The Slow Hunch

Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky, previously a digital rights activist, shares insights on decentralization and its transformative potential for social media. She discusses Bluesky's origin story, emphasizes user choice, and highlights the significance of protocols that empower users. Jay delves into the trade-offs in systems design and how Bluesky aims to create an open, extensible platform, offering flexibility and innovation when users don't like the changes. Their vision challenges traditional social media, advocating for community-driven and customizable experiences.

Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham, founding partners at Union Square Ventures, share their journey through tech investment since 2003. They discuss their unique investment thesis focused on open networks and the evolution of their approach amid different tech cycles. The duo reflects on missed opportunities, like rejecting Airbnb, and the early promise of Bitcoin. They also explore the implications of AI and the tension between decentralization and market consolidation, all while maintaining a commitment to intellectual curiosity.

In this episode of the Slow Hunch, I spoke with Jake Heller, co-founder and CEO of Casetext, a legal tech startup that pioneered the use of large language models in the legal industry.Jake and his co-founders built Casetext over a decade —  going through multiple pivots before eventually finding PMF as an AI tool that helped lawyers do better and faster legal research. In 2023, Casetext was acquired by Thomson Reuters for $650 million. In this conversation, Jake recounted how an early relationship with the research team at OpenAI got them access to GPT-4 (before the launch of ChatGPT!) and how they decided to hard pivot over the course of just two weeks. As a former lawyer himself, Jake has a unique take on the challenges of building and selling cutting-edge software in an industry that has traditionally been a late adopter of tech. This was a really fun conversation (you can probably tell because it’s longer than our usual episodes). Hope you enjoy! Chapters 00:00:00 Cold open00:06:15 How Jake found himself in legal tech00:10:07 Building Casetext00:28:41 Getting early access to GPT-4 00:38:21 The AI pivot 00:46:38 Convincing the team00:57:03 Engineering solutions to improve real-world performance 01:07:06 Jake’s thoughts on the future of the legal industry01:14:29 Closing thoughts

I spoke with Amir Haleem, founder of Helium and CEO of Nova Labs, about his journey building the world's largest decentralized wireless networks. Amir started Helium in 2013, with the initial vision to make it easier to connect IoT devices to the internet. After trying the traditional telecom playbook, he realized that combining crypto incentives with community participation could actually be key to scaling a truly global wireless network. In our conversation, we spoke about how Amir came to this realisation, and how he tackled all the challenges that come with building and securing such a network, from dealing with sophisticated attempts to game the system, to managing a decentralized and diverse community of stakeholders. Through Nova Labs and Helium, Amir wants to enable a future where decentralized communities play a major role in building and maintaining the networks that connect us.Hope you enjoy this conversation! Chapters: 00:00 Cold open 05:51 Amir’s thoughts on crypto incentives11:15 The tradeoffs with community-led building14:17 The pivot from IoT to wireless networks25:28 Challenges with establishing “proof of coverage”28:45 The balance between speed and perfection42:43 Adapting to industry changes45:24 Amir’s take on why entrepreneurship is so important52:18 Amir’s closing reflections

In this episode, I spoke to Zoe Weinberg, founder and managing partner of ex/ante, a venture fund focused on technology that enhances human agency.Zoe actively invests in a growing number of founders committed to empowering users by giving them control over their data and digital identities. Our conversation explored the ever present threat of digital authoritarianism, the product tradeoff between privacy and convenience, the potential of portable digital identities, and how emerging technologies impact democratic values.I hope you find this conversation insightful. Chapters:00:00 Cold open 03:15 Human agency and technology12:30 Zoe's thoughts on digital authoritarianism and surveillance capitalism20:18 The product tradeoff between convenience and privacy25:40 Portable digital identities30:05 Zoe's take on tech and the state of democracy36:20 The importance of user agency in emerging tech40:12 Zoe's journey to founding ex/ante45:00 Business models that support user agency50:15 The potential of AI-driven privacy solutions54:45 Closing reflectionsThe Slow Hunch is produced by the team at Spectral. 

In this episode, I spoke to Dani Grant, CEO of Jam.dev, a tool that reimagines the way software teams communicate about and fix bugs.Dani brings an infectious energy to her work. Before starting Jam, she worked at Cloudflare and was an analyst at USV, where we first crossed paths.For Dani, Jam isn’t just about making software teams more efficient—it’s about unlocking human potential and bringing the future closer, faster.I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.Chapters:00:00 Cold open 03:23 What Dani is building at Jam 05:15 Reflections on her time at Cloudflare 08:11 On the joy of building 09:36 Why bug reporting matters 12:50 On AI and the future of software development 16:04 Why crafting beautiful products is important 19:23 On building trust with AI products26:21 Building products using decentralized data 30:21 Life growing up in Mountain View 37:26 The power of cold emails 42:44 How learning the flute influenced Dani 48:28 Finding meaning in the startup journey 51:24 The importance of team dynamics 56:04 Nick’s reflections as an investorThe Slow Hunch is produced by the team at Spectral.

In this conversation with Steven Johnson, acclaimed author of 14 books and editorial lead at NotebookLM and Google Labs, he dives into the evolution of 'networked thought' through innovative digital tools. He shares insights from his journey exploring technology's history and the transformative role of AI in knowledge curation. Johnson emphasizes capturing 'slow hunches' and highlights how tools like NotebookLM foster serendipity in idea discovery, blending personal insights with broader knowledge to inspire creativity.

In this episode, I spoke to Muneeb Ali, the co-founder of Stacks — a Bitcoin L2 that aims to make BTC more programmable and scalable. At USV, we originally backed Muneeb and his co-founder Ryan Shea back in 2014. Our shared hypothesis was that Bitcoin had the potential to impact more than just finance—it could be a new foundation for the internet itself. Of course, this idea wasn't as obvious back then. In my conversation with Muneeb, we used his personal and professional journey to trace the origins of this idea—starting with his PhD in computer science at Princeton leading up to his fascination with Bitcoin and work on Stacks today. Muneeb offers insights into the technical and cultural challenges of innovating within the Bitcoin ecosystem, and shares his vision of a future where BTC serves as the foundation for the next generation of decentralized applications. Chapters: 00:00:00 Cold open00:01:35 Muneeb's background in computer science and peer-to-peer systems research00:06:29 Transitioning from academia to entrepreneurship00:09:00 The "aha moment" - Bitcoin solving the global state problem00:11:16 Evolution of Muneeb's vision for Bitcoin00:15:00 Comparing different approaches to blockchain architecture00:22:48 The current landscape of blockchain ecosystems00:26:29 Challenges of building on Bitcoin and navigating community resistance00:29:43 The Stacks Nakamoto upgrade and its potential impact00:32:44 Decentralization versus user experience00:37:38 Future vision for Bitcoin L2s and a decentralized internet—————The Slow Hunch is produced by the team at Spectral.

I spoke to Fraser Kelton, General Partner at Spark Capital and the former Head of Product at OpenAI. Fraser played a key role in the launch of ChatGPT, which is widely considered AI's "iPhone moment."Before his stint at OpenAI, Fraser built Koko, a platform that was initially built to provide cognitive behavioral therapy at scale, transitioned to AI-driven online content moderation, and eventually acquired by Airbnb in November 2018. At Airbnb, as Fraser experimented with early models like BERT and GPT-2 to scale Koko's content moderation efforts, he realized that transformer models could "turn all of the internet into training data," dramatically accelerating the progress of AI.Fraser cold emailed Ilya Sutskevar and ended up joining OpenAI—helping them transition from a research lab into a company that ships compelling consumer and enterprise products. He offered a behind-the-scenes look at the development of GPT-3 and ChatGPT, and the decisions that led up to their release.Looking ahead, Fraser discussed how transformer architectures could be applied to biology, disrupting traditional medicine as we know it. He spoke about how we are overestimating the short-term impact of AI, and under-appreciating the scale of change over the next 10-30 years.Throughout his career, Fraser has been driven by a mission to support brilliant technologists in creating a better future. His insights offer a glimpse into the past, present, and future of AI at a pivotal moment in the technology's development. Enjoy!Chapters00:00:00 Cold open00:02:56 Fraser's background as a founder and at OpenAI00:04:33 The origin story of Koko and online cognitive behavioral therapy00:10:22 Koko’s pivot to content moderation00:13:15 Playing with BERT and GPT-2 at Airbnb00:28:00 Cold emailing Ilya Sutskevar and joining OpenAI00:35:00 The cultural moment of ChatGPT's launch00:42:20 Overestimating short-term impact and underestimating the long-term potential of AI00:44:13 The transformative potential of AI in biology and medicine00:48:02 Supporting brilliant technologists to create a better future—————The Slow Hunch is produced by the team at Spectral.