Kevin Smith – Co-Founder of Snipd on Redefining Podcasting With AI

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today I am joined by a very special guest, Kevin Smith, the co founder of Snipt. Kevin, thank you so much for coming to the show today.

Kasey, thanks for having me.

Of course, man. So, you know, for those that don't know, Snipt is the AI powered podcast app. And you know, before we really dive in everything just to give context, you know, we've. We've gotten to know each other pretty well the last year or so, just both being in the world of podcasting. And, um, you know, when I first came across Snipt. Yeah, Over a year ago now, I was so intrigued because I think in this world of podcasting that we both live and breathe in and sort of the intersection of AI, it's. I was always just fascinated by how you and the team have thought about the product and, you know, for those that may not know what Snipped is, I know I gave some quick context. Would love to hear it from your perspective before we really dive into your story and the product itself and of course, all things podcasting.

Yeah. Very happy to give a brief overview of what Snipt is today. I mean, the best way to think about it is we're an AI powered podcast app for people whose main motivation to listen to podcasts is to become more knowledgeable, to learn, to follow their curiosity. So the feature that we're most known for and where also our name Snipd comes from is, is that we help people save and remember the best insights that they hear in podcasts simply by tapping your headphones. So to paint you a picture. Like for me myself, I always listen to podcasts while riding my bike to work every morning. So if an amazing idea comes up, that's the beauty of living in Zurich for sure. But the. Yeah. So if I hear an amazing idea, I want to remember that I can just triple tap my headphones. I don't have to take out my phone. And what happens is that our AI summarizes the idea that I just heard and saves the summary together with the transcript, together with the original audio in my knowledge library, which I can now come back to later. I can share it with friends. I can sync it with my notes app. Yeah. So over time, I can start collecting all of these ideas and knowledge. Yeah. So this is really where it started. But just to give a little teaser on top, I think where we're now moving towards more and more is really we're becoming the AI native experience to consume podcasts. So in the meantime, we have so Many more AI powered features like starting with transcripts, AI generated chapters. We identify the guest, we create a little mini bio about the guest. We create short overviews to help you decide, hey, is this episode something that's interesting for you or not? We identify all of the books that get recommended during an episode. People love that people love going back to like, hey, what were really the books that Casey recommended, this amazing book. And finally, we enable people to chat with the episode. For example, if there's a piece of information that afterwards you remember, you wanted to look that up again or you wanted to search for a certain moment.

The.

The new native AI Native way of doing that is not by searching for keywords in the transcript, but it's by asking AI and get. Get a nice answer.

Absolutely. No, it's. I love that perspective and I think too just some quick context, you know, as someone that's had a podcast for seven years and obviously has listened to so many shows, I still find myself as I'm the type of listener that I'm 90% listening to a show and 10% watching in this massive video uproar of podcasting. Obviously we're filming on here on video today, but as a listener myself, I primarily listen when I'm on a walk, when I'm in the gym, when I'm in the car. When I first came across snipped, as I said, having the headphone tap feature or if I'm going to run in that sense as well, it really was for me one of those moments where I'm like, wow, I always thought, like, it's so hard to get a listener to like, really convert to a different listening app when you have Apple podcasts, Spotify. And I think just again, and I said at the beginning, like, this intersection of AI on how, as you say so. Well, excuse me. And what really attracted me to snipt is like unlocking the knowledge in podcasts, right? Like people that are really there to learn, not just there to get entertainment and like passively listen, but to really like pay attention and to maybe listen to stories or maybe it's interviews, whatever it may be. And to take a step back here. I know that you and your team started working on Snip prior to this, like massive chatgpt AI boom. And I want to take a step back, like, where did this only idea come from? But your experience in AI and you know, the interest to go pursue this in a time which again, of course, like AI was talked about and you know, like big already, but not, you know, versus Someone that may be thinking about something, an AI application today. So bring us back to, you know, when. When Snip was first getting ideated on, what were you working on before? Like, where were you spending your time? And what inevitably led you to making the jump to go and start this, you know, this company? The product?

Yeah. For me, it all starts in, I think it was 2016. I had just quit my job at a big bank because I found my true passion, and that was AI, or back then called machine learning. And I just realized, like, okay, I have to do this every day, all day, 24 7. So I decided to quit my job at this big bank and join this small tech startup here in Zurich, where I was able to build up the AI team, which I then happened to do over the course of five years, which was an amazing learning experience in and of itself. But at the very beginning, I come in there, and I had no experience in the startup world. So what the founder recommended to me was go listen to this podcast called how to Start a Startup by Sam Altman. Back then, he was CEO of Y Combinator, or at least the podcast was created before OpenAI. And here I was suddenly, like, in Zurich, so on the other side of the world compared to Silicon Valley. And I'm riding my bike to work, and I'm listening to all of these amazing entrepreneurs that were on this podcast giving me their best advice about how to start a startup, what to look out for, what's different to, like, the big corporate world. And that was really the moment where I realized, like, the power of this knowledge transfer between people across the planet in this very special format, which is audio, So I could do it while I'm riding my bike to work, which I would do anyway. So I'm not even losing time. And for me, that's sort of the starting point where I realized the power and then, like, the value that's contained in podcasts. But that was also where the journey started of where I started to realize these problems that I had, like, you know, riding my bike, and, like, oh, my God, this I have to remember. And then there's no way to write it down. So I, like, stop my bike, you know, get up my phone, write it down, then get back on my bike, start paddling again.

Literally, like, oh, no, I would be on run. Sometimes it's like you stop. You screenshot the time during the episode. You're like, I want to go back to. So, yeah, I get it.

Yeah. So these were all of these challenges. I think all of us, we've had these moments and then at some point you don't take the screenshot, you don't write it down. You think you'll remember, but of course you forget. Then the next day you do remember something again. You want to look it up again in the podcast, but you can't find it because you're hitting that skip 20 second button 50 times. Then you do finally found it. And then you want to share it with your team or a good friend, but you can only share the entire episode. So you share this two hour conversation with your team and tell them, hey, no, there's a really good insight in there. Really listen to it because they explain it so much better than I could. And a week later you ask them like, hey, did you listen to it? And of course they didn't.

Right?

Because it's a two hour conversation. They don't know. The show was like, yeah. So these were basically all of the challenges that I came across. And I was at some point talking to a good friend of mine. He was actually the one who originally got me into machine learning. So it was actually him back. So it was actually in 2012 when I moved to Zurich to study here. I originally came here to study mathematics and economics to become a so called quant. So these are like the quantitative people in banks and hedge funds that create these complicated mathematical models to determine the price of a financial product, like a derivative, a call option, put option, or come up with quantitative trading strategies. And I was a really good student at that, but for some reason my passion was not in it. And then one day, one of my best friends, Ferdinand, he comes to me and says, hey, I just took this course. You have to take this. You will absolutely love it, trust me. So I'm like, okay, so what is this course about? What's it called? He's like, it's called machine learning. And then he sent me the PDF slides and like the way I remember it, it's like I went through it in a weekend and I just like after that weekend I realized like, damn, like this, this is what I have to do. Yeah. And at the time I was already working for, for a bank at like, like at the side. And then over like the next year, just like on like on the side, just got more and more into it and more and more into it until I then actually had hit that moment that I was talking about earlier where I decided like, no, okay, I have to quit my job and like do this full time. Yeah, now I lost my train of thought a little bit Yeah.

I love that. And I even think too, just to spend some time on it, obviously. And I said at the beginning, we've had lots of great conversations over the last year or so just on all things podcasting, like snipped and what I'm working on over here. But on the personal front, like you said you moved to Zurich to study. I'd love to hear early on, where did you initially grow up? And was living in Zurich sort of like a goal of yours or going to school there or kind of walk me back to maybe childhood? And I think there's always similarities or things that I like to take away from early careers or just viewpoints on the world. Curious to know what your background looked like. Did you come from an entrepreneurial family? Or what was childhood like for you?

What was childhood like? So, I mean, I'm half English, half German, so when I was four years old, we moved to Germany. And then I mainly grew up in Germany and went through the German school system in, like, a small town. So growing up, I didn't really have, I would say, a lot of contact with entrepreneurial thinking or sort of like the big city aspirations, things like universities like Stanford or Harvard. They weren't really something that you would talk about in high school, like where I grew up. But the one thing that I think really had a big impact on me was, I would say one of the things that my father always did in his own peculiar way, was he had a way of thinking for himself, meaning he was happy to take some common wisdom and actually turn it around and say, hey, this actually doesn't make sense. And even though my opinion here or my idea might sound super crazy, but, like, hear me out. I think I have a point. And that was something that I think I took away with me. And that is, in my opinion, what actually entrepreneurship is like. Like, you look at the world not how everyone else looks at it, but you actually question it. Like, why is it like this? Like, why. Why do we only have one dishwasher at home? And we. We take all of the dirty dishes, we put them in, then we take them out again, we put them in this cupboard. Like, why do we not have multiple ones where you just, like, put them in, you clean them, and you only take them out when you. When you actually use them. Again, not the storage thing in between, you know, like. Like things like that? And yeah, most. Most people just look at them, think, like, like, that's stupid. Like, why. Why would you do it differently? Um, but yeah, that. That I think definitely had an impact on me.

That's awesome. Yeah. Original thinking in a sense, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome. So when it, when it comes to, you know, when you moved to Switzerland, talk to me about that experience. You know, where were you living before you made the move to Switzerland? Or Zurich, as you said, for school, right?

Yeah. So how Zurich came about was, um, I actually I. I started a, an internship in Zurich where. Which was at a big private bank because of course, Switzerland is known for, for their banks. And I was already, I was already studying my bachelor's degree before moving here, but I hadn't really planned to move here full time yet. And I was. During this internship, I told people that I was, you know, studying mathematics and economics for this like, quant thing. It was a bit like a specialized course. And almost all of them said like, oh, is that this, this course at eth, which is like, ETH is the, the famous university here in, in Zurich, which is sort of for people in the US the easiest way to understand it. It's like the, it's like the Stanford outside of the U.S. got it.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, I need the. The context is helpful.

Yeah. And they were all like, oh, I've heard so many great things like, this is, this is the best place to study this. How is it? And I'm always like, no, actually I don't study there. I study in this small little town, like, ah, okay. And that was when I realized, like, oh, no, wait, that's actually the place where I should be. Like, this is the place where I get the best education. This is the place where the best students will go to and I can meet these, these like minded individuals. So this coupled together with, I think my entire childhood, I've always been very competitive. I was also one of the things that when, when I was already quite like, already an adult, the one thing that my father told me when I think I asked him, like, how was I liked during childhood? So like, oh, you were always way too competitive. Hey, that's when I heard that. Yeah, I think when I heard that, it was like, oh, wait, this is where the best people go to. Yeah. That's what motivated me to come here to Zurich. Yeah. And then I decided to take the leap. I applied and I got into the program and then once I got here, I actually realized how beautiful Zurich is. Zurich is.

I'm jealous. I still. I want to go to Switzerland. Zurich specifically. And the beauty there is. It's incredible, man.

Yeah. Yeah. You should definitely come visit. I believe Switzerland in general, it is One of the most beautiful places on earth, especially if you. If you enjoy nature, if you enjoy a clean. A clean environment, a safe environment that has nature basically in front of your doorstep. So here we have a very beautiful lake, a very beautiful river. The water is so clean that it's like drinking water quality. And you can just swim anywhere in the river or the lake and. Yeah. And if you need some more, you know, you drive for one hour and you're in the Swiss Alps. And then in winter you can ski, do snow hikes. In summer you can go hiking or go to some beautiful area for the view. Has a lot to offer.

Not bad at all. Kevin, come on. I gotta. I'll definitely get out there sometime in the near future for sure. Speaking of all things competition, competitive lens on business startups, and again, I know we've talked a lot about just all things podcasting, the industry over the last year or so when we're catching up and curious to know from you, how do you think about, with this uproar of video podcasting, YouTube being the biggest player in terms of listenership, as someone that has a company that's again, just unique AI experience for podcasts, how do you view the landscape right now when it comes to what Spotify is doing, what YouTube's doing? And again, to put on that competitive lens, how are you and your team thinking about the next two, three, five years when it comes to podcasting? But also the intersection of, you know, native audio plus video? And I think there's also this, like, gray area of like, what is a podcast in five years? Is it a YouTube show where it's only video? Like, is that still a podcast even if there's no rss? Right. And I think that's something that I always think about and curious to get your viewpoint on that in terms of, like, the emergence of video being a core part of this whole experience.

Yeah, yeah. Let me separate those two things. Like, so for one, a bit more the competitive landscape.

Yeah.

And to video. So with, with respect to the competitive landscape, the way that we always looked at it is Spotify, YouTube and also almost any other podcast app that is out there. They are very general podcast players. So we actually entered this market very differently. Like, we have a clear opinion, a clear mission. We. We don't go out there and say we are the podcast app for everyone. We are not. We even ask you in the onboarding and if you, depending on what you select, we actually tell you, like, hey, this might not be the experience for you. Like, stick around. If you want to, right? But we are building for a different kind of person. And maybe, maybe you'll notice that. So for us, it all comes back to. We see podcasts as one of the largest knowledge libraries in the world. We believe it's still heavily underutilized, and we want to make this knowledge library so much more valuable to everyone involved, especially the listener, but also the creator. Because if it's more valuable to the listener, it's of course also better for the creator. So this is something that has given us a mission, has given us a drive, has given us a. A framework to decide what to build and what not to build and which trade offs to take. It has also enabled us to in a way, position our brand. Right. Like, okay, we are this product for this particular person and that's what we intend to continue doing. And with that, we believe that there is a place for us in this market, a place that is significantly large. But of course, Spotify and YouTube, they. They also have a very large place for them. And, you know, I'm fine with that. Yeah, yeah, maybe with respect to the videos, the second topic that you brought up, it's a very interesting one. So today, what I think many people actually don't realize is YouTube is actually the number one podcast app in the world. It's not Spotify, it's not Apple, it's YouTube. Yep, I saw that recently. Yeah, I guess that caught a lot of people off guard. Spotify has now, for one or two years, or maybe even three years, realize that as well and have started to invest into video. But the question is, when is like, what does the video provide? Because when we speak to listeners, we realize like most people actually do still primarily listen to podcasts, even if it's on YouTube, they are usually still doing something else at the same time. And I really love this concept here of. And I didn't come up with a concept that, that was actually something that Gustav Suderstrom from Spotify, you know, mentioning the competitors again, introduced like this concept of backgroundable video. So it is video and it is important and I can get into it, like which areas. I think, I personally believe it is very important, but it is not the main thing. You don't have to. It's not like a movie where you actually have to like watch the entire time. So you can just jump on your bike, start listening and maybe every now and then they mention something where you actually do want to look at the video. Or when if you're on a subway for like three stops, maybe you want to take out your phone and watch. And then once you get off the subway and you continue walking, you just listen. So this is also how we think about it at Snipt and how we want to introduce it in the future. It's snipped as well, but I find it then much more interesting to think about. Okay, then, what are the areas, like, why where video is super valuable because backgroundable video doesn't really sound like this is so important. But there are two areas that we at Snip want to utilize much more in the future, and that is discovery and for sharing. So I believe the reason why YouTube is the biggest podcast app in the world today, it is because of discovery. It is because their discovery algorithm is better, but also that discovering in video, like visual discovery, just works so much better than text only or especially in audio.

Yeah.

And the other parts with sharing, like, the interesting thing for us is like, we have our users are creating all of these highlights that we call them snips. By the way, that's the connection to the name Snip. So all of these snips are being created by our users, but at the same time, you have creators take a creator like Huberman Lab, like he and his team, for every episode, they actually manually create clips of the episode and they post them on social media. Why do they do that? That is for distribution, because this is the way that they spread the word. But now imagine if every listener of Huberman Lab, they themselves would be clipping, as in snipping the best highlights. And now not just sharing this on social media, but actually sharing it with their best friend. This is a completely different dynamic. If. If I see a clip from HUBERMAN on. On TikTok, or if you case, if you send me on imessage this clip and say, like, hey, Kevin, like, you need to listen to this. You need to watch this. I will. I will, of course, do it. So, yeah, we believe that this will actually, in the future will be one of the biggest ways how podcasters grow.

Yeah, no, it's. I love everything you said there. And I think what sticks out to me, which I appreciate so much, is you and the team have a very unique point of view and mission that is very strong in terms of, as you said, things like the onboarding of the specific type of user that's there for knowledge, that there is a power listener of shows. And I think it's cool because again, as someone that is like myself as a user. You're totally right. The backgroundable video. Even last night I was Watching an episode with Evan Spiegel on Diary of a CEO and kind of had it on my TV because it's like a beautiful set and it's a good video. But I was doing a hundred other things. I was getting back to emails, I was eating dinner and it was just kind of, again, as you said, if I was to go on a walk, I'd want to go just finish it on the audio. And I think it's, it's a valid point especially for a platform like Snipt when it comes to like okay, video, like it's important but you know, for the power user that wants to like unlock knowledge and share, video can be important there. And I think it's a, again like speaks to your guys point of view on the specific user that you are looking for and looking towards. So that's awesome to hear.

Yeah, I very much believe in the concept of building something for someone. And that something and someone can be relatively small in the beginning and then you start to grow it. But it has to be something for someone. Otherwise if you build for everyone, you're building for no one.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's awesome to hear. When it comes to the team, you and your co founders, I know you brought them up a little bit during the conversation, but how did you and your co founders meet and what is, you know, where does the origin of, you know, this dynamic of co founder come from?

Yeah, so the first co founder is Ferdinand. So I mentioned him earlier. He was the guy who introduced me to machine learning. Interestingly enough. He was also the guy who during our studies, so we studied together here in Zurich. That's awesome. He introduced me to the concept of startups. So he was basically also the reason why in the end I went to a startup or even considered going to a startup. So he had a big impact on my life, I think that's fair to say for sure. Yeah. So we've been very good friends ever since we studied together. And it was the two of us who then at some point started talking more specifically about startup ideas. And both of us have this background with machine learning and data science and both of us had basically these problems with podcasts. So this was the start. It was the two of us and how that like we actually, while we were still like in this more like brainstorming mode and like pitching ideas back and forth during that time, both of us, we had busy jobs. So what we said was, hey, let's participate in a hackathon here in Zurich. There's Europe's biggest Hackathon once a year, it's called Hack Zurich. So we said, come on, let's just block out this weekend and just hack through for 40 hours and then we can just hack together some prototype and see, hey, does this work? To actually test some of these ideas that we've been throwing around.

Yeah.

So we go to this hackathon and in the end we built. Well, actually in the end, long story short, we won the hackathon.

So great.

We didn't expect that at all.

That's so great.

Yeah, that was like, we had like. What we actually built was an in episode search, so a podcast episode. You could search for moments within the episode through natural language. And I think the key why we actually won was on stage we had a good demo. So on stage we did the live demo and we took the famous Joe Rogan episode with Elon Musk where he starts smoking a joint. And then I think the next day Tesla stock crashed by like 7% or 11% or something. So this is a two hour episode and we brought it up on stage and. And then we just searched for, hey, smoking weed. And we actually connected it to YouTube to show the video again. Like, video can be very important. And it would just jump to that moment and Elon Musk would just start smoking the joint.

Oh, man, that's. That's great.

Yeah. But the. So for us, the takeaway was actually at the end, not that we had won. I mean, that was great, you know, like gave us energy and it was.

A lot of fun.

And we've got a little bit of money with which we then actually bought our first MacBooks or bought new MacBooks for this journey. But the insight was after pitching on stage, a lot of the other participants came to us and asked us, hey, can I use this? Or they came and said, hey, I have this other problem. Couldn't that also be solved with your tech if you change it a little bit? And that was the first indication of the customer validation in a way or market research, that it's actually not just us, there are many others out there that are having these issues. Yeah. So this is how the first co founder came to be. And shortly after that, we actually decided to just quit our jobs and just dive into it.

I think that's a great segue of. I think there's never a right time when it comes to quitting a job, going all in on something. But also I think there's something that you spoke to there that I think is important of going to this hackathon and Winning it and having this level of validation and commitment of, okay, this is something that people genuinely are interested in and have a problem with. And to finally make that jump. When you did that kind of bring us back, how did that feel? This is something that I heard you talk about another podcast where obviously you were a part of a startup, but starting your own and taking that leap of faith. There's a lot of founders that listen that either they've done that or they want to. And I always like to take a moment to say, how did you actually feel during that moment? And how do you, you know, take us back to that time? Because I think it's. It's at least for me, I think there's so much beauty of, like, letting people know, like, the realness and rawness to then have the foresight and perspective now to say, oh, yeah, Like, I think that's also kind of what made it work into some level of, you know, like, the delusion or the crazy, like, feeling, like, bring us back to that time.

I think delusion is the right keyword.

Oh, man.

Yeah, I mean, I remember. So I was with another good friend of mine. It was end of the month, like, two days or something before the end of the month. I hadn't quit my job yet, and we went out to play some badminton or something like that, and I was telling him all about, like, these ideas that we're having and that we're thinking about quitting our jobs or not quitting our jobs. And, like, I don't know. And so the entire evening, I'm just telling him all of this stuff. And shortly before we say goodbye, we're actually like, we took a bus together a couple of stops, and at some point, the friend of mine just turns to me is like, you do realize you have already made up your mind. You are quitting your job. You are framing, like, you are telling me that, oh, I don't know what to do, but. But no, if you actually listen to yourself, like, it's clear you have, like, you're quitting your job and you're doing it tomorrow. And that was actually a moment where I realized, like, shit, yeah. Yeah, I have made up my mind. I want to do it. And, yeah, I'm just going to walk in there tomorrow and just. I'm just going to do it.

Wow.

And that was. Yeah, that was super euphoric, and I just absolutely loved it because. Because it was already there. I just already knew that this was the right decision and I just had to do this. Yeah. So this Is, I think, more like the emotional side of it, the more rational side was that Ferdinand and I, we sat together and the way that the framework that in the end we used was, we thought about, like, what's the worst case scenario that could happen here? So we were in the fortunate position that in our job before, at least, like the last two years before we both had a solid salary, we were able to put some money aside. So then we asked ourselves, okay, like, let's say we don't have a salary for 12 months and then we start getting a normal job again. Like, what would that cost us? So we wrote down, okay, like, okay, what's our rent? Like, what do we spend on groceries? And all of that. Okay, that got us to a number. Okay, so this is financially. As long as we don't do anything stupid during that time, this is financially probably, like the worst case scenario. I think we added a little bit of money on top, like, for, okay, we're going to have some server costs or something, but okay, but that's not all right. Like, if that scenario happens, what will we have done during those 12 months? Like, we will have learned so much. We will have learned 10 times more than we would learn in any other job, both in terms of skills, but also in terms of, like, life experience in areas that we would never do, you know, and we will, we will have, we will probably have enjoyed every moment of it. And we, we did it together. Like, not with some stranger, like some guy, some random boss that was assigned to me. Like, no, it's the two of us. We've, at the time, we had known each other for, I don't know, eight years, nine years.

Okay.

And once we looked at it like that, like, and. And maybe. And one, One comparison was also like, okay, if we learn this much, like so many other people, they, they do things like an MBA, where they're also out of a job for six months, 12 months, and they pay way, much, much more money than the number that we had come up with. So putting all of that together, we thought, like, this worst case scenario sounds pretty awesome, actually.

No, that's. I love that the thought process around, like, not optimizing for, but understanding, like, what is the worst case scenario? And, like, really getting real with it. And I was having a conversation similarly with a friend of mine recently, and that question kept coming up, like, for his end, and we were kind of talking about that. And I think it's so important, right? As much as things can go right, things can go wrong, and you want to Understand again, quantifying it as well. What does this really mean for me and what is the cost of this? And again, there might be things that the unknown costs that come up, of course, but I love how you guys did that and really understood the opportunity cost there and walk us through that. I know we a handful of questions here before we wrap up, but when it comes to that first year of building Snip to launching it, talk to me about that process of first users, first paying customers, feedback that you guys were getting and then remind me when it was that the product went live. Just to have the context of the timeframe here.

Yeah, so we, so in the very beginning it was just Ferdinand and myself. Right? So just FYI, we are three co founders actually. So there is a third person who enters this picture at some point. Both of our background is in data science, AI backend coding. We have no experience in front end UI ux. So you know, coming back to like the delusional part that we thought we would somehow figure it out and build a consumer application without a front end, yeah, that's challenging. But you know that's, that's part of it, you know, like at some point you just have to sometimes jump into the deep end and just figure it out or something makes, makes something work. So actually after two weeks we did have a prototype. We still have a screenshot somewhere. This is I think the worst UX you will ever see in your life. But we had it and we made it and we gave it to people and we got feedback from them and it really kickstarted the okay, let's iterate fast and just get feedback as quickly as possible and show it to as many people as possible. Even like no matter how crap it actually looks like. And this, in a way maybe this is now interpreting it after the fact. But in a way this attitude was also how our third co founder joined us. Because our third co founder, Mikael, I had worked together with him for five years in that tech startup that I was working for as well. And shortly before I left, he had also taken the decision to leave without having anything new yet. He wanted to take a three month sabbatical and really not think about what he does and really take that time off. And I was telling him, and as I was telling many other people about our ideas and what we're working on. And so it was actually him because I told him about these in a way this project that we're working on, it was him who approached us and said like, hey Kevin, this sounds actually super cool and interesting. I had actually been thinking about having some kind of pet project on the side during my sabbatical because, I mean, I obviously love coding, right? Like, even if I'm not working, I still want to code. Hey, like, if you have something, I'm happy to help you guys out with some stuff. You know, I'll like, code every now and then a couple of hours. So we're like, yeah, sure, why not? And so his background is in front end engineering. He was leading the front end team for a while at that startup company. So yeah, he joined us. Really just like, hey, just going to help you guys out a little bit here and there. And after a couple of weeks, we started noticing like, Mikael was just like every day committing. Committing new code, committing new code. And he was basically working every day on this for, you know, for weeks.

So this was like, there was no. And I think this is an important topic. I think, like, there was no formality. There was no like, hey, he wants to like, come on board. Yet he was like, hey, I just want to be helpful. And it became one of those things where again, I'll let you finish the story there, but I think it's so important to kind of interject during moments like this because I think so many, especially like me looking back, I would always ask myself like, oh, like, how do you like get a mentor or how do you find a co founder? And like sometimes it's. You're. It's literally right in front of you and it's not making you don't understand it then. Right. But then like, again, having the foresight to look back now, it's like, oh, yeah. Like, you know, we had someone that was helpful and he was interested and you know, it's. Maybe you didn't think about him as such then, but it just, it ended up obviously working out and making sense. But yeah, I'd love to have you finish that story real quick. Just want to interject there.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's a great way of putting it. Like, there was no, you know, there was also no payment involved or anything. You know, it wasn't like, hey, I'll help you if you pay me this or something. Like, no, it's just we all knew each other, we were having fun and like, yeah, like, I want to be helpful. Yeah. And then he just realized how much he loves it.

Yeah.

And after, after a while we were like, hey, Mikael, are you. Are you still doing your sabbatical?

Yeah.

And. And no, I mean, it was Clear, like, no, he actually wasn't doing a sabbatical anymore. And so we, we sat together, said like, hey, like let's sit together. Let's, let's, let's do this. The three of us, co founders, all equal, equally in, equally committed, equal share. And yeah. And that's how he joined us. And then that was really the puzzle piece because now looking back, like without him. Yeah, it just wouldn't have happened.

That's so awesome to hear. And just for the final context from when you guys started to, when he came on board fully as a co founder, what was that timeframe like? Because I think it's just curious on that note.

Yeah, so that's actually a little bit difficult to say or like I don't remember the exact timeline. So I think he started joining us like just, just part time, I think a couple of weeks in. And then when we took the official decision, I think it was, I think it was after like he had worked with us for like two and a half months or something like that. So this had gone on for a while. And of course we like slowly, I know, told the story of that. We just approached him and he's like, yes, but of course it was slowly like, hey, what do you think about this idea? And it's like, yeah, yeah, I've also been thinking about it, but no pressure. And then at some point we then released it together. And I think that was then maybe after two and a half months of working together. And then I remember that after that we said, so this is all, you know, also during COVID You know, I remember it was at a time where everyone was like working remotely and it was sometimes difficult to meet up. And after that it was then, I don't know, you know, May, April, whatever. And then we actually decided, hey, let's the three of us go on an off site together. Because Mikhail and Ferdinand, the two of them actually didn't know each other yet. So I had known both of them for a long time. But so we, we actually went together to Ticino. This is the, the Italian speaking part of Switzerland on the other side of the Alps.

Yeah.

Another coming back to Switzerland being the beauty of.

Is this where you can, you can ski, can't you like ski from Switzerland to Italy? Is that the part there?

Right, so that's not in Ticino, but yes, you can see from Switzerland to Italy. No, but we went into, we locked ourselves into a small apartment for one week. The three of us worked together. And that was also again actually Ferdinand and Mikael they had to sleep in the same bed.

Yeah. So they really got each other.

Like, we really forced like, hey, can we work together in closed spaces? And we realized like, hey, no, this works amazingly. And that was then actually after that. So I think that was then, you know, maybe four months in or something like that, or five months in. That was actually the moment when we also decided what to build for real. Because up until that point we were like prototyping. We had prototypes on test flight and we would give it to friends and like people who were willing to test, but it wasn't publicly available. And yeah, then after that, that was actually then the point where we said, okay, let's now we have a clear idea of what we want to build. Let's build this thing for real. Bring it out there. And that was also the moment when we decided to raise a little bit of startup capital.

Got it. That all makes so much sense and appreciate sharing that. And a couple more questions before we wrap up here. Kevin, One thing, your background on machine learning. All things AI. Obviously there's this industry taking podcasts out of it for a second, just AI wise. So much is going on, things are moving so fast. What excites you the most around AI? And also of course, the implementation with snipt and the future of Snipped overall.

Yeah, there are so many areas, I think if I try to break it down, to not start like another 10 minute monologue here, for sure. One area that we're very excited about is AI voice or voice as an interface in general. There are so many areas where we can do very interesting things here. It starts with being able, of course, to control the app via your voice. Going back to that, you're often doing something else with your, with your hands or eyes while you're listening. This can be just like to create snips to add a voice memo to it, but it can go further, as in to ask questions if something was unclear.

Yeah.

Basically podcast becoming an interactive medium that you can just chat to and get answers back and you can also use it. One area that we're thinking about is creating a reflection flow that helps you at the end of an episode to actually be more mindful about what you've actually just learned and what it is that you want to take away for yourself. Because it's so easy to listen to something and be constantly like, you know, earlier you were, you were mentioning the, the podcast episode with the Snapchat co founder. Yeah, I'm also currently listening to it.

Oh, I love that he's Great.

Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. And this is a typical episode where you can be like, oh, this is a great insight. That's a great insight. And this other thing as well. But then it's sometimes dangerous to. If you then don't take that and actually invest like 30 seconds to say, hey, out of all of these insights, like, what's actually the most important for me and my life that I can apply, then it can be very easy to. You have heard all of this, but then you didn't do anything with it, or you try to remember everything. And if you try to remember everything, you don't remember anything. So this is another area where we think AI Voice can actually be a new way of creating a reflect flow to interact with, to help you with that. And further being then almost like a companion where it's like, hey, I really loved what he was talking about. For example, before that, I was listening to an episode with a superhuman co founder and he was talking about tm, transcendental dental meditation, if I pronounced that correctly. So maybe you're like, hey, this was super interesting. I want to get to know more about that. Right. And this companion can now find you episodes for you to deep dive further into it. So this whole area is very exciting to us. And the second area, which is again, very much connected to AI Voice, but it's a little bit different. Just the concept of being able to transform any content into audio content. So I think in the future that would be absolutely normal that you can take a blog post, a PDF, even a PowerPoint presentation and turn them into a piece of audio content that you can listen to. So for people who have played around with NotebookLM, this is exactly what I'm talking about. I believe there are actually. They haven't completely cracked it yet. There's still a couple of things there. But this concept I really love because sometimes you come across this amazing blog post, you want to listen to it, and now we have these much more engaging AI voices that can read it to you or maybe even read it, while transforming it into something that's a bit more natural in audio, being a conversation, or even if it's just one person just being a bit more conversational. Yeah. And this you can now also couple together with. Going back to I told you about, like the example with Transcendental Meditation.

Yeah.

A lot of people today, if they want to find out more about a certain topic, they go to a place like ChatGPT, for example. There's a great new feature in ChatGPT also in perplexity called deep research. It goes out into the Internet, it researches, it goes through hundreds of websites, finds all of this information for you and creates an in depth long report. Now imagine you can take this and you couple it together with what NotebookLM has been doing to create these audio podcasts for you with AI. So basically you can then ask the app, hey, Superhuman co founder mentioned trans transcendental meditation. Please, please create me like a 10 minute overview about this that I can listen to later.

That's awesome. Yeah, the ability to really. Yeah. Like to go deeper on topics that you're pulling out of it to then say, hey, tell me more about the benefits of transcendental meditation and like put together a thing that I can review based on what I've learned from this episode. In a sense, that's really, really cool.

Yeah. So, yeah, these are some of the, some of the ideas that are floating around. Another area that has nothing to do with AI, but I mentioned earlier is video where we have some cool ideas coming up in the, in the area of discovery and sharing. But man, to be honest, like, there's just so much happening. There's so many things becoming possible and it's. We're just so excited about so many things.

Yeah, no, I love that so much. And I'm sure we could talk, we could talk for a whole hour about just like AI advancements and different use cases there. So we'll have to do a part two sometime in the future when, you know, in maybe six or 12, 12 months or something and keep diving in there. But before we wrap up here, maybe from Switzerland. I would love that. So let's plan on that for sure. Before we wrap up, I just first off want to say I appreciate you and your time so much and appreciate you for coming on the show today. And for people that are still listening or viewing this episode, where's the best place for them to learn more about snipd? Obviously try out the product for themselves. If they're listening to this podcast, I'm sure they're going to love what it is that you've built if they haven't already checked it out and tried it out. And then of course, where's the best place to follow you as well?

Yeah, go to snipt.com to find out more about the app or search for Snipt in the App Store. We can also, I'm very happy to provide you with a promo link for your audience such that everyone who wants to try it out can get one month of our premium version for free. We have a free version, but also there's a premium version. So with this link, you could try it out one month for free. If you want to follow me, the best place is on Twitter. I'm Kevin Ben Smith on Twitter. And alternatively, if LinkedIn is your poison, I'm also there, but much less active.

Perfect. Well, I love it, Kevin. Well, thank you again so much for coming on the show today. And I'll be sure to link that down below. And we'll definitely do this again. Part two in Switzerland. Let's go.

Nice.