Lunch & Learn - Session 27

Well, good day and happy Lunch and Learn. Tom Powell with the Founder's Office. Joining me today is Jackie Kuiper, general counsel of all things legal and all things founders at the Founder Law Group. Huh? All of them. All of them. And, uh, probably still have salad on my teeth. And joining me, you guys both look amazing today, and I look like the crazy professor, but thank you so much. And joining also is Candice Powell, one of our senior founders at the Founder's Office and partner extraordinaire. And I've known her since she was first entered into this world. So just super happy to have both these guys. And of course, Angela, who runs the show for us and is able to collect these cats up and get us going on time. And to our audience, thanks for joining us. This is one of those days where it's an ask question day. You can be bringing anything forward. We do have topics we'll be talking about. And Jackie, first off, I'm going to say, although Angela's probably not ready for it, you're giving a speech or talk later this week to a bunch of lawyers— later this month, I guess— to a bunch of lawyers in Minnesota on the topic of the founder's isolation paradox. Right.

Yes. Yeah, it'll be a presentation. Yeah, it'll be a presentation at the Minnesota Continuing Legal Education Institute, the Minnesota CLE. It's called the Business Law Institute specifically. The Minnesota CLE Center does institutes in different areas of law. There's a bankruptcy institute, there's a family law institute, and there's a business law institute. So at the business law institute, actually May 5th, I'll be speaking about solving the founder's isolation paradox and talking about the capital alignment method and really weaving in a lot of the themes that we talk about on this Lunch and Learn, protecting IP, unlocking intangible assets, etc.

I love, I love the ongoing education. I love the opportunity to be able to teach it there. And I love that they're learning about businesses. And Candice, throw you out there too as you're putting ChapStick on. I understand you guys are getting to record another session of WTF. For those of you that don't know, WTF is a sister show parent show, I don't know, sideshow, whatever it is of Women Talk Finance. I don't know what we've got. Huh?

Opening act.

Opening act. Tell me what's going on on WTF.

Yeah, we're recording a new season of WTF. We've got some great guests lined up for this season. It's really exciting. We took a season off. So we're jumping back in and so much has changed. So we'll be talking a lot about, um, we've got a couple episodes around AI coming up, which is great, um, and very timely. Um, and we just want to open up the conversation for women to feel like they have a space in the room to talk about finance, normalize conversations. We don't just talk about finance as far as like the monetary piece. We talk about all the other types of capital that we have as people. And so, the show's really evolved and we're excited to jump into this new season.

That is cool. So, I got to ask, your best show though was not— it was so far not about finance. What was the one that got like 2 million viewers or whatever on the—

That was more about energy, energetic capital and energy exchange. And there was a woman actually, she used to be an attorney and she was a high-profile litigator very talented, loved law, but loved health and wellness and energy much more.

And that all fits right back into what we find here at the Founder's Isolation Paradox and the Founder's Office. And what we're doing here on Lunch and Learn is the great thing about being in the business we're in. Founders find businesses in every single corner of whatever it is. There's a business, and we get to, we get to see a lot of them because we get pitched often. On some of the craziest ideas out there, but it's also awesome because people bring business ideas. So, bring your ideas to both here, Lunch and Learn, and to WTF. And where do people find that? I know Angela's pulling something together, but where do people find you on WTF?

Let's wait for the— what Angela's pulling together.

I mean, we're all— we're on all the podcast platforms. So, you can find us on any of the platforms. But yeah, we want to just provide value. So, when we see that a topic is gaining traction, we are like, okay, let's lean a little bit more into that. And we try to be a show that's not a should— we don't want to should on anybody. Don't should on me. So we— but we want to open up the conversation and normalize those things. And so even the energy conversation, and a lot of it was thinking about money. Money is just a form of energy, and, and that had a really great That's my, that's my woo-woo daughter that grew up with that, you know, all everything from The Secret to 5 minutes before we jumped on, Jackie and I were talking about our woo-woo guys, which is, which is super, super great.

Uh, and, uh, for those of you that don't know all of our stories, but we've got amazing little stories as they go through there. Um, it looks like it's just finance and founders and law and stuff, but there's a lot of, there's a lot, uh, that goes on like in everybody's lives. Speaking of that, artificial intelligence. We've got 4 of our team members going off this next week, uh, to— this week or next week, um, off to Prime Elite, which is one of the groups that we recommended. We had Joe Stolti on here just last week, I think, as our guest, or a couple weeks ago. And they're going off there to even get more hands-on boot camp, uh, what did they call it, a, a code-a-thon or something like that, uh, where they're Hackathon, hackathon where they're going in there about their constraints and they're going to be working on that stuff, which the reason we mention this is because that's going to be a lot of our talk today is AI and implementation. And we're going to push you guys out there in the audience to send us questions in and talk to us about what you're doing, the problems you're seeing. And the big one that Joe talks about, which is great, is constraints. And another gentleman we know and really are a fan of his work is Nate Herkelman. Nate Herk talks a lot about what's going on in cloud and he'll be a guest last year coming up, I think, at sometime in the next month. Uh, and so the reason we're taking this so on is not out of fear, it's out of opportunity. Uh, for me, uh, it goes back into the '60s and '70s with Star Trek and being able to see that and being a little kid and going like, I want one of those. And all the way up through that, I still talk about Jarvis, uh, being, you know, my, my computer that I talk to. And there, if you saw the control room here, there's 15 screens around me that make up all the various things that come through.

Yeah, we appreciate what you did on the space launch. Thank you.

Did you see that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think there's a conversation to be had, and I think we're in those rooms and want to open up more of those rooms. There's a lot of fearmongering about AI, and of course we need to be aware and cautious and have guardrails, but a lot of the articles I see are like, AI is taking jobs, AI is doing this. And yes, we have to be fully aware. And there's another side of AI. AI is creating jobs. There are lots of jobs being created because of AI. There are a lot of opportunities being created because of AI. There are businesses being created because of AI. Their business is excelling right now. I think of if I had had AI— I've bought and sold a handful of companies. If I had had AI in a handful of those companies, a couple of those companies, Holy cow, that would have completely changed the trajectory of those businesses and probably my exit on those. So, there is that other side of the coin, and I think it's worthy of as much conversation.

Here's where I see it. So, I'm going to take a very hands-on business right now that's getting a lot of press. One of the highest trades you're going to pay for is a plumber. You can't get a plumber, right? I mean, you can get into your dentist faster than you can get into a plumber, which is crazy. Crazy, and you're going to pay more for the plumber than you will for the dentist. That's not crazy because the plumbers are very important. However, if you are in the plumbing business and you are not starting to embrace AI, you will probably end up working for someone who does. Meaning even if you're a sole proprietor, at somewhere down the line, they're going to be outpacing, out— being able to out-schedule, out-price, out-fix, bring the parts right there when you're there, because they'll have the client take a picture of what's going on, send it over, it'll be able to diagnose it right away. And so, in a very manual place, the opportunity now is to start thinking and saying, how can I do that? So, Jackie, the one that we hear about often is law and finance are going to be two of the very expensive areas. How's it starting to pack law? Where are we using it within the Founders Law Group even? And what do you look at? I mean—

Yeah, and I think that's a great question. And I would love, before I answer that, I would love for the audience to kind of type in the chat how they're using AI or what they're curious about using AI for. Candice, it's very interesting you said you wish you had AI. I'm really curious how you would have applied it had you had it at the time. I think talking about using AI is a very amorphous thing, but getting into the details of really how are we applying it is fascinating. And I think there's so much room to learn from each other because a lot of us don't necessarily know where to start. With finance and law, Tom, specifically, how we're using it. Say I need to write a memorandum of something like a memorandum of understanding or a letter of intent or another legal contract. I would say AI is not fantastic yet in finished product, at least not sophisticated, polished, really meaty legal contracts. But it's a great springboard. It's fantastic to get something started. And we all know that AI has a look, right? A look and feel to it, especially like Claude looks like Claude. ChatGPT looks like, you know, the output looks like ChatGPT, but it gets you started. It's a nice springboard piece. So if you head to ChatGPT and put, you know, just talk to it and say, I'm entering into an agreement with this party. This is what they're going to do. This is what I'm going to do. This is what's going to get paid. This is how money's going to flow. Whatever it is, you know, ask ChatGPT, give me a contract. It's going to get you a starting point and it could save you an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours of attorney time, right? And then that's a very practical application. Then you can go in and edit it, use your human touch and make it more robust.

I— that you said something super important. So 10, 15, 20 years ago, I think I came up with this idea of manage your lawyer, because when you engage, especially in litigation, your fees can get so over crazy out there. So as a client, if you are more prepared when you meet with the professionals out there, you will be able to save your save yourself money, time, and likely much better outcomes because of being prepared. That does not mean you become a junior lawyer because that's not the place for it at this point, but we are definitely seeing it in, in that scenario. I'm trying to find— I just did a, uh, a write-up, uh, for the Supreme Court's, uh, notes that are going in there, meaning my stuff's not going to go specifically to the Supreme Court, but we're doing a write-up on it, and I was able to use a— I'll find it while we're talking about And Candice, yesterday, uh, we were talking to— actually, we've had multiples in this last week on medtech.

Yes.

Are you— do you feel comfortable talking about that on, on medtech and what we're seeing? Because almost all the medtech things really were about how AI was coming in.

Yeah, we're seeing a lot of— well, we get pitched medtech quite a bit, um, and so I think what we've had 3 this week. Yeah. And AI is going to be a big part of the new frontier in medicine, as far as I can tell. I think that— and again, this is the, this is the balancing act, right? Like, there's still this huge need for the human piece to it. And we're seeing AI being incorporated into reviewing labs and reports, we're seeing AI AI being incorporated into charting. We're seeing in, in just the, the things that we are reviewing as investments. I'm not saying I'm seeing this deployed in the actual medical space yet because I'm not in medicine, but from what I'm getting pitched, AI is a very, very big part of what is coming in medicine. Um, and the idea being the speed of being able to review something, bring something to light, bring something to surface so that you are able to diagnose sooner, uh, diagnose quicker, address something that maybe wouldn't have been seen, um, before. Taking in different, uh, medical practices and being able to analyze something that maybe would have been siloed with one practitioner, now incorporating all of them. So we're seeing a lot of movement, um, specifically the early detection space, I would say, is the primary thing between cancer, between heart disease. I mean, like, all kinds of early detection pieces. So, I mean, this is— it's— I can see it's going to be a huge part of our everyday life.

Yeah. So what I took away from it was the complexity of non-correlated interactions that are actually correlated. So if you look at 2008, a big part of the meltdown was people believed that they were getting diversification because they thought they had investments in non-correlated assets, meaning two totally different asset classes. Didn't see how that was going to be there. One's in a bond, one's in a housing over here, and they didn't realize that they were all there. Whereas with analysis now going backwards AI is going to be able to do that deep analysis and think through and say, where does that show up elsewhere in our patterns? Or if you think about to the, you know, we just have a new thing, Artemis shot up into the— we circled the moon, which is super cool, especially with the movie hit that's been out, right, for going on. Candace and I were talking about that earlier.

Huh?

Oh yeah. Project Hail Mary. Love that. Love that book. But you look at that and Challenger today may have been able— we did have the Cassandra that said, hey, we've got this O-ring that's a problem. But with the AI, ideally with that risk management stuff, I'm super excited where it's going to be. And medtech is in many cases simply risk management, and it's going to be able to take all these various things and say, we're seeing this pattern repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. And the one that I use a lot of times as an example is An optometrist and an ophthalmologist in their very best of career has a limited number of eyeballs they're going to be able to see. Google, who helped get the system that is able to do now so you don't have to get your eyes dilated all the time every time you go in to see your eye doctor, gets to see millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions of eyeballs. And so they can set those patterns up and it's changing how glaucoma is being treated and detected. And that just That alone is phenomenal. I got to tell you, I know we got— we're starting to get questions. I didn't even share this with, with Jackie yet. CaseMine.com. CaseMine.com. I think they have— if you're not in the law field, you can also get into it, but it helps with writing amicus briefs. It helps with federal, state, international laws. And I use Bloomberg Law a lot as well, and we use Nexus Lexis a lot. These are closed-end systems that actually— it's not Chat writing your briefs, but it is still AI-driven in there. In PubMed, for the medical side, we use that a lot for the medical stuff that we're looking at. So it's very specific and very unique in AI. Yet Chat and Claude and all those other— boy, we started some questions. Who wants to jump in there? There you go.

Well, and I've seen a lot of themes with what people are using AI for. Ernest says he's using AI and used it to complete a $400 million to $560 million investment and strategy pitch debt competition. And out of 200 people last year, sounds like you completed the investment and maybe won or placed well at the competition. So love that using, using AI for content. Same thing Rich says, my entire company, True Try Style, is based on AI generation of people to perfectly display retailer clothing on them and get an accurate fit. But most importantly, using AI in the marketing pitches, pitch deck presentations, and search has been invaluable. So really amplifying content and all.

Rich, can you guys hang on? Rich, can you go— can you start doing ski boots for me, please? Because I'm waiting for custom-made, you know, with the printer right there, ski boot scenarios, which I know our Olympic team is actually using something similar to that. But I— it's not that I want the look, it's that I want the performance and they got to exactly fit my feet.

Rich short girlies like me are excited about that.

Oh, the clothes.

Yeah.

And Candace, there's a photo on your phone from years ago, I think when we first met, where you could go online and try on glasses, right?

Oh, right. Yes.

But the glasses came bigger than my face.

You were like this big.

So I feel like we've really— we've evolved in right-sizing things. So I love the idea of—

Caller ID on my phone is this. I took a screenshot of that.

That was early AI. We've been refined since then. And yes, I was just going to say one of the things, and we'll dive back into some of what the other guests are, the notes and comments they're leaving. But Candice, you opened talking about how AI, that there's a lot of fear that AI is replacing people. And I think down the line for some roles that is a reality, but not to say there isn't something else that people can shift into because of AI. And in the meantime, we really encourage people to think of it as a tool that can amplify current humans. So rather than replacing humans, it's like the expectations changed. You should have, you know, this strong encouragement that you're keeping your employees, but they all should be using AI. And for all of us, there's different uses, right? We can all become more efficient or become more effective and kind of amplify and enhance what we're doing based on our own application of AI.

And what did Stolte call it again? Not a hackathon. They called it a— what was it?

It was a hackathon.

Oh, hackathon.

It was a hackathon.

So, I did appreciate it's a little draconian, but I did appreciate that, you know, they said, okay, so all of our team, we're going to work on a project, whatever your constraints are. Here's the tools, here's the lessons. We're going to buy you the things. And over the next 30 days, you come back and bring us the solutions that you've been able to find. And by the way, Hey, if you're not going to do this, you're going to be up for a, you know, a personnel plan review because AI is going to change the job. There's not a job, you know, significantly around there that we're seeing it. Now, that's a little tough, but at the same time, that's why we're saying every single, you know, position within our company, and we have specific people that are driving the AI within the company, which is great. It is giving us so many tools, so fast to look at and evaluate within our own risk matrix, the investments that we look at for our family office, but also the tools that we can help with our founders relative to building their exits, which is a— we, we always start with the end in mind. So when we have our early-stage founders, it's looking at that exit. It's like, okay, where do we remove the founder from being the center the founder's isolation paradox from the very beginning. How can we do that? And, and that's kind of cool, but it's still going to take the people even to manage the agents at the end of the day. We don't quite have a super manager of super agents yet, uh, going on with those skill sets. Um, Candace, you want to take a shot at a couple of these? I think we should share, share the names. Yeah, a way to start doing that. That's kind of—

I know, I know, there's so many.

Um, mysmartplansai.ai.

Yeah, I'm so— Shelly, I'm the founder of my smart My Smart Plans AI. We support construction documentation, driving intelligence never available before. We build and connect closed AI for the project, then turning the data into an Amazon-style data hub for the lifecycle of the building. What do you see in my space? I, first of all, you're talking to the, to the right team here. This is incredible. I love this idea. I'm curious if you're, if you're live yet, but this is really cool. We're seeing, I'm seeing a lot of movement in the construction space with AI, which again is a like tangible trade. We still need the people and we're able to utilize AI in a way that makes a job site more efficient, faster. We can get things done quick. I mean, if anybody has done plans before, plans take a long time. To get done and you go back and forth on them. So I don't know if that's exactly what you do, but I'm just thinking of if AI can remove all of those friction points in or at least reduce them in getting construction projects moving. One, we would be building better, probably higher quality, moving faster. We have, you know, some challenges with shortages. Imagine if we could actually get up to speed quicker. Imagine if we could rebuild L.A. Quicker because of AI. You know, we're rebuilding communities that maybe have been hit by a natural disaster. I think that's incredible.

I love this one from Kim. There's a number of them. I'm from Los Angeles. I'm using AI to launch an AI diagnostic readiness diagnostic platform that tells you before you launch whether your organization is structurally ready for AI adoption. It's called Preflight AI. And one of the things I like there, Jackie, do you see that little right next to her comment? PreFlight AI TM. TM.

Yep. It's going to be a whole bunch of TM. I love that she's using AI to launch AI to tell you if you're ready for AI.

That is very meta.

I love it.

I think that goes back to what Joe was talking about last week though, about that, like he was talking about the tiers of where people are at in the AI journey, right? And most people are floating around the 2 or 3, like they're still using Chat or Claude or whomever as like a Google. And really, you elevate up to that level 5 when you start really utilizing AI to guide your AI and automations. And that seems like that falls right in line with that.

I agree.

I—

yes, I mean, it's right in line with that. To that, I want to put out there for different things, who's your favorite AI talk show hosts now. I mean, you know, because they're all becoming so popular. We've got a number of them. We've got Mike Kay, we've got Stolti and, and Gus, we've got, uh, Nate Hurk. Um, there's a number of other people that I'm following on YouTube. I'm like, oh, that's a great idea, that's a great idea. Uh, but I want to go back and say Kelly from our office and I were talking, and it was, gosh, 6 years ago, 7 years ago. She'll ping me and tell me when I— when it was. But we were looking at artificial, you know, and our large language models for our big database of all of the information we have on all the various clients, all the investments we've made, various pieces. And she went to Berkeley to go to that. So we've been involved with from Harvard to Berkeley to Stanford to MIT now, Columbia at that level. What I also will say is, is out there in the university brick and mortar, but it's so cool to be able to see the information delivered immediately and people can apply it immediately. So put in the box who you're using. Who do you like? Again, some of my favorites were Nate Hurk and Joe Stolte and Gus Van Dender. And who was the other? There's another one up there. Oh, we're getting some other ideas. AeroFarm Hawaii. There you go. So Candice, who do you like and why do you like it? Who do you like following on the—

I love Nate. I think he speaks so in a way I can understand. I am not at a level 4 or 5 on the AI yet. I want to get there. I aspire to get there. I'm still probably— I'm really getting better at the, at the meta prompts, but I love the way that Nate lays out information and It's, it's very easy for me to follow and understand. And then I love Gus. Gus, we're gonna— Gus actually just agreed to be on our podcast. So he'll be—

really? Yes.

So he'll be on our podcast. Um, and so, uh, we'll have an episode with him coming up soon because I specifically want to talk about this, the other side of, of AI taking jobs. AI is creating jobs, and where do you— where should you be positioning yourself to be getting those jobs in AI or building businesses in AI or whatever it is. But how can you, how can we reframe that?

You know, I love that. I will say that right now, just seeing even all the comments in here, I'm in AI, this is how we're using AI, this is where we're using AI. In the '90s, fintech wasn't even a word. And one of the early investments we did with, with Bill Fisher and what he worked on with GetSmart, which today is essentially just a spreadsheet of, you know, comparing credit card offers. But at the time, that was revolutionary. And AOL.com, you know, ding. I know it's all the old stuff, but fintech then for the next parts of especially the early 2000s, everybody had fintech. It was, we're using fintech, we're fintech, we're fintech. Now it's medtech, medtech, regtech, everything. But tech is attached to it. I'm in the construction tech business. I'm in the you know, dog walking tech business, you know. I mean, you can't— it's just, it's everywhere. And, uh, so AI is now that new tech, whatever it is.

There's a comment from a guest, and I hope I'm saying your name right, and I apologize if I'm not. It's Ahsoka, who says, I'm the founder of Aero Farm Hawaii. I used AI to build my business plan and my model and create a pitch to raise capital. Landed myself in front of a founder to pitch him my business and secure $10 million in capital, which Fantastic. I'm also super interested in his next comment. He says, I just started to learn and use AI. I was super against AI until now. AI is my personal assistant. I think this is a common feeling and worth having a chat on more. I suspect a lot of us have shared that sentiment, like being super against AI, and I want— there's different reasons to be super against AI, right? But then what— I'm curious, what moved you into like, I'm super against it I've got to embrace it, or I want to embrace it, or—

Maybe it was the $10 million.

I don't know. Ahsoka, will you tell us more? Ahsoka, please tell us more.

That does get you kind of excited.

I would be a little bit more into it after that.

I was personally against it. It's scary, right? And there's this vision. There's a little bit of fear narrative, like robots are coming. They're taking over everything. You're not going to have a place. You're not going to have a place. You're not going to have a place in this future society. That for me was like, can AI be trusted or will it spiral out into this, you know, alien intelligence form that operates purely on its own, gets smarter than us, and then like annihilates us? There's a lot of narratives out there that can create fear.

You mean basically when you guys were born, there was a movie that came out called Terminator. It's by this old guy, Arnold Schwarzenegger. You may have heard of him or seen the— Candace grew up with Terminator, right? I mean, yeah, she was born not too far from the building that they blow up in Fremont, California.

Uh, so that, that, you know, I actually quote Kindergarten Cop a lot, not Terminator as much, but Kindergarten Cop was—

I'll be back.

No, I, I do.

Not to Tuma.

Um, I think for me, my resistance to AI, and still it's something I balance with, is I actually live a very low-tech low-tech life. My home is low-tech. My kids are not screen kids. I try to, we try to not have a lot of screens on. We don't have Alexas and Siris and I don't have cameras. I don't have those things in my home. I just don't have it.

You have slides and you have silks.

We have slides. We have aerial silks and inside the house. Big backyard that people go to.

I go there Saturday to see the kids and they are on mandatory outside, which is not Mandatory at all. That's where they are.

Mandatory yard time. We do call it yard time.

Playing with very tacky balls.

Doesn't matter the weather. No, and they love it. They want to be out there. I got a bell to call them because I'm resistant to getting them a device like a watch. So, I just got a bell to page them because I was sick of yelling around the neighborhood.

And all of your 90-year-old neighbors love that.

They can't hear it. So, but it's— I then balance with I want to be cutting, I want to be on the lead with. I want to know what's going on, what's coming up, and how do I balance that with my, like, preference to be more low-tech in my personal life versus my professional life. And, and there are automations too in my personal life that are amazing. I see people online adding these automations into their life that just make even daily tasks easier. So that's my kind of hiccup with, with AI.

So, so I love that. Yeah.

Since this is a capital raising show, a lot of times that we're talking about, or at least why a lot of people show up here, I want to change the direction a little bit. Jackie, we, we, by we I mean you created a bot back when it was bots, right? Now they'd be called agents and some different things where we could run the DEX through really quickly. And the first thing that I noticed was that everything was becoming basically an amalgamation of everything else. So you could put our formulas in there. It's like, okay, you still need to be able to identify what problem is being solved, what's the challenge. And this is where AI is going to be phenomenally great, whether you're using Perplexity or you're using a number of the other tools out there. Because once you identify the problem, really identify it and articulate it, that you are solving, you will be able to use these tools to then find find funders that have already identified that they want to find people trying to solve that problem. And that's in the med tech space. So instead of just looking for people for money and just creating decks that, ooh, I used Gamma and I got a really cool looking deck— that's not what this is about. It's about identifying the problem, articulating the problem, and then finding the me too out there that says, I want to see this problem solved. Who's getting it solved, right? So that's— I mean, it's That's really the scenario that I think we're going to be able to see AI just generally take a huge leap in there.

That's a great point, Todd. To add to that, and this is actually hard to articulate, but AI is like an amplifier. It's a tool that can be applied to like specific pieces of a formula, right? It's not the whole formula. You can't just say magic wand AI, here's what I need done, do it. It's not there yet. Maybe it gets there. But right now— and Candice, you and I had this conversation— Joel Stolte has said it changes expectations, right? Because it used to be the ask of an employee like, OK, I need this. When can I expect it, right? And the old answer used to be, oh, I'll get that to you by Friday, or I'll have that done by next week. And AI speeds things up so quickly that the new expectation is it's done in half an hour or 60 minutes. And I understand what Joe is saying because it does help with pieces in the formula. But I'm going to disagree a little bit because it also assumes that, that your life, that that deliverable is happening in a vacuum, right? That you have no other priorities, no other commitments, no other meetings, no other— you don't need lunch. Like, it's so— to your point, Tom, AI is a tool that can be applied very specifically. Say you have a specific constraint in your capital raise and you've still got other pieces of the formula that you're working on. AI is a tool that you can go leverage for assistance on that thing and it speeds up your whole process. But it's not the— to me, it's not like, here it is, it's all done. It's all done for you. You don't need to think.

And I think it can. Yeah, that's the challenge we're seeing, that AI responds to everybody's emails or it responds to— Rich has that one, you know, in marketing there's ads saying do away with meta ads and use AI to automatically generate your ads. And then all I can figure out is that's just a great way to be getting into your pocket because because if Meta is creating the ads for you, then they're going to want to see some success model just enough so that you keep buying more ads and more ads and more, place these different things in there. So, you know, it is, it is really interesting.

The robots start playing you.

Exactly. They will be playing each other. Oh, I'll buy that ad. Oh yeah, here you go. And it's going to be a call center over in Thailand or something that's, that's buying that, you know, It also comes back to something that in the very first part— now again, I'm going technology started with a fax machine for me. When banks first started getting fax machines, it was like, oh my gosh, this is crazy technology. How are we going to do this? Then copiers were really the big part of technology. Then finally, you got a Selectric typewriter. Candice has one in her house.

That's how low-tech we are. My kids have typewriters.

I love it.

We've got a Selectric 2 upstairs.

Right. Amstrad computer, green screen. That was the first one you were typing onto when you were little, little, little. We got a picture of you at your aunt's house. Um, so, you know, embracing this stuff, but whenever it came in, whenever we'd find a new way to do something faster, it's like, but how do we make it high touch? How do we allow the humans to give a better human connection within this space? And I think those are the solvable questions that we're going to be able to use AI to. I don't know who it was that said they're using it as their assistant. You know, my direct executive assistant is one of the 4 that's going down to Stoltys. And it's great because you could have an executive assistant that's looking at it and saying, okay, so you can use an agent to book all of your flights. You can book it to find your constraints in your calendar, answer all your emails, get your SMS and WhatsApp. What am I going to do? I'm like, you're going to use your— she actually was the one who answered. She's like, I'm going to be able to use my brain to do even more high-impact, high-value, you know, interpersonal relationship, all the things that those can't do.

I feel like when computers and especially like age of the, like, internet for me and Jackie and you being so much more senior, you were really aware. I read, but I even remember it being like this fearmongering a little bit of like, it's gonna take jobs. And, and really what it did was it created more opportunity. And I think there's this level of efficiency. Every time we as people have gotten more efficient, what we have seen is that efficiency allows us to expand and grow and build more opportunity. And so that is exactly what I see AI being, is it doesn't take away from the human experience, the human value that we have, It gives us more resources, and I want to, like, I want to highlight Michael's comment because I feel the exact same way. I, I, I have ideas that could never come to life until now. He says, hi, thanks for putting this together. AI has enabled me to build software for an idea I had 14 years ago but couldn't afford to pay someone to build it. And that to me is like the exact best example of where we're going with AI, is it's enabling us to do things that that we didn't necessarily think were possible or didn't have the resources to do prior to now.

Like, I wrote a Lin-Manuel song.

Please, yes, we are going to spare our audience for my dad.

I want to be a rap singer. Here we go. And it's going to be part of the Constitution. And here's how we go in there. And it's a good waste of my time and everybody else's because I make everybody listen to it.

It's actually— it's a banger. It's so good. But But yeah, we're now— I literally text my sister. I was like, so artificial intelligence is helping our dad write a constitutional revenge rap song. So, and it's true. And it's a— it's— and my sister writes back. She's like, it's a banger. And I was like, it is a banger. It's so good.

You build shit. I write shit. So that's, you know, it's kind of how we get there.

It was awesome.

And then, okay, kind of Ahsoka says, no one believed in my vision. For Hawaii. Maybe no one believed in you as a rapper, Tom, until now. Um, he says most pushed against it or couldn't see what I was trying to build. The only constant support I had was AI. It listened without limits, challenged me constructively, and showed up every time, even at 3 AM, without hesitation. It helped me take what was in my head and turn it into a clear, actionable plan. Today, that vision is no longer just an idea. It's becoming real infrastructure for Hawaii's food sovereignty. Um, love that.

I love that. You know what that just brought to an idea though? I'm gonna put it out there publicly for us, but, uh, a, uh, 2 AM founder's isolation paradox, uh, I'm having this, I'm running through the head, and they can just pop on our website, push a button, and now it helps talk through their constraints or what they're working on or what they're dealing in and uses one of our frameworks to help them through there. So I love that idea because the 3 AM is where a lot of founders find themselves, right? And they don't have anybody else to talk to. Now you've Chat or whatever, Gamma or, or whatever. So, okay, Jackie, sorry, take it.

No, that's it.

My brain's going crazy. I love it.

Yeah, your, your dream of becoming a constitutional rapper has literally come true today. It's— this is where dreams are being made.

I shared it.

I shared it.

Uh, okay, we've got Boston Ice Cream Company revision last year as the Airbnb for a $5 billion cold storage. That's an awesome idea. I'm going to have to check that out because, as probably most of you guys know, I love Boston. Been there a number of different times in my lifetime of career education and actually teach at the doctoral level for constitutional law at Northeastern University. So that may be a little unknown fact out there. And, and then Ernest using AI to develop an AI by app. That is one of the crazy things that we're seeing. So I'm going to continue on with yours, but for public relations and media outreach platform for small and medium businesses to mitigate costly monthly retainers— love it— PR agencies. Now here's the thing, Ernest, people would say, oh, but that's going to take away those other jobs. You know what it's actually doing? In many cases, it's taking this idea of the gig economy and it's bringing us back to a fundamental free enterprise. Yes, I believe free enterprise saves the world. I'm of that mindset. That's what I believe in. Free enterprise being different than how a lot of people say capitalism. They're interchangeable at times, but that free enterprise is being able to do what you want to do when you want to do it, where you want to do it, and earn an income at things that you're, you know, you're great at and you're solving a problem. And I think that that's what Ernest is just talking about right there. Right? So you're, you see a problem, we're paying too much here. I can create an app for it and now I can do it super quick. Uh, trademarks and patent attorney is hot stuff. Super lawyer since 2021 in the space. So I'll be protected. I believe that's a whole nother show. And I will tell you that, uh, that we're going to talk about it, but we're coming up to the end of the time. IP, Jackie, through our Founders Law Group, it is one of the main things that we see that's going to be the opportunity within AI. Because the human brain guiding the AI gets the IP. And the sooner you get your processes named and out into that domain and protected, the better. Because if it's protected and then it keeps getting repeated through AI, you've got that lineage of timing, right? It's going to be a whole nother show. You're going to have to join us another time for that, which will be like this time next month, right? Because we've got guests all the rest. Angela, you ready to pop up the screens? People, how do you get in touch with us?

And please, before you hop off, audience, type in the chat some topics you'd want us to cover in the future, what you want to hear more of, what you'd join for a Lunch and Learn, what you're interested in hearing, what's worth your time, what's a big value add, where can and should we take this so that we're giving maximum amount of impact to y'all.

Oh, Dad, I love your, I love your thing. I agree with you on that, uh, that it is like the combustion engine or the train. Technology leads to new technology, it leads to new opportunities, and it's a disruption. But that doesn't mean that that's a loss. That's a disruption. It's a change. And aren't we glad? Could you imagine the first fire, you know, the first, uh, person, uh, that created fire or discovered how to utilize fire? They didn't create fire, but they utilized fire. Like, oh, I just can't do that. So, yep. Who's this guy? What are we doing?

Oh my God, I know him.

Ah, doing a merger and acquisition launchpad event down in Houston. And with this, you get $175 off. So I am one of the keynotes talking about our 6 C's of raising capital. And again, that's a proven model. It's been taught throughout the world and be there in Houston. In, uh, which would be a lot of fun. We've got some others up there too, right, Angela? We got a hand raising up. I don't know. Nope, this is all you get to look at. Nothing else. No, that, that's it.

I think we've got the—

well, let's see if we— do we have the link to the Substack? And I don't know, maybe.

Yeah, lots of Substack articles that are out there writing. And by the way, if you are one of my followers on Substack, uh, just like we put in here, send me topics you want us to pontificate or write about. Always happy to do that. Uh, various things. Uh, protecting IP with AI-built systems, love that. Marketing dos and don'ts. Uh, don't ask us about marketing stuff, we will bring in the experts about marketing stuff. No, I'm kidding.

Specifically about their fundraise though, because they may be—

ah, their capital. Yeah, we can tell you.

Clarify that, that'd be Rich, yeah, let us know what's— give us the context for that. The marketing dos and don'ts in what context?

Yeah, I'm just kind of going to joke about it because this is a little bit of marketing for us, but we've really built all of our businesses off of referrals. So generally, it's not someone picks up the phone, says, hey, I want to use The Founder's Office or any of our number of other companies we've had in the past and still have in many cases. It was somebody said, you need to go see Tom Tom and the team about this and solve this problem. And so there's marketing that goes on there, but it wasn't a just a big, uh, scenario, um, to, you know, about that. Okay, there's all these, uh, QR codes. One's for Substack, one's for— what's that one? Instagram.

Instagram.

And one is for the Founder's Office and one is for LinkedIn. But there's a lot of QR codes. Yes, we can go crazy.

Um, we want people to find you, apparently.

Apparently.

So that's not true. People ask ask how to find you. And so we've tried to make it easy for people to find you.

Yeah, uh, well, you guys have definitely done that. Uh, and then do we have anything on, on, uh, WTF, Angela? Were we able to pull anything together on that? Or Jackie's?

Not yet. Right now, no, we're verbally offering the news about the launch. The, the new season's gonna be launched soon. When we are ready to launch, we will have the QR code, likely next week.

The podcast is coming.

The podcast is coming.

That's what you get.

You can get caught up by watching old shows, right? Aren't you guys on YouTube?

WTF! Exclamation point. Women Talk Finance.

Yes.

There you go.

Go find that.

And my talk at the Business Law Institute is not until May, so we'll post that mid-April.

Cool. Well, it is always, it's always fun joining you two on here. Thanks for letting me on.

That was fun. It was fun having everybody like throw in there. That was really great. Love seeing what everybody's doing, and it's so cool. And, um, I saved a number of the links you guys put in, so thank you for that because I'm gonna go take a look.

I love that. I saw Rich is here on SaaS. Maybe we need to bring Kevin back on for SaaStermind. And I'm gonna make a— I'm gonna make a self, uh, poke. I was skiing, uh, with Franz Weber this weekend, and he was telling me about a time that he was raising some money and he met this bum on his chairlift, you know, just a typical ski bum, looked horrible, bad, you know, kind of bad equipment and various things. He's talking to him and the guy asked what Franz is doing. So now I've got— we're doing this development and, and he's like, oh, how much do those cost? He said, oh, you know, they're $5 million. He goes, oh, give me your address. And the guy sends him a check. Franz couldn't possibly believe that, but he had his story down. If you've met Franz Weber ever, he's just a great storyteller. But our Sastermind leader, Kevin Peterson, we built Lift Pitch Tahoe and had that where you learn how to do that presentation. AI is not going to change that. Yes, it'll help you identify those people, but you're still going to have to show up and be able to put it all together. You guys, anything else before we get off for the week? It was fun. To our audience, thanks for everything else there. We've captured these and look forward to being back. Who's our guest next week? Do we know?

I do know, but I don't know.

I don't know.

Angela? Gary? Huh? Is it Gary next week?

Nate Hurk?

Oh, it's Nate!

It's Nate!

For those that are interested in AI, come back next week. Yeah, this is the same Nate Candace was talking about, her favorite person to follow and listen to on all things AI.

Fan girl moment.

So he's got what, 600,000 followers on YouTube right now, I think, or something?

He's just wonderful because he teaches AI in a way that's very digestible, accessible. Um, it's not overwhelming. It's— excuse me, it's, it's— I don't even know how to describe it—

you so aggressively, which I feel like some of the—

and I'm like, it's well-paced.

Feel like you're behind the ball.

Yeah.

And it's, and it's implementation right now, right here, and staying abreast of it. So, and I, I do, I do appreciate state, uh, that he not only speaks to a young crowd, he speaks to an older crowd, and I can follow him and think it's pretty, pretty awesome as well. So those of us come back next week, Lunch and Learn, uh, here at the Founder's Office. Uh, Jackie Kuiper, thank you for joining us so much. I love working with you. Candice Powell, as always, love you joining and love to get to spend the time with you. And Angela, thank you for putting this all together and being our engineer extraordinaire. And to our audience, thank you all. Have a wonderful Hey.