Hallway Chat

Nov 01 2024 29 ep. 41 mins 8
Hallway Chat Podcast artwork

Fraser & Nabeel explore what it means to build great products in this new world of AI. Two former founders, now VCs, have an off-the-cuff conversation with friends about the new AI products that are worth trying, emerging patterns, and how founders are navigating a world that’s changing every week. Fraser is the former Head of Product at OpenAI, where he managed the teams that shipped ChatGPT and DALL-E, and is now an investor at Spark Capital. Nabeel is a former founder and CEO, now an investor at Spark, and has served on the boards of Discord, Postmates, Cruise, Descript, and Adept. It's like your weekly dinner party on what's happening in artificial intelligence.

  Technology
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


Q&A: Is NotebookLM an exception to a rule? When to copy? When are small improvements better than big bets? Will data privacy matter?

Nov 01 2024 41 mins  
Open format Q&A this week. Fraser and Nabeel explore AI data privacy, the ethics of copying features, and maintaining innovation. They discuss enterprise data challenges, the importance of a strong product identity, and strategies for early-stage startups during fundraising season. (00:00) - Open (00:53) - Q&A Session Kickoff (01:14) - The data you gather is your roadmap (

"Software should be soft" - Meter Command with Anil Varanasi

Sep 29 2024 58 mins  
Join Fraser, Nabeel, and special guest Anil from Meter as they dive into the innovation behind Meter Command. Meter's new interface has been called the "future of software" and a far ranging interview talks about the problem of designing product around personas, how command interfaces bridge the gap between CLI and dashboards, the importance of owning your tech stack, how your data

The New Muse: Hobbyists and AI

Aug 07 2024 28 mins  
How would you design an AI product differently for a hobbyist vs prosumer vs professional? Using MidJourney as a case study in the passion economy, they delve into how AI tools can help build communities and support semi-professional creators. They explore how these tools can democratize creativity, the role of art vs craft, the role of grit in skill building, cheating vs copilotin

Making product on the S curve of AI. Plus, Anthropic Artifacts

Jul 20 2024 42 mins  
Fraser and Nabeel start by retcon'ing their earlier "maybe we should stop talking about models" and reflecting on the importance of adapting product strategy based how much disruption is happening in your market. The episode highlights the release of Claude Artifacts by Anthropic, and comparing it to other AI product innovations. They also nerd out on the Xbloom coffee machine and

Granola, Designing AI for User Agency, and how to compete with $$$

Jun 02 2024 45 mins  
Fraser and Nabeel dive into the evolving landscape of AI note-taking apps, focusing on a new product, Granola. They discuss Granola's unique approach of "enhancing your thought" instead of "thinking for you." They also explore: applying this idea to other categories, the influence of LLMs on UX, and the need for more experimental user workflows to unlock AI. They also discuss the c

Should we stop talking about models?

May 11 2024 32 mins  
Is it still worth it to discuss models when discussing startups? Nabeel and Fraser discuss how that may be the wrong question to ask in the current landscape, and why customer-centric questions and user experience should be the basis of product experience. Later, they deliberate who might come out on top in the “horse race” for AI product dominance, and whether it will come fro

Devin & the Autonomous Engineer Wave. Plus, .Com lessons as a model for today

Apr 10 2024 39 mins  
What is the extent of autonomous coding engineer Devin’s ability to generate real, functional applications with little to no help? Nabeel and Fraser dive into the buzz about Cognition’s ‘Devin’, what makes it different, and the transformative potential of AI in software engineering, particularly focusing on autonomous coding software. Later, they get into the innovator's di

AI Models. Weighing the chances of commodity vs differentiation.

Mar 23 2024 37 mins  
This week is a discussion of the points of differentiation vs commodification in various AI models. Including how these points might change over time, and might change between language, image, and video models. Then Fraser pivots to orienting around jobs to be done in AI, and how the various models have a huge gap between being capable of doing something, and doing it well. We then

Trailer

Feb 20 2024 2 mins  

Making of Arc Search, and finding your AI product strategy with Josh Miller

Feb 19 2024 48 mins  
Josh Miller, Founder and CEO of The Browser Co, joins this week. We loved the experience with Arc Search, a new AI-enabled mobile search experience, we decided to talk to Josh directly about how it all came together. Topics:* How Arc Search came to be spawned out of basically a side project* The core value of "we don't know"* How the key AI feature 'Browse for Me' was not the initi