Eric Karkovack: I'm your host, Eric Kovac, and today I've got the co-founders of
Clay, Zachary Hamed and Matthew Achar.
they founded Clay in 2018.
Is that right, guys?
Matthew Achariam: Correct.
Eric Karkovack: Yep.
Sounds right.
Thanks for, for, thanks for being on with me.
so I, I think Clay is an interesting product.
we're gonna get into the, Acquisition by automatic, in a little bit.
But this, this app is kind of interesting to me because, you know, we have our
contacts so spread out these days, right?
you've got your Facebook accounts, your LinkedIn accounts, Twitter.
Every, every, our, our stuff is spread out all over the place.
And I, I, I was doing a little bit of research and I honestly have not heard
of Clay before this, this, past week.
But it is a really cool app.
I, I really am interested to hear a little bit more about it.
So why don't you, tell us a little bit about how it started and, who it's for.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you
Zachary Hamed: Eric, for having us.
we.
Started Clay, because we felt that exact pain point that, sort of our contacts
were in so many di disparate places.
you know, I think a lot of people have their phone contacts, and
they have, you know, your top.
You know, family members in there, friends in there.
but there's a long set of people below that that you add over time, business
relationships per, personal relationships, that, often you'll just add and you'll
never, You'll never sort of re-look at again, in your phone contacts.
And so what, Matt and I both had experiences where, we were sort of
very naturally trying to, keep in touch with people over time and that, and,
and we're intentionally broad there.
You know, it's not just, personal connections or professional connections.
It's both, and.
We had been burned by a lot of previous apps that had come in the space.
you know, in the early, you know, 2010s late two thousands.
there are a lot of, either contact apps or Web 2.0,
sort of social apps, like social address, book type apps, all of which, you know,
tried to pull from your, maybe your Twitter graph or your Facebook, you
know, friends and things like that.
And, Very quickly, you know, they would last one or two years
and they would be shut down.
And so what, when we started Clay, we had a few core.
Principles and tenants, but one of them was, number one, that these are
your contacts, they should be yours.
there's a lot of sort of data, ownership and portability that
we believed in, around that.
and then there was also this, there was a very strong design ethos.
We really wanted to make it something that you enjoyed using, that felt at home on
your home screen that was very tightly integrated with all of the different
ecosystems that we partner with today.
and then, Matt and I also, like, we have been in the tech ecosystem, tech community
for, since graduating college basically.
and, we got our start, you know, developing WordPress sites.
So I.
I think that, ethos of, you know, let's have plugins, let's have, you
know, integrations that allow you to extend and, and build the, build the
product into what you want it to be.
that was very sort of core to sort of what we wanted, clay to be.
And so we, We actually just built it for ourselves.
we're both sort of engineers.
and you know, I built the iPhone app and Matt built the website and the
backend and the design and and we just sort of like put up a, a landing site
and said like, does anybody want this?
and we actually did that with a story, which is still on our website Play
Earth slash Story, where we talked about, Actually David Rockefeller who
had index cards, and he would like take notes out of like every meeting he had.
And, just like a really interesting sort of, vignette about somebody
who, you know, did this.
And, and when we put that up, people.
Came outta droves and were like, Hey, I actually do this too.
I just take notes after meetings or I, I just like jot down in my notes
app like, you know, a few things that I remember about a person.
and so that was really the origin, of clay and, and we then set off to build,
what we thought would be the best.
we call it a home for your relationships.
so a place where your personal professional.
Friends, connections, people can live, along with the information about them.
Eric Karkovack: Yeah, I, I thought I read that story about Mr.
Rockefeller and I thought that was very interesting.
you know, somebody in that position to keep this, this book basically of all,
of all the contacts he made, no matter who they were or where they were from.
you know, just that, that ability to go back and, and remember
something, a detail about somebody.
So I could see.
How Clay kind of, is the modern version of that.
And I think, as I said, I think it's needed because we have so
many different social networks.
We have so many different places to, to connect with people.
I see all the integrations you guys have right now.
I see chat, GPT as part of it.
Gmail, Google Calendar, Facebook, X Notion, iMessage.
there are a few others going in there.
I mean, I.
What was the challenge maybe in getting that interface to work with all of
those different, services and to kind of tie it in in a way that folks using
the service could actually kind of, you know, easily read and understand
Matthew Achariam: total?
this is a, we could spend a lot of time on this, and I think the, the main principle
that drove us when we were sort of.
Understanding and, and solving this, this need was really understanding the problem.
So I think last, and I, Zach tallied this number up, like we almost had a
thousand discussions via email, via calls like this, with just people
just trying to understand really deeply what they were trying to do.
And I think there were a couple of themes that emerged.
One thing was that.
This, this idea that everything is fragmented and everywhere.
And so we said, cool, the first thing that we need to do is really
bring everyone into one place.
And so that's why Home Fear Relationships is, is, was, was
the tagline that we came up with.
Once we had everyone in that one place, it was then, okay, what do you do with this?
And so most people really.
Had a lot of issues with reaching the limits of their memory.
So if you look into the studies, there's Dunbar number, there's a whole host
of other things that talks about the limits of us as humans, which, you know,
tops out at having an, a general level awareness about of a, of 150 people or so.
And so once you reach that edge, it becomes actually very, very
difficult biologically for us to keep those relationships top of mind.
So we said, Hey, let's just.
Develop a suite of tools.
'cause we're tool builders that actually address those things.
And it all the way from like automated reconnect reminders
to bringing key moments in.
And so that was that set of features.
And so we have a bunch of features around that.
And finally, once you have that all in one place, Zach alluded
to this earlier, but there's this idea of data portability where your
relationships are inherently yours.
You need a beautiful place for them to live.
Then you wanna do things with them.
So whether it's moving them into chat, GPT, so you can, you can ask queries of
your network or productivity software or emails or weddings or what have you.
We had to make those very clear.
So those, those were the three sort of like problem areas that we, we
noticed and we said, let's just keep.
Listening to our customers and solving problems.
And it, it sounds very simple, but it took us years to sort of like hone in
on that and, and really like craft and refine, you know, through each iteration.
and we ship very, very quickly.
We have, weekly, product cycles and, and we almost ship.
Daily in a lot of cases, for different features.
And so that allowed us to really address that wide swath of problems.
And, it just, just keeps going back to this human aspect of it, right?
Like human a, sort of human focused design, which, which has been very
popular lately in consumer software.
Eric Karkovack: Yeah, I mean that, I can only imagine the, challenge just
in working with all the different APIs that you have to get through.
I, I know just working with.
Made as APIs or Google's APIs can be a challenge in itself.
So then you're kind of multiplying that by all of these different
services you're trying to pull together and, and put it into something
that, like is easy to consume.
So I can only imagine, you know, what you've had to go through for that.
now I, I've also seen that you guys have some AI capabilities
with this now, including the cool little demo on your site where.
You know, you can, email someone through an AI prompt and, and invite
them to dinner or something like that.
how important is that to where you guys are going here as, as we move on?
Zachary Hamed: Yeah, I think, you know, we are users of these products.
We, you know, are trying to understand sort of the.
Edges of what they make possible.
and I think our, again, like Matt said, a lot of what we do is driven
by our users and driven by our sort of what they're looking to do and
where they're looking to do it.
And a lot of them have moved a lot of their productivity work
into some of these tools now.
a lot of what we think about is, number one, what, what does our, Data set,
make possible that, you know, it is not possible in these tools today.
what we found is just using it on like my personal network.
When you have, when you're looking for someone, when you're trying to draft
an email, when you're, you know, when you're, doing any sort of, not only
writing work, but also productivity work.
It's incredibly helpful either via the chat GPT integration we have or via, like
MCP tools, which we, we also open sourced.
To be able to bring in knowledge of your contacts, and, and we have
that video like you mentioned.
what we're trying to show there is that, the biggest missing piece we
believe today in, in a lot of these AI tools is, the personal contexts part.
and, there are many different ways, different tools.
Every company's trying to solve that in a different way.
even last week, you saw.
at WW DC, apple is trying to do, more on device, context
and learning, and inference.
and we're very excited about that.
In day one, automatic product, day one was featured in that as well.
and so whether it's on device, whether it's, as part of, you know, an MCP
tool, as part of CLO or something, or it's a chat GPT integration, what we're
trying to think about is what is that?
unlock as a product experience and, and as a, as an output for some of these tools.
And so we did an initial rollout of Nexus, RAA copilot, and, our members were back
to us and they were like, you know, we, I, I use this for, making groups of people
and searching my network more quickly.
I use it for drafting emails.
I, I use it for drafting intros between two people where.
You know, somebody would spend 20 minutes looking at like, okay, let
me pull up their, this person's background and my notes about them
and how we met, and then this other person's background or whatever.
And they would write this like very personalized, crafted email.
And you know, AI cannot do that today.
but using clay it can get you much closer than you would be if you just said,
you know, introduce these two people.
because we have the understanding of who the person is, we have the
understanding of how you know them.
we have the understanding of the context of relationship.
and we're bringing that together in a way that, is much more
limited in scope, for the ai.
So from a privacy perspective, we're trying to keep it as limited as possible.
And again, all of this is opt in.
and a lot of what we're thinking about is, okay, what does it look like again
on device, just on your computer?
What does that unlock from a, from a sort of, from a
productivity perspective as well?
So there's.
a number of different tools in the, and the space changes so quickly,
which is really exciting to us.
and there's like new things every week.
but, we, a lot, like I said, a lot of it has been driven by our members coming to
us and saying, okay, I want to, I'm using these five different tools, like what can
I do with this and how do I integrate?
Data from other systems into clay, and then how do I get data from Clay
that I want in these other systems?
and so we work with them to make that possible.
Eric Karkovack: Yeah, it just seems like a very natural
extension to where we're at now.
We we're, we're all scattered in our, in our existence online.
And now we can bring everything together and we can now use, an AI tool to
kind of, Take that to the next step to where, as you said, you, you're,
looking at relationships, the context of, of where, how you know someone.
I thought it was interesting even you had, you know, you last saw this person
like six months ago and, you know, maybe it's time to reconnect, that kind
of thing, which I found fascinating.
but the next step in this, of course, is your acquisition by, automatic.
I, I was wondering how did that come about?
I mean, is that something you guys have been looking for, for a long
time as far as being acquired or, did this sort of happen out of the blue?
Matthew Achariam: totally.
I.
So the story is actually pretty interesting and pretty compelling.
So I think one of the things that, opened us up to this was actually
by nature of building the product.
So I, I mentioned earlier, the first stage was sort of bringing your relationships
in and then learning how to care for them.
And then that third step was sort of like getting them out into the
tools that you wanted, the ecosystems that you want, and, a little over.
A year ago, and we had known obviously of Matt and we've
been huge word WordPress fans.
I think Zach and I both shared the story that we both uniquely at the ages of
like 13 and 15 had put out, WordPress box, and that'd been our first foray.
Zach's a PHP developer.
I learned PHP not as good as him, but, I dabbled with it as well.
and so I think it, it was, it turned out to be a very poignant arc where we
had the chance last year to integrate with Gravita, which we believe is like,
you know, one of the, biggest identity platforms on, on the internet and,
and sort of has done it really well.
And that integration went really well.
We got to know Matt, we got to understand what he's building towards.
And I think the thing that we uniquely bonded on was we as a
company are uniquely mission driven.
Like we always felt like this idea of like trying to improve
or expand conscientiousness, and that was always our North Star.
And the thing that we realized after working with Automatic and Matt
was there was this idea that, open source was one of the most powerful,
It sort of forces in our lifetime.
And we had always felt that, and we'd always benefited that as developers as,
as, as folks working in the ecosystem.
And we realized this was how we were, could achieve our mission.
And so those conversations sort of naturally evolved into like.
Hey, like, why don't we team up and work on this together?
And it felt, supernatural.
we were doing really well and we felt like this could accelerate our mission.
And so, not only that, as we got deeper into this conversations, we realized
that the culture was very similar.
We were building towards, Sort of this user-centric, very users, like we respect
our users and we wanna build wonderful things that helps move humanity forward.
And I think that's always been a core value for them.
And, yeah.
And so that led to us being like, let's team up and work on this together.
And, we've only only been accelerating from there.
Right.
Zach?
I, I feel like that's, that's probably the, the,
Zachary Hamed: yeah.
And, and it.
It's really interesting to see how, all of automatics properties work across this.
And I, I didn't, you know, you've mentioned some of them, Eric, but,
you know, you've got Gravita, which is where we started the integration.
There's beeper, which we're very excited about.
and the sort of like messaging pillar and how, we integrate there.
there's also products like Jetpack, CRM and, and other
sort of, people primitives in.
WordPress itself.
and then also other automatic properties that are particularly interesting.
So the, the through line of identity and, and networks, goes across and cuts
across a lot of automatics properties.
And, you know, I think it's, it's been a core focus for them, but it's
also something that we're particularly excited about, about because,
you know, it, the, the internet, their, their sort of position as.
A, standard bearer for internet standards and, internet, sort of, APIs.
You know, there's never been a more exciting time to be innovating
in the space given, how many new platforms are out there, open source
platforms, and standards are coming up.
So, you're seeing that come out from automatic, they're part of working
groups, they're part of consortia.
They're, they're, you know, working with other, partners in the space.
And so, that is also particularly exciting to us.
Eric Karkovack: So, yeah, it seems like a, a bit of a.
a good time to be doing this.
with automatic, it has been acquiring some other products, like you said, beeper.
I think day one was another one, that are kind of in the
business of connecting people.
so I, I would have to think that, that automatics, got a lot of plans for
you guys with what, with, with some integrations and things like that.
What, what are your long-term goals now with this and ha has that changed a
little bit since, since the acquisition?
Matthew Achariam: I would say it's, again, I think the way we've think,
thinking about it, it's, it's the long-term mission has stayed the same.
I.
but now we can accomplish it a little faster through these integrations
and through this idea that, you know, there's this, this company and
org organization that's been doing this for 20 years and really, really
understands, how to do this well.
So there's a lot of synergies.
I think Matt talks about this model where we all learn from each other.
So we're very excited to partner up with the, the, the beeper team
and work very closely with them.
And then the Gravita team, and then, you know, a whole host of Eddie Eddie.
Automatic product, which carries and works with identity is a
potential entry point for us.
And so we've identified the two that feel the most natural as the first fit.
But moving forward, you know, you can see this idea that like identity becoming,
and, and Matt talks a little bit about this in, in his post announcement post,
where, it really is a primitive just like, anything else on the internet.
And so the right person to do it or the right company to do it is, is automatic.
And so, we feel.
Uniquely empowered by that.
And I think, the thing that we've always had in the back of our heads was
we've we're very, very, dogmatic about this mission and, but we were flexible
in the journey and how to get there.
And this was a great opportunity for us to, to, to sort of move quickly
towards that, that achieving that.
Eric Karkovack: Yeah, I would think that the experience that they have in
connecting people and, and, you know, getting apps out there into the public.
That has to be a great benefit for you guys.
Matthew Achariam: Totally.
Yeah.
And you know, that's, that's exactly the, the, and the, the more we explore it,
the more we realize like, wow, like this is really, beneficial or mutually so.
And I think that's rare.
I think that's rare.
And that's why we keep like reiterating that like to find such a natural
fit over time with someone, from culturally valually, from, from a
values perspective, is, is increasing.
Incredibly rare, and we wanna honor that and work towards, you know,
making, making our vision a reality.
Eric Karkovack: I'd have to imagine too, like when you are in that stage
of maybe being acquired, you know, we see it so often in tech that a large
conglomerate will come out and, and buy a smaller firm and there's always
hope for growth and things like that, and they just kind of let it stagnate.
Zachary Hamed: Mm-hmm.
Eric Karkovack: But we've seen that time and again, and I, I, I kind of.
Feel like Automatic is not one of those companies that's going to do that.
They actually seem to want to continue developing and let let the, you know,
whoever they acquire, kind of continue on their path, which I think as a
founder would be pretty attractive.
Zachary Hamed: Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I think and, and we, we tried to sort of understand
we've, we've seen it ourselves as users of all of these products.
you know, I was a user of day one for.
Five or 10 years probably.
or at least I've had it on my phone for that long.
same with pocket casts.
You know, I think we, we've, we've used all these products
ourselves and, I certainly did not feel the velocity go down.
and you know, I think going through the process we were like, okay, let's
chat with, Teams there, chat with people who have gone through it.
Like what, what is the, you know, are we, are we seeing something different?
Are you, you know, somehow pushing against, against the
grain on, on some of these things?
And the answer is no.
Like that's, because of not in spite of automatic support, and automatic's
belief in, these products, remaining, largely independent, with some sort
of shared, infrastructure shared sort of, you know, help between them.
But, for the most part, you know.
Day one is doing what day one is doing and has always done and, and is
the app that I loved and downloaded, that won an Apple Design award.
and same for, beeper, and same for, pocket Casts.
And so, you know, I think to your point, and again, when we started
Clay, a lot of what we were pushing it back against is these apps that, were
sort of more transient and, and did not have that same long-term focus.
And you see this with, with Matt and his, his focus on, you know, decades long
horizons and the, you know, a hundred years, you know, supporting WordPress
and WordPress blogs for a hundred years.
And, you know, I think there's a, there's a long-term focus and a long-term belief
in, in the, the permanence of, of the web.
Like, you know, making sure that this data does stay up and that like links stay
up and like all of these things, do not.
shut down because it does actually like that rots over time.
and, and we're really real strong believers in that.
and all these apps are, I think, hold that to the same standard.
Day one has all of your most valuable memories.
you know, beeper has all of your most valuable conversations.
Like you do not want those things to, disappear tomorrow.
And so when you're building an app like that and, and we feel this similarly,
it's a real responsibility to your.
To your users, to your members, to, to hold that, to account, to be very
clear and communicative about what, what is happening with that data.
and whether it's privacy, security, even just like, you
know, platforms change over time.
Like you can't do a big migration without making sure that all
the data comes along with it.
And so.
That is, that undergirds a lot of what I think every automatic property does.
same for WordPress, same for, the independent apps.
So that's really exciting to us.
Eric Karkovack: Yeah, I mean, even when you think about WordPress, it's
famous for backwards compatibility.
you know, I, I, I'm a web designer.
I've had sites that are 10, 15 years old and I can still update them
and they still work, which is kind of a miracle in modern software.
We don't have to overhaul things.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
As a user.
so I, I think you're kind of in the right spot if that's your, if that's
your long-term goal to, to keep that data going and, and keep it alive.
And it seems like, A situation for you where you're just allowed to be
yourself kind of, and, and do your thing.
I, I noticed, you guys are staying on, it seems like the staffing is staying, the
same, which I think is always good news when, when something like this happens.
Zachary Hamed: Yep, exactly.
Both.
and, and that's what we, I.
we're also very excited about.
so our entire team is, forging ahead.
and it's, it's largely, business as usual, which is very, very nice to hear.
both for ourselves and also for the team, for the, for our, customers who, you
know, they didn't want anything to change.
And largely nothing will change.
If anything and everything gets better, you know, every part
of the product will get better.
our velocity, our ability to do new integrations and things will get better.
Eric Karkovack: Well, that sounds great.
so I congratulate you guys for on, on the, acquisition, but before we go,
I do have to ask one question because this is a WordPress podcast, what kind
of WordPress integrations are we gonna see and, will we see them next week?
Or will it be a little bit longer than that?
Zachary Hamed: We've, we've talked with Matt a little bit about this.
I think we, we are putting together that roadmap.
I think, high level, again, not promising anything but the.
Matt has thought for a very long time about what the people primitive
looks like, within WordPress.
and there are all sorts of places as a WordPress user myself where
you know, it would be nice now that you have Gutenberg and you have
sort of the ability to add blocks.
We've seen this with, actually our notion integration as well.
Similarly, you know, they had this idea of, you know.
In, in internal docs, you're mentioning other people all the time.
And, you know, what does, you know, what does it look like
when I app mention somebody?
Or what does that like block look like?
and Gutenberg and WordPress, you're messaging people all the time.
You're commenting with other people.
You're mention at mentioning other blogs or people that are represented by blogs.
So there's a lot of people related stuff, and that's not, that's, you know.
we haven't even touched on the sort of, other systems that people
build on top of WordPress that also touch on people, including CRM.
So there's a lot of, thinking and complexity that, and, and, sort of
institutional memory that, the whole WordPress ecosystem has around that.
And so we're downloading that and, and thinking through it.
But, we're really excited about the, the possibilities of the, the
people primitive, the relationship primitive, and how that links
in through identity contact.
Comments, all of that stuff,
Eric Karkovack: it seems, I mean, I, I could even imagine,
you know, membership sites.
Yeah.
WooCommerce sites.
I mean that exactly would be an interesting, integration with
customer, relationship data, exactly.
All those types of things.
It just seems like it, it could, really skyrocket from there.
And then when you're using tying AI in with it, you know,
I could be using WooCommerce and I have an order and, maybe I.
Ask AI to send a an email to this customer and thank them for what they purchased.
And, hey, if you need this, why don't we do an upsell?
that type of thing just seems like it, it's a natural fit.
Well, oh, sorry, just one other
Zachary Hamed: that before No, yeah.
I just, we'd love that.
And, and I think the, the idea that your customers and your
audience and your, your, your blog audience, your, your mailing list
audience, like all of those things.
We've seen, we've had our customers talk to us about like, Hey, I
want to, I wanna merge these, these things, things together.
And I wanna know that somebody who was my, you know, they were subscribed
to my newsletter for a while, and then they placed an order and, they
also followed me on social media and they subscribed to my blog.
Like all of those things, I think, creators and, businesses really
think about it holistically.
but a lot of modern software views it, you know, what is the difference really
between a subscriber and a customer?
Like at the end of the day.
You have an email address and, and that thing can, can work across
all of all of those properties.
So we're very excited, by that.
and, and by the, you know, I think WordPress operates in all of
those different verticals and, and there's very few players that do.
so that's one that we're also excited about.
Eric Karkovack: Yeah, it would seem, like there, there's a lot of potential
here to, integrate clay into all sorts of automatic products and maybe even,
you know, more third parties, I'm sure.
but guys, I want to thank you again for, for coming here today.
I appreciate your time and, and again, congratulations on the acquisition.
I hope everything goes, the way you're, you're hoping.
And, thanks for being on the WP Minute.
Matthew Achariam: Thank you, Eric.
It was delightful to be here.
it's rare that we get the time and space to reflect on our work and for
someone to so thoughtfully ask a bunch of really, really, poignant questions.
So thank you as well for having us and we really appreciate it and
Eric Karkovack: happy to do it again.
Awesome, awesome.
Maybe we'll, we'll catch up in, in a year or two and see what,
what else we've got going on.
I can only imagine where you guys are going to be in that, in that bit of time.
Would love that.
All right, well thank you again and good luck.