The Glue Guys Meet the Man Behind Siri - [Glue Guys, Ep. 74]

Siri comes out on the iPhone. It's this worldwide hit. The next 6 months were the greatest in technology in history. Apple stock price nearly doubled. They surpassed Exxon to become the number one highest market cap company, not only in the world, but in the history of the world, selling this little feature. And then my basketball buddies would be like, What was the thing you said you were working on?

Glue Guy Nation, we have a real treat for you today. This is going to be the first magic trick live/virtual, okay, on Glue Guys by my friend Adam Shire. He has performed in front of heads of state. You might remember him from Penn Teller's Fool Us. And so we just needed some magic on the show, and I couldn't think of anyone better. So Adam, take it away. Please amaze us.

All right, I'll try. So I did prepare kind of a quick trick for the glue guys. I'm a huge basketball fan, as you know. And so I've always wanted to like draw up a play, you know, but really for the glue guys. I don't care about the stars. I want like, it's the team that matters. So could I just draw up a play? Is that okay, Shane?

Please, please.

So I don't have a chalkboard. Let me get right here. So I'm using these coins. They're pretty special coins. I can do it with quarters if you want, but they're a little bit bigger than, you know, a quarter is pretty small. These are silver dollars. And if you look at it, they're 1922 peace dollars. And I thought it was particularly appropriate. So these 4 pieces are going to represent our players. And I'm going to set up first. I only care about the defense, right? Defense is what wins championships.

Yep.

And you know, in today's NBA, guarding the periphery, that's what matters, right? There are 3-point shooters. You play my team, the Warriors, you know, you have to be able to fly if you want to, to do this. So 4 coins, 2 hands. Now I'm going to position the players like this, right around that 3-point line, uh, periphery. And what we're going to want to do is fly from end to end. We've got to like close out quickly. I'll show you what I mean. This is how I want the team to be coordinated together. Whoa, they fly from side to side when the ball moves. They are absolutely there. And the key is that the team needs to always be cohesive working together as smoothly and seamlessly, uh, as possible. All right, so I want you to fly around on the periphery if you're on the outside, if you're one of the small guys. Now sometimes we're going to play teams like the Spurs with someone like Wemby. That's about packing it into the interior. So I'm going to do this one more time really slowly so you guys can watch. Okay, and this is going to be for the interior guys. We're going to pack it in. Watch carefully. You gotta fly, pack it in, and always be working completely together. So that was just a quick, quick thing I wanted to throw out for the glue guys, how we're gonna play together, cohesiveness, fly around, pack it in, double team. There's a little something just—

Amazing, amazing. Well done.

Well, you know, I have to admit, okay, My friend Adam, magic is just one of the things that he does. He is truly an amazing Renaissance man. He might be the most famous person that you don't know, and he touches your life pretty much, I'm sure, almost every day. He is a founder, an entrepreneur, an inventor. He holds over 50 patents. Uh, his claim to fame is he co-founded Siri, uh, back in 1993. He sold it to Steve Jobs, uh, after Steve, uh, called his office, uh, out of the blue, uh, heard about this, said, Adam, I have to, I have to buy it. He started Viv Labs, uh, which eventually became Samsung's Bixby. Okay, uh, he's the founding member of change.org, that has nearly 600 million members over 200 countries worldwide. And his latest startup, GamePlanner.ai, amazing name, amazing story. It actually came, the name came out of his press release. He was launching the company, needed a name, so he picked the name. So, he sold the company before he even had a name for it. And we're going to get into it later, but this actually came from his experience as an assistant coach for the Nigerian Olympic basketball team. Okay, so Adam's not messing around when he is, when he says that he is a big basketball guy, he knows what he's talking about. And so, Adam, I've gotten to know you over the year. You've taught me magic. You are just an amazing person to talk to, and we welcome you to Glue Guys. And, you know, you often say that entrepreneurship, you're a huge entrepreneur, living in the Bay Area is much like a basketball team. Can you please explain that metaphor? I'm curious.

Yeah, for me, the four areas of AI, magic, entrepreneurship, and basketball, they all kind of circle around in my existence. For me, a basketball team and a startup team are so similar in so many ways, right? First of all, you need a strong leader with a vision for that organization, right? And we saw this year the impact of bringing like a really great coach. I'm gonna shout out to my friend Mike Brown who went to the New York Knicks. You know, he went there, they had not been in the finals for 27 years and not won in, what is it, 50 years, 52 years? And, you know, you need to be able to come in with a vision about how you're going to work, what your priorities are, what you're going to do, and who you're going to be. Like, what's your identity?

Why?

And you have to live and breathe it and get people to buy in, not just, you know, with their words, but with their actions. And for me, startups are the same way. It all starts with, you know, a vision, a leader who can communicate, this is what we're going to do. This is why we're going to win. This is what we need to do to get there. We need to go through steps, right? Mike Brown didn't just arrive and make, you know, a championship team instantly. He's talked about how the regular season was, in a sense, a series of experiments, a series of steps to get to like, you know, a cohesive organization that felt comfortable with all of each other. And he talked about, you know, Kat had his vision and Mike had his vision and they had to like work it out and come to something that felt that it worked for everyone. And in the end, that's what took them over the hump. I feel exactly the same way for startups. You need to have a leader with a vision, but you need to be working with your best talent, with the team that you have, making sure everyone has a role, everyone knows their role, and that people are really acting in the way, you know, the team needs them to act. And it's an endurance sport. The NBA is a long season. If you get into playoffs, it's a long season. Startups, man, they're an endurance sport. It is hard work every day. It's an emotional roller coaster. You have wins, you have losses, but you have to pick yourself up every day. You have to say, I'm going to get better, I'm going to do better, we're going to do better, we will find a way. You need to kind of lean on your brothers and sisters that I'm having a down day, someone else needs to pick me up and go forward. There's so many parallels and similarities between the quest for a championship and the quest to do something great that you can bring in the world. I listen to, you know, coaches talk about how they do what they do for their teams. And then I would always try to bring those kinds of lessons into the startups that that I was running. So for me, it really is a lot of parallel between kind of the basketball teams and the startup teams.

I do think sports analogies are almost like minimized in Silicon Valley because I think, you know, people, uh, well, I don't know if it's minimized, it's just like, it's, you know, maybe, maybe put it this way, I think, uh, some of the startup founders didn't grow up, you know, with sports at the center of their lives, right? That, that's not necessarily how they grew up. And I actually think that there are so many more analogies than people realize. I love your basketball one. Can I ask, when Shane told me that you were the co-founder of Siri, I have to be honest, I kind of Googled it myself just to make sure Shane wasn't overstating what you'd done. And in fact, brother Badié was not. You actually were. And again, I had to check the date, like '93. I mean, you know, this is— you were so far ahead. Of like where the world was going to be on this. And so can you like, what was the inspiration for starting that? And then maybe the other side of it is, what did you think voice technology would be like in 2026 when you started, you know, what would turn out to be Apple Siri?

Yeah, those are all great questions. So it was a journey. My first, the beginning of the journey for me was in 1993. And to set context, This is pre-web. So my first web browser, my first web browser was Mosaic, which I saw in 1994. And then Internet Explorer and Netscape came out in '95. So it's crazy web. And at the time, everyone had, you know, the PCs were on everyone's desk and you would buy software and they would ship you the CD-ROMs and the floppy disks. And you would load up your computer with software, and that's what you would use to work, right? To do your things. But there was no real network as part of daily life. Yes, some businesses had some email, a little bit, but in general, for most people, you'd load up your PC and that was it. And so I had a vision. I said, someday, there will be content and services spread around the world on other people's computers. And we're going to need a way to discover them, like, where are all those services? And I need a way to interact with them.

Yeah.

And so I never thought about a hyperlinked multimedia document system as the way to do that. In my conception, everyone would have an AI assistant And you would say, "I want to know this," or, "I want to do that." And the assistant's job would be to understand your words, break it into subtasks, know where all, you know, it would have a registry of where everything was, and then it would route your request, subrequest to the different machines around the world, gather the data that was needed to answer the request, present it to the user, learn from the interactions, and help the user get the job done.

It's pretty good.

So that was literally the defining statement in 1993. And I built it. I called it Open Agent Architecture. So it was literally, you know, today we have things like MCP and all of these kinds of things. In my view, it was so much further advanced than what we're talking about today, and we can get into the details later, but basically I had a research prototype where I could demonstrate 30 different services, different agents working together when a user made a request, both to answer an immediate response, to set up what we call triggers, so it would watch and monitor things for you and then automate, not only knowledge requests, but action and doing requests. So I built a prototype in '93. And then through the '90s, I built 50 different versions. I had robots, I had smart homes, televisions you could talk to in the '90s, refrigerators with RFID tags for every, you know, thing that you would check in, every, the milk and whatever. I had the web started emerging, so I had web versions, augmented reality versions. It was a playground for me to bring the same architecture and platform to this very wide version of how can you use AI to help a human accomplish a task faster and better.

What does your wife say? What does your wife say when you say you're going to be able to talk to your refrigerator and your TV and it's going to work? I mean, this is like, you know, a lot of what you talk about is impossible future. I mean, this is like an impossible future, you know, in 1993. Now we can like kind of wrap our arms around and say, okay, I can see that happening. But in 1993, what are your friends saying? What are your closest, you're telling them this vision?

You know, I worked at a place called SRI International. It was a research institute. I loved my job. I worked 7 days a week. I got in at 5:30 in the morning till 7 at night. But I had a few colleagues who were equally excited and energetic and passionate. And, you know, so my wife— it wasn't my wife in '93 yet. We didn't get married until '98. We're 28 years married now. But, um, you know, I was doing it for the pure joy of creation, love of the game. It was— and you get together with your band of brothers and you create miracles, right? Basketball, technology, magic, it's all the same. And, you know, then, you know, I did this for years, for decades, for 15 years I played with advanced AI technologies, machine learning. But then in 2007, the iPhone came out. And I said, now it's time. So I was in my 40s. I had never started a company before. But I got together with two co-founders. So Doug Kitlaus, he was the CEO marketeer. He could, man, he could sell a story and put together a demo. He had a vision for demo. And then Tom Gruber, who was our VP of Design, and I was the technology guy. We saw the iPhone come out and said, it is now time to take this idea Adam's been playing with for 15 years and make it real. And so then we started a company and we called it Siri. And the funny thing is, I remember I would play basketball every weekend and they're like, hey, what do you do? And I'm like, ah, I'm doing the startup. It's called Siri. It's got this voice thing. You talk to it. They couldn't remember the name. They couldn't wrap their head around what is this thing you're doing? You're going to control services by voice? They couldn't. It just didn't stick, right? It didn't stick. So they would ask me every month, what do you do again? And then Siri, 2 years later, Siri comes out on the iPhone. 3 years later, Siri comes out on the iPhone. It's this worldwide hit. Um, the next 6 months were the greatest in technology history up to that point in time. So just selling the iPhone 4S, which was literally the iPhone 4 plus Siri, Apple stock price nearly doubled. Um, they surpassed Exxon to become the number one highest market cap company not only in the world but in the history of the world selling this little feature. And then my basketball buddies would be like, what was the thing you said you were working on? Wasn't that something like theory? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's the theory. And everyone's like, now I understand what it means. But I would say my wife, my family, my— until Apple took it, took the idea and our technology to the world and marketed it, no one could really wrap their head around what it was going to be for 20 years, like from '93.

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So within that though, Adam, within that now, just because again, you were so far ahead of it, like '93, I mean, it's crazy, right? Are we ahead or behind of where you thought voice would be? You know what I'm saying? When you envisioned it 35 years ago, because It's so crazy. It's like this revelation now. I mean, at this moment, everyone's like, hey, this is the right way to interact with technology is, you know, voice. But you were so far ahead. So where are we relative to what you thought we'd be?

We are ahead and far behind at the same time. So if you remember, my defining specification was I want to be able to say, I want to know this, or I want to do that. To my assistant. Knowing and doing.

Yeah.

There are two halves to my vision. And on the knowing side, oh my God. Yeah. Oh my God. I would not have ever thought what has happened in the last 5 years would happen in my lifetime. I've been a professional in AI for 40 years this year. Someone has paid me to do AI for 40 years. In a row. I would never have said in my lifetime that we would end up where we are today on the knowing side. So you can ask any question. Now, the, the tricky part is knowing and doing require two different platforms. Knowing is you usually have cached data, like Google Search was knowing. They had a big Google Search index. And you could type in some words and it would return links. LLMs have a base model that has been trained with a kind of an expiration date. It's a better form of knowing, but knowing is content distilled, and now you're reasoning about it or you're generating from it or you're answering questions from it or giving links from it. That's knowing. It's cached data primarily. Then there's the doing side. Doing is about real-time live APIs. It's about access control. It's about authentication. It's about confirmations. It's about transaction boundaries. It's a very different architecture. And if you think about Siri, the original Siri that we launched as a startup before Apple bought us, We had 50 live partners. We could book a table on OpenTable. We could call a cab. This was pre-Uber.

Pre-Uber, yeah.

Uber didn't exist yet. And I could say, get me a taxi to take me to my restaurant. And a taxi would show up. And Siri would know your credit card on file. You could buy 2 tickets to the Warriors game. In one round trip plus a confirmation. Whereas on the iPhone, when the 3G was so slow back then, if you clicked on a web link, it would take a minute round trip. So to buy something's like, what, 10 clicks to go through a purchase flow? That's 10 minutes. With Siri, you could say, get me 2 tickets to the Warriors game. It says these seats. You're like, great, done. Right? One round trip, buying, booking. And there was an open ecosystem of partners. So you asked, where are we? On the knowing side, fabulous. On the doing side, when people say, oh, ChatGPT is 1,000 times better than Siri, I'm like, oh really? Well, with Siri, I just say, hey Siri, tell my wife I'm going to be late, and it sends her a message. Does ChatGPT do that? No, no, it doesn't send her a message, but it'll tell you how— no, no, no. Doesn't send a message. And with Siri, say, hey, turn on my workout playlist, and the music starts. Does ChatGPT? No, it doesn't do that. All of the LLMs generally are great at knowing, beyond my expectations. But on the doing side, we are like, I say we're 1996 of the web revolution. Why? There are 3 things missing today. The user interface is wrong for most tasks. AI is largely about chat, you know, text in, text out, you know, a few carousels, but largely text. Text is not the right way to do most tasks. If you're going to book a travel, you want photos, you want maps, you want to look at the actual data, you want to reason about it. 3 text bullets are not going to get you there. Wrong interface. It's like HTML in '95 with the blink tag, but no JavaScript, no interactivity. Yeah. The second is we don't have live APIs with access control, like the platform for doing. MCP, no access control, right? How do you have credit cards? What's the authentication paradigm? That didn't come until about '97 in the web when you had transaction servers and, you know, all of this kind of, uh, three-tier client-server database. All of this matured later. We have not figured out the equivalent in a solid, scalable way that handles the base needs for doing. And the third and most important is we need an ecosystem that works for both sides. The user, like they have user preferences. I like Uber and not Lyft, or I like Lyft and not Uber. I like this team and not that team. And brands, they want their logo to shine through. They care about their user energy, right? OpenTable has red stars. Yelp has orange stars, and they both think it's important, right? Gaio has chef hats. So What's the right experience? And if you think about every paradigm, the PC, which started in '84, the web, which started in '95— I have a 10+ theory, by the way, you'll see 10+1— the mobile, which started in 2007, 10+2. And I had been saying for more than a decade that in 10+3 years after 2008, the App Store, we would have a new paradigm of interaction. It would be the conversational assistant. And if you split June 2020, GPT-3, November '22. November '22. 2021 is right on track. So in my view, the paradigm has started for AI, just like—

What's happening in 2035, Adam? That's 10 plus 4, right? Yeah.

That is the next one. I know what the answer is, or I have my answer.

Tell me, tell us. Didn't know you were getting alpha on Glue Guys. You can come here for anything.

Yeah, I will. But the, the point is, every paradigm— the PC, web, mobile— they all have the three things. They have a defining interface standard that every business can play to. You know, Windows, it was file, edit, menu, print, dialog boxes, whatever. Web, it was hyperlinks. App, it was pinch and zoom. So there's an interface. There's a platform. Here's how you ship your DLLs on Windows. Here's how you do your application server for web and on apps. Here's how you deploy your app. And there's an ecosystem, a marketplace. Here's how you make money. And there are different models. The web—

Who's in charge of the infrastructure? Like, how did we get here? Who took ownership of the infrastructure to get us to where we are today? And who is— who's the onus on to get us to where we need to be?

The winner.

There will be—

there are always two winners. Think of it as two finalists in the NBA. There's a major and a minor for every paradigm. And the one who gets there first wins, and then there's a counterculture. So for the PC, it was Windows and Apple, right? Microsoft and Apple. For the web, Microsoft Internet Explorer, counterculture Netscape, uh, you know, browser. For mobile, it was iOS and Android. So who defines the platform? The winner, right? And, and whoever gets those three things the right interface, the right platform for knowing and doing content providers and transaction providers, and the marketplace, how you, how it works, how you get discovered, how you make money, banner ads for the web and blah, blah, blah. Whoever defines it wins and becomes the dominant company for that age. So for wet, for AI, it is completely open. We do not yet— we're, we're 4 years into this. We do not yet know who will be the defining platform, who will be the starting point for the way everyone does their computing in the AI age. We know it's not going to be at a Google search links anymore. It'll be an AI experience. But that AI experience needs a much richer interface. Needs a platform that I can trust. My credit card gets saved. Here's how it's used. I need an ecosystem where I as a consumer can give my preferences. Brands can get their brands through, not just scraped and turned into words by some automation script somewhere. So you asked, where are we? How far have we come? Did we meet my expectations from '93?

Yes and no.

On the knowing side, beyond what I ever dreamed of. On the ecosystem doing side, meaning, and the fact that AI was always meant to, it was my version of the internet, right? Remember, that was the vision. We have not figured out how AI can be an internet, meaning a marketplace, an ecosystem for every business, every industry, in an orchestrated way, and we don't know who the winners are. And I contend that the first company that solves those three things together will be the dominant technology company for this age, and there'll be a counterculture follower, just like Android followed iOS and, you know, etc., um, and they will be the second, the second major. And so it's, it's an exciting time The question is, how do we get there? Who wins? We have until 2035.

Okay, so another one for you. You today, VP of AI Experience at Airbnb. Is that the right title?

It was. I no longer work at Airbnb. So I quietly stepped aside last summer and took the first break of my career.

Okay.

But yes, I was VP of AI experience for a few years.

So I think that's, you know, the relevance is still there. You know, there's a lot of people, frankly, I'm one of them who are sort of, you know, very excited about the experience economy in general of just like, listen, the thing that matters is ultimately like the experiences you have with the people you love. And particularly as everything becomes abundant in the rest of your life, The thing that you actually want is like, well, you know, what are the experiences I'm going to have? And there's this concept that I read about one time of like the memory dividend, which I just love of like, you know, the best part about an experience is you get to live it over and over again, right? Because you get to remember it. And so I would truly love for you to tell us like, what is it going to be like? What are the experiences that everyone's going to want? What are the experiences like? How is this going to play out over the next, maybe this is 10 plus 4. But I would love to, like, get into your imagination and be able to learn about it.

Yeah, thank you. I love that notion of the memory dividend and playing it out. And let's come back to that right at the end if you save me a few minutes. I have one more magic trick that is all about the memory dividend and It's— forget the magic. It's an idea that every one of your viewers can implement in their lives to make them have a better life using the memory dividends. So let's come back.

Are you trying to take Alex Smith's spot?

I could never do that. I could never do that.

Some fancy white party in the Hamptons right now. Are you making a push to Alex Brother Smith? That's all I want to know. No, Alex, you bring it back, man. That's all I'm saying. We, we, we, we got a, we got a hot one.

I don't want to get Wally pipped right now, Shane.

I think there are many layers to your question, Ravi Gupta. I, I really enjoy it. So obviously there's a lot that's going to change in our world with AI, but one thing is not going to change. Humans are here to stay. The human experience meaning the times we spend with each other will, I think, become more and more and more important. Yeah, that's, that's a prediction. And really, my career has been about two things. One is how can AI augment a human's ability to accomplish a task better, you know, Siri and Viv and all of these things. You know, how do we help all the AI stuff, the automation? Boy, I could have so much time if AI could do it for me.

Yep.

But the other side of my career has been not on artificial intelligence. It's what I call collective intelligence. And what that means is collective is how do you get a bunch of people together, a team, a country, the world. How do we come together and share knowledge, experiences, moments, um, and in a way to both enjoy but to solve problems together, to like, you know, to lift each other up. And, and so if you think about change.org, you're like, Adam, that's kind of weird. You've done these 4 AI companies and change.org seems a little different. Uh, well, I actually have as many— you know, I talked about 50 versions of Siri and robots and augmented reality and all that stuff. Well, I have 50 projects around humans working together, interacting together. And so that's going to become more and more important. And we're, we're a tricky lot, right? We, we are fundamentally all the same, but our biases, our opinions, the— our communication styles are very different. I'm sure Shane, being, you know, a professional sports player, he's met all types of people. And like, the question is, how do we coexist? How do we produce something better than the sum of the parts? And so that's been the other side of my My career is finding ways, and change.org really is at 6— almost 600 million members with all sorts of different views and ideas and thinking at different scales. How do you bring them together and then move forward on certain concrete problems? How do we collectively propose a solution? All this to say, humanity is incredibly important. The time and the ways we work together will become increasingly important. And one of the best ways to do it, especially in this virtual world where increasingly we don't go to the office as much, we do a lot over Zoom, you know, human, physical human coexistence is still going to be super important. Because otherwise, you know, I can make a virtual AI clone that looks just like you and sounds just like you and, and If I'm just going to talk to you through a little window every day, I could talk to an AI, right? But there is something special about being together, sharing experience, laughing, fighting, all of this human existence that is special. And I think that specialness will be further revealed in the coming years.

Shane, I was thinking, but I couldn't agree with you more. Actually, Shane and I, we saw each other last week. To your point, we talk a lot, right? We talk on the phone, we have Glue Guys. It's different to be in person. There are certain experiences you have that are just different when you're together. And it's almost like there's a visceral nature of the memory that's different when it's in person versus when it's not, when the phone or the Zoom. The specific moment, Shane, I was thinking about is we were playing golf. And I, uh, I had this moment, Shane, where I was so relieved to have finally hit a decent shot. And Shane looked at me— you remember what I'm talking about? And I felt like, like the world of weight had lifted off my shoulders.

And I had some tough positions, and, you know, it was a really, really difficult course. And so the look of relief on a, on a stock 90-yard shot, a 90-yard shot that he's hitting thousands of times before, right? And the look of relief of hitting the green Yeah.

It was an unbelievable sight.

It was just, and I'm like, man, are you okay?

And I was truly just, wow. And it's funny because we'll both remember it because it was in person, you know, and it was, and it's like such a funny, like not even really notable moment, but you know, the in-person aspect makes a big difference.

I absolutely love that. Everything is amplified in person. Person. And like I said, you'll both have that memory, and you'll tell that story to each other over the years, and you'll— it'll preserve it and enhance it, and you'll get that— you'll bring back that exact feeling.

Yes.

You shared at that moment. That's fantastic. I love it.

Yeah.

Well, we'd love to see another magic trick if you have one for us.

You know, I, I talked about Last summer I finally said I need a break. I've been, I've been so intensely working for 5 companies, I need to take a break. And so I literally grabbed a backpack, small backpack, threw in some underwear, landed in the middle of Arkansas. I didn't even know where Arkansas was with no plan and just started traveling the country for an experience and trying to meet people and interact with people. And during that time, I had some reflection, right? I've been pretty blessed in my life, you know. I've sold multiple companies. I have enough money, whatever. I realize that when it's all said and done, what's going to matter is not the possessions I've acquired. It's not the house or the car or whatever. It's going to be those memories those memories that matter. And you know, when you, when you look back on life, that's the value of your life, is the stories you've collected, the moments you've shared, the memories you have. So I, on my wanderings throughout this country, I had a brilliant epiphany, and I want to share it with you. It's something you can do For less, for $15 or so, I bought something that has now become one of my most valuable possessions. So let me, let me show you what it is. I bought this book on one of the big e-commerce sellers. It came, uh, blank. And what I did, you can see it's leather, it's got this beautiful imprint on it. Has 366 pages, but it came blank. And what I did is I numbered all the pages and I thought about the stories, the memories, the moments that I could remember from my life. And I didn't write the whole story. I'm not a writer. That would have been been too much. But I, I wanted to write what I called the headline. So I have in this book, and I'm working on my new book because I've, I've done new things like be on this podcast. This is incredible, right? I got to hang out with you guys. But like, um, number 230, uh, Noah's— my son Noah, his birth at Stanford Hospital followed by 2 weeks in the neo-native intensive care unit. Man, it was so much joy, so much emotion, so much fear. You know, he had some issues when he was born. Or I went to— 149— went to Keanu Reeves and Dogstar concert with some friends of ours, and we had just the best time. We drank a little too much that night. Typical.

Everything in moderation, including moderation. That's a real bad idea.

It was a great time.

Anyway, you get the idea.

Hundreds and hundreds of stories. Every memory is just like, you know, coach of a Nigerian Olympic team. That's in here. And someone will go, what? How'd you end up doing that? And then I'll go, yeah, it was incredible. And in Las Vegas, they were ranked 42nd in the world and they beat in an exhibition match just before going to the Olympics, the Nigerian Olympic team beat the number 14 in the world, Argentina, uh, I think Argentina, and then they beat the number one team in the world, USA, Kevin Durant, all the stars. It was the biggest on the— for the African basketball, it was the biggest event ever. I can tell the story just from the headline. Yeah, so buy a book, fill it with ideas, memories, stories from your life. Just a headline, you can put it on a coffee table, someone can flip through it and go My son doesn't know every story because some are from my childhood, my wife. So there's an idea, a gift that all of you—

That's awesome.

All of everyone can share. Now, I did promise a magic trick.

So quick, just go to the point real quick. You know, most people, if you ask them, they'll say, I don't have— I can't fill up a book of 365 memories. But like, that's, that's, that's the irony. Everybody has a story. And of course, Everyone's got multiple stories and they're actually very interesting, right? You know, no one has run-of-the-mill stories. And so, it's someone who— I've journaled all my adult life just trying to remember these memories. It's therapeutic. It's one of the few times you get to reflect on what you've been through and how you've changed and it allows you to reflect on the person you want to be and the father you want to be and the friend you want to be and the husband. And, I agree, it's the cheapest quickest way to happiness that you will ever, ever find.

And, and every time I flip to a random page, I remember and I, I relive the feelings of that moment. And, but you're right, it was hard. Like, I, I kind of stalled out at 120. I was like, I don't have any more stories, that's my whole life. But they're in there. And then you just let it sit. You go out with friends, you guys are laughing, and remember that time when— and you're like, that's not in the book, that's a great story. That's not in the book. And so it came— it took me a while to be able to fill this out. And I did stall at certain points thinking, I don't have any more stories. But everyone has stories and lots of stories and writing them down and making them easily accessible. That now you can relive them in just a flash. That is what's valuable. So that's my gift to everyone. That's awesome. Let me jump into the magic trick, but before I start, in the back of the book, I don't know if you can see, there's like a little pocket. I keep one photograph of my most precious memory. I have hundreds and hundreds. Oh, I just saw a basketball one. MC Hammer took a selfie of my wife and me. I beat the future U.S. Women's National Chess Champion in a chess tournament. I wasn't very good, but she wasn't yet, but she ended up becoming the U.S. Women's National— anyway, stories, lots of stories. But one story is my most precious, my most precious memory. Now, the magic trick. Magic tricks, when I do them, usually involve cards or coins or something close up. We've got a deck of cards all mixed. I'm going to shuffle. I can cut as many times as we want. If you were here, I'd have—

if you're listening on Spotify, you know, this is, this is legit. It's a legit setup. Okay.

If we were together, uh, you'd, um, you'd do the shuffling, you'd do the cutting, doesn't matter. Okay, now one thing people don't know about a deck of cards is what cards represent. And in this context, a deck of cards represents time, because think about it, there are 4 suits. There's hearts and Uh, clubs, diamonds, and spades. Well, there are 4 seasons. How many cards in a deck of cards? Do either of you know?

52.

52. How many weeks in a year? 52. And you might not know, if you were to add up all the numbers in a deck of cards, so 7 plus 6 plus 8 plus 5 So a jack would be an 11, queen is 12, and king is 13, and ace is 1. So if you add up all the numbers, do you know what you get?

365.

Close.

It's actually 364. But what people don't think about is most decks of cards come with 2 jokers.

Yeah.

So on a regular year, you throw in 1 joker, 365.

365.

And on a leap year, you throw in the second joker, 366. Now, so cards represent time. Do one more cut. Um, we're gonna share time together. And again, you would do all of this, uh, if we were together. So what we're gonna do is I'm gonna deal back and forth like a two-person game. I'll do it with you, Shane. We don't have to put anything up. And whenever you feel it's the time, you'll just say stop. So we're going to spend time, share time. When you're ready, we'll stop. All right, so we, we shuffle these cards multiple times, we cut multiple times. If you had just said stop after I dealt one card and that card were an ace, then that would have been page one in my book. If we had dealt through the whole deck, that would have been— and we added up the numbers That would have been 364. I don't have jokers in this deck. But you dealt out to here, so we're going to need to— any of you have a calculator?

Yes.

Yeah, that'd be great. So if you can just add these up for me. I need 9 plus— you guys good? It's going?

Yep.

9 plus 7 plus 9 plus 8 plus 11 Plus 10, plus 9, plus 11, plus 4, plus 6, plus 4, plus 5, plus 2, plus 3, plus 4, plus 2.

Okay, ready?

So what's the number?

Yeah, that is 104.

104. Now we shuffled the deck. I had no idea where Shane would have stopped. He didn't even know, you know, we don't know what the cards are. If you had done one card less, if you'd stopped one earlier, that would have been 102. Let me open up 102. I crash-landed a hot air balloon in a field near a bunch of bulls somewhere in the middle of France. They were like, literally, we're coming down, bulls are like— I'm like, this could be dangerous. That was 102. If you had stopped 2 cards, because we were going back and forth, 102 minus 4, that would have been 98. Here, here's a cool one. I had the honor of presenting Kenny Smith a Players TV honors award during an NBA All-Star Weekend. I got to be one of the presenters, like in an award ceremony, and give something to NBA star Kenny Smith. That was a cool memory. Like, I forgot about that. But we didn't choose 108. We didn't choose 98 or 102. We chose 104. Can you guys read this, 104?

Yeah.

It says, I became Lynn's husband on a warm summer day in 1998 at the Milrose Inn. That was my favorite memory.

That is pretty good.

Yeah, that was the happiest day of my life, the day I got married in 1998 to my wife. So there's a, there's a little magic trick for you about how important those experiences Memories can be. I hope all of you take the time to, to remember the greatness, the gift.

Where did the passion for magic come from? Talk about how you fell into, into this, which you're very good. I've seen your other performances as well. You're a very good magician. Your daughter is a very good magician as well. How did you fall into this?

You know, when I was 10 to 14, those kind of puberty years. Magic was a fun, beautiful hobby. I grew up in a small town, no stoplight, so for me, magicians were like real-life superheroes, right? They could make superpowers happen. Then I hit 14, I grew a little, started playing basketball, left magic behind for 35 years. But then my son got, you know, he became a teen, or young teen, and got interested in magic, and it was something we could do together. Yeah. Um, so anything you can do, any, any excuse to share time with your kids is like gold. And I'm not a video gamer. He was into game video games. I'm like, this was something we can share. And when I go into a hobby, I go deep. Like, I, I go deep. So now I've worked with David Copperfield, and, you know, I'm friends with all the top magicians in the world, and Yeah, I love it. It's creative, it's inventive, and there are crossover lessons into what I do in business. Totally. And sports. So it's, you know, it's—

There's that whole thing of like technology when it works well is indistinguishable from magic, right? For sure. It's like, you know, everybody talks about that. And then I don't know, the other thing is, you know, it brings so much joy. You know, my youngest son, all three of my kids love witnessing magic. My youngest son, probably enjoys doing it a little bit more than the other two right now. And it's so fun when any of them do something, right? And it's— there's so much cool— it's so cool to have wonder, you know? And especially when your kids do something and you're like, how did you do that? And it's just, um, it, it, it really brings a lot of joy into the world. And I, I felt it with your magic and you making it with the sentiment— sentimental parts too. That was really cool.

Thank you. Yeah, for me, when I perform, which is rarely, so this is— you don't see a lot of me performing out there. Um, I always try to share a lesson, right? And so I'm like, why am I doing magic? Is it just to fool people? You know, that, that gets old real fast, right? I want everyone to go away with something they can use in their life and business. I want them to be entertained, but, you know, forget the magic trick I just did. Everyone can go home, come up with a book, or start to journal a little and, and appreciate the gratitude that comes with really remembering and squeezing the juice of the moments we've had. That's the lesson, right? The magic's cool too, but I, I love using magic to support an idea that I can share. And the magic is just the medium, right? Instead of using PowerPoint or lecturing, let's make it fun and different and give some wonder and like, how did he do that?

And that's, and that's what, that's what Steve Jobs did, right, in his presentations. He was, he was a magician in a lot of ways.

Absolutely. I, I like to say, um, he understood a magician's presentation more than almost any tech founder. And I give an example, you know, when he had a product release, Ravi will remember, it was never about here's how many megahertz and gigahertz. And, you know, like there was never any tech specs. There was never the checkboxes of here's what our competitors are doing. None of that. So I remember clearly he came out with, he was going to have a new product release and he stood on stage. And he said, the iPod has always been about being a thousand songs in your pocket. And he showed a blown-up picture of his jeans pocket, like his jeans pants with the pocket in there. And he paused. Everyone's like, yeah, okay, got it. And then he said, have you ever wondered what that little pocket is at the top of your pocket? And instantly the whole audience said, "No way!" And I'm— that's exactly the moment. Like, when I have the photograph on the thing and we— and you shuffle the cards, you deal as many, and we add up the cards, and then you get the— this is gonna add up to a page that's gonna be the— no way! Like, there should be that moment where you're like, this can't— you see where it's going but you can't imagine it. How it could be true. And so he's like, do you ever remember what that little coin, that little, little pocket is at the top of your jeans pocket is? Everyone goes, no way. And then he goes, introducing the iPod Nano, and pulls out this tiny thing. But it was like, that is straight out of a magician's playbook.

Like, it is.

I'm like, he understood that. And creating the emotion, the anticipation the wonder of what this feels like. It was never about the specs and the this and that. So I thought there's so much to learn from him. And I'm sure Ravi has seen as a VC thousands of demos.

Yeah.

And many of them—

How many do you remember? Yeah.

Right. How many do you remember? But I bet there's a handful. There's like one or two where you just like rocked back in your chair for a second. It like all clicked into place.

Yep.

And for me, the ones you remember, the demos that rock your mind a little bit, are like a magic trick. Like a magic— you get the same emotion, the same adrenaline, the same shock that you get watching a good magic show. And, you know, that's an important skill for an entrepreneur to have. Is how do you present the idea that you have in a way that's going to be remembered, that's going to make people feel? And there's the famous Maya Angelou quote, you know, they'll, they'll never remember what you said, they won't even remember what you did, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. Yeah, right. It's so— it comes back to our discussion of you guys on the golf course. You had a shared feeling, kind of the relief. That's the emotion. You will remember it because there's an emotion, right? And that's what you'll remember forever. And you'll probably play 50 more golf games together.

For sure.

For sure. Yeah. How do you do that as an entrepreneur to be memorable, to communicate your idea and your story, but to create that feeling, that that they will never forget, that's powerful. So, yeah.

Well, I want to hear about how did you end up as an assistant coach for the Nigerian Olympic basketball team? Okay. I would not have that on my bingo card ever for anybody, but like, but for you, walk us through how you ended up with a record-breaking team?

Yeah, no, I mean, I'm just a glue guy. I didn't, I didn't, you know, I'm not the star. So this was Mike Brown's team. I'm a huge fan and supporter of Mike Brown, all that he does. So I'm so happy he got his flowers this year, as in a ring, uh, as a world champion. Um, you know, he asked me to come, you know, I was trying to support him and help him in different things, and he asked me to come and gave me the opportunity to join his staff as a guest coach. Uh, you know, did I do anything significant? No, but it was an incredible experience for me, and I was happy to be there and carrying out his game plan and making sure the players understood what they needed to do. And it's funny, you had mentioned my— the company Game Planner AI, which ended up selling to Airbnb and, and Brian Chesky and and all the people there. The original ideas for how to do that came during that Nigerian coaching experience. Hmm.

Awesome.

So Game Planner AI was so stealth. We had no website. We had no LinkedIn presence. No one knew what we did. And when we sold to Airbnb, as you correctly pointed out, We didn't even know the name for the company. Brian Chesky says, the press release is coming out tomorrow. What are we going to call this thing? I'm like, I don't know. We haven't figured it out yet. Ah, let's call it this. But so no one even knew what we did, but I'll actually share what we were working on. So the idea for the company was to bring together for the first time the two threads of my career. And we've learned now that that's AI, help, you know, artificial intelligence helping people be more productive, and CI, collective intelligence, how do you get multiple people working together? And I said, what if you brought them together for a new set of tools for decision-making? And I used to say, you know, if I asked you to make a presentation, You're gonna think slides because there's a tool for that. If I say balance your budget, you're gonna think spreadsheet because there's a tool for that. But think pre-LLM, but even with LLMs, if I were to say you have an important decision to make or we have an important decision to make together, what tool would we use, should we use? And there's no good purpose-built customer mass market consumer-facing tool to make better decisions. And yet everyone in the world, every family, every startup, every VC company, every sports team, every government, every nonprofit needs to make decisions, better decisions, big or small. So we were building a new document type called a game plan. So you could say, oh, let's make a game plan for that. And that's what we were working on. And the genesis came was I'm in these coaching meetings. And so they bring to camp a lot of players who are excited to be on the Olympic team, but they can't take everyone to Japan, to Tokyo for the Olympics. So they have to make cuts. There's a roster selection. So I got to be in the meeting to watch how that decision, that important life-changing, country-changing, game-changing decisions get made. And so they had all the coaches, everyone got to speak up. Mike Brown's the ultimate decider, but he's very, you know, leans on his team and he wants perspective. And there were interesting agreements and disagreements, but As they went through the process, I'm like, oh man, there's got to be a better way.

I've been in those rooms.

Yes, there's a lot of trade-offs. Do you take the guy who's, who's like the national hero but he's been there forever, or do you take that brand new young upcoming talent who has incredible potential but isn't quite mature yet? Like, who do you go with and why, and how do you blend all the positions so that you get the right mix of star talent and glue guys. And like, how do you, how do you do that? And you want to have this as a repeatable formula that you can apply once you figure it out, how it works, your methodology, your plan, your game plan. Of course, the players change, the rosters change, but you want to have a process that goes through. And so that was actually the first time where I'm like, oh my gosh, teams need a better tool. And then I was like, startups need a better tool. I need to— everything you do as a startup is a decision. Who to hire, how much money to raise, at what valuation, what benefits do you offer? So we started building this tool that we lived and breathed and used ourselves for every decision that we could refine over time that mixed AI and knowledge with, you know, you're not going to type into an LLM and say, where should my son go to college? And then just pick the top bullet that it gives back. You need more data. You want to reason with it. You want to wrestle with it. And so that's what we were, that's the behind the scenes of what we were building. One piece I mentioned, I start all my companies in secret. Any of you know what Siri means? In Swahili?

No, no.

Secret. Oh wow. Siri means secret in Swahili. I start all my companies in stealth company mode. I don't tell anyone I'm working on it or what I'm doing. I want the time to figure it out, and then we stand up and say we've got something. So for me, the naming Siri was a tip of the hat back to our stealth company days. That's one of the meanings of Siri. But, but Adam, with magic and tech, I love secrets.

You've mentioned glue guys a few times, and we love that. And as you know, this show is called Glue Guys, and our traditional closing question that we ask folks is always, who are your glue guys or glue people?

My career has been propped up and held up by so many people above me and below me. There have been a few mentors that I've had in life. I'll cite out Hugo Daly, one of the most visionary CEOs. But he taught me how to care, really care for the team below you. Complete support at a level that blew my mind when I was a young up-and-comer.. And I try to pass that on. You know, I'll cite out Chris Brigham, Rich Julie, Didier Goutsoni. There were a bunch of tech people throughout CMA CoJET, throughout my different companies, that there's no way I could have done what I needed to do without them doing their job every day. You know, working together, knowing their role. And, you know, so I tell every employee that's ever worked for me, I say, I, from, from this point on, I am your lifelong servant. If you ever need anything, because you helped advance my career, because you fell, you followed my vision and helped me get there, you've got an IOU for life. From me. So, and I pay, I go back and pay. So that, that, and I learned that first from Hugo Daly. So I, I, that's, I will say, you know, everyone's, everyone's a glue guy. Everyone valuable in my career is a glue guy. And, um, you know, but it, I spend my time trying to repay back the debt that, you know, that I got. So, yeah.

Well, Adam, uh, Well, thank you so much for sharing your, your experience with us, your knowledge. That was, uh, so informative but entertaining, and we, we appreciate your authenticity and, and vulnerability. That's what the Glue— that's what a Glue Guy is all about. And so we— I love getting to know you. Uh, I know how big of a basketball fan you are, very knowledgeable. Enjoy talking hoops with you as well. Good luck to the Warriors. You know, Ravi's a huge Warriors fan as well this year. We have a, a, a common, uh, very good friend of Mike Dunleavy. We're cheering for— and so, you know, hoping for a Miami Heat-Golden State Warriors NBA Finals. Come out, get together.

But which— but which side has LeBron? That's the question.

Yeah, he's our guest right after you.

That's the ultimate magic trick.

That's gonna be the magic.

Where— what page is that in the notebook, Adam? Because LeBron, you have a standing invite if you want to Declare Your Decision Part 2 on Glue Guys.

You know, you can follow that.