Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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.
And then says, what is the correct way to respond to coworker that flirted in the break room? Do you ignore it? Do you flirt back? Do you politely set boundaries and report if the behavior continues, or do you laugh it off?
Sam:Hey, everyone, and welcome to Built this week, episode 20, 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, cofounder here at Rise Labs. And each and every week, I'm joined by my friend, cohost, and business partner, Jordan Metzner. What's up, Jordan? How you doing today?
Jordan:Yo, Sam. Episode 20. Right? Episode 20. Yeah.
Jordan:Oh, wow. Big big big landmark for us. So that's pretty cool. Super excited to be back. Huge week in AI.
Jordan:I think you saw last week Elon and Sam Altman all over all the podcast. So, yeah, lots going on in the space. Of course, it's never a dull moment in the AI world. But, yeah, happy to be back for episode 20. Let's go.
Sam:Before I jump into the docket, just remember, like and subscribe. We've crossed 15,000 subscribers on YouTube. New episodes each and every Friday. So whether it's on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or YouTube, please, hit that bell and, show your support and get notified for every new episode. On the docket this week, we're gonna cover an internal tool that we have to manage kind of the education process for our internal teammates that we built, using AI, whether it's, you know, best practices around phishing emails or potential gray areas with communication regarding a woman's dress or a woman's blouse, potential sexual harassment, you know, signals.
Sam:So we built a cool tool that allows us to educate and manage that process for all internal teammates. We also have a new Google tool for for social marketing. I feel like we're covering a new Google tool over the last several weeks, but this one, love. It makes, you know, creating really attractive social content super easy. And then lastly, we have some AI news.
Sam:Robots, I think, is a a main topic today, both at Amazon and in the home. So anything to to comment on before we jump into the tool of the week? Let's jump right into it. Like I said, it's been
Jordan:a hot week for AI, always new models coming out. There's been some cool stuff going on in the open source community as well, especially around kind of text to speech. So just lots of new stuff going on. You know, I think we we probably talked about it the other week, but, you know, Cursor and Windsurf both dropped their own model called Composer, and I forget what Windsurf called inside of Cursor based on top of open source. Looks like open source Chinese model.
Jordan:So they're just every week, there's a huge chunk of news coming out across the board in AI. Let's jump right into what we built this week, I think.
Sam:Awesome. So as always, what I'd love for you to be the a, give me context on the tool. Now this is you know, I think for the last couple weeks, we've done almost a few, like, throwaway tools. This one is a tool that is we're about to launch, and it's taken a little bit longer than, you know, a day or so to build. But, yeah, tell me a little bit about kinda what the purpose is, what needs it satisfies for our organization, how it was built, and, yeah, we'll take it from
Jordan:Yeah. So I I presume, like, most people have done some type of, like, compliance training, you know, sexual harassment or anti phishing or anti password stealing, kinda any of those types of, like, compliance or educational trainings. And and, you know, especially in big companies, they're they're definitely legally required. You know, Rise Labs is starting to get some compliance, certain types of compliances for some entities, and part of that requires some of this additional training as well. I think overall, just kind of best practices to do certain trainings once a year for everybody.
Jordan:So, you know, historically, most these education platforms, one, are kinda like, you know, they have these, like, pretty stocky kind of, you know, they feel like nineteen nineties videos of these weird, like, situationships happening, and then you gotta, like, answer the question. And, yeah, I just thought, like, AI was, a perfect solution here to, like, generate the content and then generate the exam platform and then use, you know, AI to basically build it end to end. So, you know, our workers can use this platform to to get educated. So here's our platform. We have it in dark mode and light mode.
Jordan:Here's it in dark mode. And this is like a super admin view. So we have tests, training hub, certificates, user management, and settings. I can show you a little bit of like, we have this, like, certificate builder where you can manage the certificate. So this is a certificate.
Jordan:It should say certificate of completion here, but yeah. So you can see the certificate. You can kinda change the style of the certificate. Let me change the zoom here a little bit. So you can have, like, single border, double borders.
Jordan:You can have it say different things. We can change the styling of the font, etcetera. So for each test, if you make a new test, you can kinda decide how you want the certificate of completion. Alright. So this is to certify the user completed the exam, etcetera.
Jordan:It's signed by me, so it's got my name as like CEO up here. You can kind of save these templates and you can apply them to different exams. Here's the training hub, so this is what users see when they need to take an exam. So it says like you need to start this exam, your sexual harassment. You can see we have a bunch of different types of exams.
Jordan:This is the dashboard for users who create exams and edit them, and I'll show you what that looks like. And then, of course, we have our home screen with our main dashboard, a settings menu, user management, so you can invite users for different levels inside the platform. Let me show you kind of what this looks like and how we used AI to build this, and I think that's where it gets really cool. So this is the sexual harassment prevention exam, and let me show you what it looks like when you preview this exam. First, you know, each exam that we call it is 10 questions.
Jordan:So the idea is that just takes a few minutes to do. Each question just should just take, like, anywhere from, like, thirty to ninety seconds, I guess, to complete. And it says passing source 70, but I think I have it made, so, like, you have to get a 100. So if you fail, you like, we make you ask the question again, essentially. But let me just walk you through how this works here.
Jordan:So what you do is you, you know, what is the quick correct way to respond to a coworker that flirts with you in the break room? Watch this scenario video. So here you can see, please watch at least 95%. So you you can't move on until you watch the video. So let's watch this video.
Jordan:Now, you have to understand this video was created 100% with AI using Veo 3.1 fast, I believe. And all the videos in this education platform are built that way. You can see, I mean, this video, I mean, at no point will you you'll be able to notice that it's easily AI. So let's just watch it for a second.
Sam:Didn't know we had models working here. You look great in that dress.
Jordan:And then says, what is the correct way to respond to a coworker that flirts with you in the break room? Do you ignore it? Do you flirt back? Do you politely set boundaries and report if the behavior continues? Or do you laugh it off?
Jordan:Which one do you think?
Sam:Let's, you know, I'll avoid making a joke. It's not a joking topic. So let's politely set boundaries and report if behavior continues.
Jordan:Great. So let's check our answer. That is correct. Good job, Sam. And so now we can go on, and we can go on to the next question.
Jordan:So that's a little bit about how it works. It's pretty simple to do, and then there's a whole assignment platform, so users can, you know, watch the next one, and the next one, and the next one. But, yeah, you know, these types of education platforms are incredibly expensive to purchase. They're on a per user basis. They usually cost, like, anywhere from, like, 10 to a $100 a user a month.
Jordan:You know, NASDAQ, the company of the stock exchange, has a pretty large education platform. I think Dow Jones does, and I think Thomson Reuters, and a few of these other companies as well have these, like, educational compliance platforms. And, yeah, we just built it ourselves. It integrates into our, like, all of our technology stack. And, yeah, besides the time of development, I would say, like, cost is zero.
Jordan:So, you know, we'll be hosting it. It'll have a small back end. It's built on top of Supabase. Front end is Byte React. And then I think I mentioned, as I said, we used Veo three to do all of the all of the test creation.
Sam:Yeah. I mean, I think just from my participation in this project, one, it's something that, like, we have to do as we grow. Our organization has to do it. So we either had two choices, buy it or build it. And the build, you know, I think we used AI in three kind of major pillars.
Sam:One is just to organize what are the tests, what are the questions for each test, how do we kind of satisfy the training, and AI helped us build out the curriculum, essentially. Obviously, AI helped us build out the platform, and then we used Veo 3.1 to build up the content. And, yes, it did require a few passes to get the content right. I would say 60 to 70% of the content was right right off the bat. I love when we build something that anyone who listens to this podcast could take the idea and be like, oh, I could do that for my organization.
Sam:And, you know, training for phishing emails may not be appropriate, but it could be training for x y z use case in someone else's organization or orientation. This could be a great way. Maybe you could build an orientation platform or that people get a certificate when they complete and has little videos about what life is like at that organization or company. So, you know, this is just how we've applied this kind of curriculum certification building within our own organization, but, hopefully, people can can take the idea and run with it.
Jordan:Yeah. And, you know, I think I wanted to just prove this point here. If you search sexual harassment training software, I mean, you're gonna see a ton of sponsored ads. You're just gonna see pages and pages of software solutions. Here's three sponsored ads on the bottom.
Jordan:If we go to page two of Google, I mean, we're gonna continue to see offerings of of software solutions. So, I mean, there is no shortage of sexual harassment training software solutions. I think what makes, you know, our tool so interesting is that we built it ourselves, and now we don't have to pay any long term subscription costs. And I think, you know, this is part of this new world of AI kind of build versus buy where this case, you know, the cost to build was pretty low and the cost to buy is high, you know, and we're gonna be able to retain control of the software and the product over the long term and continue to make it better for our particular use case. And I don't know.
Jordan:I hope I hope you liked it. And I think you're right, Sam. You know, I I think many entrepreneurs could look at this and say, yeah. Something we could build for our organization as well.
Sam:Alright. Let's jump into the Google tool of the week. What I've used this for a different brand, and you have one of our brands up here. But what I've loved about this is how quickly you can create really elegant social content, and I'll quickly describe the way it works as you kinda poke around. But, basically, it's as simple as inputting your website into the tool.
Sam:In this case, we used our Intravista AI interview website, and it immediately creates your business DNA with images from your website, fonts, kind of, you know, copy of which, colors, obviously, your your branding colors, taglines, etcetera. And with that and you can add to it. You can modify it. You can have it do it multiple times. But assuming it does it right the first time, which it did for me, you just move on.
Sam:And then from there, you can create within seconds different types of really attractive and elegant campaigns. So just for the sake of moving things forward, why don't you click looks good as we're going to accept it?
Jordan:Yeah. So the reason I'm not showing you the enter the domain page is because it does take a few minutes for it to go through your website and collect all of this data. So I had done that, you know, prior to us starting this this part of the episode. So I've put in enterovista.com, and you can see it's collected a bunch of images from my website, the main colors, fonts. It asked me for the logo.
Jordan:It's giving me same idea about brand aesthetic. It knows what the business does, as you said, and then let's click looks good. And now what it's saying is, what would you like to do? So it says it can suggestions based on the business DNA, it can kind of create these different campaigns. Unbiased talent evolution, evaluation instantly, stop screening, start evaluating, recruitment speed simplified.
Jordan:Is there any of these campaigns you particularly like, Sam?
Sam:I like the recruiting speed simplified tagline. I don't love the images, so but we can go in and and change those out.
Jordan:Yeah. So here you go. Here's four different images and styles, regarding this this type of campaign. We can kinda go back and fix them and change them. We can go back here and do add add creative as well.
Jordan:We can even say, like, okay, make me four new images for LinkedIn. Is there any, like, color and style you like? Hyper realistic? You know, more real list. Okay.
Jordan:So let's see. Okay. So here's kind of another four campaigns or so. And you can see like this one's, you know, they're not that nice. But maybe some of them are nicer than others.
Jordan:But yeah, you know, you can you can change it, you can automate it, you can hear click fix layout, it'll redo it, it looks like, and make different versions of it. But here's the one we just made, hire smarter not harder. Right? And then here, you know, you can you can say fix layout and it'll even make like another version of it. And so if you go back, I think like what's cool here is that you can do suggest ideas.
Jordan:Okay. So it's gonna suggest some ideas of different campaign ideas. And you can also say, you know, make a campaign called like x y z and it'll it'll create that campaign as well. It's funny. It says it can make mistakes, so double check the work.
Jordan:Okay. So here we go. Here are the suggested ideas. The the future of interviews is now, data driven hiring confidence, and ATS integration, no friction. Let's go with the future of interviews is now.
Jordan:And so now what it's going to do is gonna create this campaign from scratch. It created those other campaigns based on its suggestion, but now it's kinda gonna create these campaigns each one by one. So it says it'll take a few minutes to do so. And, again, this is all generated. These are only static images, but you can just imagine Google integrating something like Veo 3.1 here and being able to create better assets.
Jordan:And, you know, I think this might be you know, this is an asset from our website. So, you know, secure your competitive edge, reduce time by hiring by 40%. You know? Some of these are okay. You can see they're kind of, like, very AI e.
Jordan:But yeah. Anyway, any questions about Pompeii? You wanna try another one? Wanna try some other features?
Sam:Having played with Pompeii with another brand just as a tool to generate kind of elegant ins and quick inspiration. It's been really helpful. We've just recently introduced it to our teams. I think the tool itself has what was announced about a week ago or two weeks ago, but, you know, just another quick way to have high quality content, get some ideas quickly, and then, you know, move on to other things.
Jordan:This week's episode is brought to you by Rise Labs, the secret weapon behind some of the fastest growing startups in Silicon Valley. If you've ever wished you could hire world class engineers overnight, not just freelancers, but full embedded teammates in your time zone, that's exactly what Rise Labs does. They build elite remote teams from Latin America that plug right into your company from early stage startups to Fortune one hundreds. VCs call them value add because they tell all their portfolios about Rise Labs. They help you move faster, scale smarter, and deliver like a top tier tech organization.
Jordan:So if you're building the next big thing, or even just have a small business and need some help, go on over to ryzlabs.com. That's ryzlabs.com, and tell them that Built This Week sent you. Alright. Now back to the show.
Sam:Alright, Jordan. Let's transition to the news. We're gonna speak about your alma mater again, and this is a a robot themed news download for episode 20. But Amazon is testing adding robot warehouses to Whole Foods so shoppers can pick up other orders at checkout. You know, you obviously, worked at Amazon for for many years.
Sam:Top of mind, what do you think about this?
Jordan:It's actually pretty interesting. So if you think about kind of how the Amazon fulfillment centers work or how they used to work before robots, you know, you'd have people walking around with little pushcarts, and then you'd go to the shelf where you'd find the item and you'd pick it off the shelf. And then Amazon bought Kiva robots, and they started to build these shelves that would come to the picker. So the person would stay stable, but the shelf would move. Right?
Jordan:And now I believe, you know, they have some robots that are picking instead of the human, but the idea that the picker, the person like picking the items never moves is really interesting. So now, like, let's apply this kind of to a supermarket. If you think of a Whole Foods, you know, where you're ordering online, you know, you essentially have a person who's a picker. They're walking around the store with a push cart, and they're picking up items off the shelf. And so you can imagine a different type of Whole Foods where the picker never moves and the shelves move for them.
Jordan:And I think that, you know, that's just one simple concept that Amazon can apply using its warehouse technology to build kind of the like an automated Whole Foods where, you know, these pickers are able to basically pick orders real, very quickly in order to make a customer's kind of delivery order. So not exactly sure if that's the implementation that's being done here. But, you know, Amazon obviously has been deep in robots. They've shown off, like, human picking robots inside their fulfillment centers. But it it seems obvious that, you know, these types of things are gonna be filled with robots very, very quickly to help you fulfill orders much quicker than you could do yourself.
Jordan:And I think probably going to the supermarket will be something that people will do if they choose, quote, want to do, but probably not have to do simply because, like, the robot will be faster, cheaper, and easier. But, yeah, curious what you think about all this.
Sam:Yeah. From just my understanding of the article, it it hopes to solve a problem that I or I guess a customer behavior that I think a lot of people do. You know, just my family, we we shop certain goods at Whole Foods and certain goods at other grocery stores like Publix or Trader Joe's. And according to this article, they're they're allowing potential deliveries of products that do not are not carried at Whole Foods be also picked up there. So theoretically, eliminating the extra trips, which is something my family does literally every week.
Sam:I mean, we we have, you know, the the certain items we choose at Whole Foods and the the 70% we buy every everywhere else. So really interesting quote here. He says, you know, customers shopping at Whole Foods today are looking for natural and organic products. However, date data shows many of them visit additional stores to complete regular grocery shopping needs. Our micro fulfillment center, we can reduce the need for customers to visit different stores or make multiple online orders, which I think is really interesting that they targeted kind of that pain point.
Jordan:I always think of shopping kind of like in a funnel, kind of like, you know, we shop at Costco and Amazon and Whole Foods and even like local supermarket, and I always think of it kind of like a funnel. Like, go to Costco for the big stuff, and then we go to kind of the next level of supermarket, the next level Trader Joe's, of like for the stuff you kinda you snack on, and then kinda drops all the way down into a funnel. But, yeah, I don't know. It's all about, like, kind of product diversity and, you know, what what the customer's looking for. We have a lot of supermarkets where I live, so we have a lot of choices.
Jordan:I don't know.
Sam:Up next, and I think everyone saw different posts about this recent product launch or, I should say, robot launch, but the new, I guess, home robot, Nail, I think, you know, if you if you weren't going to read into the details, it looks it looks fairly interesting. But it is this home robot that kinda hit hit the news circuit really hard over the last seven days. I think the price tag was about 20,000 as a onetime purchase or something like $500 a month. And it looks like, from a quick glance, like, it's able to take care of your home tasks, but I think there's some some hidden text about what it can and can't actually do, which I'll I'll I'll let you reveal.
Jordan:Yeah. You know, every single week we've seen, like, not week, but I mean, often we've seen kind of these companies come out with a new robot or idea that can, like, do all these cool things inside your house. And then it's always, like, a little bit too good to be true. And if you look at this robot, it is definitely too good to be true. And so I think someone from the Wall Street Journal tested the robot, and they found out that, you know, there was a human on the other side kinda communicating with them.
Jordan:And so really the robot was just like an interface for the human, which means that it's not more efficient yet. So it is a cool idea. It is cool that that happened, but I think we're not there yet. You know, I I believe that Tesla was doing this when they did some launches using the the Optimus robot. They were having, like, humans control it as well.
Jordan:But, you know, having a humanoid robot do all these things in your house is a dream. I think it's a very difficult reality. And, you know, I have a lot of faith in in Tesla and Elon, but, you know, I know a lot of companies were going for it, but it is a hard, hard problem. Hard, hard problem. And it's not constrained.
Jordan:I mean, you know, driving, there's a lot of, like, things that can happen to you, but, you know, for the most part, like, driving is like, you know, you kinda put your foot on the gas with a brake, and then you turn the wheel back and forth kind of you know, there's not that many options of things you can do as a driver. You can go or you can't go, and you can turn and can't turn kind of thing. But, you know, to do dishes in a house, can just think about how complicated that can be, and, you know, everybody's house is different, and the sink is different, and the dishwasher is different. And, I mean, there's just so many kind of variables to the problem. So I think it's a challenging problem, but it's certainly a dream like I think that a lot of us probably wanna live.
Jordan:I mean, imagine having a home robot who did all your dishes and washed all your clothes for you while you're sleeping. Sounds like a nice way to live.
Sam:Yeah. And if it becomes feasible in our lifetimes, you know, what do you think about the price point?
Jordan:I think 20,000 is, like, the right price point. I mean, if you look at, like, a Tesla vehicle and presume that kind of a home optimist robot is as smart as a Tesla car, you know, Tesla car, the Model three, cheapest one, is maybe $40,000. And you think about, like, how much metal and all those objects inside compared to how much a robot is. So I think, like, half of a car sounds about right. $20,000.
Jordan:And if you think about how much it costs to lease a Tesla Model three, maybe the cheapest model is, like, $5,600 a month. So if it's half that, let's say it's $300 a month. So that all sounds about, like, fair to me. Mean, $300 a month for a home robot that, like, operates twenty four seven in your house, like, that sounds like a pretty good price for home services. And who knows, like, how valuable that could be?
Jordan:I mean, like, just I think about home services like washing the floors and, you know, cleaning bathrooms. But, like, imagine handiwork and, you know, painting and kind of gardening and, I mean, cleaning their pool. I mean, you know, how how deep can it go and how many services can it replace and, you know, how many value adds can you do. You know? I mean, I I, you know, I have someone to clean my house, come once a week, but, you know, mostly because I can't afford to have somebody come there every day.
Jordan:But imagine having the robot do it every day. So, you know, you're stuck to improve your quality of life significantly as well.
Sam:Yeah. I think the price point is really fair. Exactly. If you compare it to the car and, like, the theoretical lifetime of a car, and I'm assuming maybe the robot is comparable, maybe it's four or five years, I think they announced $500 a month, which I'm sure if you were to add up all your, you know, monthly home services, it's probably more than $500 easily. Whether it's you know, I don't know if it does outdoor activities like cutting the lawn, but, you know, just the week, you know, once a week maid service, which, you know, doesn't include that much.
Sam:You know, you get to probably a service, you know, inherent theoretical comparable service cost of way more than $500 a month. But, yeah, I think we're a long way away from this being a reality, both from a, you know, mechanical point of view and, you know, just the amount of variables compared to autonomous driving. And I remember talking about autonomous driving ten years ago, and it's just still it's still like, it's really kind of breaking into more and more people's homes or more and more people's vehicles, and so it's been a topic for a really long time.
Jordan:Yeah. And as you can see, you know, Google has autonomous driving, and Tesla has autonomous driving, and, you know, we'll probably see some autonomous robots coming soon from Google and Tesla and probably some other players as well. And, you know, to your point, maybe they're limited, maybe they can only do certain things, but but yeah. And this is the beginning of a new evolution. Everyone's gonna have home robots.
Jordan:It's pretty exciting. Alright. Sam, fun episode, episode 20 in the books. Can you believe it?
Sam:Yeah. It's been a it's been a really interesting experience filming 20 episodes. I think, you know, we've learned a lot. And, yeah, we're really excited about, the next 20. We have lots of guests on the calendar, some really important CEOs building some really cool AI and tech companies.
Sam:So excited about the the upcoming 20.
Jordan:Awesome. So, yeah, we got a great end of the quarter, a bunch of new guests coming on, so we're super excited about that. And, just wanna say thanks everyone for tuning in. Over 15,000 subs. Please tell your friends.
Jordan:Please share the episodes. Love to, invite more entrepreneurs to tell us about their AI startups coming up. And thanks everyone. That was a great episode, and see you all next week.
Sam:Next week, the CEO of Standard AI, Angie Westbrook, is joining us on built this week.