouTube videos Anytime AI pops up. I'm just trying to consume more so I can learn more, because I think it's one of those things that it's only going to improve and it's not going anywhere. You know like it's not, like we're going to wake up one day and it's all of a sudden less useful or less people are using it. So I think, for the entrepreneur today, you got to lean into it more, because it creates a lot of revenue opportunities.
02:20 - Dinidh (Guest)
It really does, and you know I mean this is what I tell everyone. Let's be clear Real AI doesn't quite exist yet. We have very smart algorithms, we have large language models, we have AI technologies like named entity recognition or this sort of thing, but true artificial general intelligence AGI is not quite here yet and when that arrives it will be even more of a game changer. So what I really tell people is like listen, it's a tool like anything else, it's a technology, and there were plenty of people that were resistant to the internet and moving their business online. There I was helping companies put up web stores, even, you know, in the last 10 years, who hadn't even shifted their business online yet. So there is kind of this lag time whenever a new technology comes out. But the first adopters, the early movers especially when it comes to AI, in terms of speeding up your process, as I mentioned earlier, they're going to have the most benefit, and I think you know.
03:08
I just want to say maybe to your listeners don't be afraid of AI. It's not coming for your job specifically. It may change your job, it may change what you do, but if you're one of these early adopters and, like you, if you go to the webinars and you start to really learn what the technology can do and what it does well, you can leverage that either to improve your own company, your own career, even personal development right, help you to be better at finances or take better care of your health. Ai can actually do this now and as you said we're early.
03:35
It's only going to get better.
03:37 - Chris (Host)
I kid you not. I literally just created a whole meal plan, workout plan and everything with ChatGPT Right like meal plan, workout plan and everything with chat gpt right. Gave it my height and weight, foods I'm allergic to how often I want to cook like a really long, like four or five paragraph breakdown of where my health is now and where I want to go. And it just gave me an entire workout plan, meal plan, grocery list, like everything, right, incredible. And I think if people realize you can use things like that like in a really easy way, it would change a lot of people's perspective. So before you got deep into HyperHumans, let's talk a little bit about the past. Like you said, you built websites and you built web stores and everything. What's your experience in the startup space specifically?
04:26 - Dinidh (Guest)
Sure. So I started off as a marketer and a web designer and then my very first job was working in a large printing and communications company that was already established and my CEO at the time was kind enough to help support me in a venture of my own very first startup. And that's when we started to move into smart communication, so using near field communications like the chips to be able to do, for example, concert tickets or that sort of thing which could be verified. Then I got a little bit into blockchain and Web3 super early on. This was 2011, 2012.
04:54 - Chris (Host)
Yeah, a long time ago, Very early, I shouldn't have sold my Bitcoin man. I mean, I sold it at a profit but it was a long time ago.
04:59 - Dinidh (Guest)
It could have been more, but we started. Actually, we were one of the first companies using blockchain for product authenticity, so perfumes and other high-end luxury items being able to verify their authenticity on the blockchain. So that was kind of my first foray into a startup and it was my own, and then I realized that I really just loved creating and building things and I love being there from the start because I feel like I have a pretty good gut feeling when it comes to technology and I think that makes a big difference when you're setting out as a startup and you're saying here's our direction. Now, of course, you're going to change over time. Right, it is an absolute journey that weaves around, but if you set the right destination early on, I think you get there a lot faster. So I started doing some consulting for other startups.
05:44
I would have helped found OnlyFans before it existed if it weren't for a lawyer who was very, very nervous about the idea of taking money for those kinds of images. So that was kind of my first big failure, where we had already set up like we were ready to go public, go to market, and our lawyers just shut it down and was like listen, I'm not gonna have a part of this. I think you're he was wrong, because one and a half years later OnlyFans came to be. But it was a good lesson for me in terms of trusting my gut and going okay, listen, if we think we have a good idea, just go for it, set your sights and just make it happen.
06:19
Yeah, so through that, I've worked in established companies as a marketing executive and that sort of thing. But then about three years ago, I did that for maybe two and a half years, where I went back into the corporate world from an already established company and then about, yeah, two and a half three years ago, I wanted to get back into the startup world. I really missed it. It's exciting. There's this like everyone wants it right, they want to make a name for themselves, they want to build something cool, and I think that's very different from a corporate world where it's like we just want to either maintain or grow, and that's not as exciting as just bringing something brand new to the world.
06:52 - Chris (Host)
Um, so I agree I agree it is a thing where, because I'm I'm recently, because of some family stuff, I'm going back into corporate myself and I haven't had a job in years. It's been a long time, right. Um, and I will say, the excitement that you have, like I got an idea like two or three days ago, and that kind of excitement you can't like, you just can't get that at the regular job. It's not going to happen, it's something that's impossible and I think for entrepreneurs, is something that we kind of thrive off of. Honestly, we need that because it just gives us the energy to get up in the morning, get up early and put the work in and stuff, and it's I don't know. It makes life worth living for me personally, even if I do have corporate job or whatever it is, I can never see myself giving up entrepreneurship. It's just too fun, honestly.
07:43 - Dinidh (Guest)
Right, I mean this is this is my very first startup. I was just working for the printing company and doing normal printing communications and I was like no, like this is fine, but I'm really excited about near field communications and some of like augmented reality. We started playing around with that too, and my CEO at the time was like I don't think I have customers for augmented reality and you know wireless communications. I was like cool, so let me do a startup and I will find you customers for these new technologies.
08:08
But again yeah, I was working in the office with other people and it was very like daily grind, but your brain never quite shut off and I think if you have that spark, you're never going to be able to ignore it completely. Like you said, you're not going to be happy, right?
08:22 - Chris (Host)
Yeah, and I think it's kind of good now because we have so many communities and spaces for different types of founders, and I think that part makes it easier too, because you can always lean on people in different communities to get the support you need or get some kind of guidance or help or something like. Twitter is still good for that. I'm just going on that platform specifically and asking a question. You get 20, 30 people to answer you within an hour. Like that's kind of crazy how fast you can get so many people to answer you within an hour. Like that's kind of crazy how fast you can get so many people to give you input, even if you want to validate your idea. Going on a platform like that versus linkedin, you can get a lot of buzz man, like like really, really fast, you know so how are?
09:03
you with hyper, with hyper humans, because it's so, I would say it's different. What is your approach to differentiating that in a marketplace?
09:14 - Dinidh (Guest)
That's a very good question. So for us, I mean, it's interesting because we have six or seven different products. They have different applications and for me personally, so we have three co-founders and luckily we're spread out in our interest. Personally, I'm more interested in direct to consumer and I always have been. Business to business for me is not, so it's like I don't wake up excited about business to business, although, that said, like, several of our tools are business to business, and so what we're trying to really do is set ourselves apart by well, I hate to say it, but by implementing AI in a proper way.
09:50
So a lot of the startups that I'm familiar with, they're basically chat GPT wrappers as in they're wrapping around chat GPT and it's just a different UI and it's like, oh, we're making a financial assistant, but you're actually just doing API calls to chat GPT in the background with like a new face and a new logo on it, and that's fine, like absolutely there's room for that and there's. It's not me throwing shade at anyone who's doing that. Fair play to you if you can make money doing that, absolutely. But for us, what we're trying to really do and this is my personal belief, especially in the AI space that proprietary LLMs and custom AI models are going to be the IP of the future, and so we're really trying to focus and distinguishing ourselves by not just wrapping around ChatGPT or Claude or any of these other API LLMs, but actually building and training our own custom LLMs.
10:31
So one of our first tools that actually just launched is called Neuralete and it's basically a lead finding tool where you can put in any websites, for example, and it will give you an AI profile and then you can tell it OK, I want the CMO contact of Nikecom or Apple or whatever, and it will start searching through different databases.
10:47
It'll do open source intelligence on the web to try and find you that right contact, right. So maybe it'll go to a press release feed and go, okay, find me the CMO of Apple. And then it will take that person's name and it'll bring it to our databases and start looking using a neural network to find the right person. We could do this with ChatGP, but we've actually found that when you start to train your own custom model to be like an expert in open source intelligence and sales and you're constantly training that it's actually performing way better than just off-the-shelf models or even custom trained models like the assistant feature that they have in ChatGPT, where you can train it a little bit. We're finding that the proprietary stuff really works better. So for us, it's really distinguishing ourselves with the proprietary tech and really developing, putting the effort into developing it rather than just coding a wrapper.
11:36 - Chris (Host)
I like that perspective on it because most of the people I talk to are like still on that layer one that you mentioned, where it's just like a chat GBT wrapper, which for some people, I'm not mad at that. I get that. That's where you want to start, people, I'm not mad at that, I get that. That's where you want to start. I think that's smart. Like for me, that's where I'm starting, because I just don't know enough to go and make my own model. I don't know enough yet, so while I'm learning, I think it's good to start at level one and then go, you know different levels later on. Um, but I like how you're setting it up to where you're creating a whole different. It seems like you're creating a bunch of tools that somebody can use to kind of make life way easier, and I think that's where AI should be used, versus just this project management tool, added AI that really doesn't do anything but they just use it to hike their price up, like that's what I'm seeing a lot of, to be honest.
12:26 - Dinidh (Guest)
No a hundred percent and, to be honest, like even for me from a very personal or philosophical level, I don't want to just make tools that replace people. Because it is possible, like we could create our lead generation tool, automate the shit out of it and I'm not sure if I can cuss through the podcast, feel free to cut that out but yeah, we could absolutely do that and then goodbye, sales like junior salespeople are gone. I don't like that. I prefer to make people's lives easier and to kind of empower them to do a better job, and even to. There's a. There's a really famous book for learning Python, the coding language, called automate. The boring stuff and I love the concept of this is we all have jobs to do, we all got to make money, we got to pay our bills, we've got families to support. So why don't we use these tools to cut out all of the nonsense that we don't enjoy doing about our job or the things that are maybe difficult to us or that we just don't want to do?
13:10
and make us more efficient people and more competent. So, for example, our second product that we're going to be releasing it started just as a data visualization tool where you could connect a bunch of APIs and have a custom dashboard basically displaying whatever you want. And then we realized, okay, so if somebody put their finances like their banking information, their investments, their cryptocurrency, their cash on hand and put this all into a single dashboard, we could actually use AI, not just to give you like a general plan of here's how to save more money and be more profitable.
13:38
But actually we could use a personalized AI to analyze all your finances and give you the tools to be able to make more money, save more money.
13:47 - Chris (Host)
And I think something like that is what we need, specifically because I look at a lot of business podcasts that talk about the economy and how bad it is and stuff like that, and I think something like that could help people who are in that financial hole of life and trying to get out.
14:04
Like I think that people they may not want to go and pay for some kind of consultant or a coach or whatever it is, but if they have a tool like that in their pocket, like on their phone or something, I think that's a game changer because it's more than just a regular budgeting app or a spreadsheet or whatever it is Like. Something like that is so powerful because it can really break it down to what fits you personally. Like I haven't used AI for personal finances, but I'm thinking about, like I have kids, so I'm thinking about what it could possibly look like for them in the future, and something like that would be a game changer because it's giving you the guidance that you probably didn't even think about. It's going to give you the strategies and steps to really protect yourself financially or make better decisions. And, again, it doesn't fully remove a mentor or somebody else, but it just makes things easier for you personally, so I love that one. Right there Me just thinking from a money perspective.
14:57 - Dinidh (Guest)
That'd help a lot of people in the world 100% and that's really like I don't say this lightly, I really that is our ultimate goal in Hyperhumans, and that's actually where the name come from or came from is that we want to elevate people using technology and help them to become hyperhuman, whether that's in their finances, whether that's in their business as well, automating the boring stuff that they don't want to do so that they can do the things they're good at and enjoy. Because I'm a really big believer that when people are doing things that they love, they do incredible work. Like magic happens when you have the time and the ability to focus on what you love doing, you really create even better stuff. And you know we have we have a lot of founders I know listen to your podcast and that goes for them too. Like, if you can automate the boring stuff about running a company, for me it's. It's.
15:38
I hate accounting. I absolutely hate it. We're a three person team and I'm the CEO, so I've got to do it until we can hire an accountant. So, using AI, then you know this is part of their reason, where I was like, okay, let's just put our company's finances into a tool and it can advise me on what needs to happen or how we could shift money around or what we could, where we could put our money to be more successful. So it really is a little bit of selfishness, but at the end of the day, I understand that that can help not just founders and businesses out there, but individual people, and that's what I think, is for me the message of AI.
16:06 - Chris (Host)
That's a killer right there.
16:07
Oh man, if you can use it for a company and for somebody like cause I'm just thinking about it like as a dad.
16:20
If I have my you know, my 14 year old and I'm giving her an allowance or she's got a job or something like that, whatever it is, and she has a small amount of money to manage, like she wants to go shopping or whatever it is, go out with her friends and stuff, but like she has a small amount of money to manage, this is something that could teach her those kind of skills very early. And if that same tool can help me manage my consulting business or my agency on a finance side because I interviewed an accountant a few years ago, he told me that it's like the last position that people would think of hiring for their company and they get a lot of tax trouble and all of that stuff. That could be a game changer for a lot of people. Man, so are you comfortable talking about pricing? Cause you keep talking about all these different tools and there's more than one. I would love to get like some perspective on what the pricing will be for your average customer.
17:06 - Dinidh (Guest)
Sure, so I'll. I'll use so our, our, our dashboard, our data visualization tool. It's called Hyperdash, so I'll. I'll just mention that now so that we know what we're talking about. So we're currently in beta stage and so for my personal hyperdash, I have our company's finances on one dashboard, I have my personal finances on another and then our home budget on a third, so these all are in the same account. I can switch between them. I have a bird's eye view of what's going on, and you can also combine them, if you want, to one page. You don't have to click around.
17:33
We really felt strongly that we didn't want this to be priced at like a business tool, in the sense that if you look at what maybe QuickBooks cost per seat, we didn't want to be in that range. So once we actually launch this it'll be within the next one to two months where we actually go public with the tool it's going to be about $9.99 a month, which is affordable for everyone. It's cheaper than Spotify, it's cheaper than Netflix and the real power is being able to hook up almost any API. So we can have, for example, I have N26 bank account, I have an ally bank, I have an investment account and then I have cryptocurrency, so that's all in one place. But you, just you have that bird's eye view. And then, once we add the AI element, where I can go hey AI assistant, take a look at my finances today, take a look at my spread. Am I a little bit over leveraged on something? Am I diversified enough? Where should I move money, based on what's going on in the stock market, for example? Should I maybe pull some money out? Should I put more in?
18:25
Now, obviously, it's a little bit scary to imagine just having an AI giving you input on your finances, but actually what really motivated us was realizing we're finding out recently that when you put even just ChatGPT the standard, like LLM, no customization up against trade analysts for the stock market, it beats them almost like, I think, seven to eight times out of 10. It's getting better predictions and actual stock analysts. So you get a little bit nervous. You're like do I trust in AI with my finances? And then you run some tests and you're like, oh yeah, actually I do Seven, eight times out of 10, not to mention I don't have to worry about it being like shady or taking advantage of me or whatever.
19:03
It's not working on a on a success basis or even on an hourly cost. You just it's there, right, nine, nine in a month and nine, 99 a month, and it works for you. Um, so that's yeah in terms of pricing. That's what we're trying to hit, because we really want it to be, like you said, a tool where, if you want it as an individual to launch it, just make your account and off you go, but at the same time, if you're a company with 10 employees, a hundred bucks a month. It's a no-brainer right.
19:26 - Chris (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I think that that's. That was one of my main concerns, cause when I hear amazing tools like this, sometimes what's tied to it is a crazy price point, cause I again I think about the ease of access and how easy it is it would be for people to use that. I love it, I love it. So how are you educating people on how to use the product? Cause it was something like this that's so new and different. I think that'll be the hardest challenges, like that gap of yeah, this is useful and I would love to use it, but I'm way over here and I just don't know how, like I'm kind of confused. So how are you closing that gap?
20:00 - Dinidh (Guest)
Yeah, it's, it's a great question. So we were having kind of a dual approach. Number one it's it's kind of your more typical approach A lot of video content, video tutorials, that we're going to be putting out mostly on YouTube, and that's pretty straightforward. But you'd be surprised how many companies forget to do that or just don't do it. Even for me when I'm trying to work with some of these APIs and it's like all right, here's this 300 page document that you have to wade through to try and and.
20:25 - Chris (Host)
I'm just like what.
20:26 - Dinidh (Guest)
So typically what I do is I download it, put it into chat GPT. Tell it what I do is I download it, put it into chat GPT, tell it what I want it to do and say find on page 237 the right code that I need. So there are a lot of companies that aren't even doing the video tutorials. But the more exciting thing for me, the more exciting way that we're helping onboard people, is actually onboarding with an LLM and having people actually just talk with the assistant, say, ok, welcome to Hyperdash, what is it you're trying to do? And you'd say, okay, I want to get my personal finances in order. Great, okay, tell me where you work, tell me who you bank with right, do you have any investment accounts? Do you have any cash under the bed or crypto?
21:02
And I just want to point out a very important fact here that we are huge about privacy. So me, as a company, I don't even have my customer's email addresses. It's all encrypted and hashed. I don't even like we have ways that we can contact you, but I can never go into our database and even find your email address, let alone your name or your finances or anything like that. So my co-founder is a award-winning comp sci guy. He's won awards from Microsoft and several universities for his encryption and AI technologies that he's made, and we had a very serious conversation right at the beginning and basically said listen, if we're going to create a tool where everyone is putting all of their financial data and attaching it to AI, it needs to be absolutely like Fort Knox.
21:43
Right, so that's I just want to make sure that is that is expressly said, but all that to say it's. It's a conversation, conversational onboarding this is one of the things that LLMs are actually great at is having a conversation and pulling context and facts from what they're being told. So then the next evolution from that, and this is open source information.
22:03
Berkeley has developed an algorithm, an LLM, that hooks up APIs automatically. Now, it's not perfect, but basically it allows you to connect hundreds and hundreds of APIs and allow you to communicate with those services. So it could be Stripe or, like I said, ally Bank or anyone that has some sort of banking API, and you can just tell it I bank with this company and I would like to show my balance or my savings account or my recent transactions, and it can automatically hook up that API. Have you log in with your bank securely and then just pull that data, rather than sitting there hooking up connections or anything like that. So, as you know, to your point, long story short really leveraging AI and what it's good for and it's that conversational ability, but then also on the backend, doing some really interesting stuff with the latest emerging technology of going okay, I'm having a conversation with an LLM Great.
22:55 - Chris (Host)
But can it do something for me? And the answer is yes, and that's the really exciting part. Yeah, man, I love that privacy part that you mentioned, because I know that that's a big concern with AI right now, and that part I get that you know understand why it will make a lot of people apprehensive and why it's a second thought. But also kind of look at it like if you're already online, sharing all your information, all your details, telling your stories and like some people, put their entire lives online already right.
23:20
So I love the way you set this platform up and can people go and try it out? How can people join the beta group?
23:27 - Dinidh (Guest)
So, as of right now, if you go to hyper-ai, you can sign up for our beta and within the next one to two weeks we're going to be opening up those beta accounts to our list of beta testers.
23:38
Well, yeah it's in alpha right now and then we're opening up to beta. So, yeah, hyper-ai, just go and sign up. There's several big buttons you can click very easy and we're absolutely looking for people like you'll get a free account. We want people to be able to test it. We're we're doing our own internal tests, but we really feel like, especially that products, because it's more broad, broad appeal and mass market, that's where I think as you said, it's a cool it's a cool product and we're absolutely looking for people who want to test it out, get a free account and start setting it up.
24:05 - Chris (Host)
All right, man, this is exciting. I love it. I might have to check it out myself. I think it'll be fun. I love trying new tools. I've only done it for the past 10 years. I was really focused in the podcast space specifically, so I tried every hosting platform out there. I tried it all the new tools and stuff. I try them all. But in the past year maybe I've just gotten deeper into the startup world. So now I'm always trying different people's software or whatever it is. It's fun, I love it. I love it. I think it fits with my long-term goal. Like in 10 years I want to be more of a vc, but not the typical vc. Like I want to be the kind of guy that work with a lot of, you know, small bootstrap founders yep, you know not like I come in and take over everything. Like that's not really how I want to operate, but I do want to kind of help the people who are building something cool build it faster. Like that's who I want to be long-term.
25:00 - Dinidh (Guest)
I love it. I love it and yeah, we definitely need more of those. I mean, we've I've worked with quite a few VCs over the years and there are some great people out there who exactly have that mission Right. But there are some sharks out there who will squeeze every bit of equity they can on the guise of like we're going to give you reach and money and everything and that's fine. I mean, it's partially how the world works, but that doesn't mean it can't work differently. So I really respect that, that you have a different approach there.
25:27 - Chris (Host)
Yeah, man, I'm excited, so I'll make sure I put put your link in the show notes. I want to make sure I get that one right so everybody can go and get access. Man, this was great, denny, thanks for coming on the show, absolutely.
25:38 - Dinidh (Guest)
I really loved it. It was great to meet you, chris, and, yeah, maybe we'll cross paths again in the future. You.