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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.
I mean, it's been another whirlwind week in AI, in, in new launches, in new news. And, you know, Google shared their numbers yesterday, and the numbers were just bonkers.
Sam Nadler:Why don't we jump into the tool of the week, which is the Mate tool.
Jordan Metzner:I believe I built it with cursor and super bass.
Sam Nadler:Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Built This Week, the podcast where we show what we're building, how we're building it, and what it means for the world of AI and startups. I'm Sam Nadler, the cofounder of Ryz Labs, and I'm joined by my business partner, my cohost, and my friend, Jordan Metzner. How you doing today, Jordan?
Jordan Metzner:Hey, Sam. How's it going? Glad to be back here for episode five. Things are getting more and more exciting each week.
Sam Nadler:Exactly. So, as always, we're gonna cover a tool we built and and are using internally. This one is more of a just a fun tool and a a culture tool, and I'm really excited to to talk about it. It's called Mate. And then finally, as always, we're gonna talk about the latest AI news.
Sam Nadler:Anything top of mind before we jump into the Ryz Labs tool of the week?
Jordan Metzner:I mean, it's been another whirlwind week in AI, in new launches, in new news, and and it's just been nonstop movement inside the AI space. And, you know, here we are in middle of summer, and it doesn't seem like things are slowing down, if not just heating up more and more week after week.
Sam Nadler:Yeah. Exciting space. So why don't we jump into the tool of the week, which is the Mate tool? Why did we build it? How was it built?
Sam Nadler:And, you know, how do we use it?
Jordan Metzner:Yeah. So, I mean, at first, we should maybe tell people who may not know, but mate is a Argentinian tea drink that is drank in very commonly in Argentina and Uruguay, even in Brazil and some other countries as well, and it's usually shared amongst friends. And so that was one of the reasons why we named the the app Mate. But Mate, spelled in English, is mate, which is Australian for friend. So that's why the app is called as such.
Jordan Metzner:But maybe, yeah, we should give some background on, you know, why we built the Mate app and and what it's what it's used for. So, you know, Ryz Labs has a lot of folks that work for us, and most people are remote and don't get to see each other every day. And so as someone who worked at Amazon, they had a pretty robust phone book, phone tool that they used to call it at Amazon. It was a way for you to see, you know, who who else was on your team, who was your managers, who was your manager's manager. Got all the way up, you know, to Jeff Bezos and then back down again.
Jordan Metzner:So you could kind of see, you know, how many how many levels you were away from Jeff Bezos, for example. But not only that, it allowed for a lot of other cultural things. Like, it allowed for people to join communities. It allowed for it allowed for interests. It allowed for badging and a bunch of other features.
Jordan Metzner:And I realized that it actually became a very important tool inside the company and in creating company culture. And so I'd always, for a long time, wanted to build a mate type or phone book type app for our company, but, you know, at first, maybe we were too small. And then once we got to some size, maybe it just wasn't the top priority or efforts. But, you know, with the development of AI, it just allowed me to develop software so much faster and quicker I built this entire app, I think, like, over a few day period of a weekend or something like that. And I think this is something that, like, many companies can do.
Jordan Metzner:It's it's not excessively challenging. It's not an app that's overly complicated. I believe I built it with Cursor and Supabase, and it's something that, you know, most companies can do. It could be a product that we could even sell, but I think, like, you know, as we move more and more into the kind of AI age, this is something that companies could easily build for themselves or entrepreneurs, etcetera. But, you know, before I jump into it, you know, why do you think it's important to have a company phone book?
Sam Nadler:For me, in our use case, you know, we're we're we think culture's important. We also have a fully remote team. So we're constantly looking for ways to create, you know, moments of connection, to create things to bond over, and that can be really limiting in the remote environment. Similarly, in a previous work experience, we had something similar. It wasn't called phone directory.
Sam Nadler:It was called the family tree. And it was one of the tools I used most, to to, you know, learn more about my teammates or people I came across in in meetings. And Mate, in many way, does something similar. It allows allows you to, you know, share some pictures about yourself. It shows when you started, so your tenure.
Sam Nadler:It shows, potentially different interests. So maybe there's an opportunity to bond about your your favorite football team or music group. It's just another way to try and keep teammates engaged, share some of their unique personality, be individuals, and learn a little bit about each other.
Jordan Metzner:Okay. Cool. So let's jump right into it. I think it's gonna start with my profile page here. So maybe you wanna walk through maybe a little bit of the profile, and then I can kinda walk through some of the other features?
Sam Nadler:Yeah. So when you open Mate, it it directly opens up with your individual pro profiles. So we're here seeing Jordan here with his his lovely profile pic. We do have some badges. These badges are the off sites we've conducted as Ryz Labs, so there's been several.
Sam Nadler:I believe there's been more than three, but you've you're on the three, I guess, latest off sites. You can see your interests here, and other teammates can join those interests. So I'm not sure who's who how many teammates are on many of these, but there's Bitcoin. So there looks like there's three team members who are interested in Bitcoin, yoga, surfing. Wow.
Sam Nadler:More in surfing than I would have expected. And then if you go down, we also created the clubs. Here we go. What is oh, is that a That was surfing.
Jordan Metzner:Think maybe guitar. Surfing. But yeah. I guess some of these are not not not overly populated, but maybe we should work on getting them more engagement. But yeah.
Jordan Metzner:But for on
Sam Nadler:running and yeah. And then I think I have one that if you if you can go to me, there's a I think I joined. Wow. That's the dog one, so there's a lot of people there. For Boca Juniors, which is a famous soccer team, I think there's, quite a people, who have joined that, interest as well.
Sam Nadler:This is my profile, so you can see, the different interests I have. And if you go down to the very bottom, I've shared a few pictures, my two daughters and my puppy. So, you know, again, it's not, you know, revolutionary what we're doing here, but it is an easy tool that I think really anyone can create. And I'm sure, like, you know, you don't have to be very technical to get this live for your own organization. And, you know, we hear I would say this has been live for us for a couple months, and, you know, we people use it all the time.
Sam Nadler:As you can see, people are joining different interests. It's something especially for new teammates, something for them to familiarize themselves with different members of the team, just kind of our own kind of cultural ethos, etcetera.
Jordan Metzner:Yeah. So, yeah, I think, you know, especially it's probably especially helpful for people who are just starting out at the organization who don't know many people, so it's a way for them to kinda bond with other workmates and find similar interest workmates. And, yeah, we found it to be, you know, a pretty special tool. There's some of my dogs right there, my wife there. And, yeah, we found it as a pretty special tool to share with other people.
Jordan Metzner:Here, you can go through, and you can see we have, you know, badges and interests, all types of interests, clubs, and even teams as well of some of our clients here. So what this does is just let people, you know, essentially meet other people they work with and find common likes and interests. And I think over time, you know, we'll probably spend more and more on making it a better and better experience for for our workers. And, yeah, I think, you know, having a phone phone book or family tree or as you call it, I think is an awesome tool. Let's see what else other features we've got.
Jordan Metzner:I know we've got search. Let's see. Sam Nadler. So there we go. So I can find you or anybody else who works with us.
Jordan Metzner:And, yeah, that's just a little bit about how the Mate app works. Curious what your thoughts are.
Sam Nadler:Yeah. I mean, I would just to wrap it up here, how'd you build this?
Jordan Metzner:Yeah. So I think I built the first version of this using bolt.new, which is an application that allows you to build front ends. I used Bolt to essentially scaffold out the beginning of the applications and, you know, layout the left hand sidebar, etcetera. We did build this up, like, quite a while ago, so it probably deserves kind of a fresh can of pain or some updates, etcetera. But for the most part, yeah, we used Bolt to build it originally and then used cursor with Supabase, and then everything stored inside of Supabase as the database of of record.
Jordan Metzner:So pretty easy to integrate. I think Bolt integrates with Supabase directly, and then you can kinda take the application out of there and finish it up in Cursor. So, yeah, everything's stored in our Supabase database. You know, like I said, we've got search and a bunch of other other little small features that are all part of the Supabase ecosystem that we're taking advantage of, including authentication as well. So, yeah, that's a little bit about how I built it.
Sam Nadler:Cool. Well, it's been a great tool for us. I know our team likes it. The reason I like presenting Mate is, again, I think it's a tool that any leader, technical or nontechnical, can probably spin up in a a weekend and have a fun kind of cultural tool for their team to enjoy.
Jordan Metzner:Yeah. Totally. Especially as you learn more about other people, you know, I think the first thing you see is you start to see people's dogs photos and cat photos and start to learn about your workmates a little bit more than you do on a daily basis. Built This Week is recorded online. Important parts of the episode were lost due to Starlink connection going down.
Sam Nadler:Alright. Let's go to the last story of the day.
Jordan Metzner:So I think and I mean, this kinda goes back to here, let me close some of these, but, you know, Google shared their numbers yesterday, and the numbers were just bonkers. I think Google announced your Gemini has over 450 monthly active users and growing. So, you know, I think OpenAI is still the leader in the space, but I think what this just shows is that, one, Google is catching up, and two, there's just a massive demand for consumers to leverage AI models and to use them on a daily basis. It says here over 50,000,000 people are using AI powered meeting notes inside of Google Meet. I mean, that's just that's just a crazy number of of users converted over to leveraging AI for their meetings.
Jordan Metzner:So it just shows the power of Google's network, how many users they have, and, you know, once they put AI in front of users, how fast it gets adopted. But, you know, what do you think about all this and, you know, Google's growth over the last few months as especially as a company that was, you know, pretty much in like last place, would say, from their ability to have a successful LLM model in the space to, you know, now being in this, you know, number two or three spot right now, it seems like.
Sam Nadler:I mean, I think it just shows the power of Google. I mean, we talked about a tool on our first episode called Granolah that, you know, creates a seamless tool for recording me meeting minutes. And now Google, you know, layered it into Google Meets, and 50,000,000 people are using it. And, you know, both you and I are pretty AI forward. I don't maybe I have once, but I don't even think I've used it yet.
Sam Nadler:So, you know, that's a crazy, crazy amount of people, and it's it's pretty seamless experience. Google has, like, to some degree, probably more opportunity to position AI in front of users compared to OpenAI, which I think is gonna help Google catch up faster. You know, whether it's within Google Docs, within Gmail, within search, you know, AI is, you know, at the fingertips of of all those use cases, whereas, you know, OpenAI, I think users may have to be more intentional. So I think that's gonna help close the gap.
Jordan Metzner:Yeah. I mean, I think that's one point for how impactful, you know, a company like Facebook can be in this space because, you know, you look at Meta who is now, you know, probably in in one of the last place positions, obviously, spending heavily on on AI. And they just have so many eyeballs on their products that once they, you know, start to integrate AI into their tools, we'll see, you know, a huge amount of adoption like we're seeing here at Google. And I think, you know, if Google continues to power through by providing high quality AI services and tools to users and continues to put them, you know, integrated into their applications, I think we're gonna continue to see a lot of adoption.
Sam Nadler:Alright, Jordan. Thanks. Another great episode of Built This Week covering our cult you know, internal cultural tool called Mate and then some hot AI news. Anything before we wrap up?
Jordan Metzner:I just think it's awesome episode five. Like I said, middle of summer, and AI is only heating up more and more. I think, you know, as we as we go into the fall, things are gonna get even crazier. You know, it shows kind of this type of stuff we're seeing from major players like Google's and Oracles and the Facebook's of the world and even OpenAI and their big funding announcements this week as well. So I think, you know, we're we're gonna continue to see a lot of movement in the space, continue to see a lot of chip chip purchasing and kind of increasing chip stacks across the board, and seems like the battle for who's who's the number one AI company, you know, continues.
Sam Nadler:Thanks, everyone. Next week, we'll have another episode of Built This Week. Like and subscribe and listen to us on all your favorite places where you listen to podcasts. Have a great week.