Building Eddie AI: The Cursor For Video Editing (feat. Shamir Allibhai)

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Building Public podcast. I am KP, your host, and I'm super, super, super thrilled, which used to be my catchphrase, Shamir, the super, super, super, the 3 supers, to come back on the podcast, come back to the show and really get this going after, I feel like, a couple months of a break. To make things easy for me, I've chosen as the first guest of this sort of series of new episodes to be someone who's close and dear to my heart. Someone who I don't need to prep so hard. I don't need to worry so much about the performance of the podcast. Someone who can have— I have a— with whom I can have just an honest and authentic and a simple heart-to-heart conversation from a founder to founder. Without further ado, I am excited, thrilled, you know, I mean, just blown away and happy to have Shamir Allybhai to join us, you know, on the show. Shamir, CEO of Eddy. Welcome to Build in Public podcast.

I'm so honored to be here and I always love like chatting with you. I also feel really, really strongly about you and it's been amazing to get to know you so nicely and sort of seeing your journey. I knew of you from afar numerous years ago. I mean, for me, Build in Public and you are one and the same thing and I've been super inspired by even what you've been trying to pursue. So like, To even have just got connected with you and then to like build a friendship with you. You know, thank you so much for all you do and to have me on here.

Today, I'm super excited to sort of peel the layers behind, you know, the man that Shamir is and the founder that you are and the startup Eddie AI, which you've been working on. But also what's been fascinating is you and I have had lots of deep conversations over the last few months. And I feel like any one of those phone calls could have been an episode, right? Like, it's— I walk away feeling so energized every time I talk to you. And I think you're one of the most brilliant and empathetic. I mean, my favorite combination of people, and you know this because I've said it probably a couple of times with you, are people who are ambitious yet humble. Like someone who's ambitious that you want to be around with that energy, but also humble and fun and relatable. Yeah. which usually doesn't work like that, right? It's filled with egomaniacs usually. So, I'm grateful that you are one of those. But, Shamir, for those who may not know about Eddie AI, why don't we start there? Tell me about— tell me the quick one-line, two-line summary of what Eddie AI does and what brought you to that specific idea.

Yeah, no, thanks so much. Eddie is really your AI assistant video editor built for video professionals. We really want to help video professionals craft stories and to take on some of the tedious work, the mundane work, the painful work that exists in post-production. And, you know, it's sort of all the work that we're working on, you know, it should manifest into a cursor for video editing.

Nice. I love the positioning. This is new. Or have you pitched this to me? Or this is new, feels new. I love it.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's—

I think the— I think, uh, as you— we've kind of talked about a little bit, uh, in the past, the, the prosumer tools like Eddie, yeah, I, I feel like, um, are broadly going to fall into 2 categories and you don't want to be in the middle. And those 2 extremes are, one is the cursor for X, which is cursor for, you know, whatever professional expertise, in this case Cursor for video editing, or it could be Lovable or Bolt for X, which is the beginner-friendly larger TAM, but like it's much more beginner-oriented, right?

Yeah.

So you don't wanna be in the middle, right? If you are a pro tool, which I think like from your positioning, then you have to talk the jargon. You have to have keywords like B-roll, A-roll, and all that stuff and really appeal to that audience. But if you are on the far end of the left side, which is the devils and bolts, then you can't talk jargon. Jargon will kill you, right? So let me ask you this then. What do you think makes Eddie special? Like, how do you see Eddie in the market segment that you are in? If there are other competitors or if there are other incumbents, what do you think makes it differentiated and special?

Yeah, I mean, it's really that part for video pros. We are so deep in all things that a video professional needs, their workflows, their proprietary video codecs that they record on, you know, their NLEs, nonlinear editing systems.

Linear editors, yeah, yeah.

Their video editing applications. Eddy pulls their video assets, not videos, their video assets, You know, their clips, their media from their bin, edits it together at their behest, at their direction, using their prompts, you know, the customer's prompts, the story they want to tell. And those edits are back in their video editing application where they can polish it and color correct it, add music. You know, it's this beginning part, what we call, what is known as the rough cut. Yeah. It's that beginning part that Eddy really thrives in that most people don't love. They love the creative storytelling, right? You make this story and bring it to life. How do you make it evocative, right?

Right.

But to get to that point, you have to go through hundreds and hundreds of clips, right? And Eddie like thrives in those kind of environments. So you have all this raw footage, all this media, You need to make sense of it. Are these interviews? Where are the key soundbites? You wanna put visual shots to bring the story to life. You know, that's really what Eddie does. And so in previous times, you would've had an assistant editor. You went back into some of the history of video production. I mean, if you went back far enough, it was a really exclusive club. It was really, really expensive. Very few people even had film cameras that could record on tape. Right. Celluloid.

Right.

We developed technology. So now at some juncture, there was digital cameras, right? At some juncture, there was editing software that you can edit on your computer. It used to be, you used to have like something like 2 VCRs, 2 decks that you would edit on, right? At some point, even before that, you would like cut the film strip and tape it together to make a movie. Right.

Which is crazy. We've come a long way from that cutting and taping.

Absolutely. So it was very common at one point to have an assistant editor, right? To help with this. And as now we all have incredible cameras in our pockets at all times, now we all have computers with video editing software that comes standard and it's easy to install the pro software. It's become easier and easier to record video. And to distribute video, but it's really this piece in the middle to like edit video that hasn't got significantly easier. And one of the things that has happened is that no one, to be honest, has an assistant editor by and large in the industry anymore. Yeah. Eddie is really that. And so—

Right.

We hope to liberate the video professional, help them tell better stories through this.

Nobody would love to wake up and be like, you know what, I'm gonna do 7 hours of grunt work, right? Oh yeah, no. Right, no, it's just, so it's a no-brainer. So my question to you then is, What has been particularly challenging, you know, in your journey with Eddie, um, in terms of getting this positioning right?

Yeah.

In terms of drilling this point home, you know, what has been sort of rather surprising or rather challenging?

Yeah, honestly, it's been more like— it's the struggle has been more internal, actually. The struggle has been the internal journey to being like, actually, this is who we are for. Exclusively and no one else at this current juncture of the company and no one else. And to be able to—

The choice there, right? Choosing is hard because you have to choose and stick with it for a while. And basically saying yes to one is saying no to the other 100.

Absolutely. Because there's a lot of use cases for video editing. So like it's an incredible time.

Right. So I was gonna say, what brings you, like what is it about this particular Persona that is making you come back to it? If I could persuade you, if I could give you a billion dollars, would you switch? What is making you come back to that specific persona?

Honestly, it's like, it's who I am. It's where I started my career as a video professional. I started my career at the BBC. I eat, sleep, dream in the language of film, video, And so it's like very natural to me. And so like, you know, one of the quotes that even made me think about tech and moving my career into tech was like, what do you do when you're not thinking about work? You know, that's like kind of who you really are. That's what you really enjoy. Yeah. That's what I really enjoy. And it comes so naturally. And so it is coming to sort of equanimity within myself to be like, hey, we are for this constituency. And we resolutely focus on that, and at this moment, no one else.

And, and I think the tech side of it must also have been insanely hard to pull off because you're talking about a very, very pro tool for a very, uh, advanced persona. Yeah, these guys are not beginners. They're not going to accept errors.

Absolutely right.

Like, they're not going to be forgiving as much as like a, like an average beginner would be like, yeah, that's fine. It's all our precision. It's all our precision. You got to get that shot right. The cut, right? The transition, right?

It reflects on them, right? It reflects on them.

They're signing off.

They work on behalf of somebody else. So it's them that they— it's like their work that is reflected in it.

So here's a million-dollar question that I'm sure like some of the listeners would be asking, or I would have wondered if I was listening to this. Like, you take a technology that's sort of AI that's predominantly LLM-driven, right? The challenge with that, I mean, the magic with that is you could chat with it. It's got this sort of the smartest dataset. The challenge with that is it's inherently slightly non-deterministic. There's a small variance of not knowing if it's precise or not. I cannot guarantee if it's going to be precise or not. I'm not saying hallucination broadly, but I'm just saying that precision is very hard for it to get right. You take something like that, the technology that is a little bit inherently non-deterministic, and you apply into a field where it's all about precision, which is like video editing. That's gotta be the paradox. That's gotta be the juxtaposition that's kind of like hard to bring together. So how has that journey been and what's some ups and downs with it?

But if you look at it a different way, it's actually— Um, imprecise in many ways too, because if you take the same raw footage and you gave it to 10 different video editors, you'd get 10 different video edits.

Uh, yeah, you're right. Yeah.

Not a single video editor would create the same exact edit as another editor. In fact, even if you looked at the same footage one month later, you would create a different edit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And this is what's hard In the creative areas, this is what is hard with art, right? It's like based on your experiences. Yeah. Subjective. You yourself are evolving. You know, you as a creator are evolving, right? You have new inputs. You have new life experiences. You have new wounds. You yourself are telling, um, a different story differently.

Yeah.

And so listen, like the whole craft, like that's actually the hardest part here. And what we learned in version 1 when we launched in October 2024 with your help was that—

Shout out, shout out to Product Hunt launch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That brought us together. Yeah.

Absolutely. Was that Eddie was like too open-ended and commands were too broad. So users would type in, hey, Eddie, can you cut me a great edit? What does great mean? What do they think great means? And so that's what we learned a lot between version 1 and version 2. version 2, which we launched just over a month ago, was that we had to align with the customer much better to know when they say great edit, what do they mean by great? What is the criteria?

Yeah, how do you bridge the gap? How do you bridge the gap between their expectation and what your interpretation of their expectation? Like how do you—

Yeah, so the big unlock was like what Eddy does now, it aligns with you on what it is that you want. Let's like align with you on the target duration of that edit. Is it 5 minutes? Do you want a 7-minute edit, a 10-minute edit? Let's align on the style of the editing. Do you want it like punchy back and forth, boom, boom, boom? Or do you want it thoughtful, slower, or something in the middle? You know, let's align on the story framework. We're not just doing simple social media clips here. This is story.

Wow.

What's in the intro? What's the conflict? Here's some of the things that we're including in the conflict. So we align on the Story framework.

Yeah.

And then once the— once Eddie is aligned with you on these key aspects, now we have a better shot at delivering an edit that aligns with your intention.

So, so the alignment, does it happen through— from a product point of view, does it happen through like Q&A or discussion mode?

Yeah, Q&A.

Or— oh

yeah,

nice.

In fact, Eddie tries to like push you forward. Hey, here's a framework for the story. This is a suggestion. Do you like it? Do you want to change some parts? You want to iterate on it?

Got it. So there's, there's, so does that happen? Like when you, let's say when I get started, you know, I'm walking through the UX of it. I haven't seen the latest version of it, which is, you know, which would have probably helped for, for this interview, but I haven't seen the latest version. So as you get started and you just dump a big MP4 file or whatever file, And then before you prompt, or before you drop that initial prompt, or is it after the initial prompt that asks you a series of these questions?

Right as soon as you import your interview footage. So imagine, like, let's anchor this on a specific use case. Imagine you have a product launch video, right? So you're the CEO, the head of AI, the CTO, a couple customer testimonials. So you have like 5 interviews, each of them 30 to 45 minutes long. Now you have hours and hours of interview footage. You import that into Eddy. Eddy already does the work of analyzing it, trying to understand it, trying to anchor it on what it thinks are the kind of key messages and the really ultimate story that you're trying to tell here, right? Eddy asks you, what is it, you know, how long is this edit, what is it that you're trying to achieve, here's a suggested story framework. So as soon as you import that interview footage It's already proactively pushing you and nudging you to try to align with you and try to understand what it is that you want to get out of the edit and then goes, does that edit.

That's brilliant. I love it. I'm so happy to see sort of the momentum and progress since early days when we first started speaking about this. And I feel like—

It's been painful to get here.

I know. That's how you know the journey is Just, you know, the journey is worth it, right? Uh, including when we, uh, spoke in SF. I had, I had an amazing time with you at dinner. And you remember, I— it was like 80% of me asking questions, you know, if you're like— and you were like walking away feeling like, KP, sorry, man, I didn't get to ask you questions. I'm like, no, dude, like, you, you have, you have genuinely such an interesting story, and what you're building is also super fascinating. So of course, you know, like, uh, uh, you know, Thank you. The curiosity is Off the roof. So let's get into a couple more. So I had a fun sort of a segue question into a different tangent, which is let's talk about your parents and your family. How would they describe what you do for a living? Do you think they get it? Like what you're building?

Oh, what I'm building? No, not really. But they know that I'm in tech now. I was in film before. And I'm not a doctor. They know that very well.

They know that very well, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, so let's touch on one thing that, you know, from your time in film, which I know you're, you're still partly— you haven't fully quit the film side of it. I, I don't think so, because you're, you know, uh, in many ways this is sort of still in film, right? You're still surrounded by the same kind of ICP and the personas.

Yeah.

If you, if you reflect on First of all, can you give us a couple inflection points for the audience who may not know your time in film, in that domain? Give us like a couple of things that you've done, several projects, timelines. And then the question is, to wrap it up, what were like the most unique parts about film that you think still apply in tech?

Yeah, that's fair. So I started my career at the BBC, spent time in documentaries, wore a number of different hats, producing, directing, Editing. The least favorite was the editing part for me. I was like a storyteller. So like really in the weeds, you know, kind of going through interviews and finding like the key sentences someone says, you know, the nuggets in an interview was like not that fun for me. You know, I wanted to talk about themes and like topics and like these are the messages I want to like imbue in this film or video. And so in some ways, I'm just like building Eddie For the Shamir back when I was in documentaries actively. And

that's always usually a great way to build anything, right? For the younger version of you. Yeah, it's always a great— yeah.

Last thing I did in that first part of the career in film and TV was like, I was helping set up a documentary film festival in Qatar. Qatar did a— who hosted the World Cup recently, they did a partnership with Robert De Niro's Tribeca Film Festival to bring a film festival to the region. helped to go out there and to help set that up. And my role was head of digital. Nice. And I started building mobile apps and web apps and I just felt this like other love, you know, beyond storytelling that I really enjoyed. And then I saw a lot of kind of similarities between the work I was doing in film and stories to building tech products, which is like having an idea, And mustering the wherewithal to like bring it into fruition. Right. To my now wife, I want to spend the rest of my career in tech. And I'm, you know, after—

Do you see a world in which you would sort of, you would still have one foot in the film arena?

I think I'll always go back. I still feel like I am one foot in, you know, the— when I—

Through your product launches, you know, the videos that you do are kind of like short films.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's definitely like getting my like creative filmmaking side out there.

Right.

When I talk to customers, honestly, I feel like I'm talking to my peers. Former peers.

Yeah.

You know, and so that's

another

reason. Like, that's the other thing I really came to understand, not through this company, but like really someone had said it once, but I think it really resonated when I understood you have to love Who you are building. Yes, you gotta love what you're building. Like, can I see myself working on this problem for 10 years? But like, who you're building it for is really important. If you don't want to talk to—

For 10 years.

Yeah.

Hey, you're gonna burn out. You're gonna hate it.

Yeah.

That's why I think it's, you, you, you know, I mean, I mean, we've talked about this many times, like, you know, no matter, um, you know, how little success you have, uh, in any domain, like, if you are enjoying it,

Yeah,

you will outlast and you will just win because of the last man standing principle, right? Like, I, I, and I think, but that true love that you have, the initial love, it's almost, uh, it's almost like somebody has to plant that in your head. Like, you either have it or you don't have it, right?

Yeah.

So similar to you, my story is also like, you know, I have one foot in film, one foot in, in, in tech, and, and I'm sort of living vicariously through my sister who's now in Hollywood and she's crushing it. She did 20 films and She just signed a new movie this month. And I love, because there's some true love that I have towards film, which is hard to explain. If I have to rationally explain why do I love film, it's impossible. It's just, I cannot sort of rationally justify. It's one of those rare joys. Yeah. The same thing I have for startups. And I don't know why, but I've been sort of leaning into this from when I was like, I don't know, 8th, in my 8th grade.

Yeah.

Right. I remember pitching when I was in my 8th grade, I was looking for some money and I was like, family was having a hard time. And one of my friends lived in a richer neighborhood than we were. And he was casually telling me like, there's a doctor who came into their doctor family who came into his neighborhood. I mean, like they became neighbors. And the doctor's daughter was in 8th grade and I was in 10th grade, is looking for some math tutor. And they were well off, rich enough that they were willing to pay 5,000 rupees a month, which is like $50, maybe $60, maybe right now, right? USD. At that time, that was a lot of money for me.

Yeah.

And so I was like, this is insane. Like, are you kidding me? So I went to their house, I introduced myself that I'm this, your neighbor's friend. shoot my shot, right?

Yeah.

And I said, I'm in 10th grade and your daughter, I heard your daughter is looking for a— you guys are looking for a math tutor. I may not be the most qualified, but I can promise you one thing. This is my first job. I will do whatever it takes until she falls in love with math like the way I fell in love with math. So I didn't promise any grades, scores, those kind of promises. I promised the love, which I had for math at the time. And they hired me point blank. This is like a cold pitch, literally. And so that's when I discovered that, you know what, you can just do things and you— this is business. And somebody told me when I walked out, they're like, KP, like, you know, this is businessman. You're great at business. But I never thought of me as a businessman, but I'm just saying, you know, the same thing applies there. Yeah. So if you don't love that journey, whether it's a pitch to the doctor or if it's the pitch to, you know, anybody, you know, your editors or whatever, you're not going to survive.

Absolutely.

Because the money is not the answer. Money is not going to fulfill the void.

Oh, for sure.

Right.

Especially like during hard times. Yeah. It's like that love, that sort of missionary zeal in the problem solving and who you're solving it for. I mean, that—

And it's also, it's if they, if the customers see 4 products and if they're all identically doing the same exact feature set, they will always prefer to work with the founder who gives a shit, who genuinely loves it, who's like passionate. Absolutely. And so, I mean, I mean, we, we talked about this many times. Like, I mean, my advice to all the founders is like, build something that you genuinely like, you know, you give a shit about, you love, you love it, you know, don't fake it. You should love it, right? So

yeah, ideally you want to see in the world because that's like that. Yeah, that's like a motivation, you know, that's like the first step.

There, there was a, there's a I mean, a lot of filmmaker interviews I watch, and one of them, I mean, the theme, the recurring theme, I'm sure you know this, is that some of the greatest films were made because the filmmaker, the director really just wanted to see that on screen. That's it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like there was no grand plan of like, oh, this might work because of this trend. It was more so that nobody did this in this way, and I think it would be dope to let's do this. That's it.

Totally.

So, let me ask you a fun question. So, what's one thing you believed 5 years ago about being a founder that you had to unlearn and get out of it?

Yeah. I mean, the biggest lesson. So, I see a lot of similarities back to kind of a previous question and it kind of relates to this question. I see a lot of similarities between filmmaking and being a tech entrepreneur.

Tech founder.

Yeah. You know, that, you know, you have an idea and you're like mustering the will to like bring it to life. The biggest difference and the thing that I've had to unlearn is that in film, when you hit export and the last frame is rendered, that's the end. It's over and you can't go back. There's this one film I made and I don't really watch it, to be honest. like that often at all. But like, if it comes up, and sometimes people are doing a screening, they want me to come to it. Right at the end, there's this like scene, and I don't know how we missed it. You know, the editor missed it. I missed it. Another co-director missed it. But the plane lands. And the sound of the plane landing is like 3 seconds later. I don't know. Oh, no one has noticed this. No one has noticed this as a viewer. But I hear it and see this discrepancy. I'm like, ah, and we can't go back. The film is printed, like it's done. And that is the biggest difference for me with building tech products. In fact, it's the opposite of like making a film in many ways. And I wish it wasn't like that, but it is, is that you, you know, and the cadence in this company, my company, with Eddie AI is you ship in 2 weeks. We put it out there. Oftentimes we're shipping in the same day, but, you know, at max we're running on a 2-week sprint, putting it out there, getting feedback and iterating. And every week we rinse and repeat it. If not every single day, we're shipping, learning and improving. And it's very, very different. And you have to like undo that learning from like every frame has to be perfect. Every note is perfect.

Yeah, right.

Audio levels, perfect. The color, the white balance, you Like, right.

It

doesn't matter actually in—

Because you have infinite chances to improve it. Yeah. It is an iterative game.

Way more valuable. The learning is valuable.

Yeah. The learning about learning in the market, right? Not internally. Yeah, exactly.

Putting this out there, understanding whether it resonates with the customer, solves that pain point, that learning from that is way more valuable to the next iteration.

Yeah. You know, I'll say one thing. I, uh, over time, when I first started, uh, uh, following great founders and, and, and, you know, just kind of keeping up with all the tech, I used to really admire those who got the perfection right, right? Because I used to think like that was the holy grail.

Yeah.

Um, if someone's V1 had a very high standard, I thought like, damn, man, that's a great founder or whatever.

Yeah.

Actually, over time, I changed my mind about that. Like this story you mentioned, I almost think if someone's V1 is too good, I'm like, they're going to freaking fail. I know that they're putting so much ego on that V1. And just to give you context, I mean, I love Kevin Systrom, but I'm just saying like Kevin Systrom's, the newsfeed thing, I forgot the name of it. The V1 was like so perfected because they built, they came from Instagram success.

Yeah.

And I was like, no way in hell this is going to take off. The same thing would happen with the, there was a vertical video, there was a Quibi, is it? There was a video, remember there was a little app where, um, you could watch 7-minute clips of vertical, like it was Quibi or something. Yeah, they overdid it. The V1 was like, overdid it, right?

Yeah.

And you're like, there's no way in hell, like they're gonna— and you can almost now you can predict, you can almost like put money in the Poly market and bet that they're gonna fail because what's happening, what they're signaling is They're signaling that their focus is on the first version of perfection, what they believe is right for the market, as opposed to co-learning with the market. So every time I see a founder that's a V1 piece of shit, but they're replying, tweeting constantly, like asking questions about the V1 and engaging with the people who are shitting on V1, like they're gonna crush it.

Yeah.

And then if within 2 weeks, like I said, 2, 3 weeks, if they're like, V2 is better, slightly better, better. That's the founder I'm afraid of.

Totally.

Like, that's the founder I'm afraid of. It's not like the one with the brilliant insight one day and like, you know, whatever. It's the iterative formidable force.

Look at, I mean, look at Humane. I mean, let's just say this was slightly adjacent, right? Like, say this was like a really great kind of beta version, but if they as founders went to the market, not like this is a polished, perfect mess. phone supplement or replacement, but this is our first version. We'd love your feedback. You know, came to it with like modesty and humility.

Right.

You would've imbued that inspiration, that excitement from like earliest adopters, but they went in being like, this is the next—

This is it.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, you're almost asking for people to Yeah, exactly.

And the thing is, I feel like it's so fascinating to me. I mean, because, I mean, you and I, we kind of live in this world almost. We've kind of personified what we're talking about so much that I can't even do it the other way. You know what I mean?

Like,

if Marques Brownlee— if Marques is cheating on me, I would love to spend time with him. You know what I mean? I would like take my humane pin and be like, Marques, tell me why this sucks. I'm like, yeah, what's broken here? And he'll say something. I'm like, you know what? That makes sense. If it's not, then I'm like, you know what, not for you. This part is not for you. It's for like somebody else, right?

Totally.

But like, why would you not want to be like so relatable and so with the community? I mean, in my view, that's like the absolute— it's kind of like, I mean, I can't even— because, you know, a lot of my listeners know this and you know this all. My brain is so wired to think this way that I can't even be a perfectionist if I'm going to try it. I don't even have the patience to build something for 6 months without asking feedback.

Totally.

Like, I'm too excited that I'll call you in the middle of the night, be like, Shamir, I gotta show you something, man. Like, you gotta see this V1, right? Absolutely. And

so, you know who has a really great blog post that inspired me on this was Reid Hoffman's blog post. And the title is something along the lines of, if this blog post doesn't have spelling mistakes in it, I've shipped it too late.

Too late. Yes. And Reid is a great example of that.

If this blog post doesn't have spelling mistakes in it, I've shipped it too late. And he just says like, it's really about like, You know, your first V1 is not going to be perfect. Just ship it. You'll learn. Yeah.

Because what's happening is, I mean, so much of— I mean, there's 2 big vectors that I think lead to— maybe 3 vectors lead to sort of a great, grand, amazing, unbelievable success in tech products. I think it applies even to movies too. And I talk to my sister all the time about this. The 3 vectors in my view are one, the core insight and idea, like the instinct. The moment you have an idea like that, Like a lot of people actually don't take action on that idea. They sit on it, they wait on it. Yeah. They let that like become a whole PowerPoint deck. You're screwed. The second thing is, it's how many, does it resonate?

How many unused domains do you have?

I have like 60. My wife's always complaining. Like, hey,

I'm,

yeah, that's how I'm roasting.

If I was a VC, that's like the first question I wanna see how many.

Yeah, exactly. My wife always complaining about like, 'cause if I say something about her shoes, like how many shoes do you want? And she's like, don't even talk to me. Look at your domain collection. I'm like, ah, you got me. So one part is the instinct, the idea, right? The spark. And it takes, I mean, it takes like months to get a great idea, right? I feel like I have 1 or 2 good ideas a year. I have a lot of shitty and average normal ideas, like hundreds, but like 1 or 2 ideas. The second vector is resonance. Now resonance, like how do you measure resonance? I think you have to have your own barometer of, is this a banger to an extent? And then the rest should be like from other unfiltered people who will not, who are not sick of friends, right? Like for example, when the hackathon idea came to me, I initially knew, first of all, that was a great idea, right? Like imagine if both CEO did this, the whole framing I did, I was like, I knew this is a banger. And the resonance was like 25%. I knew that this is a banger. Like you can tell from the framing of the tweet, I'm like, this is gonna be And the rest 75% has to be immediately tested by the market. Now, the longer you wait, you're not going to get the resonance. It's not a matter of if I wait 6 months, the market will react better for me. No. It's actually accidental. The third vector is craft. Now, craft is where you need the grit. You need the details. I always joke with my sister, like, I do the 1 and 2, you do the 3 for me, right? Yeah. Because she's amazing at the details. But she's not good at 1 and 2, or she kind of self-censors herself. And so you have to have a dreamy, dopey person like me. I'm like very dopey. I don't even need weed. I'm just like always dreaming. I'm sure you're like that too because that's the kind of founder you need. And so you're like, what if, what if, what if?

Yeah.

And so you need these 3 things. You need that initial spark, and then you need that immediate resonance feedback, and then you need the craft.

Yeah.

What happens, I think, in industries like movies and also tech, a lot of people over-index on the third part because they see Steve Jobs on stage and when he presents the iPad, he's only showing this, but he's not showing you the other 2 parts where the first time he had an iPad idea, he would've probably called Jony Ive and like, Jony, you gotta hear me out.

Right?

That one and 2 is happening in a tight loop. Like when you call me many times and you're like, KP, you gotta hear this out. Right. Yeah. So yeah, I'll tell you an example. A prime example of this was, uh, 3 days ago. I don't know if you saw my tweet late night, 11:30 in the night. I'm just kind of like, you know, hanging out with Theo who's next to me, my, my twin, you know, the 9-month-old boy. And I thought like, what if I was thinking about Vibe Coding and, you know, the hackathon like we had, but did you know, we saw, did you see, we have now the hackathon has 80,000 participants.

Wow. That's

incredible. 80,000.

That's amazing.

The world record was 50,000. So we definitely crossed it. Now we're gunning for $100K. And the funny thing is $100K was an arbitrary number that I made up that day. I don't even— I just thought it sounded good, so I put it out there. So I had an idea where I'm like, how do you raise the stakes even further? This is already getting a lot of publicity, but I wanted to kind of even more percolate to mainstream. What can we do? And I had an idea. I wondered how many astronauts are probably out there in outer orbit. Yeah. And I'm like, hmm, maybe Google knows. So I Googled and it said there are literally 13 astronauts who are in ISS, 8 of them in ISS, 5 of them in Chinese ISS. And my idea was like, what if you could vibe code an app from space? And it'll be the world's, the universe's first out-of-the-world app built in space. And it takes 10 minutes now with vibe coding to build like a landing page. Yeah. And I thought, this is an idea. So I myself know that idea is a banger because when I share that, the way I frame it, I know it, it's already a banger. Now I put it out on Twitter. It took me like 5 seconds to write a tweet and then I tagged ISS, I tagged SpaceX, I tagged the, you know, 5 or 6 astronauts' accounts.

Yeah.

And I was like, let's see. So Eric DMs me. I mean, Eric, CEO of Bolt, is like, dude, this is insane. Like, are you, You're driving me nuts, right? Because he replied there. But so the loop of 1 and 2 is, I think, very, very key is my point. And then now to make that come to life, of course we didn't get a response from ISS. Shame on them.

Yet.

But it's the time will not solve for it. I think that's the part a lot of founders miss. They think that sheer persistence and grit will— it won't solve. Now it dissolved. The idea went nowhere. I'm back to normal. Like, it didn't go to space, right?

Yeah.

But a lot of founders like you and I, smart founders, trip up because they think, what if I wake up tomorrow morning and try harder? That's not how it works. Like, the grit has to happen after resonance.

Yeah.

Not before. And I think this is the thing that I didn't learn back in the day because I would build startups. I'm sure you know this too, where I would take an idea and I feel like I'm not getting the right resonance. How How about I apply 8 more months on this? Yeah. It's not gonna solve it. You know, if you didn't get a residency, you didn't get a residency. So, yeah. Okay. Switching topics. I wanna know about the AI video editing segment and like, what is a contentious debate that is happening in your sort of segment that would surprise an outsider like me?

Yeah.

Like what are, I'm sure there's not just one, like one or two debates, but like, what's one that comes to mind?

Yeah, I mean, last year we heard a lot more that like AI is going— AI video editing is going to, you know, take over the video editor or the human video editor jobs, right? And I think you're seeing that writ large in creative fields, some of this like fear. What's been interesting to me over the last number of months is that fear is subsiding. People are well accustomed to now using ChatGPT for writing a pitch to win the client video work or Claude to help with the treatment or prepare for interviews. So we're seeing this kind of subside. And it's been interesting to see how, like, you know, the time for, I feel like for Eddie AI has come, you know, that like, like people are like, yeah, of course we're going to use this. Why would we not use a tool that helps save us time and does more work? You know, for sure. So I think that's probably the biggest thing that we see. I think like the shift, you know, and I see this as from myself coming from that industry to going into tech. Yeah. The other shift, like, been learning that I've had to do is like thinking about life more as like not as zero sum. I think when you're in the arts and you're in film and video, you know, there's only like a certain number of video channels that could play.

Yeah, right. Fine.

Yeah, there's only a certain amount of money that goes into the industry, and it's like either grants are going to go this way, like to these 5 people, or to those 5 people. Um, and, and tech has a very, very different mindset.

Positive sum. Yeah, yeah,

exactly. And

so, you know, it's very brilliant. Yeah, I've, I've never heard someone articulate this. Yeah, yeah,

yeah. And so like what we're trying to make the case for is like, hey, you can actually do much more, right? Like, this isn't like, oh, now you're going to do less. Actually, can you make more money? Can you do more, uh, take on more work? Because now, like, half the work is like you're passing off to Eddie AI. So, you know, that's been really, really interesting to see that that's resonating. Customers are now upselling. So they were going to do an edit— let's just take an example— they were going to do like a 5-minute video edit, but now they're like telling the client, hey, we can also do these other permutations. We can create 10 TikToks, you know, 5 Instagrams, a couple other internal videos. And it's marginal for them because with Eddy, it's like able to like really craft those edits and already has the context, already has all the source footage really, really easily, but they're able to make more. So that's been really interesting to see how people adapt.

I think that's a really, really underrated point. I think with the innovation, everyone's talking about how AI saves you time, which it does. But it makes you more productive, which doesn't mean you work less in a way. You work less on the shit that you don't want to work on and you work more on the things that really energize you. Yeah,

totally.

You

can make more money, right?

You make more money. Yeah.

They can do more of the fun work they love and get paid more.

And make more money.

So

good. I mean, it's just wild. I mean, we're in like a unique window of time in history. Where, I mean, I wouldn't trade this time with anything else in the past. So one question I have about video creation trends. What are some trends that you are noticing in your segment that may become more mainstream in the next 5 years?

Yeah, there's one tangible one, which is like, I'm seeing people do a lot more multi-camera interviews, but generally the trend is to uplevel the quality bar, uplevel the production values. In a world where everyone has a great camera on their phone,

right?

Like, how do we stand out? How do we tell better stories? How does this video look better? So there's a lot of emphasis we're seeing in wanting to stand out from the rest. And so I think upleveling quality can mean a number of things, but one of which is like you're shooting in better cameras, you're shooting with multiple cameras, you know, which communicates to the viewer, this is like a high-quality production.

High-quality production.

Of course, the story has to be better too.

Right. Awesome. Okay, so I got 3 more fun questions for you. Ready? How are we doing on time? Good?

Yep.

Okay. So if you go to college today, what are the 3 classes you're taking?

Oh, good question. I would say—

And you can take anything and it, you know, you could literally take anything and it's not about going back in time and taking what would've helped you today. It's literally about today. Yeah.

Yeah. I would take one filmmaking class. One class on early religion formation and another class on computer science. Filmmaking, because I think it's really, when you meet founders who can not only build, but also sell and tell stories, I think it's an unstoppable force. I think learning from some of the greatest storytellers throughout history, the last 100 years, is just like incredible learning and to be able to like deconstruct different story frameworks, I think is really, really powerful. And I obviously love the visual arts medium. Number 2 is, I think like, I hope it's not sacrosanct to say, but you know, this trade around like when you are building an early product, it has parallels.

You're like a cult leader, right? I mean, you have to be an evangelist. I

mean, absolutely.

In early product, best case, Religious evangelist in the worst case, cult leader.

Listen, you can use your power for good or for bad.

Yeah, true.

You're selling, you know, hey, what does this like Mount Everest look like, you know, if we can summit it? And I think that it's a really, like, really understanding how to bring people on board, how to like cultivate and nurture a following and take people on that journey. And deliver, you know, duly deliver on that promise, I think is really, really powerful.

Well, and the third one was computer science.

Computer science. Yeah. I still think that, yeah, technology and code is incredibly powerful. It's just magical. The things you can build, so like you, it's just incredible. And someone, some people will say like, You know, we don't, you know, coding, you know, we don't need to, like, with all these, like, great tools. And I think they are really, really great. I think it's going to be empowering for so many people, but I still think, like, learning some of the principles around how this all works is—

Is still great, always. Yeah.

Yeah.

It'll always be in demand, I think, too.

Yeah. I tell my wife that, you know, our kids need to learn 2 languages, English and C++.

Yeah. I think that even the second one is merging to be— I thought you would say English and prompting because I think— Okay. So 2 more. If you could have— you touched on this a little bit earlier about some of the greats. And so it's sort of an extension of that. If you could have dinner with any 3 people, dead or alive, who would you choose? And why?

Great question. Fun question. Yeah, I would say that, uh, the 3 people—

I mean, this is actually— I'm genuinely curious too, because even as a friend, I don't know.

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, from history, I'd say that, uh, I have a lot of admiration for Steve Jobs, and I feel like it—

yeah.

His time, unfortunately, was cut too short before his time. And I have lots of questions for him. I feel like, you know, hearing, you know, particularly hearing about what it was like to be ousted from Apple and that period. Yeah. Like, as much as it's, you know, he was outside of the public eye. Yeah, there's some, like, you know, books you could read, but it's like, still feels like We aren't. We don't fully know. And yeah, private time.

That's the that's the next. That was when he did next, and he had a lot of challenges during that period.

You know, until he made a comeback.

Yeah. No, it wasn't. Yeah.

Particularly successful. In fact, would yeah. As a failure. Yeah. And so, like you know, that journey, that particular part of his journey, what he went through, and but he grew so much. He also assisted in bringing about the birth of Pixar.

Yeah, which is crazy.

Yeah. So, you know, he must have—

Can I ask you, can I ask you, I got a fun question about Pixar, but like, we'll, we'll, yeah, you finish your thought, train of thought.

Yeah. So that was that. That was that on that one.

Yeah. And I got— Oh wait, just Steve, you, you gotta throw in 2 more names.

And I got 2 more. Okay. Um, it would be a toss-up between, uh, Jesus Christ or Prophet Muhammad. And wow, I think that, I think that, you know, to, to have a view and an idea and that is like considered even heretical

at the time

for the time and place in which they were living to, and, you know, in the case of Jesus, to be even put to death for that. Like, yeah, believe something so deeply. And be willing to die for that, man, it's a conviction on next, next, next level.

Next level.

Yeah. And I'd love to chat about that, you know? So, yeah. And the third one, good question. On the third one, I have to come back to you. I would say that—

Someone living?

Yeah. I mean, there's a bunch of people. I mean, I think that, you know, I would love to, I have so many questions for great tech entrepreneurs like Elon. You know, I'd love to like chat to Sergey Brin. I would love to, you know, I feel like there's so many like great stories. I think like what I listen, like the core thing that I think I see is like there's the storytelling and then there's like the behind the story and this and there's Oftentimes the normal

life,

and some of this doesn't make it into the stories.

Yeah, it doesn't, obviously.

And I feel like that type of conversation you could have where you really like what we're doing here with this podcast, where you can peel back the layers of the onion, where you can really get to know someone. I feel like—

I wonder if 30 years from now, if somebody on a podcast like this, 50 years from

now,

would ever think of you and me in that list and be like, you know what? I would have really killed to have dinner with Shamir from 2025. This guy, he was epic. Because to even think that way, just to think about the fact that I'm sure if you ask any one of them, they didn't really care or didn't really think, didn't really try to be inspiring. They were just themselves. Yeah. But the amazing impact they've had for decades, like Steve, for example, it's just unbelievable. We're talking about him, you know, about the things he did in the '80s now, which is 40 years ago, which is crazy. Yeah. Okay. So the question about Pixar was this, which is what always blows my mind about Pixar was the fact that he was basically approached by John Lasseter, I think, right? And is it Ed? I forgot his name. Ed I forgot his last name, but those guys saying like, you know, there's gotta be a full feature-length animation movie. Yeah. And someone's gonna build this, why not us? Right? That was sort of the pitch. And then he was like, he saw the vision and he believed. My curiosity is any one of the rich, great tech people in that era could have done that. It was Steve who saw the future and that this is inevitable and he did it.

Yeah.

My question to us is, what is the next Pixar that we are missing out on?

I wonder whether— I mean, that's a great question to ask him. I wonder whether that's what made him do it.

I don't know. Or is it the talent?

My narrative would be like, I think he probably just saw a kindred spirit.

With the two, right? Yeah.

coming from tech and these are safe storyteller artists. And he saw a kindred spirit. And I think maybe it was just as simple as like, you know, this would be incredible to work with. I don't know. You know, like—

Maybe. Yeah. That's the question. That's the question.

Yeah. Pixar tried to sell software. Pixar tried to do short commercials. I mean, you know, like this stuff was hard, you know, and they were just trying to survive.

They were doing, you know, what was mind-blowing to me was that for a while they were trying to do B2B. Can you imagine? Like, Pixar doing B2B? Yeah. Like,

what? I'm so happy that didn't work out for them.

Right, exactly.

I'm so happy. Can you believe if that worked out? Oh my God.

Oh my God. We wouldn't have Toy Story, man.

WALL-E. Yeah, Toy Story.

WALL-E. Yeah, WALL-E. So, okay, the last question. I know we could go on for hours, but I want to contain our energy into this one packed high-density episode that this is and hopefully bring you back in the future episode again. What's one piece of advice you would give your younger 18-year-old version? Don't say things like buy Bitcoin or anything like that, but genuinely.

Yeah, I'd just say like, don't worry, it's all going to work out. But almost like you need to have that discomfort in life. Yeah.

Would you have listened to yourself if somebody came to you, like the wiser graybeard Shamir coming to you and putting you—

Oh, not at all. No, my parents gave me lots of advice. And honestly, as much as I joke about them, they also like gave me a lot of freedom too. So, you know, to like pursue the things that were interested, that I was interested in.

Yeah.

Filmmaking class in grade 10, elective, and they encouraged it. I see, I want to like do the same for my kids is like letting them explore, you know, letting them find their, you know, nurture their curiosity to be able to just like play and have fun and see what resonates with them, what their, where their interests kind of go to. And so like, I want to do that for them, but no, I wouldn't have listened to anybody. It's like, that's like a really good quality, I think, for entrepreneurs generally is to have like a Healthy disdain for rules and skepticism of advice and people telling you what to do before it crosses the line of yeah, yeah,

yeah, delusional, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I think it's it's a it's a great advice to to also this this don't worry thing. You know, it's so hard in day to day. Like, can you imagine right now as we go through after this episode is wrapped up and you will go back to your next meeting or the next you know task on your list and the narrative in your brain is not, don't worry, Shamir, it's going to be okay. Right? It's going to be like, I've got to get this shit done. I got to get this thing out. This is like that. This is that. But yet that is truly the most powerful 2 words you could tell your younger self. It's that, don't worry, it's going to be okay. Right? So it's the paradox of—

Yeah.

That is what is true, yet it's hard to And, uh, you know, take it in.

Totally. There's like stress that's, um, negative stress and it's like, yeah, push that aside. And then there's like the stress, you know, the good stress, like, hey, we're gonna ship every single week, you know, 2 weeks, whatever it is, you know, it's like the problem solving. Exactly. Like, that's good stuff. That's a good type of stress that helps push the company forward, push yourself forward. It's like the bad stress that is subtractive and almost limits you from like your own ambitions, your full potential. Don't

worry. Don't worry, it's great. That probably will be the hook, hopefully, on the time. What was the most, or one or two super energizing moments for you in the last 6 months?

Honestly, the first customer, that was like really, really exciting. It was the first customer who put their credit card in, you know, it was like we had users, but were they real users? Did they really find value? And I think like, yeah, you know, it's, and I know I'm gonna get tired of that. I'm like, wow, we've made a customer happy. They're willing to like, yeah, commit here. And it's awesome. That was, that's definitely like exciting. We turned on subscription a few months ago. So So that's been really, really great. And honestly, like the version 1 launch, and you sent me this tweet and it was talking about, you know, putting out your product and the promise of the product and then getting the product and that promise gap.

Yeah. Yeah.

To shorten and be completely aligned. And, you know, when we launched the version 1, it was clear to me that the promise of what we were building with Edai, an AI video editor, resonates.

Yes.

Many, many groups of people.

The PMF, right? The promise market fit. Definitely, definitely was there. It was very evident from the get-go. Yeah.

And so that rush, that huge surge of users who were excited, all the people I talked to afterwards, you know, it was just like a huge excitement that like, you know, we've been building this, you know, for a year behind the scenes working on this. And then it's like, Get it out there. And, you know, it's like a film, like you've been working like kind of like in your like, you know, small room, dark editing room for weeks and weeks. In our case, it was like months and months. And then like put it out there and you're like, will anyone like it? And so that was exciting that again, the promise really, really resonated. We worked really, really hard to try to make sure that the product and the promise gap—

Align.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So

awesome. I mean, this has been such a fun blast spending the last hour with you, Shamir.

Yeah, I'd like to continue to see your journey from afar, continue to shoot your shot, continue to like, yeah, all the stuff that this podcast and you and what you're encouraging. It's hard for you to also see like the impact you're having in little ways. I like saw you from afar and it's like, concept you were like sprouting out on Twitter all the time. Yeah, really resonating, you know, public. Yeah,

I think like the, the, the older I get and I start— the more sort of success that I see in my career, Shamir, and this has become very, very, very apparent to me, and this is big. This is my new motto for the rest of my career, is that, uh, genuinely follow my gut instinct.

Yeah.

Uh, and I mean, I think you and I have been raised by great parents and great families that are Gut instinct is not going to lead us off the cliff, right? It's not going to do something immoral, illegal to society. So it's not that we have to worry about that. But most of the time, I've learned to really revel and enjoy my gut instinct. What is— and I'm always listening, like, what are you telling me? So even with the questions when I talk to you or when I— it's the questions that are there, but also I'm like, where is my curiosity leading authentically? Yeah. And it's so fun to live like that. I cannot tell you how lightweighted I feel in terms of carrying the weight of all the expectations of, oh, this is how I should do, or whatever. I'm genuinely like, my compass is my gut feeling, wherever it takes me. Right. Don't worry. And just kind of follow that and see where it goes and enjoy the journey.

That's the nice part about getting older too, is like you start seeing these successes, they start combining together and you find an inner peace and equanimity.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I hope that you always feel a good positive discomfort because that is it's a good forcing point.

As as what's this Jensen would say, right? Like like it's suffering. Yes. You know, I I wish ample suffering onto you. Which I used to really like be like what the hell is he saying? You know, but like everything we went through with Liam, I feel like has been such a gift and you know it's just. I mean, I think if the 18-year-old version of me would have freaked the fuck

out

for the last 1 year or whatever happened in our house with Liam, but the version of me that I'm like, wow, I'm like the equanimity thing. I'm like, you know what? I'm so proud of him and my wife and me and the family pulling it through and we wouldn't trade it for anything. So grateful. Let's keep that conversation and our friendship going.

And yes, luck to Liam and the rest. Uh, yeah, I'm so excited to— thank you. Thank you for having me.

I'll plug all the links. Yeah, of course. I'll plug all the links at the end of this, uh, in, in the, in the chat or in the description. Um, follow Shamir on Twitter, LinkedIn. Uh, he's got really fun product and product launch videos. You'll, you'll like it. So check it out. All right. Thanks everybody. It's a sign off.