Forged in America EP3 - Dag Kittlaus: Founding Siri Almost Killed Me
Dec 24, 2025
Dag Kittlaus, founder of Siri and serial entrepreneur in conversational AI, shares his journey from founding Siri to healthcare innovations. He recounts the intense moments leading up to Apple's acquisition, including daily calls from Steve Jobs. After a health scare with a pancreatic tumor, Dag pivoted to health tech, developing a phone-based blood pressure app. He reflects on the challenges of working with friends, the societal impacts of AI, and instilling responsibility in his children despite success. It's a candid look at entrepreneurship and resilience.
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Steve Jobs' Relentless Pursuit
- Dag Kittlaus got a direct call from Steve Jobs and was invited to his house the next day after launching the Siri app.
- Jobs then called Dag 34 days in a row to win the acquisition and personally pressured partners like Verizon to drop deals.
Negotiate By Being Willing To Walk
- Use the power to walk away when negotiating; Dag held out and improved the final price.
- Demonstrating conviction and readiness to walk away strengthened his position with Apple.
Scaling Demands Rearchitecture
- Scaling a consumer AI for Apple required re-architecting from million-user to 100-million-user scale and heavy integration into iOS.
- Dag says that building global scale assistants demanded massive new data centers and systems that Apple previously lacked.
