Episode 11: Coding the Beat: Strudel, Claude Dashboards & OpenAI’s $1B Play
This week on Built This Week, Jordan Metzner and Sam Nadler dive into the intersection of AI, music, and enterprise tools. Jordan shows off a new project built on Strudel, a live-coding JavaScript music library, turning it into an AI-powered DJ + Ableton-style mixer that generates new beats on the fly. Then, the hosts spotlight a daily use case of Claude that creates instant CFO-style dashboards from raw spreadsheets or PDFs, beating out other LLMs for speed and clarity. Finally, they break down OpenAI’s $1.1B acquisition of StatSig, what it means for Codex and the AI coding race, plus big moves in Figma’s IPO, Google’s antitrust settlement, and the rise of enterprise-focused AI like You.com.
Show Notes: (0:00) Intro + Jordan discovers Strudel for live-coding music (2:20) Demo: remixing tracks with AI-generated beats (5:02) Building an AI-powered two-deck DJ tool inspired by Ableton (8:14) How LLMs are lowering barriers to music production (10:13) Claude use case: auto-generating dashboards from Google’s 10-K (12:59) Why Claude outperforms other LLMs for financial and ops data (14:27) Codex gains traction; Rise Labs engineers switch from Claude Code (15:56) OpenAI acquires StatSig for $1.1B to boost Codex + experimentation (17:14) Anthropic predicts 90% of code will be bot-written (18:17) Figma’s IPO rollercoaster & enterprise adoption (19:37) Google avoids selling Chrome in antitrust ruling (20:29) You.com raises $100M pivoting to enterprise AI search (22:08) Why back-office ops are AI’s sleeper hit in enterprises
Built This Week is a weekly podcast where real builders share what they're shipping, the AI tools they're trying, and the tech news that actually matters. Hosted by Sam and Jordan from Ryz Labs, the show offers a raw, inside look at building products in the AI era—no fluff, no performative hype, just honest takes and practical insights from the front lines.
Jordan Metzner:
So I wanted to make something that was kind of like, algorithms DJ.
Jordan Metzner:
So every time I hit AI, I'm getting a different version.
Jordan Metzner:
And I kinda change the the sounds that it's using.
Sam Nadler:
Hey, everyone, and welcome to built this week, the podcast where we share what we're building, how we're building it, and what it means for the world of AI and startups. I'm Sam Nabler, cofounder at Rise Labs, and I'm joined each and every week by my friend, cohost, and business partner, Jordan Metzner. Jordan, how are doing today?
Jordan Metzner:
Hey, Sam. How's going? Happy to be back. Episode 11. Lots going on in the AI world.
Sam Nadler:
Episode 11, and we have a full docket today. But before we jump into the agenda, please remember to like and subscribe. We have a new episode out every Friday, so like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, wherever. We'd love to get in your feed. So, with that, I'm gonna jump right into the agenda.
Sam Nadler:
Is that okay?
Jordan Metzner:
Yeah. Let's go for it.
Sam Nadler:
Okay. So like every week, we're gonna cover a recent tool that we've built. This week, we're gonna cover somewhat of a passion project of yours. Then we're gonna jump into a use case of Claude, which maybe people are familiar with, but it's something we use all the time and I think is quite impressive. And if people aren't familiar with, they just, you know, hopefully will unlock something that has been really beneficial to you and I on almost a daily basis.
Sam Nadler:
And lastly, there's, you know, every week, some hot AI news, market moving news this week, but seems like there is every week. So with that, I'd love to see what you built this week, Jordan.
Jordan Metzner:
Yes. So busy week. You know, I was scrolling and perusing through TikTok, one of my favorite pastimes, and I found some TikTokers making music using code. And what they were using was a library called Strudel, which is a JavaScript library for developing music, and I'd never heard of it before. So I took a quick screenshot of what they were working on, and then started to explore it a little bit.
Jordan Metzner:
And Strudel is this library built off of another library that is essentially meant for music composition. Cool thing about Stradell, it's got a really easy language to be able to read. It's pretty editable. And as you know, LLMs are great at writing code. So, you know, it's a live coding platform for music and allows you to make edits in real time and do a bunch of other stuff.
Jordan Metzner:
It has a pretty cool online community. The community has done all different cool things. So I I think before I show my demo, let me just show this one. So this is some people using Stradell to make a Charlie x c x song, a remix cover of the song three sixty. You know, you can you know, it might be hard to see here, but, you know, if you look in here
Sam Nadler:
through, like, kinda how this works, because, like, a lot of the secret sauce is is right here at the top.
Jordan Metzner:
Yeah. So, I mean, this looks like, you know, almost any other programming language, you know, let, like, lead synth, you know, arrange and, you know, here's the arrangement. So it's a three in one arrangement, and it's e three to b three with c four, and then, you know, kind of runs through this and then it runs through four times. Starts with like a VOC sample up here at the beginning, and the note is a sawtooth, and then, you know, it kinda goes down into each section. Here's the bass, etcetera.
Jordan Metzner:
If I just press play here, you should be able to hear it. Hopefully, we can sync it all up in post, but should sound like Charlie XCX. Let's see how this goes. Alright. So what you can see here is, like, it's, like, running through this three, four times, then it hits this one, then it runs through it again.
Jordan Metzner:
Right? So you can actually see it happening in real time, you know, and I think I did this like kind of as an example, but like, you know, if we just changed, you know, the entire song or at least the intro to be e three instead of these different notes like e three to as f three, etcetera. Yeah. I think, hopefully, this should work. What what what we'll be able to see is that, like, you know, the song should come out totally flat.
Jordan Metzner:
I mean, we can keep those e fours in here, but it's just one note. And so if that plays, let's see if this works. So there you go. And so you can kinda see how that works a little And so I had never really heard of it. I guess maybe it's starting to take some ways online, but I decided to take this and take it up a notch, and maybe I can show you what I built.
Sam Nadler:
Yeah. So yeah. How did this inspire what you decided to build next?
Jordan Metzner:
Yeah. So I love using Ableton Live and Ableton to produce music, and I've been DJing since I was a little kid. I think I first got turntables when I was, like, 10 or 12 years old. So I love to make music and to produce music. And so I wanted to make something that was kind of like Algorithms DJ, DJ Pro two, and a combination of Ableton, and this is when I built.
Jordan Metzner:
So I don't have a good name. I just called it Strudel. It's like the name of the library. But what you can see here is I have a two deck mixer, and you can actually mix between kind of deck one and deck two. Each deck has different multiple channels on it.
Jordan Metzner:
On each deck, there's actually like a a sub channel mixer between a and b that you can kind of manipulate here down below and selecting the channels. It's got a bunch of additional master effects and features, synchronization. The the coolest feature, it has AI. So, you know, all of these channels have some AI code behind them or have regular code behind them, Stradell code. And the AI button will help us, like, write new beats.
Jordan Metzner:
So let's see if this works right. It might be a little buggy, but hopefully, it'll all work. So we should be able to get some techno music here. Let's see. Alright.
Jordan Metzner:
And I didn't promise it'd be like amazing techno music. So, you know, here's the drums and I could, you know, increase the delay. Immediately, you should start to hear, you know, you kinda have the drums picking it up there a little bit. And since the drums are on channel a, you know, I can kinda mix it between channel a and drive it all the way down channel b where there's no drums. Got it.
Jordan Metzner:
Right? So there's the mix. But now, know, what we can do is hopefully hit these drums and change the b on them, like, in the AI button.
Jordan Metzner:
So every time I hit AI, I'm getting a different version.
Jordan Metzner:
And I kinda change the the sounds that it's using. I guess every time I hit AI, it resets it again. But you could see here it's creating different beats. And then, you know, we could basically apply those and you can do this across the whole stack. So you can start to make the whole song sound different.
Jordan Metzner:
And you can keep going across the stack. So, you know, it's just the beginning early days. You know, I think we've talked about in the past that we've used, you know oh, there we go. We've talked about in the past that we've used things like Suno to produce music, but this is another type of, like, music production. Just another way to to leverage LLMs, JavaScript, React.
Jordan Metzner:
I think I used mostly Claude. Actually, I think I used mostly OpenAI Codecs to build this. I think, you know, I could have never built something so dynamic, so progressive without the use of LLMs. This would have been a very, very heavy and expensive development cycle to build something so complex. And, yeah, while it's just the beginning, I think this type of libraries, these Strudel libraries and others like it will allow, you know, the LLMs to continue to to help people make cool stuff, like, in this case, music.
Jordan Metzner:
You know?
Sam Nadler:
Yeah. That's what I love about AI. I mean, it really brings access to previously complex, I guess, trades or something that would take, you know, decades or years to really master, and you can really get your hands in in and, so, you know, have an impact pretty quickly. Not saying there's not a learning curve. Like, there's definitely a learning curve.
Sam Nadler:
I'm like, I'm not familiar with mixing music, and this looks a little complicated to me. But, you know, I think I could probably build myself a pretty basic dumbed down version and and within, like, a couple hours. And, like, previously, that would have been impossible. It'd also help me learn the technology and how to how to learn to mix music. So that's what I absolutely love about it.
Sam Nadler:
Just, you know, the accessibility of almost anything. If you're willing to spend a few hours and and and work with the tools that are available, it's pretty amazing.
Jordan Metzner:
Yeah. I mean, I think we've talked in the past of kind impact of, you know, the VEO three models from Google and the impact on video and what that has on Hollywood. And, you know, I know last week we spoke about Nana Banana and the impact on on Photoshop and image design, know, and and here's LLMs having impact on on music production. So, you know, I think, you know, we're gonna continue to see LLMs have an impact whether they like it or not on the creative arts. And, you know, hopefully, that generates a whole new wave of of, you know, creative artists, actually.
Sam Nadler:
Perfect. And that leads us to our kinda next segment. We're gonna talk about a use case for Claude. I'm assuming most people are familiar with Claude and have used it for many different tasks. However, this specific use case, we use a lot, and I think it's great to show our network and and our listeners about, you know, this amazing feature from Claude.
Sam Nadler:
And, you know, we've also we kind of run this test with other LLMs, and it's not nearly as good. So why don't you walk us through what we're doing and, you know, a, this example, and then how we use it?
Jordan Metzner:
Yeah. So I think, you know, we don't really need to do this, but in our prep for today's today's call, you know, we ran this through some other LMs and we found, you know, that continually, Claude continues to outperform. And what I mean by outperform is you can give Claude a CSV, a spreadsheet, or a document, a PDF document, and it'll build you a pretty beautiful dashboard that is pretty cohesive. And so in this example, I gave it Google's latest financial filings. I think it was a 10 k.
Jordan Metzner:
I asked something super simple. Make me a dashboard as if I'm a CFO after reading this document. And yeah. So I just had Claude put that all together. You know, it gave me an executive summary here that we can read in the text, but it also gives me this beautiful dashboard of, you know, Google's revenue for the quarter, including its, you know, 96,000,000,000 in revenue and 28,000,000,000 in net income.
Jordan Metzner:
And it even shows kind of a breakdown of where that revenue is coming from, you know, operating expenses by segment, free cash flow, employees, all the way down to the bottom of the balance sheet. So, you know, if I had additional questions or want to ask certain things, I could certainly do that. You know, it looks like they have a settlement liability charge here for some privacy concerns and some other key considerations of risk. But, you know, the document that I used to generate this was a 57 page document in PDF format with, you know, financials and all different types of documentation. So, you know, it's a great tool for investors, but it's a great tool for kind of almost any small business.
Jordan Metzner:
You can export, you know, your financials from, you know, Google spreadsheet, QuickBooks, Excel, kind of anywhere you want, and just have it make a dashboard for you. And, you know, one of the things I like about this is that, you know, it's almost like a throwaway tool. You know, I'll use it once, I'll check out the dashboard, I'll look at it, and, you know, next time I wanna make a dashboard, I'll just make a new dashboard. I don't need to save this, I don't need to it for anything. So it's almost like a one time use site.
Jordan Metzner:
I find that really valuable and really helpful and, you know, incredibly fast.
Sam Nadler:
Exactly. I think in this use case, we're using Google. But in our day to day use case, we're using, you know, QuickBooks or other data that we have from our own businesses. And instead of maintaining a dashboard, we can quickly throw it up in Cloud, and it's so incredibly digestible and beautiful. It's, you know, it's it's hard to argue that there could be something better in the amount of time this takes.
Sam Nadler:
And we did, just for context, put it in, the same document in OpenAI. It wasn't nearly as good. It didn't provide the immediate visual. The summary was pretty good, but I would I would argue that it was too much. It was too much to read.
Sam Nadler:
And then we had to prompt it a couple more times just to get the visuals, and the visuals, you know, were were there, but not nearly as as I think it made four graphs.
Jordan Metzner:
You know? I I made four graphs. And, you know, here, we don't have any graphs, but we have really good charts that actually help help you really understand what's happening in the financials. And, I mean, you know, I didn't read the document, but I know pretty well how how Google's doing just by, you know, looking at this dashboard. So it definitely hits the spot as far as being effective and efficient.
Sam Nadler:
And you can do this with really any data, whether it's financial data. I was playing with some operational metrics today and all very, very useful in Claude. And it's, you know, it's kinda funny how these LLMs excel or accelerate, and then who's better at what continues. Seems like it's constantly changing, which actually leads me to kind of our next topic, which is codecs. You know, we've talked about a lot about using LLMs to write code.
Sam Nadler:
A week ago, two weeks ago, I can't remember, we were talking about Cloud Code and how powerful it was with, the multiple agents, and I went through an ATS that I built in a couple hours. But you, since Codex, these since the most recent launch of Codex, you're you've told me that Codex is even better, and our engineers are switching to Codex.
Jordan Metzner:
You know, we keep switching. And I think that's gonna be the game until, you know, there was there's some type of supremacy, and it seems like it's gonna be a winner take most model. I think since starting to code with AI, we've gone through a bunch of different iterations from using ChatTPT to using tools to moving over to cursor, and then, you know, plot code and then codex, you know. I tried codex a few months ago, and I thought the product was highly underdeveloped. It was a pretty poor experience.
Jordan Metzner:
And, yeah, over the Labor Day weekend, I saw a lot of people talking about it, so I decided to give it a test run. It helped me build, like, the majority of what you saw inside my DJ tool. It's incredibly well developed. You can definitely see that they're spending a lot of effort in improving the models and improving the Codex experience. Yeah.
Jordan Metzner:
I think we're gonna continue to see a change in workflows. You know, I think, yeah, the team is moving over because it's the, you know, the best, you know, the best model we found available on the market today. But that may change, you know, based on on something new coming out tomorrow. So it is exciting. It's a exciting space.
Jordan Metzner:
It is showing that, you know, these things are moving very, very quickly. But, yeah, I I think to bet on, you know, what our workflow is gonna be like by the end of the year would be crazy, because I just think it's gonna change a bunch more times. You know, and speaking of the codecs, just, you know, some news came in that Alex AI or Alex Codes is a cursor for Xcode. So basically, build Swift based apps is joining OpenAI to join the Codex team as well. So, you know, they're definitely they, being OpenAI, they're definitely investing in Codex as a tool, you know, trying to beat Anthropic in this space.
Jordan Metzner:
Team is is adapting to it quite And
Sam Nadler:
they made another acquisition. Correct? Statsig?
Jordan Metzner:
Yeah. Statsig acquisition by OpenAI. I had the link up here. Let me try to find it. But, yeah, OpenAI paid $1,100,000,000 for stat sig.
Jordan Metzner:
I don't know if you know, but stat sig is a tool that allows you to do a b testing and other types of optimizations, launch flags, and things like that. And I know that OpenAI was using it as well as others in order to to test their product and make, you know, marginal improvements and things like that, AB testing. So but this just shows, like, huge, huge acquisition. I mean, billion dollars is a massive, massive acquisition for a startup. Super exciting.
Jordan Metzner:
I think some of those people are gonna roll into product roles at OpenAI, and I think this is, again, this is just like inning one, inning two. I think we're gonna see a lot more acquisitions, a lot more deals like this.
Sam Nadler:
Super exciting. It seems like OpenAI has captured, you know, the consumers and is trailing a little bit in enterprise adoption. So with Anthropic maybe leading in the thus far in the code race, So, you know, I think they're gonna probably prioritize this effort, and it makes sense. Like, enterprises are gonna be spending the most amount of money.
Jordan Metzner:
Yeah. And, I mean, I think it was Dario from Anthropic who kinda predicted that, like, know, by the end of the year or something like that, 90% of code will be written by bots. And, you know, I don't want know what percent it is here for Rise Labs. I know my code is like almost a 100% written by bots. You know, I I know companies are are getting to that percentage, you know, or close to a 100% really, really quickly.
Jordan Metzner:
It's gonna have an impact, but, you know, I think everyone is gonna continue to float to the best tool du jour tool of the week or whatnot or, you know, maybe we'll see somebody take a lead where no one can catch up. But, you know, it it is surprising that, you know, Microsoft with owning GitHub and its cloud is not the best. Amazon with its cloud is not the best coding tools, you know, and even Google who, you know, obviously, one of the best data companies in the world, plus its cloud is as hasn't produced the best coding tools yet. But, you know, I wouldn't count any of these big players out, and I think we're gonna continue to see more change in the market as it's so critical to kind of own that developer relationship.
Sam Nadler:
I know you wanted to talk about Figma, and a couple weeks ago, we covered the IPO, which I think, you know, opened at somewhere around $30.35 dollars. I think eventually got up to the $1.15, $1.20, but, has, come down a little bit. I don't know what the price is as of today. Is it in the seventies? Is that accurate?
Jordan Metzner:
Yeah. I mean, I know today shares plunged, like, 15% or something like that. I think revenue increased 40% year over year, so, you know, company is definitely growing. I think they just slightly beat expectations and earnings are breakeven. But, yeah, I think overall, it just shows kind of this company is still growing.
Jordan Metzner:
You know, you and I were talking that, you know, we in general use less Figma today than we did before, especially due to AI. But my guess is that, you know, Figma is probably expanding heavily in the enterprise space where, you know, they were not using tools like Figma and, you know, they're still slow to adopt AI inside their enterprises. And so, you know, still a great opportunity. And, yeah, I mean, Figma, probably with all this new capital they raised, probably has a war chest to go, you know, acquire some AI tools that probably will be complementary to their business today, and are probably some of the tools that you and I are talking about on a weekly basis. So it's really early.
Jordan Metzner:
I would not count out Figma or Dylan or the rest of the team. You know, since there's really only competition is Adobe, it seems like, you know, they're still in a in a pretty good spot until we see something different.
Sam Nadler:
Cool. Anything else to cover today?
Jordan Metzner:
Yeah. Just one or two more last things. You know, Google settled the antitrust case, so they do not have to sell Chrome, and that will have some impact on their deals with companies like Apple. It was overall really good news for Google. Stock was soaring.
Sam Nadler:
Good news for Apple as well, isn't it? And the the stock buckle a bit.
Jordan Metzner:
Mixed. I think mixed for Apple. Yeah. I think the stock did perform higher, but it's unclear if this is going to be a great deal because, as far as I understand, Google can't charge Apple for the exclusivity of its of its search engine, which may or may not be a good thing for Apple. I think it's it's too early to say.
Jordan Metzner:
Just a few more random quick stories. You.com, which started out as a kind of smarter Google search type tool, you know, just raised a $100,000,000, but focused almost exclusively on enterprise. And I think this is kind of like, know, the reason I wanted to bring up the story was like, you know, this is the trend we're gonna see a lot is, know, the application of AI is happening best and is most effective at the enterprise level. You know, while there are some AI tools for consumers, you know, the application of AI inside of enterprise is really where the the big money is today. And so I think this is just, like, kinda one more story that shows that shows that.
Sam Nadler:
Did you see I think it was a week ago, there was a Wall Street Journal article about the kind of, impact AI has had, at, I don't know, you know, 500 enterprises, and kind of the response seemed like it it was lackluster. And where it had the biggest impact was in back office operations, if I remember correctly. Did you see that
Jordan Metzner:
You know, there's a lot of startups, obviously, that were promising a lot of things. And, you know, it's always a question about kind of too early you're being in the arena. And, I mean, you know, you've seen Eddie, you know, the the amount of imp improvement we've seen from, you know, CHAT GPT 3.5 to four to four o to to, you know, o three to five is is significant. And it's sometimes hard to remember how kind of poor the 3.5 was compared to how good something like five is today. But, you know, you gotta be building on those on those on those stones, you know, on that on that foundation in order to be able to get there.
Jordan Metzner:
So, you know, it is possible that a lot of these companies kind of overpromised with the hopes that kind of these models would improve what they delivered. But, yeah, I think, you know, as you've mentioned, you know, back office seems to be a place where AI works incredibly well. I know for us, like, we've automated almost our entire invoicing platform leveraging AI. Yeah. You know, like we mentioned, obviously, coding is is probably number one.
Jordan Metzner:
But, you know, companies are gonna continue to see the implementation of AI inside their organization in all different all different fields. I think from HR to marketing to, like we mentioned, obviously, recruiting with EntreVista, you know, and then sales Finance? And pretty much, yeah, finance. Like, every function of the business is is gonna get impacted by AI. And if it's not, you know, you're gonna be left behind.
Jordan Metzner:
And that's just the reality of of how fast this thing is moving.
Sam Nadler:
Well, one thing I heard, and I I didn't read this, I just heard it from somewhere else, so don't quote me on it. But was there just actual you know, executive team really wants AI everywhere. They see the potential. They see the cost savings. But the people who are, like, in the trenches, there's some degree of resistance.
Sam Nadler:
And, you know, I think that will probably exist until, like, can the mentality and the culture change around using AI and, you know, working with it to solve the problems. But, you know, I can see how teammates not in the c suite are, you know, apprehensive about these AI tools.
Jordan Metzner:
Yeah. All type of change is scary. And, I mean, AI is probably, you know, probably the biggest cultural change we've seen in a long time that's gonna impact organizations. So, again, like, hard to see where it's all gonna shake out. You know, it's definitely gonna be be highly impactful.
Jordan Metzner:
And, you know, like we mentioned earlier, it seems to be just the early innings right now. So, anyway, Sam, this was an awesome episode. So great to chat with you and talk about AI and all the products that we built just this week. So I'll love to catch up again next week. And to all of our fans and friends, don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, and all your other favorite podcasting platforms.
Jordan Metzner:
Thanks, Jordan. Great episode, and see everyone next week. Cool. See you later, Sam.
